Title: Pretty in Pretend

Author: Angel Leviathan

Disclaimer: Wicked, characters, concept, etc, aren't mine.

Spoilers: Everything.

Notes: I saw the London production again and this time Helen Dallimore looked even more broken at the end of the show and it was just so heartbreaking! So, erm, yes, from that – this.

The first time she entered the palace in the Emerald City and knew it as her own domain, she refused to touch anything. Could she have done so without looking out of sorts, she would have hitched up her skirts so that the dress would not drag along the floor. She was glad she was wearing heels that meant she had minimal contact with said floor. She smiled and behaved as was expected of her – she was reassuring and comforting and 'ever so sad' that the Wizard was gone. After the palace had been searched high and low for 'clues' as to his whereabouts, she fled, as fast as her feet could carry her.

She did not want to live there. But it was expected of her. They looked up to her as their leader – every Ozian was looking to her for guidance. Her family had money. But not enough to build her a palace of her very own. And besides…she was alone now. She had to be.

The first night she spent in the loathsome palace, she trashed the place. Sobbing as priceless artefacts and works of art were hurled across rooms, shattered, ripped and destroyed, she tore through the palace like a whirlwind, inflicting as much damage as she could. She didn't know what she would say in the morning to those who attended to her. She wasn't sure she cared what she would say.

No power or magic in the world could bring back what she wanted. The only friend who had ever truly mattered to her.

She spent her days rejoicing that she was dead with the rest of the Oz, spreading tales of her Wickedness and her evil nature, and spent her nights in cold sweats, always on the verge of tears.

But she had promised Elphaba. She wouldn't try to clear her name. No matter how much she wanted to cause a scene, uproar, and scream that the Wicked Witch of the West had been no more wicked than she was. A victim of circumstance because she would not give in and relinquish her beliefs.

Maybe she was truly the wicked one. She had given up. She had done as she was told and it had led to such destruction that it haunted her more often than she liked to admit. She had practically killed Nessa herself. She had been unable to save Fiyero. And she had sent the whole of Oz on the warpath to destroy the Wicked Witch. She just wasn't strong enough. She could blame it on her youth and ignorance all she wanted…but she had been blinded by promises and prospects of adoring crowds and glittering ballrooms.

Now she was doomed to spend the rest of her life in-front of such crowds, smiling, waving, and reassuring, and dancing round those glittering ballrooms like she was beauty and goodness personified.

She was as wicked as Elphaba had ever been.

Elphaba had tried to do good. She had taken the path she believed in. Glinda had taken the path she was lead down by the need to be loved and adored. Elphaba had been capable of love. She had needed the same love. She just wouldn't abandon her principles to get it. Glinda would. She had done. Had she even had principles in the first place?

A howl - a broken scream of fury, guilt and loss - echoed through the palace.

Who was going to tell her what a blonde, mindless idiot she was now? Who was going to tell her she was being ridiculous and fanciful, that she was a fake? Who was she going to look to to steady her? Who was she going to look to as an example of someone who really believed in something?

And who was she going to loathe and adore at the same moment?

She wasn't Ginda the Good. She could never be as good as she wanted to be. As good as Elphaba had tried to be.

Surrounded by crowds of adoring citizens, she was doomed to be alone for the rest of her life. Because she knew how fake it all was…and she wished she didn't. She wished she could melt away like Elphie.

In the morning, Glinda the Good was seen to enter the palace in the Emerald City and exclaim in shock and horror that vandals had swept through and caused great destruction within. The citizens thanked sweet Oz that their beloved guardian had been attending the needs of a sick friend at the time and had not been present whilst her new home was vandalised.

She smiled and thanked them for their concern and a such a wave of adoration from the crowd swept over her that it almost made her retch.