Disclaimer: I don't own 'Wicked', tra la la...
Summary: Nessa thinks about why she and Boq are perfect for one another. One-sided Bessa drabble
A/N: This is a Shiz-era, pre-Lion-cub incident but post 'Dancing through Life' fic, just so you guys know
Same
We are sitting in a cafe off campus when the realisation comes to me.
All the usual people are there. Elphaba, her roommate Galinda, Galinda's new significant other, Fiyero, those two idiots Crope and Tibbett, that horrible Avaric, and Boq. It's raining outside and we're all soaked through, so Galinda suggests that it would be a 'lovely' idea to come in here for something warm to drink. The waitress, a petite, dark-haired woman with quick, decisive steps, brings over a tray laden with drinks. You can tell, I think, what sort of people we are from the drinks she hands out. Elphaba's is black coffee, bitter and dark. Galinda is drinking some kind of frothy strawberry mocha with heaps of cream. I order tea, though I don't know exactly what that's meant to convey about me, I must say.
Boq orders tea, too. We are the same. I sit there, pondering this, while everyone talks and laughs around me. Yes, I realise, we are the same. We both slip by unnoticed in the heat of life. Everyone else has their role to play, but neither of us has been cast yet. I have seen the way he lingers on the sidelines – just like me.
Elphaba is the freedom-fighter, the clever one, the oddball with her vivid skin-colour. Galinda is the most popular girl in all of Shiz, a status most other girls would kill for. Fiyero is like Galinda, always at the very centre of the social whirl, but while popularity is something Galinda is almost passionate about, Fiyero seems to take it all for granted, only interested in having a good time. Similarly, Crope and Tibbett are the jokers, the tricksters, the comic double act. They're the ones everybody laughs at, but they just laugh along with everyone, unfazed. Avaric is the smooth- talker, the other It-boy, but he's the one everyone's scared of.
You see, they all have an identity – a very exact identity. Everyone knows who they are.
Neither Boq nor I are like that. Yes, I am Elphaba's sister, the girl in the wheelchair, but I do not have an identity of my own. Nor, as I see it, does Boq. Not that I know of, anyway. Like me, he's not really joining in the conversation, but rather staring into space with a somewhat abstracted expression. Daydreaming, I expect. Could it be that he is daydreaming about me? After all, he asked me to the dance at the Ozdust, didn't he? He said I was beautiful. And more importantly, I felt like he meant it. People tell me I'm beautiful all the time, but usually, I suspect, they're lying to appease me, because I'm in this chair.
I believe that he has seen into my heart. I believe that he has seen we are the same. He knows we are both lost souls, drifting on the outskirts of a life that is too big and bright for either of us.
I know that he knows this. I know it. And it is only a matter of time before we become a pair. Then, I fancy, we will have an identity. We will be Nessa-and-Boq, the most devoted couple in all of Shiz University.
We will still be the same, only for a different reason. Not because we are alone, but because we are together.