~Chapter 12~
When I awoke, breathing heavily from my latest nightmare, Fiyero's arms were still embracing my body, and the muscles in my arms had all seized up; I supposed from clinging so tightly to him through the night. One of his hands was running through my hair in long, sure strokes. It was calming and reassuring after the dream I had been plagued with last night. The dissolute, cruel Gale Forcer I was almost "given to" by the Wizard brought dormant memories back from the days before my love for Fiyero. They flooded back in an inescapable crush, forcing me to relive the pain of my nights back so many years ago, when I had been feeling hard, calloused hands on me instead of Fiyero's gentle caresses; those nights were the reasons I had not bled the first time I had made love to Fiyero. I was trembling and sore all over, in part from fear of my memories and in part from the burns my tears had traced down my face.
"Fabala? Are you alright?" Fiyero asked, noticing my wakefulness. I nodded, wincing as I tried to sit up.
"Damn, everything hurts." I replied, falling back onto the pillow.
"You've been sweating on and off all night from your nightmares." I noticed the towel lying near his free hand; he had been awake for the better part of the night making sure I was alright.
"No surprise there." I said, and tried to push myself up again. I hissed from the pain as my muscles tensed and refused to move, along with the stinging from my sweat.
"You fought me when I tried to wipe your face dry. That's why the muscles in your arms are so tight. You kept murmuring things in your sleep that I couldn't understand. Do you remember any of what scared you so?" He tried to wrap his arms around my waist but I jerked violently away.
"No, don't touch me!" I cried out as fear flashed through me, only to dissipate only as soon as it had come on. He drew back from me, a concerned look crossed with something like puzzlement on his face.
For a short instant it wasn't Fiyero I had seen trying to take me in his arms but the face of my first tormentor, a nameless man who was a member of the terrorist cell I had at one time been a part of, crossed with the face of the Gale Forcer from a few nights ago. The image melted back into the visage of my lover as soon as it had appeared, but the macabre thoughts it brought about in me lingered like a recurring nightmare. I was no stranger to the bruises, blood, and torn flesh that came with rape, since I had been fortunate – or unfortunate – enough to hold onto life through the experience the first time around. The man from my terrorist days had made sure I lived through the rape of those nights so long ago. If I had to go through a series of hellish experiences like that a second time around after so many years I was sure I wouldn't live to see my next year. I had pulled back from Fiyero due to a memory-induced shock of pain that always accompanied the image and emotion of the moment.
"I–I'm sorry, I–" I stammered, as I shouted at myself, :Elphaba, pull yourself together! It's all over! You're with Fiyero again, not with the Wizard's perverse pet beast, so what are you so afraid of?!:
"Elphie? What's wrong?"
"Nothing, just a flicker of memory from the days before I had you to turn to. I didn't mean what I said the way it came out. I don't really want to talk about it." I said as I laced my fingers through his.
"I might be able to help a little if I knew what you were talking about, or are you highly against speaking of it, whatever it is?"
I sighed heavily and began to relate the entire incident to him from the very beginning; from the cold, loveless nights of the first time I had lived in the Emerald City even before Fiyero had come across me again, and how it related to what had come to pass in the Emerald Palace. I hadn't the strength to numb myself against the flood of recollections and emotion, and by the time I got to right before the Wizard had cut my face, before the one Gale Forcer that had appeared in my nightmare, I was trembling again. I had to stop there. Between the nightmares and the retelling of the whole ugly ruination of yet another thing that had been important to me it was all I could do to keep myself from the blind fear and deep depression.
"You don't have to go on." he said, his lips against my ear. I pressed my eyes shut against the images forming in my head, but couldn't banish the perverse Gale Forcer's bloodthirsty grin from my mind. Previous experiences rushed hotly through me and would not be ignored.
"I never want to feel or to be used like that again. Nothing can compare to the pain." I choked. "I was so afraid when it happened the first time so very long ago but when I heard it was about to happen all over again I stopped dead; I couldn't even fight back. The thought of what might have been if Glinda hadn't been there makes me freeze up and it scares the life from me." I whispered, flinching as I tried to sit up and failed once again from the sharp twinges due to sweat and muscle spasms.
"Elphie, stop moving. I'll get the oil for you." he said, taking the bottle from the table near the bed. I tried to relax a little; I'd been making myself feel like a small child from relying on Fiyero's "mothering" me all this time; it made me feel guilty, like I was making him sacrifice some of himself for me. I'd always been so self-reliant, and didn't want him to have to keep doing everything for me. Even so, some of the guilt-ridden sting lessened once I felt his hands and heard his voice. I held my hair to the side as he rubbed the oil into the back of my neck then unlaced the ties halfway down my dress to spread the stuff over my back. The more contact my skin had with his hands and the oil, the faster the physical pain evaporated, leaving behind only the empty ache of failure.
"You never said anything to me about what you had been put through. Why? I could have done something about it when I fell in love with you the first time…" he said; his new knowledge of my years-ago rape had hit him hard.
"I didn't want you to worry. I didn't want to have to rely on anyone other than myself to manage to drag myself through life still reasonably alive and self-sufficient." I sighed. "Could we please not talk about this anymore? It helps not to remember. I don't want to remember." He nodded, kissing my hair.
"I promise, Fabala, I won't let anyone hurt you like that again."
"I know," I answered, my underlying fears allayed for the moment. "I know."
We sat together in silence for a short while, one of his hands tangled in my hair, the other laced through mine. My other hand was draped across his chest to rest on his shoulder. He squeezed my hand and I held tight to his.
Soon enough however I fidgeted and pushed myself away; I had always found it hard to sit still, especially with so much weighing in my mind.
"Fiyero, could you please go feed Chistery for me? I want to get myself into something that's easier to move in – or at least to try to move in." He nodded and left my side, rummaging in the cabinets for something the monkey would find appetizing. Once I made sure he was looking the other way, I shed my filthy, slightly bloodstained dress and pulled a looser, more comfortable one over my head. I called over to Fiyero, "Just grab anything, that little scavenger of mine'll eat anything as long as it stands still long enough for him to get his greedy little paws on it."
Chistery, who had been grooming himself on the table, looked up from his work and scampered up onto the bed. He nuzzled his head up under my chin and chittered incomprehensibly; the Elphaba he knew was back, at least to some degree. I smiled at the little thing. Once he smelled food, however, he scurried back over to the table as Fiyero sat down beside me once more.
I laid my head on his shoulder, closing my eyes. Instinctively he reached out to take my hand, but noticed the thin, red line from the Wizard's dagger running down my face and throat. He redirected the path of his hand then gently traced the half-healed wound with his finger and asked "Where did that come from?"
I hadn't gotten to that part in my narrative yet, and reluctantly progressed to giving him the rest of the details; how the Wizard would have given me to the Gale Forcer, how he made the mistake of laying the dagger aside, and how Glinda had committed the murders of both men.
Then I let go of all the frustration, disappointment, anger at Glinda, and whatever else had been lying heavy on my shoulders since it happened. I couldn't hold these things in anymore. I'd spent so many years alone, with no one I could trust with my thoughts but myself. Once I found a way to break from keeping everything I felt to myself, it had become hard for me to hold it all away from Fiyero; he insisted on hearing the whole of what I felt. He was always open with me, trying to get me to open up. He wanted me to trust him. He taught me to trust again, not only in him but partially in myself. When I finished speaking I was so drained I curled up against his side, closing my eyes.
"I know I shouldn't feel so furious at Glinda; I realize that if she wasn't there I'd have been dead or worse. Even so I can't push aside the knowledge that that she was the one who told the Wizard what I was planning to do; I can't help feeling that she betrayed me, and that's all that justifies my anger. And I can't take the defeat anymore! To have success snatched from my grasp by none other than Glinda, when I've previously heard from her own pretty little painted-up mouth that there was 'no way in Oz' I'd ever get her to help me …"
"Elphaba, I understand that. You're entitled to feel like that. The only thing I have to ask of you is not to lay the total blame on Glinda. She's not the kind of person who'd throw away a friend's life just like that."
"I know, that's why I feel so guilty about it. Once again I've managed to hurt someone through my actions. Everything I do or say always ends up hurting someone!" I half-shouted, aggravated at myself.
"Fabala, it's not your fault. Why can't you realize that?"
"It is my fault! If I hadn't told her in the first place –"
"You told her because you knew you couldn't accomplish it alone! How you acknowledged the fact that you needed help and were willing to ask for it is something I admire about you. You're not afraid. "
"But I am." I whispered. "I've been so afraid for so long …"
"You don't have to be anymore."
"Yes, I do."
"For what reason?"
"I have every reason."
"I'm listening."
"The whole of Oz besides you and Glinda believe that I am a witch. They want me dead. I would rather be dead than have to live in hiding for the rest of my life with a chance at nothing better than where we are now. I don't want to be afraid for the rest of my life the way I am now. I don't want to run from the world, I don't want to run from life anymore. I don't want anything to happen to us, especially not you. You do realize that by associating with me you're putting yourself in more danger than you can comprehend?"
"I'm not afraid of pain or death, Elphie. I've felt enough of it in my lifetime. I just don't want to lose you again like I did last time. I won't make the same mistake twice."
"It's always possible one of us will." I said, moving away from him. I walked to the window and laid my hand flat on the glass, my face pained with internal struggle.
"What do you mean?" he asked, following me, cupping my cheek with his hand. I began to lean into it, but then pushed away from him.
"There's always the possibility that – that something might happen to make one of us leave the other. If ever there comes a day that my being with you puts you in imminent danger, I won't be the one to hurt anyone again, especially not you. I'll have to leave you. You have to promise that you won't follow me if I go."
"Elphaba, if you ever leave me like that it'll hurt me more than it'll help me!" he cried, grabbing my wrists and making me face him. I tried to turn my face away but he put his hand back up to my cheek to make sure I met his eyes. The fire in them blazed with a sudden heat I had never seen. I was taken aback by his intense opposition to me and I wanted to look away, but I couldn't turn my head, his hand preventing me from movement.
"Do you hear me, Elphaba? I will not let you just up and go like that! It'll hurt you beyond that you've been feeling since what seems like forever ago. You know it will."
"Keeping you from pain is more important to me that what pain I cause myself!" I shouted.
"No, it's not! You can't stop living your life just because you're afraid of hurting someone! People get hurt, Elphie. No one can avoid that. You just can't seem to grasp the fact that whatever pain people feel isn't something you and you alone have caused." He paused as if waiting for me to speak. I held to my silence, not sure of what to say.
"Sometimes I feel that you must want to live the rest of your life alone because of the way you alternate between letting me stay near you and pushing me away! One moment I could be kissing you and the next we're fighting like alley cats! I don't know what you're trying to do to yourself, to me, but it's not making anything better." The pronounced aggravation in his voice made me want to walk away, but I was too fired to leave it at that.
"I don't know what to feel, what to want, what to believe in! I don't know! What I once thought was real is now sparkling falsely in my eyes, mocking me. My life is a lie, Fiyero, a lie I'm not willing to keep living! I'm tired of cheating death! I can't live like that anymore!" I yelled as if the sound could chase it all away and leave me free to run. "It only hurts more to go on that way!"
Over the weeks I had been living with Fiyero it had gotten so much harder to live with myself. Things in the Emerald City weren't as simple as they were in Kiamo Ko. Here in the city it was so much easier to get caught by someone, so much harder to preserve my anonymity. It was easier in Kiamo Ko to shut myself off from myself and my hurt, to push everything away. With Fiyero, despite how I knew how much he loved me and how much I wanted to love him back, it forced me to remember and retell what I've been through. I wanted it all gone.
The growing silence between us expanded and enveloped the room until we were suffocating within it.
When I awoke, breathing heavily from my latest nightmare, Fiyero's arms were still embracing my body, and the muscles in my arms had all seized up; I supposed from clinging so tightly to him through the night. One of his hands was running through my hair in long, sure strokes. It was calming and reassuring after the dream I had been plagued with last night. The dissolute, cruel Gale Forcer I was almost "given to" by the Wizard brought dormant memories back from the days before my love for Fiyero. They flooded back in an inescapable crush, forcing me to relive the pain of my nights back so many years ago, when I had been feeling hard, calloused hands on me instead of Fiyero's gentle caresses; those nights were the reasons I had not bled the first time I had made love to Fiyero. I was trembling and sore all over, in part from fear of my memories and in part from the burns my tears had traced down my face.
"Fabala? Are you alright?" Fiyero asked, noticing my wakefulness. I nodded, wincing as I tried to sit up.
"Damn, everything hurts." I replied, falling back onto the pillow.
"You've been sweating on and off all night from your nightmares." I noticed the towel lying near his free hand; he had been awake for the better part of the night making sure I was alright.
"No surprise there." I said, and tried to push myself up again. I hissed from the pain as my muscles tensed and refused to move, along with the stinging from my sweat.
"You fought me when I tried to wipe your face dry. That's why the muscles in your arms are so tight. You kept murmuring things in your sleep that I couldn't understand. Do you remember any of what scared you so?" He tried to wrap his arms around my waist but I jerked violently away.
"No, don't touch me!" I cried out as fear flashed through me, only to dissipate only as soon as it had come on. He drew back from me, a concerned look crossed with something like puzzlement on his face.
For a short instant it wasn't Fiyero I had seen trying to take me in his arms but the face of my first tormentor, a nameless man who was a member of the terrorist cell I had at one time been a part of, crossed with the face of the Gale Forcer from a few nights ago. The image melted back into the visage of my lover as soon as it had appeared, but the macabre thoughts it brought about in me lingered like a recurring nightmare. I was no stranger to the bruises, blood, and torn flesh that came with rape, since I had been fortunate – or unfortunate – enough to hold onto life through the experience the first time around. The man from my terrorist days had made sure I lived through the rape of those nights so long ago. If I had to go through a series of hellish experiences like that a second time around after so many years I was sure I wouldn't live to see my next year. I had pulled back from Fiyero due to a memory-induced shock of pain that always accompanied the image and emotion of the moment.
"I–I'm sorry, I–" I stammered, as I shouted at myself, :Elphaba, pull yourself together! It's all over! You're with Fiyero again, not with the Wizard's perverse pet beast, so what are you so afraid of?!:
"Elphie? What's wrong?"
"Nothing, just a flicker of memory from the days before I had you to turn to. I didn't mean what I said the way it came out. I don't really want to talk about it." I said as I laced my fingers through his.
"I might be able to help a little if I knew what you were talking about, or are you highly against speaking of it, whatever it is?"
I sighed heavily and began to relate the entire incident to him from the very beginning; from the cold, loveless nights of the first time I had lived in the Emerald City even before Fiyero had come across me again, and how it related to what had come to pass in the Emerald Palace. I hadn't the strength to numb myself against the flood of recollections and emotion, and by the time I got to right before the Wizard had cut my face, before the one Gale Forcer that had appeared in my nightmare, I was trembling again. I had to stop there. Between the nightmares and the retelling of the whole ugly ruination of yet another thing that had been important to me it was all I could do to keep myself from the blind fear and deep depression.
"You don't have to go on." he said, his lips against my ear. I pressed my eyes shut against the images forming in my head, but couldn't banish the perverse Gale Forcer's bloodthirsty grin from my mind. Previous experiences rushed hotly through me and would not be ignored.
"I never want to feel or to be used like that again. Nothing can compare to the pain." I choked. "I was so afraid when it happened the first time so very long ago but when I heard it was about to happen all over again I stopped dead; I couldn't even fight back. The thought of what might have been if Glinda hadn't been there makes me freeze up and it scares the life from me." I whispered, flinching as I tried to sit up and failed once again from the sharp twinges due to sweat and muscle spasms.
"Elphie, stop moving. I'll get the oil for you." he said, taking the bottle from the table near the bed. I tried to relax a little; I'd been making myself feel like a small child from relying on Fiyero's "mothering" me all this time; it made me feel guilty, like I was making him sacrifice some of himself for me. I'd always been so self-reliant, and didn't want him to have to keep doing everything for me. Even so, some of the guilt-ridden sting lessened once I felt his hands and heard his voice. I held my hair to the side as he rubbed the oil into the back of my neck then unlaced the ties halfway down my dress to spread the stuff over my back. The more contact my skin had with his hands and the oil, the faster the physical pain evaporated, leaving behind only the empty ache of failure.
"You never said anything to me about what you had been put through. Why? I could have done something about it when I fell in love with you the first time…" he said; his new knowledge of my years-ago rape had hit him hard.
"I didn't want you to worry. I didn't want to have to rely on anyone other than myself to manage to drag myself through life still reasonably alive and self-sufficient." I sighed. "Could we please not talk about this anymore? It helps not to remember. I don't want to remember." He nodded, kissing my hair.
"I promise, Fabala, I won't let anyone hurt you like that again."
"I know," I answered, my underlying fears allayed for the moment. "I know."
We sat together in silence for a short while, one of his hands tangled in my hair, the other laced through mine. My other hand was draped across his chest to rest on his shoulder. He squeezed my hand and I held tight to his.
Soon enough however I fidgeted and pushed myself away; I had always found it hard to sit still, especially with so much weighing in my mind.
"Fiyero, could you please go feed Chistery for me? I want to get myself into something that's easier to move in – or at least to try to move in." He nodded and left my side, rummaging in the cabinets for something the monkey would find appetizing. Once I made sure he was looking the other way, I shed my filthy, slightly bloodstained dress and pulled a looser, more comfortable one over my head. I called over to Fiyero, "Just grab anything, that little scavenger of mine'll eat anything as long as it stands still long enough for him to get his greedy little paws on it."
Chistery, who had been grooming himself on the table, looked up from his work and scampered up onto the bed. He nuzzled his head up under my chin and chittered incomprehensibly; the Elphaba he knew was back, at least to some degree. I smiled at the little thing. Once he smelled food, however, he scurried back over to the table as Fiyero sat down beside me once more.
I laid my head on his shoulder, closing my eyes. Instinctively he reached out to take my hand, but noticed the thin, red line from the Wizard's dagger running down my face and throat. He redirected the path of his hand then gently traced the half-healed wound with his finger and asked "Where did that come from?"
I hadn't gotten to that part in my narrative yet, and reluctantly progressed to giving him the rest of the details; how the Wizard would have given me to the Gale Forcer, how he made the mistake of laying the dagger aside, and how Glinda had committed the murders of both men.
Then I let go of all the frustration, disappointment, anger at Glinda, and whatever else had been lying heavy on my shoulders since it happened. I couldn't hold these things in anymore. I'd spent so many years alone, with no one I could trust with my thoughts but myself. Once I found a way to break from keeping everything I felt to myself, it had become hard for me to hold it all away from Fiyero; he insisted on hearing the whole of what I felt. He was always open with me, trying to get me to open up. He wanted me to trust him. He taught me to trust again, not only in him but partially in myself. When I finished speaking I was so drained I curled up against his side, closing my eyes.
"I know I shouldn't feel so furious at Glinda; I realize that if she wasn't there I'd have been dead or worse. Even so I can't push aside the knowledge that that she was the one who told the Wizard what I was planning to do; I can't help feeling that she betrayed me, and that's all that justifies my anger. And I can't take the defeat anymore! To have success snatched from my grasp by none other than Glinda, when I've previously heard from her own pretty little painted-up mouth that there was 'no way in Oz' I'd ever get her to help me …"
"Elphaba, I understand that. You're entitled to feel like that. The only thing I have to ask of you is not to lay the total blame on Glinda. She's not the kind of person who'd throw away a friend's life just like that."
"I know, that's why I feel so guilty about it. Once again I've managed to hurt someone through my actions. Everything I do or say always ends up hurting someone!" I half-shouted, aggravated at myself.
"Fabala, it's not your fault. Why can't you realize that?"
"It is my fault! If I hadn't told her in the first place –"
"You told her because you knew you couldn't accomplish it alone! How you acknowledged the fact that you needed help and were willing to ask for it is something I admire about you. You're not afraid. "
"But I am." I whispered. "I've been so afraid for so long …"
"You don't have to be anymore."
"Yes, I do."
"For what reason?"
"I have every reason."
"I'm listening."
"The whole of Oz besides you and Glinda believe that I am a witch. They want me dead. I would rather be dead than have to live in hiding for the rest of my life with a chance at nothing better than where we are now. I don't want to be afraid for the rest of my life the way I am now. I don't want to run from the world, I don't want to run from life anymore. I don't want anything to happen to us, especially not you. You do realize that by associating with me you're putting yourself in more danger than you can comprehend?"
"I'm not afraid of pain or death, Elphie. I've felt enough of it in my lifetime. I just don't want to lose you again like I did last time. I won't make the same mistake twice."
"It's always possible one of us will." I said, moving away from him. I walked to the window and laid my hand flat on the glass, my face pained with internal struggle.
"What do you mean?" he asked, following me, cupping my cheek with his hand. I began to lean into it, but then pushed away from him.
"There's always the possibility that – that something might happen to make one of us leave the other. If ever there comes a day that my being with you puts you in imminent danger, I won't be the one to hurt anyone again, especially not you. I'll have to leave you. You have to promise that you won't follow me if I go."
"Elphaba, if you ever leave me like that it'll hurt me more than it'll help me!" he cried, grabbing my wrists and making me face him. I tried to turn my face away but he put his hand back up to my cheek to make sure I met his eyes. The fire in them blazed with a sudden heat I had never seen. I was taken aback by his intense opposition to me and I wanted to look away, but I couldn't turn my head, his hand preventing me from movement.
"Do you hear me, Elphaba? I will not let you just up and go like that! It'll hurt you beyond that you've been feeling since what seems like forever ago. You know it will."
"Keeping you from pain is more important to me that what pain I cause myself!" I shouted.
"No, it's not! You can't stop living your life just because you're afraid of hurting someone! People get hurt, Elphie. No one can avoid that. You just can't seem to grasp the fact that whatever pain people feel isn't something you and you alone have caused." He paused as if waiting for me to speak. I held to my silence, not sure of what to say.
"Sometimes I feel that you must want to live the rest of your life alone because of the way you alternate between letting me stay near you and pushing me away! One moment I could be kissing you and the next we're fighting like alley cats! I don't know what you're trying to do to yourself, to me, but it's not making anything better." The pronounced aggravation in his voice made me want to walk away, but I was too fired to leave it at that.
"I don't know what to feel, what to want, what to believe in! I don't know! What I once thought was real is now sparkling falsely in my eyes, mocking me. My life is a lie, Fiyero, a lie I'm not willing to keep living! I'm tired of cheating death! I can't live like that anymore!" I yelled as if the sound could chase it all away and leave me free to run. "It only hurts more to go on that way!"
Over the weeks I had been living with Fiyero it had gotten so much harder to live with myself. Things in the Emerald City weren't as simple as they were in Kiamo Ko. Here in the city it was so much easier to get caught by someone, so much harder to preserve my anonymity. It was easier in Kiamo Ko to shut myself off from myself and my hurt, to push everything away. With Fiyero, despite how I knew how much he loved me and how much I wanted to love him back, it forced me to remember and retell what I've been through. I wanted it all gone.
The growing silence between us expanded and enveloped the room until we were suffocating within it.