TrebledWriter: What you said about their asses not being hats made me laugh harder than it probably should have.
Miranda: You'll have to wait for that a while, but they'll get one in the end! *smirks*
Fae'sFlower: Mum and Dad always did that to me and my sister, too - pretend-cry. We couldn't STAND it. The moment they did, we instantly ran over to hug and comfort them, haha.
5. Fighting
"You are certain?" Oscar asked, worried; and Fiyero nodded. He was pacing up and down the mayor's office, with both Oscar and Galinda's concerned eyes following his movements. The blonde was wearing a green dress today, her hair pinned up and make-up accentuating her best facial features. She was pretty. Not even that long ago, Fiyero would have charmed her outrageously and he would make sure to end up in her bed within two days at most, boyfriend or no boyfriend. Now, however, he merely stuck to noticing her beauty – which, really, was hard to overlook for anyone – and some innocent flirting. Perhaps he had grown up a little after all over the past few years.
"I'm certain," he said in response to Oscar's question. "I saw him. I didn't see who it was – he was dressed in all black and he disappeared into the shadows when he noticed I had spotted him. I don't trust it. He didn't make a move, he was just watching her, but there's definitely something fishy going on."
"Fishy," Galinda echoed. She exchanged a glance with Oscar. "You don't suppose...?"
Oscar shook his head. "Morrible has been banned from the City," he pointed out. "I'd have received word if she had returned. Besides, she's a woman – why would she have a man following Elphaba around?"
Galinda shrugged. "To threaten her? Intimidate her?" she suggested. "The man could be working with Morrible even if she isn't in the City herself."
"Morrible?" Fiyero asked, scrunching up his nose. "You mean your former PA?"
He didn't know much about Madame Morrible – only that she had been working for Oscar a long time ago, but he found out she had an agenda of her own. Apparently he had confronted her, she had attacked him, and she'd been arrested for assault – or that was what Fiyero had heard, anyway. It had been quite the scandal and all of Oz had heard about it; Fiyero's parents had been talking about it a lot back when it had happened.
Oscar nodded at the younger man. "Yes. She was always interested in Elphaba." He frowned. "I don't think she is behind all of this, though."
"Why was she interested in Elphaba?" Fiyero asked curiously.
Oscar replied, "Because she was my daughter, although I didn't know that yet back then."
Fiyero must have looked confused, because Oscar elaborated without the guard needing to ask. "Elphaba's mother, Melena, was a woman I fell in love with during some travels in my younger days. I never knew she was pregnant with Elphaba; apparently, Melena did write to me, but by then I had already started my political campaign and Madame Morrible, who managed most of my campaign for me at the time, intercepted those letters and hid them, reasoning they wouldn't be beneficial for my reputation."
Fiyero could understand that. Image was everything in the world of politics and business, after all. He of all people could know.
"Melena passed away in childbirth with Elphaba's younger half-sister Nessarose," the mayor continued, "and Elphaba and Nessarose were both raised by Nessarose's father and Melena's husband, Frexspar Thropp, who is a priest in Munchkinland. Frexspar never knew he wasn't really Elphaba's father, I think – she doesn't like to talk about her childhood, so I don't know for sure."
"How did she find out that you are her real father, then?" Fiyero asked, his curiosity growing with every bit of information he received; but Galinda interjected this time.
"I think this is Elphie's story to tell, Oscar," she said sharply and he closed his mouth, nodding.
"Of course. I'm sorry, Fiyero," he apologised. "You'll have to ask Elphaba."
He sighed, grumbling under his breath. "I might as well as the statue in the hall, then. There's no way she'll ever tell me. She won't tell me anything about her personal life."
"I'm sure she has her reasons," said Oscar.
Galinda smiled. "She's just a very private person," she said. "I'm sorry, Fiyero. I do wish we could tell you these things, but it's not our place to tell. Elphie would kill us."
Despite his disappointment, Fiyero could understand that the green woman wouldn't like her friend and father telling her life story to a relative stranger. Still, this whole conversation had made him immensely curious.
"What do you suggest we do about the creep following her around?" the blonde girl asked and Fiyero cocked his head a little to the side, thinking.
"Nothing yet," he said. "I need to find out who he is. I'll continue to accompany Elphaba every time she leaves the Palace and see if I can catch sight of our culprit again – perhaps even snap a picture of him. Maybe I can figure out his identity then."
Galinda and Oscar both nodded. "Good luck with that," said Oscar.
Galinda giggled. "With tracking down our guy or with continuously accompanying Elphaba?" she asked, her blue eyes twinkling. "Because I don't know which of those two is going to be harder on Fiyero here."
Unfortunately, Fiyero suspected that she was right.
Fiyero was in his office the next day, reading the notes and letters Elphaba's stalker had sent her, frowning. Galinda had given them to him at his request; he was hoping to find some clues as to the writer's identity in there. So far, he hadn't found anything other than that the writer seemed to be male. The handwriting was, as Galinda had told him before, impossible to lead back to a single man, since it seemed to differ with each sentence. The content of some of the letters was sickening, as Galinda had also already told him before. Someone was clearly obsessed with the deputy mayor. He'd seen a lot of strange things since he started working as a bodyguard, but even he felt a little nauseous upon reading the things this man had to say to Elphaba.
There was one thing the letters confirmed and that was that the man he'd seen following Elphaba around the day before had to be the same guy who had written these letters. The writer of the letters mentioned following her a couple of times and Fiyero thought it was highly unlikely that Elphaba had multiple stalkers. Perhaps that knowledge could come in handy, although he wasn't sure how. The only way to really achieve anything would be to catch and confront the guy in the act of following Elphaba, but Oz knew when that might happen.
He looked up when he heard footsteps and Xalo came bounding into the room, looking excited. "Fiyero! Do you have time to teach me about fighting now? Please? It's Sunday, so I don't have lessons, and I'm bored and I want to learn how to fight!"
The bodyguard chuckled and put the letters aside, rising to his feet. "Sure, kid. Let's find a place where we can practise, shall we?"
Xalo nodded eagerly. "We could go outside," he said. "The weather is nice and Mum doesn't want me practising inside anymore." He reddened a little and Fiyero grinned knowingly.
"Did you break something?"
"Yeah," the boy admitted. "I knocked over the TV when Duran was teaching me some basic things about fighting a while ago. Duran is a friend of Mum's," he explained upon seeing the confused look on Fiyero's face. "They went to university together. He's really nice – he's in the military now, so he also knows a lot about fighting."
The sandy-haired man followed Xalo through the Palace. Even after nearly a week, he still felt like he was lost all the time here and when Xalo walked into a large room filled with books, he looked around, bewildered.
"This doesn't look like the garden."
Xalo laughed at him. "It's just quicker to go there through the library from your office." He wove between the countless bookshelves and descended a flight of stairs, supposedly taking them to the second floor of the building. Or was it the first? How enormous was this building – not to mention this library?
They rounded a corner and walked past more bookshelves before Fiyero suddenly stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Elphaba curled up in an armchair by a fireplace in the corner, reading a book. She had a pair of glasses perched on her nose and there was a softness to her face that he never saw when she looked at him.
"Hi, Mum!" Xalo said brightly and she looked up from her book then, first smiling at her son and then scowling at Fiyero. The bodyguard made a face. Softness? He must have seen it wrong. There was nothing soft about this woman whatsoever.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"Fiyero is going to teach me how to fight," Xalo said happily. "We're just going outside." He looked sheepish and Elphaba laughed softly.
"Good." She peered at Fiyero again over her glasses. "Be careful," she warned him. "If you hurt my son again..."
Fiyero snorted. "What do you think I am? Some kind of savage?"
"You threw him to the ground within ten minutes of first arriving here at the Palace," she pointed out to him. "You tell me."
He wisely kept his mouth shut at that and Xalo said, "Oh, Mum, I almost forgot. Auntie Galinda said that there was a call for you from Auntie Nessa. She asked you to call her back."
Elphaba's face lit up and she closed her book, quickly rising to her feet. "Thanks, sweetie. Have fun, you two!" She hurriedly left and Fiyero glanced at the boy beside him.
"Auntie Nessa?" he asked, figuring this must be about Elphaba's half-sister Nessarose and wanting to know more. He'd never be able to ask Elphaba about these details of her personal life, but that didn't mean he wouldn't find out about them at all.
"She lives in Munchkinland," Xalo explained as he continued his way through the library. They went through a door at the back and emerged in one of the hallways on the second (or was it the first?) floor, after which they took a lift down to the ground floor. Emerging from the lift, the boy turned right and then left and opened a door that led to a patio in the back gardens of the building – but by that time Fiyero already had no idea anymore how they had gotten there. The gardens were beautiful, though, well-kempt and large, with flowers, bushes, trees, fountains, and gravel paths everywhere. "She's nice, but we don't see her a lot. She's in a wheelchair and she lives with the Big, Bad Bully."
Fiyero choked. "With whom?!"
Xalo grinned sheepishly. "That's what Auntie Galinda calls him. He's Mum's father, but he's not really her father. Grandpa is her real father, but she grew up with Auntie Nessa and the Big, Bad – I mean, Frexspar Thropp, in Munchkinland."
"Do you ever see him?" Fiyero asked.
"Mr Thropp? Sometimes," said Xalo. "We've been to Munchkinland once or twice, but I only remember one time a couple of years ago. He's scary. Usually Auntie Nessa comes out to see us here in the Emerald City, but we only see her once every year or every two years because Mr Thropp doesn't want her to see Mum too often. He's really mean – he always says that Mum is a bad influence on Auntie Nessa."
Somewhere, deep down, Fiyero felt bad for Elphaba. It couldn't have been easy for her to grow up with a father like that, and then her green skin and her little sister in a wheelchair...
"Mum is very sad about that," Xalo continued as they moved farther out into the gardens, towards a patch of grass near a few trees at the back, "because she really loves Auntie Nessa and she has taken care of her for a long time, because of Auntie Nessa's wheelchair, but now she doesn't see her often. They just call and email. Like I said, Mr Thropp is really mean. That's why Auntie Galinda calls him the Big, Bad Bully."
Fiyero nodded seriously. "I see."
He spent the next hour or so teaching little Xalo some basic fighting moves and stances, showing him how best to throw a punch as well as block one. Once, when the boy tried to block one of Fiyero's moves, the older man suddenly found himself flung back by an invisible force and he landed hard on his back in the grass, the air knocked out of him.
He gasped and Xalo's face soon appeared in his line of vision, looking anxious.
"Fiyero? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that," he said, chewing his lower lip. "I can't always control it, especially when I get upset or excited... I'm sorry."
"That's okay," Fiyero managed breathlessly, slowly pushing himself into a sitting position. Well, this was humiliating. Knocked to the ground by an eight-year-old. He'd suspected the twins to have magic of their own since he'd seen the sparks of light around Fawn's hands on his first day here, but he hadn't seen any evidence of it since. How powerful were these kids? And if little Xalo could already do this to him by accident, he shuddered to think about the magical powers Elphaba had to possess and the things she could do.
Xalo still looked worried and Fiyero gave him a weak grin. "Really, kid, it's fine. Consider it payback for the day I arrived," he panted and Xalo chuckled, nodding.
"Okay."
By the time they went back inside a while later, Xalo was tired, but beaming.
"Thanks, Fiyero," he said to the guard as they re-entered the library. "For teaching me."
"You're welcome, buddy." Fiyero held up his hand and Xalo grinned as he gave him a high-five. He then dashed off to find his sister to play with.
Fiyero spun around slowly, trying to orientate himself. If he could only find the staircase leading back up to the upper floor of the library... but where was it again?
He ended up roaming the library for a while before he finally located the staircase again and then nearly jumped out of his skin when he suddenly found Elphaba sitting there, on the upper floor this time, once again with her nose buried in a book. "Oz, you scared me."
She glanced up only momentarily before returning to her book and he asked, "Do you like to read?"
"No," she deadpanned without looking up from the pages. "I'm bored to tears right now. Can't you tell?"
All right, he supposed he had deserved that. "You know what's funny? Only a day and a half ago, you snarled at me that you were completely fed up with me; and yet here you are, talking to me again."
She ignored him.
"I'd say you are attracted to me, like every other female in Oz."
"Don't flatter yourself." She turned a page. "Does your love for yourself know no bounds at all?"
"None," he informed her, grinning, and she rolled her eyes.
"I should have guessed. Is it real, though, or is it all a part of your oh-look-at-me-I-am-so-happy-act?"
He stilled. "What?" Was she using her magic on him now? Could she read minds? He had not even been here for a week – how had she seen through him so quickly?
"I know what misery looks like, Fiyero," she said, finally looking up from her book to meet his stunned gaze. "No matter how well it is hidden, I can always tell. Until you're ready to admit to yourself that you're unhappy, though, it's no use talking about it at all, because it will just end with you snapping at me again and I've had enough of that, thank you very much. Could you let this vegetable read in peace now?"
He was still staring at her, stunned, as she returned to her book; and he stood there gaping for another minute at least before he got himself together and fled the library as if death itself was on his heels.