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After the close call in the shop, the witch and her captive hurried back to the nurse's house with the jar of spice in hand, pushing through the throngs of people that seemed to be trying to meet the sparkling Good Witch stuck in the middle of them all. Elphaba forced Levin forward, prodding her in the back any time she seemed to slow on the way back to her home, all the while feeling guilty as she purposely evaded her old friend.
As soon as they stepped through the door to the cottage, Elphaba closed it securely behind her before closing all the windows and curtains, much to the dismay of her hostage. Levin stood silently in the middle of her room, watching fearfully the witch's careful movements.
"What are you going to do to me?" Levin finally asked a few minutes after Elphaba had given up her attempts to darken the room and dropped into a chair in frustration.
"I'm not going to do anything to you," the raven-haired woman groaned exasperatedly, burying her head into a hand. "Except have you sit here quiet until I figure out what I'm going to do. I know she recognized me…but I don't know what she'll do now…"
Levin stared unblinkingly at the woman seemingly mumbling utter madness in front of her before she finally sputtered, "Who in Oz are you talking about?"
A harsh rapping sounded at the thick, wooden door and Levin immediately sprang towards it with barely a look over her shoulder. Elphaba got to her feet, facing the door, ready to face the possibility that whoever was there was there for her.
Levin swung open the door quickly and Elphaba heard her give a small gasp of surprise. "Glinda! Glinda the Good!" the nurse squeaked thankfully. "What are you doing here?"
"That's who I was talking about," Elphaba muttered dryly as her old roommate in all her puffy, shimmering splendor stepped in with a black bundle in hand and shut the door behind her.
"I'm sorry to intrude, but I was told there was someone here that I was looking for," Glinda said calmly, looking from the older woman to the younger one standing just a few feet behind her. The two old friends faced each other in silence, and Glinda took a moment to examine Elphaba's new appearance over carefully before she continued. "The man at the store down the road said this is where the girl with black hair and white skin most likely was."
"And he was just happy to just tell you whatever you wanted? Never even bothered to question you?" Elphaba asked, her tone colder and braver than she felt.
"You'd be surprised at how nice folks can be when you're not on Oz's Most Wanted List!"
"So you know who she is then?" Levin hissed, pointing venomously at Elphaba while never removing her eyes from the good witch that stood in her home. Glinda dropped the ugly, black bunch in her hands to the floor, straightened out her sparkling dress, and nodded her perfectly groomed head clearly.
"I do," Glinda said, looking back with her stony expression at Elphaba.
"What are you doing here, Glinda?" she asked with a sigh. "What do you want from me?"
"I want to know what happened to you!"
"Nothing. An accident. Another spell gone horribly wrong," Elphaba answered grimly. "I tried to save Fiyero…"
"Fiyero? But Elphie, he's dead," Glinda said, her voice on the verge of cracking.
"Don't you think I know that?" she spat. "I couldn't live with…I can't live with knowing he's dead because of me. So I tried bringing him back, even if my life had to be taken for it. It seemed like a good trade-off, no one would miss the Wicked Witch of the West…"
"You know, for someone so smart, you're as dense as a rock, mossy coloring or no," Glinda said angrily, waving her thin finger irately at Elphaba. "You just don't get it! I thought you were dead!"
"Glinda—"
"Shh!" the blonde hissed, wiping one of the tears away that had escaped down her cheek. "You've been the only friend that's ever mattered to me. You were the reason I tried so hard to smile all these years and tell everyone to have hope, because I knew no matter what anyone thought about you you'd still fight for Oz to be a better place! And Fiyero did nothing since you left but look for you because he believed in you too."
"And look where it got him, thanks to me–"
"You and I both know that if given the chance, he would have done it all over again."
The two old friends stared at each other solemnly. It wasn't long before Elphaba tried to apologize, for being the one that Fiyero chose and died for, but could barely form the words. "I'm so…so sorry, Glinda…"
Glinda stepped forward to her, reached up and stroked a petite hand across her friend's cheek, brushing away a salty tear before it rolled into the stitches that still held her tender skin together.
"None of it matters anymore," the Good Witch comforted, but the words hardly helped her; it didn't matter anymore because the reason it mattered was dead. "Now, don't cry, you'll melt yourself again," she tried to joke lightly, but nothing could console Elphaba's sorrow.
"It really didn't work, did it? I couldn't save him, could I? It was just another disaster to add to my generous supply…"
"I don't know, Elphie."
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"The guards had been at the Wizard and Morrible's orders the entire time and took him as soon as he…departed. It took everything I had just to get them from hanging up his corpse in a field for you to see if you flew by. So instead they brought him back to the palace to Morrible and the Wizard."
Elphaba had to sit down. She stumbled over to a chair and brushed her hair away from her eyes with shaky hands, overcome with anger and grief.
"They planned it, Elphie. Just like Morrible purposefully killed your sister. She told me so herself; I would have been able to have her arrested for the murders of an unelected official and a prince, traitorous one or no, if not for the fact that soon all of Oz is going to be celebrating her defeat of you."
"What? That's crazy. All of that happened to me last night because of a spell I cast, not her!"
"She's taking all credit for the storm, whether it was by her doing or not. The rain followed not long after the cyclone she conjured. Now that everyone will believe she's saved them all, I doubt that anyone would allow her to be imprisoned," Glinda explained, walking over to her friend's side and squatting down beside her so she could look her in the eye. "Look, I'll tell them all the truth about you."
"Then they'll all turn against you."
"I don't care!"
"But I do," Elphaba said as Glinda stood back up with a huff of frustration. "'There's no better way to bring folks together than to give them a really good enemy,' don't you remember? Even if you said something, you would not only have to convince everyone in Oz to change their opinion about me and the Wizard, but also explain why you had been lying to them for so long. People are happy in their ignorance, but once you explain to them it was because of lies you told them, they'll never forgive you."
"But I won't allow them to get away with this. They've gone too far this time!"
"Promise me you won't try to clear my name."
"No, I–"
"Promise!"
"Alright, I won't," Glinda grumbled irritably. She stormed away and kicked with her a fancy shoe the old, black bundle that she had dropped by the door as though trying to release her frustration on it. As it turned out, the Good Witch didn't just arrive with Elphaba's old cloak, but also her broomstick and her messenger bag with the magical book in it. "But I don't understand–"
"What are they doing here?" Elphaba interrupted, standing up from the chair and walking over to the pile of objects, her mind moving a mile a minute while she examined the condition of her things.
"They're far too magical to be left in the middle of the street, so I hid them in your cloak and took them after telling everyone to scurry on home," Glinda said, watching her old friend's reaction carefully. "Is that a problem? Should I not have?"
"No, it's not a problem," Elphaba answered and bent down to pick up the old broomstick. She turned back to look at her friend with determined eyes. "But I'm going back. I'm going back to the Emerald City."