Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“It’s always something with that girl,” Glinda said to the sunset, leaning on the rail of her balcony. Dorothy Gale was sitting inside, on the recessed couch in the tastefully mauve conversation area, sobbing stickily. Glinda hadn’t invited her, she’d just shown up in that little gingham monstrosity. There was the dog, too, but he was alright. He reminded her of- no. Best not to think about him just now.

Stepping back inside through the double doors, Glinda surveyed the scene. One of her aides, a Secretarybird named Nabo, stepped up delicately beside her, her crest shrinking back in dismay. The dog - Glinda couldn’t remember his name, or whether she’d ever been told - took one look at Nabo and decided to hide on the other side of Dorothy’s legs.

“Ms. Glinda,” Nabo croaked quietly. “There’s someone from the Animal Repatriation Group House to see you, she has some questions about the timeline for the next few months. And the interim Governor of Munchkinland has sent another telegram asking for the appointment of a replacement, really I don’t think she’s cut out for the job for much longer. Oh, and the Shiz University board of trustees has some rather strongly worded feedback about the Animal reparations mandate - don’t worry, I put it out before leaving it on your desk.” She took an awkward, leggy step back as Glinda turned and stared at her.

“I’m sorry, did you say - put it out?”

Nabo bobbed her head. “Yes. It was on fire. Quite dramatically on fire, actually. And I have a glazier coming up to look at the window.”

Glinda blinked. “The window?”
Nabo bobbed her head again, her crest shrinking even further. “The window it was thrown through, yes.”

Glinda sighed, throwing a hand across her forehead before catching sight of herself in the mirror and stubbornly crossing her arms instead. The board of trustees was going to be something of a problem, especially if they’d decided that firebombing her office was a good idea. The interim Governor’s position was understandably difficult, considering that, up until a month ago, she’d been Nessarose Thropp’s housekeeper, the poor thing. There was not a large corps of dedicated civil servants in Munchkinland, which made it difficult to consider any better appointment than the woman who had, thus far, managed to keep the lights on and the trains running for the last month. The ARGH would make sense to deal with first, as they were trying to do something helpful and didn’t seem to actively want Glinda dead. At least, not yet. Probably best to-

Dorothy made a very wet and unhappy sound.

First things first. Real people first, before all else. It had been the first decision she had made after- Best not to think about that just now. The first decision she had made before encouraging the Wizard to take a very long vacation. People first, politics, magic, power, and propaganda came second. “Thank you so much, Nabo, you’re a real hero,” she said, putting an encouraging hand under Nabo’s beak. The crest opened with  a little optimism. “ARGH first, Governor second, Shiz- well. Shiz when I feel like it, I suppose. I promise, I promise I’ll have answers for the other two before the end of the night. I just have to deal with a little,” she twiddled the fingers of her free hand in the direction of the conversation pit, “unexpectified hiccup first.”

Nabo relaxed, her crest flaring out. “Thank you, Ms. Glinda,” she croaked, sounding deeply relieved. “I’ll show the ARGH rep out and tell her to wait for a courier later, and the Governor will just have to wait for a telegram. Shiz can, pardon my Winkie, get stuffed in the meantime.” Nabo cocked her head conspiratorially, the closest Avian equivalent of a wink, missing Glinda’s small wince. She leaned in, extending her dramatically long neck to bring her beak up next to Glinda’s ear. “Good luck with the fledgeling, Ms. Glinda.” With that, Nabo took her leave, strutting out of the room with her usual high-stepping, precise gait.

Glinda put her hands on her hips and made a small, fortifying sound. She strode with purpose across the room, stepping down into the conversation pit and coming up in front of Dorothy, looking down at the wretched crying girl. Dorothy looked back up at her with a blotchy, red face, wet with tears and who knew what other unpleasant bodily fluids.

It was at this point that Glinda realized she had no idea what to say. This was, to say the least, an extremely discomposing experience. She had never actually considered having children much beyond the obvious fact that she would eventually have some number of them, and as such she had never given much thought to what interacting personally with a distressed child might entail.

“Well,” she began, and faltered immediately. Dorothy’s brow furrowed.

“Well?” The girl repeated, looking somewhere between frightened and confused.

“Well,” Glinda started again, “what seems to be the problem?” Now Dorothy looked decidedly confused, and something else - perhaps disgusted, though that couldn’t be right.

“What seems to be the problem?” Dorothy repeated, sounding incredulous. Glinda began to worry that the girl was even dimmer than she’d initially suspected. “I’m stuck in an insane upside down world full of talking animals and people who seem to think that’s totally normal, I was kidnapped, thrown in a pit, and had to kill the Wicked Witch to escape, my only possible chance of getting home flew away in a hot air balloon, I’ve spent weeks wandering from one hostel to another just trying to figure out what to do next, and just when someone finally thought to bring me to the person in charge of all this mess, she turns out to be a stupid pink hag who’s looking at me like I’m the crazy one in this situation.” Dorothy paused to catch her breath, then narrowed her eyes in evident confusion at Glinda. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m not,” Glinda replied, wiping her eyes delicately. “And I really will not have that kind of language used in my house - they’re not animals, they’re Animals.” She sighed, staring at Dorothy who looked, if anything, more confused, not less. She supposed the girl had had a rather difficult few weeks. Her and the rest of Oz. ‘Stupid pink hag’ should probably have stung, but she had been called so many things recently that none of it stuck any longer. She was simply Glinda, now, to herself if not to anyone else. 

The fact remained that Dorothy had murdered- no, not murdered, slain the Wicked Witch. Glinda’s feelings on that fact, as if she had any, were immaterial. They had to be, if that act was going to be what Oz needed it to be. An inflection point, a rallying cry, a place to begin fixing everything that had been so terribly broken for so terribly long. And the girl was clearly not as stupid as she’d thought.

Glinda stepped over the dog - she really needed to find a polite way to discover his name - and settled herself on the couch next to Dorothy, who scooted a few inches away. Glinda tried not to take it too personally.

“You’ve had a difficult time since coming to Oz, haven’t you?” She said with as much sympathy as she could muster. It really wasn’t the girl’s fault, the way things had gone. Certainly no more than it had been Glinda’s.

Dorothy made a choked noise in her throat and nodded. “You could say that,” she said warily.

“Well I think I will,” Glinda replied, feeling that she was getting nowhere. She thought fast, something she was becoming quite good at lately. The girl was a national hero, and she was relying on the generosity of the Emerald City’s hostelries? That was an absolute propaganda nightmare. “You said you’ve been trying to find a place to stay, didn’t you?” 

Dorothy nodded slowly. “Just until I can get out of here. Until someone can send me home.” She looked pointedly at Glinda, who ignored her just as pointedly. If Dorothy Gale could be sent home, it would have to be Glinda who figured out how to do it, and the only hope for that lay in the Grimmerie, which was its own problem at the moment.

Glinda smiled as hard as she could. “Well, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, my apartments are quite sizable. There are a few staff rooms that no one’s ever used. You’re practically an Ozian icon, by now, we really can’t leave you running around from one insalubricious hostel to another, can we?”

Dorothy’s face went from blotchy red to pale, then back to a hot pink. “Me, live here?” She gestured around at - well, pretty much everything. “You really don’t have to do that,” she said with a slightly panicked look.

Glinda’s vision blurred. She couldn’t think why, but her face was suddenly running with hot tears, her throat closing like someone had wrapped their hand around her neck. She tried to fight it, to hold it down as she’d been doing for Oz knew how long, but her wretched body betrayed her yet again and she had no choice but to let it happen, heaving great ugly gasping breaths between convulsive sobs. Her nose ran, and the stupid dress didn’t have pockets, so she didn’t have a handkerchief, and she absolutely refused to dribble on her blouse.

A hand, rough and small and shaking slightly, touched her forearm. She blinked the tears away as best she could, the world coming back into her field of vision in splintered fragments seen through a broken mirror. Dorothy’s face, closer than before and looking more concerned than frightened. A swimming vision of horrid gingham near at hand.

“I washed it this morning,” Dorothy said. “And I haven’t used it. Honestly, I’ve just been crying on my sleeve mostly. Auntie Em says I shouldn’t, but I say why dirty a handkerchief if you don’t really need to?”

Glinda wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands, trying to make sense of the words. She blinked a few more times, and resolved the scene in front of her. Dorothy, next to her on the couch, having moved a bit closer, proffering a worn but evidently clean white handkerchief. Glinda took it and blew her nose with as much poise as she could muster. It wasn’t much.

Dorothy was saying something again, and Glinda tried to listen with ears that were still rushing a little. “I didn’t mean any offense, ma’am,” she was saying, voice slightly hushed. “It would be awfully nice to have a place to myself for a while, only I don’t like the idea of taking a favor I haven’t earned. Gales aren’t like that.”

Glinda stared at her. Pinched, worried face. Hair a complete mess. Dress that only a mother could love, and not a very good mother at that. She was a national hero, whatever Glinda thought of how she’d become one, and she didn’t think she’d earned the hospitality of Oz.

“Dorothy,” Glinda said damply. “Do you know what an ‘intern’ is?”

Chapter Text

Ten years later

Glinda pinched the bridge of her nose and stared at one of the piles of paper on her desk. No matter what she did, they never seemed to actually get any smaller, they just changed shape. Dorothy sat across from her, a scroll twice as long as she was tall unrolled across her lap and the desk. 

“Glinda, you really can’t do all of these,” Dorothy said, shaking her head. “I don’t think you could make it to every one of these engagements even if you used the Grimmerie to travel, and if you want to take the bubble there’s just no way. You’ve got to pick and choose.”

Glinda threw her head back against her chair, closing her eyes. “I know, Dot, but it’s the tenth Goodness Day, I simply cannot miss it. Everyone will be expecting me, and I can’t afford to snub anyone.”

Dorothy set the scroll aside with some difficulty and leaned across the table, putting a hand gently on Glinda’s forearm. It was alarmingly pale, like all of Glinda had been lately, even more so than usual. “Glinda,” she started, then reconsidered. “Ma.” She started again, quieter. “It’s been ten years. If some of Oz can’t do without their Good Witch for a bit, they’ll never be able to. Keep the list to the provincial capitals, use the Grimmerie to travel if you think you can handle it, and you’ll be back here for the fireworks with time to spare.” The Grimmerie, in its usual spot at Glinda’s left hand, shivered and rifled its pages in evident agreement.

Glinda opened her eyes, giving the Grimmerie a sharp look. “Don’t you get excited,” she said to it in a commanding tone. “Simple teleportation, here to there, and that is it. I will not have a repeat of last time.” The Grimmerie’s covers thumped shut, looking somewhat sullen. 

Ten years of diligent, occasionally manic study, and Glinda had finally mastered the terrible little thing. Every spell was catalogued and translated as best she could figure in neat pink lettering in a notebook she kept far away from the original, the formulae for constructing new spells had been nailed to the metaphorical wall after nearly a year of dedicated struggle, and she had come to understand its moods and whims. Not that there hadn’t been some trouble along the way. A few disturbances, as Dorothy called them. Glinda still shuddered at the memory of being turned into a large pink rain cloud. After that, she’d never tried the “travel fast as the wind” spell again.

She turned her attention back to Dot, taking the proffered hand gratefully. “I know, I know. But it certainly seems like they can’t do without me, doesn’t it?” She gestured to the pile of unread papers that had once been her inbox. “I can do the provincial capitals on Goodness Day with the Grimmerie, and maybe I can do the outlying towns in the bubble over the week before? A tour!” She brightened somewhat, offering her best, most Good smile, though it felt a bit strained. “A Goodness tour.” 

Even as she said it, she felt the weight of it pile into her shoulders, yet one more burden to bear. Dorothy squeezed her hand, her expression of concern deepening. 

“I know how hard Goodness Day is on you,” Dorothy said quietly. “It’s no better for me. But I don’t have to be Good every day. I don’t have to be perfect.” Glinda nodded slowly. It wasn’t just her own life that had changed forever with the throwing of a bucket of water. Dorothy was the savior of Oz, the Wicked Witch’s killer. To everyone else, that made her a hero. Between them, it was just something that kept them both awake at night; especially when the time of year came that all of Oz gathered to celebrate it.

Glinda gave Dorothy her best, most Good smile. “I know, dearie, I do. But someone has to be there for Goodness day. People need someone to give them hope, something to celebrate, especially for the tenth anniversaration.”

Dorothy nodded, a gleam in her eye, and Glinda wondered if she’d walked into something. Her adopted daughter didn’t outmaneuver her often, but it did happen.  

“I’ve gone the Goodness Day circuit with you every year, even when you had to drag me through it kicking and screaming. You’re absolutely right that someone needs to do it. But it doesn’t have to be you,” Dorothy replied with a grin that was, yes, ever so slightly wicked.

Glinda stared at her, her fossilized smile going slack. Before she could object in more than a splutter, Dorothy continued her patter with the smooth ease of an ice skater gliding above rocks under the surface of a frozen pond. I taught her that, Glinda thought with a strange mix of indignance and pride. 

“I’ve already discussed it with Nabo, just to see whether she thought it was practical, of course, and we already have an itinerary worked out that lets me take the bubble to all of the capitals with a stop in Munchkinland on Goodness Day morning, which the Governor has agreed would be perfect for her purposes, and gets me back here just in time to be Mistress of Ceremonies for the parade. A role which, I feel I should add, the Captain of the Guard is entirely comfortable with me assuming.” Dorothy released Glinda’s hand and sat back in her chair, eyeing her mother with just a touch of nerves showing through.

Glinda blinked and shut her mouth. “You got Nabo, the Governor, and Chistery involved in this?” She asked, incredulous.

Dorothy nodded with her best attempt at a serene expression. “I got three people who are worried about you involved in this.” She paused. “Well, I think Chistery is worried about you. You know how he is.”

Glinda stared at her. The girl was trying to give her - what, a break? A vacation? The idea struck her as so utterly ridiculous that she could barely retain her composure. She hadn’t had a break in fifteen years, what possible reason did Dorothy think she had to take one now?

Dorothy sighed. “I know that look. No arguing, the arrangements are already made. All we have to do is announce it, with your signature.” She leaned forward across the desk, worry creasing her forehead. “You’re not eating, you’re barely sleeping, you spend every second you’re not making a public appearance behind this desk worrying. I live with you, you think I don’t see it?” She took Glinda’s hand again, and Glinda realized that she was trembling. “I know you’re grieving,” she said, barely more than a whisper. “Every year, I see it. But this year’s worse. Please, do this for me, if not for yourself.”

Glinda inhaled sharply. It was the unspoken and unspeakable, the fact they both understood but did not address. Glinda was grieving. Had been grieving, in fact, for ten years. Not just for the loss and betrayal of her fiance, as the public was well aware, but for - Someone else. Someone dead a decade past, at Dorothy’s hand. Someone whose hat lived in a little round box, tucked deep at the back of a largely unused closet of terribly outdated dresses somewhere in Glinda’s apartments.

Glinda reached up with her free hand to brush something away from her face, a strand of hair most likely. Her hand came away damp. She stared at her fingers, then at Dorothy.

“I want the bubble back here in one piece,” she said as briskly as she could manage. “Not a scratch. I mean it!” she added in response to Dorothy’s grin. 

Dorothy let go of her hand and nodded deferentially. “I’ll be careful, don’t worry about me. And don’t even think about making a ‘surprise appearance’ anywhere. Try it, and Chistery will have you back here faster than the Grimmerie could manage it.” The Grimmerie rattled its covers in annoyance, but they both ignored it.

“I know, I know,” Glinda said, raising her hands in defeat. “I suppose I can get caught up on telegrams,” she said, eyeing the towering inbox.

“Absolutely not,” Dorothy interjected. “Nabo isn’t letting you anywhere close to this desk. You’re taking a proper break, and I don’t care who thinks their village’s rail connectivity proposal is an absolute emergency for Glinda the Good. Everything can wait a week.”

Glinda opened her mouth to object, and Dorothy shut her down with a look. I taught her that, too, Glinda thought. “Oz is fine,” Dorothy said gently. “Oz can do without you for a week. Like I said - if they can’t do it now, they’ll never be able to.”

Glinda deflated. It wasn’t that she couldn’t fight Dorothy - or, perhaps, Dorothy, Nabo, Governor Rush, and Chistery in concert - it was that, try as she might, now that the cards were on the table, she found that she couldn’t bring herself to want to fight. Which was, of course, her perennial affliction.

She opened her mouth, choked slightly, cleared her throat, and tried again. “Fine,” she managed on the second go. “Fine!” she repeated, a little more sure of herself. “I’ll have Nabo announcify that this year’s special Goodness Day celebrations will be conducted by none other than the Hero of Oz herself. It’s only fair - after all, we’re all celebrating your particular act of Goodness, aren’t we?” She smiled at Dorothy, quite sure she really meant it.

Dorothy gave her a look that started off as surprise and quickly turned into pity. “That isn’t exactly how I would have put it, I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Glinda the Good is challenging me to come into my own and bring hope and encouragement to all Ozians myself, this year,’ but if that’s what you’d prefer then we can do it.”

Glinda continued to smile at her. “I think whatever you decide will be just perfect,” she said, patting the desk approximately where Dorothy’s hands had been until she had, just a second before, moved to pick up a sheet of paper from one of the nearby piles. Dorothy, of course, caught the motion out of the corner of her eye and turned back to Glinda, that same look of pity creasing her forehead.

“You really do need this,” she said quietly, after a moment. “Thank you for letting me talk you into it. I mean it.”

Glinda stood up abruptly in a small avalanche of skirts, smoothing them down reflexively. “I’m going away now,” she announced, and turned, rustling out of the room as quickly as she could manage without tripping herself. The door swung shut soundlessly behind her.

Dorothy stared after her for a moment, then peered under her side of the huge desk. Toto looked up at her with an unreadably doggish expression on his face. “And how do we think that went?” He asked.

Chapter Text

Glinda stood on her balcony, the Grimmerie hanging at her side and an excessively large and pink pearled carpet bag in hand. She was dressed for travel, which was to say a slightly heavier dress than usual with one or two fewer layers of petticoats. In front of her, there was a hole in the air that sparked and hissed and bent the eye away from it when you looked too closely. On the other side was, in theory, a dusty high road somewhere in Quadling Country. The breeze that came through smelled different, at any rate.

Dorothy stood a little behind her, leaning idly against the wall, Toto sitting patiently by her feet. Glinda looked back at her. “You’re really quite sure you can handle it all yourself?” she asked, trying to keep her tone level.

“Absolutely positive,” Dorothy said with complete self-assurance, a small grin on her face.

“You’ll have the bubble back in one piece? And more importantly yourself, of course.” She bit her lip, one foot poised on the edge of stepping through the hole. Uncertain, nervous.

Dorothy nodded. “Of course. I’ve been flying it for years, I’m sure I can handle a few hops between cities.”

Glinda still wavered, casting around internally for whatever she’d forgotten, whatever critical piece of information she absolutely had to impart to Dorothy before her departure. There was nothing. “And you will tell me all about it when we’re both back?” 

Dorothy sighed, kicking off the wall and crossing her arms, her grin fading to slight annoyance. “Yes, of course I will. But not if you don’t get going. I’ll be fine.”

Glinda dropped her bag and crossed the balcony at a half-run, wrapping Dorothy in the tightest hug she could manage without crushing the Grimmerie between them. Dorothy returned it, earnestly if a little exasperated. After a minute, Glinda stepped back, cupping Dorothy’s face in her palm. Dorothy carefully reached up and removed the hand, placing it back by Glinda’s side.

“Ma, it’s time. Go in the portal, I’ll be fine, I promise,” she said, a slight hint of irritation creeping into her voice.

Glinda nodded, wiping her eyes (which were of course completely dry) with the back of a gloved hand. She picked up her bag again and marched resolutely toward the portal she’d opened on the balcony, putting one foot through, then the bag. She paused then, looking back over her shoulder for one last glance at Dorothy.

“I am going to miss you so much,” she said, then pulled the rest of herself through the hole in the air and vanished from sight, the portal snapping shut behind her with a pop and a faint smell of singed grass.

Dorothy sighed and looked down at Toto, blinking back tears that had snuck in somewhere while she wasn’t watching. “Do you think she’ll be alright?” She asked.

Toto stood and shook himself. “Sweet Oz, you really do take after her.” He scratched at his ear contemplatively, then yawned. “She’ll be fine. I won’t be, however, if you dawdle as much as her. I think Nabo might actually eat me if I don’t get you in the air on time today.”

Dorothy laughed, a little damply, and turned to follow Toto back inside. She still hadn’t finished preparations for the Goodness Week tour that started in just a few hours, having stayed up far too late the night before seeing Glinda packed and ready. She did not turn to look back at where her mother had vanished off the balcony as she stepped through the big doors and closed them behind her.

Glinda tried very hard to enjoy herself. Every day was a new village or hamlet in a new part of Oz, stepping between them as lightly as passing through a door. She was recognized, of course she was, but the news of her impending vacation had spread through Oz like wildfire and most were content to shake her hand and go away with a grin and a story. She did have to kiss one or two babies, but that was alright.

The first day had been Quadling Country. Rolling hills and cornfields as far as the eye could see, the inhabitants not having quite the eclectic taste of the Munchkins, nor the cosmopolitan snobbery of the Emerald City. Comfortable, sturdy, down to Oz people who knew the value of their land and were quite happy to share it with anyone who didn’t intend to stay too long.

Then had been The Glikkus, perhaps an unusual stop on a tour of Oz for a woman of refinement who could go quite literally wherever she wanted with absolute ease. But Glinda had harbored a private desire to see the peaks of the Scalps for years, the place that had produced the vast wealth of the Emerald City, at exorbitant cost to its people. It was a cost paid in blood, and Glinda’s government, a decade on, was still struggling to find a way to properly repair the damage done to the Glikkuns. They were a people who had no interest in jewels or gold, preferring instead the quiet of their mountain glades and the sunlight through the gnarled pines.

The mountains did not disappoint. Forests and steep climbs were not exactly Glinda’s preferred venue, but there were a few places in the Scalps, tucked away and secret if you didn’t have a Glikkun to show you where they were, that were accessible by a thoroughly pleasant stroll. There, Glinda felt true wonder for the first time since she had come to the Emerald City a lifetime ago. Waterfalls sparkled down cliffs higher than the clouds, strange birds wheeling and calling in great flocks in the valleys between. Crystal blue lakes, so clear she thought she would be dizzy just from looking into their depths, reflected the scenes around and above them. She had to tear herself away, feeling sure that if she stayed another hour, another minute, she might never find the strength to leave at all.

Munchkinland, for all its fields of flowers and the color and vibrance of its inhabitants, could not quite banish thought of the Scalps from Glinda’s mind. She carefully avoided Center Munch because, as much as part of her wanted to pay a visit to Governor Rush, she knew that neither of them could avoid professional conversation. She personally wouldn’t have minded, but she knew Dorothy would catch wind of it, and the chastisement that would ensue was one she was intent on avoiding.

Instead, she spent two days in Rush Margins on the shores of the Illswater, having rented a room from an elderly Munchkin woman who either didn’t recognize Glinda or recognized simply a woman with a desire for privacy. She tried sitting on a small boardwalk by the lakeshore and reading, but she found that she was no more at home with books now than she had been at Shiz. Reading was something she did regularly, as a requirement of her day to day life, but that she took no particular pleasure in. In that sense, it was much like eating.

Glinda closed her book and stared across the lake. A great many things were like that, she thought. They had been that way for a long time. So long, in fact, that she was no longer entirely sure whether any other life had ever truly been hers. There were memories, of course, but they were all shadows behind a screen. Fancies that she did not dare entertain lest she become lost in them. Yet the Scalps had shaken something loose, a frayed thread blowing in the wind that she could not quite cut off or tuck away, try as she might. Those mountains. Raw and uncompromising, yes, but beautiful and inviting nevertheless.

She was missing something. There was something she had not done, somewhere she had not been, someone she had not accounted for. Mountains, indomitable beauty, stray threads in her mind. 

She knew what it was. She had known for some time, if she was being honest with herself. Ten years in power without making a single diplomatic trip to the Vinkus, delegating those responsibilities to undersecretaries, diplomats, and, on one particularly dire occasion, Toto. The Tigelaar family had made it clear - quietly, politely, and privately - that they had no interest in association with her after the dust had settled. She respected that wish, and it provided her with useful moral cover in continuing to avoid making the trip across the mountains. Mountains she could, on a clear day, see in front of the setting sun. 

A memory itched at the back of her mind. The scent of pomade and lotioned skin. Long fingernails combing through her hair. The promise of a trip to the Thousand Year Grasslands. “My parents could find room for all of us. It’s a bit of a ride but we could stay a night at Kiamo Ko on the way. What d’you think?”

She brushed it off, shoving it back into the locked closet in her mind where things like that lived. It was a practiced motion at this point, almost unthinking. Yet this time, it failed her. She frowned, trying again, only to be confronted with the fact that trying very hard to ignore something tended to have the opposite result.

Other memories surfaced, worming through the crack in the door. The three of them in the library, watching Boq get stuck upside down in the rotating bookshelf. The smell of wet stone and the echo of a scream muffled by a closet door. The muzzle of a gun pointed at her face, trembling as the hand behind it shook.

The Vinkus hadn’t been on her travel itinerary, and she hadn’t even considered why it was omitted. It was simply a fact of life - the place she didn’t go. Not since her singular, terrible visit to Kiamo Ko a decade ago. A decade to the day. It was Goodness Day, after all. The conclusion pawed at her like Toto when she was ignoring his policy suggestions, inevitable and wretched. 

She had time, plenty of it, and the ability to go anywhere in Oz she wanted. She didn’t want to go to Kiamo Ko, per se, but the more she thought about the idea the more obvious it seemed. Maybe seeing it again, after all this time, would settle whatever monster lived in her head and drank her thoughts every day. Maybe it would just kill what remained of her. Either way would be a relief.

Deciding to go was harder than the going itself. It was the same portal spell she’d used for every other stage of her trip thus far, memorized and rote. The air broke and warped in a shower of golden sparks, smelling of ozone and a waft of cold mountain air. It was a smell that featured in her dreams or, more often, her nightmares; the background to scenes of darkness, claustrophobia, and a wrenching nameless grief. She paused momentarily on the edge, her resolve wavering. Then the stronger side of her, the side that had brought her through countless long nights over the past decade, won out as she plunged forward, the portal snapping shut behind her definitively.

The Tigelaar family had abandoned all but nominal stewardship of the castle, choosing to leave it to rot and collapse and bury the stain on their legacy it held rather than attempt some sort of renovation and rehabilitation. As such, the room where Glinda’s nightmares lived was cobwebbed and dusty, the window still shattered, dry rot creeping in and eating at the woodwork. Otherwise, it was exactly as she had left it. No human came here. Even the Monkeys had turned away from it, preferring the comfort of their roosts in the Emerald City.

There was still a bucket in the corner, wood staves now warped and crumbling, iron bands rusting through. Glinda’s stomach turned and she looked away, surveying the rest of the room. It was odd, seeing the place she’d thought of so often but never sought to visit. She felt oddly outside of herself, existing as one body in one place, but at two points in time, distant and spanned only by her memories.

The pump was rusted into unusability. The trapdoor to the small room where Dorothy had been dropped by the Monkeys gaped open as Dorothy had left it. She felt a knot of anger in the pit of her stomach at that. Dorothy, for all her faults, for all that she had done, was hers. First her problem, then her intern, then somehow amidst the throes of Dorothy’s adolescent angst, her daughter. She had never expected or asked for that honor, and at times she paid dearly for it, but Dorothy gave and Glinda accepted. The idea of her trapped in a cold, dark chamber, alone and afraid, made Glinda angry in a way she felt only seldom, when what she had committed herself to was threatened.

She put that aside for the moment, carefully, with both hands. It was something to come back to later, perhaps. For now, she continued sweeping her gaze around the abandoned room. A few straggling plants grew in the corners where the wind had piled dust and blown leaves, tendrils and leaves trailing towards the light coming through the great window. The closet doors - oh, those Oz damn closet doors - hung open, one half off its hinges. The window gaped like a big, bright mouth.

Glinda looked, and looked some more. It was all so familiar, yet all so unlike it was in her memory. Being here now, she felt no great sense of resolution, no lightning bolt of sense or sanity. The hole inside her still yawned and swallowed everything that came near it, and the itch of something wrong and inexplicable still worried at the back of her head. If anything, the way it had all deliquesced into utterly mundane ruin made it even worse. Even the place itself had left her behind, time moving on with no regard to her comfort.

She walked slowly towards the window, picking her way carefully around the patches of leaf litter and crumbling wood. The sound of her heels echoed faintly in the empty space. Tap tap tap.

Tap tap tap tap.

Tap tap tap bong.

She stopped short a few feet from the window, perplexed. She stamped her foot a couple of times, experimentally.

Bong bong.

The itch at the back of her mind was stronger than ever. She crouched down and ran a finger across the dusty stone of the floor until it caught on something cold and hard. A metal lip, the edge of a panel set flush with the floor. Conjuring a small wind, she brushed the dust back to the corners with a twist of her wrist, exposing a metal trapdoor about the size of a small bed. A handle was set along one side, cleverly flush with the surface so as not to present any sign of itself to someone who wasn’t looking for it.

Heart in her throat, though she couldn’t think why, Glinda stepped off the trapdoor and, careful of her nails, lifted the handle. The hinges groaned but complied, protesting, and the door swung up.

Beneath it was - well, really nothing at all. A small space, just tall enough for a person to stand in, long and wide enough for a person to lie down in. It looked as though it might have been a storage space for something domestic at one point, flour or cheese or something like that, but it had clearly not been for some time. All that was inside now was dust, a few shreds of black fabric that looked as if they’d been caught in the hinges and torn, and a single blue feather.

The trapdoor slammed down, Glinda not even realizing she’d let go. The feeling in her head was palpable now, painful and urgent. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes but it didn’t help, she saw the room exactly the same as with her eyes open. Except it wasn’t the same. The floor was wet, the light was different, there were feathers and embers scattered here and there and in front of her, right in front of her on what looked for all the world like just another piece of floor but that she now knew was a trapdoor, sat a beautiful black hat.

Everything will be okay, I promise.

The truth is not a thing of fact or reason.

Water will melt her? People are so empty-headed, they’ll believe anything!

She pulled her hands away from her eyes, taking a single shaking step backwards. She looked at the trapdoor again, with new eyes this time, the sensation in her head abated. Yes, someone could stand there, just there, and yes, she could drop to her knees in a cloud of smoke and a hideous scream and yes, with enough planning and a little help and a touch of magic, just a touch, she could drop right through that door as if she had simply vanished. Melted away into the floor. The bitch.

"Oh, you absolute motherfucker," said Glinda to no one who could hear her.

Chapter Text

Dorothy raised a hand, her eyes closed, her face as close to impassive as she could make it. Glinda fell silent.

“Let me make sure I understand,” Dorothy said, her voice soft, almost a whisper. She opened her eyes just in time to see Glinda finish stifling a flinch. Dorothy knew her tone was dangerous, and that if anyone would recognize that, it was Glinda.

“You and the Wicked Witch - excuse me, Elphaba,” she spat the name, “were friends in college. You parted ways when she decided to become a domestic terrorist and you went into government. Prince Tigelaar left you at the altar for her, and then you and she made up - I can’t imagine how - on the night that I killed her. Except, oh I’m sorry, I didn’t actually kill her, did I? And somehow, you expect me to believe that you’ve been sitting on all of this for ten years and never figured out that she was still alive out there somewhere.” She paused, shooting a venomous look at Glinda, who suppressed another flinch. “Actually, Glinda,” not Ma, not now, maybe not ever, “I can absolutely believe you were just that stupid.” 

Glinda opened her mouth, and Dorothy glared at her again. “I’m not done. Anyway, you were in that room at the top of the tower at Kiamo Ko that night. You said it yourself. While Elphaba had me in that terrible little oubliette, crying and trying not to die of absolute terror, all over a pair of shoes that you gave me, you were up there settling whatever kind of score you needed to with her. No concern for the girl in the basement, because you had Good Witch business to attend to. And then when I turned up on your doorstep, looking awfully convenient as the fabled killer of the Wicked Witch? Well then you were absolutely overflowing with concern for me, weren’t you?” She paused for breath, her chest heaving, one hand still raised. Glinda didn’t even try to speak, but Dorothy saw tears sparkling in her eyes. One rolled down her cheek, ridiculously perfect and photogenic. It only made Dorothy angrier. She dropped her voice back to that venomous near-whisper.

“Just exactly when did you think it would be a good time to tell me any of this?”

Glinda swallowed hard, apparently trying to unstick her throat. She made a sick little whining noise, coughed, and managed a few strangled words. “I couldn’t tell you when I first took you in- imagine what it would have done to you. And then, when I thought you were old enough to handle it, well, you know-” she waved her fingers in a way that contrived to mean absolutely nothing at all.

“I don’t know. Please explain.” Dorothy kept her voice hideously calm.

“Well- it had all just been too long. You were settled in here, I knew what it would do to you if I told you the whole truth. You knew what you had to, the same as everyone else in Oz-”

Dorothy raised a hand again. “I think I needed to know a little more than everyone else in Oz, wouldn’t you say? Maybe because I’m working as your personal proxy? Or maybe, Glinda, because I was your daughter?” 

Glinda flinched, properly, this time. The past tense had been nasty, but it was well deserved. Dorothy felt a triumphant little twist in her stomach. Glinda nodded, tears running freely.

“Dot, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean-” Dorothy cut her off with a look again.

“Let’s stick with ‘Dorothy’ for now, please. While I’ve got you here,” she gestured at Glinda practically cowering behind her huge desk, though at the moment it felt entirely like Dorothy was the one in control of the conversation, “is there anything else you haven’t told me that you really should? I promise you, you can tell me anything you like. It can hardly make me any angrier.”

Glinda closed her eyes and took several deep, shaking breaths. Dorothy very nearly felt a twinge of sympathy for her. Very nearly.

“Two things. Just two. First - The Witch was never Wicked. Not really. That was what the Wizard wanted everyone to believe and, well,” she trailed off for a moment, eyes going unfocused, then coming back to the present with some discomfort. “I went along with it because I thought it would help. Even what everyone believes now is still worse than the truth. She wasn’t some Animal rights agitator who just took things a little too far. She wasn’t dangerous. She didn’t hate anyone, not ever, except maybe the Wizard. And second - no please. Let me say this.” Dorothy knew she had a look in her eye, but she held her tongue with some considerable force and nodded, once. 

“I think I know where she is. She’s not anywhere in Oz, the Grimmerie is absolutely sure of that. I think-” she paused, sniffed, and continued. “I think she’s back where you came from. And I might have an idea how to get to her.”

Dorothy took a very deep breath. She had been wrong about not getting any angrier. Something terrible was happening in her stomach, with three or four profoundly incompatible emotional responses vying for attention. Horror, relief, disgust, and excitement. She had known that the Witch was not quite as wicked in reality as she, and the rest of the Witch Hunters, had been led to believe. That had been difficult for her to swallow for a number of reasons, but she had made her peace with it. She knew how propaganda worked. She had seen it from both sides, now, and tried to extend herself grace for being as susceptible to it as anyone else.

This was something completely different. There was a line where hyperbolized propaganda crossed into outright lies, and it seemed the stories about the Witch were altogether on the other side of that line. God, she was glad she hadn’t actually managed to kill the woman, no matter what anger she might still hold over her treatment at the Witch’s hands. Thank God she was still alive out there, somewhere that Dorothy could find her, somewhere that she could make things right.

Back where she had come from. That was the other deadly confession. Ten years ago, Glinda had told her she had no idea how to send her home. In the elapsed decade, no matter how Glinda’s knowledge of the Grimmerie and the magic of Oz had deepened, there had been no way around it. Glinda had found transportation spells, obviously, and she had even found spells to travel to places beyond Oz, something that Oz generally made difficult for those who originated there. None of them, however, Glinda deemed safe or certain enough to send Dorothy off with. And, truth be told, Dorothy had settled into her new life. Politics came naturally to her, and Glinda was - had been - always a good mentor, and a decent enough mother when one was needed. And now, this.

She fought to keep her voice steady, to keep the tremor of incandescent rage out of it. “You’re going to go get her. Fine. I can’t stop you. But you are bringing me with you.”

Glinda gaped. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, the last time you saw her she-”

“You don’t get to tell me what’s a good idea anymore,” Dorothy snapped, her restraint failing her. “I’m going with you, I’m going to settle my own score with the Witch, and then I’m going to go home.” Her voice trembled on the last word. “Kansas wasn’t perfect, but no one kidnapped me, or locked me in a cellar, or lied to my face for ten years. I think I’d like to go back to that.” She stood, all at once, the chair sliding back and almost tipping, sending Toto skittering out from under it. Glinda flinched away, her tear-stained face blanching. Dorothy almost felt a little guilty at that, but she couldn’t quite manage it. “Goodnight, Glinda. Send Nabo to tell me when we’re leaving.” She pivoted on her heel and stalked out of the room, not waiting to see whether Toto followed.

Silence fell in Glinda’s office, aside from her intermittent sniffles. Toto shook himself, then scratched behind an ear. Glinda stared at him, looking but not seeing. After a moment, he headed for the door that Dorothy had left through, then paused. He turned to look at Glinda, his expression as inscrutable as ever.

“Glinda,” he began. “I’m sorry to say this, but you have absolutely screwed the pooch. And I don’t use the term lightly.” Then he trotted out the door, leaving Glinda alone once again.

Morning came too quickly and too slowly. Glinda slept fitfully for an hour, at most. There was too much to do and too little time to do it, the fevered intensity giving her a substantial excuse to avoid thinking about the situation beyond simple, bare facts. She was alive. She was outside of Oz. She had a spell that could take her there, something she had thought nearly impossible to do safely. The trick, she had realized in the panicked frenzy of the days between her discovery and this terrible night, was homing on a definite person of substantial power in her own right. She might have been able to make it work with the Wizard, wherever he was now, but he was a spark on the wind compared to the searing flare of her power against the darkness of - well, wherever she was. She hadn’t been able to discover that much, just that it was somewhere safe enough. Thank Oz for that.

Eventually, her bag was packed, the great sending circle and its many associated sub-figures was chalked on the floor of the balcony, a certain innocuous hatbox sat at its center, and the sun was just beginning to lighten the sky somewhere off behind the palace. The circle trembled and hummed with barely contained power, its lines glowing faintly in the dark. A twisted knot of guilt and regret in her stomach vied for her attention with the pressure headache building behind her eyes as she held the sending circle together, ready without releasing it.

Nabo had been sent for Dorothy fifteen minutes ago, and Glinda had not stopped pacing the perimeter of the sending circle since. She stopped abruptly when she heard the telltale pat- pat- pat of Nabo strutting across the floor inside, followed by Dorothy’s unmistakable heavy footfalls and the click-clack-click of Toto’s prim gait. Any other day, it would have made her smile. Today it was the very last thing she wanted to hear. It was the last time she’d ever hear it in her house, she realized with a chill. After ten years, this was it, faster and more final than she had ever imagined or feared.

The three of them came out into the grey light of early dawn, all looking a little the worse for wear. Nabo had been up all night with Glinda, putting things in order for an administrative absence covered by a fictitious diplomatic visit to Governor Rush, who had been informed in no uncertain terms that Glinda was, in fact, her guest at present, and that nothing as trivial as her physical absence should stop Governor Rush from saying the same to any reporters who might ask. Her crest drooped and her eyes were not quite as bright as usual. Toto looked a little haggard, not an uncommon state for a dog of his size and breed, but a state he rarely allowed himself to be seen in.

It was Dorothy’s appearance that strained Glinda’s heart to breaking. Her eyes were red and bloodshot, and she had made no effort whatsoever to hide the fact she had been crying. Her hair was a mess, loosely tied back in an almost girlish ponytail, a style she rarely wore, and never out of the house. She had in tow a large bag, stuffed nearly to bursting, and a smaller but no less overstuffed one slung over her shoulder.

“Do you have everything you need?” Glinda asked, reflex from a decade of joint traveling, and then realized what she was asking, under the circumstances. Did Dorothy have everything she would ever need? Everything of her life in Oz that she wanted to remember?

Dorothy nodded once, curtly, not meeting Glinda’s eyes, her mouth tight. “I’m fine. Is everything ready?”

Glinda nodded, then wiped her eyes with the back of her hand when Dorothy turned away, saying a quiet goodbye to Nabo that she couldn’t quite hear. Nabo ran her beak through Dorothy’s flyaway hair twice, smoothing down the worst strands. In return, Dorothy ran a finger through Nabo’s crest, straightening out two feathers that had overlapped and tangled. They bobbed their heads at each other and Dorothy turned away, plastering a look of stubborn defiance back onto her face. She stepped into the sending circle, careful not to disturb the chalk lines on the floor. Dorothy knew as well as anyone the consequences of an improper cast, especially one already laden with as much power as the circle held.

“Are you ready?” Glinda asked, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.

“Absolutely,” Dorothy said emphatically, still not meeting her eye.

Glinda looked down at Toto. “And you?”

Toto craned his neck to look up at her. “If she’s ready, I am. You know how this works.” Glinda did. Dogs didn’t often choose humans as their pack leader in Oz, usually preferring each others’ leadership, but she understood that once one had chosen as Toto had, that bond would not be broken by love or money. It was a kind of devotion she’d always wished she could experience.

She nodded again, at a loss for words for one of the first times in her life. Nabo gave her a sympathetic tilt of the head before Glinda turned away, facing out towards the mountains. The Grimmerie hung at her side, but she didn’t need it for this. The sending circle was complete, and its activation hung by a single word of the spell as yet unuttered. Dorothy stood behind her in silence, their bags and Toto at her feet. 

Glinda felt the power stretch out around her, the pressure of it behind her eyes. She set emotion aside, the way she had learned to do when working with the Grimmerie. Feeling could lead to mistakes, and mistakes in this kind of magic could be fatal. She breathed deep, and completed the spell.

“Genal.”

She had expected fireworks. She had expected to be stretched and squished and bent through contortions of time and space. What she had not expected was blinding sunlight, cacophonous noise, bitter cold, and the unmistakable smell of fried food.

She blinked. She looked around. Dorothy, Toto, and the bags were there, though steaming slightly. She was there. She had absolutely no idea where “there” was, other than that it looked like a sidewalk in a large city. People hurried past on all sides, wind rushing at their backs as they went. Some of them stared at something in their hands, though she couldn’t see what. Noisy clockwork carriages, brightly colored and shiny and in a dizzying array of shapes and sizes zipped past in the street or waited, rumbling patiently for- probably something. The buildings around her were brick, two and three stories with huge plate glass windows. 

It was a little reminiscent of the Emerald City, she thought, but for the part of the road given to the fast carriages, and the general air of grimy symmetry to the whole place. Dust and paper scraps blew around her, and the dominating colors of the landscape were grey and brown. It seemed a dreary place in its forms and color, every building roughly the same shape, every carriage and every person’s dress split about evenly down the middle. Nevertheless, there was an undeniable life to it, people rushing to wherever they were going, and the smells of human life in the air. She turned to Dorothy.

“Where are we?” She asked. This was Dorothy’s world, after all. Presumably she must know. Then she caught the astonished look on Dorothy’s face. Astonished and, she thought, more than a little frightened.

“I have no idea,” Dorothy said, raising her voice to be heard above the bustle of the street. “But it’s not Kansas.”

Chapter Text

Glinda turned slowly on the spot, taking in the cityscape around her. The passing pedestrians seemed utterly unbothered by the sudden appearance of two women, a dog, and a pile of baggage in the middle of the sidewalk, the flow of traffic simply splitting around them like a stream meeting a rock. One or two people aimed confused looks at them, though Glinda suspected that had more to do with their dress than their location. She and Dorothy both wore traveling clothes, herself in a modest purple dress with only a single layer of petticoats, Dorothy in green breeches and riding boots with a heavy blue jacket buttoned to the throat. It was nothing extravagant to her mind, but she couldn’t help noticing that they stood out somewhat from the tide of people around them dressed in blacks and browns and greys, unadorned and alarmingly symmetrical.

The fashion standards of wherever they had landed was hardly the most important thing at the moment. Glinda looked around for any sign of where they had landed and what its relationship to Dorothy’s homeland might be. Across the street, over the entrance to what looked to be a book store, she spotted two flags flying jauntily from angled poles, snapping in the stiff breeze.

She pointed. “Dorothy, what country’s flags are those? Is that where we are?” They looked like appropriately colorful national flags, one rainbow striped, the other a symmetrical pattern of blue, pink, and white.

Dorothy turned to look across the street, her face out of Glinda’s view. Nevertheless, from the twitch of muscles at her temple, Glinda got the sense Dorothy was restraining something. She turned back, her face carefully composed. “No, I don’t think that’s where we are.”

“Well then where-” Glinda began, but Dorothy cut her off, pointing at something in a window just behind her.

“I think we’re in Chicago.”

Glinda turned and looked. A newspaper clipping was pasted inside the window, an article acclaiming a newly opened diner, from a newspaper called the Chicago Tribune. Glinda tried to make sense of the name, and gave up. Chicago, Omaha, and Kansas were all places that existed, she supposed, but exactly which one they were in, or what sort of place it was, was not exactly pertinent at the moment.

She drew herself up, trying to reassert some sense of control and sanity over the situation. “Well, if we’re in Chicago, that sending spell sent us here. Which means she must be somewhere nearby.”

Dorothy shifted a little, uncomfortable, and Glinda felt yet another stab of guilt. However angry Dorothy was, and however dead set on leaving Oz never to return, she couldn’t imagine that the thought of seeing the woman she’d tried to kill was a particularly pleasant one. Not to mention Dorothy’s stated intention of settling her own score, whatever that meant.

Glinda closed her eyes, reaching out with that sense that was not a sense, the way she reached to work with the Grimmerie, the way she had reached between worlds to find a trace of that power that had guided them there. She didn’t have to reach far. It exploded across her mind, a firework of green and gold set off nearby. Not just nearby, next to her, just feet away. She staggered back a step, opening her eyes, losing her bearing for a moment. 

She regained her level with a little work. Dorothy was staring at her, an eyebrow raised. So were several other people. She caught her breath and pointed in the direction the flare had come from, then followed her own trembling arm to find the source. The diner, the one they had landed in front of. She knew with absolute certainty, in her heart, in her bones: She was in there.

“Come on,” she said to Dorothy, her voice shaking. Without waiting for an answer, she hefted her bag and shouldered open the door, pushing into the clamorous warmth of the diner’s interior.

Elphaba leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms and contemplating the remains of her breakfast. America, for all its faults, had really gone off with canned corned beef hash. It wasn’t good, not exactly, and it looked almost identical to dog food, but it was predictable and exactly what she needed every Saturday morning. Fiyero had taken to waffles in a big way, and he was currently mostly through a substantial stack. She wasn’t exactly sure how digestion worked in a straw-based lifeform, but it very evidently did. 

She blinked, shifting her mind sideways just enough to see the glamour she had put over both of them years ago, the same thing the patrons of the diner saw when they glanced their way. Instead of green, her hands were a rich brown that matched the dark wood of the table they sat at. Instead of burlap, Fiyero’s skin was a patchwork of burn scars. Neither glamour was perfect, and a close inspection revealed the truth, but it did the job. Most people only looked halfway, and when they did they saw nothing more than a black woman and a white man with facial scars. They made for a slightly odd couple, but no more than they ever had in Oz. Much like the rest of their life, it was enough.

Behind Elphaba, some way across the diner, the bell on the door chimed as it admitted someone else in a swirl of cold breeze. Elphaba didn’t bother turning to look. It was a Saturday morning, and the place was packed as ever. She looked up to catch Fiyero’s eye, just in time to watch his fork drop out of a hand gone suddenly slack, impaling itself tines-down into his waffle.

“What is it?” She hissed, not turning around, not attracting attention. They weren’t hunted here, they weren’t traitors here, but they both knew they weren’t safe. Papers had been forged, officials persuaded with a little magical assistance, accounts set up in adopted names. It was as close to airtight as she’d been able to get it, but there was always the risk. Always the fear that someone would notice a discrepancy, an IRS audit, or a DHS investigation, something would turn up a missing link somewhere.

Fiyero didn’t answer for a moment. “It’s Glinda,” he said in a choked voice.

Elphaba’s heart skipped a beat, then slowed. She sighed and went back to her breakfast. “Not this again. You know it’s not. If she didn’t find us already, she’s certainly not going to find us after a decade.” She frowned at Fiyero, concerned. In the early days, he’d seen Glinda in every blonde, every pink outfit. It had frayed both their nerves and dashed his hopes time and again. It had been some time since this had happened, and she’d hoped he had finally found his peace.

“No, I mean it really is Glinda,” he hissed back. “I’m not mad, I’d recognize that nose anywhere.” He ducked his head over his plate. “She’s looking our way,” he whispered.

Was it possible? No, there was no way. She refused, absolutely refused to start hoping after all this time. Wait a little, and whoever it was would leave, Fiyero would come to his senses, and they would continue with their life as they had after every false start before.

A raised voice, terribly familiar, cut through the chatter of the diner. “Elphaba Thropp, I know you’re in here!”

Elphaba’s heart skipped another beat, and kept skipping. Sweet Oz, she thought, it really is her. What do I do? What do I say? Does she know Fiyero is here? How does she know I’m here? How is she here? Slowly, perilously, she turned in her seat and looked in the direction of that voice.

Fiyero was not, in fact, mad. Glinda stood just inside the door of the diner, in full flower, upright and alert. Her hair was a mess, by Glinda’s standards, and it had darkened a few shades in the last decade, save for a small streak of grey at the temples. Her dress was purple and the closest to practical that she’d ever seen on Glinda, though definitely nowhere near enough for the depth of Chicago winter outside. She carried a large pink carpet bag, and Elphaba thought she saw a leather strap over her shoulder that looked suspiciously like the strap of her old Grimmerie carry bag. She was, in short, at least as beautiful as Elphaba had ever seen or imagined her.

Glinda turned as if she felt the pressure of Elphaba’s gaze on her. Possibly she did, if her magic had gotten strong enough to bring her here. Elphaba felt the small muscles in her face and neck tense, adrenaline dancing at the edge of her perception as Glinda’s gaze swung towards her.

Glinda crossed the small diner in three strides, making for Elphaba - or, more accurately, the woman who she was really quite certain was Elphaba, aside from the obvious. She had a look that was all Elphaba, and all too familiar. Slight panic, on the edge of flipping into a burning, self-protective anger, but restrained by unvoiced hope. She drew up short, looking down at the seated woman.

“You’re not green,” she said, somewhat accusingly.

The laugh was all the proof she needed.

“Look again,” Elphaba - undeniably Elphaba - said.

Glinda blinked, and looked again.

Her arms were around Elphaba before she knew what she was doing, her face was in the crook of her neck and sweet Oz she smelled different, so different than she ever had before, but not entirely, there was still something of the old Elphaba, earth and smoke and lilies, and she was green, and she was there, and she was her. One of them was laughing, and one of them was crying, or possibly both of them were doing both and there was no way to tell.

Eventually, they separated. Glinda’s eyes stayed on Elphaba, drinking in the evidence of her, trying to fill in a decade of absence with all of the presence that she could gather now. A strange sound, a sort of papery cough, broke her focus. She looked up, and her head tilted in confusion.

“Elphie, what in Oz is the Scarecrow doing here?” She asked with a mix of trepidation and bemusement. The Scarecrow in question looked somewhat crestfallen, as if he’d really expected Glinda to be happy to see him. 

She couldn’t quite see why, having only met him once before, briefly, and at some distance, when the Wizard pronounced Elphaba’s intended doom. She’d watched from one of the hidden balconies in what she disparagingly thought of as “The Head Room,” and he’d seemed a somewhat plaintive, unimpressive sort of creature. Why Elphaba had him with her she could not begin to imagine.

Elphaba gave Glinda a sharp look and opened her mouth, presumably to answer the question. Then she froze, her gaze shifting from Glinda’s face to something else, something past and behind her, her lips contorting into a snarl. Glinda snapped her head around, following that baleful glare, and saw.

Dorothy had just stepped out of her shadow.

Chapter Text

Several things happened at the speed of human reflex. Dorothy took a step towards Elphaba. Elphaba shot out of her chair, almost knocking it over, a snarl on her face. Glinda moved, planting herself firmly between them, her right hand raised, a faint iridescent ripple spreading from it between herself and Elphaba, invisible if one didn’t look. Her face was set, every trace of confusion erased, replaced with rock-hard determination.

“Elphaba, don’t! She’s mine,” Glindad snapped, bringing her up short.

For a moment, no one moved or spoke. Glinda became aware that the diner as a whole had gone silent. Elphaba was breathing heavily, looking as though she held her anger only barely in check. Glinda had to defuse the situation, fast and unerringly. Fine. That had been her job for the past ten years, hadn’t it?

“Elphaba, a lot’s happened in Oz since you left. Dorothy is a public figure, now. She’s just about as capable of running the government as I am, at this point.” She remembered, with a stab of pain, that she really should be speaking in the past tense. Dorothy was leaving, any minute, whenever she felt satisfied that she’d done what she came here to do. But right now, that didn’t matter, couldn’t matter.

Glinda continued in a rush. “I’ll let her speak for herself, but she’s not the kid who the Wizard sent to kill you anymore. She’s grown, she’s smart, and she knows the truth. The whole truth, Elphaba, about you, about what the Wizard did to you. She’s not here to hurt you. I promise. Everything’s going to be ok.”

Elphaba’s chest was still heaving, but a little of the tension went out of her face and her body. “You said she’s yours. What does that mean?” Elphaba asked, her voice low and still a little dangerous.

Glinda opened her mouth to answer, with all the pain and complexity that would involve, but she felt a touch on her arm and paused. Dorothy stepped forward, her eyes on the floor, her hand on Glinda’s arm, moving, Glinda realized, the way she would when being conciliatory with a carnivorous Animal who had taken some kind of offense. Elphaba tensed a little again, but said nothing. When Dorothy spoke, still not meeting Elphaba’s eyes, it was low and soft, matching Elphaba’s tone but with none of the edge.

“I was a kid. I was scared. I was a long, long way from home. I had just - I thought I had just - killed a woman who had kidnapped me. No, let me finish. I don’t blame you for it now, not in the slightest. But then? Then I didn’t know anything but what the Wizard had told me, and you know about how much that’s worth. After she finished sending the Wizard and Morrible,” Dorothy spat the name, “packing, she took me in. Couldn’t send me home, couldn’t leave me out in the cold. I was her intern,” a small smile played around the tight corners of Dorothy’s mouth, striking Glinda to the heart. “Then I was her assistant, and then her deputy. She raised me, Elphaba. I helped her put Oz back together, and she put me back together.”

The tension went out of Elphaba, all but the slight protective hunching of her shoulders that Glinda suspected never went away at all. Poor thing. She sighed, then nodded. “She tends to do that,” she said with a small grin. “If you can survive the Glindaisms, that is.”

Dorothy gave a full smile at that, looking up and meeting Elphaba’s eyes at last. Sadness still creased the corners of her eyes and lifted her brows. Dorothy’s heart broke at the sight, if it was possible for it to break further than Dorothy had already broken it. For a moment, no one said anything, all three of them feeling their way through the tension, the flows of agreements and disagreements in the air, the overlapping but separate histories. Dorothy was the one to break the quiet, as usual.

“I have something for you. I didn’t bring much, but I knew I had to bring this.” Glinda shot a quizzical look at Dorothy, who returned an absolutely blank stare that said you’ll find out the same as her. Glinda nodded once, accepting the rejection. Oz knew she deserved it.

Dorothy rummaged through the larger of the bags she’d brought with her, producing a large, shabby cardboard box that she handed to Elphaba, who took it gingerly. It looked like it had some weight to it. “I’m sorry about the inadequate packaging, Meda couldn’t find the original case.” Elphaba looked at Dorothy, then at Glinda with some confusion, and Glinda realized that Elphaba had never encountered the implacable force of crochet that was Meda Rush.

“Permanent interim Governor of Munchkinland, it’s a long story.” Glinda responded under her breath.

Elphaba sat back down at the table, setting the cardboard box down in front of her. The Scarecrow - Glinda was embarrassed to admit she’d rather forgotten he was present at all - leaned forward with some curiosity. Glinda squinted at him. There was something about him that seemed familiar, beyond the obvious fact that she had met him before, but she couldn’t quite place it under the patched burlap and leaking straw.

Elphaba opened the box. Her hands froze as she looked inside, and Glinda’s heart turned over. Sweet Oz, Dorothy, I hope you know what you’re doing. Something gleamed inside the box, white crystal shot through with a subtle red light that glinted strangely. Elphaba stared for a long minute, then closed the box, slowly, her hands trembling. She turned a face to Dorothy that was, Glinda realized, streaked with tears.

“Why are you doing this?” Elphaba asked, barely above a whisper.

Dorothy’s smile faded a little. “They’re yours by right. Glinda made a mistake when she gave them to me. She knows that, but she can’t unmake it. I had to do that. They aren’t hers to give, or mine. They’re yours, and they always have been. I’m just returning them to their proper owner.”

Elphaba nodded slowly. The Scarecrow, across the table, shook his head. “Well, you can’t say the girl doesn’t have flair,” he said with an odd half-smile.

Glinda really didn’t think her heart could take any more stopping, starting, and turning over. It had done altogether too much of that in the past few days. Nevertheless, it skipped painfully in her chest when the Scarecrow spoke. The voice was thin and papery, a rustle to it like wind in a cornfield, but there was no mistaking it. Glinda blinked back the glamour she’d pushed aside, Elphaba’s skin going back to brown, and the Scarecrow - oh, the Scarecrow.

Glinda stepped past Elphaba, sleepwalking awake. The face was scarred, older and more careworn than she had ever seen it. But there was absolutely no mistaking it, nor was there any mistaking the look of combined awe and terror that he gave her as she reached out a trembling hand, then stopped it just short of touching his face. She didn’t have the right. She knew she didn’t have the right.

“Fiyero?” She breathed.

He nodded, jerkily, with a faint rustle. The look of fear was still in his eyes which, Glinda saw as she blinked the glamour away again, were still his, still entirely his. How had she not seen it before?

“Hi,” he said, blinking up at her.

Glinda refused to cry again, she’d been doing altogether more of that than she cared for. Instead, she turned to Elphaba, skewering her with a look. “Explain,” she said, in the most imperious tone she could manage.

Elphaba shifted, uncomfortable. Everything was moving fast, so fast, so much changing in so little time. “It was an accident,” she began. “I didn’t find out until after- until I was about to leave. When the Gale Force took him I-” She blinked rapidly and cleared her throat. “I tried to save him. With the Grimmerie. But- well- you know what that can come to.”

Glinda shivered involuntarily, remembering the sensation of being turned into a literal fine pink mist. She did.

“He found me just before I left. Until then I assumed I’d failed. Then I realized I’d done-” Fiyero cut Elphaba off with a hand laid over hers, a slight shake of his head. Glinda looked back and forth, figuring what had passed between them. An old conversation, then, that didn’t bear repeating. Elphaba nodded. “I realized I’d saved him, but not quite the way I’d meant.”

Glinda nodded slowly, taking it all in, fitting it with her sequence of events. The Scarecrow had disappeared rather quickly after Dorothy’s return to the Emerald City. Brrr had joined Glinda’s government and risen almost as fast as Dorothy, and Boq - well, his heart was still with his birthplace. Munchkinland had its indefatigable defender, whether it needed it or not, and he and Glinda carefully avoided each other. It was better that way. Last she had heard, he’d settled down with a young gentleman who had a perhaps unusually strong interest in metals.

Just one thing still didn’t make sense to Glinda. “And you just left him like this? I mean, if you like him that way I certainly wouldn’t say you shouldn’t, but it seems like it would be - scratchy?”

Elphaba and Fiyero looked at her in equivalent incomprehension. “It was a Grimmerie spell,” Elphaba answered. “You know those can’t be reversed.”

Now it was Glinda’s turn to be bewildered. After a moment, memory stirred - all the way back to the beginning of it all, herself and Elphaba and the Wizard and Morrible in the Head Room, when the Monkeys had first taken wing. She rolled her eyes.

“And you still listen to what that old hag had to say? Elphie, she couldn’t even read the thing, and you believed her on how it worked? Sweet Oz I thought you were smarter than that at least.” She shook her head, still a little disbelieving. “If I couldn’t reverse Grimmerie spells I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you, and Oz would be an absolute mess. It took me a bit to figure out how, but it’s not as though it’s difficult once you know how to do it.”

Elphaba stared at Glinda, her mouth slightly agape. As she was about to say something, Glinda felt a soft touch on her shoulder. She turned, suppressing the instinct to flinch and strike. A young woman in a simple black shirt and pants with a dark blue half apron stood there, looking nervous. Glinda arched an eyebrow at the intrusion.

“Sorry to bother you ladies, but if you’re going to be here much longer, would you like to sit down? I can bring some menus around and steal a couple of chairs so you can all sit together,” she asked with a fixed smile. Glinda blinked, not entirely understanding the question.

Elphaba came to her rescue. “Yes, I think that would be good, put it all on my bill. Thanks Darla,” she said with a smile. The woman - Darla, apparently - nodded gratefully. Evidently some kind of social misstep had been remedied. She turned to leave, and almost tripped over Toto, who looked up at her with his usual expression of haughty indifference.

“Oh, I’m so sorry honey, we can’t allow dogs in here unless they’re service animals,” Darla said over her shoulder to Glinda. Elphaba opened her mouth to answer, but she was cut off by Toto.

“I assure you, Darla, I will be very well behaved. I’m certainly housetrained, and if I haven’t bitten anyone who annoyed me before, I don’t think I’m going to start today.” With that, he trotted over to Fiyero, sniffed his leg once or twice, and curled up under his chair.

Darla stared, evidently totally nonplussed. “Well, I guess we can make an exception,” she said faintly, sounding a little lost. Elphaba nodded encouragingly and Darla, shaking her head, wandered off to find chairs.

Chapter Text

Glinda was staring at her plate with a slightly dazed look. Half the eggs Benedict in front of her was as yet untouched, but the other half had disappeared alarmingly quickly, leaving behind only a slick of yolky carnage. She had tried to order toast and a fruit cup, but Darla had been having none of it.

“I could eat soup out of your collarbones honey, you need something heavier than that,” she’d said, and Glilnda had grudgingly accepted Elphaba’s recommendation of eggs Benedict. Dorothy wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but it looked good.

She’d taken Fiyero’s suggestion of a waffle with strawberries, and the damn thing had set her mind right back to Sunday breakfasts on the farm. Aunty Em hadn’t been an extravagant cook, sticking to the functional necessities of farmhouse life, but she had owned her grandmother’s stovetop waffle iron and made good use of it. Dorothy hadn’t realized how much she’d missed waffles, such a thing being completely unknown in Oz, until she’d tasted one again.

She thought it should make her all the keener to get this encounter over with, to get back to the life she’d been plucked out of a decade ago. Instead, she found herself wondering whether Meda could track down the waffle iron, the way Aunty Em’s recipe box had quietly turned up on her desk a few years ago accompanied by a note from an anonymous and embarrassed Munchkin. She pictured Nabo stomping full force on a heavily syrupped waffle and suppressed a giggle.

No, she chastised herself silently. You decided to leave for very good reason, and you’ve never backed down on anything in your life yet. She wasn’t sure stubbornness was the best way to make a decision like this, but it hadn’t failed her yet.

Glinda, Elphaba, and Fiyero - it was odd to think of them as something other than Ma, the Witch, and the Scarecrow - seemed to have settled into something resembling a loose entente. It had happened surprisingly quickly once they’d settled in, shoving their bags out of the way in a corner, Toto curled up under the table. Dorothy had to remind herself that there was a history there, that Glinda was not as a stranger to the others. She assumed they were assuming something of their old roles, though there was an obvious tension in the air. Two obvious tensions, actually.

Elphaba was still suspicious. Not of Glinda specifically, Dorothy thought, nor necessarily of herself, but of the situation as a whole. It was understandable, she supposed. Elphaba had a twitchy, nervous tic about her that Dorothy recognized. She’d seen it in some of the Animals who had been most central to the underground communities that had formed under the Wizard’s regime. Tishtik the Shoebill, Alamine the Ocelot. Both had been prominent advocates before the Wizard’s most draconic measures had come down, and had skirted the edges of outlawry afterwards. Both were respectable persons now, names worth knowing in the Emerald City’s political cadre. And both had a tendency to eye lines of escape, their eyes darting instantly to the source of any unexpected noise, any sudden movement.

Elphaba sat back with her coffee cup in her hands, a picture of casual relaxation in a lumpy black sweater and high waisted jeans - were those popular now?. At the same time, her eyes flicked from one corner of the diner to the other, following every patron, every child running between the legs of the straight backed chairs. When a police car passed outside, lights and sirens running, Dorothy actually thought for a split second that Elphaba was going to dive under the table. 

Her heart ached unexpectedly to see her like this. Elphaba Thropp was the Wicked Witch in her mind, an indomitable force, once a terrifying embodiment of evil, then a misunderstood advocate with extreme methods, then finally a scapegoat for one of the Wizard’s petty crusades. Here and now, she was none of those. Here and now she was just a woman torn between hope and fear, reunion and the terror of a repeated loss.

Then there was Fiyero. His chair was pushed a few inches back from the table, tilted back against the wainscotting so that it was balanced on its back feet, his shoulders resting against the wallpaper. It looked casual, or had for the first minute or so. Now it had been twenty, and Dorothy was beginning to suspect that this was his attempt to stay as far away from Glinda and Elphaba as possible without being too obvious. She wasn’t even sure he was conscious he was doing it. 

She thought hard. He had left Glinda at the altar to find Elphaba. It hadn’t ever been officially confirmed just what the nature of that betrayal had been, but public sentiment - and Glinda’s private confirmation over one too many drinks after an ARGH gala - certainly seemed to align with the evidence of her eyes here. They were obviously a couple, and probably had been since they’d gotten the chance. There was no way Fiyero could be particularly comfortable in the presence of his lover and his former fiancee, but that didn’t seem to be the source of his discomfort. Elphaba and Glinda were chatting as amiably as could be expected with Elphaba wound tight as a clock spring. At the moment, Elphaba was attempting to explain to Glinda what a smartphone was. Glinda had gotten as far as “it’s like a very small radio set.”

With paramours past and present in apparent accord, Fiyero’s anxieties had to be centered elsewhere. Dorothy decided to try the direct approach. She leaned a little his way as Glinda struggled vocally with the concept of a television, and she caught a panicked twitch of his eyes, the look of a rabbit in a snare. She raised her hand slightly, conciliatory, and he untensed half a turn, bringing the front legs of the chair slowly to the floor. He leaned slightly towards her, matching her.

“It’s good to see you again,” Dorothy said, carefully loud enough to not be a conspiratorial whisper. It was true. Brrr and Boq were both accounted for well enough for her liking, the one a steady friend and political ally, the other no longer her problem. But the Scarecrow had always seemed to her a rather hapless sort of person, carrying a nameless grief with him as they’d loped down the road together toward parts unknown to her and fearful to the others. She had hoped he’d met with a better fate than going back to the cornfield she’d imagined he’d come from, but she hadn’t hoped very hard. Scarecrows are not generally robust creatures. Truth be told, the patches on his face when she looked beneath the glamour told a story. She suspected he wouldn’t have lasted nearly this long without Elphaba’s loving care.

Fiyero smiled in that strange, crooked way she remembered, and her heart lifted. If he still had the smile, he wasn’t too far gone. “You too,” he responded, likewise sotto voce. “You’ve done well for yourself, eh?” He seemed genuinely pleased, and Dorothy actually smiled back.

“I did, I suppose. Glinda took me in and I somehow ended up helping her get Oz back on track.” She remembered with a jolt that she had a decade of news that the poor man was behind on. “Your family are all fine, as are Brrr and Boq.” 

Fiyero huffed. “Well I’m glad Brrr’s alright, can’t say much for Boq though. D’you know, he never recognized me? Not once! I mean, he’d seen me with my shirt off and he couldn’t recognize me through a little-” he gestured at his face in indignation. “Maybe he and Glinda would have been alright for each other.”

Dorothy was torn between shock and amusement, and chose to giggle softly. “What do you mean? She never said a word to me about him.”

Fiyero rolled his eyes, which looked much worse than it would have without the burlap. “I don’t think she had a clue, really. He was obsessed with her, I mean really obsessed. But they’re the only two people in the world who could meet someone they’d spent that much time with and not recognize him because of a little burlap.” His tone was light, but the edge of his voice was bitter, and Dorothy shot a glance over at Glinda and Elphaba, who seemed totally engrossed in their conversation.

She thought for a moment. No, Glinda really hadn’t recognized Fiyero until he’d spoken, had she? Conflicting impulses warred inside her for a moment, and curiosity won out.

“I’m sorry if I shouldn’t ask this but - I’ve always wondered, and I’m not going to get another chance. Why did you leave Glinda? Or, why did you leave the way you did?” She hadn’t gotten where she was by being anything but blunt, after all.

Fiyero inhaled sharply, or would have if he had lungs. Instead he rustled in a decidedly perturbed manner. “I’m not asking what you mean about not getting another chance, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about it.” He sat back, looking around the diner, collecting himself she thought, then leaned back in. “I didn’t leave. Not really. At least, not without meaning to come back.”

Dorothy frowned, caught entirely off her guard. Outright denial was the one answer she hadn’t expected. “You did very much leave. I mean, you’re in Chicago.”

Fiyero shook his head fast, causing a piece of straw to land in his coffee. “I left Oz because I really didn’t have much choice. But I didn’t mean to leave Glinda, not- I mean not really.” The discomfort she’d seen earlier flared in his face, and Dorothy leaned a little closer, pressing the question. “Someone needed to find Elphaba. Someone needed to bring her home. To us, I mean. To Glinda, at least. After that, I thought-” He ducked his head, cutting himself off, and Dorothy wondered for a moment if she’d pushed something too far.

She reached out a hand, placing it gently on his shoulder. He started at the touch, then looked up. His eyes were damp, and the burlap around them slightly tearstained. “It sounds silly to say now. I thought it could be alright once we were all together again. I thought Elphaba and Glinda would figure it out, and I could be there too. That’s all I wanted, really.”

Dorothy found herself blinking back her own stinging eyes. For a moment she was at a loss for words. Then her mind reset, taking her back to the only reliable fallback she’d always had: Asking questions.

“And what do you want now?”

Fiyero laughed quietly, a soft rustle. “If you’d asked me that an hour ago I’d have said for Jimmy to have the walk-in sorted before we open. Now I’ve got no idea. I don’t make plans.”

Dorothy nodded, admittedly somewhat mystified by whoever Jimmy was. She thought she could see the shape of what Fiyero wanted, the thing he couldn’t look directly at, a soap bubble of a desire.

“It’s right back to where it started, isn’t it?”

Fiyero blinked at her, a long, long moment. Then he nodded slowly, his mouth slightly open.

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

Dorothy nodded just as slowly back. “Oz is different now. A lot different. Mostly for the better, I think.”

Fiyero shrugged. “I knew it would be, once Glinda ran the place.”

“She’s good. She’s been who Oz needed,” Dorothy replied, just a little bitterly. “If you want to go back to what you wanted the first time around, there hasn’t been a better time.”

Fiyero’s face shifted into an expression of what Dorothy could only read as instinctively suppressed hope. “I’m glad. I am. For all of you. But Elphaba can’t go back to Oz. I mean- I mean, can you imagine what would happen if the Wicked Witch just walked into the Emerald City? After all this time?”

Dorothy opened her mouth to respond, then froze. Glinda and Elphaba had stopped talking, and she hadn’t, damn them both, noticed. Neither had Fiyero. Elphaba broke the pause, looking first at Dorothy, then back at Glinda, whose face bore the most naked expression of abject longing Dorothy had ever seen.

“I think I must have missed something,” she said quietly. “Because last I remember, I had no plans to go back to Oz.”

Chapter Text

The table was deathly silent, save for the background noise of the diner. Glinda looked as though she’d been shot, and Fiyero looked like he was about to be. Elphaba was, metaphorically at least, holding the gun.

This time, Glinda broke the quiet. “Elphie,” her voice trembled. “It’s safe. You can come back, we’ll make it work.”

Elphaba turned to her, perilously slowly. “You’ll make it work? So it doesn’t work already, then. Precisely why I have no intention of going back.” Her eyes were ice.

Glinda made a small, choked sound. She opened and closed her mouth several times, apparently unable to squeeze words through her throat. Dorothy’s eyes flicked between them as Glinda struggled to find her voice, failing completely

Elphaba made a small, disgusted noise and turned her stare on Dorothy. A stab of panicked memory, those flashing eyes pinning her to the floor as the door of the oubliette slammed shut. She breathed. It passed.

“You try to explain it, then,” Elphaba said, her voice desperately calm. “I’m sure you’re in on whatever her plan is.”

Dorothy closed her eyes. She hadn’t meant to be involved in this. She had intended to come here, make her peace with Elphaba, and then go on her way. She was under no illusion that rebuilding a life on Earth would be easy, but it was her intention. She had never failed in one of those before. And yet, here she was. She could refuse. She could say she had nothing to do with it, throw Glinda under the metaphorical house, stand up and walk out of the diner. She should do exactly that.

“Honestly, I don’t think she really has a plan.” She shot Glinda a Look. “Feel free to jump in when you figure out how. I’m pretty sure she didn’t think much beyond finding you. She’s been making a lot of decisions without considering the long term implications, lately.”

Elphaba huffed derisively. “Nothing new there.” 

Dorothy bristled unexpectedly. “Maybe not in your time, but in my experience she’s better than this. It seems like you’re something of a weak point, for her.” She felt a slight pang of guilt for talking about Glinda as if she wasn’t there, but she had gotten them both into this mess. She could deal with the consequences of getting them out of it. “For my part, I’m not going back either. I’ve spent ten years trying to get here, and I’m not leaving now that I’ve managed it.” She paused, considering her next sentence carefully. “Which is exactly why I think you should go with Glinda.”

Elphaba’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

Dorothy nodded. She had no idea why she was helping Glinda, aside from - aside from the fact that she had always helped Glinda, that Glinda had always helped her. That whatever else happened, Glinda was the only family she’d had through the most difficult part of her life. She pushed that thought and its inconvenient reconsiderations aside, focusing on the task at hand.

“Two reasons. One, I know what the political situation in Oz is, and it’s going to be significantly friendlier to you than you might expect. Glinda and I have done quite a bit of re-mythologizing in the past decade, mostly around your particularly challenging legacy. And two,” she paused, taking a deep breath, steadying the wobble that wanted to creep into her voice. “I know how it feels to be in the wrong world. Part of you is always looking for that feeling of home, being where you’re meant to be, with who you’re meant to be with.” She saw recognition flicker in Elphaba’s eyes and pressed her advantage. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel it, I can see it in your face. You want to feel like you can go home.”

Elphaba half nodded before she caught herself. “Oz hated me when I left. How much can you have done with that?” It was a good question, and the fact she was asking it at all meant she was considering the proposal, if perhaps subconsciously.

Glinda seemed to have composed herself somewhat. She cleared her throat with a familiar, officious little cough. “A lot, actually. You’re forgetting something important - Oz didn’t hate you. Only humans in Oz hated you. The Animals thought you were at worst a little naive - don’t make that face, I’m just telling you what they told me - and at best a national hero. We had to do something to bridge that gap if we wanted an integrated society to work again.”

Elphaba raised an extremely skeptical eyebrow. “And what exactly did you do?”

Glinda shrugged. “Propaganda,” she said with a somewhat preening look. “It wasn’t hard. The Wizard was hideotious but he was right about a few things. The truth is just what everyone agrees on, remember?”

Elphaba frowned, clearly mulling it over. “So, what does everyone agree on?”

Dorothy saw Glinda suppress the urge to preen again. She knew what was coming next, and that Elphaba would react either well or very, very badly. “Well for one thing, that the Wizard and Morrible were terrible. You’d be surprised just how many people will tell anyone who listens that they were always against his treatment of the Animals.” She shrugged. “There’s a grain of truth to it. Most people didn’t care until it was someone they knew, and by the time the Wizard left, almost everyone knew someone. The other thing-” She paused, tilting her head with the almost childlike thoughtful expression she got in unguarded moments of contemplation. “The other thing is you.” 

Elphaba’s expression remained unchanged, and Glinda pressed on. “Humans hated you, Animals loved you - or at least thought your heart was in the right place. We couldn’t possibly integrate them again with an issue like that on top of everyone’s minds. So we started with what was easy. No one had much trouble coming around to the idea that the Wizard wasn’t worth the suit he wore, and from there it was easy enough to make you- well. A little more palatable. Not perfect, but at least someone they don’t hate.”

Elphaba’s frown deepened, but it looked more like confusion than consternation. “So how do they think of me, then?”

Glinda looked to Dorothy, a soft plea in her eyes. Dorothy sighed. Glinda had trouble with this at the best of times, and now was not the best of times. It was her turn again. “Mostly? Right idea, wrong approach. Animals - well, some of them still think you’re the best thing that ever happened to you. The rest? They’re glad a human cared enough to try to do something, at least. The humans are the tricky part. A few of them would still like to have been the ones to kill you, of course, and a few agree with the more passionate Animals. Mostly, they think your heart was in the right place, but that you went a little too far.”

Something happened to Elphaba’s face. Dorothy watched anger, grief, and resignation flicker across it before it settled into what might have been a quiet, sad kind of hope. Fiyero leaned forward a little, laying a gentle hand on Elphaba’s back. She flinched, then subsided, and he left his hand where it was. Neither said anything. Glinda just watched, and Dorothy knew her heart was in her throat.

She leaned forward too, extending an open hand to Elphaba, trying to keep the tremor out of her fingers. Elphaba stared at it for a long moment as if she’d never seen a human hand before. Then, slowly, she took it. Her fingers were ice cold, and Dorothy found them trembling as much as hers wanted to.

“If you come back with us, we can do better than that. That was the best we could do with the memory of a dead Witch and an absent Wizard. Think of what we could do with Glinda the Good welcoming back the Witch of the West, in public, together.” A treacherous corner of her brain said ‘Excuse me, we?’ but she ignored it in favor of the situation at hand.

A tear rolled down Elphaba’s face, dripped off her chin, and landed in her coffee. She said nothing, and neither Dorothy nor Glinda disturbed her. Dorothy just held the cold, trembling hand and waited.

“What more could you ask for?” Fiyero said, audible just above a whisper. “You trusted her enough to leave. She did everything we hoped she would, and more. Come on, Elphie, give her the chance.” What he did not say, but that Dorothy could see held tight behind his teeth - Give us both the chance.

Elphaba said nothing for another long, slow minute. Darla, most patient of all women, approached the table and, at a look from Dorothy, moved on towards another group seated nearby.

“Would you really survive that? Politically, I mean?” Elphaba asked at last, barely louder than Fiyero had been. She looked up at Glinda as she said it, meeting her anxious gaze with a damp challenge.

Glinda scoffed. “Elphie, have you ever met someone more convincifying than me?”

Elphaba’s smile widened a little, hope showing through the cracks a little more clearly. “Yes, actually - Dorothy, for a start. But I think I know where she got it from.” She nodded, slowly. “If you think you can make it work - I trust you.”

Darla received the largest tip of her life. Glinda was somewhat confused by the concept, and appalled when Elphaba explained the economic situation that led to the practice in the first place. The five of them walked - or at least, three of them walked while one shambled and another trotted - a few blocks through the chilly streets of Chicago to the door of the building where Elphaba and Fiyero had an apartment. Dorothy found herself strangely aghast at the city. She had never been in a city as a child, the farm being a hundred miles at least from the nearest location that had more than a single stoplight. 

The Emerald City, though initially overwhelming, had felt like nothing more than a great bustling holiday. Faces were generally friendly, doors generally open, streets generally broad and clean, gardens generally well kept. Exceptions existed, especially in the early days when the Animal quarter was all but abandoned and running to decay, but after recovery from the Wizard’s tenure had taken proper root, the city as a whole was clean, friendly, and safe. 

Chicago could not have felt more different. Cars rushed and honked at every corner, trash blew down the sidewalk, and people darted from door to door as if they were afraid to be outside. Quickening her pace, Dorothy caught up to Elphaba, leaving Glinda and Fiyero chatting nervously behind her.

“Why does the city feel like - this?” She gestured around her, hoping to encompass everything about it in a single sweep of her arm. “Is it always like this?”

Elphaba heaved a sigh. “No. It isn’t. It was different when we arrived. Noisy and dirty, yes, but it felt safe. People were good to each other. People weren’t afraid to go outside.”

Dorothy wasn’t sure she wanted to ask the obvious question. She wasn’t sure of much, lately. “What changed?”

Elphaba stared off down the street, looking as far away from Dorothy as she could. “It’s a long, long story. Let’s just say - The Wizard wasn’t exactly unique. He was right about what you can do if you give people an enemy.” She shook her head, absently. “It feels just the same. But this time I don’t think I have the strength to do anything about it. We’ve just been trying to do the same thing as everyone else - survive and get by. We made it through the first few years ok, we survived the pandemic, and we were surviving this too.”

“Sorry, did you say pandemic?” Dorothy asked, realizing she was probably fixated on the wrong thing.

Elphaba let out a short, barking laugh. “Like I said. Long story. You’ll find out soon enough, staying here. You’ve got a lot to catch up on.” 

Dorothy was about to start asking more questions and trying very hard not to panic, but they had arrived at the door of the apartment building, and it didn’t seem the time. Elphaba unlocked the door and led the small, odd party up the stairs to the second floor.

The apartment was small, but it had the feeling of a place that two people loved with a pride that would not fit inside of its walls. Plants colonized most horizontal surfaces, and Fiyero had clearly applied his particularly Vinkun sensibilities to the decor. Every room was a riot of colors and patterns, from couch cushions to wall hangings and bed spreads. The kitchen, cramped but cozy, was dominated by a trestle table decorated with a tablecloth that would not have felt out of place in a Munchkin kitchen.

Dorothy was surprised to see them each pull a small but evidently heavy bag out of a closet in their bedroom, throw a few spare clothes into the top, and declare themselves ready to leave.

“Is that all you need?” Glinda asked with some evident confusion.

Fiyero shrugged. “We’ve had bags ready to go for years. Just in case.”

Glinda started to smile, then froze the expression somewhere in the vicinity of a ration to a bad smell. “In case of what?”

Elphaba pushed past her, out to the living room. “In case we had to leave in a hurry. Old habits die hard. It’s happened before.” She looked around, surveying the plants, a little sadness coming across her resolute face. “I suppose I can leave them in the stairwell. Maybe someone will pick them up.”

Glinda took the measure of the room. “Well why would you need to do that? I’m sure we can fit them all in the circle to go home.”

Elphaba eyed her, uncertain. “Could you- I mean, would that be alright?”

Glinda rolled her eyes, not dignifying her with a response, instead nudging back the carpet to start chalking the sending circle on the floor. When she saw that it was hardwood, she waffled, and ultimately settled on using the tile of the kitchen instead.

Dorothy helped Fiyero move the table and helped Elphaba begin gathering plants while Glinda drew out the circle, muttering under her breath and consulting the Grimmerie the whole time. She found herself moving in a kind of haze, dimly aware that she was helping organize things towards the departure of Glinda, Elphaba, and Fiyero. Dimly aware that she was about to be truly alone, save for Toto, for the first time in her adult life. Dimly aware that the world she remembered as simple and comfortable and safe might no longer exist, if half of what Elphaba had said was true.

The plants were moved. The table was stood against the wall. Glinda consulted with Elphaba and Fiyero about the exact nature of the plants and their bags’ contents, paging through the Grimmerie as Elphaba watched in some amazement. Occasionally, while Elphaba and Fiyero were debating over something, she would glance up, giving Dorothy a searching, probing, desperate look. Toto sat at Dorothy’s feet, and Dorothy trembled on the edge of tears, about to get the only thing she’d wanted for so long she couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t.

Toto looked up at her. “Is this really what you want?” He asked quietly, his implacable little brown eyed stare piercing her to the heart.

Dorothy blinked back tears. “Of course it is.” Of course it was. She had set herself on this course, and all she could do was remain, and remain, and remain.

Except.

Glinda had thrown out the Wizard and Morrible on their ears and made a new course for her, and for Dorothy.

Elphaba had gone to Shiz over her father’s protestations, and left Oz to Glinda’s care against all sense and reason.

Fiyero had left everything in his life a dozen times over to be where his heart took him.

Now, maybe, even Toto was doing something else. She knew he would follow wherever she led, without question. And yet here was the question, nevertheless.

“I don’t know,” she said, barely a whisper.

Chapter Text

One year later

Elphaba sat back and sighed with satisfaction. Canned corn beef hash was something she would always miss from her time in Chicago, but she had to admit that the kitchen at Forbidden Corn was figuring out something even better. Owning the Emerald City’s first - and thus far only - 24-hour diner wasn’t exactly a normal career path for a Vinkun prince, but Fiyero hadn’t had a normal day in his life since he arrived at Shiz. The Tigelaars were more than a little perplexed by the decision, but they were happy enough to have their prodigal son returned and not made of straw that they weren’t about to complain. They had, in fact, bankrolled it quite substantially.

Glinda had insisted that eggs Benedict be added to the menu, though they had had to change the name. “Benedict” was simply not something that the average Ozian could come to terms with. By provenance it had been listed as “Eggs Upland,” which of course attracted attention by association with Oz’s head of government.

Oz’s head of government was currently attacking her namesake eggs with a frankly alarming ferocity. Elphaba watched her, chin on her hand, her other hand on Glinda’s knee under the table. It was something they could do, now, this kind of casual touch. It had taken time, care, and not a little conversation to get them to the place they were in now. They called it The Understanding for lack of anything better, Glinda having flatly rejected the word “polyamory” on the grounds that it was “too serious.”  “We’re not in Shi-cago,” she’d insisted. “I don’t care what they call it there, this is Oz!”

Glinda still surprised her on a daily basis. She’d left her in charge of Oz a year and ten ago with the faintest of hopes that she might make something of the situation. She hadn’t made just something. She had made a better Oz than Elphaba had seen or, in truth, imagined. Glinda had made an Oz that was able to accept Elphaba, if not entirely welcome her, which was miles better than she had ever seen before she left. 

The Animals, at least, adored her, and she spent most of her days with them. The ARGH had become almost an independent branch of government, and liaising between them and the rest of Oz was a full-time job. It was also a role that kept her in and out of Glinda’s office, much to their mutual satisfaction - occasionally more than metaphorically. Nabo was truly a master of discretion.

It was rare for either of them to have a day truly off, and rarer for those days to line up this well. When they did, they were generally either spent in bed, Fiyero having crept out the front door at an unseemly hour to see to the morning staff at Corn, or they were spent somewhere in the city together. They kept intending to go somewhere else, make a state visit someplace interesting, but it never quite materialized. The apartment adjoining Glinda’s with its bed sized for three and Elphaba’s plants on every surface, her corner table at Forbidden Corn, and the ARGH offices were Elphaba’s world for now. Sometimes she’d stretch it a little wider with Glinda and Fiyero’s help, but most days she was happy with what it was.

The bell inside the door rang. Elphaba turned with practiced ease, forcing herself out of the habit of snapping her head around at the slightest disturbance. Dorothy had just entered, looking a little windswept but in a basically good mood. She made immediately for the corner table, which was hardly a surprise. Business for Glinda arrived at any time of day or night, born by Dorothy if not by Nabo. They made brief eye contact and Elphaba gave Dorothy a small, polite smile. That was one part of her world that still made little sense to her, but they had reached a mutual understanding predicated on their shared love of - and frequent exasperation with - Glinda. Besides, the girl was damn good at her job, which seemed mostly to consist of making problems for Glinda go away or turn into new, preferable problems.

Dorothy pointedly did not notice the location of Elphaba’s hand under the table, and pulled an empty chair around from an adjoining seat. Glinda fluttered at her, and Dorothy waved it away with a beneficent, if impatient, look. She sat, and produced from her shoulder bag a single thin telegram envelope, which she placed delicately on the table between Elphaba and Glinda’s plates. Glinda eyed it with some interest. Elphaba eyed it suspiciously.

“Sakkali Oafish sends her regards, apparently,” Dorothy said, snatching Elphaba’s coffee cup and draining it before Elphaba could object. She was sidetracked from any possible objection by the name.

“Sakkali Oafish as in, the chief of the Glikkuns?” Elphaba asked incredulously.

Glinda nodded, opening the envelope and scanning its contents. Then she passed it to Elphaba and leaned back in her chair, a contemplative look on her face. Elphaba read.

Sakkali Oafish, first among mothers, matriarch of the Glikkus, cordialiciously invites Glinda the Good and the Emerald Witch to conference at Great Scalp. Your response is requested expediently and with great anticipation.

Elphaba bristled, dropping the envelope in front of Dorothy as if it burned. “What’s the game? What does she want from having me there?”

Glinda laid a hand over Elphaba’s and she became aware she was shaking. “Elphie, take a breath. Sakkali is on good terms with the Emerald City these days. My guess is she just wants to see the woman everyone is talking about.”

Elphaba breathed, calming a little, but not by much. Then she felt a pressure on her forearm opposite the hand Glinda held, and started, looking down. Dorothy had laid a hand over her wrist, giving it a gentle squeeze. Her eyes met Elphaba’s, and they were undeniably earnest.

“Glinda’s right. Everyone has an opinion about you, and among halfway intelligent people they’re mostly pretty good. Especially anyone who got fucked by the Wizard - pardon my Vinkun. And the Glikkuns definitely got the short end of the stick when he was in power. You should go. Fiyero can come as part of your staff, Nabo and I will arrange it. What do you say?”

Elphaba stared at Dorothy for a pregnant moment, then looked back at Glinda, who was smiling.

“My girl always has something,” Glinda said with a wink.

Elphaba nodded slowly, the rest of the tension going out of her shoulders. Glinda had waxed rhapsodic to her for months about her visit to the Glikkus. The world outside the Emerald City’s walls was terra incognita, as far as Elphaba was concerned, but if a place had had such a profound effect on Glinda, she had to see it for herself. And Fiyero would be there, with whom she’d gone through hell more than once. Nothing was impossible with him and Glinda at her side. Strangely, she found the idea of Dorothy’s presence an odd comfort as well - solid, unflappable, uncompromising Dorothy who never bowed to Glinda’s odder whims. If ever Elphaba was going to fly again, it would be like this.

“I’ll go.”