Chapter Text
Sometimes, very late at night and very high up in the Emerald City, nestled into a soft bed in a softer penthouse all full of down feathers and silky sheets, Glinda forgets who she is.
Not in a disturbifying way, of course! Not like her grandpopsicle’s roommate at La Mombey’s Home for the Aging Ozian, who she always prayed wasn’t awake because he’d mistake her for a daughter, a great niece; embarrassing, far too intimate, a creeping uncomfortability that lingered like a hand gone unwashed, a thank-you gone unsaid.
No, not that sort of forgetting! More of a peaceful kind, one that is perhaps even gracious. Glinda wakes up during the night, now. She’s always been a great sleeper, ever since babyhood, Granny had said so! But maybe it was the palace air, being up so high. Or the way the glitter from all the celebrations got stuck to her hair, to the cracks in the balcony doors. Maybe it was a sign of some sort; sorceresses, as Glinda had taught herself no thanks to Morrible’s grudgingly official sorceressly training, were meant to have a special affinity for that sort of thing. There were all sorts of divination, reading signs left by birds or tea leaves, flower patterns and even the way little animal bones fell onto the floor. Glinda, of course, wouldn't ever attempt such a thing! But maybe this was it, so she tried to harness some meaning from these episodes in the nighttime. She tried, but then she’d blink, and then she was asleep again.
But in the lapsed time it was easy to blend all the parts of life together, messy as the paint the Ozergarteners who’d decorated bird houses for the palace square looked, blobs and spirals of color. In those moments she could be Glinda and Galinda and even Duckie, Galindaberry, any of those old nicknames that used to make her blush. It was good because things could be both true and untrue, both here and there. Momsie and Popsicle were just in the other room, and Fiyero was in her bed and in his dorm room and also in his palace chambers.
Elphie, of course, could still be there too. Before that terrible day she could’ve been so many places: in her dormitory bed with her single pillow, maybe, or tucked in beside Glinda under mountains of pink, enough pink to drown in. Some nights it was very chilly outside. On those nights she had to think of Elphie somewhere warm, sitting beside a fireplace with a cup of cocoa, cinnamon on top just the way she liked. Or else she couldn’t think of her at all.
This night, sandwiched between two public appearances, Glinda wakes silently. She isn’t sure she is awake at all, really; the pillows beside her head look big enough to be mountains, or maybe clouds. She could’ve been dreaming, just then, or maybe it was real life, scheduling and duties. Was there really a Gale Force soldier, in the hospital with a nasty infection, who Morrible wanted to parade about? Had he really been burned when the Witch flew past him, or had Glinda only made it so in her mind? And did Glinda really need to award him that silly little vanity medal? This sequence of events, slippery, was dissolving fast along with others like it; Morrible insistifying Glinda do her own laundry, clothes coated inexplicably with gashes and holes, Fiyero’s bed, the spot where Glinda fastened herself when she ended up there, the little curve to the mattress on the side. She isn’t in his bed, though. This is her room. It’s cold, colder than usual. There is a breeze that she identifies, sitting up with the blankets pulled to her chest, over her loveliest lavender nightgown. The balcony door sits ajar. In the air, there— a few sprinkles, glimmering, of leftover confetti. They drift in lazily and settle on Glinda’s floor, right on the tile.
“Elphie?” Glinda whispers.
In the morning, the door is shut again. The confetti is gone. On Glinda’s vanity is a single poppy, red and outstretched almost grotesquely. It’s a nice kind of liminality, just here. In moments like these she can pretend, and it can all be anything she wants it to be.
Glinda Fully Zipped: The Emerald City Starlet Discussifies Ballgowns and Parties, No Comment On Wicked Witch, Prince Fiyero
The Emerald City Gazette sat down with Glinda the Good to get the full scoop on life in the palace, what ballgowns are in for the season, and her handsome fiance Prince Fiyero.
Emerald City Gazette: Thanks for sitting down with us! Our readers would love to know: what’s the most exciting part of having such a public facing role at such a young age?
Glinda the Good: Thank you for having me! I love getting to meet all the Ozians and spread love and light to them even in times such as these. My life right now is just a dream come true— you’ll have to forgive me for being sappy!
EC: I’m sure it is! Every girl in Oz simply idolizes you. You wore a lovely dress to the Palace’s banquet just last week, tell us all about it.
GG: I’m so glad you asked, it was one of my favorite gowns I’ve been able to wear this season. It was custom made by Yackle’s Boutique for the occasion; I’ve always loved lace and tulle and we had the brilliant idea to add some floral motifs to the netting along the top.
EC: We’ll attach a photo when this goes to print! It must be exciting to get to wear such beautifying outfits so often.
GG: Absolutely.
EC: It’s been quite a few months since you debuted as Glinda the Good. What has it meant for you to become such an inspiration overnight?
GG: I’d like to say I had practice! [laughs] I’ve always tried to be someone whose image others can admire, whether it was back at school or for all of the Ozians out there today. I do strive to be good, of course.
EC: Truly such braverism to take on such a role during such trying times. Can you give a comment on the current situation in the North? Has the Witch been spotted?
GG: My fiance, who has recently been named the captain of the guard, is monitoring things.
EC: Do you have any further comments on the Wicked Witch, perhaps on the reports of her relationship with rebel Animal groups on the border of Quadling Country?
GG: [sighs, looking out the window beside her] It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?
EC: It is.
GG: Hmm.
EC: Alright then. You mentioned your fiance— what’s your favorite thing about your relationship with Prince Fiyero?
GG: Oz, that’s a hard question! [giggles] Fiyero and I met at school and from the moment I laid eyes on him I thought he was perfect. We’ve learned that lots of people agree!
EC: They definitely do! And what does a day off look like for the two of you?
GG: Oh, those are rare these days! When I’m not working I love to stay in bed with some snacks and a magazine or two. The Gazette is my favorite, of course.
EC: And when you and your prince want to spend some quality time together?
GG: We see each other quite a lot— at work, and at home, and there’s always a party going on!
EC: I know that all of us at the Gazette would love to see you two out and about! What’s your favorite date night spot?
GG: Date night spot, that’s a hard one… we had a most wonderful time at the autumn banquet, which you mentioned. Yackle custom made his suit to match my gown.
“I don’t see the problem,” Glinda says, brow furrowed, folding the magazine carefully and setting it back on the table. There’s more on the bottom, a whole section about the goodliest and most innifying dishes of the season, but she glosses over it, fixes her eye on the emerald sigil at the bottom by the page number. “I didn’t talk about El— about the Wicked Witch.”
“It might be good for people to see a more human side of you two,” Morrible says steadily. She’s drinking tea, swirling a tiny spoon in the depths of her cup and picking up stray leaves as she goes. She’s taken on a horrifying new tone when she speaks to Glinda, now. Icily kind, a pale imitation of the way she used to speak to Elphaba. It’s uncanny, like some alien power has slipped into Morrible’s skin and is merely playacting. Unfortunate, so very bothersome, that Glinda still wants her approval so much! She craves it, really, and maybe it’s some kind of reaction to attention being withheld; Oz, she doesn’t know, she’s not some sort of psychoanalyst! Besides, Glinda’s never been good at not doing what she’s told. So she blinks.
“Of course,” she nods. “But, well… I mentioned about Fiyero, about—”
“You and Mister Tigelaar need to be seen out more often,” Morrible announces. She’s abandoned the teacup and is staring at Glinda head on now, eyes sharp. “It is good for morale, you understand. Fills the pages of the Gazette with something besides those dreadful attacks up North.”
Glinda’s brow furrows. “But the Gazette is going to report on the news either way.”
Morrible’s laugh is quite distressifying; the more Glinda hears it the more she hopes she never will again. “Of course,” she says. “But you know better than that, dearie. People love to be at ease— you know that too. Reading about the witch evading capture yet again is hardly the sort of news the public wants. A romantic outing for Oz’s favorite couple, on the other hand…”
She’s right, is the thing that grates at Glinda’s skin. There’s a certain unease she feels around Morrible as of late, shackles going up whenever they are alone together, but she does know about these sorts of things. It’s about popularity, at the end of the day. She’d taught Elphie about that once.
“But,” Glinda protests weakly, “they saw us together at the press briefing just yesterday. I showed off my ring to that photographer from Ozmopolitan.”
Morrible smiles. It is a grim thing, inhuman in a most off putting sort of way, teeth too white and lips curled too widely in the early morning air. Glinda would recoil only she’s trying quite hard not to show her hand, these days.
“You love him, don’t you?”
Glinda nods. There is a terrible knot in her throat, she swallows around it but it only grows.
“Then act like it.”
“Fiyero, dearest!”
Fiyero peeks his head around the doorframe, brow all furrowed. He’s handsome in his fancy new uniform, Pfannee and Shenshen had busied themselves fawning over it for days. Glinda’s always liked the way he looks, the tall broadness of him and that familiar tousle of brown hair. She smiles.
“Glinda,” Fiyero says slowly, and emerges in full in the doorway all backlit and stable, “I didn’t expect you. What are you… is something burning?”
“It’s dinner,” Glinda trills, waving some smoke away from the pan. Funny, she can’t think of the last time they ate together! It certainly doesn’t smell quite the way it’s supposed to, true, and the mushrooms are looking rather shrivelified. That’s why she’s in his apartment and not hers— she so hates when that oily smell lingers. “Here’s where you’re supposed to thank me, Fiyero, and tell me about your day.”
“It looks… delicious,” Fiyero says, and crosses over to smile wanly at her and press a fleeting kiss to her hair. “I was just surprised, really; I’ve never seen you cook.”
“Oh, but this is what wives do! And considering that I am soon to be a wife— did you read my interview, dear?— it only seemed appropriate.”
Fiyero smiles again but it looks tense, looks like he’s putting in quite a lot of effort. “I did,” he says. “I didn’t realize cooking was so important to you, dearest, what with the palace’s cooks and everything.”
Glinda gasps. “No, see, this is how marriages go stale! You must never get too used to your spouse, partner, whatever it may be. Each year my momsie and popsicle try to pick up a new hobby to surprise each other— why, haven’t you ever wondered why we own so many of those lopsidified ornaments? Glassblowing, the year before last.”
Fiyero hums. “I never get used to you, in truth,” he says, and smiles but it’s all washed out like the smudgy weather beaten carnival words on the sides of the Wizard’s trinkets. Glinda chooses to take it in stride.
“Set out some plates, dearest, I’ve got splendified news to share with you,” Glinda says, and Fiyero complies. The look of it all, him rooting and rustling through her cabinets to pull out her fine china with his big broad hands, makes Glinda’s chest feel all askew. Love, she supposes.
“So,” Fiyero says, once he’s poured two glasses of red wine— Glinda prefers white, really, but a prince would know more about these things! Glinda takes her seat at the table most delicately, folding her napkin over her lap and spooning a portion onto her plate. The pasta looks rather crunchy, which isn’t right, and the sauce is a bit more watery than it usually was when Popsicle made it. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Take a bite first, take your time,” Glinda says easily, waving a hand and scooting to the edge of her seat. Fiyero smiles agreeably and spoons a helping up to his mouth— some of the white sauce dribbles down, it’s far too thin.
His eyebrows go up first, then down. That sturdy jaw works and it works, it seems to be chewing for quite a while and Glinda taps her fingers along the table anxiously. “Well?”
“It’s… yes, Glinda, that’s quite good,” Fiyero says, and Glinda squeaks with delight. “What did you say it was, again?”
“Oh, who knows,” Glinda scoffs. “Eat up, you’ll need it for the fantabulified thing I’ve got to tell you.”
“Yes,” Fiyero says, “what was the news?”
“Madame Morrible would like for us— us as a couple, that is, an affianced couple— to find ourselves in the public eye more.”
Fiyero raises his eyebrow again, slower this time, and he is decidedly not smiling the way Glinda is. “More?”
“Yes.”
“More than we already are, you mean?”
“Yes,” Glinda repeats, with a little huff. “Really, Fiyero, it’s nothing absurd! Just a date night or two, some magazine covers and photo ops.”
“Forgive me,” Fiyero says, “but weren’t you just the cover of the Gazette?”
“Yes, but that was only me,” Glinda says. He’s being rather dense, and he hasn’t taken another bite of his dinner, either! “The point of this, dearest, is to bring joy to the citizens of Oz as a pair. A royal couple, as it were. Stuff of storybooks.”
“And that’s what you want?” Fiyero asks, staring ahead quite stiffly. “For them to… well, that we’re perfect, they should think that? You think that?”
“Well, of course,” Glinda says. Her lips are tingling ever so slightly, hair feeling askew where he’d touched it minutes before. She thinks for a moment of that first night with Fiyero back at the Ozdust, lights along water and walking with her head craned back to see the stars. “In such dark times—”
“You mean Elphaba,” Fiyero says crossly. “Dark times, don’t give me that— Elphaba.”
“We have a job to do,” Glinda says, and sucks in a sharp breath. It feels shallow in her lungs, unsatisfying and bitter air. “Take me to the theater this weekend, kiss me before you ride off with your men so some cameras see. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Fiyero opens his mouth and for a moment Glinda is ready to argue. It gives her such a thrill sometimes, one of her worst flaws. Glinda the Good is not made to argue, not meant to bite back and provoke but sometimes with Fiyero it’s too easy to get him going, to get that familiar itch and ache to her neck and insist upon her rightness. She’s ready, ready to make a big fuss and go to bed with swollen eyes feeling sorry for herself, but Fiyero doesn’t bite.
He just purses his lips together and nods, once. “Alright,” he says.
And Glinda smiles, she beams. Because she’s won, of course, because she has been right and Fiyero wrong, but it feels rather hollow. “Good,” she chirps, and it comes out in that patented Glinda the Good voice. She clears her throat.
It’s silent for a moment. Glinda moves her dinner around on her plate ever so slightly, avoiding Fiyero’s eyes, and finally lifts her fork toward her mouth.
It’s absolutely terrible, isn’t it? Watery and crunchy and limp and the mushrooms are both undercooked and burnt on the edges. Disgusticifying, Glinda thinks, and then she smiles again.
“Do you smell that?” Fiyero asks, and Glinda cocks her head. “No, something is certainly burning.”
“That’s quite rude,” Glinda says huffily. “It’s supposed to taste like that, for your information. This is simply how we cook in Frottica.”
“Not— Glinda,” Fiyero says, jutting his face forward. “Something else is burning, and quite badly at that.”
Glinda rolls her eyes and moves to argue but— no, most unfortunately he is right this time, there’s a terrible stench to the air and even a billow of smoke rising from the oven up to the beautiful pink tile, terrible!
“Oh!” she gasps, and tosses her fork down to the table, “the dessert!”
She finds Fiyero quite comforting at the best of times. They laugh until their stomachs hurt that night, more than a little tipsy on red wine by the end of it, and the tears in the wrinkled corners of Fiyero’s eyes make him look almost like the boy Glinda had first met that day just before the Ozdust. He takes care of things, that is her Fiyero. He calls down to the kitchen and orders up two plates, warm bread rolls and heaping bowls of soup and even a slice of rich chocolate cake to split. Glinda’s stomach begins to cramp somewhere in the middle of the cake. She’d shared a slice with Elphie once, in Shiz Proper. But that had been a long time ago.
Fiyero stays later than he usually does, munching on a spare roll and sprawling across his couch with his feet kicked up. Glinda sits delicately on the settee, lifts the book she’s brought along from the coffee table and thumbs to the spot where her bookmark is waiting. Fiyero eyes her.
“What’re you reading?” he asks, with that familiar sing-song cadence of his voice that makes him sound like a little boy on the playground, like a distant brother or cousin. Glinda rolls her eyes.
“Nothing, if you keep talking to me.”
“Very funny,” Fiyero says, and leans over to poke at her shoulder. “What is it, Glinda?”
He doesn’t act this way anymore. It’s the wine, maybe, or the laughter— she hasn’t seen him act this unbridled in a long, long time. Fiyero nowadays is so buttoned up, all stiff jaw and grabbing at Glinda’s arm to hiss about injustice, and about Elphaba, and about how he doesn’t care what Morrible has to say. This Fiyero, the boy who would twirl Glinda around in the halls between classes, is far from the forefront.
“One of my novels,” she says. “This one’s about a prince, actually, maybe you’d find it relatable.”
“Is he as dashing as me?” Fiyero asks, and Glinda scoffs with only a little weight behind it.
“Well, currently he’s enmeshed in a very severe duel for the heart and honor of his beloved,” she answers, and cocks her head. “So I’d say he’s more dashing. I’ve never seen you duel on my behalf.”
“Hasn’t come up,” Fiyero says, and tosses Glinda a smile. It’s rather pesky how quickly she can pretend now, how like the past it is. Like Elphie’s just in the next room over fetching them some tea and cookies, like she’ll come back to ruffle Glinda’s hair and tease her about her romance novels, like she’ll blush when Glinda asks if there’s anyone you’d like to romance, Elphie, just like the princesses do.
Glinda takes another sip of wine and it sits too bitter in her mouth, too red. “It’s going to get very steamy soon enough, I can tell,” she declares. “It’s because they always start talking about running away together. They’re from rival kingdoms, see, and the prince is willing to give up his whole life to be with her somewhere they can be in love. And once they talk about that either they’re going to die, or they’re going to… you know. And I have it on good authority that there is no death in this one, because my heart can’t handle it.”
She’s not so sure what she expects— maybe for Fiyero to laugh and call her silly, maybe for him to make some joke about sex just to see her blush. But instead something crosses his face, something very firm and oddly shadowed, and he tilts his head up to the ceiling. Glinda follows his gaze, eyes getting stuck on the white tile.
“Do you ever think about running away?”
Glinda doesn’t answer, not fast enough, and Fiyero turns to her with something in his eye, an energy that’s unfamiliar.
“The two of us, together,” he says. “We could… we wouldn’t have to listen to them anymore, we could go and live our lives, our real ones. And we could…”
They could find her. He doesn’t have to say it, Glinda knows.
“Of course I think about it,” she says softly, and dips her finger into the wine glass just to see it disappear, “I think about it all of the time.”
Fiyero sits up quickly, limbs straggling behind and giving him the effect of a marionette, all disjointed and dizzified. Glinda’s tipsy enough that it almost works, the world in slow motion. “What are we waiting for, then?” he declares, and Glinda finds herself struck with a terrible case of deja vu.
“You’re drunk, dearest,” she says, and her voice sounds strained even to her. How unbecoming! She must dig out a lozenge.
“Barely,” he insists. “Or I am, I suppose, but— Glinda?”
She smiles at him. “You can finish the wine,” she says. “The cake, too, I’m rather stuffed. All this dueling I’m reading about makes a girl lose her appetite.”
And that, for the moment, is that.
Glinda thinks of Shiz quite a lot. Late at night, after Fiyero’s gone back to his own chambers— this is something that will change when they’re married, of course, but she has gotten rather used to her things being only hers— well, it creeps in. She thinks of Fiyero sometimes, but then again she thinks of a lot of things. Her room and the way it used to smell, the cinnamon that Elphaba would put into her coffee. All sorts of things, her and Elphaba rushing to dinner through the heaps of snow and the burst of laughter Elphie’d let out when a clump of it had fallen onto Galinda’s hat. That game they’d played out in the fields during springtime, what had it been?
“Do you remember that?” she asks Pfannee and Shenshen rather desperately in the front hall of the Palace, “What was that called?”
Shenshen’s face sets, jaw firm but something soft in the corners of her eyes. “Glinda,” she says quietly, “that was a long time ago.”
“But,” Glinda says, and notices the two of them exchange a glance— nothing’s wrong, she wants to yell, nothing at all!— “It wasn’t that long ago, not really.”
“I spoke to the cake people this morning,” Pfannee says, voice more serious than she’s heard it in a very long time. “They want to know if you’d prefer a white or a yellow trim with the pink.”
“Yellow,” Glinda says, and turns on her heel. “Yellow will do nicely.”
She’s not sure what’s come over her, that sharp rush of mournful energy set aside. Sometimes she thinks she’s made the wrong choice, or maybe her whole life has been a long stack of wrong choices slapped one on top of another, like blocks in a teetering tower. She should walk out of the Palace one day and never come back, never ever.
This is, of course, not how the world works.
“I so agree,” Shenshen says with a gasp, hurrying closer so that her heels click on the floor. “Yellow’s just so much more… and for your wedding, of course, and everything has to be…”
“Have you seen Fiyero?” Glinda asks abruptly, turning with another sharp twist. Pfannee and Shenshen hasten to pause, knocking into one another. “I thought he was meant to be meeting me here.”
“He… well, he was,” Pfannee says with a twist of nerves at the corner of his mouth. Most people would not notice; Glinda is not most people. Pfannee has his tells, nervous tics that flutter across his face like rogue butterflies. “We’ve got paparazzi outside from a couple of the tabloids, but of course it won’t look staged. And a few more outside the opera house.”
Glinda’s opera dress is quite a showstopper, if she does say so herself. It’s clingy silk, the kind that gets sticky along the hips and the chest, all swoopified and plunging. And the white and green of it all, swirled together and blending together, well. It’s very Emerald City, the type of things the paper dolls Glinda had as a little girl used to wear. Just what a woman should wear for a night out with her fiance, just what Glinda should wear.
“Good,” Glinda says cheerily, fidgeting ever so slightly with the neckline of the gown. It keeps tracing too low, over the dark freckle that rests just atop her breast. Glinda pulls it higher with a huff. “The theater’s offering tickets for the whole season, you know, on account of the publicity. Such goodness.”
“So good,” Shenshen says all breathily, and then hesitates with a squint. “Glinda? Should I go and try to find him?”
Glinda laughs airily, swiping her hand through the open space between her and the adorned door. “Oh, no no! He always runs late, my Fiyero.”
And she turns to Pfannee and Shenshen with raised eyebrows and they fall over themselves to agree, nodding and fixing the curl of her hair and the angle of her chin.
There is a clatter behind them soon enough and oh, there he is, Glinda’s prince. He makes his way down the stairs with that familiar loping step, the shrug of his shoulders and the tousle of his hair. Whenever she sees him from faraway Glinda gets a sticking in her stomach, a fondness that could read as almost fraternal if she didn’t know better. Her fiance, her man— that was what he was. And Oz, all of the figuring things out was easier when he was around.
“Dearest!” Glinda calls out, waving unnecessarily, and Fiyero ambles toward them. He gives Pfannee and Shenshen a tight grin and presses a fleeting kiss to Glinda’s silky glove, one that she tries to cling to but it’s slipping away before she even feels his lips land.
“Shall we?” Fiyero asks, and Glinda tugs his hand back.
“No, no, let’s just…” she finds herself trailing off, leaning forward to adjust his tie and the straightness of his collar. “Let’s stay like this, just for a second?”
When Glinda was a little girl her momsie and popsicle would go out for dates, long lingering nights that caught Glinda in the middle of admiration for such romantifying things and a mournfulness that comes from missing one’s mother, one’s father. She would sit on the top of the steps before Momsie and Popsicle left, listening in on the hushed instructions they’d give to whatever ama had been available that night, fiddling with her own nightgown while seeing the reflection of Momsie’s sequins in the glass doors. And she’d always wake just before they got home, a sixth sense for their arrival, a familiar bubbling in her stomach when the door would open and her parents would giggle like schoolchildren and Glinda would remember that they were in love, that they had secrets she’d never be privy to.
Being with Fiyero felt like grasping at air sometimes. They led a busy life, that was all. To be a public figure was quite the time commitment. And yet those moments felt notably absent, the sneaking around and the giggling late at night. Fiyero looks down at her fondly, she thinks, but it isn’t the same. They will go out to the opera and take the carriage home and he will give her a kiss goodnight if she asks him for it. He won’t suggest that they run off to a Quadling restaurant at the top of the second act, he won’t spin her around in her dress so that the skirt fans out. It’s all what they’re supposed to do, always.
“The carriages are waiting,” Pfannee says from behind them, a note of regret in his voice, and Glinda blinks.
“That’s right, of course,” she mutters, shaking her head. “So silly of me. Shall we, dearest?”
Fiyero smiles, takes her by the arm and smooths his rough palm over her glove. “We shall.”
The choreography of it all is quite sublime, Glinda has to admit. The doors swing open and they’re met with a face of early twilight, dusky mist and a swarming crowd like a bustle of ants. At the front there are flashbulbs, bright enough that Glinda can’t make out the carriage they’re meant to be taking; when she turns to ask Shenshen the doors are shut again, nothing but that brassy emerald inlay in their place. She swallows.
“Glinda!” she hears, just one sharp shrill voice, and then it’s a wave unleashed, a certified wall of sound.
There’s a sort of crackling to it all, like radio static or those tiny firecrackers children let off in the street on the Wizard’s landing day. She can hardly make out one word, can hardly see one thing, and finds herself worrying most childishly if the pictures will make her look good, if she'll be squinting into the camera lens. The tabloids will splash some unfortunate headline over her face, then, Glinda the Gloomy: The Secret Fatigue of the Emerald City Starlet or something like that.
There’s a little poke at her side and Fiyero’s there, dipping low to murmur in her ear. “Just smile,” he says, “and pretend you hardly notice them.”
For an instant she feels indignant. She’s dealt with the press before, she’s known loud and loving crowds! But he’s right, she thinks as she fastens her hand tighter around his own and squeezes, this is different. There’s a new level of frenetic to it, a vague aggression that she isn’t used to.
“Give us a kiss!” someone roars, and the crowd explodes, shouting. They’re clamoring for it, really, and Glinda just isn’t sure why. Of course they’re a beautiful couple— the most perfectest couple in all of Oz, really— but a kiss, really?
But something strange happens, something very odd and quite abnormalified. Fiyero straightens up suddenly, sweeping a hand around Glinda’s waist and walking her up to the top of the Palace steps, right in the light of the cameras. “Follow my lead,” he murmurs in her ear, and then before Glinda can think he’s sweeping her forward and kissing her, so theatrically that he’s pressing his hands at the small of her back and pulling her up to her tiptoes.
And, because she’s a natural born performer, she kicks her leg back and pops her foot. And, because they’re both performers— she has picked a prince, after all!— the crowd goes wild.
Not that her relationship with Fiyero is a performance, of course, they’re affianced! It’s just that the lights and sounds of it all are a touch much, even for Glinda the Good. As Fiyero helps her into their carriage and kisses her hand again and winks at the crowd before he draws the curtains she thinks about it, rolls it around in her head. It’s just strange to be watched, that’s all.
“Morrible will be happy,” Glinda says to break the silence once they’ve pulled away, waving once more at the crowd and blowing them a spare kiss or two, and Fiyero hums in acknowledgement.
The opera is good, and the photographs splashed across every gozzip column in the city the next morning are even better.
Elphaba is a sorceress. A witch, some might say, though Glinda doesn’t love the implications of such a word, the same word they hurtle at Elphie day and night. Either way she is a possessor of magic and quite a good one, at that. She is all of these things, and so it’s really not too difficult of a stretch and not too much of a muscular and cerebral strain for Glinda to pretend that she’s really there when Glinda thinks of her.
So Glinda would never admit it to anyone, not even to Fiyero, but she has a bit of a pet theory.
Elphie visits her in dreams rather often. And Glinda doesn’t always remember her dreams, and sometimes they’re odd and surrealist, melting skies and shoes that wind their way up her legs and arms. Mostly, though, she wakes up nearly positive that there had been someone beside her moments before.
They’re quite realistic. So realistic, in fact, that she’s beginning to wonder if perhaps they’re not dreams at all. Elphaba has the Grimmerie, Elphaba has magic, Elphaba has everything, everything left over from Glinda’s everything.
This time Elphaba’s standing behind her and Fiyero on a platform in Munchkinland, or maybe it’s Gillikin. Either way it’s summertime and the sun is beating down so hot and relentless that Glinda wants to tear off her pretty sleeves.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Glinda tells her. “They’ll get you, they’ll hurt you.”
“But they can’t see me,” Elphaba says, so careful and soft the way she’d always been with Glinda. “Only you can, remember?"
And Glinda does, suddenly.
“Glinda the Good,” someone is announcing, and the Munchkins or Gillikins or whoever they are all cheer, “and her betrothed.”
And Fiyero steps forward and then Glinda can’t see him anymore, he’s gone and no one seems to notice, and Elphaba’s hands come around her waist and pull back. They pull hard, fast— she has claws for hands, one of those terrible tabloids had printed several months back, gnarled up fingers and she’ll grab at innocent women and children, snatch them away in the name of wickedness.
“Elphie,” she hisses over her shoulder, because Morrible’s watching and there’s a whole collection of children up front, a girl in a little Glinda the Good crown peering up at her hopefully, “let go, I have to— I’ve got to—”
Maybe it’s real. She thinks this and for one blinding second she’s sure of it, positive. There’s something about the feeling of Elphaba’s hands that cannot be replicated, Glinda knows it well.
But then she looks down and the hands turn bulbous, heavy like shackles and they fall to the ground and oh, she realizes just as she wakes, it had all been happening purely inside her head.
The light into her bedroom is weak, strained tea all murky at the bottom. It’s a bit stuffy and it smells like sleep; how unsettling, Glinda thinks, that this place should get to see her when she can’t see it back. At Shiz she’d cuddled with Elphie most nights and then there had been no time to think of monsters under beds or the creeping trepidation of nighttime, the unsureness of it.
And now she wakes with a breath caught deep in her throat and she is alone.
She could go find Fiyero, probably. He’d let her into his apartment and his room and his bed, even, and there’s something to be said for comfort in such a basic way. It’s primal the way human beings seek warmth, affection, togetherness. But for some odd reason the thought of Fiyero’s muscly arm over her shoulders stings acidly in her throat.
Besides, she thinks with a huff as she stands up and winces at the chill of the floor, what would she even say? It hadn’t been a nightmare.
Glinda the Good & Prince Fiyero: We Can’t Wait To Be Wed!
Just six weeks after announcing their engagement Glinda the Good and her handsome hunk Prince Fiyero step out for a night at the Emerald City Ozpera House, sparking both innuendo and outuenndo. We have the full scoop, complete with an exclusive from an inside source!
“Glinda and Prince Fiyero met at Shiz University, shortly after the Prince’s expulsion from the Royal Winkie Academy,” our source lets us know. “They fell in love instantaneously, sparks were flying and leaving all of Shiz stunnified!”
And now just a short few years later they are Oz’s hottest couple, bringing us both style and substance in the face of the Wicked Witch’s terror.
Behind the scenes the two are infatuatified, just itching to get married! “Fiyero and Glinda spend all of their free time together,” our source tells us, “although they’re very busy protecting us Ozians from evil left and right. They’re terribly romantic with each other too— at the Ozpera House last night Fiyero was such a gentleman.” Fans watched from the orchestra seats as the Prince and the paragon of goodliness whispered and giggled the night away!
Autographs were signed outside the theater. When asked about the most romantifying evening out with her fiance to date, Glinda neglected to comment.
“This,” Morrible says easily when Glinda sets down the glossy magazine, placing it upside down on the table of the train so that the cover of collaged up photos of her and Fiyero kissing don’t show, “is much better.”
Fiyero is a gentleman to everyone.
“I do so agree,” Glinda says breathily, adjusting her refreshment— a glass of pomegranate juice, blood red and quick to stain— so that it covers up the block letters proclaiming A Secret Smooch? Read more about the couple’s romantical life inside! They do grasp at straws, don’t they? “It does make me feel so goodly, raising people’s spirits. Why, back at Shiz—”
“This is, in fact, what I wanted to talk with you about,” Morrible says, and leans closer atop the shuddering counter of the train. Glinda’s eyes dart across the bar— Oz, if only her refreshment were spiked, a drop of elixir in there to set her nerves back at ease. Morrible has always made her so nervous, ever since the very start. “You see, I am glad to hear people acceptifying you, dear, and your handsome prince.”
“Yes,” Glinda says softly, watching the ice in her glass rattle.
“But we must remember to remain vigilant,” Morrible adds, and taps her fingers one by one across the glazed countertop. The scratch of them itches through Glinda’s spine, a certain clicking so reminiscent of something she can’t quite remember. “That is, to mention the Witch.”
Glinda smiles but it wavers just the slightest bit. She swallows and tries again, letting it rest solemnly across her lips. “She hasn’t been spotted in nearly two weeks, has she,” she says, and squints at Morrible. “Madame, I do wonder if…”
Morrible arches her brow. “If?”
“Well,” Glinda starts, and laughs self-deprecatifyingly, light as a bell. “I only wondered if we really should remindify the public of her… you know, her profound wickedness. Seeing as people’s emotions are just beginning to look up, and seeing as the summer holidays are soon? Perhaps for today we could mention the good! The wedding, of course, and the success of the Yellow Brick Road. Why, I was speaking to a Gillikin ambassador the other night and—”
“No,” Morrible says, and it’s quite soft all things considered but it seems to echo around the train car, bounding off the stiff walls and slamming back to hit Glinda across the face.
Glinda blinks. “No?”
“The citizens of Oz are at constant risk of complacency,” Morrible continues, voice so unwavering and still that Glinda almost gets distracted, almost marvels at the steadfast sameness of it. “I know you love them, but they are…”
“They’re what?” Glinda asks, leaning forward ever so slightly so that her gown grazes her ankle. Morrible scoffs.
“Stupid,” she says, in a low voice. “They love you, dear, and I’m ever so glad they do but we cannot let them festivate over small pleasures. They need to remain alert.”
Glinda shakes her head ever so slightly, mouth open. “But surely they could do both,” she murmurs. “Surely I don’t need to remind them of the wickedness every time we meet— Madame, do we not run the risk of plunging all of Oz into some dreadfulified state of permanent despair?”
Morrible’s eyes flash and she taps her fingers once more, slower and almost compelling Glinda to look. Look she does, and Morrible leans forward to grab her hand from the counter, pale and undecorated but for that simple wedding band.
“You know what you’re here for,” Morrible says, and drops Glinda’s hand so abruptly that the ring clatters on her finger as the skin hits the countertop once more, dull and thudding. “Do what you’re told.”
And so Glinda gets off of her train with a smile and a wave and the crowd erupts, cameras popping again and the glinty light getting into her eyes. She’s too warm, she thinks grumpily, and she wishes for a moment that Fiyero were here.
Only no, she decides, she doesn’t quite want that. If he were here the whole crowd would be begging them to kiss, desperate for some nonexistent hint about their relationship that Glinda is much too tired and far too annoyed to provide. What more is there to say? There is a boy, and she is with him some of the time.
The Yellow Brick Road has been open for quite a while but this is its official Quadling grand opening, a whole song and dance that Glinda will sit through before her speech, which is meant to take just a few clock ticks. It’s a whole affair— Fiyero would hate it, she suspects as she accepts gifts from the diplomats, stacking up in her arms until they waver and she has to drop them by the pedestal set up for her and Morrible, but she quite likes it. Quite quite.
And hadn’t Elphie spent time in Quadling Country? Yes, a summer, Glinda remembers it now. Back when she was young, her father traveling for diplomacy— not, she thinks with a little huff, like that man was ever diplomatic a day in his life! Oz rest him, of course.
So now she thinks about Elphaba, just for a moment. Just a wink and a blink of an instant. Elphie could have been here, in this main town square, dressed even then in all black, stockings without a single run, hair carefully braided, eyes solemn and cavernous under those glasses. Glinda hadn’t ever seen a likeness of a young Elphaba— funny, really, the Prop and Ganda department not taking advantage of such a thing— but it feels better like this, almost. Secret.
“Your Goodness!” someone in the crowd shouts, and then everyone is cheering, tossing roses at her feet— such a boring flower!— and papers to sign. There, gigantified and pasted into a lopsided red heart, are her and Fiyero’s faces, cut out from a dozen gozzip columns and leering hideodiously. Uncanny! Glinda looks away.
“Fellow Ozians!” she begins, and that's always bound to start off a whole new round of hysteria, cheering and a few fans pushing their way to the front; easy enough to reprimand with a quick little smile and a comment about wanting to see everyone’s precious faces equally, something that makes the crowd sigh. “She’s so good!” Pfannee will say, prompting, at this point. So she waits, lets the commotion quiet, the hubbub and the thrumming scent of the air, smiling.
Glinda turns to her left, waves, turns to her right. Morrible, over her shoulder and shrouded in dark blue, raises her eyebrows.
“Yes, right. Fellow Ozians!” Glinda begins again, and she can still feel the eyes in her shoulder, marking their place. Off in the distance she spots a cloud, light gray. Then, with a puff of air from behind her, it is gone. It’s got a bit of an edge to it, smudgy like when she can’t quite remember if she’s dreamed something or not, always something mundane like where she’s left her lucky signature pen. But then, you never could tell!
“I am most grateful to announce the grandest of openings for the Yellow Brick Road, Quadling branch. It will be the newest of eras for Quadling Country, I’m most sure of it! How goodly, to be able to have a straight path to our wonderful Wizard— who, I’m told, is most hopeful—’
“Glinda!” someone in the crowd calls, “where’s Fiyero?”
She fastens her grin tighter. “Prince Fiyero couldn’t be here today, on account of his incredible busifulness,” she smiles. “You see, my fiance—” and here a pause for gasps and coos, which come in spades— “is the captain of the Gale Force. It’s a very trying job! I can report, most firsthandedly, that my dear prince’s… shall we say… single-minded devotion to capturing the Witch is admirable, and keeps him quite busy.”
There’s a dreadful pitch of silence for a second, just a single instant. Perhaps, Glinda thinks desperately, they can tell how she’s lying? She isn’t sure where Fiyero is, not exactly. And she wants him quite badly. She’d wanted dinner with him last night, just the two of them, just some private space because his chest was solid and it felt comforting to rest against, because he smells most familiar out of the whole palace. But Morrible had needed her.
So Glinda isn’t sure where it’s come from, the silence, but it creeps in slowly, lastingly; first the edges of the crowd go quiet and then soon enough no one’s speaking, there’s the space the width of a breath and she looks around and—
“It’s the Witch!”
She can’t tell who yelled it, is the thing. And she doesn’t have her microphone yet, no way of raising her voice and no magic to do it with, so she just stands there. Looking out, looking down, the crowd scatters like a mess of fish, darting in every direction. Morrible tugs on her sleeve and says something, she doesn’t quite hear. It’s hard to hear much of anything, really.
It is Elphaba, that much is true. From Glinda’s vantage point up on the pedestal she looks smaller. She’s wearing quite a lot of layers, black on black and there’s something different about the way she moves, a certain practiced stillness to it. There’s a confidence to her that Glinda only half recognizes, a pitch to the angle she stands at and the way she moves her braids behind her shoulder.
“Glinda,” Morrible hisses, “do something.”
So she is meant to speak, Glinda realizes. She’s rather frozen, she finds. In front of her a small girl, hastening to run for cover, trips and falls on the brick, skinning her ruddy knee. Her face pinches up, a warble to her chin, and Glinda goes to her.
“Don’t worry,” she finds herself murmuring, and stoops down to give the girl her hand, something to help her scramble back to her feet which she does, shaky and trembling. “She won’t hurt you.”
In fact Glinda isn’t quite sure what Elphaba is doing here, what she will do. She’d already written in the sky back in Munchkinland, and she’d spent several weeks breaking up the bricks on the Road for reasons unbeknownst to Glinda. “Just rampant destructification,” Morrible had tutted. “Such disrespect for you, Glinda, and the Wizard.”
But Elphaba— the Witch, in all her cloaks— sweeps her head around searchingly. She’s looking for something, Glinda realizes, and squints.
“Miss Glinda?” the girl in front of her murmurs, and Glinda blinks. “Can’t you make it stop? With your goodliness, please!”
“I—” Glinda says, and glances back up only to find Elphaba has moved, appearing again some ten feet further back near the edge of a building. Still she’s got a crunched up brow and Glinda knows that face, knows what it looks like when Elphie’s puzzling over something. It looks like a scowl, but Glinda knows better. She cocks her head.
Someone behind her is wailing. She will need to make a pronouncification, and where in Oz had Morrible spirited off to? The girl in front of her is tugging at her dress silks most insistently, and Glinda feels a prickling rush at the back of her neck.
She looks up once more. Elphaba, about to disappear behind the thatched roof of the cottage nearby, has raised a hand in simple greeting.
And, throat stuffed with cotton and stomach roiling and overfull, doughy and bloated, Glinda raises a hand in return.