Strength

A.N. Thanks for the reviews. Less than 1 week until I see Wicked!!!!!

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters

Elphaba didn't bother asking Madame Morrible's permission to leave school. The way she saw it, Madame Morrible had written the letter to the Wizard in the first place, so it should have been obvious to her that Elphaba would be going to he Emerald City upon his reply. Even if Madame Morrible did not see it her way, Elphaba didn't really care. She was going to meet the Wizard and nothing was going to stand in her way.

This disregard for her classes was a new feeling for Elphaba. As she was gathering up her and Glinda's bags the morning of their departure two days after receiving the letter, she caught sight of herself in Glinda's mirror. Instead of quickly looking away as she usually did, she stared at her reflection. Somehow, the girl she saw in the mirror didn't look like her. It was her, of course, but somehow she looked different. She looked brighter; her face had more life. Elphaba smiled as she left the mirror and carried the bags out of the room. She knew she should have felt guilty about leaving, but she didn't. She felt, well, happy; a little like someone else she knew.

"Maybe Fiyero's right about this dancing through life stuff." Elphaba said as she struggled to carry the double load of bags down the hallway. She was relieved to see a very tired looking Glinda coming back up towards her.

"Elphie, do we really have to leave this…" Glinda's sentence was interrupted by a yawn. It was understandable; after all, it was only 5 in the morning. Elphaba had insisted that they leave as early as possible, to avoid the inevitable inquisition that would come with leaving school again.

Elphaba giggled a little bit, and answered, "Yes, we do. Come on, you can sleep on the way there." The two girls slowly proceeded out of the building, taking extreme measures to not make any noise when passing by Madame Morrible's chambers. The met Fiyero by the curb, leaning against a lamppost. His eyes were open, but he didn't seem to be quite awake.

"Yero…Oz to Fiyero!" Fiyero snapped back when Elphaba spoke. He hadn't seen her and Glinda approach.

"Oh, morning Elphie, morning, Glinda. It is morning, isn't it?" To Fiyero, and to Glinda as well, it still seemed as though it was nighttime.

As her two companions got into a discussion of the horrors of a 4:25 am wake-up call, Elphaba tuned them out and listened instead to the voices in her own head. Normally, Elphaba only heard one voice inside herself. But today, she heard many more. One was going on about the Wizard and how great this was that she got to meet him. Another told her not to get her hopes up, that maybe this wouldn't be as great as she'd imagined.

A third voice then entered Elphaba's head, but this time it was not from inside her. This one was from Fiyero. "Elphie, the cab is here. Let's go."

The travelers once again loaded luggage and the cab drove away. After Shiz was out of sight, Elphaba's adrenaline rush from sneaking out began to fade. She looked over at Glinda, who was already fast asleep. Elphaba tried to stay awake as long as she could, in case something should happen, but eventually she decided to stop fighting it. She leaned her head against the already sleeping Fiyero's shoulder and began to drift off herself, no longer afraid to display such affection openly.

All three of them slept for quite some time. Glinda and Fiyero both woke up before Elphaba. They sat for several minutes just watching her sleep. They too saw a difference in her. For the first time, there was a smile on her face as she slept.

Glinda looked from Fiyero to Elphaba several times. Fiyero noticed this and asked, "What? Is something wrong?"

"No…it's just…I never thought that this could happen so fast."

"That what could happen so fast?"

"That a boyfriend and girlfriend could switch personality traits so fast. Look at the two of you. Normally, you're happy all the time and Elphie's worried all the time. But today, she's happier than I've ever seen her and you're looking at her as if she may explode."

Fiyero sighed. "I don't know about this whole thing, Glinda. It seems a little, well…"

He ended his sentence prematurely when he felt Elphaba stirring on his shoulder. He decided to wait until later to explain it to Glilnda.

Elphaba spent the remainder of the ride talking out her nervousness about her meeting with the Wizard. Fiyero and Glinda did their best to calm her, but it was of no use. Glinda began to regret leaving Shiz that morning. They had expected the journey to take much much longer, but as evening fell they saw the green skyline of the Emerald City looming ahead. The driver, apparently, had taken some back roads as a shortcut while they were all asleep, cutting a whole day off of the trip. The plan had been to use a day and a half traveling, to arrive late on the 20th of November. They would then have stayed only one night, and left directly following Elphaba's meeting. Now, however, they had an extra half a day to kill in the Emerald City. Normally that would not have been a problem, but Glinda was sensing that Fiyero was apprehensive about something and knew that whatever that something was would most likely show itself during that extra time.

Glinda's predictions proved to be correct. Later that night, after checking into a hotel, Elphaba sat on the bed in Fiyero's room, which was connected to her and Glinda's. The hotels in the city were much nicer than the inns along the way to Nest Hardings, with even the cheapest hotels being of somewhat livable quality. Elphaba was once again rambling on about meeting the Wizard as Fiyero began to unpack.

"Yero, I'm so excited. I've never felt this way before."

Fiyero didn't turn around at first. When he did, he replied "Yeah, it's great, Elphie. I just…" he cut himself off. He wasn't sure if he should tell her how he really felt about all of this.

It appeared that he didn't have a choice, however. "It's just what?" Now that Elphaba had heard the beginning of the sentence, she wouldn't rest without hearing the end of it.

"It's just that…well, I don't think you should get your hopes up too much. I've heard a lot of things about this Wizard and how he's not really as great as he seems to be, that he's just hiding behind a political and social mask to keep Oz happy."

"Fiyero, how could you say that? The Wizard has done some wonderful things for us. There are no masks to him."

"I'm sure you're right, Elphie. I just…I don't want you to be disappointed."

"Well, I can assure you that I won't be disappointed with the Wizard. But I have to say that I'm a little disappointed with how you're acting. I thought you would have been a little more supportive of this."

"Elphie, I'm very supportive of this whole thing. I just don't want to see you…"

"No, you're not. Something is different about you, and I'm not sure I like it." Elphaba got up and went back into her own room. She found Glinda to be asleep. "Just as well. I don't need her bugging me for details of our first argument." She climbed into the other bed and drifted into a restless sleep.

On the other side of the wall, Fiyero finished his sentence although there was no one around to hear him. "I just don't want to see you get hurt."

The next morning, Elphaba said nothing to Glinda about her fight with Fiyero. It didn't seem to matter anyway, because Glinda insisted on having a girl's day with Elphaba to find the perfect outfit for her to wear to her meeting. This day actually extended well into the night, and Elphaba almost forgot about Fiyero, almost.

Elphaba was to report to the Wizard's palace at 1:30pm the next day. She wished that the meeting had been set for an earlier time, as she didn't thing she could avoid Fiyero for another half a day. She just wanted to go this meeting and prove him wrong; prove to him that the Wizard was everything he said he was and possibly more. Then she could go about the business of making up with him.

Elphaba managed to fake sleep until 11:30. To kill the remaining time, she indulged Glinda's makeover game by letting Glinda style her hair and attempt to apply makeup, although the makeup did little good on her green skin. Since Glinda was very thorough with these tasks, and because getting the makeup off was a challenge without the use of water, it was 1:10 by the time she was done. "Perfect. Just enough time to get to the meeting." Elphaba thought to herself. She hugged Glinda and headed for the palace.

Elphaba learned one thing about the Wizard before even seeing him. The Wizard was not very punctual. Although her appointment was at 1:30, it was almost 2:00 by the time her name was called. Every other person in the office was called before her, even ones that had came in after her. She did find that unfair, but was in no position to complain about such matters.

Eventually, however, her name was called. Elphaba walked down a long hallway to a single translucent door. She turned the knob slowly, not knowing what she would find on the other side.

When she first entered the room, she was first drawn to a large, mechanical, gold head. She heard a voice speak her name, and at first thought that the voice had emerged from the head. It hadn't, however. It had emerged from a small man sitting at a table directly in front of it.

The man then spoke again. "Please, sit down, Elphaba. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"The pleasure's all mine, your Wizard-ness. You said in your letter that you wished to discuss my sorcery abilities…"

The Wizard's reaction to this seemed a little strange. "Huh? Oh, yes. That. We'll get to that eventually. But there is another reason why I've asked you here, one that I couldn't have written in the letter."

"What is it?"

The Wizard paused for a moment, trying to find the best way to say what he had to say. "Have you ever wondered why your abilities are far greater than anyone else's at Shiz? How you got this power?"

"I can't honestly say that I have thought about it in the past, but I would like to know if you can tell me." It didn't occur to Elphaba that the Wizard knowing such information, without ever having met her before, was very unlikely. He was the Wizard. He knew everything.

"Elphaba, you were born in Munchkinland, correct?" Elphaba nodded and the Wizard continued his story. "Almost nineteen years ago now, I was passing through Munchkinland making my official undercover observations of the area. That was something I did quite often back then, but I'm afraid that the years have not been a friend to me and roaming about Oz is not something my body will allow for anymore. Anyway, I was walking through the area of Nest Hardings, when I happened to overhear a man saying goodbye to his wife. I quickly hid behind a shrub to get a better look at the situation-I had to find out what he was leaving his wife for, after all. Being that he was dressed in very formal attire and was carrying a briefcase, I assumed he was leaving on a business trip. I should have left the situation at that, but then I saw the woman. She was so beautiful, and well to make a long story short I ended up having an affair with her."

"How could you do that? What if you had given her a child?"

"Oh, I did think of that. And I took special precautions to make sure that if I did father a child that night, that I would be able to identify him or her as my own."

"Precautions? What do you mean?"

The Wizard stood up and went into a closet in the back of the room. He returned with a small glass bottle, identical to the one Elphaba had been clutching the night she received word of her mother's death. "This bottle, and another that went along with it, was filled with a special elixir. Had no child been conceived that night, it would have had no effect at all. However, any child that was conceived with this elixir in the mother's body would have been born with a severe pigmentation problem. Elphaba, what I'm trying to say is that I am your biological father. That woman was your mother, Melena. The elixir that was in this bottle is what caused your green skin."

Elphaba sat in a silent state of shock. She wasn't sure if she should believe the Wizard or not. On the one hand, his story had offered the one plausible explanation for her skin color that she had ever heard. But on the other hand, it seemed highly unlike the Wizard to go around getting married women pregnant. She decided to fish for a few more answers. Even if the weren't correct, they were answers. "So what does that have to do with my sorcery ability?"

"Oh, yes. That brings me to another uncomfortable topic. You see, Elphaba, I'm not really the great magician that everyone thinks I am. In fact, outside of you and my personal staff, no one in Oz has ever seen me unless I'm behind that thing." He gestured to the large metal head. "I'm not from here, Elphaba. I was born in another world. I only came here when a strange wind caused my hot-air balloon to drift off course. The people here seemed to be in need of a leader, and they chose me. I couldn't say no. You try telling about 2,000 people that you can't get them a better life. Anyway, the reason you have such abilities is because you are a mix of two worlds. Now, I don't know the scientific explanation for it all, but somehow your body chemistry, instead of being pure Ozian or pure other-worldly, is a strange mix of both, and the mixture causes your natural abilities for magic."

Elphaba remained silent for a moment, absorbing what she had just been told. "Ok, so let me get a few things straight here. You are my father, not Frex. You're not really a Wizard, just some guy that got lost in a balloon and got sweet-talked into becoming a leader for a land you knew nothing about. And you are responsible for making me endure a lifetime of ridicule because of this skin?"

"Elphaba, I'm sorry. I never planned to wait this long to tell you. My plan was to return to Nest Hardings a year later and to take any children born of that affair back here with me. That's why I chose the green elixir. I knew that a child with red or blue skin would never be accepted anywhere, but anything green seems to be fine here, even skin. But by then I had transformed from being simply the unknown new leader of Emerald City to being the most famous man in Oz. I couldn't just walk into Nest Hardings, find the green child and make an announcement that the child was actually mine. I never planned on becoming so famous. That's why I hide in here, behind this big head. I was never meant for spotlights, you know."

"So now that you've told me all of this, what am I supposed to do? Go back to Shiz and pretend this never happened? I can't very well go around telling everyone that I'm the illegitimate daughter of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, now can I? Why did you wait nineteen years to tell me this? You could have summoned me at any time. Your timing couldn't have been worse, you know. My mother just died!"

"I know. I should have gotten this out in the open earlier. I waited until you were at Shiz so I would be telling only you, not the rest of your family. That's why I held off the letter a few days. I was unsure of whether I should send it, seeing as how you're not a child anymore and I couldn't just take you in as I was planning to do. But then I heard that Melena died, and well, I just couldn't live with the guilt anymore. I understand if you're upset, Elphaba, but I would like to keep the lines of communication open between you and I."

With as much dignity and composure as she could muster up, Elphaba stood and replied, "Well, I will certainly consider it. Good day."

A.N. Well, this was sure a long one. And, because old man Winter paid us a visit last night and I have the day off (9 degrees without windchill-fun), you lucky people get two new chapters in one day! I'm not really sure if I got the whole Wizard story correct, but please bear with me. Pretty soon I'll have seen the show and I'll know more about things like that.