TW: Body horror, SA, Violence

Blonde curls could take her away, lightening the weight of gravity like the lift of her broom. They could make her forget how terrified she was.

A dangerous thing to forget.

To be terrified was to be aware that, at any moment, Elphaba could lose her. These walls that protected and imprisoned the witch could come crashing down under emerald boots at any given moment. A bullet could fly through Elphaba's skull faster than her broom could fly to her hand, and Glinda could be ripped away from her arms before magic even sparked.

Glinda should have known the danger better than any of them, yet she still ran out that door.

"I have to go get her - it's not safe!"

"Being seen with you is what will get her recognized, Fae. I'll go."

Hell and Oz, why did Glinda have such a habit of making the witch want to put her in a bubble that she couldn't pop with her wand? Elphaba shouldn't have been so surprised, coming from her roommate who once stepped atop their dorm balcony railing to arabesque in high heels - as if the universe would never be so bold as to let a girl in a pink peignoir plummet to her death.

How long had it been since Fiyero went to get her? A minute? Thirty? It could have been either, or anything in between. Elphaba had been alone here so many times before Fiyero and even after he joined her, but she was never so confined here as she was now. She ached for the skies, but if she couldn't have flight without daring Oz to bring her down, she yearned for Glinda. Even just to look into her eyes and know she was here. Elphaba paced, unable to get her own words out of her head, acutely aware that the kitchen table and chairs had begun to vibrate.

I have to go get her.

I have to go get her.

She needs me.

No. Glinda walked away. She couldn't drag her back in here like an actual kidnapper, no matter how terrified Elphaba was. No matter how much the walls inched towards smothering her in the barnhouse. Without fawn locks draped over her thigh for Elphaba to pave narrow rivers through, the isolation made the air feel thin. She'd want to fly - she'd need to fly - if she wasn't so worried about leaving Glinda's side. Taking her along was more dangerous than being spotted by herself, seeing as people could immediately assume that the blonde on the back of her broom was their stolen princess of hope and goodness, even without her identifiable crown.

For almost a month, Elphaba had only stepped outside the house briefly for private conversations with Fiyero. Though her broom called to her desperately, she'd only flown twice in that time - once to the chapel in an emergency, and then to the forest to heal the bird.

"You're magic!"

"I'm magic!"

Then again, Elphaba always knew she was. Glinda had always been her light, even before she could make it with her wand. Was it getting darker in here?

No, Elphaba, you're being ridiculous, and she'd tell you the same.

Glinda walked out that door on her own, and she was allowed to. Just like the girl who wrapped Elphaba's cape around her neck all those years ago had every right to step back in a tearful goodbye, no matter how much it broke the heart of Oz's new Wicked Witch.

They were both just trying to protect each other, even if falling unaligned on how to do that was ultimately what tore them apart. There was just no world where Elphaba could have stood in that emerald room again, groveling to Morrible and the Wizard, watching their black eyes sneer down at her submission. Even if Glinda could have assisted or coached her, Elphaba could have never pulled it off. They never would have believed her. And even if Glinda could have taken over and spoken to them, who knows what they'd make the green girl do to earn their trust, after her outburst? Morrible knew so much about Elphaba - what threats would they have sewn to keep her in line, if she had gone back?

Elphaba put her hand on a window that was opaque with morning fog, smearing a circle of clarity she could see through. No sign of Glinda or Fiyero out back. Elphaba considered cracking the door to check for them out front, but she didn't trust herself to resist going out there. Instead, the witch ignited the fireplace with a swoop of her wrist, leaned her sage palms into the rock mantle above it, and stared into the blaze until her corneas burned. When both the heat and dryness compelled Elphaba to blink, she saw a flash of black and crimson blistering and cracking on Glinda's arm.

"Rejesha choma, ela…el – no, fuck!"

Elphaba tried to read the spell through tear-blurred vision, through eyes that couldn't stay on the text while Glinda cried out in pain.

"Rejesha afya…rejesha sano…"

The skin twisted on Glinda's arm. Elphaba could hear it. Was she supposed to be able to hear it? She looked again, even though she shouldn't have, and began to panic when unaffected flesh stretched over red blisters in a way that she knew wasn't right.

"Rejesha afya…rejesha choma… Rejesha…"

There was an audible crack like the snap of rubber as the witch watched porcelain skin tighten and split. Her hands trembled in their sorcerous dance, fingers pulled into the spell that had already unstably begun, even if she wanted nothing more than to stop hurting Glinda.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I'm trying!"

The witch shoved herself off the mantle and away from the flame, stumbling backwards on the heels of her boots. Pointed green fingernails tore through loose braids until Elphaba spotted the clerical texts sitting on the couch. Like a crashing wave, she flung her hands, spitting a curse into trembling air as she sent the leather-bound book hurtling into the wall. Tears stung her eyes, but Elphaba was too furious to notice if they'd bothered to fall or not. The heat of her own skin could have simmered them away. She dropped herself onto the couch and threw her cheeks into her hands before she could throw anything else around the room.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck…"

The face Glinda had made when the pain was too much for her to even scream anymore… Glistening, dark lashes in pointed triangles facing the ceiling… Her eyebrows pitched in frozen horror. Her eyes…

How could Glinda have done that? How could she have put Elphaba in that position - forcing her to… Oz, her screams… having to hurt her…

"And how long before your arm is back in that fire?"

Elphaba inhaled sharply, emerging from her splayed hands before the darkness could conjure images of brown eyes glazing - dissociating - and instead of being Glinda's anchor, the witch was now the cause.

She hadn't wanted the words to come out like that, but fucking Oz, there were too many things that could have hurt Glinda - too many that already had - and every single one of them was outside of these walls, so they kept her in. Then, finding her so determined to hurt herself that she barricaded the door, keeping Elphaba and Fiyero out…

Glinda had been through hell and back, but had she even thought for a second about everything they'd done to get her here? To keep her here, safe, with them? She had to understand on some level, right?

Elphaba hoped that it was just something she didn't understand. Like their parting in that Emerald City tower, maybe she and Glinda just had different ways of protecting each other, and protecting themselves. Elphaba wondered who Glinda was trying to protect in barricading that door; who was she trying to protect in running away.

She knows the danger. She won't go far. She needs me.

Memories posed the question that Elphaba was trying to dissuade her own thoughts from - did Glinda really know the danger?

"Please, please, please, be safe."

Elphaba remembered her hands shaking as she took Glinda's face at the chapel, overcome with a sudden need to memorize every inch of it as if she could ever forget. Willing Glinda to see every other plea that bled from olive eyes.

Please, please, please, beg me to stay…

Please tell me you don't already trust these people you've just met…

Please convince me I'm leaving you behind with some sense in your head…

Please, Glinda, don't leave me…

Be safe, be safe, fucking Oz, please be safe.

Looking into brown eyes and seeing no reassurances looking back at her. Hoping the words found their way to Glinda in the witch's kiss. Tearing herself away as if tearing her body from her own arm. Calling her broom to her hand to try and fill the hole left behind. Flying off, against the wind and against every current of her own heart.

She'd tried to focus on the sky, but all she could see was everything she had pretended not to see when Glinda first got here - when Elphaba first rolled teal silk sleeves off Glinda's arms in front of the barnhouse fireplace.

Bruises. Handprints that could have wrapped twice around Glinda's fragility, yet multiple sets of them strangled porcelain skin all the way up her forearms. A disgusting patchwork of fingers and meaty palms, leaving behind their shadows in black and blue.

Fiyero never saw them. Elphaba hadn't meant to keep it a secret from him - she just couldn't bring herself to further rob Glinda of the autonomy that she already wasn't in a state to advocate for herself. Slipping off the blue dress that was keeping Glinda warm just to perform a living autopsy on every mark…it felt wrong. Dehumanizing. Violating. It would have helped no one - trying to decipher the angles of each grip to gauge if she'd been held still, held back, or held down.

Even if the intent was to provide care - to make sure nothing else needed tending - showing Fiyero the scars without Glinda's say in the matter was already enough to make Elphaba feel sick. It would have only invited more questions, more fear, and more reasons for Fiyero to barrel out the door on a warpath when Elphaba desperately needed him by her side. Most importantly, though, it was wrong.

If that wasn't enough reason - and it was more than enough - that tear had slipped from Glinda's lashes. A question of why. Why did you have to show him? A plea to be protected when she was helpless. Begging her best friend to make her feel safe again.

Elphaba heard her. Glinda had been handled enough. More than enough.

The witch already thought she was assuming the worst, but the nightmares Glinda muttered in her arms those first nights had the witch dreading if she could even fathom how truly bad it was. Expressions ranging from devastation to horror. Eyes darting under her eyelids. Fits of pushing Elphaba away when Glinda had drifted halfway out of her grasp. The witch's whispers would bring her back, "It's alright…you're with me…" and Glinda would need to be closer, needing to breathe the space between Elphaba's neck and shoulder to feel safe. The witch assisted, finding a light gravitational pull even in her sleep to keep Glinda there.

She needs me.

When he could bring himself to ask Elphaba about it, as if she even knew, Fiyero seemed fixated on narrowing down the worst thing that could have happened to her. Perhaps an answer would have helped him understand how to act, what to do, where to place blame, or how to protect her. To Elphaba, though, it didn't seem like the situation could even begin to be qualified like that.

Fiyero had his own nightmare - his own worst case scenario. He had, through tears, asked Elphaba if she thought Glinda had been raped.

She could have told him no. She could have given him that comfort. She could have taken his face in her hands and asked him, "Would that change anything? Would you love her any less? Would she need us any less? Fiyero, why does it matter?" Instead, Elphaba had given him no response, and her silence told him enough. She'd held him as he cried.

Elphaba remembered the dream-turned-nightmare that set all of this in motion. The memory of a time where a young Galinda needed her. She was feverish and sick, but the green girl could be there. Elphaba could take care of her. She seemed to always know what Galinda needed, even then.

There was an end in sight. The brown-eyed girl began to get her light back through the crusts of mucous under her nose and the lilac-scented tissues strewn haphazardly about the floor. A dimple began to teasingly emerge whenever Galinda could find some success in her dramatics, testing the return of her own charisma. And the roommate who adored her was happy to fall victim, as long as it meant she could see that smile again.

Until a phantom gash sliced through Elphaba's wrist, and the dreamy mirage of Galinda couldn't wake up. The warning wailed through prophecy - moving like air, but seeping into skin like guilt once the message found the witch. The feeling of Glinda - her Glinda - giving up.

Sometimes Elphaba cursed this mysterious ability of hers to see things before they happen, in all of its vagueness and its habit of being too late for her to change a thing. Why in Oz did it wait until her best friend wanted to die? What about the horrors that must have gotten Glinda there? Where were those visions? Did Elphaba keep herself from seeing, when she flew away and tried not to think about the girl who left a handprint on her heart, and then broke it? Could Elphaba have saved her - before the whitewake, before the bruises, before anyone so much as touched Glinda - if she hadn't let that handprint fade?

Perhaps the witch would never know. Elphaba couldn't erase the past, but she'd carry the weight of her regrets. She'd make them look weightless so that Glinda would never hesitate to lean on her.

She needs me.

Fiyero returned alone. With no time to be mad at him, Elphaba stood and summoned her broom, stomping towards the door. The prince blocked her path.

"Move."

"Fae, she's fine." He daringly took her by the shoulders while Elphaba's hands shook with sorcerous restraint. His hands swept down to hers, and against her own volition, her fingers relaxed at his touch. He raised them to his lips. Olive eyes blazed in his direction, but the tone of her words were more desperate than angry.

"Where is she?"

"She's cooling down," he said softly, pairing his assurance with a kiss to her forehead. He whispered into her skin. "You should, too."

The couch, chairs, and table dropped from a hover in the air with a heavy thud that shook the floorboards. Elphaba hadn't even realized she'd lifted them. Keeping her hands, Fiyero guided her to the window. Once there, she allowed his touch to turn her. He stood behind, and Elphaba could see a blonde in a dirt-stained dress sitting at the well out back.

"What happened to her skirt?"

"We were just sitting." Toned arms slipped around her ribs, drawing Fae back into Fiyero's chest. She watched Glinda sit on the brick of the well and inspect the dark sediment stains on the bottom of her stockings - formerly Elphaba's.

"She ran out without shoes."

"She'll live, I think."

"I should bring her a pair. And stockings."

If Fiyero hadn't been holding her, she would have made a move for the bedroom closet, but she allowed his warmth to keep her from doing so. A kiss to her cheek caused the witch's eyes to flutter closed a moment. Her chest and shoulders deflated in an exhale.

Outside, Glinda pulled a bucket of water from the well and removed her soiled stockings. Elphaba and Fiyero watched from the window as she dampened a clean section of the cloth and wiped any remaining grime from her feet.

"I know you hate to hear it, Fae, but—"

"I know," Elphaba whispered against his chest. She knew and disagreed at the same time.

She's safer without me there, standing next to her in all of my identifiable green.

Even the thought felt like lies and put a scowl on her face. Fiyero dipped his breath into the back of black and brown microbraids, speaking softly into them.

"She's just a woman outside of a barnhouse who happens to be blonde," Fiyero continued. "No crown, no magic bubble, no association with a…decidedly hot witch…" Elphaba felt Fiyero's lips at her neck, for a moment gently sucking at jade skin. She couldn't bring herself to let it work on her. He accepted that and held her closer instead. "She might as well be invisible, Fae."

Galinda Upland, invisible. An impossible thought, once. No more fathomable than a green woman slipping through a crowd unnoticed. It was true, though. Even if Glinda's shade of hair was still that lovely champagne blonde, it now fell without uniformity in varied locks of waves and curls, parting slightly off-center as if it had just fallen there, because it had, in fact, just fallen there. It was hard to imagine her sipping much of anything from an opulent glass, much less champagne. She was a farm girl in a blue dress. To the world, at least.

"What did you find out about the announcement from the palace?" Elphaba asked with a pang of worry. "And the Emerald Guard - they're still being sent out? And the weapons?"

Fiyero paused.

"I've been thinking…"

A bad sign, Elphaba thought, not entirely with sarcasm.

"Maybe we talk about it with Glinda, too?" offered the prince tentatively. "Make sure she knows what's going on? I mean, it involves her. It involves all of us. I think she deserves to know whatever we know about it."

Elphaba almost found her way to a retort, but nothing she could have said held logical weight, only emotional. She turned in Fiyero's arms, attaching to his chest and looking into blue eyes. Perhaps she didn't need words with Fiyero. Her chin tilted up in an invitation, and as Elphaba felt a sting of tears that might actually fall this time, she allowed his kiss to give her comfort. When their lips parted, Elphaba felt the cooling, damp paths fall down her cheek. Her chin quivered in her words with the tension of holding back.

"I'm so scared."

"I know…" he said tenderly, hushing her and wiping her tears. "Fae, you told me you couldn't do this alone, but you won't stop taking it on alone."

Elphaba punctuated a stuttered sigh, dropping her forehead into his chest. She knew the words she wanted to say. She wanted to say the same thing she told Fiyero when she stood on a sprained ankle and carried Glinda's unconscious, nightmare-addled body into the corner of the bedroom.

"She needs me."

Instead, the truth came out.

"Fiyero, I need her."