Chapter Five

Good Intentions

The damage is unlimited
To everyone I've tried to help
Or tried to love
…
In a long career of distress
Every time I could, I tried making good
And what I made was a mess!

--(Wicked the Musical: No Good Deed)

Elphaba marched stoically ahead. Since the incident with the mutilated body the Witch had regained her distance, and was decidedly indifferent to her blonde companion. They had walked for over an hour, Elphaba striding forwards, her dark eyes searching the oncoming night for sight of the castle, and Glinda trailing several feet behind in her cumbersome gowns, complaining that her feet hurt.

Elphaba continued to pointedly ignore her. Which caused Glinda to remember the last time they had spoken. The fight was over something as silly, as trivial, as a pair of old shoes.

Nessarose, Elphaba's sister, had just been killed in the tornado. They said 'the tornado' because it sounded better than saying that a house had fallen on her head. Elphaba had returned from Kiamo Ko, and had walked with Glinda through Colwen Grounds. There were bluebirds. Glinda still remembered how the Witch her old roommate Elphaba had become had frightened her. The strange charisma and the stoic air of detachment, mingled with an inexplicably fiery passion, although for what, exactly, had always remained more or less a mystery to Glinda.

There was something thrilling about it. So much so that she didn't know quite what to say, and so she had chattered on too much. They had walked passed the places splattered with graffiti of the overjoyed Munchkinlanders who had seen Nessarose as a tyrant and called her the 'Wicked Witch of the East.'

What a sight for a grieving sister to see! Not that Elphaba had ever let any of her pain show. Of course not.

Glinda had told Elphaba how she had sent the girl who was in that house, the girl they called "Dorothy," to the Emerald City.

It was strange, she and Elphaba had been to the Emerald City, and so much had changed there. She had won Elphaba in that city, and lost Elphaba in that city. She had thought she had lost her forever. She had returned to the Shiz alone, the burning of Elphaba's lips against her cheek imprinted there forever. She did not know how many tears she had cried over her roommates' disappearance. The girl she had loathed for the longest time, in her horrid old rags, with her musty old books, and political balderdash.

How she had cried and cried and cried!

Then they had met again, at Colwen Grounds, and Elphaba had changed so much. She had not returned for Glinda, either, even though the husky whisper"hold out, my sweet," continued to echo in her head and in her dreams as it had for years. No, Elphie had only returned to see Nessarose as Eminent Thropp, head of state, who had orchestrated a revolt and had Munckinland seceded from Oz and set up as an independent state. Still obsessed with politics. She hadn't even seen Glinda. They were only reunited after Nessa's death. And Elphie was still always looking at the bigger picture, and her righteous causes, and probably not thinking of her roommate from long-ago at all.

At first Elphaba had surprised Glinda with her concern for the alien girl. She had reprimanded Glinda for lying to her about the Wizard, and sending her to meet him. But then, once she had told her that she had given the poor girl Nessa's shoes—

Glinda would remember the look of raw hurt and fury that had burned across Elphaba's face until the day she died. "You WHAT?"

Her entire body trembled violently, and Glinda had actually cowered (inside, of course, she was actually surprised at herself for maintaining an outward façade of false calm).

"Those shoes weren't yours to give away! My father made them! And you just gave them to the clumsy foreign brat who dropped her big clunky house on my sister!"

Glinda had tried to make fun of her—how could Elphaba wear those pretty glass shoes with her dreary old cloaks and shawls? The only foot wear Glinda had ever seen Elphaba wear had been army boots, for Lurline's sake!

She had tried to point out that the shoes had been falling apart until she had taken her wand to them and laced them with a magic binding spell. And then, with Elphaba still raving, furious—and more frightening than Glinda had ever seen her—she finally broke down and shouted that she would have kept them if she had known Elphaba wanted them.

She would have kept them! But how was she to know that the Witch was suddenly going to become sentimental over something like a pair of glass shoes? How was she to know? The poor foreign girl had nothing else. Glinda had only been trying to do the right thing.

She was only trying to do the right thing!

Lurline…why did everything she tried to right end up backfiring so horribly?

Chuffrey…Dorian…Elphaba…everyone she cared about—everyone she loved—why did it always have to end with them hating her?

She had a terrible headache.

They're only shoes…they're only shoes…she'd pleaded. She had to get them out of Munchkinland, the pagans had begun to attribute divine powers to the silly things. She was just trying to make everything right!

Her head was throbbing painfully, she could barely see through the tears in her eyes.

But Elphaba had turned on her and snapped viscously. Glinda would always remember.

"You're working with the Wizard, aren't you? You have no sense of charity, Glinda. Don't fool yourself. You're working with the Wizard. You're betraying everyone—the Munchkinlanders, the girl you claim you were trying to help—hell, you're sending her right into the Wizard's clutches!"

Glinda's head was spinning. But Dorothy had been just a girl. No one would take her seriously. The Wizard couldn't possibly see her as a threat—could he?

But Elphaba was paranoid, she spoke of the Wizard using the shoes to reannex Munckinland, somehow. She spoke of them as though they had power. She was hysterical. "The Wizard mustn't have those shoes! If you won't retrieve them, I'll get them back myself!" She had stood there, as still and impregnable as a marble statue, towering above Glinda in the stormy darkness, her black cloak flaring out in the wind around her, her eyes burning coals that cut the Good Witch to the core.

"I want those shoes, Glinda."

And now, here they were, wandering lost in the darkness, stranded somewhere in the Vinkus, and Elphaba wouldn't even look at her. Her feet were killing her, and she didn't know how much longer she could walk, dragging her heavy skirts after her.

The old Elphaba would have at least said it was her own fault for wearing such ridiculous clothing, but now the Witch did not even look at her. Any sort of pity she had felt for Glinda when they had stumbled upon the soldier's corpse had apparently dissipated.

She wanted to try once more to heal the rift that had come between them. To make everything better. But once again, the words all jumbled together deep in her throat, and she didn't know what to say, or how to say them, or how to possibly express all that she was feeling in one string of limited words. And so, of course, she said exactly the wrong thing.

The most wrong thing, in fact, that she could possibly have said.

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"The shoes won't make your father love you, Elphie," Glinda said quietly.

The Witch froze as she walked, her back straightened, green hands clenched tightly. She was too angry even to speak, the words boiled in her chest but stopped in her tightened throat. The shoes her father had lovingly made for her sister Nessarose, with the craft he had learned from the Quadling lover of himself and Elphaba's mother. She could not explain how, even if Glinda had used her magic to mend the shoes, used her magic to give Nessarose the power to stand and walk without assistance, they were still not Glinda's shoes to give away.

They were Nessa's shoes.

They were her family's shoes.

They were HER shoes!

"You had no right! No right to give them away to some drippy little farm girl! They were MINE!"

She certainly had no right to send them right into the hands of the Wizard, who would use them to manipulate the Munchkinlanders, who had put so much significance into the shoes with the Lurlinist beliefs. But again, all the anger that really boiled up deep within her was that

"They were mine."

The blonde sighed, her blue eyes not meeting the Witch. How many times had they had this argument? How many times had it driven them farther and farther apart? "But the girl didn't have a pair of shoes for herself, Elphie! She didn't have anything! She was lost, frightened…I honestly didn't think you would care. You deserted your family for years! I was the one to take care of Nessa after you vanished!"

"So that makes my family's belongings your property then, does it?" the Witch snapped.

"You know that's not what I meant!"

The Witch marched back to her, black skirts flaring in the wind, the old broom clutched tightly in her hand. "While I was struggling, suffering—while I was helping the Animals and the Resistance fight against the Wizard, living in hiding and risking my life, watching people I loved die—"

"But I still don't understand why you did those things, Elphie! You would have been the Eminent Thropp!"

"You really have no concept of it, do you, Glinda? What it really means to help the people who need you—you think a few charity galas are enough!"

Elphaba regretted her words the instant she said them, but could not change her frozen, bitter expression. She saw the deep hurt spread across the Good Witch's face, poor Glinda, who had, despite her naivety, worked very hard to try and deserve all of the privileges and luxuries she had. Glinda, who wasn't really so bad…who was even capable of intelligent thought when she put her mind to it…

For a moment, the shoes almost slid away. For a moment, the Witch could have almost found it in her to forgive—

But then that wounded face turned harsh, and angry. The blonde clenched her own hands into fists and shoved Elphaba roughly out of the way. "Oh really? Well, where are all those people you "REALLY" tried to help, Miss Elphaba? Where are the Animals now? Did all your oh-so-important sacrifices save them? Where is Dr. Dillamond? Nessarose? Fiyero?"

That was the last straw.

Elphaba felt the anger crackling along her spine and Fiyero's name sent a spike of fire straight through her heart.

Memories of a dark room in the Emerald City, secret meetings, the touch of hands and lips. "Fiyero, Fieryo…" a quiet ache deep down in her heart. "Yero my hero."

The crack of the Witch's hand across Glinda's face rang sharply through the empty landscape. Glinda stared at her in surprise for a moment, before her hand struck Elphaba back. "I should have known you wouldn't change—you're still the stuck up—"

"Don't you dare say his name!"

"What do you care about Fiyero? The last time we met you practically accused me of having an affair with him!" Glinda shouted back.

"You idiot!" Elphaba growled. "All you can ever think about is yourself—of COURSE the whole world revolves around GLINDA's affairs. I was trying to CONFESS to you, damn it!" she roared, without realizing what she was saying until it was too late. When the words flew from her, directly from some dark tightly knotted pit in her chest, she suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of aching, and loss.

And relief.

How many years had it been, and she had never told anyone?

Glinda was shocked into silence, staring at her, pink lips slightly parted, her crystal blue eyes rounder than Elphaba had ever seen. And slowly, tears started welling up in Glinda's eyes for reasons the Witch could not fathom. The petite blonde's shoulders began to shake, and she turned away from Elphaba much too quickly, falling to the ground amidst the folds of her massive skirts. "You—YOU—Elphie—?"

The Witch sighed heavily. She clutched the broom tightly, feeling the rough worn splinters digging into her bony fingers. "Yes," she said quietly. "I was with the resistance. That's why they came for him. I'm the reason he died."

"But you—you LOVED him—Fiyero?" Glinda asked, choking. After that night in the Emerald City—after those words whispered in the back of the carriage? After—after everything

The Witch stared at the mess of blonde curls before her, confused, and frustrated. "Yes. That's what I've been saying!" she snapped irritably. "Fiyero and I were lovers. It's because of me that he was killed! By the Unamed God, Glinda, can't you just listen for once? I came out here to the Vinkus to find his wife Sarima and apologize, but she wouldn't let me—"

"W—wouldn't let you…?" Glinda murmured in a kind of haze.

"I came to seek forgiveness. And then the Wizard's forces came while I was away at Colwen Grounds, and they marched Sarima and her sisters, and their children away—and now they're all dead, and I'm the one to blame and—"

"And what?" Glinda asked, rising shakily and turning to glare at her. "You want forgiveness now, is that it?"

Elphaba stared at her, open-mouthed in disbelief.

"Well I've forgiven you for everything else you've done—like deserting me in the middle of the Emerald City to fight for your damn heroic, self-sacrificing causes, to play the glorious martyr, the hero, the anti-hero, while I was left to cry alone in the back of a coach!" Glinda spat the words angrily. "And what do you care? You've never apologized for that!"

"Good God, Glinda! Can't you stop being so damned selfish for one minute! These people died! It's a lot more important than what happened between us in the Emerald City twenty years ago!"

"Not to me, it isn't!" the blonde shouted back at her. "I was alone and scared and I TRUSTED you and I—I—"

The Witch's cold glare bore into her, relentless, unfeeling.

"I might have loved you, damn you!" she cried, turning away and sobbing.

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When she looked back, the Witch had continued to stride ahead, not so much as looking back at Glinda, as though nothing at all had happened. "How can you demand forgiveness, when over those stupid shoes you still haven't forgiven me?"

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The Witch strode ahead, as fast she could without actually running away. She didn't like seeing Glinda here. She hadn't seen Glinda, except for the brief instance at Colwen Grounds, in years. The Glinda she had known in university hadn't had the faint lines around her eyes and mouth, which the Witch noticed even beneath all that powdered make up.

But that shy face, those wide blue eyes, were still the same. Horribly the same.

She didn't want to think about Glinda. It was always easier around the native Winkies and Arjiki tribesmen, who knew her only as 'the Witch.' Glinda knew who she really was, well, as much as anybody did. Glinda knew her name, and used it freely, and by the Unnamed God, how it cut her to the core every time she had to hear it!

She had given up the name. She preferred simply 'the Witch.' 'Elphaba' had so many failings attached to it. The murder of Dr. Dillamond. Her tireless efforts to save the Animals which had come to nothing. Her desertion of Glinda , in the back of a carriage somewhere in the Emerald City. The disappearance of her lover, Fiyero. Her failed attempts to make peace with Fiyero's wife Sarima, and the subsequent murders of not only Sarima, but her sisters, and the children. God, all of Fiyero's children.

Except for Liir.

And even Liir was a sort of failing. She looked at him and didn't feel like a mother. She had never been the mother.

And worst of all, the forgiveness that she could never receive. The mistakes she could never atone for.

Glinda struggled behind her in her ridiculous skirts, while the Witch continued to march steadfastly ahead.

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The Major scowled at the alien landscape that unfolded before his very eyes. He did not approve in the slightest of other worlds existing within Mirrors, even magic ones. At least it wasn't bright and cheery, but a suitably sombre grey, dismal place, with only a few sparse skeletal trees and mostly rocky terrain with jagged cliffs and dark mountains.

Now he only had to find that bugger Eroica, although why he was going to save the damn nuisance he couldn't quite say, except that it was on the whole preferable to comforting the hysterical Shenshen. He was more grateful that the wedding had been interrupted than he would admit, and lit another cigarette.

There appeared to be smoke drifting skyward in lazy spirals from the chimneys of a little town that he could see a few leagues away. It seemed as good a place to begin looking as any, and he began towards the village of Red Winmill.

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Dorian was profoundly uncomfortable. His arms had been bound to his sides with a dozen heavy coils of rope, which threw him off balance as well as being quite painfully tight. The soldiers as well, were beginning to disturb him all the greater. Perhaps it should not have been surprising, given what they had done to the poor bastard nailed to the windmill, but the thief still couldn't quite swallow how very different they were from the Major.

Hell, he was beginning to think they were even worse than the KGB.

They didn't have that sense of justice or nobility that the Major had. Nothing about them seemed to indicate that they were a force for good, and not just that they had rather unceremoniously tied him up and were shoving him along the twisting path with the butts of their guns, but their callous, sneering eyes.

"You're in big trouble, Goldilocks," one of the soldiers sauntering along beside him said. "We've been stationed out here in the middle of nowhere an awfully long time, most of the boys have gotten pretty bored, if you know what I mean."

"Did anyone ever tell you that for soldiers you are most unprofessional?" the Earl replied with disdain. In fact they had some nerve calling themselves officers, the Major could have shown the lot of them! If he was there, or even on the same planet.

Dorian hoped his fear wasn't showing as someone grabbed him roughly from behind, and pulled him backwards. He felt a hand bruising his throat and another pulling at his hair.

There was a thirst for blood and something else glittering in the beady black eyes of the men. They could not have been more different from the Major and his agents. "So Commander Cherrystone said we couldn't touch Dorothy. No one's gonna care what happens to this Gilikinese cad."

"Hey, you know who he reminds me of?" said the one gripping his throat. "That Glinda the Good! I always wanted to do her, this'll be the next best thing."

"The sorceress, huh?" their leader hesitated. "What if they're related or something?"

"Y-YES!" Dorian choked. "We're definitely—totally—completely—related!"

The grip on his throat was momentarily released and he gasped for breath, choking. "She's my mother!"

The soldiers all looked at him for a long moment. "The—the sorceress, yes! And she'll—she'll—turn you all into newts for this!"

Sadly, it didn't have quite the effect he had been hoping for. Rather than being stricken with terror, the soldiers began laughing uproariously at him. Then someone punched him hard in the jaw, and he lost his balance, crashing to the ground, the bindings around his arms preventing him from bracing himself, of course, and his chin slammed painfully into the hard dirt.

He felt hands groping up his back, over his legs. He managed to kick someone, as the pained cry he heard evidenced, but then a sharp blow sent a shock of blinding pain through his chest.

There was the unmistakable bang of gunfire, and Dorian kicked another of his assailants off him, only to see a hole burst through the man's forehead as he slumped to the ground.

Oh God, what now? He thought, as more gunshots rang through the clearing, and the soldiers that had been attacking him cried out as they either fell or scrambled away.

Their leader grabbed his hair roughly, pulling his head back painfully, and Dorian felt the cold edge of a dagger being pressed against his neck. "What sorcery is this?" he shouted into Dorian's ear.

A second later, another shot tore the skin from the top of the commander's hand, and the Wizard's soldier screamed, bringing the blade down with the last of his strength. Dorian pulled out of the way, and the knife grazed against his shoulder, cutting through his shirt and tearing at his skin.

The commander had released him and was running away, and Dorian tried to sit up, but the rope made it quite difficult. After a moment of struggling, he finally gave up, and fell back to the ground with a sigh.

"And you call yourself the world's greatest thief, getting captured by this riff-raff?" a familiar voice said.

And Dorian finally realized who had fired the shots.

"Major!" he exclaimed, seeing the familiar tall, dark-haired officer coolly reloading his magnum in the middle of the now empty clearing. Empty, except of course for them, and the poor bastard who'd taken a bullet to the head, and another wounded soldier lying on his side by the Major's feet.

"It is quite unfair of you to make fun of me, darling!" Eroica pouted.

"Don't call me that, you degenerate!" the Major scowled.

"Well, are you going to untie me or not?"

"I don't know," he lit a cigarette. "It might be easier to deal with you like this."

"That's not funny!" the Earl whined.

"Alright, alright," he stepped forwards, when the soldier who had been lying on the ground next to him stirred, and a hand reached up and grabbed his ankle.

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He fell forwards, collided with Eroica, and in the next moment, they were both on the ground. Eroica was quite effectively pinned beneath him, his arms tied, the riot of golden curls all in a mess around them. Some remote part of his mind was screaming MOVE, YOU IDIOT! but his hands were caught in all those curls, and somehow his entire mind gone simply blank.

The degenerate actually had the nerve to wink at him. "Well, you know I'm certainly not complaining daaarling, but were you planning to untie me or is this more your kink?"

The voice was like a slap in the face with ice water, and the Major shook his head violently, screaming several German insults as he staggered to his feet, brushing the dirt off his uniform. "PERVERT! I should leave you here to rot, and do the world a favour!"

"Such harsh words," the Earl pouted. "And after it was you who veritably pounced on me!"

The Major turned back to him with a look of pure outrage. "You damn queer!" he shouted, then turned and gave the fallen soldier another good kick. "I didn't—"

"And I've been wounded, too," the thief continued. "Ah—my shoulder!"

There was blood seeping through his shirt, and the Major reluctantly took the knife that had been held to the Earl's throat from the ground and cut the ropes that were binding Eroica's arms. "It's just a scratch!"

"Oh dear, but it's bleeding! Oh God! Do you think it'll scar?" the thief asked worriedly

"So what if it does? You're a man, you shouldn't be worried about a scar or two!"

"Oh no, it would be just beastly," the Earl continued, completely ignoring him, of course. The Major rolled his eyes and shook his head.

Eroica stood shakily, making a dramatic scene of clutching his wounded arm (of course), but then he turned and looked at the Major in that foppishly annoying manner. "What?" Klaus snapped at him, irritated, embarrassed, and in desperate need of another smoke.

"Thank you," the thief said quietly. "I was scared."

"Idiot! I don't care!" he retorted sharply.

"I just don't think I ever—you're even more wonderful than I thought you were!" Eroica said. The Major groaned silently and rolled his eyes.

"We have more important things to worry about, you pervert!" he snapped, surveying the scene of destruction. "Those weren't the only soldiers stationed here. The other regiments will be out looking for them."

"You'll think of something, I'm sure," the thief said, actually batting his eyelashes at him! And walking towards him…

The Major was quite close to striking the degenerate, but before he had the chance, the Earl's eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell forwards in a perfect drama-class faint. The Major muttered that they didn't have time for such idiocy, but the perverted fop was lying perfectly still on the ground. He kicked him a little with the end of his boot. Not even a twitch. Then he noticed how sickly and grey the Englishman's skin had gotten, and knelt beside him.

His eyes fell to the thin red cut slashed across the Earl's left shoulder. He lifted the dagger that had done it, and examined the blade. It was coated with something the Major could not identify.

Poison?

There was a low growl behind him, and he slowly turned to see a pack of very-hungry looking wolves slinking out of the decimated woodlands, snouts rippling as they snarled and barred their long pointed teeth.

His eyes fell back to the unconscious Earl beside him, and then back to the snarling animals. Iron Klaus narrowed his gaze angrily.

"Just wonderful."

To be continued in Chapter Six: Loathing