Challenge #6: Three Times, by daredelvil, PG-13
Title: Three Times
Pairing: Pretty much every combination of Fiyero, Elphaba and Galinda
Rating: PG-13, just to be safe - mild swearing, a rather cranky Elphie and Fiyero's dirty mind
Subject: Musical - specific cast; see author's note
Author: DareDelvil
Word Count: ~4.5k
Challenge Words Used: All of them - and a prize to the first person who can tell me which of them appears in all seven sections!
Summary: Post-Ozdust, pre-City, mid-Shakespeare; six memories and one summer's day. Three people falling in love, over and over again.
Disclaimer: The Wizard of Oz and Wicked are the property of L.Frank Baum and Gregory Maguire respectively. This is their game; I just bend the rules when nobody's looking. Neither do I own any of the London company, much to my dismay, and nor do I own the last four lines of iambic - they're Shakespeare's, from Sonnet #116 (a favourite of mine, full text here). I wrote Galinda's sonnet, and if you steal it I will eat your face. ^.^
Author's Note: In honour of the community's "birthday", this is the one-shot I mentioned. It's something of an experiment - the characters herein are different from their Revolutions counterparts, and I hope it shows. They are based directly upon the cast I saw in London on Thursday August 2nd, the pertinent players being Oliver!Fiyero, Dianne!Galinda and CJ!Elphie, and this piece may be considered a tribute to their work that night. This may just be my national pride talking, but I feel we've some of the best performers in the Wickeding world.
Without further ado, my latest venture into ficdom: Three Times.
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Revolutions || Other Darefic
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Three Times
"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."
- Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626), "Of Beauty"
[1]
"Wake up, you!"
He started, but he was still half asleep as he slid his sunglasses on to his forehead. There was no one there. But he'd distinctly heard the shout, felt the slap of a hand vibrate through the seat -
"Young lay-dee, d'you realise 'oo this is?"
"Oi doan't care 'oo this is!"
Oh, she was arguing with Avaric - mocking his accent, sounded like. And now she was storming away from the driver to glower at the passenger - him - instead, and her blue-grey eyes were so full of fury that her gaze should have burned on contact, and she was...green. And rather short. And very, very angry.
"Your car," she snapped, gesturing at the vehicle, "nearly ran me over. And you're sleeping."
Fiyero tried in vain to process the situation. Here was a girl who wasn't falling at his feet in adoration, which puzzled him. She was in fact shouting at him, which puzzled him even more, and she said "sleeping" as though he oughtn't to have been, which was totally beyond him. "Of course," he answered, not unkindly: he was willing to give anyone as obviously foreign as she was the benefit of the doubt. "It's daytime."
She stared at him in a mixture of horror and disbelief. Doing his best to ignore her, he took his satchel, assured Avaric that he'd be out of here before long, went through the secret handshake on autopilot and watched the car pull away.
"Is this really how you go through life? Nearly knocking people over and not even noticing?"
Apparently the little foreigner was not content to be ignored. Fiyero looked her up and down (well, down and further down) and decided she would look much prettier in black, without the hat, without the glasses. Perhaps she could be persuaded to take her hair out of that severe plait. Unbound, it would fall at least half way down her back: he could imagine it being picked up and toyed with by the wind, or spread out on the grass in dark waves beneath her, or wrapped around his fingers -
"Well?"
His line of sight was abruptly blocked by the book she had been holding under her arm: she was now clasping it against her chest in a rather protective fashion. Ah. She probably felt threatened by the attention: a girl could only look so foreign before most people began to lose interest. He let his gaze drift back up to meet her eyes - Oz, they were cold -
"Perhaps the driver saw green," he said lazily, "and thought it meant Go..."
The moment the words were out he regretted them intensely. She kept glowering, kept the same tight hold on her book, but suddenly her gaze seemed so hollow, so empty it was almost too horrible to watch. He'd hurt her. Dammit - he'd thought she might be a little more travelled than that, a little more accustomed to foreigners making jokes about her complexion. The red-skinned Quadlings got their share of harmless wisecracks, and all the ones he'd ever met had laughed and reciprocated in kind. Oughtn't she to do the same, curl her lip into a smirk (or even a smile, Oz forbid) and call him Snowy or Whitewash? He'd been trying to lighten the mood, for Oz sake...and now she was leaving, head down and tense all over, striding past him with an air of purpose. He took a few steps after her, reaching out to her with an expression that said no, wait, I didn't mean it like that, please come back, but it was all to no avail. Within moments, she had vanished among the crowds.
Well, that was a good start.
Resigned to a morning of boredom, he dug in his satchel for his timetable and peered at the tiny print. Hah. If the green girl hadn't stormed off on him like that, he might have made her laugh by asking to borrow her glasses...
"Are you looking for something?"
Another girl's voice. He turned, and was treated to a toss of perfect blonde hair and a come-hither look from dark eyes.
"Or...someone?"
Fiyero grinned internally, taking in the girl's pristine white uniform and smooth curves. Perhaps this place wouldn't be a total drag after all.
[2]
"...my roommate, Miss Elphaba."
Elphaba. The name had an exotic, sensuous quality, and it suited her far better than he'd expected it to. If only she would take that damned hat off, though... He was unsurprised by the firm handshake, and returned it without missing a beat: raising that hand to his lips and kissing the smooth green knuckles would have been a recipe for disaster. "Elphaba," he repeated, rolling the name around his mouth and liking the taste of it. "Wow. That's..." Beautiful? No, that's been done to death. Sexy? Oz, no, don't say that, she'll run a mile -
He dithered too long, and she cut him off. "I know, I know, about as archaic as my clothing and as hideous as the rest of me," she said with a tired air, neatly extracting her hand from his grip. "Can we get at the punch, do you think?"
"Don't worry, I'll get drinks!" Galinda chirped. "You two play nicely while I'm away..."
And off she went into the crowds. This, Fiyero realised, left him with Elphaba. He hadn't expected to meet the green girl again so soon, and certainly not under such circumstances as these. Not that he wasn't glad of it, of course - he just hadn't quite worked out what to say to her yet, and that probably meant he'd end up saying something stupid and offending her again.
"Punch? You're looking to get smashed, then?" He had to conceal a wince. Could have done better than that.
"Smashed?" She quirked an eyebrow. "You mean drunk?"
He grinned. "Yeah. Punch drunk."
She didn't giggle. She sneered at him. Oh, wow, this was not a normal girl. Admittedly the joke had been weak at best, but that usually didn't matter. "Oh, ha dee ha ha," she said flatly. "On lemons and melons and pears?"
"Oh my."
She frowned. "Oh your what?"
"Lemons and melons and pears, oh my," Fiyero repeated, "and there's a reason for the oh my. The punch is spiked."
"What? How do you know?"
"How do I know?" He laughed. "Miss Elphaba, this is a party. There is punch. Ergo, the punch is spiked. It's practically Rule Number One."
An expression of horror affixed itself firmly to her face. "Oh, sweet Oz, Nessa! She's probably been drinking it all evening!"
"Then she'll probably have the mother and father of a headache in the morning," Fiyero said with a sigh, reaching out to keep her from rushing off. "Just leave her, she'll be - "
With hindsight, he should have known better than to catch hold of her arm. She wrenched it away, whipped her head around and shot him a glare that ought to have reduced him to a charred shadow on the smoking remains of the opposite wall. He felt as though he should be terrified, but he was mostly just impressed that someone so small could contain so much anger. "Don't you dare - " One heavy brown boot slammed down dangerously close to his toes. " - tell me how to take care of my sister. In fact, don't tell me what to do. Ever. Unless, of course, you want to die horribly, in which case I'd be all too happy to oblige. Nessa!" She hurried off in the direction of her sister's wheelchair. "Nessa, don't drink that - someone's laced it with Oz-knows-what..."
"Too late..." Fiyero murmured to himself as Galinda returned with three glasses of sherbet fizz. "Ah, excellent - something that isn't a certified health hazard."
Galinda handed him his glass and looked around. "Where'd Elphaba go?"
"To save her sister from the oh my." He took a sip. It wasn't bad.
"The what? ...Oh, the punch. Goodness, yes, she has had rather a lot of it, hasn't she? Well, never mind, gives me a chance to ask - what do you think of her?"
He blinked. "Of Miss Nessarose?"
She swatted his arm lightly. "No, silly. Of Miss Elphaba."
"She's..." Considering his answer, he decided that being hazy was the safest option. "...different. Interesting."
"...You don't like her, do you?"
Oh, no. Her lip was trembling. "Galinda, I - "
"It's the green, isn't it?"
"She's a little frightening," he said, hoping she wouldn't interrupt him again, "but no, it's not the green. It's the thorns. I could like her, I suppose, if she'd only stop biting my head off every time we meet." But he had a feeling she wouldn't be Elphaba if she wasn't irritable - and she looked so powerful when she was angry, as though she could move mountains with a gesture. It was intimidating, yes, but it was also remarkably attractive. "I almost ran her over when I arrived, though, and I don't think she's forgiven me yet, which I suppose is fair enough." Wisely, he didn't mention his ill-timed remark about her colouring.
"...The green doesn't bother you?"
He shrugged. "Why should it? I've seen black people, white people, red people - why not green people? It's exotic. Like Midori liqueur. ...Come to think of it, that's probably what's in the punch..."
"Red people?"
"Red people. Quadlings. I've been kicked out of quite a few places, you know. ...But enough about me - I think Midori's terrorising your Biq." He'd just spotted Elphaba approaching the hapless Munchkin, and she had a purposeful look in her eye.
"It's Boq," Galinda answered automatically, craning her neck to see. "Oh dear. I feel responsible. We'd better go and rescue him."
Not because he was in trouble, Fiyero thought wryly, but to spare Galinda any troubling pangs of guilt. They approached surreptitiously until Elphaba's voice became audible. She was leaning close to Boq, and, as they watched, one green hand curled tightly around the lapel of his jacket.
"...you listen here, sunbeam," she was beginning to say in a low, rough voice. "Nessarose may be the Governor's daughter, but while she is here she is first and foremost my sister - it is my responsibility to look after her, and in my book that means I have to make sure you're going to take proper care of her in my absence. Now I'm sure you're a nice lad, and you'd treat her very well under normal circumstances, but you're essentially a young man, and I know how easily you lot can be tempted to stray from the path of chivalry. So let me make this quite clear to you now: she is far too far gone to make any sort of measured decision on her own, and if I find out that there has been one iota of funny business I will have your bollocks for earrings. Understand?" When Boq nodded weakly, she released him. "...Good. Now get her out of here, and don't jar her on the staircases."
Boq complied at once, only waiting a moment for the sisters to say their goodnights. Miss Nessarose was rather far gone: she kissed Elphaba's cheek and complimented her hat before the Munchkin wheeled her away. Once they had left, Fiyero approached the remaining sister with Galinda on his arm. "...That may have been overkill," he said cautiously, deeply aware that one could wear two pairs of earrings at once.
Elphaba dismissed him with a wave of her hand. "Rubbish. I was just being firm with him. You'll know when it's overkill."
"Come dance, Miss Elphaba?" Galinda suggested, smiling a little too brightly as she held out her hand.
The green girl didn't seem to notice the difference. "What, again? Haven't I made enough of a fool of myself already? ...oh, don't look at me like that! Anyone would think I'd kicked you... Fine, have it your way - just spare me the puppydog eyes, for Oz sake..."
There was no genuine venom in her words, though. She was going through the motions, no more, as if passing a whetstone over a blade to keep it keen. Galinda laughed merrily and dragged her away by the wrist - good grief, if he'd tried that she'd've had his arm off. Didn't Galinda realise what she was handling so carelessly?
Or maybe she had the right idea, unconsciously calling Elphaba's bluff. Maybe in being certain that she wouldn't be harmed she was keeping herself from harm - maybe, he thought as he watched them, maybe Elphaba wasn't as cruel as she liked to pretend.
Someone bumped into him, shattering the moment, and he decided that there was a wretched kind of irony in envying someone green: he didn't know how she'd done it, but he had the distinct feeling that Elphaba had just stolen his date.
[3]
"I can't stand poetry," Galinda huffed as she dropped into the seat beside Elphaba. "I simply can't stand it!"
Two rows back and concealed behind a textbook, Fiyero went deliberately unnoticed. He didn't much like listening to Galinda whine and moan about her everyday trials: to his mind, she would sometimes be more agreeable if she were silent (save, of course, for appropriately timed giggles and utterances of his name). Elphaba was taking it in her stride, though. "Last week you said you'd never been so moved by anything in your life," she was saying. "What happened?"
"They want me to write it," Galinda lamented, "and I can't."
"Yes you can. I've seen some of your poetry and it's not even dreadful."
Fiyero bit back a snort of laughter and peeped out from behind his book. Elphaba, typically enough, was holding up her end of the conversation without taking her eyes off her work. Galinda was glaring at her. "How kind of you to say so," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "But it's not like that. It's sonnets. I hate sonnets. And until further notice I hate poetry, too."
"And I'm not a great fan of your playing with my hair all the way through every lecture," said Elphaba mildly, setting her pen down and turning to Galinda. "But I could sit somewhere else, and you could drop the poetry class. So why haven't we?"
Galinda frowned, and Fiyero marvelled. She was seriously considering the question.
"...Some sort of inherent reluctance to change?"
His jaw slackened. Did Elphaba force everyone to think? The green girl seemed a little surprised herself: she quirked one dark eyebrow. "Inertia?" Ah, that was the word...and was it him, or did she look different all of a sudden? "Perhaps. Or maybe, however secretly..."
She took Galinda's hand then, quite without warning, and pressed it against - Fiyero felt his body tighten without his consent -
"...we just like to be touched."
...against her shoulder, and the long braid of dark hair that was resting there. Galinda broke into a most unladylike grin, giggled gleefully, and began to unwind the plait with nimble fingers. Two rows back, behind his textbook, Fiyero breathed out. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting Elphaba to do. ...All right, yes he was. But she just wouldn't do something like that, and he didn't know why he'd wanted her to in any case. She was clever, though, wasn't she? She'd managed to please Galinda, of all people, with a fragment of philosophy, though admittedly the offer to let her mess with her hair might have had something to do with it. He suspected she was working harder at pleasing Galinda than he was. Come to think of it, Galinda was probably her only real friend.
And then it hit him. Of course she looked different. This was the first time he'd ever seen her smile.
[4]
She was never so gentle with him as she was with Galinda. He suspected he still hadn't been forgiven for almost squashing her upon his arrival. In any case she seemed to have more interesting things than him to pay attention to, and though that stung it didn't sting for long. He took to watching her and her books - now a weighty tome on astronomy, now a leather-bound history of politics, now a small book of illustrated fairytales, now a sorcery manual - apparently she wasn't fussy about the subject matter so long as there was information to be devoured. She read each and every one with the same kind of rapt attention he usually paid to a beautiful woman: not that she winked at them or pinched their back covers, of course, but before long he realised there was a certain something to him in the way she turned the pages. Every slide of her fingers over the worn paper was a loving caress, as though she were coaxing them into releasing each new scrap of knowledge. She probably had more respect for books than she did for people. Given her thirst for knowledge, he wouldn't be terribly surprised.
One day, inevitably, she caught him in the act. The slim volume of Western folk legends snapped shut. She rose quickly, glowering at him, everything about her saying how dare you even look at me. He met her gaze boldly - and shivered, not with revulsion, nor even with the curious wanting that had crept upon him as he watched her reading. Looking back at him, however, she could not have known that. Likely she thought it was lust or loathing, and he wasn't sure which would have irked her more. Her eyes darkened with ill-disguised anger. For one horrible moment he thought she was going to hit him, but she merely scowled (how attractively, he thought) and stalked away. He stood there in her wake, stunned by the same spark of absolute clarity that had suddenly taken hold of him and made him tremble.
Someday, somehow, she was going to ruin him.
[5]
He watched her writing, too, which she did with less enjoyment. She would scratch holes in the paper with her quill, snarl to herself in frustration, wind her green fingers into her dark hair as if to pull it out by the roots - this last she had done four times in the past half hour. Once she even gave a little whine of dismay. Glancing surreptitiously over her shoulder from the row behind, he recognised Galinda's loopy scrawl on the page she was attacking. Fourteen lines. Sonnet. Elphaba was attempting to correct Galinda's homework. Hah. No wonder she was tearing her hair out. He grinned secretly to himself behind his book. Entertaining and thoroughly lovely though Galinda was, she was not cut out for intellectual pursuits.
"Oh, Elphie - you didn't have to go to all this trouble..."
On cue, there was the girl herself. She commandeered the seat to Elphaba's left in a flurry of white, and proceeded to talk the poor girl's ear off. Better Elphaba than him. They complimented each other surprisingly well, he decided as he watched them. If Galinda was the perfect white rose, then Elphaba was the stem: green, of course, but more notably sharp. Sharp and prickly. As adept as Galinda was at attracting the world from afar, Elphaba was equally competent at repelling it if it ever came too close.
And yet...
standing on the edge of the parapet at Kiamo Ko, staring down at the jagged rocks, wondering as the wind tore at his hair if it might be worth the agony of landing, of dying, to feel for a few short moments the exhilaration of flight
...difficult though it was to think about it, and cowed though he certainly was by her ever-present thorns, he almost felt compelled to reach out and touch her. She was as inviting as a bed of clover, if poetry was the order of the day. A shame that every time he even thought about getting comfortable he seemed to encounter at least one unfortunately placed thistle.
She turned and caught his eye at that moment, but instead of glowering at him she looked quickly away. He blinked. Perhaps he had imagined it - in the split second in which their eyes had met, her cheeks had seemed to darken.
[6]
He never had the chance to see Elphaba's attempt at poetry. She might have been all right at it. She might even have garnered her friend a decent grade. But Galinda handed in a piece of parchment with a different pattern of lines, and he knew she had composed something fresh even before he saw it written there. He had always known she could not pass what was mostly her friend's work off as her own. Even if it did not affront her rather dubious moral code, wherever something of Elphaba's was concerned - however tenuously - she would abide by Elphaba's rules. And the girl herself, though she had pretended not to care, would secretly have hated to be accessory to any kind of academic malpractice. He was certain of that. Or as certain as was possible, in any case. Though he could see the shape of the words on her heart - as everyone could, for she made no attempt to conceal them - they were written in a language he did not entirely understand.
Elphaba was an open book to him, and still he could not read her.
[7]
"How did it go?"
From the very instant the words are out, shaking him from his moment of remembrance, he is overcome with a sense of foreboding. Something momentous is about to happen, though whether wonderful or terrible he knows not. The thought troubles him. Between them, Doctor Dillamond and the Lion cub have filled his quota of terrible for the month at least. He plucks the clover from the lawn and toys with it absently, watching Elphaba wind her dark hair between her fingers as she reads, trying not to think and finding the task disturbingly difficult. Perhaps he has burned that bridge already. Perhaps he burned it the moment he first laid eyes on her.
"Horribly," Galinda grumbles, stepping into view around the oak tree. Elphaba must have heard her arriving. "Apparently I didn't capture the essential theme of a sonnet - and the essential theme of that, sir, is that you aren't looking hard enough. And I know that didn't make sense, so don't even say it. I'm allowed to be incoherent when I'm cross."
"I never said you weren't," Elphaba replies mildly, marking her page and closing the book of poetry with a snap. "How bad is it?"
"Well, I thought it was rather good, but he obviously thinks it's - "
"I meant the mark, Galinda."
" - oh, that. Grade's on the paper. Here, have a look."
Green fingers pluck the sheet of parchment from Galinda's unresisting hand. "Thanks. Mind if I read?"
"Please do - I don't know that a second opinion will lift my spirits any, but we might at least try."
Fiyero remains hidden among the shrubbery, not wishing to be caught eavesdropping, but as Elphaba begins to speak - and is thus distracted - he inches closer to the pair, the better to watch and listen.
"She wore a smile upon a perfect mouth,
And gilded ringlets with a gentle sheen,
A satin dress, imported from the South,
And gold, and pink spinel, and tourmaline.
The dancers, black and white, adoring eyes,
Stepped back to let the golden couple pass,
And, smiling still, the patron Saint of lies
Outshone them all, as diamonds outshine glass.
Yet someone stole the light from every gem
And put the sweetest girls of Shiz to shame;
She wore her courage like a diadem
And dared the wond'ring world to speak - to..."
...and she is reading ahead, and has just realised who she is reading about - oh, and you do like to be touched, Miss Elphaba. How you do like to be touched. Once again he is deeply jealous of Galinda, and resolves to be a poet: if poets can engender such a startling reaction with words alone... But Elphaba continues, as bravely as she can. Perhaps she wishes to pretend that Galinda has not addressed the sonnet as she has, and ignore all the implications of such an act in one fell swoop. Fiyero tries to do just that for a moment, but rapidly discovers that he does not care - or, more accurately, that if Galinda's heart lies where it seems to he does not blame her in the slightest.
"...And dared the wond'ring world to speak her name -
The fairest...of the company that night...
Wore cotton...jet...and flawless malachite."
By the time she reaches the last few words, she is speaking barely above a husky whisper. Her expression has softened in a manner he finds jarringly beautiful, and all he can think is Galinda, you fool, her hair's not jet black - it's brown, like coffee without any milk. "And that gets a B minus?" she asks, haltingly, rhetorically, and he wonders if jade might have been better than malachite, though even that has marks and blemishes. Flawless, at least, was a good choice.
"That's what I said," Galinda mutters irritably, settling on to the grass beside her friend. "Something is rotten in the state of Oz. I worked on that blessed thing for half the night."
Elphaba shifts awkwardly, endearingly. It is hard to tell whether she is trying to smile or trying not to. "I...don't know what to say..."
"Oh, don't fret - it's just one poor mark among all the decent ones I've had. I'm sure I'll get over it," Galinda says airily, and Fiyero cannot believe that she has so effortlessly defused the situation. Elphaba knows she meant the sonnet for her, Galinda knows she knows, and Elphaba knows that, but together they will pretend that nothing has changed. Together they will pretend that this is all about getting a lower grade on one's confession of love than expected, rather than examining said confession any further. "Read me something?" she suggests, indicating the anthology in Elphaba's lap - and there is the offer to reciprocate, and yet it is completely innocuous to any passer-by. To be so easy with such a creature!
"You're growing fond of sonnets after all, then?"
A light quip from Elphaba, testing the weight of weapons she does not need as she tucks the gift between the pages of her book. Galinda does not answer save with a smile, and Fiyero imagines that she, as he, is simply growing fond of listening to Elphaba speak. She rests her blonde curls and ivory cheek against her friend's chest and crisp white blazer, and her eyes close softly as an arm finds its way around her waist. Looking on, Fiyero aches silently. He pulls the leaves off the clover stem one by one: at the whisper of a page turned over and smoothed into place with a reverent hand, at the lacing together of white and green fingers, at the gentle flow of words, ancient, near-sacred, from full ivy lips. What he would not give to take his girlfriend's place at Elphaba's side. He wants to gather her into his arms and cradle her close to him, to catch the scent of her hair, to go beyond the realms of hearing and feel the rough edges of her voice, to have her touch him without fear and look upon him without disdain. Never before has he wanted so little and so much from someone; never has he cared so much for their approval; never has he loved a soul so well as the girl he cannot have.
And love, as he is rapidly discovering, makes poets of us all.
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
That alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove..."
Fiyero watches, listens, falls: once, twice, three times.
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...for the London cast, one and all, and everyone who has seen and loved them - here's to a wonderfully wicked company.
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And if you didn't spot all the words, they're here:
S2: "it's not the green. It's the thorns"
S3: "Fiyero bit back a snort of laughter and peeped out from behind his book"
S4: "Likely she thought it was lust or loathing, and he wasn't sure which would have irked her more"
S5: "She was as inviting as a bed of clover, if poetry was the order of the day"
S6: "wherever something of Elphaba's was concerned - however tenuously - she would abide by Elphaba's rules"
S7: "From the very instant the words are out, shaking him from his moment of remembrance, he is overcome with a sense of foreboding" and "Once again he is deeply jealous of Galinda, and resolves to be a poet"
Each of the sections also uses one of the words as a prompt, in the following order: lust, jealous, abide, foreboding, thorn, book, clover. I make no apology for any tenuous links between prompt and section.
Next up is Part The Fifth of Revolutions, unless I'm inspired to write something else. I'd also like a chance to do some flashfiction, though, so I'm taking requests for drabbles. If you're interested, comment and leave me four related words or phrases - a set I did in the past, for example, was "second best; second nature; second chance; split second" - and any further notes on what you'd like to see, such as 'verse, genre, possible events and so forth.
Until next time...this is Dare, signing off.
- D
Pairing: Pretty much every combination of Fiyero, Elphaba and Galinda
Rating: PG-13, just to be safe - mild swearing, a rather cranky Elphie and Fiyero's dirty mind
Subject: Musical - specific cast; see author's note
Author: DareDelvil
Word Count: ~4.5k
Challenge Words Used: All of them - and a prize to the first person who can tell me which of them appears in all seven sections!
Summary: Post-Ozdust, pre-City, mid-Shakespeare; six memories and one summer's day. Three people falling in love, over and over again.
Disclaimer: The Wizard of Oz and Wicked are the property of L.Frank Baum and Gregory Maguire respectively. This is their game; I just bend the rules when nobody's looking. Neither do I own any of the London company, much to my dismay, and nor do I own the last four lines of iambic - they're Shakespeare's, from Sonnet #116 (a favourite of mine, full text here). I wrote Galinda's sonnet, and if you steal it I will eat your face. ^.^
Author's Note: In honour of the community's "birthday", this is the one-shot I mentioned. It's something of an experiment - the characters herein are different from their Revolutions counterparts, and I hope it shows. They are based directly upon the cast I saw in London on Thursday August 2nd, the pertinent players being Oliver!Fiyero, Dianne!Galinda and CJ!Elphie, and this piece may be considered a tribute to their work that night. This may just be my national pride talking, but I feel we've some of the best performers in the Wickeding world.
Without further ado, my latest venture into ficdom: Three Times.
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Revolutions || Other Darefic
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Three Times
"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."
- Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626), "Of Beauty"
[1]
"Wake up, you!"
He started, but he was still half asleep as he slid his sunglasses on to his forehead. There was no one there. But he'd distinctly heard the shout, felt the slap of a hand vibrate through the seat -
"Young lay-dee, d'you realise 'oo this is?"
"Oi doan't care 'oo this is!"
Oh, she was arguing with Avaric - mocking his accent, sounded like. And now she was storming away from the driver to glower at the passenger - him - instead, and her blue-grey eyes were so full of fury that her gaze should have burned on contact, and she was...green. And rather short. And very, very angry.
"Your car," she snapped, gesturing at the vehicle, "nearly ran me over. And you're sleeping."
Fiyero tried in vain to process the situation. Here was a girl who wasn't falling at his feet in adoration, which puzzled him. She was in fact shouting at him, which puzzled him even more, and she said "sleeping" as though he oughtn't to have been, which was totally beyond him. "Of course," he answered, not unkindly: he was willing to give anyone as obviously foreign as she was the benefit of the doubt. "It's daytime."
She stared at him in a mixture of horror and disbelief. Doing his best to ignore her, he took his satchel, assured Avaric that he'd be out of here before long, went through the secret handshake on autopilot and watched the car pull away.
"Is this really how you go through life? Nearly knocking people over and not even noticing?"
Apparently the little foreigner was not content to be ignored. Fiyero looked her up and down (well, down and further down) and decided she would look much prettier in black, without the hat, without the glasses. Perhaps she could be persuaded to take her hair out of that severe plait. Unbound, it would fall at least half way down her back: he could imagine it being picked up and toyed with by the wind, or spread out on the grass in dark waves beneath her, or wrapped around his fingers -
"Well?"
His line of sight was abruptly blocked by the book she had been holding under her arm: she was now clasping it against her chest in a rather protective fashion. Ah. She probably felt threatened by the attention: a girl could only look so foreign before most people began to lose interest. He let his gaze drift back up to meet her eyes - Oz, they were cold -
"Perhaps the driver saw green," he said lazily, "and thought it meant Go..."
The moment the words were out he regretted them intensely. She kept glowering, kept the same tight hold on her book, but suddenly her gaze seemed so hollow, so empty it was almost too horrible to watch. He'd hurt her. Dammit - he'd thought she might be a little more travelled than that, a little more accustomed to foreigners making jokes about her complexion. The red-skinned Quadlings got their share of harmless wisecracks, and all the ones he'd ever met had laughed and reciprocated in kind. Oughtn't she to do the same, curl her lip into a smirk (or even a smile, Oz forbid) and call him Snowy or Whitewash? He'd been trying to lighten the mood, for Oz sake...and now she was leaving, head down and tense all over, striding past him with an air of purpose. He took a few steps after her, reaching out to her with an expression that said no, wait, I didn't mean it like that, please come back, but it was all to no avail. Within moments, she had vanished among the crowds.
Well, that was a good start.
Resigned to a morning of boredom, he dug in his satchel for his timetable and peered at the tiny print. Hah. If the green girl hadn't stormed off on him like that, he might have made her laugh by asking to borrow her glasses...
"Are you looking for something?"
Another girl's voice. He turned, and was treated to a toss of perfect blonde hair and a come-hither look from dark eyes.
"Or...someone?"
Fiyero grinned internally, taking in the girl's pristine white uniform and smooth curves. Perhaps this place wouldn't be a total drag after all.
[2]
"...my roommate, Miss Elphaba."
Elphaba. The name had an exotic, sensuous quality, and it suited her far better than he'd expected it to. If only she would take that damned hat off, though... He was unsurprised by the firm handshake, and returned it without missing a beat: raising that hand to his lips and kissing the smooth green knuckles would have been a recipe for disaster. "Elphaba," he repeated, rolling the name around his mouth and liking the taste of it. "Wow. That's..." Beautiful? No, that's been done to death. Sexy? Oz, no, don't say that, she'll run a mile -
He dithered too long, and she cut him off. "I know, I know, about as archaic as my clothing and as hideous as the rest of me," she said with a tired air, neatly extracting her hand from his grip. "Can we get at the punch, do you think?"
"Don't worry, I'll get drinks!" Galinda chirped. "You two play nicely while I'm away..."
And off she went into the crowds. This, Fiyero realised, left him with Elphaba. He hadn't expected to meet the green girl again so soon, and certainly not under such circumstances as these. Not that he wasn't glad of it, of course - he just hadn't quite worked out what to say to her yet, and that probably meant he'd end up saying something stupid and offending her again.
"Punch? You're looking to get smashed, then?" He had to conceal a wince. Could have done better than that.
"Smashed?" She quirked an eyebrow. "You mean drunk?"
He grinned. "Yeah. Punch drunk."
She didn't giggle. She sneered at him. Oh, wow, this was not a normal girl. Admittedly the joke had been weak at best, but that usually didn't matter. "Oh, ha dee ha ha," she said flatly. "On lemons and melons and pears?"
"Oh my."
She frowned. "Oh your what?"
"Lemons and melons and pears, oh my," Fiyero repeated, "and there's a reason for the oh my. The punch is spiked."
"What? How do you know?"
"How do I know?" He laughed. "Miss Elphaba, this is a party. There is punch. Ergo, the punch is spiked. It's practically Rule Number One."
An expression of horror affixed itself firmly to her face. "Oh, sweet Oz, Nessa! She's probably been drinking it all evening!"
"Then she'll probably have the mother and father of a headache in the morning," Fiyero said with a sigh, reaching out to keep her from rushing off. "Just leave her, she'll be - "
With hindsight, he should have known better than to catch hold of her arm. She wrenched it away, whipped her head around and shot him a glare that ought to have reduced him to a charred shadow on the smoking remains of the opposite wall. He felt as though he should be terrified, but he was mostly just impressed that someone so small could contain so much anger. "Don't you dare - " One heavy brown boot slammed down dangerously close to his toes. " - tell me how to take care of my sister. In fact, don't tell me what to do. Ever. Unless, of course, you want to die horribly, in which case I'd be all too happy to oblige. Nessa!" She hurried off in the direction of her sister's wheelchair. "Nessa, don't drink that - someone's laced it with Oz-knows-what..."
"Too late..." Fiyero murmured to himself as Galinda returned with three glasses of sherbet fizz. "Ah, excellent - something that isn't a certified health hazard."
Galinda handed him his glass and looked around. "Where'd Elphaba go?"
"To save her sister from the oh my." He took a sip. It wasn't bad.
"The what? ...Oh, the punch. Goodness, yes, she has had rather a lot of it, hasn't she? Well, never mind, gives me a chance to ask - what do you think of her?"
He blinked. "Of Miss Nessarose?"
She swatted his arm lightly. "No, silly. Of Miss Elphaba."
"She's..." Considering his answer, he decided that being hazy was the safest option. "...different. Interesting."
"...You don't like her, do you?"
Oh, no. Her lip was trembling. "Galinda, I - "
"It's the green, isn't it?"
"She's a little frightening," he said, hoping she wouldn't interrupt him again, "but no, it's not the green. It's the thorns. I could like her, I suppose, if she'd only stop biting my head off every time we meet." But he had a feeling she wouldn't be Elphaba if she wasn't irritable - and she looked so powerful when she was angry, as though she could move mountains with a gesture. It was intimidating, yes, but it was also remarkably attractive. "I almost ran her over when I arrived, though, and I don't think she's forgiven me yet, which I suppose is fair enough." Wisely, he didn't mention his ill-timed remark about her colouring.
"...The green doesn't bother you?"
He shrugged. "Why should it? I've seen black people, white people, red people - why not green people? It's exotic. Like Midori liqueur. ...Come to think of it, that's probably what's in the punch..."
"Red people?"
"Red people. Quadlings. I've been kicked out of quite a few places, you know. ...But enough about me - I think Midori's terrorising your Biq." He'd just spotted Elphaba approaching the hapless Munchkin, and she had a purposeful look in her eye.
"It's Boq," Galinda answered automatically, craning her neck to see. "Oh dear. I feel responsible. We'd better go and rescue him."
Not because he was in trouble, Fiyero thought wryly, but to spare Galinda any troubling pangs of guilt. They approached surreptitiously until Elphaba's voice became audible. She was leaning close to Boq, and, as they watched, one green hand curled tightly around the lapel of his jacket.
"...you listen here, sunbeam," she was beginning to say in a low, rough voice. "Nessarose may be the Governor's daughter, but while she is here she is first and foremost my sister - it is my responsibility to look after her, and in my book that means I have to make sure you're going to take proper care of her in my absence. Now I'm sure you're a nice lad, and you'd treat her very well under normal circumstances, but you're essentially a young man, and I know how easily you lot can be tempted to stray from the path of chivalry. So let me make this quite clear to you now: she is far too far gone to make any sort of measured decision on her own, and if I find out that there has been one iota of funny business I will have your bollocks for earrings. Understand?" When Boq nodded weakly, she released him. "...Good. Now get her out of here, and don't jar her on the staircases."
Boq complied at once, only waiting a moment for the sisters to say their goodnights. Miss Nessarose was rather far gone: she kissed Elphaba's cheek and complimented her hat before the Munchkin wheeled her away. Once they had left, Fiyero approached the remaining sister with Galinda on his arm. "...That may have been overkill," he said cautiously, deeply aware that one could wear two pairs of earrings at once.
Elphaba dismissed him with a wave of her hand. "Rubbish. I was just being firm with him. You'll know when it's overkill."
"Come dance, Miss Elphaba?" Galinda suggested, smiling a little too brightly as she held out her hand.
The green girl didn't seem to notice the difference. "What, again? Haven't I made enough of a fool of myself already? ...oh, don't look at me like that! Anyone would think I'd kicked you... Fine, have it your way - just spare me the puppydog eyes, for Oz sake..."
There was no genuine venom in her words, though. She was going through the motions, no more, as if passing a whetstone over a blade to keep it keen. Galinda laughed merrily and dragged her away by the wrist - good grief, if he'd tried that she'd've had his arm off. Didn't Galinda realise what she was handling so carelessly?
Or maybe she had the right idea, unconsciously calling Elphaba's bluff. Maybe in being certain that she wouldn't be harmed she was keeping herself from harm - maybe, he thought as he watched them, maybe Elphaba wasn't as cruel as she liked to pretend.
Someone bumped into him, shattering the moment, and he decided that there was a wretched kind of irony in envying someone green: he didn't know how she'd done it, but he had the distinct feeling that Elphaba had just stolen his date.
[3]
"I can't stand poetry," Galinda huffed as she dropped into the seat beside Elphaba. "I simply can't stand it!"
Two rows back and concealed behind a textbook, Fiyero went deliberately unnoticed. He didn't much like listening to Galinda whine and moan about her everyday trials: to his mind, she would sometimes be more agreeable if she were silent (save, of course, for appropriately timed giggles and utterances of his name). Elphaba was taking it in her stride, though. "Last week you said you'd never been so moved by anything in your life," she was saying. "What happened?"
"They want me to write it," Galinda lamented, "and I can't."
"Yes you can. I've seen some of your poetry and it's not even dreadful."
Fiyero bit back a snort of laughter and peeped out from behind his book. Elphaba, typically enough, was holding up her end of the conversation without taking her eyes off her work. Galinda was glaring at her. "How kind of you to say so," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "But it's not like that. It's sonnets. I hate sonnets. And until further notice I hate poetry, too."
"And I'm not a great fan of your playing with my hair all the way through every lecture," said Elphaba mildly, setting her pen down and turning to Galinda. "But I could sit somewhere else, and you could drop the poetry class. So why haven't we?"
Galinda frowned, and Fiyero marvelled. She was seriously considering the question.
"...Some sort of inherent reluctance to change?"
His jaw slackened. Did Elphaba force everyone to think? The green girl seemed a little surprised herself: she quirked one dark eyebrow. "Inertia?" Ah, that was the word...and was it him, or did she look different all of a sudden? "Perhaps. Or maybe, however secretly..."
She took Galinda's hand then, quite without warning, and pressed it against - Fiyero felt his body tighten without his consent -
"...we just like to be touched."
...against her shoulder, and the long braid of dark hair that was resting there. Galinda broke into a most unladylike grin, giggled gleefully, and began to unwind the plait with nimble fingers. Two rows back, behind his textbook, Fiyero breathed out. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting Elphaba to do. ...All right, yes he was. But she just wouldn't do something like that, and he didn't know why he'd wanted her to in any case. She was clever, though, wasn't she? She'd managed to please Galinda, of all people, with a fragment of philosophy, though admittedly the offer to let her mess with her hair might have had something to do with it. He suspected she was working harder at pleasing Galinda than he was. Come to think of it, Galinda was probably her only real friend.
And then it hit him. Of course she looked different. This was the first time he'd ever seen her smile.
[4]
She was never so gentle with him as she was with Galinda. He suspected he still hadn't been forgiven for almost squashing her upon his arrival. In any case she seemed to have more interesting things than him to pay attention to, and though that stung it didn't sting for long. He took to watching her and her books - now a weighty tome on astronomy, now a leather-bound history of politics, now a small book of illustrated fairytales, now a sorcery manual - apparently she wasn't fussy about the subject matter so long as there was information to be devoured. She read each and every one with the same kind of rapt attention he usually paid to a beautiful woman: not that she winked at them or pinched their back covers, of course, but before long he realised there was a certain something to him in the way she turned the pages. Every slide of her fingers over the worn paper was a loving caress, as though she were coaxing them into releasing each new scrap of knowledge. She probably had more respect for books than she did for people. Given her thirst for knowledge, he wouldn't be terribly surprised.
One day, inevitably, she caught him in the act. The slim volume of Western folk legends snapped shut. She rose quickly, glowering at him, everything about her saying how dare you even look at me. He met her gaze boldly - and shivered, not with revulsion, nor even with the curious wanting that had crept upon him as he watched her reading. Looking back at him, however, she could not have known that. Likely she thought it was lust or loathing, and he wasn't sure which would have irked her more. Her eyes darkened with ill-disguised anger. For one horrible moment he thought she was going to hit him, but she merely scowled (how attractively, he thought) and stalked away. He stood there in her wake, stunned by the same spark of absolute clarity that had suddenly taken hold of him and made him tremble.
Someday, somehow, she was going to ruin him.
[5]
He watched her writing, too, which she did with less enjoyment. She would scratch holes in the paper with her quill, snarl to herself in frustration, wind her green fingers into her dark hair as if to pull it out by the roots - this last she had done four times in the past half hour. Once she even gave a little whine of dismay. Glancing surreptitiously over her shoulder from the row behind, he recognised Galinda's loopy scrawl on the page she was attacking. Fourteen lines. Sonnet. Elphaba was attempting to correct Galinda's homework. Hah. No wonder she was tearing her hair out. He grinned secretly to himself behind his book. Entertaining and thoroughly lovely though Galinda was, she was not cut out for intellectual pursuits.
"Oh, Elphie - you didn't have to go to all this trouble..."
On cue, there was the girl herself. She commandeered the seat to Elphaba's left in a flurry of white, and proceeded to talk the poor girl's ear off. Better Elphaba than him. They complimented each other surprisingly well, he decided as he watched them. If Galinda was the perfect white rose, then Elphaba was the stem: green, of course, but more notably sharp. Sharp and prickly. As adept as Galinda was at attracting the world from afar, Elphaba was equally competent at repelling it if it ever came too close.
And yet...
standing on the edge of the parapet at Kiamo Ko, staring down at the jagged rocks, wondering as the wind tore at his hair if it might be worth the agony of landing, of dying, to feel for a few short moments the exhilaration of flight
...difficult though it was to think about it, and cowed though he certainly was by her ever-present thorns, he almost felt compelled to reach out and touch her. She was as inviting as a bed of clover, if poetry was the order of the day. A shame that every time he even thought about getting comfortable he seemed to encounter at least one unfortunately placed thistle.
She turned and caught his eye at that moment, but instead of glowering at him she looked quickly away. He blinked. Perhaps he had imagined it - in the split second in which their eyes had met, her cheeks had seemed to darken.
[6]
He never had the chance to see Elphaba's attempt at poetry. She might have been all right at it. She might even have garnered her friend a decent grade. But Galinda handed in a piece of parchment with a different pattern of lines, and he knew she had composed something fresh even before he saw it written there. He had always known she could not pass what was mostly her friend's work off as her own. Even if it did not affront her rather dubious moral code, wherever something of Elphaba's was concerned - however tenuously - she would abide by Elphaba's rules. And the girl herself, though she had pretended not to care, would secretly have hated to be accessory to any kind of academic malpractice. He was certain of that. Or as certain as was possible, in any case. Though he could see the shape of the words on her heart - as everyone could, for she made no attempt to conceal them - they were written in a language he did not entirely understand.
Elphaba was an open book to him, and still he could not read her.
[7]
"How did it go?"
From the very instant the words are out, shaking him from his moment of remembrance, he is overcome with a sense of foreboding. Something momentous is about to happen, though whether wonderful or terrible he knows not. The thought troubles him. Between them, Doctor Dillamond and the Lion cub have filled his quota of terrible for the month at least. He plucks the clover from the lawn and toys with it absently, watching Elphaba wind her dark hair between her fingers as she reads, trying not to think and finding the task disturbingly difficult. Perhaps he has burned that bridge already. Perhaps he burned it the moment he first laid eyes on her.
"Horribly," Galinda grumbles, stepping into view around the oak tree. Elphaba must have heard her arriving. "Apparently I didn't capture the essential theme of a sonnet - and the essential theme of that, sir, is that you aren't looking hard enough. And I know that didn't make sense, so don't even say it. I'm allowed to be incoherent when I'm cross."
"I never said you weren't," Elphaba replies mildly, marking her page and closing the book of poetry with a snap. "How bad is it?"
"Well, I thought it was rather good, but he obviously thinks it's - "
"I meant the mark, Galinda."
" - oh, that. Grade's on the paper. Here, have a look."
Green fingers pluck the sheet of parchment from Galinda's unresisting hand. "Thanks. Mind if I read?"
"Please do - I don't know that a second opinion will lift my spirits any, but we might at least try."
Fiyero remains hidden among the shrubbery, not wishing to be caught eavesdropping, but as Elphaba begins to speak - and is thus distracted - he inches closer to the pair, the better to watch and listen.
"She wore a smile upon a perfect mouth,
And gilded ringlets with a gentle sheen,
A satin dress, imported from the South,
And gold, and pink spinel, and tourmaline.
The dancers, black and white, adoring eyes,
Stepped back to let the golden couple pass,
And, smiling still, the patron Saint of lies
Outshone them all, as diamonds outshine glass.
Yet someone stole the light from every gem
And put the sweetest girls of Shiz to shame;
She wore her courage like a diadem
And dared the wond'ring world to speak - to..."
...and she is reading ahead, and has just realised who she is reading about - oh, and you do like to be touched, Miss Elphaba. How you do like to be touched. Once again he is deeply jealous of Galinda, and resolves to be a poet: if poets can engender such a startling reaction with words alone... But Elphaba continues, as bravely as she can. Perhaps she wishes to pretend that Galinda has not addressed the sonnet as she has, and ignore all the implications of such an act in one fell swoop. Fiyero tries to do just that for a moment, but rapidly discovers that he does not care - or, more accurately, that if Galinda's heart lies where it seems to he does not blame her in the slightest.
"...And dared the wond'ring world to speak her name -
The fairest...of the company that night...
Wore cotton...jet...and flawless malachite."
By the time she reaches the last few words, she is speaking barely above a husky whisper. Her expression has softened in a manner he finds jarringly beautiful, and all he can think is Galinda, you fool, her hair's not jet black - it's brown, like coffee without any milk. "And that gets a B minus?" she asks, haltingly, rhetorically, and he wonders if jade might have been better than malachite, though even that has marks and blemishes. Flawless, at least, was a good choice.
"That's what I said," Galinda mutters irritably, settling on to the grass beside her friend. "Something is rotten in the state of Oz. I worked on that blessed thing for half the night."
Elphaba shifts awkwardly, endearingly. It is hard to tell whether she is trying to smile or trying not to. "I...don't know what to say..."
"Oh, don't fret - it's just one poor mark among all the decent ones I've had. I'm sure I'll get over it," Galinda says airily, and Fiyero cannot believe that she has so effortlessly defused the situation. Elphaba knows she meant the sonnet for her, Galinda knows she knows, and Elphaba knows that, but together they will pretend that nothing has changed. Together they will pretend that this is all about getting a lower grade on one's confession of love than expected, rather than examining said confession any further. "Read me something?" she suggests, indicating the anthology in Elphaba's lap - and there is the offer to reciprocate, and yet it is completely innocuous to any passer-by. To be so easy with such a creature!
"You're growing fond of sonnets after all, then?"
A light quip from Elphaba, testing the weight of weapons she does not need as she tucks the gift between the pages of her book. Galinda does not answer save with a smile, and Fiyero imagines that she, as he, is simply growing fond of listening to Elphaba speak. She rests her blonde curls and ivory cheek against her friend's chest and crisp white blazer, and her eyes close softly as an arm finds its way around her waist. Looking on, Fiyero aches silently. He pulls the leaves off the clover stem one by one: at the whisper of a page turned over and smoothed into place with a reverent hand, at the lacing together of white and green fingers, at the gentle flow of words, ancient, near-sacred, from full ivy lips. What he would not give to take his girlfriend's place at Elphaba's side. He wants to gather her into his arms and cradle her close to him, to catch the scent of her hair, to go beyond the realms of hearing and feel the rough edges of her voice, to have her touch him without fear and look upon him without disdain. Never before has he wanted so little and so much from someone; never has he cared so much for their approval; never has he loved a soul so well as the girl he cannot have.
And love, as he is rapidly discovering, makes poets of us all.
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
That alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove..."
Fiyero watches, listens, falls: once, twice, three times.
--------
...for the London cast, one and all, and everyone who has seen and loved them - here's to a wonderfully wicked company.
--------
And if you didn't spot all the words, they're here:
S2: "it's not the green. It's the thorns"
S3: "Fiyero bit back a snort of laughter and peeped out from behind his book"
S4: "Likely she thought it was lust or loathing, and he wasn't sure which would have irked her more"
S5: "She was as inviting as a bed of clover, if poetry was the order of the day"
S6: "wherever something of Elphaba's was concerned - however tenuously - she would abide by Elphaba's rules"
S7: "From the very instant the words are out, shaking him from his moment of remembrance, he is overcome with a sense of foreboding" and "Once again he is deeply jealous of Galinda, and resolves to be a poet"
Each of the sections also uses one of the words as a prompt, in the following order: lust, jealous, abide, foreboding, thorn, book, clover. I make no apology for any tenuous links between prompt and section.
Next up is Part The Fifth of Revolutions, unless I'm inspired to write something else. I'd also like a chance to do some flashfiction, though, so I'm taking requests for drabbles. If you're interested, comment and leave me four related words or phrases - a set I did in the past, for example, was "second best; second nature; second chance; split second" - and any further notes on what you'd like to see, such as 'verse, genre, possible events and so forth.
Until next time...this is Dare, signing off.
- D