Elphaba sat in the castle's north tower and wondered why she had come back here. Because you have nowhere else to go, stupid, answered the increasingly irritating second half of her inner dialogue. Crossing the great and mysterious Western Dessert had seemed less appealing as a one-man job. One-woman job. One-witch job. Whatever. Come to think of it, the first half of her inner dialogue had been getting pretty annoying as well.

She sighed. Years of relative solitude had gotten her the habit of running things past herself and that had gradually developed two distinctive voices. Probably not a good sign sanity-wise, but what was she to do? Find somebody else to talk to. There used to have been Chistery. Who talks back! He could have, in time. Yes. Time. A long, long time.

"Please, shut up."

Oh, bravo. Now you're talking to yourself out loud. That's a step in the right direction.

"Agh!" Elphaba swept to her feet, pacing the small room in frustration.

I'm blowing everything out of proportion. This isn't so bad. I'm in a big empty castle. I've done that before. I've been alone before and I was just fine. You're more alone now. You can't be more alone. You either are or you're not. Oh, no. You didn't have any people before, but you had something else. What's that? A reason to be alone. A cause.

She stopped pacing. She was right. She had nothing to do, to fix, to help. No broom, no book. She'd passed them on. Her time was over. She had…nothing left to do, nothing left to…don't finish that. Don't go there. There are too many high ramparts in this rusty, old castle.

Perhaps this was madness. Now there was a question for the philosophers. If a madwoman rants in a tower and there is nobody there to hear her, is she still mad? More importantly, does it matter?

There must be some way to survive this existence. That's easy. Don't think about it. Don't think about it? I don't think you know us very well. Perhaps not, but

that's the way out. Don't think on the future. Don't think on the past. Just take it one moment at a time. One moment at a time, for how many moments? Don't think on it.

Right.

The next few days were a blur. She slept when she was tired, woke when she was not. She bathed when she smelled. She ate from the kitchen when hungry, drank from the well when thirsty. She cleaned when the dust became too great. When none of these things bothered her she paced. She did not think on whether this was to be her life.

Some days later, she discovered it was not.

Banging. There was a banging. It had taken several minutes for her to fully register a new sound. She tilted her head and moved to find its source. It was really very irritating. What was that banging? She climbed down the stairs, walked the long halls and found herself at the front gate. There was someone there. Yelling.

"Hello? Is anyone there? Please open up the gate!"

A familiar someone, it seemed. Elphaba went down and opened up the small side door as the gate took several large men to operate. She stood for several minutes simply staring at the figure before her. From the back all that could be seen was the dark brown, excellently cut, leather cloak and hood.

"Glinda?"

The figure spun quickly and within a blink had nearly toppled Elphaba over with her embrace.

"Oh, Elphaba!" she shrieked with glee.

Then, just as quickly, she pulled back and aimed a volley of rapidly flying little fists at the stunned green woman.

"How could you do that to me?" cried Glinda. "I was a mess! You scared me to death! I was grief-stricken! You…you…you horrible person! Oh, I missed you so much!" She exclaimed, pulling the taller woman into another tight embrace.

"Glinda, please, let's…let's go inside."

Elphaba pulled her petite friend through the doorway, through the castle, arriving at her small corner tower.

"Glinda," Elphaba said at last. "What are you doing here?"

"I got your note," replied Glinda as if it explained everything.

Elphaba blinked. "Glinda, I only sent that so that you would know. So…so that you would not grieve."

"Well, what did you expect me to do?"

"Nothing!"

"Nothing. Elphie, sweetheart, you can't pull a 'look I'm dead, except not really' and expect a person just go, 'oh, ok then.'"

"Glinda, you have to go back. You have things to do!"

"It's taken care of."

"Taken care of?"

"For now anyway. The Wizard is preparing for departure. Madame Morrible is in custody. I have taken a brief leave in order to sort through my upcoming duties. And most of Oz is too busy celebrating to notice any of it."

Elphaba was taken aback. In truth she had always looked down on Glinda a little, seeing her as rather, well, not ingenious. But sweet Oz, she was good at this. It should have been her all along.

"Elphie, are you listening to me?"

Elphaba smiled. "Of course not. Do I ever?"

Glinda giggled, then fought to regain a serious expression.. "Elphie, this is important. I have an idea. It could fix everything!"

"Really," Elphaba asked skeptically.

Glinda nodded. "It will work, I'm sure. It's the only way for you to come back, but you'll have to swallow your pride. Now, I know…"

"Wait." Elphaba interrupted. "Come back? Back where?"

"The Emerald City. I've been thinking about it all the way here and…"

"I'm not going back, Glinda."

Now the blonde began to pout. "Why not?"

"To begin with, I'm dead. That might be awkward."

Glinda shook her head. "No, I have it all worked out."

"They all hate me."

"I can fix it!"

"Fix it?"

"Yes!"

Elphaba opened her mouth to explain the obvious lunacy of this statement but Glinda rushed to cover her mouth with her hand.

"Elphaba, you have to come back with me. I…I can't do this!" Glinda sank to her knees despondently.

Elphaba, startled by her friend's desperation, quickly kneeled beside her.

"Glinda?" she inquired softly to blonde's sniffles.

"Elphie, what you asked me to. I can't. I don't know how. I need you to show me."

Elphaba shook her head. "I know its hard, but I don't know how either. I tried. It's your turn now."

"No it's not," Glinda snapped. "It was never your turn and it's not mine now. I…I've been thinking about this too."

Elphaba smirked. "That's quite a lot of thinking in so short a span. Making up for lost time?"

Glinda glared at her. "Oh? And what have you been doing?"

That wiped the smirk off Elphaba's face. Maybe we were both making up for lost time.

"Anyway, as I was saying," Glinda continued, turning serious again. "It was never supposed to be that way, yours or mine. It was supposed to be…it was supposed to be ours."

Elphaba pulled back a bit, her teeth biting her lower lip in thought. She'd considered that. She'd wondered how things might have been different if…but that moment had passed. There was no going back. Slowly, she shook her head.

"Elphie, please," Glinda begged, holding her friends hands to her. "I…I made a mistake. A terrible one, but please, don't make the same mistake to…to punish me!"

Elphaba's head shot up and she looked into the eyes of her only friend, spilling over with tears.

"Oh, no," she whispered, pulling the other girl to her. "Never, never, never," she chanted softly as she stroked her hair.

As Glinda began to cry against her dearest friend's shoulder, she started to speak. The words came from somewhere she had never been before, but she knew then to be Truth.

"You had it right the first time, we had it right. We're the Queen the Flowers, together. One needs the other, like we said. Elphie, you sent a bird to tell me the rose still had her thorns. Elphaba, please, she needs them.

"Elphaba. Come with me."

We'll be the greatest team there's ever been.

"Swallow my pride, huh?"

Elphaba sighed and thought of all the absolutely horrendous things that could imply. So many things could go wrong. It would be going back to everything, the responsibility, the pressure, the people. It scared her to death.

"Yes. I'll come."