Defying Gravity, 13/?, by ainsleyaisling
Title: Defying Gravity, 13/?
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG-13
'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: An Elphaba interlude. Many things are hidden under the palace.
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. The previous chapter of this story can be found here.
~~Elphaba~~
Fiyero looked serious when he came into the suite that night, his face a bit paler than usual. She tried to pretend she hadn't noticed. "Ready?" she asked.
"If I still can't talk you out of it, yes."
"You can't."
He shifted and looked around the room. "Where's Glinda?"
"Gone to bed." She reached for the satchel she had packed earlier and lifted it onto her shoulder.
"Did you tell her where you were going?" Fiyero asked.
"No. I said I'd tell her after."
"All right, then." He took her elbow as she came closer to the door. "I've been thinking, about the guards."
Elphaba paused in the act of reaching for the doorknob. "What about them?"
"Just - look embarrassed and try to follow my lead, all right?"
Elphaba's eyebrows lifted, but she didn't have time to ask questions - Fiyero was already nudging her aside and opening the door himself. She rearranged her expression of confusion and slipped out after him, her eyes on the floor, avoiding the gazes of the columns of guards as they walked between them. It wasn't difficult; this was the way she usually entered and exited anyway. The only thing that was different was Fiyero pulling her by the hand.
They were away from the guards and not quite around the corner into the stairwell, still visible, when Fiyero stopped suddenly, put his back to the wall in the corner, and pulled her hard toward him. She crashed into his chest with all the dignity of a bicyclist running into a wall and was so confused that she hardly noticed he had kissed her cheek, and pressed his face into her hair. Not quite sure whether she was more affronted by his manhandling or embarrassed by the stares of the guards, she pulled back and exclaimed, "Fiyero!"
His hands firm on her back, he looked over her shoulder and rolled his eyes. "They're not paying attention," he said. "But all right, come on."
It wasn't until they were halfway down the flight of stairs that she realized what he had been doing, and that she had responded exactly right without even knowing it. "Oh," she said out loud.
Fiyero turned to look up at her from the step below. "Oh?" His face was back to its unaccustomed mask of seriousness, without a hint of gaiety.
She shook her head. "Just thinking about something, sorry."
"Well," he replied, his voice dropping to a whisper, "think quietly, we're passing the barracks."
"Won't they just think . . ." The heat rose in her face and she found she couldn't quite finish the sentence.
"Probably," Fiyero whispered. "But I'd rather they think we went out of the palace, rather than down this way."
"Right," she whispered back.
Guiding her by the hand, he took them hastily around a corner on the landing from which the doors to the Guards' barracks were plainly visible. They went down a few more flights of stairs, lower than Elphaba thought she had ever been in the palace, and then he was pushing open an almost-hidden door in the wall and they were in a much smaller hallway, with plain whitewashed walls instead of the accustomed emerald and gilt.
"I've never noticed that door," Elphaba commented.
"You weren't meant to. Here." He reached for another door she wouldn't have noticed, only this one was bolted and he strained to lift the heavy beam before he could open it. "This passage links to the main entrance into Southstairs from the outside, where prisoners are brought in."
"Oh," Elphaba said simply, helping him to shift the bolt in its holster as they passed through the door. "How do you -"
"It's set to fall back into place when the door closes."
"Clever." It was dark in this new passage and the walls weren't so much whitewashed as they were smoothed, packed earth showing between the beams. Fiyero fumbled for a lantern on the nearby shelf, and Elphaba stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, holding out her other palm on which she had produced a small dancing flame.
"Clever," he echoed, looking at it.
"Glinda's is better," she replied. "But she tends to burn her hands after a while. Which way?"
"Follow me."
It was good that he knew the way, because Elphaba quickly lost track of how many times they had turned down seemingly random corridors. They all had arrows in varying colors and sizes drawn on them, presumably to show the Guards which way was which, and at certain points she thought she could hear the sounds - low talking, the occasional moan - of prisoners down one or the other hall. "Are there cells this high up?" she asked in a whisper.
"Some, for those not yet convicted," he replied, similarly hushed. "Special prisoners mostly - women, minor political prisoners."
"Have you been here often?"
"No, fortunately."
"Do you know what we're looking for, then?"
He nodded tersely in the flickering light. "There are a few doors I've never seen opened, but I've seen people coming and going from one of them - physicians it looked like, in coats, and people with carts full of cages. That has to be the one."
Elphaba shuddered and followed in silence.
He led them to a door that was set by itself at the end of a hallway, with only a little space on either side. The key he produced slid loosely into the slot, and it took a moment of jimmying before the lock clicked and the door slid slightly open. "They gave you a key?" she whispered.
"No." He held it up into her light. "Skeleton key. Useful thing."
"Where did you get one of those?"
"I made it at my third boarding school."
"Of course you did."
He paused with his hand on the door. "Wait out here, let me look around first."
"Why?"
"Because you can't un-see things, that's why." He waited for her hesitant nod, then brushed his fingers against her hand and ducked into the room. Half a second later he ducked back out again, looking at the glowing flame in her palm. "Can you, um . . ."
She almost laughed. "I think so. Hold out your hand."
He did, but almost immediately curled his fingers in. "Will it burn?"
"It shouldn't, but I wouldn't let Glinda try it."
"Excellent safety tip." He watched closely, his forehead slightly furrowed, as she made a tiny flame appear on his palm.
"Does it burn?" she asked.
"No . . ." He frowned. "I can feel it, though. Do I have to do anything?"
"Just keep your hand open."
"Easy enough." He slipped through the door and let it close behind him. On the ground, under the door, Elphaba could see the tiniest flicker as he moved around the room with his magic flame. After a few moments, the door opened a fraction and he said, "It's all right, I think."
Elphaba edged through the door and kicked it gently closed, finding herself leaning against the other side with Fiyero right beside her. She raised her hand and cast the little light as far as it would go around the room, illuminating a central table covered with papers and water jugs, a few chairs, and a bright, glinting point of light off to one side. As Elphaba watched, it slid to the side and another appeared. Eyes.
She couldn't restrain a quick gasp, and Fiyero was quickly moving closer to her side and looking where she had been looking. "Cat," he whispered.
Elphaba slowly, almost reluctantly lifted her hand higher, and swept her little light over the wall. "Lots of cats," she whispered back. "And other things."
The wall to their left was lined with rows and rows of cages, of all different sizes, each containing at least one animal. Or so she hoped, anyway. Some looked back at her, while the others continued to sleep, but none with the apparent glimmer of Animal intelligence. There was a monkey of some kind she had never seen before except in pictures, a small cage of mice, a few thin mongrelly-looking dogs, some rabbits, and mostly lots and lots of cats, some alone, some four or five to a cage. The cats' eyes created a puzzle of light as her flame caught them.
"Other side," Fiyero whispered, catching her elbow and turning her slightly to the right. "Supply cabinets I think, and food stores."
She moved in that direction, feeling oddly reluctant to turn her back on the cages of silent animals, and swept her light over the wall. The sacks of hay and barrels of dried salt meat were the only thing clearly visible. "What can they all be doing here?"
Behind her a cat meowed, and the monkey hissed as if in fear. She swung around by reflex, but the animals were all looking back at her, and her alone. "I don't think they like noise," Fiyero whispered.
Elphaba cleared her throat and spoke fully aloud, her voice sounding positively stentorian after so much whispering in the empty room. "Can anyone here speak?"
Near-silence greeted her words, the only noise coming from a few cats shifting in their cages and a dog whining in its sleep. Fiyero looked at her and shrugged.
"Anyone?" she repeated, trying to gentle her voice and project the sound at the same time. She held the light close to her own face, so that they could see her. "We're friends, I promise. We want to help. Are there any Animals here, any of you that can speak?"
A cat let out a high, short sound, more a squeak than a meow. Elphaba lowered her light and looked to Fiyero, who extended his own light toward the edge of the row of cages. "I'll have a look around that way," he said.
She nodded to his retreating back in the shadows. "I want to look at them," she said.
"All right."
She walked slowly up the rows, peering closely into the cages. Some of the animals snapped at her. A few, the youngest and apparently the very oldest, leaned heads close to the bars for her to stroke when they understood that she was willing. One small kitten in particular nosed the tip of her finger so delightedly that it drooled down her hand. She was poking her finger through the bars in an attempt to rub its head when Fiyero called.
"Should I come?" she whispered.
There was a pause before he replied. "Yes. If you think . . . yes."
His tone made her nervous, and she stepped around the corner where he had disappeared with some trepidation. "What did you find?"
He lifted his hand and let his flame cast light over another central table, this one glinting with flashes of something reflective. "Look."
She came slowly closer to the table, sweeping her own light over its expanse. The glints of light were from metal tools - surgical implements, she could see now. Scalpels of varying sizes, a fairly terrifying array of saws, specimen jars and dishes intended for - what? And bottles and bottles of chloroform. "What are they -"
"I found these." Fiyero sounded grim as he passed a notebook into her hands, and when she had taken it he gestured toward a stack of them at the end of the table. "There are more in that cabinet."
"Do they say anything useful?" Elphaba asked, already opening one and peering at the spindly handwriting. "It's so dim . . ."
"My eyes are better than yours," he said, taking the book back from her. "They're conducting experiments."
"On the animals?"
He placed the book carefully back on top of the pile, seemingly unable to look at her. "They're not all animals, Elphaba, only the older ones. The little ones are Animals taken before they learned to speak."
"Like the Lion cub," she breathed.
"I think he was luckier than we knew."
"What are they doing to them?"
He gestured toward the table with the hand holding the flame, creating a blurred glare. "They're operating on their throats. Trying to see if removing the larynx changes the nature of the Animal."
"That's barbaric," Elphaba gasped with her free hand on her own throat. "And . . . ridiculous."
"To you," he said. "Lots of people seem to think the only difference between animals and Animals is their ability to speak - that it's some kind of magic."
"Then how do they know what to say? It's idiotic - Animals don't repeat human prattle like parrots."
"I know, Elphaba," he said quietly. "These people - well they're not physicians, in any case."
"Veterinarians?" she asked sardonically.
"Who knows?"
She cast her eyes over her shoulder, back toward the corner and the rows of cages. "Do you think they can understand us?"
Fiyero shrugged. "Could a human baby, if it had never heard speech before?"
She bit her lip. "Do you think they'd notice if we took some of the books?"
"In short? Yes."
"What if we -"
"Elphaba, I can promise you, if you liberate the animals, they will devote some time and energy to figuring out who was down here tonight."
Her pulse was racing, but she made herself stand still and understand that he was right. "I'm coming back," she said.
"I never doubted." He sounded weary, from the plight of the animals - and Animals - or from her, she couldn't tell. "Can I at least ask you to bring me along, whatever you're planning?"
"You can ask . . ."
"Elphaba!" His tone made her freeze. "I - do you even -"
"Do I understand?" she whispered hard. "Is that what you were going to ask? Yes, I do. You're not the one who nearly ended up in Southstairs, Fiyero."
"Then how can you -"
"How can I not?"
"I understand!" he said, and she could see that he actually did. "But you - Elphie - you will be careful? Do you even know how to be careful?"
"Am I in jail yet?"
He looked into the palm of his own hand, and very deliberately curled the fingers into a tight fist until her magical light went out. "All right," he said. "Are you ready to go?"
"I've seen enough," she said in answer.
On the way out she stopped and petted the animals through their cages, even the monkey who didn't wake, even the old ginger cat who nearly speared her finger with two claws. One of the kittens leaned close and touched its nose to hers, and she was wiping away tears when Fiyero called to her from the open doorway. "Coming," she whispered.
When the door was closed behind them, he gripped her hand. "I'll help," he whispered into the dimness of the hallway. "You know I'll help."
"I know you'll do what you can," she whispered back. "So will I."
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG-13
'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: An Elphaba interlude. Many things are hidden under the palace.
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. The previous chapter of this story can be found here.
~~Elphaba~~
Fiyero looked serious when he came into the suite that night, his face a bit paler than usual. She tried to pretend she hadn't noticed. "Ready?" she asked.
"If I still can't talk you out of it, yes."
"You can't."
He shifted and looked around the room. "Where's Glinda?"
"Gone to bed." She reached for the satchel she had packed earlier and lifted it onto her shoulder.
"Did you tell her where you were going?" Fiyero asked.
"No. I said I'd tell her after."
"All right, then." He took her elbow as she came closer to the door. "I've been thinking, about the guards."
Elphaba paused in the act of reaching for the doorknob. "What about them?"
"Just - look embarrassed and try to follow my lead, all right?"
Elphaba's eyebrows lifted, but she didn't have time to ask questions - Fiyero was already nudging her aside and opening the door himself. She rearranged her expression of confusion and slipped out after him, her eyes on the floor, avoiding the gazes of the columns of guards as they walked between them. It wasn't difficult; this was the way she usually entered and exited anyway. The only thing that was different was Fiyero pulling her by the hand.
They were away from the guards and not quite around the corner into the stairwell, still visible, when Fiyero stopped suddenly, put his back to the wall in the corner, and pulled her hard toward him. She crashed into his chest with all the dignity of a bicyclist running into a wall and was so confused that she hardly noticed he had kissed her cheek, and pressed his face into her hair. Not quite sure whether she was more affronted by his manhandling or embarrassed by the stares of the guards, she pulled back and exclaimed, "Fiyero!"
His hands firm on her back, he looked over her shoulder and rolled his eyes. "They're not paying attention," he said. "But all right, come on."
It wasn't until they were halfway down the flight of stairs that she realized what he had been doing, and that she had responded exactly right without even knowing it. "Oh," she said out loud.
Fiyero turned to look up at her from the step below. "Oh?" His face was back to its unaccustomed mask of seriousness, without a hint of gaiety.
She shook her head. "Just thinking about something, sorry."
"Well," he replied, his voice dropping to a whisper, "think quietly, we're passing the barracks."
"Won't they just think . . ." The heat rose in her face and she found she couldn't quite finish the sentence.
"Probably," Fiyero whispered. "But I'd rather they think we went out of the palace, rather than down this way."
"Right," she whispered back.
Guiding her by the hand, he took them hastily around a corner on the landing from which the doors to the Guards' barracks were plainly visible. They went down a few more flights of stairs, lower than Elphaba thought she had ever been in the palace, and then he was pushing open an almost-hidden door in the wall and they were in a much smaller hallway, with plain whitewashed walls instead of the accustomed emerald and gilt.
"I've never noticed that door," Elphaba commented.
"You weren't meant to. Here." He reached for another door she wouldn't have noticed, only this one was bolted and he strained to lift the heavy beam before he could open it. "This passage links to the main entrance into Southstairs from the outside, where prisoners are brought in."
"Oh," Elphaba said simply, helping him to shift the bolt in its holster as they passed through the door. "How do you -"
"It's set to fall back into place when the door closes."
"Clever." It was dark in this new passage and the walls weren't so much whitewashed as they were smoothed, packed earth showing between the beams. Fiyero fumbled for a lantern on the nearby shelf, and Elphaba stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, holding out her other palm on which she had produced a small dancing flame.
"Clever," he echoed, looking at it.
"Glinda's is better," she replied. "But she tends to burn her hands after a while. Which way?"
"Follow me."
It was good that he knew the way, because Elphaba quickly lost track of how many times they had turned down seemingly random corridors. They all had arrows in varying colors and sizes drawn on them, presumably to show the Guards which way was which, and at certain points she thought she could hear the sounds - low talking, the occasional moan - of prisoners down one or the other hall. "Are there cells this high up?" she asked in a whisper.
"Some, for those not yet convicted," he replied, similarly hushed. "Special prisoners mostly - women, minor political prisoners."
"Have you been here often?"
"No, fortunately."
"Do you know what we're looking for, then?"
He nodded tersely in the flickering light. "There are a few doors I've never seen opened, but I've seen people coming and going from one of them - physicians it looked like, in coats, and people with carts full of cages. That has to be the one."
Elphaba shuddered and followed in silence.
He led them to a door that was set by itself at the end of a hallway, with only a little space on either side. The key he produced slid loosely into the slot, and it took a moment of jimmying before the lock clicked and the door slid slightly open. "They gave you a key?" she whispered.
"No." He held it up into her light. "Skeleton key. Useful thing."
"Where did you get one of those?"
"I made it at my third boarding school."
"Of course you did."
He paused with his hand on the door. "Wait out here, let me look around first."
"Why?"
"Because you can't un-see things, that's why." He waited for her hesitant nod, then brushed his fingers against her hand and ducked into the room. Half a second later he ducked back out again, looking at the glowing flame in her palm. "Can you, um . . ."
She almost laughed. "I think so. Hold out your hand."
He did, but almost immediately curled his fingers in. "Will it burn?"
"It shouldn't, but I wouldn't let Glinda try it."
"Excellent safety tip." He watched closely, his forehead slightly furrowed, as she made a tiny flame appear on his palm.
"Does it burn?" she asked.
"No . . ." He frowned. "I can feel it, though. Do I have to do anything?"
"Just keep your hand open."
"Easy enough." He slipped through the door and let it close behind him. On the ground, under the door, Elphaba could see the tiniest flicker as he moved around the room with his magic flame. After a few moments, the door opened a fraction and he said, "It's all right, I think."
Elphaba edged through the door and kicked it gently closed, finding herself leaning against the other side with Fiyero right beside her. She raised her hand and cast the little light as far as it would go around the room, illuminating a central table covered with papers and water jugs, a few chairs, and a bright, glinting point of light off to one side. As Elphaba watched, it slid to the side and another appeared. Eyes.
She couldn't restrain a quick gasp, and Fiyero was quickly moving closer to her side and looking where she had been looking. "Cat," he whispered.
Elphaba slowly, almost reluctantly lifted her hand higher, and swept her little light over the wall. "Lots of cats," she whispered back. "And other things."
The wall to their left was lined with rows and rows of cages, of all different sizes, each containing at least one animal. Or so she hoped, anyway. Some looked back at her, while the others continued to sleep, but none with the apparent glimmer of Animal intelligence. There was a monkey of some kind she had never seen before except in pictures, a small cage of mice, a few thin mongrelly-looking dogs, some rabbits, and mostly lots and lots of cats, some alone, some four or five to a cage. The cats' eyes created a puzzle of light as her flame caught them.
"Other side," Fiyero whispered, catching her elbow and turning her slightly to the right. "Supply cabinets I think, and food stores."
She moved in that direction, feeling oddly reluctant to turn her back on the cages of silent animals, and swept her light over the wall. The sacks of hay and barrels of dried salt meat were the only thing clearly visible. "What can they all be doing here?"
Behind her a cat meowed, and the monkey hissed as if in fear. She swung around by reflex, but the animals were all looking back at her, and her alone. "I don't think they like noise," Fiyero whispered.
Elphaba cleared her throat and spoke fully aloud, her voice sounding positively stentorian after so much whispering in the empty room. "Can anyone here speak?"
Near-silence greeted her words, the only noise coming from a few cats shifting in their cages and a dog whining in its sleep. Fiyero looked at her and shrugged.
"Anyone?" she repeated, trying to gentle her voice and project the sound at the same time. She held the light close to her own face, so that they could see her. "We're friends, I promise. We want to help. Are there any Animals here, any of you that can speak?"
A cat let out a high, short sound, more a squeak than a meow. Elphaba lowered her light and looked to Fiyero, who extended his own light toward the edge of the row of cages. "I'll have a look around that way," he said.
She nodded to his retreating back in the shadows. "I want to look at them," she said.
"All right."
She walked slowly up the rows, peering closely into the cages. Some of the animals snapped at her. A few, the youngest and apparently the very oldest, leaned heads close to the bars for her to stroke when they understood that she was willing. One small kitten in particular nosed the tip of her finger so delightedly that it drooled down her hand. She was poking her finger through the bars in an attempt to rub its head when Fiyero called.
"Should I come?" she whispered.
There was a pause before he replied. "Yes. If you think . . . yes."
His tone made her nervous, and she stepped around the corner where he had disappeared with some trepidation. "What did you find?"
He lifted his hand and let his flame cast light over another central table, this one glinting with flashes of something reflective. "Look."
She came slowly closer to the table, sweeping her own light over its expanse. The glints of light were from metal tools - surgical implements, she could see now. Scalpels of varying sizes, a fairly terrifying array of saws, specimen jars and dishes intended for - what? And bottles and bottles of chloroform. "What are they -"
"I found these." Fiyero sounded grim as he passed a notebook into her hands, and when she had taken it he gestured toward a stack of them at the end of the table. "There are more in that cabinet."
"Do they say anything useful?" Elphaba asked, already opening one and peering at the spindly handwriting. "It's so dim . . ."
"My eyes are better than yours," he said, taking the book back from her. "They're conducting experiments."
"On the animals?"
He placed the book carefully back on top of the pile, seemingly unable to look at her. "They're not all animals, Elphaba, only the older ones. The little ones are Animals taken before they learned to speak."
"Like the Lion cub," she breathed.
"I think he was luckier than we knew."
"What are they doing to them?"
He gestured toward the table with the hand holding the flame, creating a blurred glare. "They're operating on their throats. Trying to see if removing the larynx changes the nature of the Animal."
"That's barbaric," Elphaba gasped with her free hand on her own throat. "And . . . ridiculous."
"To you," he said. "Lots of people seem to think the only difference between animals and Animals is their ability to speak - that it's some kind of magic."
"Then how do they know what to say? It's idiotic - Animals don't repeat human prattle like parrots."
"I know, Elphaba," he said quietly. "These people - well they're not physicians, in any case."
"Veterinarians?" she asked sardonically.
"Who knows?"
She cast her eyes over her shoulder, back toward the corner and the rows of cages. "Do you think they can understand us?"
Fiyero shrugged. "Could a human baby, if it had never heard speech before?"
She bit her lip. "Do you think they'd notice if we took some of the books?"
"In short? Yes."
"What if we -"
"Elphaba, I can promise you, if you liberate the animals, they will devote some time and energy to figuring out who was down here tonight."
Her pulse was racing, but she made herself stand still and understand that he was right. "I'm coming back," she said.
"I never doubted." He sounded weary, from the plight of the animals - and Animals - or from her, she couldn't tell. "Can I at least ask you to bring me along, whatever you're planning?"
"You can ask . . ."
"Elphaba!" His tone made her freeze. "I - do you even -"
"Do I understand?" she whispered hard. "Is that what you were going to ask? Yes, I do. You're not the one who nearly ended up in Southstairs, Fiyero."
"Then how can you -"
"How can I not?"
"I understand!" he said, and she could see that he actually did. "But you - Elphie - you will be careful? Do you even know how to be careful?"
"Am I in jail yet?"
He looked into the palm of his own hand, and very deliberately curled the fingers into a tight fist until her magical light went out. "All right," he said. "Are you ready to go?"
"I've seen enough," she said in answer.
On the way out she stopped and petted the animals through their cages, even the monkey who didn't wake, even the old ginger cat who nearly speared her finger with two claws. One of the kittens leaned close and touched its nose to hers, and she was wiping away tears when Fiyero called to her from the open doorway. "Coming," she whispered.
When the door was closed behind them, he gripped her hand. "I'll help," he whispered into the dimness of the hallway. "You know I'll help."
"I know you'll do what you can," she whispered back. "So will I."