Elphaba crouched low in the rafters, scanning the great Wizard's hall for guards of any sort. TShe and the Elphs were planning a raid on the Wizard's palace for quite some time, and it was the perfect thing to take Elphaba's mind off of the encounter with her sister. (Nessa can walk now because Elphaba enchanted the shoes from 'Dear Old Shiz'. They're red now, just so you know.) There didn't seem to be anybody there, or even the Wizard for that matter. Deeming it safe, she fell from the ceiling, using the broom to slow her descent. Leaning the broom against a wall, she started searching around, looking for the special lever that raised the tapestry and revealed the cage. It had to be somewhere…how would the Wizard have put the Monkeys in the cage to begin with if he couldn't open it?
"I KNEW YOU'D BE BACK." Though I thought it would have been sooner than later… The Wizard's voice boomed throughout the hall, startling Elphaba. She whipped around to see the Wizard twirling her broom like a baton. She winced to see her escape route in the hands of the Wizard, at the mercy of the sharp break over the leg that all people are able to do, with magical powers or not. Twenty-twenty hindsight kicked in. I shouldn't have set the broom down…I should have made it indestructible…I should have created some invisibility spell so he couldn't have found me… I should stop standing here and do something!
"Give that back," Elphaba said seriously, hoping the Wizard didn't understand enough of magic to know that she had to pull out the Grimmerie to do anything truly terrible to him.
"No," He said, tossing the broom and catching it again in the other hand. "Not until you hear me out." He honestly wanted to stop fighting with the Elphaba. It just caused a lot of fuss, and although fuss had its uses, something wasn't right anymore. Some sort of growing discontent was forming, even as he and the Captain of the Guard formed plans (well, the Captain formed plans. The Wizard nodded his head and said 'mm-hmm' a lot) on how to fight Elphaba, but she was too smart for their best-laid strategies. It would be so much easier if life just settled back to normal.
"I don't want anything to do with you," Elphaba turned her back, scanning the new panel of buttons and switches she was facing for the cage's lever.
"Please, Elphaba," The Wizard said. "I never meant to hurt you,"
"Oh! You never meant to hurt me." Elphaba faced her adversary, layering her voice thick with sarcasm. "The same way you never meant to hurt those monkeys, and never meant to lock Animals up in cages!" The Wizard stared at his shoes, fighting the internal battle of whether to stick with his carefully prepared script that would gain him an ally, or just to tell the truth for once and stop fighting ethics. He never was big on ethics, but some things he just knew were bad.
"I know, I did wrong. And I deeply regret it, Elphaba."
"I don't believe you. Now, don't move! I'm setting the monkeys free!" Elphaba declared superiorly. "Don't try to stop me, don't call the guards, and…ah..." She tried to think of another sleazy loophole the Wizard could exploit. The Wizard held up his hands in surrender, still holding on to Elphaba's broom.
"I'm not calling anyone. The truth is I'm glad to see you again. It gets pretty lonely around here…"
"Why in Oz would that be? You have a cage full of mute Monkeys. Don't they keep you company?" Elphaba used her most biting tool, sarcasm, again. The Wizard winced. This girl had spirit, and never gave up the way he used to.
"…and I know you must get lonely too." The Wizard finished as if Elphaba had not spoken.
"You've forgotten the Elph encampment." Elphaba baited with the information that the Wizard could use to destroy the resistance. "Wherever they are, that's where I am. I never get 'lonely' with them around."
"Oh, sure, sure." The Wizard agreed a tad bit too wholeheartedly. "Always working, always planning for the greater good of Oz. Tell me, Elphaba, when was the last time you were able to do anything for yourself? Spend a little time to sit and just think? Do what you want for once?"
Elphaba bit her lip. She did never do anything for herself. "I don't need to. I have everything I want." She declared, lifting her chin slightly in defiance.
"Living out in the wild with nobody to look out for you but yourself. You have to look after everybody. Your Elphs, the Animals you set free, your sister…" The Wizard mentioned casually. Elphaba tensed. How could he know she had seen Nessa? Did he have informants? Did Morrible find out for him? "Wouldn't it be nice if someone else cared about all that, and left you free to do whatever you wanted?" The Wizard clamored to remember the notes he had taken from Glinda's account of her last day with Elphaba. "You'd have all the knowledge of Oz right at your fingertips, and the time to learn it all." Elphaba felt shocked by his knowledge of her personal life right before she left it all behind.
"Help me start again," He held out the broom, which Elphaba snatched back possessively.
"You can't just start again," Elphaba said. "It's physically impossible. I can't just roll back the clocks and pretend the past three years didn't happen! I know that when people sing the praises of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, they sing the praises of a fraud!" Elphaba scowled at him, arms folded. "I had thought you were better than that."
"My dear child, Elphaba!" The Wizard tried to calm her down again, honestly feeling struck by what she was saying. She was right, but it was painful to admit it. "I never asked for this or planned it in advance! I was merely blown her by the winds of chance. I never saw myself as a Solomon, or Socrates…" Elphaba stared. Who were these people, why did they have funny names, and why were they important?! The Wizard continued, however, not really caring if Elphaba understood his comparison.
"I knew who I was, one of your dime-a-dozen mediocrities." He kicked his foot at nothing, sorry he could never have been anything better at home. Still, nobody at home could be anything better than he was here. "Then, suddenly I'm here, respected, worshipped, even." Elphaba remembered a show Glinda and she had seen before meeting the Wizard, "Wiz-o-mania." A ghost of the chorus played in her head. Who-oo-ooo! Isn't he wonderful?! Our wonderful Wizard. "Just because the folks in Oz needed someone to believe in!" He shrugged innocently. "Does it surprise you I got hooked, and all too soon…" He swept his strange top hat off his head and placed it on the top of Elphaba's broom. She scowled and removed the hat roughly, not helping to notice how odd it was. A perfect circle, framed by and even rim, with a solid black stripe along the gray silk. Something was too unnaturally perfect about it.
"What can I say, I got carried away…" The Wizard smiled endearingly, trying to work under the hard exterior to the heart he knew she had. She met his eyes harshly, unforgiving of all that he had done and gotten away with. "And not just by balloons…. Wonderful," The Wizard looked off into the distance, remembering the time when he had landed in Ozma Town, the people there living about fifty years behind his time. He showed them common marvels of Kansas, and they clamored for more, called it magic, called him the Wonderful Wizard. "They called me wonderful. So I said 'Wonderful…'" The Wizard noticed Elphaba looking on disapprovingly. He knew immediately what she would have done; taken back the machines and left immediately for back home or the next land over. "'...If you insist.'" The Wizard finished his quote, remembering that he was once rather afraid of the Ozians' enthusiasm, the strange clothing and customs, ways of speaking. But then they showed him the palace. And the luxury they were willing to give him if he stayed, and showed them how to use the wonderful devices he brought with him as random junk in the bottom of his balloon.
"'I will be wonderful', and they said, 'wonderful'…" The Wizard kept telling his story, trying to help Elphaba see that any man would have done the same. "Believe me, it's hard to resist, 'cause it feels wonderful!" There was something extra in the Wizard's song and dance he hadn't meant to put in there; for some reason, he truly wanted Elphaba to be great, to stand beside him and be happy, ruling all of Oz. He knew that was what she wanted, and it would be something he could easily give her. All she had to do was realize how much she wanted it…
"They think I'm wonderful! Hey, look who's wonderful, this corn-fed hick!" Elphaba took a small step back, a little bit of panic blossoming in her heart. Not only was the Wizard a normal man, but he was a country bumpkin as well, completely untrained on how to run a country! The sooner the Ozians accepted the truth and overthrew him, the better. "Who said it might be keen to build a town of green, and a wonderful road of yellow brick!"
"See? I never had a family of my own since I was always traveling," The Wizard even remembered sneaking out of the palace to roam about Oz, reliving his 'glory days' on the roads of Kansas in this strange new world. "so I guess I just wanted to give the citizens of Oz everything."
"So that makes it okay to lie to them." Elphaba said cynically, rolling her eyes at this man's severe lack of morals.
"If you can call them lies, yes." The Wizard explained, trying to ignore the increasing feeling that he was on shaky ground in her book. "Besides, think of the 'lies' they wanted to hear!"
"Nobody likes finding out that all they believed in was a lie." Elphaba said, leaning against her broom casually, but keeping her expression icy and hard. I didn't.
"Elphaba, please!" The Wizard said. "Where I come from we believe all sorts of things that aren't true! We call it history." Elphaba raised her eyebrows. History had to be true; the past couldn't have been a lie because it happened, and everybody knew it happened. You can't lie in a textbook, educate the masses with dishonesty.
"A man's called a traitor," He pointed at Elphaba decidedly. She puffed up under the accusation. She was doing good! Those she had saved, those who supported her! "or a liberator," The Wizard continued, well aware of her point of view.
"A rich man's a thief or philanthropist." He gestured to himself, daring her to think that he stole from the Ozians, the very people willing to devote their lives to his comfort.
"Is one a crusader, or ruthless invader? It's all in which label is able to persist!" Elphaba bit her tongue, weighing her arguments against the Wizard's philosophy. He made sense, even if it wasn't what she thought was right. No. What I think is right. She realized what he was trying to do: mentally weaken her senses of right and wrong and win her over. Make her jeopardize the Elphs and Animals; stop her cause for good by tricking her into believing that what he was saying was right. Stay strong, Elphaba! He can't beat you!
"There are precious few at ease with moral… 'ambiguities'," The Wizard plowed on, pushing his point to the very end, beyond Elphaba's best reason. "So we act as though they don't exist!" Elphaba turned away from the Wizard, trying to force these new ideas out of her head. He's lying to me. That's all he ever does with people, lie and manipulate! She chanted over and over again in her head, like some spell of her own that would make her immune to persuasion.
"They call me wonderful, so I am wonderful!" The Wizard repeated, hoping Elphaba would understand it was the Ozian's ignorance to his true nature that made him into the great figure he is. "In fact, it's so much who I am, it's part of my name!" He held out his hand to Elphaba, certain that after this long she would take it.
"And with my help, you can be the same…" Elphaba could feel it coming, the one thing the Wizard was sure would crumple her defenses like paper and make her join him. She couldn't do it…she had to resist…
"At long, long last receive your due long overdue…Elphaba…" He took another step, hoping the hesitation didn't mean she'd turn him down. "The most celebrated are the rehabilitated!" Elphaba remembered the vision so long ago, the crowds of people celebrating the green-skinned woman. Was it all supposed to come true? Was this the only chance she would have at glory like that?
Was the price truly too high, or was she just over-exaggerating?
"They'll be such a whoop-dee-do… A celebration throughout Oz, that's all to do with you!" The Wizard smiled heartily, ready for her acceptance of his offer. Dream-baiting always works, but in her case, her dreams weren't really bait. The Wizard couldn't think of someone more deserving of love and attention and the carefree lifestyle he had become so accustomed to. "Wonderful! They'll call you wonderful!"
"It must be wonderful!" Elphaba turned back to him, suddenly all smiles and laughter, grinning broadly as she accepted the Wizard's point of view. That's what I'm talking about! The Wizard couldn't help thinking. Pushing the small question of her sudden change of heart out of his mind, he played up her new happy attitude.
"Trust me, it's fun!" The Wizard agreed, letting out the tension of worry, the fear that she'd still run off and fight against him. Sooner or later, she might get hurt.
"When you are wonderful, it would be wonderful!" They said together, caught up in the pure excitement of the moment, finally able to relax and have things return to the normal, happy life they both had. Except now they'd be working together. "Wonderful, wonderful…"
"One," The Wizard faced Elphaba and started to count off the beat of his favorite dance from Kansas, but noticing the empty eyes coupled with the bright smile. Why would that be? "Two, and…!"
The pair spun off around the hall, dancing merrily at their new success, a future together. The steps came easily to Elphaba, who kept pace with the Wizard in the lively dance, Monkeys apparently forgotten. The Wizard couldn't remember a time when he had been happier, when the whole world had seemed bright and full of possibilities, when life had seemed so... unlimited. Life couldn't possibly be better, nothing can go wrong anymore!
"All right," Elphaba said at last as the dance ended. "I'll accept your proposition…" The Wizard smiled warmly. He knew she would, knew that she would do the right thing.
"Wonderful," he said. How best should he explain it to Oz? Captured the Witch, and redeemed her out of his goodness? That would probably be best accepted...
"On one condition." The Wizard was taken aback at first. Was it her place to demand a condition? Well, she was changing her beliefs. That had to come at a price. "You set those Monkeys free."
The Wizard let out a sigh of relief. He had been imagining much worse. Those Monkeys really were useless; slightly grotesque, noisy, expensive to feed, even meagerly, with there being so many of them.
"Done!" The Wizard said, and then pulled one of the torches on the wall. It came forward like a lever, then the cage and tapestry began to rise. Clever, Elphaba couldn't help thinking. Keep the opening switch far away from the rest of the controls. A few Monkeys poked their heads out, not really sure what the absence of the cage bars meant.
"Fly!" Elphaba shouted at them. A few scuttled out of the cage, flapping their wings experimentally. "You're free! Fly!" Some of them ascended higher, up into the rafters, landing on the support beams. "You're free! Fly!" One of the Monkeys made it to the skylight Elphaba had flown in. It screamed to the others, and soon they were all flying out the skylight, into the dark Ozian sky, shadows against the stars. Elphaba turned to the Wizard, smiling smugly, when she noticed another Monkey under a blanket. "Fly!" She said to it, and then pulled off the sheet.
"No!" The Wizard said. He had forgotten that he was in the Monkey cage too. It was Dr. Dillamond, his clothing torn and neglected, dirt caked in his hair, eyes wild with fear.
"Dr. Dillamond…" Elphaba stared at her old professor, wondering how this came to happen. The day he was dragged off in class, he was thrown in with the Monkeys? She should have done something back in class, she could have saved him.
"Elphaba…we just couldn't keep letting him speak out..." The Wizard tried to explain; well aware his argument must sound pathetic with the hard truth of Dr. Dillamond sitting in front of her.
"Dr. Dillamond, are you all right?" The Goat shied away, his thin body tensing to being so close to a person. "Don't be afraid. It's me, Elphaba." Elphaba tried to reassure him, but he didn't look at her.
"Ba-a-a-a-a," He said stupidly, gazing around at the outside of the cage in wonder, trying to understand what things meant.
"Doctor, don't you remember me?" Elphaba spoke calmly, using the same voice she did with the mute Animals she rescued from cages.
"Ba-a-a-a-a!" He said again, noticing the Oz head and backing away from it. Elphaba put one arm around her professor's neck, almost whispering in his ear.
"Can't you speak?"
"Ba-a-a-a-a…" Dr. Dillamond tried to pull away from Elphaba, his weak legs trembling with the effort. Elphaba looked back up at the Wizard. I've lost her again. He thought as she stood up and faced him, meeting exactly at eye level.
"I had never believed you for a clock-tick," Elphaba said, advancing on the Wizard. She could feel the electricity building up in her body again, but she forced to keep it down. "The people will see the truth, none of this propoganda, and I will fight you until the day I die!" The Wizard retreated behind his Oz head, speaking into the microphone:
"GUARDS! GUARDS!" The main door burst open, heavy boots sending footsteps ringing throughout the halls. Elphaba spun around, broom held high to defend any attack-
And she stopped short.
There were three men, two with spears and the Captain of the Guard, Fiyero.
He had a gun trained on her.
D'Arvit! By telling this from beginning to end, everybody missed crucial foreshadowing! Elphaba is really the illegitimate child of Frex's wife and a traveling salesman, but Frex didn't know that. Either way, I just love torturing you all, it's so much fun. Next is the rest of the scene I cut off for the sake of making a full chapter out of four lines of singing. Review and it might come quicker. Hopefully. I have -most- of Sunday to work on it, and it should be pretty easy. Maybe use a bit of Monday to flesh it out, I know how much you love character's thoughts, the stuff not easily shown on stage without constant monologues. Keep reading and writing! -LostOzian.