Writing samples for livelongnmarry auction
Since I don' t have a ff.net account or a site of my own, I'm going to be posting a few samples of my writing in this post for my offer in the
livelongnmarry auction (and everyone, go bid! Two days left!). So if you're considering bidding, here they are, and if you've already read these... sorry.
A note, I apologize that the only samples I have are from Wicked. This style is generally how I write any fandom, though. I've written much more than this for other fandoms, but don't have access to it anymore. The short version of why is that my mom found a story that I had written, which was femmeslash; even though it wasn't explicit my parents were not pleased, and my dad went through my computer and found every piece of fanfiction I had saved and deleted it. I had only posted one story anywhere at that point (A BtVS story, Willow/Tara pairing, which was actually what my parents found), so I have no way of recovering the other stories. And the one that is posted... uh, well, I was fourteen when I wrote it, and I'd rather not post a link. Haha. It was called Crystalline Snowfall... I'll just leave it at that.
Anyway, here's the writing. Thanks for checking it out.
Title: From What
Fandom: Wicked (bookverse)
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Glinda/Elphaba
Sometimes, Galinda wished there was something wrong with her, so that Elphaba could save her.
“Being shown off is not the same thing as being cared for. I don’t think you can imagine how it hurts to be ignored… Miss Elphaba, you are not even listening to me!”
“What? Of course I am; your tale of mommy’s inattentiveness at your coming-out ball is simply too traumatizing to be ignored. I apologize if my genuine concern for the horror of your being fawned upon was not adequately conveyed. Do tell me when you are finished, and I shall squeal and braid your hair.”
Would,Galinda reminded herself firmly (more often than she’d like to admit). She need not concern herself with “could,” when Elphaba most likely would not.
And really, it wasn’t a wish for Elphaba herself that Galinda curled up around each night. It was a wish for a bed not empty, for something not empty, and Elphaba was, when neither of them could avoid it, the person closest to her. Really, who else was there to dream about?
It didn’t matter that she didn’t quite know who Elphaba really was, when there was no one else she might have had, anyway. So she made a habit of slamming the door a bit louder than necessary when entering her room and then huffing about, and had to explain to Pfannee and Shenshen that it was easier to avoid conversation if the green bean thought her mad. She had several perfectly distressing (if essentially baseless) stories about their cruelty to her rehearsed, in case Elphaba ever deigned to ask. In case Elphaba ever had time to worry about anyone else who needed saving, herself included. The sister, though, was always writing those damned long letters, and Dr. Dillamond required more and more assistance in the lab, and Elphaba hurried off to fulfill obligations to those who needed her. Galinda sat on her bed and watched, since Elphaba didn’t look her way enough for her to fear being caught staring.
It was disconcerting, to have someone ignore her in such a way. What could pious invalid and a smelly old Goat have that she did not?
The key for Elphaba, it seemed, was being needed. Was that what this was?
She tried so very hard to make it into need; not just because she might matter to Elphaba then, but because if she was going to be stuck with this persistent ache, this tiny sliver of a feeling that something was lacking, she’d rather there at least be a name for it.
She tried so very hard to make it into anything, anything she could claim, and treat-certain disorders were not considered as stigmatizing this listlessness, this detachment and queer longing. Something horribly wrong or devastating was not necessary, but to need something, to have a term or an explanation (or possible salvation) would have been nice.
After all, one could not simply go to one’s friends and say “I feel as if I have forgotten to eat for a few hours too long, or my Ama has clipped my nails too close to the pink, painful part, and it doesn’t really sting so much as remind me that I’m missing something. But I ate just this morning and my nails are grown out and polished pink anyway, and I don’t know why I’m so upset about what I don’t know. Or what I don’t have, I mean. Not know. What I don’t have.”
One could, however, say “Oh girls, I do believe I’m developing insomnia from Miss Elphaba’s bothersome turning and moaning, but I don’t want to wake the wretched thing and embarrass her.” At which one would receive both murmured compliments on one’s goodness at enduring such conditions and medication from the nurse, versus the whole nothing that this strange pining provided.
Yes, Miss Galinda would be satisfied with having.
And this, this was simple convenience, Galinda reasoned as she climbed into bed beside Elphaba, the first night her prescription was not strong enough to drown out the sounds of the girl’s nightmares. Nobody else slept only feet away every night, nobody else seemed to need saving from dark dreams, and nobody else looked at her in that peculiar way: as if there was something about her to be figured out, as if she was someone to know, not something to have.
In the dream she’d been woken from she’d had green skin, and illogically it had been such a relief, to look across at a normal colored Elphaba and realize she could save her. Now the words were echoing in her mind fuzzily, through static, and they caused a subtle shift in the ache in her that she couldn’t quite place. Whatever it was, it drove her across the room and made the coarse bedding a comfort, her ungraceful fall onto it a release.
She could need Elphaba, and would or would not had seen no reason to butt their heads to the simple little world she was stuck in. And why, well, that she could hide from, like a child from the Ghosts in the dark at night- wasn’t that all why really was, anyway? She considered asking Elphaba when she woke up.
When Elphaba did wake up, her expression was less thrilled than Galinda had imagined in her brief and partial emergence from drug-induced sleep hours earlier. This reemergence was slower, harder, but even through her blurred exhaustion Elphaba’s annoyance was clear. The girl could simply have drawn comfort from the fact that someone was so near. But of course she wouldn’t; she was Elphaba, and she was severe and problematic, and she threw Galinda’s arm off of her waist as if it had been the cause of her bad dream. Then she grunted “What are you doing?” in an accusing tone that made the color rise to Galinda’s cheeks. She scrunched her eyes shut, and after a few dizzy seconds remembered to force them open again. She tried not to yawn.
“Well, I’m just trying to have… I mean, I need…” The medicine had not at all worn off and she was spinning slightly, pulled back towards sleep, and under her roommate’s half-lidded glare Galinda grew flustered and stumbled over her words and felt vaguely stupid, and continued in a rush.
“I mean, I’m saving you.” Which, she admitted, did deserve an incredulous look, and she prepared her face to counter it. Except that a few seconds later she noticed Elphaba hadn’t given it, but simply blinked a few times appraisingly.
“And what would you be saving me from?”
There was a delay between Elphaba’s mouth moving and the sound reaching her ears, and another before it made sense through the buzzing whose origin she couldn’t determine. Galinda’s mouth opened and closed a few times before she realized she had nothing to say. This was not at all the question she’d been expecting, and not the one she had an answer to.
“I, I don’t know, I…” She felt like she was staring at the words on a page but they kept changing, they couldn’t be read; she knew this was important and she needed to focus, but her dreams were pulling at her, eating away at the edges.
“If you don’t know, my sweet, you can’t save me.” Elphaba’s voice was a hoarse whisper, and there was some bleak note in it that Galinda couldn’t place. What was the word? “Now go back to sleep, shoo. Oh hush, before I shove one of those pretty pink pills down your throat.”
But was that disappointment on her face, or just Galinda projecting her own heavy emotions onto the green features? Surely her voice was softer, lacking any real malice, and Galinda wanted so badly to know what it was she was feeling, even if it meant that she couldn’t have her. She tried to ask, to get back up, but her world was blurring and she simply could not keep her eyes open, although Elphaba’s were wide and unblinking across the room…
The next night, their beds were inexplicably pushed together when Galinda emerged from the bathroom. When Elphaba curled around her in the dark Galinda was afraid to ask why, and clung tighter to dispel her fear. She pressed herself into the sharp body to see if it could fit into whatever this space was inside of her, cut away any of the empty places. Her prescription lay discarded in her bottom drawer, and she knew she should ask when she was never woken by jerking or turning or muffled cries, and dark circles appeared under Elphaba’s eyes during the day. But she wanted so very badly to be what Elphaba needed.
She knew she should have asked, should have tried to stop those nightmares from happening. She should have saved her. But she couldn’t.
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Title: Grasping
Fandom: Wicked (bookverse)
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Elphaba-centric; Frex, Melena, Nessarose, Nanny
Five days after, Frex would not move from the table. Nothing, it seemed, would move forward anymore.
The first day, Elphaba sang quietly to Nessa, a slow but hopeful song she could only remember Melena singing once. When she smiled at the memory Frex lifted his head for just long enough glare at her, coldly. For allowing herself such an expression so soon after, she understood. Her voice broke for a second in surprise but then she continued, meeting his eyes for as long as she dared. Cataloguing the moment avidly, she noted the strength of resentment there was for her in his eyes when it was not diluted with the usual guilt. It was first time he’d looked at her in anger (or at all, really) for something she’d done, rather than for being… whatever she was.
Nanny held Elphaba to her chest when she found her alone outside the second day, studying dark clouds on the horizon. Elphaba wasn’t quite sure why; she’d only been trying to escape the heavy, cumbersome grief of everyone else in the house. In a book Elphaba had read, a girl’s mother had died, and this sort of thing was supposed to help. But the feel of Nanny’s sagging warmth was much different than the firm chest of the young man described in her book. It filled her with an uncomfortable expanding feeling, made her limbs heavy with the need to move. They flailed of their own accord, pushing and kicking and twisting until she was free. A faint wailing drifted down to them and the dangerous, engulfing feeling was gone, replaced by a queer awareness that the air around them was entirely too still. Nanny clutched her chest and stared at Elphaba’s dry eyes the same way people usually stared at her green skin. Muttering something about helping the human daughter, she turned to go to the crying Nessa.
The second night, Elphaba watched, with a fascination that felt morbid, as Nessa struggled to sit up, whimpering, her body snakelike as it twisted and strained in the moonlight. Somehow Elphaba understood that she was trying to look for Melena, and shivered- but then, it was much colder here than she was used to. Nessa had gone mute the first day and refused food for two, but by the third morning seemed to reconcile the loss with an overbearing need to be looked after by everyone else close to her. From then she required a hand at her back even once sitting up, an assurance of support just in case she required it. Frex still had not moved from his tableside vigil, and the fifth time Nessarose’s screams split the air that day, Nanny had begun to pretend her hearing was going. Elphaba learned not to wander too far.
Frex said two words: “She’s gone.” That was the fourth day. The new baby was crying quietly, but Elphaba was not allowed near it, and was fairly certain that Frex hadn’t yet seen it. She left to find Nanny without him looking up, and she wondered if he had spoken because he expected something of her, or if he hadn’t known she was there at all.
Then it was the fifth day, and she was sitting on the doorstep of a home that wasn’t hers, questions she hadn’t gotten to ask crowding her mind. Even if he had intended her to hear him the day before, it didn’t matter, because she couldn’t give him what he wanted. She was trying, she was trying very hard, but she’d never cried before (that she could remember) and she wasn’t quite sure how to do it. And every time she repeated the words “she’s gone” in her head a thousand questions snuck in with them, like “to where?” and “for how long?” and “then how can her body still be in the wagon behind the house?”
It had rained the night before, and she understood now that the heaviness in the air had not just been grief, but the mugginess of an impending storm. The air was crisper, lighter now, and even colder than before. They’d been trying to make it back into Oz in time for the new child to be born, but then the world itself had stopped five days ago in this abandoned farmhouse. “I loved him, Frex, I loved him too, but I won’t raise another child in this wilderness.” Melena had said. “I won’t.” And she’d been right.
Elphaba didn’t know what she had meant, and the uneasiness of not knowing had driven her outside the fifth morning. But at the door she’d stopped, staring. She had never seen snow or anything like it, and gazed intently at the grass, lightly frosted where drops of rain had frozen in the early morning chill. The air was still and unbearably dry in her eyes, and she couldn’t stop thinking. “If everything is a part of the Unnamed God’s plan, then how can we mourn her death?” Reaching out to touch a shimmering blade, she marveled at the intense cold and then pulled back, stung. What was this? How could it hurt her?
Frex had never cared much for questions, or questioning. Elphaba slowly stripped the grass of its frost, letting pieces of ice melt on her fingertips until they blistered. But no tears came.
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Title: When Fiyero
Fandom: Wicked (musical)
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Fiyero, Glinda, Elphaba; multiple pairings
Notes: basically, I couldn't reconcile the musical's characterization of Elphaba with the idea that she would just take her best friend's fiancee without even hesitating. So I tried to explain it to myself. And that turned into this.
When Fiyero is with Glinda, he thinks of Elphaba. He thinks she doesn’t know. He thinks he is the only one.
Glinda doesn’t just know, she understands. Because she feels the same. Really, it’s the only thing holding them together, now.
They sleep in the same bed at night but do not touch, and the space between them is shaped like Elphaba’s body. Fiyero wraps around her from behind, and Glinda curls into her chest, their arms loose around each other. Fiyero leans his forehead on her shoulder and never opens his eyes. Glinda sleeps with her face pressed softly into Elphaba’s neck, but she usually sits awake first, tangling her fingers in dark hair. Her eyes are open- not enough to destroy their illusion, but enough to keep watch over Fiyero, and make sure her hand never accidentally brushes his cheek on it’s way from a green ear or eyelid to a bony hip. If his eyes ever opened the ghost would disappear, and they’d be left staring at each other. Glinda won’t let that happen.
This is what Glinda can do. She can pretend. It is all she has.
There is a vague feeling that she should be ashamed of this, or at least want to be something more. But Elphaba was the only one who ever told her she was less than she had the ability to be, and the only one to ever make her feel ashamed of anything (well, aside from that horrible red-orange heap of a dress that had to be worn recurrently to family gatherings because it had been a gift from her great-grandmother). And Elphaba isn’t coming back.
So while Fiyero is here, she pretends for him. When he is gone, she will pretend for everyone else.
When Fiyero leaves, it will hurt her badly, but only because she will know where he is going. And because without him here to press into the other side of her dream, the hole in her life will become less defined; Elphaba will start to shift away from her even in sleep, dissolving backwards and blurring with distance, until her absence is spread out over the entire room and Glinda can no longer see her face. Somewhere, Fiyero will be holding more than just a ghost, and Glinda wonders if the real Elphaba still slides away into any open space like it as escape route.
Or maybe, Glinda thinks on nights when she can’t sleep, it is only her that Elphaba would want to escape from.
Elphaba will be able to escape if Glinda the Good pretends to be heartbroken but worried for her fiancée, and convinces the Wizard to forbid excessive use of force in the capture of the Witch and her Captain-of-the-Guard. She will say that it doesn’t matter where he is, just that he isn’t with her. Really, where he’s gone will be all that matters, but Glinda doesn’t need a search party to know where that is, and she doesn’t want Elphaba brought to her if she wouldn’t come herself.
And maybe, just maybe, someone will listen to what she’s saying, and realize that Fiyero will have chosen to leave, regardless of who he leaves with. And maybe just one person will see that Elphaba isn’t to blame for this, too, that someone could actually choose green over Good, and actually think about what is going on…
And maybe, just maybe, Elphaba will notice when no guard grips her arm tight enough to bruise it, and she slips through their grasp again. And maybe she will understand.
Glinda curls and uncurls her fingers around the silk of her sheet, imagining Elphaba pulling away, countless hands clutching and then giving up, the edge of her cloak fluttering her only goodbye out the window.
Next to her Fiyero groans and buries his face further into his pillow, then frowns slightly and exhales. He doesn’t like this bed; it is too soft for him, too yielding, and he feels trapped in the heavy fur of the blankets. His bed with the guard, she knows, is firm and thin, and he wraps himself in a blanket from the Vinkus, sparingly downed by light, wispy feathers with pointed stems that poke sharply through its fabric as often as they provide comfort.
Glinda wants to tell him that the first night Elphaba shared her bed at Shiz she had nightmares of drowning, and woke up trashing, sunk in the deep comfort of the mattress. But she also wants to tell him that there was a silk pillow missing from her collection the next day, and that Elphaba’s hair was simply beautiful fanned out across the white pillowcase, and softer than any fabric Glinda has been able to locate since.
Their bedding now is deep green for reasons unacknowledged, and because of this Glinda can’t tell him half of the truth, for fear of him discovering all of it. She would like so much to set him free, except that in doing so she will lose even these nights of dreaming. Every morning he murmurs “goodbye” while he thinks she is asleep, but the tone is grave and choked with something and all she can hear is “I’m sorry.” He thinks her so good, so innocent, a victim.
The morning he can say goodbye without regret or guilt weighing him down, he will be light enough to fly away on the Witch’s broomstick, and she will lose everything. She clings to his ankles now, not to keep him from leaving, but to force Elphaba to look down one more time.
The only barrier between them is their loyalty to her. Elphaba would not hurt her friend in such a way, and Fiyero would not expect her to.
When Elphaba discovers Glinda does not really love him, she will take him and leave her here alone. Pretense is all Glinda has.
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livelongnmarry auction (and everyone, go bid! Two days left!). So if you're considering bidding, here they are, and if you've already read these... sorry.
A note, I apologize that the only samples I have are from Wicked. This style is generally how I write any fandom, though. I've written much more than this for other fandoms, but don't have access to it anymore. The short version of why is that my mom found a story that I had written, which was femmeslash; even though it wasn't explicit my parents were not pleased, and my dad went through my computer and found every piece of fanfiction I had saved and deleted it. I had only posted one story anywhere at that point (A BtVS story, Willow/Tara pairing, which was actually what my parents found), so I have no way of recovering the other stories. And the one that is posted... uh, well, I was fourteen when I wrote it, and I'd rather not post a link. Haha. It was called Crystalline Snowfall... I'll just leave it at that.
Anyway, here's the writing. Thanks for checking it out.
Title: From What
Fandom: Wicked (bookverse)
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Glinda/Elphaba
Sometimes, Galinda wished there was something wrong with her, so that Elphaba could save her.
“Being shown off is not the same thing as being cared for. I don’t think you can imagine how it hurts to be ignored… Miss Elphaba, you are not even listening to me!”
“What? Of course I am; your tale of mommy’s inattentiveness at your coming-out ball is simply too traumatizing to be ignored. I apologize if my genuine concern for the horror of your being fawned upon was not adequately conveyed. Do tell me when you are finished, and I shall squeal and braid your hair.”
Would,Galinda reminded herself firmly (more often than she’d like to admit). She need not concern herself with “could,” when Elphaba most likely would not.
And really, it wasn’t a wish for Elphaba herself that Galinda curled up around each night. It was a wish for a bed not empty, for something not empty, and Elphaba was, when neither of them could avoid it, the person closest to her. Really, who else was there to dream about?
It didn’t matter that she didn’t quite know who Elphaba really was, when there was no one else she might have had, anyway. So she made a habit of slamming the door a bit louder than necessary when entering her room and then huffing about, and had to explain to Pfannee and Shenshen that it was easier to avoid conversation if the green bean thought her mad. She had several perfectly distressing (if essentially baseless) stories about their cruelty to her rehearsed, in case Elphaba ever deigned to ask. In case Elphaba ever had time to worry about anyone else who needed saving, herself included. The sister, though, was always writing those damned long letters, and Dr. Dillamond required more and more assistance in the lab, and Elphaba hurried off to fulfill obligations to those who needed her. Galinda sat on her bed and watched, since Elphaba didn’t look her way enough for her to fear being caught staring.
It was disconcerting, to have someone ignore her in such a way. What could pious invalid and a smelly old Goat have that she did not?
The key for Elphaba, it seemed, was being needed. Was that what this was?
She tried so very hard to make it into need; not just because she might matter to Elphaba then, but because if she was going to be stuck with this persistent ache, this tiny sliver of a feeling that something was lacking, she’d rather there at least be a name for it.
She tried so very hard to make it into anything, anything she could claim, and treat-certain disorders were not considered as stigmatizing this listlessness, this detachment and queer longing. Something horribly wrong or devastating was not necessary, but to need something, to have a term or an explanation (or possible salvation) would have been nice.
After all, one could not simply go to one’s friends and say “I feel as if I have forgotten to eat for a few hours too long, or my Ama has clipped my nails too close to the pink, painful part, and it doesn’t really sting so much as remind me that I’m missing something. But I ate just this morning and my nails are grown out and polished pink anyway, and I don’t know why I’m so upset about what I don’t know. Or what I don’t have, I mean. Not know. What I don’t have.”
One could, however, say “Oh girls, I do believe I’m developing insomnia from Miss Elphaba’s bothersome turning and moaning, but I don’t want to wake the wretched thing and embarrass her.” At which one would receive both murmured compliments on one’s goodness at enduring such conditions and medication from the nurse, versus the whole nothing that this strange pining provided.
Yes, Miss Galinda would be satisfied with having.
And this, this was simple convenience, Galinda reasoned as she climbed into bed beside Elphaba, the first night her prescription was not strong enough to drown out the sounds of the girl’s nightmares. Nobody else slept only feet away every night, nobody else seemed to need saving from dark dreams, and nobody else looked at her in that peculiar way: as if there was something about her to be figured out, as if she was someone to know, not something to have.
In the dream she’d been woken from she’d had green skin, and illogically it had been such a relief, to look across at a normal colored Elphaba and realize she could save her. Now the words were echoing in her mind fuzzily, through static, and they caused a subtle shift in the ache in her that she couldn’t quite place. Whatever it was, it drove her across the room and made the coarse bedding a comfort, her ungraceful fall onto it a release.
She could need Elphaba, and would or would not had seen no reason to butt their heads to the simple little world she was stuck in. And why, well, that she could hide from, like a child from the Ghosts in the dark at night- wasn’t that all why really was, anyway? She considered asking Elphaba when she woke up.
When Elphaba did wake up, her expression was less thrilled than Galinda had imagined in her brief and partial emergence from drug-induced sleep hours earlier. This reemergence was slower, harder, but even through her blurred exhaustion Elphaba’s annoyance was clear. The girl could simply have drawn comfort from the fact that someone was so near. But of course she wouldn’t; she was Elphaba, and she was severe and problematic, and she threw Galinda’s arm off of her waist as if it had been the cause of her bad dream. Then she grunted “What are you doing?” in an accusing tone that made the color rise to Galinda’s cheeks. She scrunched her eyes shut, and after a few dizzy seconds remembered to force them open again. She tried not to yawn.
“Well, I’m just trying to have… I mean, I need…” The medicine had not at all worn off and she was spinning slightly, pulled back towards sleep, and under her roommate’s half-lidded glare Galinda grew flustered and stumbled over her words and felt vaguely stupid, and continued in a rush.
“I mean, I’m saving you.” Which, she admitted, did deserve an incredulous look, and she prepared her face to counter it. Except that a few seconds later she noticed Elphaba hadn’t given it, but simply blinked a few times appraisingly.
“And what would you be saving me from?”
There was a delay between Elphaba’s mouth moving and the sound reaching her ears, and another before it made sense through the buzzing whose origin she couldn’t determine. Galinda’s mouth opened and closed a few times before she realized she had nothing to say. This was not at all the question she’d been expecting, and not the one she had an answer to.
“I, I don’t know, I…” She felt like she was staring at the words on a page but they kept changing, they couldn’t be read; she knew this was important and she needed to focus, but her dreams were pulling at her, eating away at the edges.
“If you don’t know, my sweet, you can’t save me.” Elphaba’s voice was a hoarse whisper, and there was some bleak note in it that Galinda couldn’t place. What was the word? “Now go back to sleep, shoo. Oh hush, before I shove one of those pretty pink pills down your throat.”
But was that disappointment on her face, or just Galinda projecting her own heavy emotions onto the green features? Surely her voice was softer, lacking any real malice, and Galinda wanted so badly to know what it was she was feeling, even if it meant that she couldn’t have her. She tried to ask, to get back up, but her world was blurring and she simply could not keep her eyes open, although Elphaba’s were wide and unblinking across the room…
The next night, their beds were inexplicably pushed together when Galinda emerged from the bathroom. When Elphaba curled around her in the dark Galinda was afraid to ask why, and clung tighter to dispel her fear. She pressed herself into the sharp body to see if it could fit into whatever this space was inside of her, cut away any of the empty places. Her prescription lay discarded in her bottom drawer, and she knew she should ask when she was never woken by jerking or turning or muffled cries, and dark circles appeared under Elphaba’s eyes during the day. But she wanted so very badly to be what Elphaba needed.
She knew she should have asked, should have tried to stop those nightmares from happening. She should have saved her. But she couldn’t.
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Title: Grasping
Fandom: Wicked (bookverse)
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Elphaba-centric; Frex, Melena, Nessarose, Nanny
Five days after, Frex would not move from the table. Nothing, it seemed, would move forward anymore.
The first day, Elphaba sang quietly to Nessa, a slow but hopeful song she could only remember Melena singing once. When she smiled at the memory Frex lifted his head for just long enough glare at her, coldly. For allowing herself such an expression so soon after, she understood. Her voice broke for a second in surprise but then she continued, meeting his eyes for as long as she dared. Cataloguing the moment avidly, she noted the strength of resentment there was for her in his eyes when it was not diluted with the usual guilt. It was first time he’d looked at her in anger (or at all, really) for something she’d done, rather than for being… whatever she was.
Nanny held Elphaba to her chest when she found her alone outside the second day, studying dark clouds on the horizon. Elphaba wasn’t quite sure why; she’d only been trying to escape the heavy, cumbersome grief of everyone else in the house. In a book Elphaba had read, a girl’s mother had died, and this sort of thing was supposed to help. But the feel of Nanny’s sagging warmth was much different than the firm chest of the young man described in her book. It filled her with an uncomfortable expanding feeling, made her limbs heavy with the need to move. They flailed of their own accord, pushing and kicking and twisting until she was free. A faint wailing drifted down to them and the dangerous, engulfing feeling was gone, replaced by a queer awareness that the air around them was entirely too still. Nanny clutched her chest and stared at Elphaba’s dry eyes the same way people usually stared at her green skin. Muttering something about helping the human daughter, she turned to go to the crying Nessa.
The second night, Elphaba watched, with a fascination that felt morbid, as Nessa struggled to sit up, whimpering, her body snakelike as it twisted and strained in the moonlight. Somehow Elphaba understood that she was trying to look for Melena, and shivered- but then, it was much colder here than she was used to. Nessa had gone mute the first day and refused food for two, but by the third morning seemed to reconcile the loss with an overbearing need to be looked after by everyone else close to her. From then she required a hand at her back even once sitting up, an assurance of support just in case she required it. Frex still had not moved from his tableside vigil, and the fifth time Nessarose’s screams split the air that day, Nanny had begun to pretend her hearing was going. Elphaba learned not to wander too far.
Frex said two words: “She’s gone.” That was the fourth day. The new baby was crying quietly, but Elphaba was not allowed near it, and was fairly certain that Frex hadn’t yet seen it. She left to find Nanny without him looking up, and she wondered if he had spoken because he expected something of her, or if he hadn’t known she was there at all.
Then it was the fifth day, and she was sitting on the doorstep of a home that wasn’t hers, questions she hadn’t gotten to ask crowding her mind. Even if he had intended her to hear him the day before, it didn’t matter, because she couldn’t give him what he wanted. She was trying, she was trying very hard, but she’d never cried before (that she could remember) and she wasn’t quite sure how to do it. And every time she repeated the words “she’s gone” in her head a thousand questions snuck in with them, like “to where?” and “for how long?” and “then how can her body still be in the wagon behind the house?”
It had rained the night before, and she understood now that the heaviness in the air had not just been grief, but the mugginess of an impending storm. The air was crisper, lighter now, and even colder than before. They’d been trying to make it back into Oz in time for the new child to be born, but then the world itself had stopped five days ago in this abandoned farmhouse. “I loved him, Frex, I loved him too, but I won’t raise another child in this wilderness.” Melena had said. “I won’t.” And she’d been right.
Elphaba didn’t know what she had meant, and the uneasiness of not knowing had driven her outside the fifth morning. But at the door she’d stopped, staring. She had never seen snow or anything like it, and gazed intently at the grass, lightly frosted where drops of rain had frozen in the early morning chill. The air was still and unbearably dry in her eyes, and she couldn’t stop thinking. “If everything is a part of the Unnamed God’s plan, then how can we mourn her death?” Reaching out to touch a shimmering blade, she marveled at the intense cold and then pulled back, stung. What was this? How could it hurt her?
Frex had never cared much for questions, or questioning. Elphaba slowly stripped the grass of its frost, letting pieces of ice melt on her fingertips until they blistered. But no tears came.
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Title: When Fiyero
Fandom: Wicked (musical)
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Fiyero, Glinda, Elphaba; multiple pairings
Notes: basically, I couldn't reconcile the musical's characterization of Elphaba with the idea that she would just take her best friend's fiancee without even hesitating. So I tried to explain it to myself. And that turned into this.
When Fiyero is with Glinda, he thinks of Elphaba. He thinks she doesn’t know. He thinks he is the only one.
Glinda doesn’t just know, she understands. Because she feels the same. Really, it’s the only thing holding them together, now.
They sleep in the same bed at night but do not touch, and the space between them is shaped like Elphaba’s body. Fiyero wraps around her from behind, and Glinda curls into her chest, their arms loose around each other. Fiyero leans his forehead on her shoulder and never opens his eyes. Glinda sleeps with her face pressed softly into Elphaba’s neck, but she usually sits awake first, tangling her fingers in dark hair. Her eyes are open- not enough to destroy their illusion, but enough to keep watch over Fiyero, and make sure her hand never accidentally brushes his cheek on it’s way from a green ear or eyelid to a bony hip. If his eyes ever opened the ghost would disappear, and they’d be left staring at each other. Glinda won’t let that happen.
This is what Glinda can do. She can pretend. It is all she has.
There is a vague feeling that she should be ashamed of this, or at least want to be something more. But Elphaba was the only one who ever told her she was less than she had the ability to be, and the only one to ever make her feel ashamed of anything (well, aside from that horrible red-orange heap of a dress that had to be worn recurrently to family gatherings because it had been a gift from her great-grandmother). And Elphaba isn’t coming back.
So while Fiyero is here, she pretends for him. When he is gone, she will pretend for everyone else.
When Fiyero leaves, it will hurt her badly, but only because she will know where he is going. And because without him here to press into the other side of her dream, the hole in her life will become less defined; Elphaba will start to shift away from her even in sleep, dissolving backwards and blurring with distance, until her absence is spread out over the entire room and Glinda can no longer see her face. Somewhere, Fiyero will be holding more than just a ghost, and Glinda wonders if the real Elphaba still slides away into any open space like it as escape route.
Or maybe, Glinda thinks on nights when she can’t sleep, it is only her that Elphaba would want to escape from.
Elphaba will be able to escape if Glinda the Good pretends to be heartbroken but worried for her fiancée, and convinces the Wizard to forbid excessive use of force in the capture of the Witch and her Captain-of-the-Guard. She will say that it doesn’t matter where he is, just that he isn’t with her. Really, where he’s gone will be all that matters, but Glinda doesn’t need a search party to know where that is, and she doesn’t want Elphaba brought to her if she wouldn’t come herself.
And maybe, just maybe, someone will listen to what she’s saying, and realize that Fiyero will have chosen to leave, regardless of who he leaves with. And maybe just one person will see that Elphaba isn’t to blame for this, too, that someone could actually choose green over Good, and actually think about what is going on…
And maybe, just maybe, Elphaba will notice when no guard grips her arm tight enough to bruise it, and she slips through their grasp again. And maybe she will understand.
Glinda curls and uncurls her fingers around the silk of her sheet, imagining Elphaba pulling away, countless hands clutching and then giving up, the edge of her cloak fluttering her only goodbye out the window.
Next to her Fiyero groans and buries his face further into his pillow, then frowns slightly and exhales. He doesn’t like this bed; it is too soft for him, too yielding, and he feels trapped in the heavy fur of the blankets. His bed with the guard, she knows, is firm and thin, and he wraps himself in a blanket from the Vinkus, sparingly downed by light, wispy feathers with pointed stems that poke sharply through its fabric as often as they provide comfort.
Glinda wants to tell him that the first night Elphaba shared her bed at Shiz she had nightmares of drowning, and woke up trashing, sunk in the deep comfort of the mattress. But she also wants to tell him that there was a silk pillow missing from her collection the next day, and that Elphaba’s hair was simply beautiful fanned out across the white pillowcase, and softer than any fabric Glinda has been able to locate since.
Their bedding now is deep green for reasons unacknowledged, and because of this Glinda can’t tell him half of the truth, for fear of him discovering all of it. She would like so much to set him free, except that in doing so she will lose even these nights of dreaming. Every morning he murmurs “goodbye” while he thinks she is asleep, but the tone is grave and choked with something and all she can hear is “I’m sorry.” He thinks her so good, so innocent, a victim.
The morning he can say goodbye without regret or guilt weighing him down, he will be light enough to fly away on the Witch’s broomstick, and she will lose everything. She clings to his ankles now, not to keep him from leaving, but to force Elphaba to look down one more time.
The only barrier between them is their loyalty to her. Elphaba would not hurt her friend in such a way, and Fiyero would not expect her to.
When Elphaba discovers Glinda does not really love him, she will take him and leave her here alone. Pretense is all Glinda has.
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