The Effects of Gravity 13/? by ainsleyaisling
Title: The Effects of Gravity 13/?
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Pairings: Glinda/Fiyero, Elphaba/Fiyero, Glinda/Elphaba
Summary: Glinda makes a discovery, and Fiyero makes a confession.
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Previous section can be found here.
~~Elphaba~~
It took Elphaba several moments to figure out what had woken her, particularly because she was reluctant to open her eyes. She finally forced them open when she heard once again the rustling of paper and the creaking of a chair across the room. The flickering light of one small lamp illuminated Glinda sitting at the room's mostly ornamental desk, frowning over an assortment of notes spread in seeming disarray. She had pulled her hair back from her face and her skin was pale, with deep shadows around her eyes. The effect was uncanny, with the green walls around her dancing half in light, half in shadow and Glinda's gold hair glowing in the midst of it.
"Glinda," Elphaba murmured, pulling herself to a sitting position and trying to keep the blanket tucked as high around her as she could. "What are you doing?"
"Studying," Glinda said, not looking at her.
"In the middle of the night?" With a sigh Elphaba slid from the warm bed and crossed to Glinda's side, arms wrapped tightly around herself in the chilly nighttime air.
"I have to learn this enchantment before I forget everything Morrible said about it," Glinda insisted, shuffling the papers to a new order that seemed to make sense to her.
They had spent the day - mercifully, their last in the City this visit - in the high tower room with Morrible learning the basics of setting up a joint enchantment, something that allowed them not to combine their power exactly but to layer it, in a way, letting Elphaba's spell work to back up Glinda's, or vice versa. The steps of each spell had to be performed in a specific interwoven order so that they would lock together and reinforce one another, and the order was so seemingly nonsensical that it simply had to be memorized.
"Glinda," Elphaba said gently, "we're leaving first thing in the morning. No one's going to test you anymore; you don't have to learn this right now."
"That's such a very un-Elphaba thing to say that I suspect you're just worried that my fragile self can't handle such work." The tone was dry, but the words didn't sound entirely in jest. "Or is it my frail intellect?"
"Don't be ridiculous please, I'm too tired for it."
At long last Glinda met Elphaba's eyes, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. "I couldn't sleep," she said finally. "I just kept thinking, there has to be a way to make sense of this."
"You didn't understand it?" Elphaba insinuated herself onto one side of Glinda's chair, letting Glinda adjust to make room for her. "You did it perfectly the last time we tried."
"I know." Glinda frowned a moment as if deciding whether to continue. "It just seems - it can't really be that the order of the steps makes no sense, or it shouldn't matter what the order is. I think there is a rhyme and reason for why the enchantment is built the way it is . . ."
"You think Morrible doesn't know the reason?" Elphaba interrupted. "I wouldn't be surprised."
"No, I think Morrible doesn't want us to know the reason." Glinda moved her papers around some more, apparently looking for something in particular. She was whispering low, mindful probably of their conversation about being spied on by the Palace. "Because she told us something that isn't true."
"Really? What?"
Glinda found what she was looking for and pointed one neatly manicured finger at a line she had underlined in her notes. "She said it's never possible to fully merge the enchantments - that you can perform a single spell with two casters, which is about one-and-three-quarter times as powerful as the spell performed by one person alone; or you can layer the spells as we did, making the whole enchantment as powerful as two individual spells; but that there's no way to layer them and fully join the layered spells into one."
Elphaba thought carefully, trying to follow Glinda's increasingly excited explanation. "But there is a way?"
"There is. I saw it in a book when I was trying to choose a subject for my university entrance essay."
"How do you do it?"
Glinda turned to face Elphaba, their noses nearly touching. In some discomfort, Elphaba looked down and studied the notes on the table as Glinda talked. "The book didn't explain," Glinda replied. "It's advanced magic that's not even taught at university. But it's supposed to be a 'natural extension' of the method for layering spells. It's like -" She linked her fingers together as a visual aid. "Like building one wall behind another but then cementing them together into one big thick wall."
Glinda's notes swam on the page as Elphaba tried to figure out where she was headed with this. "So," she said slowly, "you think Morrible doesn't want to teach us the reasoning and method behind the process for layering spells, because she doesn't want us to be able to figure out how to do this other thing - to layer and then join them?"
"Exactly," Glinda said. "I bet if we understood how the layering enchantment is set up, we might be able to understand how to merge our layered spells into one - which would be about four times as powerful as one original spell alone, if we did it right."
"And Morrible wouldn't want us to learn how to do that, because we might become too powerful."
"Two of us and one of her," Glinda agreed. "See why I couldn't sleep?"
"Morrible was so careful to explain that she knows how to deconstruct a layered spell," Elphaba thought out loud. "She could undo anything we cast, eventually, if we stuck with that method. But I bet she isn't strong enough to take apart one huge spell at four-times strength."
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Because I could kiss you for this. Instead she said, "Because you really are clever, Glinda - really, really clever."
"Not so clever," Glinda sighed. "Knowing what we could do is all well and good, but I haven't managed to figure out how yet."
"We'll figure it out," Elphaba promised. "Together. But not in the middle of the night." Glinda looked about to protest, but Elphaba laid a restraining hand on top of the pile of notes. "There's no rush, and back at school we can research, look in the library - work in our room without worrying about -" Even though they had been whispering all along, she mouthed the last word silently. "- spies."
"I guess." Glinda frowned down at Elphaba's hand over her papers, but she couldn't keep back a yawn. Elphaba stood and pulled Glinda out of the chair with her.
"Come on, come back to bed," she murmured.
Once she had allowed herself to be dragged away from her work Glinda became suddenly pliant, not protesting when Elphaba extinguished the lamp and letting Elphaba slide off her heavy dressing gown and prod her back into the bed. Her eyes drifted shut as soon as her head touched the pillow, but she stayed awake long enough to grasp Elphaba's hand as Elphaba climbed into bed beside her. "Promise me," she whispered, "that in the morning you'll remember we talked about this."
"I'll remember," Elphaba promised. "Go to sleep now, or you'll have to go back to school with your eyes all red."
Elphaba lay watchful until she was certain that Glinda had fallen asleep, her hand - cold from being out of bed so late - still wrapped around Elphaba's. Although of course it was impossible, seeing as the entire point of their midnight discussion had been a possible way to outwit Morrible and the Wizard, a small, proud part of Elphaba wished that they could have overheard the conversation. But then, she reminded herself, maybe it was all for the good if they continued to underestimate Glinda. It was a tricky balance to strike - they had to continue to find Glinda valuable enough to keep her safe, to make her important enough to protect; but at the same time it might serve Elphaba and Glinda's purposes if no one ever quite figured out how devious Glinda could be. Her appearance of naivete, of complete innocence - not to mention her appearance of shallow regard for anything other than appearance - could go a long way toward concealing anything that they might get up to.
And the Wizard thought Elphaba couldn't be subtle. Ha. She smiled smugly to herself over the recollection of their last conversation, that afternoon.
"I use magic because I can," she had told him honestly. "As a means to an end. Glinda's interested in sorcery for its own sake - that's why by rights she ought be the better at it, of the two of us."
"But she isn't."
"No." They had been talking on the stairs to the throne again, with the Wizard leaning his back against the bottom of the chair itself and Elphaba's knees pulled nearly to her chest, her long skirt spread modestly over them. "But," she'd added, seeing that the Wizard was only slightly paying attention to her words, "one day she'll understand it much better than I ever will."
~~Glinda~~
Glinda was exhausted by the time they found a compartment on the train, but she wasn't about to give Elphaba the opportunity to say "I told you so." She hid her yawn as well as she could and remarked blandly, "I hope we're home in time for tea."
"We should be, unless there's a delay." Elphaba helped to lift Glinda's suitcases onto the empty bench along with her own. "And then we'll be just in time for the weekend - plenty of time to rest."
"Or go to the library?"
Elphaba's eyebrow arched over the rim of her eyeglasses, which she was wearing presumably in hopes of having the chance to read the book she had on her lap. "Are you teasing me?"
"No, just making sure you remember your promise."
"I remember." Elphaba patted her hand. "It's a brilliant idea and of course we'll work on it."
"Just so you keep that in mind. Especially the part where I was brilliant." Another yawn barely suppressed, but Elphaba noticed.
"How long had you been awake before I got up last night?"
"Don't know." Glinda leaned her head back against the bench, letting her eyes close and thinking about allowing herself to be sleepy. "A while."
"Come on." Elphaba wrapped an arm around Glinda's shoulders and tugged her downward, settling Glinda's head in her lap. "Lie across the bench and try to sleep for a while - no one will come in the compartment with the hideous green girl."
Glinda was too tired to put up much of a fight, and even though this was a definite variety of "I told you so," Elphaba was soothing rather than scolding and it was so easy to drift off in her lap, with her thin fingers idly stroking Glinda's hair.
Glinda hadn't expected Fiyero to meet them at the station, which was lucky because it saved her from being very disappointed when he wasn't there. By the time she and Elphaba had reached their dormitory she had convinced herself - almost - that it didn't matter and that she had more important things to be thinking about. Elphaba wanted to wait till the next day to begin their research on layering spells - which Glinda thought must mean that she was still a bit worried about Glinda's need for rest, because when had Elphaba ever wanted to wait before doing homework? - but Glinda pleaded until Elphaba agreed that they could work for a while, just until tea-time, just long enough to collect some likely volumes for later study. Glinda was desperately thankful for the distraction, and dispatched Elphaba to the library while she herself went to examine some of the rare books kept in the sorcery classroom building.
She was so focused on her task, mentally trying to remember which books exactly she had seen in the little sorcery library, that she didn't hear her name shouted until Fiyero had practically run into her.
"Oh," she said, not entirely able to decide whether she was more pleased or annoyed to encounter him. "Hello."
He stood facing her, several steps of frozen brown lawn away from her, and asked rather stiltedly, "How was the Emerald City?"
"Fine," she replied. "I learned a lot."
"And Elphaba?"
"No one tried to arrest her this time, so - fine too."
"So it wasn't . . ." He shifted from foot to foot nervously. "You were frightened before you went, I think - you and Elphaba. It wasn't too terrible?"
"No," Glinda said absently. Not terrible, but - strange sensations of revulsion at the lust of others - or was it strangely revolted lust? - power flowing through her hands but also into her from somewhere, Morrible's haunting voice, confused nights huddling too close to Elphaba in their shared bed, an incomprehensible tangle that somehow involved Fiyero and herself, or was that a dream? "No," she repeated, her own voice sounding distant even to herself. "Not so terrible, but . . . confusing."
"That's good." He stepped closer and took her arm, and whatever spell had come over her was broken. "Can we talk, for a moment?"
She almost told him that she was on her way somewhere important - to the library, which he wouldn't believe, or to meet someone else, which would be admittedly cruel - but despite the way he had been acting he was still Fiyero and she still missed him, still wanted him, and still would go where he asked her to go. "All right," she said softly.
He led her to the cover of a small grove of trees, somewhere they could not be seen but could see that no one was close enough to listen. He took her hand, facing her, standing closer now, and looking pale. "Is something wrong?" she asked.
"Glinda," he started. His thumb stroked over the back of her hand, over and over. "I have to - I've been lying to you. And I don't want to lie anymore."
Her heart seemed to stop in her chest as she contemplated all the possible horrible things he could mean. The most obvious was that he had been sneaking around with another girl, but certainly there were other possibilities. "Lying how?" she asked.
His fingers tightened on her hand; she could practically see him thinking. "Well," he said, "when we first met each other - it seemed like fun, didn't it? Us?"
"Fun" wasn't the word she would have used to characterize the way she thought of their relationship, but she nodded. "Sure."
"Here's the thing." He held her hand with both of his now, looking earnestly down at her. "Glinda . . . I love you. I really love you."
It was the most sincere he had ever sounded, but at the same time his words sounded like an apology, and that couldn't be right. "So what's wrong?" she asked.
He looked straight into her eyes, but she could tell he didn't really want to. "I don't love you," he said more softly, "the way you want me to."
She tried to pull her hand away and after a moment he let her, but he took a step forward to counter her step back. "What does that mean?" she asked him.
Fiyero reached out for her, but when she backed away again he mercifully gave up on coming closer. "It means," he said, with the air of someone making a deeply shameful confession, "that I love you more than I ever expected to, but it's not a romantic love, and I care too much to keep lying to you about that."
She felt sick; her mind unwillingly filled with all the things he had said to her, the times he had touched her, kissed her, and how real it had felt. Most of the time. "But . . ." she said.
"I am - attracted to you." He leaned his back against a tree, seeming to need the support. "But - it seems like that isn't enough to turn one kind of love into another kind. I don't know why not; I don't really understand it. But I'm pretty sure about it."
"I -" She nodded slowly, a sick nauseous despairing sort of relief creeping up her spine and bringing tears to her eyes. "So we're over."
"- yes." His hands fidgeted at his sides, reminding her of Elphaba. "Anything else would be wrong."
"Since when do you care?" She tried to laugh, but the wretched tears were beginning to make themselves heard in her voice.
"Since now, I guess." His eyes pierced her. "Is that what you would want - for me to be having fun with you, without caring?"
"Of course not." She felt weary, but there was no tree near enough for her to lean against. "You're - right . . . I see that you're right. Please excuse me, I have to go." She turned and walked deliberately out of the little grove, ignoring his voice calling her name. He would want to make sure that she was all right, and she wasn't ready to grant him that favor.
Her feet steered her toward the dormitory without conscious thought on her part, her previous errand more or less forgotten. She needed to be alone, wanted Elphaba, wanted no one, couldn't go looking for Elphaba in the library where there were other people, so she went back to their room, methodically built up the fire against the chill, calmly kicked off her shoes, stripped down to her shift, and wrapped herself in a blanket by the fire, and then she cried.
An hour at least went by; the darkness of a winter afternoon fell outside and the shadows in the room lengthened. The fire began to die down and she huddled deeper into her blanket, every minute hoping to hear Elphaba's familiar footsteps approaching the door.
When they finally came Glinda looked up, prepared to spill out the whole story - but one glance at her roommate's drawn face made clear that Glinda didn't have to tell her anything.
"Glinda," Elphaba said softly, still standing framed by the doorway.
"Does everyone know already?" Glinda asked in something that came out somehow between a wail and quiet resignation.
"No." Elphaba closed and locked the door behind her and laid her satchel with unusual care on Glinda's bed, dropping a pile of old books beside it. "I saw Fiyero. I think he was looking for me, actually."
"Oh." Glinda's toes were cold; she drew them further under the blanket. "What did he have to say for himself?"
"Not much."
"Oh," Glinda repeated, watching Elphaba build up the fire.
Elphaba settled beside her and started to put her arm around Glinda, then apparently thought better of it and slipped her arm under the blanket instead. A flip of her elbow sent one side of it flying over her shoulders as well, and she pulled Glinda close and tucked the blanket tightly around both of them. Glinda settled her head comfortably over Elphaba's small breasts, her own chest supported by Elphaba's bent knees, and let the new tears well up with indescribable relief that no words seemed necessary.
"Was he awful?" Elphaba whispered after a while. "He seemed so guilty."
"No, he wasn't," Glinda sniffled. She adjusted her position to one slightly more comfortable, and took one of Elphaba's hands and held it to her chest like a life preserver. "That's the hardest thing, Elphie - I know he's right." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "He's right and there's no one to blame. I can't convince him to love me."
Elphaba only hugged her closer and whispered quiet things that Glinda couldn't quite hear, but they gave her some comfort anyway.
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Pairings: Glinda/Fiyero, Elphaba/Fiyero, Glinda/Elphaba
Summary: Glinda makes a discovery, and Fiyero makes a confession.
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Previous section can be found here.
~~Elphaba~~
It took Elphaba several moments to figure out what had woken her, particularly because she was reluctant to open her eyes. She finally forced them open when she heard once again the rustling of paper and the creaking of a chair across the room. The flickering light of one small lamp illuminated Glinda sitting at the room's mostly ornamental desk, frowning over an assortment of notes spread in seeming disarray. She had pulled her hair back from her face and her skin was pale, with deep shadows around her eyes. The effect was uncanny, with the green walls around her dancing half in light, half in shadow and Glinda's gold hair glowing in the midst of it.
"Glinda," Elphaba murmured, pulling herself to a sitting position and trying to keep the blanket tucked as high around her as she could. "What are you doing?"
"Studying," Glinda said, not looking at her.
"In the middle of the night?" With a sigh Elphaba slid from the warm bed and crossed to Glinda's side, arms wrapped tightly around herself in the chilly nighttime air.
"I have to learn this enchantment before I forget everything Morrible said about it," Glinda insisted, shuffling the papers to a new order that seemed to make sense to her.
They had spent the day - mercifully, their last in the City this visit - in the high tower room with Morrible learning the basics of setting up a joint enchantment, something that allowed them not to combine their power exactly but to layer it, in a way, letting Elphaba's spell work to back up Glinda's, or vice versa. The steps of each spell had to be performed in a specific interwoven order so that they would lock together and reinforce one another, and the order was so seemingly nonsensical that it simply had to be memorized.
"Glinda," Elphaba said gently, "we're leaving first thing in the morning. No one's going to test you anymore; you don't have to learn this right now."
"That's such a very un-Elphaba thing to say that I suspect you're just worried that my fragile self can't handle such work." The tone was dry, but the words didn't sound entirely in jest. "Or is it my frail intellect?"
"Don't be ridiculous please, I'm too tired for it."
At long last Glinda met Elphaba's eyes, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. "I couldn't sleep," she said finally. "I just kept thinking, there has to be a way to make sense of this."
"You didn't understand it?" Elphaba insinuated herself onto one side of Glinda's chair, letting Glinda adjust to make room for her. "You did it perfectly the last time we tried."
"I know." Glinda frowned a moment as if deciding whether to continue. "It just seems - it can't really be that the order of the steps makes no sense, or it shouldn't matter what the order is. I think there is a rhyme and reason for why the enchantment is built the way it is . . ."
"You think Morrible doesn't know the reason?" Elphaba interrupted. "I wouldn't be surprised."
"No, I think Morrible doesn't want us to know the reason." Glinda moved her papers around some more, apparently looking for something in particular. She was whispering low, mindful probably of their conversation about being spied on by the Palace. "Because she told us something that isn't true."
"Really? What?"
Glinda found what she was looking for and pointed one neatly manicured finger at a line she had underlined in her notes. "She said it's never possible to fully merge the enchantments - that you can perform a single spell with two casters, which is about one-and-three-quarter times as powerful as the spell performed by one person alone; or you can layer the spells as we did, making the whole enchantment as powerful as two individual spells; but that there's no way to layer them and fully join the layered spells into one."
Elphaba thought carefully, trying to follow Glinda's increasingly excited explanation. "But there is a way?"
"There is. I saw it in a book when I was trying to choose a subject for my university entrance essay."
"How do you do it?"
Glinda turned to face Elphaba, their noses nearly touching. In some discomfort, Elphaba looked down and studied the notes on the table as Glinda talked. "The book didn't explain," Glinda replied. "It's advanced magic that's not even taught at university. But it's supposed to be a 'natural extension' of the method for layering spells. It's like -" She linked her fingers together as a visual aid. "Like building one wall behind another but then cementing them together into one big thick wall."
Glinda's notes swam on the page as Elphaba tried to figure out where she was headed with this. "So," she said slowly, "you think Morrible doesn't want to teach us the reasoning and method behind the process for layering spells, because she doesn't want us to be able to figure out how to do this other thing - to layer and then join them?"
"Exactly," Glinda said. "I bet if we understood how the layering enchantment is set up, we might be able to understand how to merge our layered spells into one - which would be about four times as powerful as one original spell alone, if we did it right."
"And Morrible wouldn't want us to learn how to do that, because we might become too powerful."
"Two of us and one of her," Glinda agreed. "See why I couldn't sleep?"
"Morrible was so careful to explain that she knows how to deconstruct a layered spell," Elphaba thought out loud. "She could undo anything we cast, eventually, if we stuck with that method. But I bet she isn't strong enough to take apart one huge spell at four-times strength."
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Because I could kiss you for this. Instead she said, "Because you really are clever, Glinda - really, really clever."
"Not so clever," Glinda sighed. "Knowing what we could do is all well and good, but I haven't managed to figure out how yet."
"We'll figure it out," Elphaba promised. "Together. But not in the middle of the night." Glinda looked about to protest, but Elphaba laid a restraining hand on top of the pile of notes. "There's no rush, and back at school we can research, look in the library - work in our room without worrying about -" Even though they had been whispering all along, she mouthed the last word silently. "- spies."
"I guess." Glinda frowned down at Elphaba's hand over her papers, but she couldn't keep back a yawn. Elphaba stood and pulled Glinda out of the chair with her.
"Come on, come back to bed," she murmured.
Once she had allowed herself to be dragged away from her work Glinda became suddenly pliant, not protesting when Elphaba extinguished the lamp and letting Elphaba slide off her heavy dressing gown and prod her back into the bed. Her eyes drifted shut as soon as her head touched the pillow, but she stayed awake long enough to grasp Elphaba's hand as Elphaba climbed into bed beside her. "Promise me," she whispered, "that in the morning you'll remember we talked about this."
"I'll remember," Elphaba promised. "Go to sleep now, or you'll have to go back to school with your eyes all red."
Elphaba lay watchful until she was certain that Glinda had fallen asleep, her hand - cold from being out of bed so late - still wrapped around Elphaba's. Although of course it was impossible, seeing as the entire point of their midnight discussion had been a possible way to outwit Morrible and the Wizard, a small, proud part of Elphaba wished that they could have overheard the conversation. But then, she reminded herself, maybe it was all for the good if they continued to underestimate Glinda. It was a tricky balance to strike - they had to continue to find Glinda valuable enough to keep her safe, to make her important enough to protect; but at the same time it might serve Elphaba and Glinda's purposes if no one ever quite figured out how devious Glinda could be. Her appearance of naivete, of complete innocence - not to mention her appearance of shallow regard for anything other than appearance - could go a long way toward concealing anything that they might get up to.
And the Wizard thought Elphaba couldn't be subtle. Ha. She smiled smugly to herself over the recollection of their last conversation, that afternoon.
"I use magic because I can," she had told him honestly. "As a means to an end. Glinda's interested in sorcery for its own sake - that's why by rights she ought be the better at it, of the two of us."
"But she isn't."
"No." They had been talking on the stairs to the throne again, with the Wizard leaning his back against the bottom of the chair itself and Elphaba's knees pulled nearly to her chest, her long skirt spread modestly over them. "But," she'd added, seeing that the Wizard was only slightly paying attention to her words, "one day she'll understand it much better than I ever will."
~~Glinda~~
Glinda was exhausted by the time they found a compartment on the train, but she wasn't about to give Elphaba the opportunity to say "I told you so." She hid her yawn as well as she could and remarked blandly, "I hope we're home in time for tea."
"We should be, unless there's a delay." Elphaba helped to lift Glinda's suitcases onto the empty bench along with her own. "And then we'll be just in time for the weekend - plenty of time to rest."
"Or go to the library?"
Elphaba's eyebrow arched over the rim of her eyeglasses, which she was wearing presumably in hopes of having the chance to read the book she had on her lap. "Are you teasing me?"
"No, just making sure you remember your promise."
"I remember." Elphaba patted her hand. "It's a brilliant idea and of course we'll work on it."
"Just so you keep that in mind. Especially the part where I was brilliant." Another yawn barely suppressed, but Elphaba noticed.
"How long had you been awake before I got up last night?"
"Don't know." Glinda leaned her head back against the bench, letting her eyes close and thinking about allowing herself to be sleepy. "A while."
"Come on." Elphaba wrapped an arm around Glinda's shoulders and tugged her downward, settling Glinda's head in her lap. "Lie across the bench and try to sleep for a while - no one will come in the compartment with the hideous green girl."
Glinda was too tired to put up much of a fight, and even though this was a definite variety of "I told you so," Elphaba was soothing rather than scolding and it was so easy to drift off in her lap, with her thin fingers idly stroking Glinda's hair.
Glinda hadn't expected Fiyero to meet them at the station, which was lucky because it saved her from being very disappointed when he wasn't there. By the time she and Elphaba had reached their dormitory she had convinced herself - almost - that it didn't matter and that she had more important things to be thinking about. Elphaba wanted to wait till the next day to begin their research on layering spells - which Glinda thought must mean that she was still a bit worried about Glinda's need for rest, because when had Elphaba ever wanted to wait before doing homework? - but Glinda pleaded until Elphaba agreed that they could work for a while, just until tea-time, just long enough to collect some likely volumes for later study. Glinda was desperately thankful for the distraction, and dispatched Elphaba to the library while she herself went to examine some of the rare books kept in the sorcery classroom building.
She was so focused on her task, mentally trying to remember which books exactly she had seen in the little sorcery library, that she didn't hear her name shouted until Fiyero had practically run into her.
"Oh," she said, not entirely able to decide whether she was more pleased or annoyed to encounter him. "Hello."
He stood facing her, several steps of frozen brown lawn away from her, and asked rather stiltedly, "How was the Emerald City?"
"Fine," she replied. "I learned a lot."
"And Elphaba?"
"No one tried to arrest her this time, so - fine too."
"So it wasn't . . ." He shifted from foot to foot nervously. "You were frightened before you went, I think - you and Elphaba. It wasn't too terrible?"
"No," Glinda said absently. Not terrible, but - strange sensations of revulsion at the lust of others - or was it strangely revolted lust? - power flowing through her hands but also into her from somewhere, Morrible's haunting voice, confused nights huddling too close to Elphaba in their shared bed, an incomprehensible tangle that somehow involved Fiyero and herself, or was that a dream? "No," she repeated, her own voice sounding distant even to herself. "Not so terrible, but . . . confusing."
"That's good." He stepped closer and took her arm, and whatever spell had come over her was broken. "Can we talk, for a moment?"
She almost told him that she was on her way somewhere important - to the library, which he wouldn't believe, or to meet someone else, which would be admittedly cruel - but despite the way he had been acting he was still Fiyero and she still missed him, still wanted him, and still would go where he asked her to go. "All right," she said softly.
He led her to the cover of a small grove of trees, somewhere they could not be seen but could see that no one was close enough to listen. He took her hand, facing her, standing closer now, and looking pale. "Is something wrong?" she asked.
"Glinda," he started. His thumb stroked over the back of her hand, over and over. "I have to - I've been lying to you. And I don't want to lie anymore."
Her heart seemed to stop in her chest as she contemplated all the possible horrible things he could mean. The most obvious was that he had been sneaking around with another girl, but certainly there were other possibilities. "Lying how?" she asked.
His fingers tightened on her hand; she could practically see him thinking. "Well," he said, "when we first met each other - it seemed like fun, didn't it? Us?"
"Fun" wasn't the word she would have used to characterize the way she thought of their relationship, but she nodded. "Sure."
"Here's the thing." He held her hand with both of his now, looking earnestly down at her. "Glinda . . . I love you. I really love you."
It was the most sincere he had ever sounded, but at the same time his words sounded like an apology, and that couldn't be right. "So what's wrong?" she asked.
He looked straight into her eyes, but she could tell he didn't really want to. "I don't love you," he said more softly, "the way you want me to."
She tried to pull her hand away and after a moment he let her, but he took a step forward to counter her step back. "What does that mean?" she asked him.
Fiyero reached out for her, but when she backed away again he mercifully gave up on coming closer. "It means," he said, with the air of someone making a deeply shameful confession, "that I love you more than I ever expected to, but it's not a romantic love, and I care too much to keep lying to you about that."
She felt sick; her mind unwillingly filled with all the things he had said to her, the times he had touched her, kissed her, and how real it had felt. Most of the time. "But . . ." she said.
"I am - attracted to you." He leaned his back against a tree, seeming to need the support. "But - it seems like that isn't enough to turn one kind of love into another kind. I don't know why not; I don't really understand it. But I'm pretty sure about it."
"I -" She nodded slowly, a sick nauseous despairing sort of relief creeping up her spine and bringing tears to her eyes. "So we're over."
"- yes." His hands fidgeted at his sides, reminding her of Elphaba. "Anything else would be wrong."
"Since when do you care?" She tried to laugh, but the wretched tears were beginning to make themselves heard in her voice.
"Since now, I guess." His eyes pierced her. "Is that what you would want - for me to be having fun with you, without caring?"
"Of course not." She felt weary, but there was no tree near enough for her to lean against. "You're - right . . . I see that you're right. Please excuse me, I have to go." She turned and walked deliberately out of the little grove, ignoring his voice calling her name. He would want to make sure that she was all right, and she wasn't ready to grant him that favor.
Her feet steered her toward the dormitory without conscious thought on her part, her previous errand more or less forgotten. She needed to be alone, wanted Elphaba, wanted no one, couldn't go looking for Elphaba in the library where there were other people, so she went back to their room, methodically built up the fire against the chill, calmly kicked off her shoes, stripped down to her shift, and wrapped herself in a blanket by the fire, and then she cried.
An hour at least went by; the darkness of a winter afternoon fell outside and the shadows in the room lengthened. The fire began to die down and she huddled deeper into her blanket, every minute hoping to hear Elphaba's familiar footsteps approaching the door.
When they finally came Glinda looked up, prepared to spill out the whole story - but one glance at her roommate's drawn face made clear that Glinda didn't have to tell her anything.
"Glinda," Elphaba said softly, still standing framed by the doorway.
"Does everyone know already?" Glinda asked in something that came out somehow between a wail and quiet resignation.
"No." Elphaba closed and locked the door behind her and laid her satchel with unusual care on Glinda's bed, dropping a pile of old books beside it. "I saw Fiyero. I think he was looking for me, actually."
"Oh." Glinda's toes were cold; she drew them further under the blanket. "What did he have to say for himself?"
"Not much."
"Oh," Glinda repeated, watching Elphaba build up the fire.
Elphaba settled beside her and started to put her arm around Glinda, then apparently thought better of it and slipped her arm under the blanket instead. A flip of her elbow sent one side of it flying over her shoulders as well, and she pulled Glinda close and tucked the blanket tightly around both of them. Glinda settled her head comfortably over Elphaba's small breasts, her own chest supported by Elphaba's bent knees, and let the new tears well up with indescribable relief that no words seemed necessary.
"Was he awful?" Elphaba whispered after a while. "He seemed so guilty."
"No, he wasn't," Glinda sniffled. She adjusted her position to one slightly more comfortable, and took one of Elphaba's hands and held it to her chest like a life preserver. "That's the hardest thing, Elphie - I know he's right." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "He's right and there's no one to blame. I can't convince him to love me."
Elphaba only hugged her closer and whispered quiet things that Glinda couldn't quite hear, but they gave her some comfort anyway.