A/N: Woo-hoo chapter 20! This takes place immediately after the last chapter.
Enjoy!
Elphaba jerked back, leaning away from her roommate.
"What's wrong?" Glinda asked, startled by the movement. The green girl just shook her head. She stood and retreated to her own bed, where she curled up into a tight tangle of gangly limbs. Glinda didn't know how long she and her roommate had sat in that embrace. All she knew was that the sudden loss of contact left her feeling quite alone. "Elphie?"
Her roommate rested her chin on her arms. "I just can't believe he's actually gone."
"You act as if he's dead."
"Maybe he isn't yet, but…"
"Elphie! You can't think like that!"
She lowered her head, pressing her forehead against her knee. "Think about it. He was forced to leave his home with almost nothing. He has no job, nor can he get one with more and more bans taking place. The Animals have been cast down to the lowest parts of society. He was probably one of the only of his kind to still be working."
"But there are still Animals at the school," Glinda protested. "That Gorilla in the café, for example."
"Yes," Elphaba said. "Low-paying jobs. If he can find work, that's what he'll be doing. He's been one of the greatest professors in Oz for years, and now he's just…gone."
"You really cared about him, didn't you?" Glinda asked softly. "I mean, of course you did. We all knew that. But…"
Elphaba shifted a little so she could see her roommate. "Yeah," she breathed after a pause. "Yeah, I really did."
"Tell me about him, Elphie."
She raised an eyebrow. "You knew him as long as I did."
"But not as well."
The green girl sighed, but the words came surprisingly easy. "What can I say? I admired him. I've never met anyone as intelligent as him. He could see beyond his own experiences to what the world was really like. He knew the Animals were going to lose their rights even before the bans started, and certainly long before they affected him personally. But it was more than his intelligence. He could have had so much more, you know? Dr. Dillamond is known to this day among nearly all of Oz's greater minds. He could have worked for the Wizard himself, but instead he chose to teach. He told me the reason once. He said that his knowledge would be useless if it just died with him. That was his true passion: teaching those who came after him."
"Is that why he was so patient?" Glinda wondered out loud. "I mean, look at the way the rest of us treated him. Most of the class refused to learn simply because he was a Goat. And we can't have been the only difficult class he had. Yet he never gave up on us. He tried to teach us, anyway."
Elphaba nodded, gazing into space. "He was used to being an outcast. He would never let that stop him from doing what he needed to. Who cares if people made fun of him? As long as he could teach them something, then he was doing his job. That's all he wanted. You guys would make fun of me for spending my lunches with him, but honestly, that was the highlight of my day. Maybe it was because I'm an outcast, too—although I doubt that's the only reason—but he always understood me. He knew what to say, how to motivate me to get back on my feet again. Never once did he say a word against another student, not even when I was ranting and saying all sorts of vicious things. I suppose that's the real reason I admired him so much. The world threw hell at him, but he never used it as an excuse. He only ever did what was right, so calmly, so at peace with himself…"
She shook her head and looked at the blonde again. "Do you know why I care so much about the Animals, Glinda? It's because of him, and because of others like him. I believe humans—well, most of us, anyway—have both good and evil inside of them. That's why even a decent person can fall into selfishness and greed. Even the most revered leaders start wars, both by battles and by politics, and the rest of us don't seem to care enough to change anything. But the Animals are different. I'm not saying they're all saints, but they're better than people. They're not blinded by a lust for power. They certainly don't look down on others the way humans do. They simply live the lives given to them, doing honest work and just trying to make the world around them a better place. Do you understand what I mean?"
Glinda stared at her roommate, but she wasn't exactly looking at her. All she could see was the Badger children playing innocently in their yard. Or Dr. Dillamond, answering Milla's questions when she couldn't understand the simplest concepts, calmly taking Pfannee's thinly disguised insults, struggling to pronounce her name right…
Glinda nodded slowly. "The Animals have done nothing but live, and yet we see fit to beat them down. And it's all just because they're…different." At the last word, Glinda's eyes caught Elphaba's. This, she thought, was why the green girl was so passionate about Animal rights: because what was happening was sickeningly unfair, because no one else even seemed to notice, and because the same thing might very well happen to her.
Elphaba didn't respond, but her dark eyes drilled into Galinda's, marveling at the sincerity she saw in the blue.
"And Morrible is behind it all."
The green girl tensed. "What makes you say that?"
"I heard you and Dr. Dillamond saying her name. It's her, isn't it? She's the reason Dr. Dillamond had to leave."
"We don't know that for sure."
"Well, she certainly didn't do anything to stop it!" Glinda jumped up from her bed and began pacing across the room, only vaguely aware of how much she must look like Elphaba in that moment. "Oz knows she's in a high enough position to decide who does and doesn't teach in her school. And if bans are being placed left and right, it wouldn't be that hard to slip in a few suggestions, would it? Doesn't Morrible have a connection with the Wizard? Maybe they—"
"Glinda, stop." The blonde stood still at her roommate's sharp tone. "Morrible has nothing to do with this."
"But…" Glinda tilted her head slightly, completely bewildered. She had heard them saying Morrible's name earlier. In Dr. Dillamond's room, Elphaba looked like she was ready to murder their Madame Head. What had changed? Unless… "You're lying to me." She couldn't keep the pain out her voice.
The green girl flinched. "Fine. Morrible's involved. I don't know what she did, or why, but I know she's involved. Happy?"
"Not particularly. What are we going to do?"
Elphaba stood up, crossing her arms over her chest. "We will do nothing."
"What? You don't want my help?"
"There's nothing to help with. Even if this is all Morrible's fault, what are we supposed to do? Get rid of her? She owns the university. There's nothing we can do."
Glinda's shoulders sagged slightly as she nodded. Of course Elphaba was right—she was always right. Something bothered the blonde, however, even as Elphaba pulled out a book and settled into her bed with it.
But whatever it was, she wasn't going to figure it out anytime soon. Her roommate had already sunk into the comforts of her literature.
Glinda shook her head and went to her wardrobe. She shifted through a few outfits before pulling out one of her simpler dresses. The gown was pale pink with a wide, cream-colored belt. She smoothed it out on her bed, but made no move to get dressed. After a few moments of just standing there, she sank onto the bed, shoving the dress away from her.
"Did I just witness you tossing aside an outfit? And a pink dress, no less. My, my, Glinda. You're simply full of surprises this morning."
"I see your sarcasm is back," Glinda muttered, but she couldn't help the tiny smile that played across her lips. "Besides, I like this sweater. It's cozy." She hugged the comforting fabric to herself.
"Comfort over fashion. I think you've been spending too much time around me lately."
"Or maybe not enough," Glinda responded quietly. She didn't need to look to know that Elphaba was staring at her. But after a moment, the green girl just returned to her book. Glinda turned her head, her brow furrowing. Her roommate had a reaction to everything. For her not to respond was…
Then she realized what was wrong, why something was still bothering her about the entire Morrible situation. There's nothing we can do, Elphaba had said. But Elphaba never said that. There was always something she could do, even when she was facing an entire school alone. The green girl wasn't about to give up anytime soon, no matter what she said.
Glinda was a little hurt and extremely confused by her roommate's lie. She was about to press her for answers, but something held her back. Somehow she knew that if she pushed the subject now, she would never figure it out. So she settled quietly into her pillows, letting her mind race over everything that had happened in the last couple of days. It was a strange feeling, having her thoughts wander freely over things that weren't superficial. Oddly…exhilarating.
She closed her eyes, feeling lighter and lighter as her mind drifted, as if thinking for herself, unashamed and unrestrained, had lifted a burden she didn't even know was there. She felt dizzy in the most wonderful way, and—even though it was mid-morning and classes were still going on—it wasn't long before she fell into a blissful sleep.
Elphaba watched over the top of the book she wasn't reading. Glinda's breathing had deepened. The blonde wasn't one to look stressed, but now she was more relaxed than Elphaba had ever seen her. The green girl smiled and set her book down. Quietly, she went over to her roommate and pulled the blanket around her sleeping frame.
She backed away until she hit her bed, then half-fell, half-sat down. Now that she had time to think about everything that had happened, it was overwhelming. All of a sudden, the entire world had changed. Her roommate changed her name and was now her friend. Her favorite teacher was gone. Morrible was behind it, and so was, maybe, the Wizard. The green girl looked sideways at Glinda. Doesn't Morrible have a connection with the Wizard?
Elphaba shook her head quickly. It didn't matter who caused all of this. She would do everything in her power to help the Animals and her teacher, whether that meant facing her classmates or the Gale Force or the Wizard himself.
If only she knew where to start.
She looked over at the bag on the floor, biting her lip. The book Dr. Dillamond had given her was in there, but she wasn't sure she wanted to look through it just yet. She didn't know what it contained, but no matter what, opening it would mean he was really gone.
But she didn't just want to sit there and do nothing, either, so she crept over to the bag and pulled out the old thing. With one quick glance to make sure Glinda was still asleep, she sank back onto her bed and flipped it open.
It was a journal. The pages were brimming with scrawled dates and equations. Lines were ended with question marks, then crossed out furiously, then rewritten above in cramped letters. The handwriting was messy and in many parts frantic.
Elphaba's eyes widened as she skimmed through the pages. A few words stuck out among the others, repeated on nearly every other page—Animals, bans, evolution, equal consciousness. And then, later on, notes that sent a shiver crawling up the green girl's spine: the Wizard, hiding something, Animals disappearing, not alone, this isn't just about the Animals.
She closed her eyes and set the book down, taking deep breaths. When she looked down at the journal again, she caught sight of one phrase, one question written in the top margins of a page, underlined and circled and finished with a dark, bold question mark:
How can I prove it?
Across the room, Glinda stirred. Elphaba quickly shut the journal and shoved it under her pillow, but it was a false alarm. The blonde simply rolled over with a content sigh.
When all was quiet again, she slowly pulled the journal back out and clutched it to her chest. She could clearly see the glint in Dr. Dillamond's eye as she tucked the journal out of sight, the way he had shaken his head, as if they were sharing a secret that none of Oz knew.
And now they were. She held in her fingers the research of one of the greatest minds in Oz, the closest thing they had to connecting humans and Animals and, with any luck, bringing equality back to Oz. And he had chosen her to take care of his research, to carry on where he had been forced to leave off.
Again, Elphaba glanced sideways at her roommate. This project had gotten Dillamond kicked out of the school, and that was only just the beginning. There was no doubt in her mind that Morrible was already snooping around the Goat's office, trying to find any evidence he'd left behind. Simply possessing this journal was putting her in danger, let alone delving in and adding on to the research. It was a risk Elphaba was willing to take, but she refused to put anyone else in harm's way. Glinda couldn't know. Not now, not ever.
That'll be easy, though, the green girl assured herself. I've already lied to her about it. She won't bring it up again.
But it was becoming more and more common for Elphaba to misjudge her roommate, and this was no exception. The blonde was, after all, more intelligent than even she gave herself credit for. That was why, when she woke up again, she stayed still and peered at her roommate from beneath the covers. She knew she didn't have a right to know what was in that journal, but she also knew that, whatever made Elphaba clutch the book like a lifeline, she couldn't let the green girl take on alone.