Gelphie One-Shots

Tears of an Angel

“HUG!” Elphie burst out of the bathroom and threw her long arms around her wife, squeezing until Glinda was half-certain the jade-green woman meant to strangle her.

Glinda frowned at the odd show of affection. Not that Elphaba wasn’t affectionate - quite the opposite, hem hem - but she wasn’t usually this open. Or fully clothed.

“You feeling okay?” Glinda asked in mild irritation.

A flash of something Glinda couldn’t place crossed Elphaba’s face. “I’m fine!” she said in a rather forced-sounding cheerful tone. “But ah - I’ve gotta go.”

Glinda dismissed the odd mood as just that - an odd mood. Elphie was, by definition, moody.

What she didn’t see was the way Elphaba hunched her shoulders as she made her way out the door. Or the deeply furrowed brow.

Or the rim of tears that shimmered in her wife’s dark ebony eyes.

---

Elphaba sat on the park bench, her shoulders hunched and one thin green hand pulling at her thin black jacket, though her shivering had very little to do with the cold. The other clutched the true reason: a small, crumpled paper with “POSITIVE” emblazoned at the bottom of a long list of symptoms.

“I’m afraid there’s not much we can do at this point, Mrs. Thropp. It’s incurable. You may have anywhere from a year to a few weeks, we can’t be certain.”

“But Dr. Oz, my wife - “

“Elphie?”

Glinda’s thin, shivery voice broke through Elphaba’s reverie. She glanced up to see her wife standing there, the cold winter sun still managing to set her golden hair ablaze with light like an angel’s halo. She held out one arm, proffering a cuddle in her thick faux leather coat. Elphaba accepted gratefully, but not before stuffing the paper out of sight.

“Glinda - “ Elphaba began to say, her voice uncharacteristically thick with emotion. Glinda wrapped her arms around her wife’s chest, feeling the difficulty with which she drew breath. Elphaba had always been more prone to coughs and head colds than Glinda, but she hadn’t shown any signs of one earlier. Glinda’s stomach clenched in concern.

“Are you alright, Elphie?” Glinda asked, twisting her head to meet Elphaba’s eyes.

Elphaba bit her lip, searching her wife’s lovely face and weighing her options. “Glinda, there’s something I should tell you.”

She drew the paper out again and smoothed it out. “I...I went to the doctor earlier. He’s diagnosed me with late stage, virulent emphysema. He said…”

Glinda closed her eyes. “He said I’ve only a few weeks left.”

---

“Glinda?” Elphie said in a tiny, rasping voice.

Elphaba had gotten progressively worse since her diagnosis. At first, it had only been more violent, prolonger fits of coughing. Then, Glinda had started finding her collapsed, either too weak to move or blacked out from difficulty breathing. She had lost too much weight off her already worryingly thin body; Glinda had finally taken her in after finding her passed out on a park bench within easy falling distance of the duck pond.

Now, here they were. Elphaba was breathing through a respirator, but her breaths were terribly raspy and painful-sounding. Glinda blinked at her wife, trying her utmost not to cry.

“Hug?” Elphie whispered, her dark eyes reflecting the woman she had once been, bright and full of fire.

Glinda twisted her mouth wryly. “Save your strength, Elphie,” she said softly, sitting back in her chair.

She smiled softly as Elphie’s face twisted into her characteristic pout, making Glinda’s heart melt just as she had known it would.

“Oh, you wicked thing,” she murmured as she wrapped her arms around her beloved. “You know I can’t deny - “

“Hold out if you can,” Elphie rasped with difficulty. “Hold out, my sweet.”

There was the sound of a last, rattling breath drawn, then utter silence befell the room.  

Glinda let her head fall onto her wife’s still chest. “I will,” she promised through her tears. “I will.”