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Galinda looks at Elphie like she's the only person in the world when the train is here to collect her. She's going to miss her best friend so much. Galinda has been a little weepy all morning. Part of Elphie snorts, the part of her that has never been allowed closeness. The other part holds her — a handprint on her heart.
Then Fiyero approaches, Galinda opening herself, opening them both to him from afar. Her brow furrows. She is worried, Elphaba knows. Fiyero has been distant, thinking about the cub. Thinking about her.
Galinda holds Elphie's hand in one of hers. She puts the other on Fiyero's arm. Sweet. Steady. The world shifts. Life is just the three of them. The crowded platform means nothing, compared to this goodbye. Their greetings are weighed down by the tension between them and the inevitability of the train taking Elphaba to the Emerald City.
"I'm happy for you," Fiyero tells Elphaba. His expression is heavy, serious, but his eyes, his smile, they're warm. For her. For them.
Their goodbyes, the words, even the flower Fiyero presses into her hands and Glinda's speech about Dr. Dillamond all blend together. Elphaba tries to wave goodbye to them from her carriage. Glinda chases the moving train and brings her a tourist pamphlet. Elphaba can't do it, can't say goodbye. Glinda has already said it.
Elphaba's eyebrows shoot up, as if she surprises even herself. "Come with me!"
"What?" Glinda is nonplussed.
"To meet the wizard!" Elphaba exclaims, her eyes wide and her cheeks dimpled up, green around her pink smile.
"What are you saying?"
"Get on the train, you're gonna miss it!" Elphie cries high, a little girlish, the chance for a child's mischief she's never known before.
"I wouldn't want to impose," Glinda demurs, but Elphie is serious. She wants Glinda with her, needs her there. In this new city, with all its strange people, she needs her world. Glinda is that — and, well — "It doesn't matter, just come with me!"
"I couldn't possibly, this is your moment. I'm coming!" It all comes out rapidfire, and then Glinda takes her hand and clutches the carriage door, heaving herself inside with Elphaba. They fall together, dizzy and giggling, to the floor as the train speeds off with them in it. They hurt and there will be bruises where they fell, but it's worth it. Having Glinda here is everything.
And then — the world shifts again. The compartment door opens, and she sees the familiar lines of Fiyero's suit and then his face. Elphie's jaw drops — she's shocked, and yet she's not. It's right, that Fiyero is here with the two of them. He belongs to them. Getting on the train, that part would have been easy. That sweet, slutty boy has never met a rule he couldn't break.
The door swings closed behind him and he's standing there, halfway posing. It's so familiar that Elphaba can feel it in her chest, painful and sweet. He looks down at the two of them on the floor, splayed out together and joins them there as if nothing at all is strange about it.
"You couldn't help yourself?" Elphie manages to break her giggles long enough to ask.
Fiyero puts on a winning smile. "Big old wizard, new people, no friends? Of course I wasn't going to leave you to go on your own to the Emerald City. Can't leave my best girls behind!"
"Oh, come here, you! We're going to have such great fun!" Glinda sweeps Fiyero into a hug and then pulls Elphie in. Tentatively, she goes on. "And thank you — even if I hadn't made it on the train, I would have been depressified to see Elphie go such a long way by herself. I know you could do it, Elphie, but you shouldn't be alone again."
Elphie is crying into Fiyero's crisp suit and Glinda is rubbing her back tenderly. And then suddenly, Glinda presses a soft kiss to Fiyero's cheek and then to hers — well, that's what she aims for. But she misses, and her lips are on Elphie's, and this is right. Glinda, Elphaba, and Fiyero are inevitable, a triptych made to be one. Elphaba pulls Fiyero in close with them, and the three of them transform themselves to a tangle of kisses on the compartment floor.
"I can't believe it," Elphaba tells the other two, wide pink grin spliting her green cheeks into joyful dimples again while Glinda fixes her hair and Fiyero looks rather like the cat that got the cream. "We're really going to meet the Wizard."