A/N: Trigger warning for self-harm and violence. Rating is M. The full prompt is called "one is mind controlled and forced to fight the other".
Happy reading!
Glinda held onto the bedpost of her canopy bed, her eyes closed as she tried to fight the migraine she had woken up with this morning. She was already all dolled up with her golden hair curled in bouncy ringlets and her face plastered with overdone glittery make-up, all that was left was her gown. Her maid was lacing her corset with skillful fingers while she tried to distract her mind from what was waiting for her today.
Another day of parading around the city with Fiyero, showing off her engagement ring and telling the same fake story of a romantic proposal over and over until she almost believed it herself. Almost.
Because they both knew that their betrothal was a farce, the idea of the Wizard or Morrible or both to distract the masses from the real problems walloping right beneath the surface. They didn't love one another, Fiyero had lost his heart to a girl he had been promised to when he was merely an infant, and Glinda still cried her eyes out every night for the girl she had lost in this very palace almost a decade ago. And yet here they were, a few days away from a meticulously planned pompous wedding which would bound them to one another forever.
While Glinda knew about Fiyero's reasons why he didn't want to marry her, she had never told anyone about her own. Elphaba had made her promise not to, and Glinda kept that promise, even though it seemed to become harder with every passing day.
Morrible smothered her with wedding preparations, making her decide which cake she wanted and what color the decorations should be – sometimes Glinda could barely resist the urge to scream at her that she didn't care about any of it as long as they would let her marry Elphaba instead. But, of course, she didn't. While Morrible knew about their friendship at Shiz and taunted Glinda often enough with it, she had no idea that in the privacy of their dorm room, their relationship had gone well past the bounds of friendship.
Sometimes she almost found herself telling her, if only to see the shocked look on her face, but she could always stop herself. Not only did she want to keep what she and Elphaba shared a secret, but Morrible would probably distrust the blonde even more, although Glinda already felt like no one ever told her anything.
Ever since the engagement party, everyone had started to act strange around her. One second she had danced with Fiyero, Morrible and the Wizard supervising them with sharp eagle eyes, and in the next, they were all gone. When she wanted to go look for them, guards had stopped her at the door, forcing her to stay inside the ball room. They had all returned eventually, but all her questions had been either blocked or only answered with silence.
She had tried to investigate, but wherever she turned there always seemed to be a guard close by watching her every step. Although she had to pretend otherwise to everyone else, she was a prisoner in this palace. Nothing more than a pretty poster child for the Wizard's agenda who could do nothing more than smile and wave.
Glinda jumped in her spot as the door to her bedroom opened, not even having to look over her shoulder to know that it was Madame Morrible. The former head mistress entered every room as if she owned it, and Glinda couldn't tell if maybe, she actually did.
"Out, girl, out!" Morrible shooed her maid away with a dismissive wave of her hands and the young girl quickly obeyed.
Before Glinda could turn around to face her, the door of her bedroom closing behind her maid, Morrible already grabbed the laces of her corset, clicking her tongue in disappointment.
"This useless little hussy doesn't even know how to lace a corset," she said and sharply pulled on them, Glinda instantly gasping in shock.
"Not so tight, Madame," the blonde choked out as her waist was being mercilessly squeezed by the material, the struggle for breath becoming harder with each lace.
The Wizard's secretary leaned forward, her foul breath hot on Glinda's ear. "I will only lace it as tight as it has to be. Now, you have a job to fulfill today."
Something began to tingle in the back of Glinda's mind, though she couldn't tell if it was due to the lack of oxygen in her lungs or something else.
"I know," she said, her tongue strangely heavy in her mouth. "The parade through the outer districts of the city."
"Yes." Morrible chuckled quietly as she pulled the laces even tighter, and Glinda asked herself if she took a sadistic kind of pleasure in the gasps and grunts escaping from her throat. "But that's not your only job today."
"It's not?" Glinda managed to choke out between desperate gasps for air.
Finally, Morrible seemed to be done, securing the laces with a tight knot between her shoulder blades. Her mind felt foggy, every thought building agonizingly slow and it seemed like the little breakfast she had forced down this morning rose up her throat again.
Blood rushed through her ears as she tried to concentrate on Morrible's next words, and when she did hear them, they didn't sound like she was standing right next to her. Instead, she heard the sounds right inside of her head, as if the sorceress had lodged herself in it. Sharp claws seemed to clamp on the edges of her mind and her mouth opened in the shape of scream, though no sound came.
"Ready to visit your best friend?"
Elphaba loved and hated the darkness engulfing her at the same time. On the one hand, it meant that she was being left alone while they granted her a minute of peace, on the other it was hard to see any hope of escaping or a possibility that this would end differently than with her death.
She had been stupid enough to break into the palace. Stupid enough to believe a word of what the Wizard said. Stupid enough to let Fiyero arrest her and bring her down in the dungeons.
Her current predicament was her own fault alone and there was no one else to blame, as much as she might like to.
Now, this was her new reality. Her entire body aching from the kicks and punches she had to endure from the Wizard's men, untreated blisters defacing her skin from where they had tried to pry her secrets out of her through torture with water. She knew that the only reason she was alive was that they wanted the Grimmerie, which she hadn't brought with her.
At least she had been smart enough to hide it before coming here, so it was highly unlikely that they would ever find it.
The ropes binding her hands together had rubbed the skin of her wrists sore, and she tried not to hiss in pain while she reached for the small cup of water they had given her. It tasted foul and bitter, but her mouth was so dry that she didn't mind. The material of her torn dress slid a little further down with the movement, revealing more blisters and paper-like skin with her collarbones sickly protruding through.
Even without a mirror she knew that she never looked closer to death than right now, and it had only been a few days since her imprisonment at the ball. A concept of time was hard to keep down here, with no daylight to measure it by, but this wasn't her first time underground for a long period of time. Working with the Resistance had taught her a few lessons, even in keeping her mouth shut while skilled hands knew exactly where she would feel the pain the most.
Sometimes she wondered how long they would try to pry the hiding place of the Grimmerie out of her until they finally gave up and let her die. It couldn't be too long, after all, neither the Wizard nor Morrible could read the damn book, and maybe they would just let it go in hope of finding it themselves eventually.
But she didn't concern herself with these thoughts too long, because even though she did her best to hide it, from the guards as well as from herself, she was terrified of dying. Not only because she didn't believe in the existence of souls which meant that there was no other life after death, but mainly because she couldn't stand the thought of leaving this world without seeing Glinda one last time.
Her life was full of regrets but leaving the tiny blonde she had fallen in love with over a decade ago and had never stopped loving ever since, was by far the biggest one.
She quickly sat the cup of water down as she heard someone unlocking the metal door she was trapped behind.
Not again, was the first thing she thought as she shifted in her position on the stone floor, pain radiating through every cell with the movement. She didn't know how long she could do this anymore.
Yet Elphaba heaved herself up to her feet, knowing all too well that it would only hurt more if they dragged her over the floor instead, where pieces of broken glass were only waiting to cut her skin open. Using the wall as support, she turned towards the door.
Her heart dropped to the floor as she saw Glinda standing in the doorframe, and for a second she wondered if she had gone mad, seeing things that clearly weren't there. But if it were her mind playing tricks with her, surely it would have come up with another image, the one that usually haunted her in her dreams.
Ten years younger, dressed in a yellow sundress and staring up at her as she took a last glance back while she fled from the Emerald Palace. A small and abandoned figure with tears in her eyes, surrounded by strangers and enemies.
This version, however, was older but that wasn't the biggest change. Her hair was still golden, but while it used to flow freely over her shoulders in gentle waves, it was now piled up on her head in tight ringlets. Heavy make-up accentuated her dainty features, making her look more like a doll than a young woman. A pompous baby blue gown seemed to swallow her tiny figure. And yet, she still looked like Glinda, the girl Elphaba had fallen in love with during their time at Shiz, and who she had missed more than anything.
"Elphie," the blonde whispered, eyeing her from head to toe and Elphaba noticed how horrible she probably looked in her eyes.
"Glinda." She wanted to storm towards her but the shackle around her ankle barely allowed her to move. The metal chain clattered on the floor as she tried anyway, and as Glinda noticed her predicament, she hurried towards her herself, throwing her arms around her in a bone-crushing hug.
The green witch hissed in pain as she came in contact with her wounds, but Glinda only hugged her tighter. While she tried to enjoy the feeling of her body pressed against her own after years of separation, and to some extent she did, the pain shooting through her body made it unimaginably hard. The Glinda she knew would have been more careful, as she had been whenever Elphaba so much as cut her finger on paper, but the ecstasy of meeting again probably made her throw all caution out the window.
When they finally separated, and Elphaba immediately felt guilty at the slight relief overcoming her, she brought her bound hands up to the blonde's face. Taking it between her hands, gently caressing her cheeks with her thumb, she couldn't stop the tears from burning behind her eyelids.
"What are you doing here?" She asked while she tried to resist the urge to kiss the ridiculously bright pink color right of her lips.
"I didn't know you were down here," Glinda replied, avoiding the green woman's gaze. "Or I would have come sooner."
Elphaba frowned. "They captured me at the ball a couple days ago … but Glinda, if they didn't tell you, you can't be here! It's too dangerous!"
"Why are they torturing you?" Glinda asked as she looked at her bruised skin again. The green woman searched for the tears in her eyes she had become so familiar with, the panic that always overwhelmed the blonde when she saw Elphaba in pain. But there was nothing there.
Her emotions were either well hidden behind her make up or they didn't exist at all.
"The Grimmerie," she explained slowly, her eyes still roaming over Glinda's face in hope of finding anything she recognized. It was exactly as she remembered and yet something was odd, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. "They want to know where I'm hiding it. But Glin-"
"And where did you hide it?" Glinda cut her off, looking her in the eyes for the first time. The sea blue orbs Elphaba used to get lost in still had the same color, and yet the dull, emotionless expression in them was too much for her to handle.
She drew her hands back from Glinda's face but the girl who had protested whenever Elphaba broke their skin contact, stealing kisses from her lips to lure her back, didn't even seem to notice.
Elphaba averted her gaze, trying to make sense of it all. "I can't tell you."
"Why not?"
"Because they would try and torture you too," she replied, her voice barely more than a whisper. Even though she didn't seem to recognize this Glinda, she owed it to the young girl she had fallen in love with to keep her from harm. "You need to leave."
Glinda stayed rooted to the spot, and Elphaba had to force back a timid smile at this display of stubbornness – at least one thing the years of separation hadn't changed.
"She won't leave until you tell her."
Elphaba's head shot up as she instantly recognized the voice of her former headmistress at Shiz, frantically looking around the room to find her. But she and Glinda were just as alone as they had been the entire time.
"Stop making a fool out of yourself, my dear, and look at me", the voice said and Elphaba's heart stopped beating as she noticed Glinda's lips moving, forming the words.
Her head began to spin as her eyes once again fell on the blonde's face and in a split second, it all made sense. Elphaba felt her knees going weak.
"Madame Morrible," she choked out, her own voice strangled and hoarse.
She didn't answer, instead, Glinda slapped her across the cheek with a force she never would have suspected within her. Elphaba barely felt the sting, although it caused her to stumble a few steps backwards. The shackle around her ankle held her back and she fell to the floor, just barely able to cushion the fall with her arms.
There was a simple reason she hadn't recognized this Glinda – because it wasn't her. It was her body, yes, but not her mind. It may have been Glinda's hand which had slapped her, but not out of her own will.
The thought was quickly erased from her mind as a sharp stiletto heel kicked her in the stomach, and Elphaba grunted in pain. More kicks soon followed, and she curled herself in a fetal position on the floor to protect her body.
While the reasonable part of her knew that this wasn't Glinda, not really, it couldn't stop the blows from hurting twice as much just knowing that they came from her. Seeing her beautiful features screwed up in a mask of anger and blood lust – Elphaba thought she would get sick from the sight alone.
"Tell me!" The blonde yelled as she kicked her again, this time in the back. "Tell me!"
Elphaba kept silent, except for the grunts of pain she couldn't avoid slipping from her mouth. A loud scream freed itself from her throat as she could feel one of her ribs breaking from another kick, her lungs quickly protesting as she tried to gasp for air.
"Where's the Grimmerie, Elphie?" She asked once again while kicking on the same spot again, and the abused nickname caused Elphaba's tears to roll down her cheeks, leaving a burning trail of wetness.
"I won't tell you!" Elphaba screamed against the pain in her lungs and desperately gasped for air as Glinda stopped kicking her for a moment. "You can use Glinda all you want, beat me until I die for all I care, I will never tell you!"
A cold chuckle filled the room, but Elphaba's ears were ringing so loud that she couldn't even tell if the voice belonged to Glinda or Morrible. "Oh, is that so?"
Elphaba looked up as she heard Glinda step away from her, blinking against the blurriness blocking her view.
"What did you say earlier? Because they will try and torture you?"
A devilish smirk defaced Glinda's features before she picked up a big glass shard from the floor, the smirk quickly vanishing as she used it to cut the pale skin of her arm open.
"No!" Elphaba screamed, the pain radiating through her body forced to a far corner of her mind as she tried to scramble towards the blonde. "No, no!"
Deep red blood flowed in a thick trail down her arm, Glinda's face screwing up in pain, and yet she passed the glass shard into her other shaking hand and dragged it over her other arm.
Elphaba struggled against her shackles as she screamed at her to stop, but Glinda was far out of her reach. Burning tears rolled freely over her face as she realized that Morrible would only let her stop if she surrendered and told them about the Grimmerie.
She sobbed as she watched Glinda falling to her knees, right into the puddles of her own blood.
This was too much. She refused to let Glinda die for her secret, and there was no other way.
"Fine! Fine!" Elphaba screamed as she continued to pull on the shackle holding her back. The blonde's face was ashen, and she looked like she might fall over any second. "There's an underground hiding place in the western district of the city, that's where I hid it. I can bring you to it and then you can kill me, but, please, help her! Let me help her!"
"I knew we could come to an understanding," Morrible said through Glinda's lips, before the blonde passed out on the stone floor.
Elphaba could only watch as her shackle remained firmly in place.