A/N: Thanks to Kennedy Leigh Morgan, who, though I haven't spoken to her in forever, helped me write this originally. And also to Veronika Green. She's stuck with me throughout. And betas somewhat.
Also, maybe it was a little mean of me to put this on hold forever and then, on top of it all, to spend time rewriting it once I came back, but, for real, I couldn't have continued it like it was. So, to all you little minions that aren't reviewing: I see you.

This is the most exciting thing since… Glinda racked her memory. Had she done anything exciting ever? She glanced around at Liir and the Superior Maunt, who appeared vaguely tired. This is the most exciting thing since Nessarose di—

Candle came through the door and Glinda put a pause on her mental narrative and slid closer to the edge of her seat.

Glinda didn't know for sure how exactly she'd pictured Candle would be, but her mental storyteller hadn't imagined that the normally reserved girl would seem so… well, collected, which is the general impression that she gave, gliding all smooth-like into the room with the domingon slung over her shoulder like a bow. No shame, no avoidance. More confidence, even, than the girl usually showed.

The girl sat obediently in the chair farthest from them all and nearest to the door. The maunt said nothing, seeming to let the silence soak in. Liir was glancing in earnest from the maunt, who was watching the baby out of the corner of her eye, to Candle, who was surveying her fingertips with mild disinterest. Glinda coughed a little.

The Superior Maunt shot Glinda a glance before speaking into the warm stillness. "Candle." Candle flexed her fingers under her gaze. "Is this your child?"

The woman didn't so much as glance at Liir or at the infant on his lap. "Yes."

"May I ask," the maunt began, in a voice that quiet clearly stated that she would ask whatever she pleased with or without permission, "why you left your child?"

Candle decided, then, to look at the maunt, at which point there ensued a silent battle of wills. Liir had turned red along the neck and cheeks. It felt to Glinda like one of the old Shiz debates on the lawn of the Three Queens, but wordless and devoid of aging professors with pince nez on their bulbous noses.

"Baby thought to be dead," Candle answered, at last.

Liir sat forward in his chair, leaning into the conversation and unraveling the silence that had settled around him. He was trembling slightly. "Candle," he fumed, now completely red below the ears. "Don't lie."

Candle looked at him then, her face unresponsive. It was hard to tell if he was shaking from anger or something else.

"Don't you tell me," he said, "that I found this child, my child," he broke off, sighed. "Don't you tell me that you had no time… that you couldn't tell that your own daughter… that the trash… don't you tell me—" He slipped into Qua'ati; Candle looked at him more intensely than before. A part of his reserve broke, his voice rose a pitch. The baby fidgeted in his lap and Candle's face began to shine with anger.

Glinda leaned forward even more, desperate to understand the language that she had never learned. She caught a word that she thought to be "damned." Another "daughter." It all seemed ethereal, somehow, Liir and Candle and the cracking walls of the room all bathed in orange sunlight. Liir's voice a song.

Candle rose from her chair and glared down at Liir, still not acknowledging the baby in his arms. "My child is dead," she said. She turned her back on them all, defiantly, and marched out the door.

The Superior Maunt was the first to break the silence. "What is it that you plan to do, Liir?"

He was still staring at the doorway through which Candle had just left. After a moment, he looked down to his daughter. Looked to Glinda, then to Elphaba's broom in her hands. Looked out the window and stared at the setting sun, the low-hanging clouds. "I can't do this," he said. He rose and crossed the room to where the maunt sat. "Just…" He placed the child in her arms. "I'll come back."

Glinda could have sworn that he paused for just a moment at the door, could have sworn she heard him whisper "Goodbye, Lena." As the door closed faintly behind him, she was certain he whispered, even quieter, "Goodbye, Elphaba."

The uncomfortable silence of the room was broken only by the baby's soft cooing—an attempt to capture the attention of the maunt in whose lap she sat.

Glinda rose halfway from the chair. "I…" The maunt tore her eyes away from the window, through which Liir could be seen, retreating into the sunset. Her whole body was slumped in exhaustion. "Take her."

Glinda unquestioning obeyed, raising the child from the maunt's lap. Feeling, somehow, like some pawn of Time, she followed Liir and Candle's footsteps through the door. She walked aimlessly, concentrating only on making sure that she ran into no one in the halls, lest she have to garner the energy to try to explain the green and the child, or, worse, to politely refuse an explanation.

She glided over to a bench in the courtyard and sat down upon it, laying the girl out on her lap. She hated that already her childhood had been different than other children's, that, while most arrive, loved, into a world of fleece blankets of pink and blue, she had arrived nameless into arguing and neglect and abandonment.

The child suddenly tensed when one of Glinda's teardrops landed softly upon her cheek. "I'm sorry," Glinda gasped, brushing it away. She raised her face to the sky and closed her eyes. She hadn't ever understood, before, the idea of a motherless child. Any girl growing up without muttering "Mama" during a bad dream, without whispering and giggling with her first best friend, the woman who would watch her grow into gowns and marriage. Tears of regret burned her eyes. Tears for not understanding when Elphaba needed most to be understood.

She pulled the baby to her chest and breathed in the soft smell of wood in the night air. She could picture Elphaba in the distance against the strip of the horizon, stumbling listlessly across the marshland of the past. "That won't be you," she whispered, hugging her child closer against the cold of the night.