7. The Good Friends' Value
"Is it true?" Lulu asked one afternoon when she, Galinda, and Elphaba were spending some time together in Galinda's room. "About you and Prince Fiyero?"
Elphaba grimaced. "That depends on what you've heard." Galinda was brushing her hair, slowly running the hairbrush through her friend's tangled curls, brow furrowed in concentration as she focused on this seemingly very important task. Elphaba would never stop being amazed at how obsessed the blonde was with beauty and fashion.
"I heard he's been here quite a few times," said Lulu, watching Elphaba closely. "Galinda told me what he did for you that first night after your... um... absence." Elphaba rolled her eyes at the other girl's choice of words, but Lulu ignored that, just like Elphaba ignored the mention of Galinda – she'd have scolded her friend for talking about Fiyero when Elphaba tried so hard to keep it a secret, but they both knew Lulu could be trusted with the information. "I've heard that he keeps seeking you out, almost every night you're available, and that he often stays until Madame Morrible has to ask him to leave when she closes at three in the morning."
"That is true," said Elphaba carefully.
Lulu grinned at her. "Someone has also told me that there might be something blooming between His Royal Highness and you."
Elphaba scoffed. "There's no need to ask who that someone was." She glared at Galinda, who didn't look at her friend at all and just continued brushing the long, ebony curls. "But no, Lulu, that is not true."
"Is, too!" said Galinda suddenly, unable to keep quiet. She pointed the hairbrush at Elphaba. "You know it, Elphie. He keeps coming back for you and I don't believe for a clock-tick that it's because he thinks you're so good in bed." Elphaba blushed, but the smaller girl kept ranting. "You told me yourself that you haven't even slept together yet. He likes you. Probably not just as a friend, either. Stop denying it, because it's obvious to everyone but you."
"Galinda," the green girl said impatiently. "How could he possibly like me?"
Galinda softened. "Oh, Elphie. Is that why you won't admit it?" She walked around to sit across from Elphaba, rather than behind her, and she took her friend's hands in her own. "Elphaba, you are a wonderful, beautiful, and sweet girl with big brains and an even bigger heart," she told her earnestly. "Don't tell me he said anything to you to make you believe you aren't worthy of him, because if he did, I'll kick him in the nuts wearing stiletto heels."
Lulu giggled. Elphaba smirked, but then sobered and shook her head.
"He didn't," she said. "I just –"
"I know you, Elphie," Galinda cut her off sternly. "Stop right there. None of the things you are thinking about yourself are true."
Lulu, meanwhile, was regarding Elphaba closely. "You really like him, don't you?" she asked quietly. "I can tell."
Elphaba's head shot up and Lulu smiled.
"It's not so hard to see," she said.
Elphaba bit her lip. "He kissed me," she admitted. "I thought he just wanted... you know. But he said he liked me. He said he thinks he might be falling in love with me." She sighed and shook her head. "How could I possibly ever know what he really wants from me, though?"
"You feel it," Galinda said simply. "Right here." She tapped Elphaba's chest, right over her heart. "It takes some trust and I know that is hard for you, but you can do it, Elphie. Have a little faith. Please. I can tell he makes you happy and we all deserve to be happy, if we can."
Lulu looked sad, all of a sudden, and Elphaba glanced at her. "You will be, too, one day," she told the younger girl. "Happy, I mean."
She quirked a sad smile. "I know. I'm just... wondering when that day will come, I guess."
"It's hard on you, isn't it?" Galinda asked sympathetically, moving to sit behind Lulu on the bed instead and starting to run her hairbrush through the younger girl's dark hair. "All of this. Some of us actually like it, most of us manage to deal with it, but I've noticed before that you seemed to have a really hard time adjusting and it's still not easy for you to do what we do."
"Is it easy on any of you, though?" Lulu asked reasonably.
Elphaba scoffed. "Not exactly."
Galinda shook her head as well. "It's not," she said. "Never has been. But as I said, we manage. We each find our own way to handle it, but you seem to be having as much difficulty with it now as you did when you first got here."
Lulu's shoulders slumped and she leaned forward, resting her chin in her hands. "I know," she said miserably. "I hate it. I'll live, but I still hate it. How will it ever get better?" she asked, her voice trembling a little. "After being here for over a year and a half, I still have to force myself to do this every night and I'm not even halfway there yet by far. Even once Morrible does release me when I'm twenty-five, where would I go? I'd have the money she saved for me, but I won't be able to live off that forever. Not being able to take care of myself is why I ended up with her in the first place."
"It's why we all did," said Galinda as she began to braid Lulu's hair.
And it was. The girls ended up here because they had no other way to keep themselves alive and Morrible offered them food, shelter, and money in exchange for their services. She hardly ever allowed a girl to leave before her twenty-fifth birthday, determined to use them until they were getting "too old" for this job; and she kept their share of the money they earned in reserve for them until that day, too, unless they asked for a small portion of it in order to be able to buy potions, clothes, or trinkets for themselves. In other professions, there would be laws against employers using their employees that way, but not here. No-one cared about the people dangling at the bottom of society – the beggars, the thieves, the orphans, or the girls who had no way to keep themselves alive unless they sold their bodies to men for money.
"Delani feels even more hopeless," Lulu said quietly. "It's been five years and it's getting harder on her every day. All she wants is to be free, but she still has such a long way to go."
"Is she still taking those potions?" Galinda asked.
Lulu nodded sadly and Elphaba sighed. They knew Delani wasn't the only girl of Morrible's resorting to substances. Delani, as well as Milla and sometimes Falin, occasionally bought potions from shady vendors in the back alleys of Reins. It wasn't encouraged, but Morrible also didn't forbid it and some of the girls used such things as a way to deal with the pressure and the unhappiness.
"She's growing desperate," Lulu said, biting her lip. Galinda gave her a brief hug from behind in an attempt to comfort her.
They were all desperate, Elphaba thought as she looked at her two friends. They all wanted to get away from here, but they all knew they couldn't until Morrible would let them leave and they were certain they would never have to go back to this life again.
When she was a little girl, for the first while after having been left at the orphanage by her father, she'd cried a lot. She'd felt betrayed and abandoned and she didn't understand what she had done wrong, although she'd always remembered the words her father had spat at her as he'd pushed his struggling, three-year-old daughter away from him with a look of disgust on his face: "You are a disgrace. It was bad enough when you were just green, but now you've also killed your mother and crippled your sister – are you happy now? Your mother would turn in her grave if she knew about this. She'd agree with me. You are an abomination and I should have done this a long time ago." He'd turned around then and left, ignoring her cries of "Daddy!" as the door to the orphanage opened and she was taken inside.
Frex had purposefully taken her to a place far away from his home and his precious Nessarose. She'd cried and she'd felt sad and guilty, believing the things he had said to her about her mother and sister. After a few years, the anger had set in when she'd recognised that no matter what her father had thought she might or might not have done, she'd only been a child and he'd blamed her for everything that had gone wrong in his life and sent her away. She'd been angry all the time then for a while, fighting with the other kids and kicking at the walls.
Eventually, however, she had resigned herself to her fate, but she had promised herself that someday she would be able to do whatever she wanted and she was going to change things in Oz. She was going to make things better for children like herself, for the people no-one else looked twice at, and she was going to show her father that he had made a mistake when he'd called her a disgrace and banned her from his family.
That resolve, that determination, was what had gotten her through all these years. It was what kept her going through the endless days full of hard work and with little food back at the orphanage. It was what kept her from breaking down when she'd had to leave the orphanage at age sixteen and wandered the streets for months, stealing and begging to keep herself alive. It was also what had enabled her to endure the torments of life with Madame Morrible, of doing this work without losing her mind or resorting to substances as some of the other girls had done.
"Elphaba?"
The green girl blinked and looked up. Galinda had finished braiding Lulu's hair and both girls' eyes were on Elphaba now.
"Are you all right, Elphie?" asked Galinda.
Elphaba nodded. "Yeah. I'm sorry," she apologised. "I just... zoned out. I got lost in thought, I guess."
"Again?" the blonde teased and Elphaba stuck out her tongue.
Lulu, however, was still eyeing her worriedly. "Are you sure you're okay?" she asked. "If something's wrong or you feel bad, or anything like that... then you know you can come talk to me, right? Or to Galinda?"
"I do," Elphaba assured her, a little puzzled. "I'm fine, Lulu. Are you?"
Lulu nodded, then shook her head. She sighed. "I don't know," she admitted. "It's like you said – it's so hard, and now I'm so concerned about Delani... I really feel like she can't go on for much longer, but she won't talk to me. She and you two are the only people I have left," she said quietly.
Elphaba smiled sympathetically at her. "I know. It'll be okay, Lulu, really. We all feel that way sometimes, you know. We all get desperate and miserable and we all break down occasionally, but we also always get up again."
"Exactly," said Galinda. She reached out to pat Lulu's arm. "Everything will be all right."
Elphaba glanced at the time and grimaced. "I have to go. Work night. I'm beginning downstairs in the common room tonight." She rolled her eyes.
Galinda wrinkled her nose. "Oh, me too!"
"Wonderful," said Elphaba, not entirely joking. "At least I'll have someone to exchange weird looks with – especially since Milla is the other girl working the common room tonight."
Galinda and Lulu both giggled and the latter rose to her feet. "I'll go back to my room, then," she said. "I have the night off, so I think I'll just relax and go to sleep early. Good luck, you two."
"Thanks," Elphaba said sarcastically and Galinda added, "We'll need it."
"I am terribly sorry, Your Highness," Madame Morrible said smoothly. "Emerald is busy tonight. We have plenty of other girls available, though, if you want to –"
"It's all right," Fiyero interrupted. "Those men over there are friends of mine. I'll just join them." He flashed the woman a winning smile and then moved past her and farther into the common room, where a group of men was already sitting, laughing with beers in hand and girls perched in three of their laps. One of them was a sultry girl who was enthusiastically making out with the man whose lap she was sitting on; one of the others he recognised as Topaz. She was giggling at everything the men said and exchanged looks with the third girl every now and then.
The third girl was Elphaba, which was the only reason why he'd lied to Morrible about knowing the men already being entertained by her and the other girls.
Fiyero joined the group of men, swiftly involving a few of them in conversation, and soon they passed him a beer and acted like they'd all been friends for the longest time already. He caught Elphaba looking at him from the corners of her eyes at some point, but when he looked at her, she quickly looked away. She giggled, too, he noticed, but he didn't once see her dimples.
When she had eventually been passed on by several of the men and ended up in Fiyero's lap, he tightened his grip on her to keep her there and murmured into her ear, "Any chance I can save you from them tonight?"
"No," she said quietly. "Common room duty means we have to stay here and entertain these men until they take us upstairs. No other clients."
"I'm one of the men here now," he pointed out, but she just gave him a weary smile.
"I appreciate your efforts, Fiyero," she said. "But you can't protect me from this – any of this. Not all the time. You're very sweet, but this is what I do and Madame Morrible is already a little suspicious because you come here asking for me all the time. It would be better if you stayed away for a little while and only visited me occasionally, or perhaps during the day."
He started to protest, but she silenced him. "If you really want to spend time with me, meet me at the library tomorrow at noon," she told him and then another man whisked her away again.
89 reviews! (Although the review count I see in my "Manage Stories" tab is off by one.) I'm sure we can make it to 100 before I post the next chapter - who's it going to be? :)