The Effects of Gravity 3/? by ainsleyaisling
Title: The Effects of Gravity 3/?
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG-13
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Pairings: Glinda/Fiyero, Elphaba/Fiyero, Glinda/Elphaba
Summary: Elphaba and Glinda find out what the rest of their schooling will be like, and Fiyero is confused.
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Previous part can be found here.
~~Elphaba~~
In a way her newfound notoriety was helpful; it forced her to knock on Nessa's door and enter immediately before she was seen, rather than lingering in the hallway trying to delay the inevitable. Nessa was alone in the room - a small bedroom suite set off from the headmistress's rooms by a private hallway - with her chair turned away from the door. Without even turning to look, she said, "Hello, Elphaba."
Elphaba leaned back against the closed door instead of going around to face her sister. "Hello," she said softly. When Nessa didn't reply for a long while, she added, "Nessa, I'm sorry."
"For what?" Nessa asked calmly, her back still resolutely turned. "For staying away longer than you were supposed to? For . . . whatever you did that made the Wizard drag your name, and mine, through the mud? I'm not even going to ask what it was - they told us something ridiculous about flying monkeys, but I can imagine - I don't have to imagine, I know what you can do when you don't get your way."
"Nessa, that's not fair."
"What's not fair is that you didn't even bother to write to me yourself. You couldn't even manage that, Galinda had to be the one to think of me?"
"I - I did think of you. I was thinking of you." Elphaba ran a hand distractedly over her hair. "But as for writing - no, Nessie, I couldn't. I just - couldn't."
"So what are you doing here?" Nessa asked. "Aren't you meant to be on the run somewhere?"
"Glinda didn't explain very well -"
"Oh, that's right, it's Glinda now. You really are a strange influence on people, Elphaba. I would have hoped she'd be more of an influence on you."
Elphaba took a deep breath, ignoring that remark. "I'm not - on the run. At all. It's all right with the Wizard, but no one here knows yet. We're . . . that is, Glinda and I are going to join him after school. It's all settled." Her own voice was a curiosity to her; its roughness was beginning to fade but it sounded artificial, empty, toneless.
Nessa let a long silence elapse before she said, "I've spoken to Madame Greyling. She knows you're coming back today - she said she had some news from the palace that explained what was to be done with you in the future."
"Oh." Elphaba hoped that rather ominous phrasing belonged to Nessa and not to the headmistress or the missive from the Wizard. "Thank you."
"Well, someone had to be responsible for you. Although you can tell Ga- Glinda that Fiyero's been a great help, really."
Elphaba's fingers tightened, clenching at a bit of her skirt, at the ringing irony in Nessa's voice. "Fiyero?"
"Didn't Glinda tell you that she was writing him, too? He told me. And he has been spectacular, especially the other day when someone made a rude remark about you and - Glinda, and Fiyero nearly knocked him unconscious."
"What?" Elphaba gasped. "Are - are you joking?"
Nessa finally wheeled her chair in a circle to face her sister. "Do I look like I think this is funny, Elphaba?"
"But - you have to be - is this like when you told me the lake had frozen under the snow, just to watch me fall through?"
"I'm not ten years old anymore, and I'm not joking," Nessa said, giving her a withering look.
Abandoning the support of the bedroom door, Elphaba crossed the room and sank onto her sister's bed. "Fiyero hit someone?" It was impossible to imagine - mostly because she couldn't quite imagine him caring enough about anything. Violent outbursts on someone else's behalf were more her style, not his.
"I don't know his name - a red-faced Gilliken boy from our history class. He was too stunned to hit back and, luckily for Fiyero, too embarrassed to report it."
"I -" Her mind was too busy to allow her to speak. Fiyero, who had sat upstairs trying to comfort her and calmly helping Glinda to plan her return to class? Fiyero whose life was - or had been - centered around being liked by everyone and not causing trouble unless it might be fun? "I have to go, I have to -"
"Elphaba!" Nessa said firmly to detain her, but it was unnecessary. A knock on the door silenced them both, and Miss Greyling, the literature instructor, entered without waiting for a reply.
"Oh," she said on seeing the sisters together, Elphaba poised to flee. "Miss Elphaba, wonderful. I have something for you."
"I - what?"
Miss Greyling - Madame Greyling now, Elphaba supposed - pulled a familiar-looking envelope from one of her pockets. "This came for you and Miss Glinda from the Wizard himself. Madame Morrible has written to me and explained the entire situation, dear, so don't worry. Tomorrow I will make a public announcement recanting everything that was said about your journey to the Emerald City, and Madame Morrible has assured me that the same will be done in town. You will be perfectly safe here."
Elphaba took the envelope with trembling hands. "Thank you." She turned hastily to Nessa, using Madame Greyling's presence to escape their conversation. "I have to go now, Nessa, I'll see you later!" She fled the room and ducked as quickly as she could into the stairwell, racing up the two flights to her floor and darting across the hall into her room.
"Is everything all right, Elphie?" Glinda was alone in the room, and her tone was tinged with guilt. "I was just about to go and look for you."
"Fiyero left?"
"Just now."
As she spoke, Elphaba noticed that her roommate's face was very pink, and rapidly growing pinker. Her hair was disheveled, and her shoes had been dropped carelessly at the end of the bed. For one moment Elphaba completely forgot about her conversation with Nessa and about the envelope she carried; her stomach dropped and she exclaimed, "You didn't!"
Glinda's eyes widened and she clapped a hand to her chest in horror. "No, of course I didn't! Honestly, Elphie, what do you take me for?"
Elphaba shrugged. "The girl whose boyfriend just ran out of here and left her looking like that?" Glinda's face reddened to a degree Elphaba would have thought impossible, but before she could speak, Elphaba frowned in confusion. "Wait - left how? I would have passed him in the stairwell." A sudden, terrible thought occurred to her. "He isn't hiding in here, is he?"
Glinda gestured vaguely. "Out the window. Down the tree."
This did nothing to alleviate Elphaba's confusion. "Why?"
"I guess it seemed like the thing to do?"
"He really has lost his mind." Elphaba sat down on the bed next to Glinda. "Nessa said he hit someone the other day - some boy we don't know who made a comment about us."
"What?"
"I know." Her gaze fell to her lap, and she caught sight of the cream-and-green envelope clutched in her hands. "Oh. The Wizard sent this to Madame Greyling for us." She held it out for Glinda to take.
"You should open it," Glinda demurred as she tried to tidy her hair.
Elphaba slid one finger under the seal, then stopped and held it out again. "No, you read it, please? And just tell me if it's good or bad?"
Glinda hesitated, then nodded. "All right." As she leaned over to take the letter, she also kissed Elphaba quickly on the cheek. "Don't worry, it'll be fine."
"Just read it, please?"
Glinda carefully broke the seal on the envelope and pulled out a small card that couldn't have said very much. Her eyes scanned it quickly, and then she said, "We're to be trained, by them, little by little until we finish school."
"Trained in what?" Elphaba interrupted.
"Politics and government, sorcery and spellcrafting," Glinda recited in a way that made it clear she was quoting verbatim. "The direction of magical skill toward political ends."
"Wonderful," Elphaba muttered. "What else?"
Glinda raised an eyebrow at her over the card. "I think the rest speaks for itself - learning to follow orders, stay quiet, be good girls?"
"I meant, what else does the letter say?" Elphaba's tone was abrasive, but inwardly she was rather impressed with Glinda. If only she'd think that hard about her political science classes . . .
"Oh. Well, we're going to be called to the Emerald City periodically for short visits, two or three days, for training sessions. About three times a year until we graduate - that isn't so bad - and then 'of course' after graduation they'll expect us on a permanent basis."
"You keep saying 'they.'"
Glinda held up the card. "It's signed by the Wizard and Madame Morrible. I guess she's the 'sorcery and spellcrafting' part."
"May I?" Elphaba took the card and scanned it, but Glinda hadn't missed anything important. "So that's that."
"That's that." Glinda patted her hand. "See, it could have been so much worse. Just little bits of training for the next two and a half years, that's not so horrible."
Elphaba looked straight into Glinda's eyes. "You don't really feel that optimistic about it."
Glinda held her ground for as long as she could, but eventually she faltered. "No, I'm terrified," she confessed, still held in Elphaba's gaze.
Elphaba turned her hand over so that she could hold Glinda's, which was still laying on top of hers. "You can tell me that. I hate this, but I'm not going to collapse because you admit it's possible something might go bad."
Glinda nodded, and Elphaba noticed for the first time that her eyes were as red as her face had been a moment ago. She lifted a hand and brushed her fingers gently over what appeared to be drying tears. "Have you been crying?"
Glinda laughed and shook her head. "No. I was just . . . er . . ."
"So - yes?"
"Yes."
Elphaba dropped her hand to Glinda's arm and squeezed it. "What happened? Did Fiyero do something?"
"N- no . . ."
"Is that a no, yes he did?"
This time Glinda's soft laugh was real, and she reached over and patted Elphaba's knee. "We had an argument, that's all. Then we made up. Nothing to worry about." In response to Elphaba's concerned expression she added, "I'm actually relieved that he cares enough to argue with me. It's the most energy I've had out of him in weeks." She blushed all over again and ducked her head. "Well, you know what I meant."
"So you're all right?"
Glinda impulsively hugged Elphaba, so tightly that Elphaba could barely manage to embrace her in return. "Yes, I'm all right," she said.
~~Fiyero~~
He missed the announcement - if he'd known in advance that the subject of the all-student meeting would be Elphaba's innocence, he would have attended - but he didn't miss the flurry of whispers and pointed throat-clearing that accompanied Glinda's return to class that day. She sat in her usual place in history, across the room from him, but she flashed him a quick smile as she settled onto her bench.
He glanced to the front of the room, but the professor was writing on the blackboard and not ready to begin his lecture. "Elphaba?" he mouthed after catching Glinda's eye again.
She nodded and mouthed, "Fine," then wrote something in large letters on her notepaper and held it up: Tomorrow.
So Elphaba would be back in class tomorrow. He hadn't seen her since she had left her and Glinda's room to speak with her sister, and he hadn't seen Nessa - or, for that matter, Glinda - either. None of which meant that he hadn't been thinking about them - well, not so much Nessa, but the other two.
The witches. He felt that the thought should be amusing, but in fact it sent a cold shudder through his body to picture the Elphaba and Glinda he knew as not sorceresses, but witches. Watching Glinda from across the classroom, in her neat school uniform, casting coy glances at him from beneath her eyelashes, it just didn't seem right. And Elphaba . . .
Thinking of her brought to mind a recent memory, a guilty pleasure so compelling that he had to breathe deeply to steady himself. That night in their room, when compassion and warmth and real affection had driven him to kiss Glinda again and again, to press her into the bed and run his hands over her skin, he had been simultaneously unable - even kissing Glinda with his eyes wide open - to forget the feeling of Elphaba against his side, her back under his hands, her hair tangled in his fingers.
Once he had returned to his own room, he had rubbed his hands over his face in an attempt to get them both out of his mind, to erase the frustration and released worry and, just, confusion; but that was not to be. He had frozen, there on the end of his bed with his hands over his face, arrested by the mingling scents he could detect on them and on him, on his clothes. Glinda and Elphaba, together. Just the memory of that discovery sent the blood rushing to his head. He had to practically run from the room when class was over; he didn't think he could face Glinda just now.
The next day as he sat in his accustomed place in literature class, he knew what was happening when the stunned hush fell over the assembled students who were waiting for their lecture to begin. He knew as soon as he heard footsteps echoing from behind him in the unnatural silence, and he didn't have to look at the color of her skin to recognize the person who dropped quietly into the empty place beside him. He knew the line of her skirt, the scent of her hair; he felt as if he knew the very pattern of her breathing. He wanted to take her hand, to reassure her, but was too afraid to touch her. So he tilted his head down in an attempt to catch her eye and said simply, "You're back."
Elphaba nodded without looking at him. "I'm back."
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG-13
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Pairings: Glinda/Fiyero, Elphaba/Fiyero, Glinda/Elphaba
Summary: Elphaba and Glinda find out what the rest of their schooling will be like, and Fiyero is confused.
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Previous part can be found here.
~~Elphaba~~
In a way her newfound notoriety was helpful; it forced her to knock on Nessa's door and enter immediately before she was seen, rather than lingering in the hallway trying to delay the inevitable. Nessa was alone in the room - a small bedroom suite set off from the headmistress's rooms by a private hallway - with her chair turned away from the door. Without even turning to look, she said, "Hello, Elphaba."
Elphaba leaned back against the closed door instead of going around to face her sister. "Hello," she said softly. When Nessa didn't reply for a long while, she added, "Nessa, I'm sorry."
"For what?" Nessa asked calmly, her back still resolutely turned. "For staying away longer than you were supposed to? For . . . whatever you did that made the Wizard drag your name, and mine, through the mud? I'm not even going to ask what it was - they told us something ridiculous about flying monkeys, but I can imagine - I don't have to imagine, I know what you can do when you don't get your way."
"Nessa, that's not fair."
"What's not fair is that you didn't even bother to write to me yourself. You couldn't even manage that, Galinda had to be the one to think of me?"
"I - I did think of you. I was thinking of you." Elphaba ran a hand distractedly over her hair. "But as for writing - no, Nessie, I couldn't. I just - couldn't."
"So what are you doing here?" Nessa asked. "Aren't you meant to be on the run somewhere?"
"Glinda didn't explain very well -"
"Oh, that's right, it's Glinda now. You really are a strange influence on people, Elphaba. I would have hoped she'd be more of an influence on you."
Elphaba took a deep breath, ignoring that remark. "I'm not - on the run. At all. It's all right with the Wizard, but no one here knows yet. We're . . . that is, Glinda and I are going to join him after school. It's all settled." Her own voice was a curiosity to her; its roughness was beginning to fade but it sounded artificial, empty, toneless.
Nessa let a long silence elapse before she said, "I've spoken to Madame Greyling. She knows you're coming back today - she said she had some news from the palace that explained what was to be done with you in the future."
"Oh." Elphaba hoped that rather ominous phrasing belonged to Nessa and not to the headmistress or the missive from the Wizard. "Thank you."
"Well, someone had to be responsible for you. Although you can tell Ga- Glinda that Fiyero's been a great help, really."
Elphaba's fingers tightened, clenching at a bit of her skirt, at the ringing irony in Nessa's voice. "Fiyero?"
"Didn't Glinda tell you that she was writing him, too? He told me. And he has been spectacular, especially the other day when someone made a rude remark about you and - Glinda, and Fiyero nearly knocked him unconscious."
"What?" Elphaba gasped. "Are - are you joking?"
Nessa finally wheeled her chair in a circle to face her sister. "Do I look like I think this is funny, Elphaba?"
"But - you have to be - is this like when you told me the lake had frozen under the snow, just to watch me fall through?"
"I'm not ten years old anymore, and I'm not joking," Nessa said, giving her a withering look.
Abandoning the support of the bedroom door, Elphaba crossed the room and sank onto her sister's bed. "Fiyero hit someone?" It was impossible to imagine - mostly because she couldn't quite imagine him caring enough about anything. Violent outbursts on someone else's behalf were more her style, not his.
"I don't know his name - a red-faced Gilliken boy from our history class. He was too stunned to hit back and, luckily for Fiyero, too embarrassed to report it."
"I -" Her mind was too busy to allow her to speak. Fiyero, who had sat upstairs trying to comfort her and calmly helping Glinda to plan her return to class? Fiyero whose life was - or had been - centered around being liked by everyone and not causing trouble unless it might be fun? "I have to go, I have to -"
"Elphaba!" Nessa said firmly to detain her, but it was unnecessary. A knock on the door silenced them both, and Miss Greyling, the literature instructor, entered without waiting for a reply.
"Oh," she said on seeing the sisters together, Elphaba poised to flee. "Miss Elphaba, wonderful. I have something for you."
"I - what?"
Miss Greyling - Madame Greyling now, Elphaba supposed - pulled a familiar-looking envelope from one of her pockets. "This came for you and Miss Glinda from the Wizard himself. Madame Morrible has written to me and explained the entire situation, dear, so don't worry. Tomorrow I will make a public announcement recanting everything that was said about your journey to the Emerald City, and Madame Morrible has assured me that the same will be done in town. You will be perfectly safe here."
Elphaba took the envelope with trembling hands. "Thank you." She turned hastily to Nessa, using Madame Greyling's presence to escape their conversation. "I have to go now, Nessa, I'll see you later!" She fled the room and ducked as quickly as she could into the stairwell, racing up the two flights to her floor and darting across the hall into her room.
"Is everything all right, Elphie?" Glinda was alone in the room, and her tone was tinged with guilt. "I was just about to go and look for you."
"Fiyero left?"
"Just now."
As she spoke, Elphaba noticed that her roommate's face was very pink, and rapidly growing pinker. Her hair was disheveled, and her shoes had been dropped carelessly at the end of the bed. For one moment Elphaba completely forgot about her conversation with Nessa and about the envelope she carried; her stomach dropped and she exclaimed, "You didn't!"
Glinda's eyes widened and she clapped a hand to her chest in horror. "No, of course I didn't! Honestly, Elphie, what do you take me for?"
Elphaba shrugged. "The girl whose boyfriend just ran out of here and left her looking like that?" Glinda's face reddened to a degree Elphaba would have thought impossible, but before she could speak, Elphaba frowned in confusion. "Wait - left how? I would have passed him in the stairwell." A sudden, terrible thought occurred to her. "He isn't hiding in here, is he?"
Glinda gestured vaguely. "Out the window. Down the tree."
This did nothing to alleviate Elphaba's confusion. "Why?"
"I guess it seemed like the thing to do?"
"He really has lost his mind." Elphaba sat down on the bed next to Glinda. "Nessa said he hit someone the other day - some boy we don't know who made a comment about us."
"What?"
"I know." Her gaze fell to her lap, and she caught sight of the cream-and-green envelope clutched in her hands. "Oh. The Wizard sent this to Madame Greyling for us." She held it out for Glinda to take.
"You should open it," Glinda demurred as she tried to tidy her hair.
Elphaba slid one finger under the seal, then stopped and held it out again. "No, you read it, please? And just tell me if it's good or bad?"
Glinda hesitated, then nodded. "All right." As she leaned over to take the letter, she also kissed Elphaba quickly on the cheek. "Don't worry, it'll be fine."
"Just read it, please?"
Glinda carefully broke the seal on the envelope and pulled out a small card that couldn't have said very much. Her eyes scanned it quickly, and then she said, "We're to be trained, by them, little by little until we finish school."
"Trained in what?" Elphaba interrupted.
"Politics and government, sorcery and spellcrafting," Glinda recited in a way that made it clear she was quoting verbatim. "The direction of magical skill toward political ends."
"Wonderful," Elphaba muttered. "What else?"
Glinda raised an eyebrow at her over the card. "I think the rest speaks for itself - learning to follow orders, stay quiet, be good girls?"
"I meant, what else does the letter say?" Elphaba's tone was abrasive, but inwardly she was rather impressed with Glinda. If only she'd think that hard about her political science classes . . .
"Oh. Well, we're going to be called to the Emerald City periodically for short visits, two or three days, for training sessions. About three times a year until we graduate - that isn't so bad - and then 'of course' after graduation they'll expect us on a permanent basis."
"You keep saying 'they.'"
Glinda held up the card. "It's signed by the Wizard and Madame Morrible. I guess she's the 'sorcery and spellcrafting' part."
"May I?" Elphaba took the card and scanned it, but Glinda hadn't missed anything important. "So that's that."
"That's that." Glinda patted her hand. "See, it could have been so much worse. Just little bits of training for the next two and a half years, that's not so horrible."
Elphaba looked straight into Glinda's eyes. "You don't really feel that optimistic about it."
Glinda held her ground for as long as she could, but eventually she faltered. "No, I'm terrified," she confessed, still held in Elphaba's gaze.
Elphaba turned her hand over so that she could hold Glinda's, which was still laying on top of hers. "You can tell me that. I hate this, but I'm not going to collapse because you admit it's possible something might go bad."
Glinda nodded, and Elphaba noticed for the first time that her eyes were as red as her face had been a moment ago. She lifted a hand and brushed her fingers gently over what appeared to be drying tears. "Have you been crying?"
Glinda laughed and shook her head. "No. I was just . . . er . . ."
"So - yes?"
"Yes."
Elphaba dropped her hand to Glinda's arm and squeezed it. "What happened? Did Fiyero do something?"
"N- no . . ."
"Is that a no, yes he did?"
This time Glinda's soft laugh was real, and she reached over and patted Elphaba's knee. "We had an argument, that's all. Then we made up. Nothing to worry about." In response to Elphaba's concerned expression she added, "I'm actually relieved that he cares enough to argue with me. It's the most energy I've had out of him in weeks." She blushed all over again and ducked her head. "Well, you know what I meant."
"So you're all right?"
Glinda impulsively hugged Elphaba, so tightly that Elphaba could barely manage to embrace her in return. "Yes, I'm all right," she said.
~~Fiyero~~
He missed the announcement - if he'd known in advance that the subject of the all-student meeting would be Elphaba's innocence, he would have attended - but he didn't miss the flurry of whispers and pointed throat-clearing that accompanied Glinda's return to class that day. She sat in her usual place in history, across the room from him, but she flashed him a quick smile as she settled onto her bench.
He glanced to the front of the room, but the professor was writing on the blackboard and not ready to begin his lecture. "Elphaba?" he mouthed after catching Glinda's eye again.
She nodded and mouthed, "Fine," then wrote something in large letters on her notepaper and held it up: Tomorrow.
So Elphaba would be back in class tomorrow. He hadn't seen her since she had left her and Glinda's room to speak with her sister, and he hadn't seen Nessa - or, for that matter, Glinda - either. None of which meant that he hadn't been thinking about them - well, not so much Nessa, but the other two.
The witches. He felt that the thought should be amusing, but in fact it sent a cold shudder through his body to picture the Elphaba and Glinda he knew as not sorceresses, but witches. Watching Glinda from across the classroom, in her neat school uniform, casting coy glances at him from beneath her eyelashes, it just didn't seem right. And Elphaba . . .
Thinking of her brought to mind a recent memory, a guilty pleasure so compelling that he had to breathe deeply to steady himself. That night in their room, when compassion and warmth and real affection had driven him to kiss Glinda again and again, to press her into the bed and run his hands over her skin, he had been simultaneously unable - even kissing Glinda with his eyes wide open - to forget the feeling of Elphaba against his side, her back under his hands, her hair tangled in his fingers.
Once he had returned to his own room, he had rubbed his hands over his face in an attempt to get them both out of his mind, to erase the frustration and released worry and, just, confusion; but that was not to be. He had frozen, there on the end of his bed with his hands over his face, arrested by the mingling scents he could detect on them and on him, on his clothes. Glinda and Elphaba, together. Just the memory of that discovery sent the blood rushing to his head. He had to practically run from the room when class was over; he didn't think he could face Glinda just now.
The next day as he sat in his accustomed place in literature class, he knew what was happening when the stunned hush fell over the assembled students who were waiting for their lecture to begin. He knew as soon as he heard footsteps echoing from behind him in the unnatural silence, and he didn't have to look at the color of her skin to recognize the person who dropped quietly into the empty place beside him. He knew the line of her skirt, the scent of her hair; he felt as if he knew the very pattern of her breathing. He wanted to take her hand, to reassure her, but was too afraid to touch her. So he tilted his head down in an attempt to catch her eye and said simply, "You're back."
Elphaba nodded without looking at him. "I'm back."