Elphaba sat, half asleep at the breakfast table. "Damn you, Fiyero. Really. My little brother did not need to be scared half to death last night. He made me sit in there and talk to him for an hour."
"He and Juni were in that guest room alone, Fae."
"They weren't even doing anything! For Oz's sake, before we were married you and I had…"
"They're not as old as we were."
"True." Elphaba sighed. "Where's the mail?"
"Perria!" Fiyero called.
Perria appeared in the doorway seconds later. "Yes?"
"The mail?"
"I'll get it."
"Thank you." Fiyero turned back to Elphaba. "Besides, your brother is almost eighteen, now. And how can you say they weren't doing anything? They were lying on the bed!"
"They were lying on the bed fully clothed, not on top of one another, cuddling. It was no big deal. You are not her father. You are not a father, thank you, and I will not have you giving those creepy looks to my poor little brother who may as well be the man who will marry your sister! She hasn't been married yet, if you haven't noticed, and that means it's getting pretty late."
"The only reason my mother hasn't married her off is because she knows Juni is attached to Shell. She could've been married by now."
"Not happily! You don't agree with the marriage custom, remember?" Elphaba poked him across the table. "Someone can't admit that he's wrong."
Perria walked in and handed the mail to Fiyero quickly. "Anything else?"
"Could you bring my brother this upstairs?" Elphaba gestured to the uneaten breakfast two seats away from her. "He's too afraid to come down here this morning, I'll bet." She gave Fiyero a look.
Perria simply nodded. "Will do."
"I'm sure he'll love that." Elphaba smiled at the woman.
Fiyero studied an envelope. "Fae, um, something important looking is here for you."
Elphaba shrugged and snatched it from him. "Probably just another one of the Wizard's weekly letters. He's gotten to the point where he can't quite remember if he's written one during the week yet." She tore open the green envelope, dusting herself of the glitter that fell off of it. "Sweet Oz, what is with all of this stupid glamour?" Unfolding the paper carefully, she read, "'The Wizard begs your presence at his Palace in the Emerald City in order to discuss some personal information he has recently discovered. Please do not inform the other representatives of this meeting. It does not involve them.'" Teeth gnawing her lip, she gulped.
"Representatives?"
"He means Glinda and Nessa. He won't call us, like, anything that could make us sound somewhat equal to him in status. But Fiyero, you don't think he found out about those few months in the city all that time ago, do you?"
Fiyero looked half-frozen for a moment. "He couldn't have… no."
"I… maybe you're right. I mean, he'd have just sent the damned Gale Force out here and had me arrested if it was that." She said, more to reassure herself than him.
"That's probably true."
They were, in fact, right in hoping that it did not have to do with the Resistance. Upon entering the Wizard's chambers, the couple (for Fiyero would not let go of his wife, worried that, if it did have to do with the Resistance, she'd be taken from him) was greeted with more of a display than usual. Alongside the contraption that the Wizard used for most of his meetings with anyone who did not regularly attend Palace functions, there was a strange cart with a dragon above it, and a dwarf glaring rudely at them.
"What the hell?" Elphaba muttered.
From behind his beloved mask, the Wizard stepped out and pointed to chairs that were set up nearer to the dragon invention. "Have a seat." Much to Elphaba's surprise, he sat at their level, as well. "This, what did you call it?" He turned to the dwarf.
"Clock of the Time Dragon," the dwarf recited.
"This, uh, clock, has only just brought some past experiences and consequences to my attention that I never quite gave thought to before, and I… I don't know how to tell you this, Miss Elphaba, so I'm going to let it do its show."
Fiyero and Elphaba exchanged looks but sat back in their seats. A doll made to look extraordinarily like the Wizard was moved onto the main part of the cart, where a small, makeshift house was. The Wizard-doll knocked on the door and a female doll opened it and welcomed the Wizard-doll inside. Elphaba gasped. "Melena."
"What?" Fiyero looked at her questioningly.
"My mother."
"You knew her mother?" Fiyero looked at the Wizard.
"There's more to it than that, I'm afraid," the Wizard said gravely.
Fiyero felt Elphaba squeeze his hand tightly as the puppets continued their actions. After a moment, Fiyero coughed loudly. "What is the point of this… this… exhibition?"
The Wizard made a motion and the dwarf turned the "clock" away, also silencing the two puppets who were blatantly having sex in a dollhouse bed on stage. "If we were to have continued watching that, it is implied that nine months later, that woman gave birth to a green child, a daughter. That daughter would be, well, Elphaba, your age."
"No." Elphaba backed away.
"Fae…" Fiyero held her wrist firmly.
"You can't mean?"
"I can only assume that this clock is trying to tell me that, well, I fathered a child that evening and… you are that child." The Wizard faltered for a moment.
"Oh my god," Elphaba said in barely a whisper, leaning against Fiyero for support. "But why am I green?"
He snapped his fingers and the dwarf appeared with another mini-prop. Elphaba had seen the life-sized version of this before. A mysterious green bottle with the ominous word written "elixir". "This was more of a tool I meant to use to, well, it was an aphrodisiac of sorts. I didn't exactly consider the side effects."
Fiyero helped Elphaba sit back down. He ran his hand along the side of her arm to comfort her.
"What does all this mean? Why are you telling me this?"
The Wizard's face turned grim. "Elphaba, I'm an old man. Ozma is gone. There is no one to take the power when I am gone. It is odd, though, as I was planning on delegating it out between my three representatives. But I suppose now I will give it to only one. I've been planning on returning home, to where I came from. Would you rule Oz in my place?"
How could he be this impersonal? She was his daughter and all that really meant to him was that there was someone to take his place. Well, Elphaba reasoned, she didn't want to be personal with that man, that hateful man, anyway. No man who denied rights and oppressed the Animals as he did could ever have a personal, amiable relationship with her. He might as well not have been her father, except for in name. She looked nothing like him; she acted nothing like him. Suddenly, she realized, "I could change things…"
"What do you mean?"
Elphaba shook her head. "Nothing, Your Ozness, I mean, your… I don't know. I just meant I could make a difference, that people might, well, remember me."
"Elphaba," Fiyero tugged at her arm, "what about me? What about Kiamo Ko?"
Turning to him, she knew where she was obligated to stay, knew where she must and would stay. Facing the Wizard again with tears in her eyes, she said, "Your Ozness, I can't. I can't leave my home."
"You could rule from wherever you like. If the power was yours, you could decide where you should live. It's all in your hands."
"All?"
"Yes, my daughter." The Wizard held out a hand for her to shake.
Elphaba didn't move for a moment. She couldn't act friendly with this man, father or not! But if only for a time, if only until he was gone… "Then I shall do as you asked, my father," she strained.
Fiyero stood and watched, stunned. "Elphaba's… I'm married to…"
"You're married to the new ruler of Oz, good prince." The Wizard chuckled. "Don't let that scare you, though. You are still a husband and she is still your wife."
"Right you are," Fiyero said, wrapping his arms around Elphaba's waist and dragging her close. "She's still mine."
"On that note," Elphaba said softly, "I'd like to do something. How do you call in the guards?"
The Wizard explained quickly, "All you have to do is call out 'guards' loudly enough and they'll come running."
"Well, that's simple. Guards!"
Four tall men in Gale Force uniforms rushed into the room.
"I would like you to track down Alapedgio, a former guard at the Palace for me and bring him here."
"He's not a former guard," one of the Gale Forcers said. "He still works here."
"Bring him to me." Elphaba said.
The Gale Forcers looked to the Wizard, who nodded. On a mission, the four men left the room.
"Fiyero, darling?" She whirled around towards her husband.
Eyebrows raised, he asked, "What?"
"I know you've always wanted the chance for real revenge, haven't you?"
A slow grin crept into Fiyero's features. "Yes, love, more than anything."
"Almost anything," she corrected him teasingly. "One condition: I go first."
A few minutes later, Alapedgio, in pajamas (he was obviously off duty), was thrown into the center of the room.
"Could you please restrain him so he cannot move?" Elphaba asked, sounding innocent and polite, such a contrast to what she had asked.
He was handcuffed and held in the center of the room.
Elphaba took a deep breath and stood near to him, nearer to him than she'd ever have dared go. He was gagged, and she thanked Oz for that – one never knew what he could say, and she was too close to what she wanted to let her time in the Resistance ruin her chances now. "Hi, there. How are you doing? Good to hear. I'm doing wonderfully. I've just gotten over this little trauma that happened to me a good few years ago. I'm not completely over it, and I might never be, but in the next few minutes, I should be a good way better, even better than I am now.
"Now, my friend, have you missed me? I'm sure you have. I'd hope you haven't been making up for that with fantasies in that sick mind of yours." She reached out and slapped him hard across the face, then did the same on the other side. Tongue bitten in anger and concentration, she aimed a kick right for the groin, and hit her target well. Alapedgio sank to his knees. "You'll never look at a woman again in a few minutes. But you can look at me for a few more, while my husband has his say." She walked to the side of the room and held a hand out across the floor. "Fiyero, I think I've done my part."
Fiyero strode quietly up to the bound man already injured and on his knees. "You took my wife." He kicked him, and again after each statement, "You hurt my wife; you made her cry; you tricked my wife; you…"
Elphaba turned away. The violence had begun to make her ill.
Fiyero saw this. "That is all. But you'll be punished. Take him away."
"We listen to her, sir." A guard argued loyally, pointing at Elphaba.
"And you listen to him, unless I say otherwise," Elphaba clarified. "And please, do take him away. The worst cell you've got in Southstairs."
"Whatever you say, ma'am."
Elphaba collapsed against Fiyero. It was hard to believe, sometimes, when everything came full-circle. "Karma," she muttered tiredly, "pure karma."