Author's Note: I disclaim. So sorry for tardiness, but I am moving closer towards my university exams this week and next so updates may be a little slow. However, as of 13th May they are all over and I am utterly yours! Enjoy this, I am trying to get the action moving!
Also, I went to see Wicked in London last wednesday. Needless to say it was phenomenal, despite seeing the Glinda understudy and not Louise Dearman. Though this was made up by the fact that she and Rachel Tucker were on the Alan Titchmarsh show yesterday afternoon! Anyone watch it?
Enjoy xx
"I bought the plain kind precisely to encourage your writing to me, Elphie." Galinda said quietly, more so than she ever had before. It was quite plain to Elphaba that there was sadness in her voice. She was waiting for the tears, but they would never show themselves before her and Elphaba was grateful. "I want to hear absolutely everything that happens to you between now and when we meet again. I mean everything-"
"Oh for Oz' sake, Galinda, I know what you mean." Elphaba tucked the finely wrapped paper in her bag. "I'll miss you, dearie." And to her blonde friend's utter shock, green arms folded her in a hug and she heard the same words whispered again for her own ears, which took her smile from her face. Fiyero watched the scene with mild irritation; Elphaba had not shown any outward sign of anxiety at her leaving, and yet when they were alone she would pull him just a little bit closer. He wished she would communicate more of those feelings and less of the political ones. It frightened him because her words and political tendancies felt a little bit dangerous. Elphaba knew this and she shouted about them all the louder.
Elphaba had never quite felt the feeling of reciprocation from a friend, but Galinda's fierce return of her embrace cemented it. "I'll miss you, too. You're my best friend, you know. My only true friend." Galinda sighed, pushing back tears. A lady never cries in public, Galinda. What would your mother think? "Oh Goodness," she said, storming towards an errant porter whose clumsiness would have her tossing and turning for nights on end, "young man! Yes, you there! What are doing with those cases? They are very precious to my sister here . . ."
"Precious?" Fiyero whispered into her ear.
Elphaba spun round and stepped towards him a little. "Did you hear what she called me? Silly thing."
Fiyero let his hands ghost over her arms and settle on her back. "You love it." And they kissed. "You're not stopping me." He murmured, when he pulled her closer and felt the tight warmth of her hands on his neck. She shook her head. "Why not? I thought you hated public displays of affection."
"The public can bite me." She hissed, and touched his lips again. "I won't see you for three weeks, Yero. I don't pretend to like it. I don't pretend that I won't miss you."
"You know, Galinda's writing rule applies to me, too. I want enough letters from you to fill anthologies." She laughed and they parted at the sound of the whistle. "Goodbye, then."
Elphaba did not respond, but turned to receive another hug from Galinda, who passed her bag over and left the porter looking entirely helpless. "Bye Elphie." Her voice shook a little, so Elphaba only smiled in return and Galinda retreated.
"You know she's going to cry once the train has pulled away." Fiyero nodded, his neck craning upwards to look at her from the compartment window. "She thinks crying in public is weak and common." Fiyero nodded again. "So I brought her handkerchiefs." He smirked at her foresightedness and tucked the rose-tinted fine combed-cotton squares into his jacket. "She'll need them."
"I'll need them."
"Oh shut up. You don't cry, Yero."
"Neither do you, but everyone has their moments."
"The only time I cried in front of you was when we fought in the library."
"For which I apologised." She smiled and bent down to kiss him. Fiyero watched her put away her travel case and loosed the curtain ties on the foyer windows. She was meticulous about privacy. She was beautiful. Suddenly, the week they would be apart before he came to get her was not short enough. "I love you, Fae." Elphaba blanched and stared at him and watched panic flash over his face. "I-I mean it."
"No, you don't." She said, dully. Unimpressed, and almost angry. "Don't you dare say that unless you mean it."
He grabbed her hand. "I do mean it!"
"Don't lie to me! You're so bad at it, Fiyero." He sighed, and the whistle blew again.
Elphaba ran her finger through his hair, tucking an errant curl away. "It just felt right, at the time. It felt right. It . . . feels right." She watched him and smiled, though it was not entirely genuine and Fiyero could see he had hurt her somehow. But the final whistle blew and the train pulled out and Fiyero was forced to step back from the door. The entire platform was filled with grey smoke and in a few seconds neither Galinda nor Fiyero could see her. They heard the heavy screeches of the metal and the loud calls of the signalmen. When the smoke cleared, the track was empty and there was a more than usually empty sense of sadness.
"Wow." Fiyero said into the space. "That was so much less successful than I had planned." He ruffed his hair and sighed. "Galinda, do you think-" He turned and stopped when he saw Galinda, her hands over her mouth and tears coursing over them. "Oh now, come on." He said, putting his arms around her. "Don't use your hands; don't you know how common that is?" She spluttered what Fiyero assumed must have been a laugh and he reached into his pocket and retrieved the handkerchiefs. "Here."
Galinda took them with a shaking hand. "Oh . . . oh . . . Elphie!" She cried, and buried her head into Fiyero's shirt.
Nest Hardings had not changed a bit. The sky was cloudy and dull and the Thropp estate still failed in its pretentions to grandeur, at least in Elphaba's opinion. She decided against hailing a cab and opted to walk with her baggage that had multiplied to two suitcases and a satchel for the short distance to her home. Elphaba was not entirely sure Nest Hardings was her home. It certainly did not have any kind of sentimental value for her, excepting the presence of her family, but they had moved around so much when she was little that the connection of place to home meant very little. Galinda told her that home was where your heart lay. Elphaba chose not to think about where her heart lay.
She approached the gilded iron gate and walked through the courtyard where the paving was frosted with ice and she trod carefully to avoid slipping. She was not given to such stupid displays of human frailty, but she always tried to maintain her dignity here, where they were most likely to treat her as a child and ignore her.
"Fabala?"
"Yes, Papa, I'm here." She replied, with the politeness of a child, despite herself. The tall and balding middle-aged man swept over the remaining distance from the door with an unparalleled and new enthusiasm. He had never before reacted so positively to her presence but Elphaba reasoned that he had never gone so long without her and perhaps in some way he missed her.
His own shock at this affectionate display was apparent on his face when he reached her. His outstretched arms indicated that he had meant to embrace her, but he faltered and only took her cases. The need in her eyes frightened him. "Welcome Home, my dear." Elphaba smiled and followed him into the house.
In the evening when she had unpacked and been left to reacquaint herself with her room and the house and she had kissed Nanny and repeated blandly to the house staff that her life at Shiz was good they sat at the table and ate. Nanny joined them as she was almost a mother to little Nessarose now, whom Elphaba thought bloomed a little in a way Galinda would find remarkable. In the few words they had exchanged so far, Elphaba noted that her younger sister was as religiously fanatical and unpleasant as she had thought.
"Fabala," Nessa began, using the family honorific, "have you made friends at Shiz? Or have your cruel words scared them off? You have a penchant for such things."
"Cruel? I'm hardly cruel. But I have made friends. Two very good friends in particular." She said with a sense of pride she was not expecting. "Nanny will have to remind me to write to them. I promised them, but I pay no mind to my memory much."
Nanny started. "And your sharp little brain thinks senile old Nanny can hold such things to herself, does it? You listen, Fabala, you have grown up like your mother and inherited her high-minded ways to boot. Remember yourself."
"Is no one glad at my homecoming? What a shock. I am nothing like my mother."
"You are." Her father said, almost happily.
Elphaba pinched her skin between her fingers. "And my mother was pearly-skinned, just like me? Yes, oh yes, we definitely share the same whiteness in our faces. I have had people stop me on the street at Shiz to comment on my maternal parentage."
"Enough. Fabala, now that is cruel." Nessa said with her faux quiet authority.
"You are my younger sister, Nessie. Don't dare to tell me what to say or not say. I have no patience for your acquired influence. You have none with me, so don't try it whist I am pushing you around all Lurlinemas. You will look ridiculous."
"I am with my green sister. How else would I expect to look?"
Elphaba winced at the reference. Nanny made some unattended comment about her own relief at not pushing a youth here and there while their Father seemed to remember how he had always acted with Elphaba and the momentary welcome disappeared.
On Lurlinemas Day, Elphaba waited in her room, circuiting the hallway until her father and sister left for the services. As they paraded themselves in front of the Unknown God, she wrapped herself up in a heavy coat and boots and left the house herself. She liked the bite of the wind chill on her nose and the crunch of the frozen leaves and twigs beneath her feet as she neared her destination. The air was desperately cold, and she thought that she could have ridden in the carriage with her father, but she had no mind for debates with them and could not have brought herself even to ask.
Elphaba heard the moan of the hymns and chants from the hall and joked that she may be warmer than them, but then they were convinced their behaviour was damning them to hell, so they deserved to be cold.
Walking past the doors of the building she pulled the collar further up to hide herself. She felt self-conscious. However much confidence she had in Shiz, these were the people that were not even frightened of her. They saw her as an attraction and an example of cursedness and viewed her as no more than what was skin-deep. Some, she recalled, wanted to touch her like a relic of some obscure saint, and some wanted to drown her in blessed water. They were idiots, and they were her worst enemies. The memories made her feel small and utterly terrified, so she put them away and pretended that she had her magic with which to defend herself.
Elphaba had to walk past tall shrubberies and grasses to reach her destination. Comfortingly hidden, but lovingly maintained, her mother's grave was a surprisingly wonderful sight. She had never visited it since they day they laid the body there and yet she knew the way. Whether out of her gift or some memory she had tucked away, it was unclear, but Elphaba rested against a tree that faced it and smiled as though Melena were before her.
"It is not an insult to you, mother, that I don't cry at this reunion. I don't cry. I never did . . . but you knew that." Elphaba paused, not sure of her purpose now that she was here. Not even sure she had one to begin with. "I do not believe in an afterlife. I do not believe in much, especially myself, and so I don't kid myself into thinking that you are watching over me." She sighed. "But I should like to think so." Elphaba thumbed a dewy leaf and waited, letting the silence talk.
"I haven't told Father about Fiyero. I want to. I miss him more than I thought I would, and Galinda. I have never had friends before that weren't thrust onto me by some sense of familial ambivalence and I appreciate them. I suppose I would like to know . . . mother . . . if I ever had love that wasn't forced. Did you love me? Did you care for me? Father thinks I am cruel and my very presence irritates him. Nessa thinks the same, but I am insolent to her and she assumes I shall burn in hell. I don't care, you see, about their approval, because they never really loved me . . . as I suppose a daughter and a sister should be loved."
"But we never loved as anyone should. Nothing we did was ever done as others did it. And I guess for that I am grateful. I would rather be different. Sometimes. Fiyero and Galinda have shown me love like I've never known it and my heart breaks, because I wish we had, at least in that respect, behaved as everyone else."
"I can rule out my father and my sister as people who loved me unconditionally. Not you, Mama. I want to know if you ever looked at me with love."
Heartbreaking hope for Elphie! x