Defying Gravity, Prologue, by ainsleyaisling
Title: Defying Gravity, Prologue
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Summary: Glinda and Elphaba - and Fiyero - working hand-in-hand, the way it was supposed to be . . . maybe . . .
This chapter: One night in the Emerald City.
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Sequel to "The Effects of Gravity," a link to all chapters of which can be found here.
And also more notes: So many of you posted awesome fic in the past week or so while I've been working serious overtime. I may have to ask for comment amnesty on already-posted fics, but I'm back and I'll be better, I promise. :)
~~Fiyero~~
A cool breeze had stripped the lingering heat from the evening, but he didn't think that was the reason so many people in the crowd were shivering. Even the stoic faces of the guards standing around him were tilted up to the balcony, eyes riveted, unwavering, watching for a threat. Not from the crowd. From the people they were supposed to be protecting.
He wondered if any of them noticed that Elphaba looked terrified. Probably not. She was good at hiding it, after all, from anyone who hadn't spent the last three years looking at her. And then he wasn't afraid of her, and it was clear that the rest of the crowd found her exactly as intimidating and foreign and frighteningly strange as the Wizard and his press secretary intended. It was also clear that the presence at her side of a radiant Glinda, though somewhat subdued - out of fear, he thought, and a share of trepidation on Elphaba's behalf - was not counteracting the spell that Elphaba seemed to have cast.
He let his eye roam, secure in the knowledge that absolutely no one was watching him when they could be keeping a cautious eye on the witch above. Some of the crowd actually seemed concerned on Glinda's behalf, whispering to one another that she was standing awfully close to the strange one, the green one, the frightening one. Madame Morrible had done a careful and subtle job, while introducing both girls to the rest of Oz, of slyly conveying the message that Elphaba could not, perhaps, be considered entirely safe. That she was on the Wizard's side was presented as a possibly temporary choice from a powerful and unpredictable temper. Elphaba's face remained unchanged throughout the entirety of the speeches, her dignified posture and strained expression lending credence to the idea that here was barely-suppressed strength and, possibly, rage. Fiyero had long been used to the fact that Elphaba's stoicism, hard-learned as it was, made it difficult for her to make emotional connections, on the surface, with other people. It was working particularly hard against her today.
There were a few, however, amidst the throngs who trembled and stared and held tight to each other's hands and arms, who seemed instead . . . fascinated. Nervous certainly, cautious, and afraid, but fascinated. Most were young men, not boys, but not approaching middle age. They looked up at the balcony with hands on their chins, or shading their eyes against the setting sun for a better view, shifting on their feet, some exchanging ambiguous glances with one another.
And she was fascinating. The breeze caught the ends of her hair, which was so straight and fine that he thought Glinda must have done something to it, and whipped them around the bodice of her jet-black dress where the hair almost blended with the color of the fabric. The dress was tight in the bodice, certainly another Glinda intervention, though of a conservative cut that didn't reveal much emerald skin to the eyes of the onlookers. Against all that black her chin was sharper than usual, her frame looked even more slight and more angular, and yet - exotic. Anyone who didn't know her would have thought her taller than Fiyero himself; she was revealed as long-limbed and lithe, somehow, despite the presence of layers of skirt. And she was biting her lip, not that most would have noticed, especially from this distance.
Fiyero generally thought it was pointless to regret things he had done when he was drunk. After all, what was the good in regretting something that you hadn't exactly chosen to do in the first place? You could regret getting drunk, but a person could hardly avoid that for the rest of his life. So he didn't regret kissing Elphaba, exactly. But he did think this might all be easier to watch, perhaps, without the vivid memory of the taste of her mouth or the clasp of her fingers in his hair, before she had caught herself. She'd never said a word about it and so neither had he, but he remembered every detail as if he had been stone cold sober. Unfortunately.
He shifted and leaned his weight onto the bayonet propped in front of him. Four weeks and he still wasn't able, ever, to look at the tip of the weapon while he was carrying it. He kept his eyes focused steadily somewhere around the middle of the shaft, because a single glance at the sharp end and all he could hear was Glinda's voice, nearly three years ago, heavy with tears and choking over her fear, telling him how the Wizard's guards had hurt Elphaba, had left marks on her body with their bayonets. Those same guards - probably some of the exact same ones - were charged now with protecting her, but Fiyero knew as well as anybody that "protecting" meant keeping Elphaba in as much as keeping external danger out. In, and in line. They were a show of force, and not even his presence in their ranks had entirely kept her from tensing when she'd walked past his line earlier.
On looking up again he saw that Glinda's golden head was tilted downward. The crowd would think her serene, calming smile was for them, but as he watched he saw her give a tiny wave, just the smallest flutter of her fingers, in his direction. He couldn't wave back, but he gave her a faint nod. Although his view of her other side was blocked by the heavy stone railing that surrounded the balcony, he thought she had reached over and taken Elphaba's hand. Instantly Elphaba seemed both more dignified and less tense.
The pageantry seemed to be coming to an end above his head; Glinda and Elphaba were both turning to follow their old headmistress from the balcony. As she turned, Elphaba looked down - oblivious to the people who were disturbed to find themselves suddenly under the force of her gaze - and sought him out, seeming to linger in the not-quite-eye-contact they managed to hold. He nodded, he thought he saw her chin drop quickly in response, and then she was following Glinda out of sight.
He was still looking up at the empty balcony when his captain's hand landed on his shoulder. "Your men are off," the captain said, with a genial smile. "Take 'em over the pub or something, now this is all over."
"This," Fiyero repeated, looking up once more. "What do you think of it all?"
"You mean of them?"
Fiyero nodded.
"Well. The girl's pretty, I guess. Reminds me more of the girls I chased after in school than of a witch, though, if you know what I mean."
"I do," Fiyero said. "Very well."
"The other one . . ." The captain whistled under his breath. "I don't know. A piece of work, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"Memorable though I guess. Folks won't forget about her in a hurry. It's like the City birthed her right out of itself, isn't it?"
Fiyero blinked at this unexpected bit of poetry. "I guess?"
"Anyway - take your men off, they've been on duty all day. And don't worry, it's rare all the guards are called to stand out at once. Your life will be much more boring than you think."
"Somehow I doubt that," Fiyero said with an affable smile as the captain turned away, already focusing his attention on his other charges.
Once in the pub his men shook off their nervous tension as easily as they shook off the bright green jackets and helmets that marked them as guardsmen. They joked about the heat, the length of the day, the idiocy of the Wizard - whom none of them had ever seen - and of their superiors - "not you, sir, them over you, you know" - until finally one of them took a long swig of his ale, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and said, "Well - never seen a woman like that before, have you?"
One of his compatriots laughed and clapped him on the back, saying, "Well you'll never meet her anyway, 'less you're guarding her door and she's nice enough to say 'hello.' Girls like that can have anyone they want."
"Didn't mean her," the first man returned, as Fiyero watched curiously. "The green one. She's got some fire in her, eh?"
A third guardsman sputtered into his own ale, laughing. "Fire? I'll say - she walked past us and you nearly fainted."
"So she takes a little getting used to!" the man exclaimed, amid the laughter of his entire unit. "I could do it!"
"Do what, exactly?" Fiyero asked before he could stop himself.
All the men seemed to sober, although he hadn't sounded particularly imperious. He didn't think. The boisterous guardsman who suddenly found himself under his lieutenant's gaze replied, ". . . get used to her?"
"You'll have to," Fiyero said succinctly. Just in time, he remembered to crack a smile.
"You know her, don't you, sir?" asked another guard, a young baby-faced boy with hardly any hair on his face. "You know both of them?"
Fiyero lowered his mug of ale cautiously. "Yes," he said.
The boy swallowed visibly. "Well, she's - she's all right, isn't she? I mean - I mean if we have to guard their door and all -"
He couldn't blame the boy for his fear - much. He couldn't blame any of them - they weren't afraid of Elphaba because she was green; they were afraid of her because they had been told she was the most powerful witch in history as far as anybody could remember. He nodded. "She's all right."
"She won't - hex us?"
"Not unless you deserve it."
The first man, the one who had proclaimed himself ready to "get used to" Elphaba, looked alarmed. "Is it easy to deserve it?" he asked.
Fiyero laughed outright. "No," he said. "Three years and she's never hexed me. And I bet she was tempted."
His men laughed at the thought of their leader being as reckless and irritating as they might be themselves, they ordered more ale, and they stopped talking about witches and hexes. Fiyero only wished it were as easy to stop thinking about them.
It was late when he reentered the Palace and turned from his usual path, veering away from the officers' quarters on the ground floor and taking the stairs straight up into one of the towers. The door he came to was guarded by a complement of young men in crisp uniform, all looking a bit sleepy after their long day. They sized him up but said not a word as he approached the door and knocked.
Glinda looked tired when she opened the door, but she brightened immediately when she saw him. "Fiyero!" she exclaimed. "You've never come up, I was beginning to think you never would." She stepped back and let him into the little suite.
"Are they just going to let anyone in like that?" he asked as she closed the door behind him.
"You're not anyone, you've got their uniform on. Although . . ." She reached out and straightened his jacket with a practiced hand. "There, now you look less like you stole the uniform off someone's wash line."
"Oh, very funny." He turned and swallowed as his eyes took in the other figure in the room, perched on the sofa of their small parlor. Elphaba looked somewhat diminished here, in this ordinary room in the midst of the Palace hustle and bustle. She'd changed into a more ordinary dress, and her feet were bare. Her hair still hung long, straight, and unbound over her shoulders. Her face was pale.
"I saw you today," she said softly. "We both did."
"I was hoping you would." He ran his hands awkwardly over the sides of his jacket. "Was it very hard?"
"To see you?"
"No. To - be up there, with all the . . ."
"A little," Elphaba replied. "But - we're alive. Thanks to Glinda, probably."
"If you're referring to me stopping you from losing your temper at least seven times," Glinda said, "then yes, thanks to Glinda."
Elphaba leaned her head back against the sofa. "Surely it was only six," she said.
"I was counting on my fingers."
With a smile for Glinda, Fiyero crossed to the sofa and stood behind Elphaba, taking her hand. Her fingers wove softly among his, and she smiled. "Thank you," she said. "For . . ." She didn't seem able to articulate what she meant, but he thought he understood anyway.
"You're welcome," he said. He dropped her hand and said to Glinda, "I only had a moment, I have to get back - the officers -"
"We understand." With a broad smile Glinda showed him to the door and wrapped her arms around his waist for a moment before opening it for him. "But don't be a stranger."
"I won't, I promise." He brushed a kiss against her cheek and looked over her shoulder to call, "Goodnight, Elphaba."
Her reply was so soft that he barely heard it. He stepped back out into the hall, noting that two of the six guards looked intrigued and the other four just bored, adjusted his uniform one more time, and started back down the stairs.
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Summary: Glinda and Elphaba - and Fiyero - working hand-in-hand, the way it was supposed to be . . . maybe . . .
This chapter: One night in the Emerald City.
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Sequel to "The Effects of Gravity," a link to all chapters of which can be found here.
And also more notes: So many of you posted awesome fic in the past week or so while I've been working serious overtime. I may have to ask for comment amnesty on already-posted fics, but I'm back and I'll be better, I promise. :)
~~Fiyero~~
A cool breeze had stripped the lingering heat from the evening, but he didn't think that was the reason so many people in the crowd were shivering. Even the stoic faces of the guards standing around him were tilted up to the balcony, eyes riveted, unwavering, watching for a threat. Not from the crowd. From the people they were supposed to be protecting.
He wondered if any of them noticed that Elphaba looked terrified. Probably not. She was good at hiding it, after all, from anyone who hadn't spent the last three years looking at her. And then he wasn't afraid of her, and it was clear that the rest of the crowd found her exactly as intimidating and foreign and frighteningly strange as the Wizard and his press secretary intended. It was also clear that the presence at her side of a radiant Glinda, though somewhat subdued - out of fear, he thought, and a share of trepidation on Elphaba's behalf - was not counteracting the spell that Elphaba seemed to have cast.
He let his eye roam, secure in the knowledge that absolutely no one was watching him when they could be keeping a cautious eye on the witch above. Some of the crowd actually seemed concerned on Glinda's behalf, whispering to one another that she was standing awfully close to the strange one, the green one, the frightening one. Madame Morrible had done a careful and subtle job, while introducing both girls to the rest of Oz, of slyly conveying the message that Elphaba could not, perhaps, be considered entirely safe. That she was on the Wizard's side was presented as a possibly temporary choice from a powerful and unpredictable temper. Elphaba's face remained unchanged throughout the entirety of the speeches, her dignified posture and strained expression lending credence to the idea that here was barely-suppressed strength and, possibly, rage. Fiyero had long been used to the fact that Elphaba's stoicism, hard-learned as it was, made it difficult for her to make emotional connections, on the surface, with other people. It was working particularly hard against her today.
There were a few, however, amidst the throngs who trembled and stared and held tight to each other's hands and arms, who seemed instead . . . fascinated. Nervous certainly, cautious, and afraid, but fascinated. Most were young men, not boys, but not approaching middle age. They looked up at the balcony with hands on their chins, or shading their eyes against the setting sun for a better view, shifting on their feet, some exchanging ambiguous glances with one another.
And she was fascinating. The breeze caught the ends of her hair, which was so straight and fine that he thought Glinda must have done something to it, and whipped them around the bodice of her jet-black dress where the hair almost blended with the color of the fabric. The dress was tight in the bodice, certainly another Glinda intervention, though of a conservative cut that didn't reveal much emerald skin to the eyes of the onlookers. Against all that black her chin was sharper than usual, her frame looked even more slight and more angular, and yet - exotic. Anyone who didn't know her would have thought her taller than Fiyero himself; she was revealed as long-limbed and lithe, somehow, despite the presence of layers of skirt. And she was biting her lip, not that most would have noticed, especially from this distance.
Fiyero generally thought it was pointless to regret things he had done when he was drunk. After all, what was the good in regretting something that you hadn't exactly chosen to do in the first place? You could regret getting drunk, but a person could hardly avoid that for the rest of his life. So he didn't regret kissing Elphaba, exactly. But he did think this might all be easier to watch, perhaps, without the vivid memory of the taste of her mouth or the clasp of her fingers in his hair, before she had caught herself. She'd never said a word about it and so neither had he, but he remembered every detail as if he had been stone cold sober. Unfortunately.
He shifted and leaned his weight onto the bayonet propped in front of him. Four weeks and he still wasn't able, ever, to look at the tip of the weapon while he was carrying it. He kept his eyes focused steadily somewhere around the middle of the shaft, because a single glance at the sharp end and all he could hear was Glinda's voice, nearly three years ago, heavy with tears and choking over her fear, telling him how the Wizard's guards had hurt Elphaba, had left marks on her body with their bayonets. Those same guards - probably some of the exact same ones - were charged now with protecting her, but Fiyero knew as well as anybody that "protecting" meant keeping Elphaba in as much as keeping external danger out. In, and in line. They were a show of force, and not even his presence in their ranks had entirely kept her from tensing when she'd walked past his line earlier.
On looking up again he saw that Glinda's golden head was tilted downward. The crowd would think her serene, calming smile was for them, but as he watched he saw her give a tiny wave, just the smallest flutter of her fingers, in his direction. He couldn't wave back, but he gave her a faint nod. Although his view of her other side was blocked by the heavy stone railing that surrounded the balcony, he thought she had reached over and taken Elphaba's hand. Instantly Elphaba seemed both more dignified and less tense.
The pageantry seemed to be coming to an end above his head; Glinda and Elphaba were both turning to follow their old headmistress from the balcony. As she turned, Elphaba looked down - oblivious to the people who were disturbed to find themselves suddenly under the force of her gaze - and sought him out, seeming to linger in the not-quite-eye-contact they managed to hold. He nodded, he thought he saw her chin drop quickly in response, and then she was following Glinda out of sight.
He was still looking up at the empty balcony when his captain's hand landed on his shoulder. "Your men are off," the captain said, with a genial smile. "Take 'em over the pub or something, now this is all over."
"This," Fiyero repeated, looking up once more. "What do you think of it all?"
"You mean of them?"
Fiyero nodded.
"Well. The girl's pretty, I guess. Reminds me more of the girls I chased after in school than of a witch, though, if you know what I mean."
"I do," Fiyero said. "Very well."
"The other one . . ." The captain whistled under his breath. "I don't know. A piece of work, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"Memorable though I guess. Folks won't forget about her in a hurry. It's like the City birthed her right out of itself, isn't it?"
Fiyero blinked at this unexpected bit of poetry. "I guess?"
"Anyway - take your men off, they've been on duty all day. And don't worry, it's rare all the guards are called to stand out at once. Your life will be much more boring than you think."
"Somehow I doubt that," Fiyero said with an affable smile as the captain turned away, already focusing his attention on his other charges.
Once in the pub his men shook off their nervous tension as easily as they shook off the bright green jackets and helmets that marked them as guardsmen. They joked about the heat, the length of the day, the idiocy of the Wizard - whom none of them had ever seen - and of their superiors - "not you, sir, them over you, you know" - until finally one of them took a long swig of his ale, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and said, "Well - never seen a woman like that before, have you?"
One of his compatriots laughed and clapped him on the back, saying, "Well you'll never meet her anyway, 'less you're guarding her door and she's nice enough to say 'hello.' Girls like that can have anyone they want."
"Didn't mean her," the first man returned, as Fiyero watched curiously. "The green one. She's got some fire in her, eh?"
A third guardsman sputtered into his own ale, laughing. "Fire? I'll say - she walked past us and you nearly fainted."
"So she takes a little getting used to!" the man exclaimed, amid the laughter of his entire unit. "I could do it!"
"Do what, exactly?" Fiyero asked before he could stop himself.
All the men seemed to sober, although he hadn't sounded particularly imperious. He didn't think. The boisterous guardsman who suddenly found himself under his lieutenant's gaze replied, ". . . get used to her?"
"You'll have to," Fiyero said succinctly. Just in time, he remembered to crack a smile.
"You know her, don't you, sir?" asked another guard, a young baby-faced boy with hardly any hair on his face. "You know both of them?"
Fiyero lowered his mug of ale cautiously. "Yes," he said.
The boy swallowed visibly. "Well, she's - she's all right, isn't she? I mean - I mean if we have to guard their door and all -"
He couldn't blame the boy for his fear - much. He couldn't blame any of them - they weren't afraid of Elphaba because she was green; they were afraid of her because they had been told she was the most powerful witch in history as far as anybody could remember. He nodded. "She's all right."
"She won't - hex us?"
"Not unless you deserve it."
The first man, the one who had proclaimed himself ready to "get used to" Elphaba, looked alarmed. "Is it easy to deserve it?" he asked.
Fiyero laughed outright. "No," he said. "Three years and she's never hexed me. And I bet she was tempted."
His men laughed at the thought of their leader being as reckless and irritating as they might be themselves, they ordered more ale, and they stopped talking about witches and hexes. Fiyero only wished it were as easy to stop thinking about them.
It was late when he reentered the Palace and turned from his usual path, veering away from the officers' quarters on the ground floor and taking the stairs straight up into one of the towers. The door he came to was guarded by a complement of young men in crisp uniform, all looking a bit sleepy after their long day. They sized him up but said not a word as he approached the door and knocked.
Glinda looked tired when she opened the door, but she brightened immediately when she saw him. "Fiyero!" she exclaimed. "You've never come up, I was beginning to think you never would." She stepped back and let him into the little suite.
"Are they just going to let anyone in like that?" he asked as she closed the door behind him.
"You're not anyone, you've got their uniform on. Although . . ." She reached out and straightened his jacket with a practiced hand. "There, now you look less like you stole the uniform off someone's wash line."
"Oh, very funny." He turned and swallowed as his eyes took in the other figure in the room, perched on the sofa of their small parlor. Elphaba looked somewhat diminished here, in this ordinary room in the midst of the Palace hustle and bustle. She'd changed into a more ordinary dress, and her feet were bare. Her hair still hung long, straight, and unbound over her shoulders. Her face was pale.
"I saw you today," she said softly. "We both did."
"I was hoping you would." He ran his hands awkwardly over the sides of his jacket. "Was it very hard?"
"To see you?"
"No. To - be up there, with all the . . ."
"A little," Elphaba replied. "But - we're alive. Thanks to Glinda, probably."
"If you're referring to me stopping you from losing your temper at least seven times," Glinda said, "then yes, thanks to Glinda."
Elphaba leaned her head back against the sofa. "Surely it was only six," she said.
"I was counting on my fingers."
With a smile for Glinda, Fiyero crossed to the sofa and stood behind Elphaba, taking her hand. Her fingers wove softly among his, and she smiled. "Thank you," she said. "For . . ." She didn't seem able to articulate what she meant, but he thought he understood anyway.
"You're welcome," he said. He dropped her hand and said to Glinda, "I only had a moment, I have to get back - the officers -"
"We understand." With a broad smile Glinda showed him to the door and wrapped her arms around his waist for a moment before opening it for him. "But don't be a stranger."
"I won't, I promise." He brushed a kiss against her cheek and looked over her shoulder to call, "Goodnight, Elphaba."
Her reply was so soft that he barely heard it. He stepped back out into the hall, noting that two of the six guards looked intrigued and the other four just bored, adjusted his uniform one more time, and started back down the stairs.