Archive of Our Own ^beta

She intends to leave immediately.

But the questions and the celebration take so long that by the time she is done, that awful effigy has finished burning.

She watches as the munchkins prepare to take away the remaining waste. Clean the last of the Wicked Witch’s horrible image for good. The only thing left of the pyre shaped like her friend is ashes, and they will be gleefully disposed of, putting an end to her story once and for all.

Glinda’s chest tightens, and she steps forward and offers to dispose of the remains for them.

They protest, of course, you don’t have to do that Glinda, but Glinda insists, and they cave to her wishes like so many before them. Glinda always gets what she wants, except for when she doesn’t. Except for when it’s important.

But this is important, and she gets her own way.

She takes the ashes with her - careful not to spill any - and leaves to the cheers of the munchkins, still well into their celebrations, delighted that Glinda the Good has lifted even the small burden of ridding the remains of the Wicked Witch from their shoulders.

She smiles throughout it all, smiles until it hurts, smiles long after it hurts. She doesn’t stop smiling until she’s safely in her own room.

The only part of Elphaba left was her hat. Her hat, maybe her clothes, Glinda honestly doesn’t remember, because all her focus was on the hat. The hat that, to all of Oz, was a symbol of her wickedness. The hat Glinda gave her.

Perhaps it’s her fault what the hat became. It was given in wickedness, so in the end, wickedness is what it represented.

It would’ve been easy to take it with her. She could have easily told everyone it was given to her by her Granny - true - and the Wicked Witch of the West stole it - lie - and now she’s claiming it back. No one would’ve questioned the story, she’s the only one left for them to listen to, and no one who could contradict her would care to. They would all be more than willing to rewrite history.

But the hat was wet when she picked it up, and she’d felt sick, and she couldn’t bear to bring it with her. To take it away from Elphaba.

So she left it.

She could go back and get it - Kiamo Ko was given to her as Fiyero’s almost-wife in a symbolic show of liberating it from the Wicked Witch, so she can enter it whenever she pleases - but she doesn’t want to. She never wants to set foot in that awful place again, the place where her whole world slipped from her fingers because she didn’t hold on tight enough.

In a way, it’s the only thing she has left of Fiyero, yet she can’t bring herself to go anywhere near it.

And besides, the hat is Elphaba’s, but there’s a little bit of Glinda in it, too. The fabric is Elphaba, but some of the stitches inside are Glinda, a very small piece of it, but a part of it all the same. The same way the cloak billowing grandly in the wind was Elphaba, but the knot that tied it around her neck was Glinda.

Glinda does not want any reminder of Elphaba that is not her and her alone.

Technically the effigy was none of her. Not a single piece of the real Elphaba, and it wasn’t even a true image of her, just one of mockery based on someone who never existed.

But there was none of Glinda in the effigy, and it left ashes.

For a moment, she contemplated taking the little green bottle Elphaba used to hide under her pillow and keeping it under her own pillow in turn. Carry on the tradition. But something about it didn’t feel right; the bottle was a reminder of Elphaba’s mother, not Elphaba herself, and despite how hard she tried, Glinda just couldn’t look at it without remembering the Wizard’s matching one, tainting any chance she had of using it to remember Elphaba. How could she, when all the bottle represents to her is a truth Elphaba never lived long enough to discover?

In the end, it wasn’t up to her. Chistery asked for the bottle before she could come to a decision, and Glinda didn’t feel she had the right to refuse. It wasn’t her place to keep it from him; he worked closely with Elphaba in her final days after she freed him from the Wizard, her death would’ve affected him too, so of course he’d want something to remember her by. And Chistery did more for Elphaba than Glinda ever did, and when she looked at him, all she could see was the vision Elphaba died trying to achieve. It would’ve been selfish of her to say no.

With the bottle gone, the ashes are all that’s left.

It’s not perfect. It’s so far from perfect it’s an insult, and Glinda has always hated imperfection.

But she has nothing of Fiyero outside of a castle she can’t bring herself to enter, and it’s the closest she will ever get to Elphaba’s remains, so it will have to do. Chistery has the bottle, and she can’t take the hat.

Ashes will raise no questions. Ashes could belong to anyone. Ashes are easier to lie about.

So she takes the ashes of the mockery of her friend to use them to remember her.

At this point, it’s far from the worst way she has insulted the one person who doesn’t deserve it more than anyone else.

The urn is simple, smart, black. No outward decoration to give away whose ashes rest inside it. Glinda fills it, seals it, turns it around in her hands. She’d wanted green, but she’d feared it would be too obvious, that someone would notice, would connect the dots to something - someone - other than the Emerald City. At least with black she can claim it as a colour of mourning.

It’s simple. Too simple. Too plain, the lack of decoration makes her skin itch, even though it’s for protection. Is this really all she can do?

No. She casts around for something, anything, and pauses at the quill on her desk, bright pink, showy over efficiency. Half the time she can’t even get it to write on paper, so it probably won’t write on ceramic.

… Won’t it? Is it not worth a try?

All her ink is black, but she can acquire something else.

Emerald City has very famous green ink. No one would think twice.

She hides the urn away for her trip. Her heart pounds the entire time, sometimes in her chest, sometimes in her throat, but when she finally returns, pot of green ink in hand, she breathes a sigh of relief to see it still in place.

She doesn’t expect it to work, she really doesn’t, but when she dips the quill in the ink and the tip glides across the surface of the urn, mercifully, mercifully, it writes just fine.

There are many things Glinda wants to write. So many thoughts, confessions, apologies, something to reflect the truth of Elphaba, just so it’s written somewhere, in some way, that she was not what she has been made out to be. So the memory of the real Elphaba resides somewhere more permanent than Glinda’s mind, doomed to die with her.

There are many things she wants to write, but they’re all too obvious.

In the end, she writes near the bottom of the urn, in small letters, with the handwriting she has always considered beautiful but Madame Morrible complained was illegible, so no one but her will be able to read it.

Elphie.

Glinda raises the urn until the name is at eye level, longs to trace it with her thumb but doesn’t dare smudge the ink.

How many people even know Elphaba’s real name? Who can connect the barely legible nickname with the most hated woman in all of Oz?

Will anyone know? Can anyone know?

She swallows. Places the urn on a shelf, the green ink glimmering at her. Elphie in her line of sight at all times.

Who will know? Who can know? No one, surely, no one ever cared enough to know the real Elphaba. No one except her and Fiyero, and he’s… she’s…

Her heart sinks as she turns the urn until the name faces the wall. Then she piles other meaningless pieces of decor in front of it, around it, anything that’s taller than it surrounds it. Pink and bright and sparkly and eye-catching, centre of attention, the only things worth focusing on. There is nothing behind worth seeing.

She steps back. Steps to the side. Never takes her eyes off the shelf. She wanders around the room, examining, is there any angle from which someone could see the urn behind all the pointless knickknacks?

No. No one will know. It’s hidden away, safely out of sight.

Safely? Is it because of safety, or because of shame?

Not even Glinda knows anymore.

Over the years Glinda has perfected her mask for the public. She’s always had it ever since she was small, it was vital for someone of her status, but once Madame Morrible and the Wizard took her under their wing, she had to refine it beyond what she thought possible. Smile. Wave. Find a delicate little string of positivity to pluck from the waves of fear and hate, and spin it into a beautiful sparkling gown of hope, then don the gown and become the light at the end of the manmade tunnel.

By now she has it down to an art. Nothing can budge her smile, no matter how dire the situation, or what she’s feeling, not even how much pain she’s in. She smiles, always smiles, always waves and greets, breezes past the urges to cry and scream and throw childish petty fits like they don’t exist; a far cry from her younger years, when her self-control was not so ironclad and she succumbed to petty pranks and insults that would be unacceptable for her now. She smiles so much, and it’s always fake, but she’s gotten good at faking it, or no one cares enough to ask, because everyone is always delighted when Glinda the Good graces them with her perfectly sweet smile. Even upon her deathbed, whenever that day comes, she will be smiling her flawless smile, for everyone to coo over and gossip amongst themselves about how Glinda was always so positive, always found the best in a bad situation, so wonderful and good she even embraced death with the same positive open arms she had in life.

She would worry that one day she’ll smile so much she won’t be able to stop, but, well, that would make everything easier, and Glinda always chooses the easy way out, so really, such a thing would be doing her a favour. She’s already cursed to spend the rest of her life smiling even when she doesn’t want to, what would be the harm in being physically unable to stop?

So when she enters her room after a long and difficult day, she’s smiling, even though her teeth are grinding together and her hands are trembling and her eyes are beginning to water. She smiles, smiles, smiles as she drops onto her bed, presses her face into her palms, and giggles, giggles wildly, opening her mouth and laughing, until her body finally gets the hint and the smile falls and her laughs turn into sobs.

She used to be able to cry on command, but she hasn’t been able to for a long, long time. These days it’s a fight to start crying, an invisible barrier keeping her smile in place and her tears at bay, a crawling on the back of her neck and a voice in her ear telling her it isn’t safe to cry, someone could see her, someone is watching. Someone is always watching.

Even now she’s gotten past that barrier, her chest is so tight, her throat aching and clogged, trying to strangle her sobs before she has a chance to make them. Constricting her.

That’s nothing new though. It feels like she’s been constricted forever, the Wizard and Madame Morrible at her back and the whole of Oz at her front, each side pushing her back into the arms of the other, pressed so close she hasn’t had room to take a breath, clear her head, do anything except stay afloat, lest she pop under the pressure.

Now the Wizard and Madame Morrible are gone, and she has space again, room for a full breath.

Too much space. Too much room.

The lack of constriction is foreign, she keeps expecting to hit that solid wall whenever she breathes, but she doesn’t, she just keeps going, and going, and with nothing behind her she fears she will go too far and fall backwards and no one will catch her.

Too much space, too much room, despite all of Oz’s eyes on her they aren’t close enough to be solid, to lean on, and she itches for a little bit of pressure. Just a little. Only two. Two warm weights on either side of her, supporting, not constricting. Holding her up instead of pushing her back and forth.

Those warm weights are gone, though. Glinda has no choice but to stand, balance, be so delicate and careful, because if she wobbles even once, if she falls, there is nothing and no one left to catch her.

And she has no one to blame but herself.

She sobs harder, pressing her face further into her palms to muffle the sound; no point in risking anyone outside hearing her cry. If they do, they’ll be concerned, they’ll ask why, and Glinda no longer knows how to explain why she’s upset. 

She managed to sign her first piece of legislation today. Something small, something related to Animal rights. It was important, she faintly remembers hearing cautious cheers from a group of Deer residing in Munchkinland, but Glinda can’t remember what it was about. It was important, she remembers that much, but it was small, barely anything in comparison to the walls upon walls of anti-Animal sentiments the Wizard implemented, and it doesn’t feel like the victory it should be. No matter how much she tells herself this is progress, she just feels like she’s dragging her feet in a pitiful attempt to disguise how lost she is.

Elphaba wouldn’t stand for that. Elphaba wouldn’t have the patience for it. She was always so determined to get everything done now, fix it now, in one big dramatic gesture, like when she first flew on her broom and declared no one, not even the Wizard, could bring her down.

Glinda wouldn’t say she’s ever been a patient person, but she grew up around enough politics to know everything is a slow process.

Somehow that wasn’t enough to prepare her for the reality of it.

Today should be a victory, but it’s been such an unnecessarily uphill battle, there are countless things that could have gone wrong at the last moment, and despite all the effort she still hasn’t even scratched the surface of everything she needs to do. If this is how much work is needed for even the tiniest of changes, how much harder is everything going to be once she moves onto something bigger?

It’s overwhelming, it’s exhausting, and Glinda is trying, she’s trying so hard, but she doesn’t know what she’s doing. 

She should. She grew up around politics, and she’s always been so good at getting exactly what she wants without ever really trying. This shouldn’t be difficult, she should already have a plan on exactly what to do and what to say and when and how to say it, but here she is, struggling with the easiest and simplest of things. If she was good enough, she would’ve already done so much more by now, but she isn’t. She’s never been as good as she pretends to be.

Elphaba would know what to do. She was so smart, so amazing, so much better than Glinda will ever be.

Glinda misses her. Misses her so much, misses her unwavering determination and gritted teeth and endless willpower. She misses Fiyero, misses his easygoing attitude and the casual way he used his position as a prince to get what he wanted, and all he ever wanted was to help other people. They were both so good at what they did, a formidable team that Oz wouldn’t have stood a chance against if not for the Wizard’s ironclad grip.

Glinda can’t possibly compare to them. She isn’t good enough to do what they did, not on her own. How is she ever supposed to come close to them when the tiniest of victories drain her so?

She can’t do this. She needs Fiyero. She needs Elphaba.

But they’re gone, and she’s the only one left. She has to do this, even though she can’t.

She chokes at the reminder, chokes on the accompanying sob; everything is clogged, she can’t breathe, and every time she tries, she keeps crying instead. 

Crying won’t help. Crying isn’t going to create the Oz Elphaba wanted.

With a sniffle that does nothing to make breathing easier, Glinda fumbles for a handkerchief, tucked away in one of the many secret pockets in her dress - she always carries one, it was a lifesaver when she had to make that horrendible announcement to all of Oz, over and over and over - and blows her nose. The relief at being able to breathe lasts only for a second before more sobs take advantage of it, and she has to bury her face back into the handkerchief until she manages to wrestle herself into some semblance of control.

When she finally lifts her head, handkerchief still pressed to her nose and mouth, her gaze falls on the shelf of meaningless knickknacks.

Chest hitching and trembling with suppressed sobs, Glinda rises to her feet and stumbles towards the shelf, pushing aside everything, uncaring of what falls to the floor, to reach for the urn.

This is dangerous. She’s done such a good job at hiding it, and despite the way her heart pounds every time anyone enters her room, no one has ever noticed it, only ever ooh’d and aah’d over the pointless and pretty decorations. She promised herself she would never, ever take the urn down, so it would stay safe, so she could keep her shameful little secret, all so no one can ever find out who it’s for and demand she get rid of it.

But the day was difficult, and she can’t stop crying, and no matter how hard she tries, she feels like Elphaba would be disappointed in how little she’s accomplished if she could see her now.

She cradles the urn close to her chest, handkerchief pinched between her fingers on her right hand, shuffling backwards until her legs hit the edge of her bed and she sinks down onto it. Tears stream down her face, drip down her chin, but she doesn’t bother to wipe them away. Not when it would mean even one hand letting go of the urn.

If she closes her eyes, if she lies to herself, maybe she’ll be able to trick herself into believing it’s Elphaba she’s holding.

But when she tries, the urn is cold in her hands, and no matter how much she curls around it, her body heat won’t warm it. She doesn’t dare press it any harder to her chest, lest she risk shattering it, but without the warmth it’s impossible to convince herself this is her best friend. Elphaba always ran warm; Glinda remembers cuddling up to her on the train ride to the Emerald City and falling asleep, Elphaba’s body heat more than enough to keep her warm.

No, this cold urn could never be Elphaba. Not even when she lies to herself, even though lying is the one thing she’s supposed to be good at. After all, it’s all she’s been doing for so long.

Apparently she can’t anymore, though. Just like how she couldn’t do magic at school no matter how hard she tried, just like she couldn’t save Elphaba, just like she can’t change Oz. The thought makes her throat tighten, which at least has the mercy of preventing her from screaming like a tantruming child.

She remembers the tantrums she had back at Shiz, after a difficult lesson with Madame Morrible when she once again failed to perform even a spark of magic. Remembers a girl she no longer recognises stamping her feet and flinging herself onto her bed and whining.

I can do it, I can!

And Elphaba’s tender hands brushing her hair out of her face while she looked at her with soft, unwavering belief.

I know you can.

“I can’t, Elphie,” Glinda whispers into the urn. “I can’t do it. I need you.”

Despite herself, she strains her ears in futile hope of hearing a response.

Nothing. The only reply she gets is her sobs starting up again at the deafening silence.

How long she sits there crying into the urn, she doesn’t know. Long enough for her tears to eventually dry and her breathing to even out, even as her lower lip continues to tremble. Still, she can’t bring herself to put the urn back just yet, even knowing every minute it’s off the shelf is a minute someone could discover it. As odd and painful as it is to cradle this instead of Elphaba, the thought of letting go for even a second makes her eyes water all over again. It may not contain Elphaba’s real remains, but it’s the only thing Glinda has, and she needs something within reach right now. Despite how cold and dead the urn in her arms is, it’s a reminder of who, exactly, she’s doing all this for, and why she must keep going, no matter how difficult it becomes to do so.

Fixing Oz is so much harder and so much more exhausting than Glinda ever imagined.

But it’s what Elphaba wanted.

And if Elphaba could spend years on the run, cruelly hunted down like the Animals she aligned herself with, risking her life to liberate them and expose the Wizard’s lies, Glinda can - has to - endure every single pushback thrown her way and overcome them. She can’t rest, won’t rest, until she lives in the world Elphaba died trying to create.

It’s hard, she isn’t the right person to do this. How can she when she doesn’t know what she’s doing? She doesn’t have half of Elphaba’s insight or smarts; for all Glinda knows, she could be making everything worse, not better.

But she clings to the urn, remembers who it represents, and tries to draw on some semblance of courage from that. Tells herself every minute she holds the urn, she’s borrowing Elphaba’s strength, instead of pitifully hugging it the way a child hugs a teddy bear.

By the time Glinda works up the nerve to uncurl, she’s stiff and sore from being hunched over the urn for so long, and her face is uncomfortably sticky. With a final pitiful sniff, she wipes her nose with the handkerchief she’s still clinging to, then dabs at her eyes. It comes away stained; that’s right, her makeup isn’t waterproof, and even if it was, she was probably crying hard enough to ruin it anyway. Goodness, she must look like a mess, it’s a blessing no one is here to see her like this. Makeup ruined, clutching an urn, the combination would guarantee shallow sympathy, and she doesn’t want to hear any false condolences right now.

Still, people knock on her door at all hours of the day. She must be presentable at all times. Now is no different, even if her work for the day is supposed to be done; no rest for the wicked, after all.

Glinda lets out a shaky sigh and places the urn delicately on the bedside table, not quite ready to commit to putting it back on the shelf yet. It feels like it takes all the strength she just gained from holding the urn to push herself to her feet, but she manages, and shuffles with heavy feet into her private bathroom and reaches for her makeup removal supplies. They’re scattered all over the counter amongst a variety of beauty products that take up every inch of available surface; half of them things very few people would know the purpose of.

Glinda remembers a time when her beauty products were the source of fights, and then later disagreements once their relationship improved. Elphaba herself never had so many things, and it irked her when Glinda would claim the entirety of the counter for so many frivolous items. Glinda would counter with an argument that it didn’t matter, since Elphaba had so little anyway, and therefore there was plenty of room for both of their things even if Glinda was the owner of the majority of it. 

It annoyed her at the time, so unused to sharing her living space with anyone else. Everything has always been hers and hers alone. Her own room, her own bathroom, her own products, her own space. Sharing was alien to her, and it was a rough adjustment period, not helped by their fighting during those initial months when they loathed each other.

Now Glinda would give anything to have that back. To hear that snarky voice yelling at her for hogging all the space again, to be forced to learn how to prioritise and organise her things to make room for someone else. She’d do anything to see Elphaba’s shampoo and the small collection of makeup Glinda coaxed her into purchasing amongst her own endless pile of things - goodness, she’d even give away everything, every last lipgloss and brush, leave the countertop completely bare of all her silly little indulgences if it meant she could see Elphaba’s things in their place. Proof of their shared living space, proof of Elphaba alive, and with her, gazing at her across the room or indulgently letting Glinda play with her hair.

Glinda removes her makeup methodically, staring into the mirror but not really seeing her reflection, too caught up in the shadows of what once was and what could have been. She doesn’t need to see what she looks like. She already knows. It will be an identical sight to the night she lost Fiyero and Elphaba, after she finished delivering the news to every corner of Oz: mascara clinging to her eyelashes in ugly little clumps and running messily down her cheeks, eyeshadow and foundation smudged and ruined, splotchy tearstained skin peeking out from the gaps in her once-flawless mask.

Above all, desolate eyes. The eyes of someone so hopelessly lost, with no real sense of direction, but blindly stumbling forward and hoping to find the way at some point.

Yes, Glinda doesn’t need to look at herself to know exactly what pathetic sight would greet her in the mirror.

It’s muscle memory alone that lets her finish removing her makeup, and muscle memory that leads to her reaching for her brushes once she is done.

Reapplying her makeup is as robotic a process as removing it, the practiced motions second nature to her after so many years so she doesn’t have to concentrate at all. Handy, as it means she doesn’t have to pay much attention to the sorry sight of her reflection. Still, even running on autopilot, it takes longer than usual. She can apply her makeup much faster than this, but her crying fit sapped her of all energy, and she can’t bring herself to hurry through the process. The sooner she finishes, the sooner she’ll have to return to her room and put the urn back on the shelf, and she doesn’t trust she won’t burst into tears all over again if she lays eyes on it just yet.

So she delays, drags her feet through her makeup routine, staring at the mirror but not really seeing anything, and does her best to keep her mind blank from any thought in particular. There is no train of thought that won’t loop back to Elphaba right now, and so it is best to not think at all-

Except that philosophy only makes her think of Fiyero, and her eyes threaten to prick with tears all over again.

No. She cannot cry. She has cried enough today. Her grief for Elphaba alone has already taken everything she has, and if she thinks of Fiyero too, she will shatter beyond repair and there will be nothing left. She can’t risk that. She’s Glinda the Good, and if she cannot be put-together, she must at least be functional. It’s the least she owes him. Owes both of them.

She had all the men involved in Fiyero’s death arrested, and it still doesn’t feel like enough. Nothing she does ever feels like enough, and all she can think to do is keep trying, keep pushing, and hope and pray that one day, maybe one day, she will stop feeling like she’s letting them down.

She doubts she will.

A knock on her door jolts her out of her spiraling thoughts, almost ruining the makeup she’s still applying. The knock is loud, so important enough it’s something she’ll need to deal with tonight, but not sharp, so nothing as urgent as an emergency.

“Just a clock tick!” Glinda calls out automatically, heart lurching as she takes in her appearance again; not suitable for company quite yet. She hurries through the rest of her routine, applying only the essentials, and the moment she’s somewhat presentable, she rushes to answer the door.

The person who greets her is a young lady, a little younger than herself, donned in a handmaiden’s uniform, bright-eyed and glancing nervously up at her. Glinda doesn’t recognise her - she does her best to remember all her handmaiden’s names and faces, so either her memory is worsening or this young lady is new - but she certainly recognises the pile of forms clutched tight in nervous arms, and her heart sinks.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you so late,” the handmaiden says, “but these were marked as rather urgent, and everyone insisted you simply must sign them tonight-”

“Yes, of course,” Glinda says, despite the way her exhausted mind wails at the idea of more work. “It shouldn’t take more than a moment, if you wouldn’t mind waiting for a clock tick, I can review and sign these and you could deliver them for me? I assume they will need to be filed by tonight, I can’t imagine why else they would be so urgent… oh, no need to idle by the door, you’re more than welcome to come in. Would you like some tea?”

“No thank you, Lady Glinda,” the handmaiden says, shuffling meekly into the room. The title is unfamiliar; people called her Miss Galinda back at Shiz, and Glinda the Good or simply Glinda after… well, after Elphaba left, but Lady Glinda is very, very recent, and she still isn’t used to hearing it.

She used to daydream about such a title, once. She’s always thought it would make her sound so elegant, so mature and in control. And it does make her sound like all of those things, except now there’s a dissonance between that and who she truly is. It may make her sound elegant, mature, and in control, but she is certainly none of those things, only good at appearing like she is.

“Do let me know if you change your mind,” Glinda says, secretly hoping she won’t; tea will mean the handmaiden is here for so much longer, and Glinda is in no mood to entertain a guest. Hasn’t she done enough for one day? All she wants to do is curl up in bed and hold-

Her heart stops. She glances back at the handmaiden just in time to see her eyes fall on the bedside table.

The urn. She hasn’t put the urn back.

“My Granny,” she says before the handmaiden has a chance to ask. It’s the same dismissive tone she used back in Shiz when Pfannee and ShenShen first discovered the pointy black hat, and it hides a similar amount of panic. Strange to compare them, when the stakes back then were so trivial, and this is anything but. “My parents gave it to me, they were worried I would be lonely without any family here with me. They’re such dears, aren’t they? Normally I leave it on the shelf, but, oh, it sounds so silly, but I like to hold it sometimes while I give myself a pep talk.”

“It’s not silly at all,” the handmaiden rushes to reassure her curious eyes still roaming over the urn. “It’s perfectly lovely, and the urn is beautiful.”

“Isn’t it? I picked it out myself. It’s so simply elegant, and she was such a darling, I knew as soon as I saw it it was perfect for her.”

Those words, at least, aren’t a lie, even though she isn’t being truthful as to who she is talking about. Truly, she doesn’t mean to say them at all, but they just… spill out. A quiet, unheard plea from her crying heart that’s so very desperate to talk about Elphaba. To explain why she chose that urn, why it fits Elphaba so perfectly, why she pushed back her tears and poured her heart and soul into finding the perfect resting place for the ashes.

She will never be able to talk about Elphaba again. Not in the way she wants to.

Is it more despicable to spout lies and speak ill of a dead woman, or to never speak of her at all?

“She sounds wonderful,” the handmaiden says.

Glinda smiles. Conceals the way she’s forced to swallow the lump in her throat. “She was. More than anyone will ever know.”

The handmaiden’s shining, admiring eyes are too much to bear. The ashes of the person she is complimenting are the ashes of a woman she would sooner spit on than give any grace, and it’s all so fake, it’s all a lie, and Glinda can do nothing but smile through it and pretend it doesn’t break her heart.

Before she can do something she’ll regret, like cry or scream, Glinda takes the forms from the handmaiden and bustles over to her desk, looking over her shoulder to maintain the conversation. “Well, never mind all that. These forms are rather urgent, I believe you said?” She places the forms on her desk, reaches for her impractical quill, eyes finally turning to the pile as she starts to flick through them. “Could you-”

A second. That’s how long she looks away.

There’s a crash, and Glinda whips around, and the urn is shattered on the floor, Elphaba’s ashes spilling out and making a mess of the carpet.

“I…” The handmaiden stares down at the urn, then up at Glinda, her face contorted in horror. “I - Lady Glinda, I’m so, so sorry, I just wanted to see what was written on-”

“It’s okay,” Glinda says numbly. Distantly, she realises she’s smiling.

“I - I’ll clean it up, I’ll get a new urn, I’ll-”

“It’s quite alright. We’ll clean the mess and won’t think any more of it. No harm done.”

“But-”

“Oh, there’s no need to fret. Truthfully, I wasn’t very attached to the old thing, and I wasn’t close to her anyhow.”

The lie rests thick and bitter on her tongue, her mouth ashy, just like the ash on the floor, except no matter what she does, she can never clean it up. This is her punishment, is it not? Elphaba and Fiyero were brave, they stood for freedom, and so freedom they earned in the worst way possible, like the ashes scattered on the floor, no longer trapped in the urn. Glinda was a coward, and she stood by the lies, so it is the lies she is condemned to. Lies will rest on her tongue forevermore, denying Elphaba the peace and love she deserved, all because Glinda was scared and her decision to be brave came far, far too late.

She doesn’t want to be a coward or lie anymore. She doesn’t want to continue seeing Elphaba’s name dragged through the mud, not now she finally has the power to clear it like she wanted to the minute the whole of Oz first spat that dreaded curse of wicked.

But Elphaba asked her not to. It was one of her final requests, and Glinda has been selfish for long enough, she can’t let her down again after everything she’s already done to her. She promised.

(Had she known it would be her last promise, that it was a dying wish, she never would’ve agreed. She only did so because she thought she had time to convince Elphaba to change her mind.)

So the lie she chose, and the lie she sticks to, and no matter how much she tries to be good, no matter how many of Elphaba’s goals she achieves in her honour, she will never truly atone while the lies roll off her tongue again and again in a vicious cycle. Her punishment is to be as she always has: a coward who sides with a lie. Sweetly simple poetic justice.

All because she was too scared to risk living even a day in Elphaba’s life, hated and scorned by all.

She’s loved by everyone now, just like she always wanted. And the price was the two people she loved and wanted to be loved by more than anyone else in the world.

The handmaiden is teary-eyed, her lower lip wobbling, but she gazes at Glinda with reverence when she clasps her hands together. “You truly are as good and gracious as they say, Lady Glinda.”

Glinda smiles, Glinda’s eyes stay dry, Glinda does not waver or falter when she helps clean. She deals with the ashes, the remnants of her whole world, while the handmaiden carefully picks up the pieces of the urn and throws them away, oblivious when Glinda takes the shards with Elphie written in delicate penmanship to deal with them herself. Just in case.

Her heart screams, thrashes, cries in protest as Glinda works, rebelling when she disposes of the last of the ashes, the only thing she had to remember Elphaba by. Her only reminder of the woman she loved.

But perhaps it’s for the best.

She was never meant to keep her anyway.