Defying Gravity, 27/?, by ainsleyaisling
Title: Defying Gravity, 27/?
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: Some news is bad news; other news is just confusing.
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, plus the posted chapters of this story, can be found here. The previous chapter of this story can be found here.
~~Glinda~~
She'd always thought a letter bringing truly bad news would have to look somewhat portentous from the outside - a tighter than usual penmanship, her address written in a shaky hand with something carelessly misspelled, the seal crooked and sloppy, something at least to indicate distraction, if not actually tears (or blood) smudging the ink and staining the paper.
She knew that was utterly ridiculous, but she clung to her childish belief for comfort anyway. The letter in her hand looked perfectly normal, and sent no shivers of apprehension up her spine. Therefore, it couldn't be carrying bad news.
Nevertheless, her stomach clenched at the thought of opening it. She clutched it tightly between her fingers until it bent and crinkled, trying her hardest to think of what Elphaba would say if she were at home. Somehow pretending it was Elphaba telling her to do things often made them more palatable, if only because they were then imbued with Elphaba's imaginary concern for her wellbeing.
Not that Elphaba wasn't truly concerned for her wellbeing. But in this circumstance she couldn't be, because she didn't know about it.
Glinda stopped stalling and broke the seal on the letter with her thumb.
Dearest Galinda,
Father was very pleased to see your letter. I read it to him directly. I hope you will understand that he didn't write you himself, but he is not at present able to hold a pen. He does send his love, and his wish that he will be able to see you soon. Now that he has survived the immediate attack, there is every chance that were you to travel north for a visit, you would be able to see him when you arrived.
Glinda put the letter down in her lap for a moment and breathed deeply, feeling some of the knot in her stomach unclench, though only slightly. Her mother had not come so close before to admitting that Glinda's father could easily be dead by the time she was able to travel to Gillikin. However, he was still alive now, and that meant the letter was not as bad as Glinda had feared.
However, darling, I can't say that I would recommend you making the trip just now, even if the Wizard were able to spare you. Your dear father has weathered the initial storm, but he remains with the maunts and his condition is not everything that we could wish. Although his faculties are as ever, and he does recognize myself and your brother and your uncle, his body has not recovered from the attack. He can make himself understood - certainly well enough to talk of his dearest Galinda - but as yet he is unable to move very much or to be left unattended. We do not know when he will be well enough to leave the hospital, or if indeed his condition is likely to improve at all.
A stroke, then. Glinda bit her lower lip and read on.
And in any case, dear, with the weather so odd and so terribly harsh, I would fear for your safety were you to travel. Best to remain in the Emerald City where we know you are safe, and to continue with your studies and your work for the Wizard. We are so very proud of you, and your father is quite the celebrity among the other patients and their families for being the father of the Good Witch.
Your uncle asks to be remembered to you and says that he hopes you will return home soon and reunite the family. He is a good and trustworthy man, and has been doing very well for us while your father is ill. He has asked me many times what I know of your wishes and desires for the future, and seems concerned to see you comfortable - I feel certain that, if put into the position of caring for all of us, he truly would consider your wishes and would want to settle you as much according to your preference as possible.
Again and again Glinda found herself incapable of finishing her mother's letters, and this one proved no exception. Not content merely to fold it back up, she crumpled it in her fist and stuffed it into one skirt pocket, creating a stiff lump that bulged from the side of her hip. "My father's not even dead," she told the cat, tears beginning to well up in her eyes. "And she's already listening to what my uncle wants for my future - what business is it of his - if my father's faculties are still so good, he's still my father and this is -" Having worn out her anger, she subsided into quiet and slumped on the sofa, hands folded in her lap, tears beginning to flow freely. The cat climbed onto her stomach to investigate and nosed curiously at the saltwater dripping down her face, ears pricking in alarm at the strange sounds coming from the face before him.
Not as bad as she had at first feared, but, Glinda quickly realized, still fairly terrible. No, her father was not dead. But he was as good as, apparently. If his body had been so horribly affected, if he could barely speak and couldn't even hold a pen to sign his name to a letter to his daughter, what power did he have to stop his brother from doing anything he liked with the estate or with her father's business or his wife or his children? And Glinda, she was beginning to realize more and more, was a major asset, possibly worth more in property or money or power than all her father's holdings or his investments or his business contracts. Glinda was now not only young and pretty and well-bred and just properly educated enough and in line for a splendid dowry; Glinda was famous. Sought after by governors at her first ball in the Emerald City, wooed by soldiers, admired by all - this had never seemed such a horrible thing until this moment. Glinda was a holding that could be sold or traded away for more, far more, than a field or a share in an emerald mine. Glinda could elevate her family to royalty if she tried hard enough - or if someone else tried hard enough for her.
Petulantly, Glinda pounded a fist into her hip and flattened the ball of the crumpled letter in her pocket. Elphaba would be back from the library soon, and for the first time in a long time, Glinda had something that she really wanted to hide from her roommate. If Elphaba knew how close to the cliff Glinda walked, she might think Glinda's plan was desperation, hurry, carelessness. She couldn't know, not until it was too late to hide, not until Glinda had to go away. After all, the last time Glinda had fallen apart, Elphaba had so steadfastly tried to maintain that everything would be fine, had insisted on ignoring reality. As Glinda lay on the sofa underneath the cat's wobbly paws, her spirits were so low that any hope seemed impossible. The Wizard thought she was worthless except for keeping Elphaba in line, the Wizard was paternalistic and condescending and thought she was a pretty idiot, the Wizard wouldn't stop her family from disposing of her as they chose.
She couldn't see any hope. The best she could do was to try to control the means of her downfall as much as possible, and that meant entertaining a great number of unpleasant possibilities.
~~Elphaba~~
Though the downtown library did have a copy of all the latest major Munchkinland newspapers, the afternoon had been largely a disappointment. Whether the newspapers truly did not have any inkling of what might be going on in the province, or whether they were somehow being hushed up, there was no mention of anything that made Elphaba feel any more enlightened than she had been before. The Assembly continued to pass perfectly ordinary, perfectly useless measures affecting the price of crops and the payment of workers building the Wizard's road and the need to dredge parts of the Munchkin River, if it ever melted enough to be able to do so. Trade continued to fall off; farmers continued to bemoan the severe frost. The ordinary animals, cows and pigs and chickens, continued to die and to underproduce milk and eggs. The numbers of poor importuning the Governor for help with food, for handouts of money, for subsidies for their failing crops, continued to rise. The maunts continued to report being overburdened with the poor who sought shelter within their walls. Orphans, or ostensible orphans, continued to be left at the mercy of the matrons at the asylums. Munchkinland died slowly under the pressure of cold and famine and loss of labor, but there was nothing about rebellion, nothing about blaming anyone for the fact that all the Animals had gone and the farms were folding and the people were languishing. If the Governor was indeed in league with the Resistance, he had succeeded in keeping his secret well.
Only one article had startled Elphaba. It appeared as an editorial in a small weekly out of the Far Margins, further east than she had ever been. It was the only article that even implied Nessa's existence, but that wasn't what had taken Elphaba aback.
It was titled, "Where Is The True Heir?"
. . . what the Government has never wanted the people to know is that The Witch ought to be the Governor's proper heir, but he's hidden her because her power threatens his stranglehold over Munchkinland and especially over our Far Eastern regions where we suffer without the hint of any hope being offered by the Assembly. They want us to believe that The Witch is in league with the Wizard, but hasn't the time come to stop believing the propaganda, whether offered by our own Government or by the Emerald City? The Witch's power is given to Munchkinland to free itself, and the mistake of the Munchkin people has been ignoring her and refusing to ask for her help. When we ask, she will give it, and she will challenge her father and her sister and she will free Munchkinland with the power the land has given her. Munchkins, it is time to stop being foolish children who cower at the very mention of magic! It is time we brought the true Heir to Munchkinland back to claim her birthright, and ours!
Elphaba had to read the article twice before she noticed that it hadn't actually mentioned her color, or her appearance, or anything about her other than her power and her supposed birthright. Whether the people in the Far Margins had never heard about her - which she seriously doubted, since the author of the editorial seemed to know everything else - or whether they didn't care, she was stunned by this expression of confidence from any segment of Munchkinland's population. So, there were some at least who were willing to throw in their lot with a monster, if they thought the monster could be an ally.
And what in Oz would happen if the people of the Far Margins suddenly rose up and demanded that Elphaba return and overthrow the sitting government and set them free? What would her father say then? She could only pray that he and Nessa only read the major, legitimate newspapers and not the radical fringe press to which Elphaba had resorted in her attempt to find out whether anyone even suspected the truth.
She was unaccountably trembling by the time she had climbed the stairs to the tower and gone into the suite where Glinda was waiting for her. Glinda was bent over a desk, her hair mussed and her eyes red - she must have been working all afternoon. She did, sometimes, almost rival Elphaba for falling into a reverie when something interested her and forgetting to rest or eat or take any kind of care.
"Elphie," Glinda said wearily, looking up as the door closed behind Elphaba. Her voice was hoarse, as if she had been chanting spells to herself all the afternoon. "Come and look, I think I've found a spell that might let us move the cages with another spell active inside them - so we could move the cages and move the animals and have them still end up inside the cages . . ."
She sounded so weary that she was simply stringing words together, with sense enough but without the ability to measure how many words were necessary and which might be mere redundancy. Elphaba went to her side obediently, dropping her cloak over the back of the sofa, but said, "You're exhausted. Wouldn't you rather show me after dinner?"
Glinda shook her head, tumbled curls spilling from the few pins that were more or less holding her hair back from her face. "There isn't time - that is - Rikk could be returning any day now and we have to be ready. If the snows come it'll be too difficult to move them -"
"All right," Elphaba said quickly. Glinda was becoming visibly upset; exhaustion often made it more difficult for her to control her emotions and more than once at school she had started to cry over an assignment merely because she was too tired to have any perspective left. "Show me, and then we'll both rest."
"I'm just worried about having enough time," Glinda said softly, and then she turned away from Elphaba and looked hard at the book before her, and began to explain what she'd found.
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: Some news is bad news; other news is just confusing.
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, plus the posted chapters of this story, can be found here. The previous chapter of this story can be found here.
~~Glinda~~
She'd always thought a letter bringing truly bad news would have to look somewhat portentous from the outside - a tighter than usual penmanship, her address written in a shaky hand with something carelessly misspelled, the seal crooked and sloppy, something at least to indicate distraction, if not actually tears (or blood) smudging the ink and staining the paper.
She knew that was utterly ridiculous, but she clung to her childish belief for comfort anyway. The letter in her hand looked perfectly normal, and sent no shivers of apprehension up her spine. Therefore, it couldn't be carrying bad news.
Nevertheless, her stomach clenched at the thought of opening it. She clutched it tightly between her fingers until it bent and crinkled, trying her hardest to think of what Elphaba would say if she were at home. Somehow pretending it was Elphaba telling her to do things often made them more palatable, if only because they were then imbued with Elphaba's imaginary concern for her wellbeing.
Not that Elphaba wasn't truly concerned for her wellbeing. But in this circumstance she couldn't be, because she didn't know about it.
Glinda stopped stalling and broke the seal on the letter with her thumb.
Dearest Galinda,
Father was very pleased to see your letter. I read it to him directly. I hope you will understand that he didn't write you himself, but he is not at present able to hold a pen. He does send his love, and his wish that he will be able to see you soon. Now that he has survived the immediate attack, there is every chance that were you to travel north for a visit, you would be able to see him when you arrived.
Glinda put the letter down in her lap for a moment and breathed deeply, feeling some of the knot in her stomach unclench, though only slightly. Her mother had not come so close before to admitting that Glinda's father could easily be dead by the time she was able to travel to Gillikin. However, he was still alive now, and that meant the letter was not as bad as Glinda had feared.
However, darling, I can't say that I would recommend you making the trip just now, even if the Wizard were able to spare you. Your dear father has weathered the initial storm, but he remains with the maunts and his condition is not everything that we could wish. Although his faculties are as ever, and he does recognize myself and your brother and your uncle, his body has not recovered from the attack. He can make himself understood - certainly well enough to talk of his dearest Galinda - but as yet he is unable to move very much or to be left unattended. We do not know when he will be well enough to leave the hospital, or if indeed his condition is likely to improve at all.
A stroke, then. Glinda bit her lower lip and read on.
And in any case, dear, with the weather so odd and so terribly harsh, I would fear for your safety were you to travel. Best to remain in the Emerald City where we know you are safe, and to continue with your studies and your work for the Wizard. We are so very proud of you, and your father is quite the celebrity among the other patients and their families for being the father of the Good Witch.
Your uncle asks to be remembered to you and says that he hopes you will return home soon and reunite the family. He is a good and trustworthy man, and has been doing very well for us while your father is ill. He has asked me many times what I know of your wishes and desires for the future, and seems concerned to see you comfortable - I feel certain that, if put into the position of caring for all of us, he truly would consider your wishes and would want to settle you as much according to your preference as possible.
Again and again Glinda found herself incapable of finishing her mother's letters, and this one proved no exception. Not content merely to fold it back up, she crumpled it in her fist and stuffed it into one skirt pocket, creating a stiff lump that bulged from the side of her hip. "My father's not even dead," she told the cat, tears beginning to well up in her eyes. "And she's already listening to what my uncle wants for my future - what business is it of his - if my father's faculties are still so good, he's still my father and this is -" Having worn out her anger, she subsided into quiet and slumped on the sofa, hands folded in her lap, tears beginning to flow freely. The cat climbed onto her stomach to investigate and nosed curiously at the saltwater dripping down her face, ears pricking in alarm at the strange sounds coming from the face before him.
Not as bad as she had at first feared, but, Glinda quickly realized, still fairly terrible. No, her father was not dead. But he was as good as, apparently. If his body had been so horribly affected, if he could barely speak and couldn't even hold a pen to sign his name to a letter to his daughter, what power did he have to stop his brother from doing anything he liked with the estate or with her father's business or his wife or his children? And Glinda, she was beginning to realize more and more, was a major asset, possibly worth more in property or money or power than all her father's holdings or his investments or his business contracts. Glinda was now not only young and pretty and well-bred and just properly educated enough and in line for a splendid dowry; Glinda was famous. Sought after by governors at her first ball in the Emerald City, wooed by soldiers, admired by all - this had never seemed such a horrible thing until this moment. Glinda was a holding that could be sold or traded away for more, far more, than a field or a share in an emerald mine. Glinda could elevate her family to royalty if she tried hard enough - or if someone else tried hard enough for her.
Petulantly, Glinda pounded a fist into her hip and flattened the ball of the crumpled letter in her pocket. Elphaba would be back from the library soon, and for the first time in a long time, Glinda had something that she really wanted to hide from her roommate. If Elphaba knew how close to the cliff Glinda walked, she might think Glinda's plan was desperation, hurry, carelessness. She couldn't know, not until it was too late to hide, not until Glinda had to go away. After all, the last time Glinda had fallen apart, Elphaba had so steadfastly tried to maintain that everything would be fine, had insisted on ignoring reality. As Glinda lay on the sofa underneath the cat's wobbly paws, her spirits were so low that any hope seemed impossible. The Wizard thought she was worthless except for keeping Elphaba in line, the Wizard was paternalistic and condescending and thought she was a pretty idiot, the Wizard wouldn't stop her family from disposing of her as they chose.
She couldn't see any hope. The best she could do was to try to control the means of her downfall as much as possible, and that meant entertaining a great number of unpleasant possibilities.
~~Elphaba~~
Though the downtown library did have a copy of all the latest major Munchkinland newspapers, the afternoon had been largely a disappointment. Whether the newspapers truly did not have any inkling of what might be going on in the province, or whether they were somehow being hushed up, there was no mention of anything that made Elphaba feel any more enlightened than she had been before. The Assembly continued to pass perfectly ordinary, perfectly useless measures affecting the price of crops and the payment of workers building the Wizard's road and the need to dredge parts of the Munchkin River, if it ever melted enough to be able to do so. Trade continued to fall off; farmers continued to bemoan the severe frost. The ordinary animals, cows and pigs and chickens, continued to die and to underproduce milk and eggs. The numbers of poor importuning the Governor for help with food, for handouts of money, for subsidies for their failing crops, continued to rise. The maunts continued to report being overburdened with the poor who sought shelter within their walls. Orphans, or ostensible orphans, continued to be left at the mercy of the matrons at the asylums. Munchkinland died slowly under the pressure of cold and famine and loss of labor, but there was nothing about rebellion, nothing about blaming anyone for the fact that all the Animals had gone and the farms were folding and the people were languishing. If the Governor was indeed in league with the Resistance, he had succeeded in keeping his secret well.
Only one article had startled Elphaba. It appeared as an editorial in a small weekly out of the Far Margins, further east than she had ever been. It was the only article that even implied Nessa's existence, but that wasn't what had taken Elphaba aback.
It was titled, "Where Is The True Heir?"
. . . what the Government has never wanted the people to know is that The Witch ought to be the Governor's proper heir, but he's hidden her because her power threatens his stranglehold over Munchkinland and especially over our Far Eastern regions where we suffer without the hint of any hope being offered by the Assembly. They want us to believe that The Witch is in league with the Wizard, but hasn't the time come to stop believing the propaganda, whether offered by our own Government or by the Emerald City? The Witch's power is given to Munchkinland to free itself, and the mistake of the Munchkin people has been ignoring her and refusing to ask for her help. When we ask, she will give it, and she will challenge her father and her sister and she will free Munchkinland with the power the land has given her. Munchkins, it is time to stop being foolish children who cower at the very mention of magic! It is time we brought the true Heir to Munchkinland back to claim her birthright, and ours!
Elphaba had to read the article twice before she noticed that it hadn't actually mentioned her color, or her appearance, or anything about her other than her power and her supposed birthright. Whether the people in the Far Margins had never heard about her - which she seriously doubted, since the author of the editorial seemed to know everything else - or whether they didn't care, she was stunned by this expression of confidence from any segment of Munchkinland's population. So, there were some at least who were willing to throw in their lot with a monster, if they thought the monster could be an ally.
And what in Oz would happen if the people of the Far Margins suddenly rose up and demanded that Elphaba return and overthrow the sitting government and set them free? What would her father say then? She could only pray that he and Nessa only read the major, legitimate newspapers and not the radical fringe press to which Elphaba had resorted in her attempt to find out whether anyone even suspected the truth.
She was unaccountably trembling by the time she had climbed the stairs to the tower and gone into the suite where Glinda was waiting for her. Glinda was bent over a desk, her hair mussed and her eyes red - she must have been working all afternoon. She did, sometimes, almost rival Elphaba for falling into a reverie when something interested her and forgetting to rest or eat or take any kind of care.
"Elphie," Glinda said wearily, looking up as the door closed behind Elphaba. Her voice was hoarse, as if she had been chanting spells to herself all the afternoon. "Come and look, I think I've found a spell that might let us move the cages with another spell active inside them - so we could move the cages and move the animals and have them still end up inside the cages . . ."
She sounded so weary that she was simply stringing words together, with sense enough but without the ability to measure how many words were necessary and which might be mere redundancy. Elphaba went to her side obediently, dropping her cloak over the back of the sofa, but said, "You're exhausted. Wouldn't you rather show me after dinner?"
Glinda shook her head, tumbled curls spilling from the few pins that were more or less holding her hair back from her face. "There isn't time - that is - Rikk could be returning any day now and we have to be ready. If the snows come it'll be too difficult to move them -"
"All right," Elphaba said quickly. Glinda was becoming visibly upset; exhaustion often made it more difficult for her to control her emotions and more than once at school she had started to cry over an assignment merely because she was too tired to have any perspective left. "Show me, and then we'll both rest."
"I'm just worried about having enough time," Glinda said softly, and then she turned away from Elphaba and looked hard at the book before her, and began to explain what she'd found.