Fic: Adventures in the Bad Green Apple: Blood For a Bauble - Chapter 10. (Wicked)
Fandom: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Disclaimer: Wicked (c) Gregory Maguire.
Rating: PG-13, whole fic PG-13/R.
Pairings: Glinda/Elphaba, Glinda/Fiyero, others that it would be spoilery to mention.
Summary: In a slightly different Oz, Elphaba Thropp ekes out her living as a bitter private eye in the Emerald City, the bad green apple of Oz, where rain rarely lets up, crime runs rampant, and sensual socialites wrap themselves in cigarette smoke.
Chapters: Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 / 12
Adventures in the Bad Green Apple: Blood for a Bauble
Chapter 10.
Elphaba hadn't realised she had fallen asleep again until the carriage began to stop, jolting her awake. Glinda had stopped playing with her hair and was now gazing out the window.
"Bring back memories?" she asked, causing Glinda to jump and look down.
"Yes," she answered, after a moment. "I really found out a lot here..."
Elphaba sat up to look out the window. The day had turned to night. The city outside was beautiful, as far as she could tell in the light of streetlamps and windows, but even here were the cracks made by humanity's passing on the architect's dream. There were gutters running with filth, a high-pitched laugh and the sound of glass breaking from a brightly lit inn, and there, in the alley between two stately buildings, she could see two figures grappling. With violence or with desire, she could not tell.
"How much did you tell him?" asked Glinda. "I assume you called him or sent him a message this morning."
"Neither, actually," said Elphaba. "I noticed an old friend following me when I left Morrible's town house - went there to have a little chat with your old maid Maud."
"I'm not surprised that's where she ended up, the little viper!"
"I wasn't either. I don't know how long I had been shadowed, but I backed up a couple of times and in the end caught a sight of the fellow - knew him from the old days. From that point on I knew Fiyero would be watching me, and figured it couldn't hurt. Are we close?" Elphaba said abrubtly and leaned painfully out to see where they were. Just then the carriage rounded a corner, rolled for a few more inches and stopped. Fiyero jumped off the driver's seat.
They had stopped outside a large building connected to other large buildings, an arrangement that could only herald an institution. The walls had been decorated much as the rest of the city, but Elphaba could detect a touch of fancy here that was unique - the same mix of Lurlinist and Unionist imagery that had decorated Madame Morrible's house. Goats and angels leered out of the corners and pumices, half lost in shadow, even the benign among the faces twisted into monstrosity by the play of light. There were Animals carved into the walls as well, and even in the dark she could see that many of them had been graffitied over.
Fiyero opened the door to the carriage and offered his arm first to Glinda and then, when she seemed determined to come out, to Elphaba to help them out. He had cleaned up the blood on his hairline and dusted himself off and now looked as respectable by Gillikin standards as his tattoos allowed. Glinda, for her part, re-arranged her skirts to partly hide the bloodstains. Elphaba did not feel up to such niceties - not with the pain wrecking her, nor with the extend of the red splatters on her half-dressed body. She refused to lean on Fiyero like a cripple, though, and once out the carriage tried to stand up straight. Pain doubled her over once again.
"You shouldn't even be standing," Fiyero admonished her with gentle worry in his eyes. Damn him. The situation was awkward enough without him acting loveable on top of it. Glinda, her little mouth a determined line, wrapped her arm around Elphaba's, supporting her despite herself. Elphaba didn't have the energy to push her away too.
"Just let's get inside, find the thing and then find me a healer," Elphaba said. "I may not be able to fight but I won't delay you, either."
"No. I could use Glinda's help, but you are to get back into the carriage and let my men take you to a healer."
"Waste of your resources," Elphaba snapped. "You need your men with you, and you need me too. Nessa's an idiot. She can't read a room - she won't have found it yet. This would be a good thing, except that I don't think much more of your chances, either. Let me into the building - I'll be able to help. You know I will."
Fiyero and Elphaba stared at each other, one thoughtful and conflicted, the other determined if hazy with pain. "You know," Elphaba whispered at last, "that I do stupid things for people I've never met, when it's right. You know what it would mean if you were linked to this theft. You know. And I know how much the Grimmerald means to your people. Let's not waste any more time, I'm getting tired."
Fiyero nodded, though his expression was still undecided. "Let's go, then. Glinda, look after her." He turned with a swirl of cape and began to march inside.
"He keeps telling you to look after me," whispered Elphaba with a little grin to Glinda as the two followed Fiyero up the stairs. Fiyero banged on the door. "What do you think? Has he relegated you to nurse or is it his way of telling us he's okay with... well, us?"
"I don't know which is more insulting," said Glinda with a huff. "It's not like we need his permission."
"He's an exceptional man but he's still a man," said Elphaba in a tired tone. "He'll never see either of us as competition."
Glinda sparked with anger. "I'm glad I threw him out in the middle of a dinner party. I could have waited until the guests were gone but it wouldn't have been nearly as humiliating."
"Well, I was glad for a while that I punched him hard enough to knock out two teeth."
"But he's not missing any teeth!"
"The marvels of modern medicine, my dear."
The door was opened by a wrinkled little Ama who peered at Fiyero suspiciously. "We're with the previous party," Fiyero said. The Ama made a cooing sound and stepped aside to let the whole party in. Elphaba could not help but be impressed. Fiyero had assumed that whatever excuse Nessarose had used to get in with her men would work to let the second party in as well. The fine suit he was wearing, he must have known, wouldn't hurt either.
Glinda helped Elphaba up the stairs and five of Fiyero's men - one bleeding discreetly, two left behind to tend the rest who had been injured in the chase - followed them into a chandelier-lit corridor. Elphaba guessed the lights wouldn't go out before midnight.
"My point," Elphaba continued in a whisper to Glinda, "is I'm not glad any more. It makes things a little awkward when he keeps saving my life and I still have the scar on my right-hand knuckles. Forgive and forget."
"That's not the Elphaba Thropp I read about in the papers."
Elphaba looked at her as sternly as she could through the pain. "You read--"
"When Crope gave me your name from the directory I recognized it," Glinda said. "You've been mentioned in a number of cases, mostly scandals, a couple of murders. Usually dismissively, and The Eye on Oz has you pegged as a loose cannon. I read you once went back to a meatgrinder's after the case had been closed and the owners announced innocent on all charges. The place burned down."
"They could never prove that."
"You did, though, didn't you?"
"They were packing uninspected meat."
"What happened to forgive and forget?"
"That flesh they were peddling was Animal. There's a bloody line."
Glinda looked at her thoughtfully, eyes soft and curious, but she soon tore her gaze away to the hallway, over the paintings of old schoolmistresses and the incongruous antique armour. "Do you still--?"
"Here," said Fiyero, interrupting her. He had reached the end of the hallway where it branched into a T-shape. Elphaba hoped he didn't have good hearing. They limped their way to him. "This is as far as my tracking skills can take us," Fiyero said. "I'm afraid I've never been inside the girls' dormitory before."
"The dorm rooms are on the left," Glinda said, "and there's a staircase at the end of the hallway which leads upstairs and more bedrooms. There are three floors. On the right is the canteen and recreation hall."
"It'll be in one of the dorm rooms - an unused one," Elphaba told him. "There will likely be so many similar rooms that Morrible thinks we won't ever find the right one."
"She might have a point," said Fiyero.
"We know her timing, though. She won't take the risk of hiding it in a room in which the occupants could find it. The room has to be empty and meant to remain so for a few nights more at least to make it a secure temporary hiding place. She'd rather take one that will remain empty indefinitely, to shield against the possibility of some girl or other wanting to change their room to that specific one because of the light, or other surprises, such as maintenance coming to check it. Is there such a room?" she asked Glinda.
"Only one I know of." She looked a little embarrassed. "My own dorm room had a fire one night. It was left in disuse - at least when I left the college."
"It's a good place to start," said Elphaba grimly. "Please don't say it's on the third floor."
"Second," Glinda said with a grimace. She looked around the five men following them - all Winkies, all with tattooes and unreadable faces, though she recognized a couple of them. Elphaba left her arm and began hobbling towards the staircase on the left.
"Enough," growled Fiyero. In a few strides he was by Elphaba's side and lifted her up, despite her thin arms pushing him away. "It's only one flight of stairs. I give you allowances enough as it is, Fae," he told her firmly.
Elphaba seemed resigned, and with a sigh rested her head against his shoulder. Glinda followed them, something sharp and angry in the clipping of her heels, and they ascended the staircase.
There were no girls about the hallways. As there were fewer lights in the dorm corridors, Elphaba guessed there was a curfew in place. The hallway was lost in darkness, with pinpoints of light that blinded more than they illuminated. Elphaba kept her eyes fixed away from the candles, in the shadows, to better train them to the darkness.
"It's fourteenth on the left," Glinda said in a whisper. There had been no sign of Nessarose, yet the Ama's reaction had seemed to indicate they had come in. There were no noises in the hallway, either. It was quiet - quiet enough that they could hear the sighs of sleeping girls behind their doors.
"Do you think Nessarose could have come to the same conclusion as we did?" Glinda asked.
"Depends," Elphaba whispered. "Did she know your room burned down?"
"Oh yes," said Glinda darkly. "She knew."
Elphaba glanced at her. "She burned your room down."
"I couldn't prove it, of course, but she acted as if she had. She kept making these references, and laughing. I could never fathom why she'd do such a thing, or why she'd joke about it if she hadn't. We weren't enemies."
Elphaba thought about her little sister, her little inconsistencies, her masking of her own bitchy nature under a veneer of piety. She thought of Nessarose ordering the death of someone who'd never done her harm, of giggling delightedly while she played with matches. Mad. She was mad. "Then we have very little time."
"Here," said Glinda, then stopped, puzzled. There was no fourteenth door. The wall was smooth and a painting of a saint hung there in place of a door.
"You're sure this is where the room was?" demanded Fiyero.
"Maybe we should go back and count again," said Glinda, uncertain. "Though I don't remember this painting, either..."
"No," said Elphaba grimly. "It's here."
The painting was of Saint Elphaba of the waterfall. It was as if Nessarose wanted her to find her. Quite besides that, too, Elphaba could feel something behind the wall - something powerful.
Elphaba was no witch, save for knowing a charm or two and where to buy more cheap. She'd never considered magic worth her time. Magic had no laws, no foreseeable effects, no restrictions. Magic could not happen without the people whose minds enforced it. Science told you the things that were and would continue to be without a single mind to study and apply them. Elphaba did not trust people. She did not trust magic.
What she felt now behind that door was wholly unscientific. It frightened her, but they needed what it could tell her. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and allowed the sensation to wash over her.
There was a world on the other side of the door - honking horns, tall buildings, metal and steel, and still the same human flesh dying in the ditches, freezing over, thawing, melting, while living things walked by, high heels, strange dresses, heavy boots, glass crashing into the street, shouting, screaming, laughing, talking, the silence of forests and a crashing wave of water hitting the shore, and stretching - stretching - like a desert but filled with the gushing life - an ocean.
"It's here," she gasped. "I don't know what it is - but it's here." She reached through the illusion and felt for the handle. She found it, grasped it, turned and pulled. The illusion melted into air with a sparkle and a poof and the corridor was flooded with light from Glinda's old dorm room.
Nessarose was standing in the middle of the room, her men arrayed around it, lifting things, slashing through old singed mattresses and smashing holes into the walls. The magical sound-proofing that Nessarose must have put in place in addition to the illusion of the painting still held and when Nessarose opened her mouth to screech commands no-one in the corridor could hear it. One man dropped a pile of battered books and reached for his inside pocket. Fiyero lifted his gun and shot him dead, the bullet burying itself right between his eyes. He walked into the room, and his men followed him, professionally taking down everyone in the room. Nessa twirled around and screamed something as her men were disarmed and constrained.
"Shall we?" asked Elphaba. She and Glinda were still standing in the corridor.
"I wouldn't miss this for the world." Glinda grinned at her wickedly and helped her through the door and the sound barrier into her old dorm room.
"You! This is all your fault!" Nessarose shouted, pointing a finger at Elphaba.
"Your logic, as always, is a little hard to follow," said Elphaba, but she was barely concentrating on what she was saying, now. The feeling of the other world was overpowering and so near, though none of the others seemed to be reacting to it at all. She knew where it was coming from, too. Her eyes fixed on the leg of one of the two beds in the room.
"You just have to ruin everything about my life, don't you?" Nessa screamed, beginning to roll her chair towards Elphaba. Fiyero grabbed its handles and stopped it, then calmly stuck a piece of broken wood under the front wheels to stick it in place.
"I make you the Eminence of the East by staying away. I suppose you could call that ruining. I stop you from murdering my girlfriend and stealing something that doesn't belong to you. Yeah, I'm a goddamn monster, aren't I?"
"Where is it? You know where it is, don't you?"
"I might do," Elphaba said.
"You do?" asked Fiyero anxiously.
"Then take it," Nessarose said, visibly forcing herself to calm down. "Sister, dear. Please. I'm sorry I've interfered with you. I'm so sorry. Take it, give it away, do whatever you wish with it. There! It's yours. Even if you give it to me now, I won't take it. That's a promise, as long as - as long as you do the right thing, the sisterly thing. You will, won't you, Fabala? You'll give me my legs?"
The look on Nessarose's face was so open, so familiar. Elphaba could remember seeing it on her face often when they were children. This was Nessie when she wanted something so badly it hurt her childish heart; Nessie who longed, Nessie who needed. Elphaba was used to giving her what she wanted.
Elphaba shut her eyes, and bent her head. "No."
"Fabala! Yes you will! You will give me my legs! I demand it!"
"No. You don't deserve to walk. You don't deserve even that chair. I was a fool to let you have power." Elphaba leaned on Glinda, as if for support, but her hand flashed out fast as a snake inside Glinda's jacket pocket and pulled out Fat Margie. She pointed it at her sister. "You rather deserve to die before you cause more damage."
Nessarose grew quiet and stared at her, her eyes wild and wide, her face pale, her hands gripping the arms of her chair. One of her men shouted her name and struggled to break free, but Fiyero's man sat on him and forced him to stay still.
The moment drew out. Elphaba thought about it. There were things that needed doing, and she'd always done them, regardless of herself. She'd killed. She'd bludgeoned. It had been necessary. This was necessary. She wasn't Elphaba Thropp, at this moment. She was just the tool of necessity.
Her finger tightened on the trigger. She pulled it. The bullet buried itself harmlessly into a table leg.
She dropped the gun and fell on her knees on the floor. "Bed leg," she said quietly. "The larger bed, the one closest to the door, the left end leg. It's hollowed out." Elphaba lowered herself onto the floor and curled into a ball. The room around her burst into activity. There was the sound of crashing wood. All she could concentrate on now was the hum of the other world, her pain, and the warmth of Glinda's hands and body as she lifted her into her lap and cradled her.
"It's more than I thought it could be," someone said with a gasp. "It's..."
"Give it to me!"
"Shut up!"
"It's beautiful."
"Give it here," commanded Glinda's voice sharply. Elphaba opened her eyes. Glinda looked like her saint namesake, resplendent in the shady candlelight. Fiyero's face appeared above, and he slowly handed her a green glowing thing. It shimmered and shone like a living thing, like a piece of a green star pulled down on earth. "It didn't look like this before," Glinda said in wonderment. Elphaba reached up and touched the Grimmerald.
The glow intensified, brightened, flooded the room, turning everything in it as green as Elphaba. Glinda exclaimed, Fiyero shielded his eyes, there was a shout. Elphaba's fingers closed around the jewel, and it changed in her hand. The edges began to spread out, widen. She put out her other hand, allowed the jewel to grow. There were sparkles in her eyes and a crash and roar in her ears. She blinked and found herself holding a large book.
"What... is it?" asked Glinda, her eyes wide with surprise.
"The Grimmerie," Elphaba read. The name was carved on the cover in swirling letters. She blinked and could read them; she blinked again and could not. She opened it. The text on the pages was the same, and the images as well - they winked into meaning and out.
"It's perfect gobbledegook!" Glinda said. "Is this some kind of a disguise for the jewel?"
"Book! The book of power!" Nessarose said excitedly, twisting at the wheels of her chair uselessly. "Give it to me, I've read about it, I'm sure I can use it."
Elphaba's could barely hear them, so loud was the humming of the book. She sat up, her injuries sending jolts of pain through her body, and let her fingers find the page she needed. It was a spell - a real spell, a powerful spell, not just a two-penny charm. She'd never attempted anything like it. It called for pewter, glass, blood. She thought of her own blood, and took the pewter out of an ashtray stuck on a water-damaged closet at the window, lifted the broken glass she'd heard in the inn before from her memory. The images she conjured became the things themselves, swirled into existence before her, and she spoke the words.
The green light flashed white and disappeared.
Elphaba stood up whole, her clothes splattered with blood from wounds that were no longer there. Glinda and Fiyero stood back, amazed.
Nessarose stared at her. Then, slowly, she stood up as well.
Disclaimer: Wicked (c) Gregory Maguire.
Rating: PG-13, whole fic PG-13/R.
Pairings: Glinda/Elphaba, Glinda/Fiyero, others that it would be spoilery to mention.
Summary: In a slightly different Oz, Elphaba Thropp ekes out her living as a bitter private eye in the Emerald City, the bad green apple of Oz, where rain rarely lets up, crime runs rampant, and sensual socialites wrap themselves in cigarette smoke.
Chapters: Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 / 12
Adventures in the Bad Green Apple: Blood for a Bauble
Chapter 10.
Elphaba hadn't realised she had fallen asleep again until the carriage began to stop, jolting her awake. Glinda had stopped playing with her hair and was now gazing out the window.
"Bring back memories?" she asked, causing Glinda to jump and look down.
"Yes," she answered, after a moment. "I really found out a lot here..."
Elphaba sat up to look out the window. The day had turned to night. The city outside was beautiful, as far as she could tell in the light of streetlamps and windows, but even here were the cracks made by humanity's passing on the architect's dream. There were gutters running with filth, a high-pitched laugh and the sound of glass breaking from a brightly lit inn, and there, in the alley between two stately buildings, she could see two figures grappling. With violence or with desire, she could not tell.
"How much did you tell him?" asked Glinda. "I assume you called him or sent him a message this morning."
"Neither, actually," said Elphaba. "I noticed an old friend following me when I left Morrible's town house - went there to have a little chat with your old maid Maud."
"I'm not surprised that's where she ended up, the little viper!"
"I wasn't either. I don't know how long I had been shadowed, but I backed up a couple of times and in the end caught a sight of the fellow - knew him from the old days. From that point on I knew Fiyero would be watching me, and figured it couldn't hurt. Are we close?" Elphaba said abrubtly and leaned painfully out to see where they were. Just then the carriage rounded a corner, rolled for a few more inches and stopped. Fiyero jumped off the driver's seat.
They had stopped outside a large building connected to other large buildings, an arrangement that could only herald an institution. The walls had been decorated much as the rest of the city, but Elphaba could detect a touch of fancy here that was unique - the same mix of Lurlinist and Unionist imagery that had decorated Madame Morrible's house. Goats and angels leered out of the corners and pumices, half lost in shadow, even the benign among the faces twisted into monstrosity by the play of light. There were Animals carved into the walls as well, and even in the dark she could see that many of them had been graffitied over.
Fiyero opened the door to the carriage and offered his arm first to Glinda and then, when she seemed determined to come out, to Elphaba to help them out. He had cleaned up the blood on his hairline and dusted himself off and now looked as respectable by Gillikin standards as his tattoos allowed. Glinda, for her part, re-arranged her skirts to partly hide the bloodstains. Elphaba did not feel up to such niceties - not with the pain wrecking her, nor with the extend of the red splatters on her half-dressed body. She refused to lean on Fiyero like a cripple, though, and once out the carriage tried to stand up straight. Pain doubled her over once again.
"You shouldn't even be standing," Fiyero admonished her with gentle worry in his eyes. Damn him. The situation was awkward enough without him acting loveable on top of it. Glinda, her little mouth a determined line, wrapped her arm around Elphaba's, supporting her despite herself. Elphaba didn't have the energy to push her away too.
"Just let's get inside, find the thing and then find me a healer," Elphaba said. "I may not be able to fight but I won't delay you, either."
"No. I could use Glinda's help, but you are to get back into the carriage and let my men take you to a healer."
"Waste of your resources," Elphaba snapped. "You need your men with you, and you need me too. Nessa's an idiot. She can't read a room - she won't have found it yet. This would be a good thing, except that I don't think much more of your chances, either. Let me into the building - I'll be able to help. You know I will."
Fiyero and Elphaba stared at each other, one thoughtful and conflicted, the other determined if hazy with pain. "You know," Elphaba whispered at last, "that I do stupid things for people I've never met, when it's right. You know what it would mean if you were linked to this theft. You know. And I know how much the Grimmerald means to your people. Let's not waste any more time, I'm getting tired."
Fiyero nodded, though his expression was still undecided. "Let's go, then. Glinda, look after her." He turned with a swirl of cape and began to march inside.
"He keeps telling you to look after me," whispered Elphaba with a little grin to Glinda as the two followed Fiyero up the stairs. Fiyero banged on the door. "What do you think? Has he relegated you to nurse or is it his way of telling us he's okay with... well, us?"
"I don't know which is more insulting," said Glinda with a huff. "It's not like we need his permission."
"He's an exceptional man but he's still a man," said Elphaba in a tired tone. "He'll never see either of us as competition."
Glinda sparked with anger. "I'm glad I threw him out in the middle of a dinner party. I could have waited until the guests were gone but it wouldn't have been nearly as humiliating."
"Well, I was glad for a while that I punched him hard enough to knock out two teeth."
"But he's not missing any teeth!"
"The marvels of modern medicine, my dear."
The door was opened by a wrinkled little Ama who peered at Fiyero suspiciously. "We're with the previous party," Fiyero said. The Ama made a cooing sound and stepped aside to let the whole party in. Elphaba could not help but be impressed. Fiyero had assumed that whatever excuse Nessarose had used to get in with her men would work to let the second party in as well. The fine suit he was wearing, he must have known, wouldn't hurt either.
Glinda helped Elphaba up the stairs and five of Fiyero's men - one bleeding discreetly, two left behind to tend the rest who had been injured in the chase - followed them into a chandelier-lit corridor. Elphaba guessed the lights wouldn't go out before midnight.
"My point," Elphaba continued in a whisper to Glinda, "is I'm not glad any more. It makes things a little awkward when he keeps saving my life and I still have the scar on my right-hand knuckles. Forgive and forget."
"That's not the Elphaba Thropp I read about in the papers."
Elphaba looked at her as sternly as she could through the pain. "You read--"
"When Crope gave me your name from the directory I recognized it," Glinda said. "You've been mentioned in a number of cases, mostly scandals, a couple of murders. Usually dismissively, and The Eye on Oz has you pegged as a loose cannon. I read you once went back to a meatgrinder's after the case had been closed and the owners announced innocent on all charges. The place burned down."
"They could never prove that."
"You did, though, didn't you?"
"They were packing uninspected meat."
"What happened to forgive and forget?"
"That flesh they were peddling was Animal. There's a bloody line."
Glinda looked at her thoughtfully, eyes soft and curious, but she soon tore her gaze away to the hallway, over the paintings of old schoolmistresses and the incongruous antique armour. "Do you still--?"
"Here," said Fiyero, interrupting her. He had reached the end of the hallway where it branched into a T-shape. Elphaba hoped he didn't have good hearing. They limped their way to him. "This is as far as my tracking skills can take us," Fiyero said. "I'm afraid I've never been inside the girls' dormitory before."
"The dorm rooms are on the left," Glinda said, "and there's a staircase at the end of the hallway which leads upstairs and more bedrooms. There are three floors. On the right is the canteen and recreation hall."
"It'll be in one of the dorm rooms - an unused one," Elphaba told him. "There will likely be so many similar rooms that Morrible thinks we won't ever find the right one."
"She might have a point," said Fiyero.
"We know her timing, though. She won't take the risk of hiding it in a room in which the occupants could find it. The room has to be empty and meant to remain so for a few nights more at least to make it a secure temporary hiding place. She'd rather take one that will remain empty indefinitely, to shield against the possibility of some girl or other wanting to change their room to that specific one because of the light, or other surprises, such as maintenance coming to check it. Is there such a room?" she asked Glinda.
"Only one I know of." She looked a little embarrassed. "My own dorm room had a fire one night. It was left in disuse - at least when I left the college."
"It's a good place to start," said Elphaba grimly. "Please don't say it's on the third floor."
"Second," Glinda said with a grimace. She looked around the five men following them - all Winkies, all with tattooes and unreadable faces, though she recognized a couple of them. Elphaba left her arm and began hobbling towards the staircase on the left.
"Enough," growled Fiyero. In a few strides he was by Elphaba's side and lifted her up, despite her thin arms pushing him away. "It's only one flight of stairs. I give you allowances enough as it is, Fae," he told her firmly.
Elphaba seemed resigned, and with a sigh rested her head against his shoulder. Glinda followed them, something sharp and angry in the clipping of her heels, and they ascended the staircase.
There were no girls about the hallways. As there were fewer lights in the dorm corridors, Elphaba guessed there was a curfew in place. The hallway was lost in darkness, with pinpoints of light that blinded more than they illuminated. Elphaba kept her eyes fixed away from the candles, in the shadows, to better train them to the darkness.
"It's fourteenth on the left," Glinda said in a whisper. There had been no sign of Nessarose, yet the Ama's reaction had seemed to indicate they had come in. There were no noises in the hallway, either. It was quiet - quiet enough that they could hear the sighs of sleeping girls behind their doors.
"Do you think Nessarose could have come to the same conclusion as we did?" Glinda asked.
"Depends," Elphaba whispered. "Did she know your room burned down?"
"Oh yes," said Glinda darkly. "She knew."
Elphaba glanced at her. "She burned your room down."
"I couldn't prove it, of course, but she acted as if she had. She kept making these references, and laughing. I could never fathom why she'd do such a thing, or why she'd joke about it if she hadn't. We weren't enemies."
Elphaba thought about her little sister, her little inconsistencies, her masking of her own bitchy nature under a veneer of piety. She thought of Nessarose ordering the death of someone who'd never done her harm, of giggling delightedly while she played with matches. Mad. She was mad. "Then we have very little time."
"Here," said Glinda, then stopped, puzzled. There was no fourteenth door. The wall was smooth and a painting of a saint hung there in place of a door.
"You're sure this is where the room was?" demanded Fiyero.
"Maybe we should go back and count again," said Glinda, uncertain. "Though I don't remember this painting, either..."
"No," said Elphaba grimly. "It's here."
The painting was of Saint Elphaba of the waterfall. It was as if Nessarose wanted her to find her. Quite besides that, too, Elphaba could feel something behind the wall - something powerful.
Elphaba was no witch, save for knowing a charm or two and where to buy more cheap. She'd never considered magic worth her time. Magic had no laws, no foreseeable effects, no restrictions. Magic could not happen without the people whose minds enforced it. Science told you the things that were and would continue to be without a single mind to study and apply them. Elphaba did not trust people. She did not trust magic.
What she felt now behind that door was wholly unscientific. It frightened her, but they needed what it could tell her. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and allowed the sensation to wash over her.
There was a world on the other side of the door - honking horns, tall buildings, metal and steel, and still the same human flesh dying in the ditches, freezing over, thawing, melting, while living things walked by, high heels, strange dresses, heavy boots, glass crashing into the street, shouting, screaming, laughing, talking, the silence of forests and a crashing wave of water hitting the shore, and stretching - stretching - like a desert but filled with the gushing life - an ocean.
"It's here," she gasped. "I don't know what it is - but it's here." She reached through the illusion and felt for the handle. She found it, grasped it, turned and pulled. The illusion melted into air with a sparkle and a poof and the corridor was flooded with light from Glinda's old dorm room.
Nessarose was standing in the middle of the room, her men arrayed around it, lifting things, slashing through old singed mattresses and smashing holes into the walls. The magical sound-proofing that Nessarose must have put in place in addition to the illusion of the painting still held and when Nessarose opened her mouth to screech commands no-one in the corridor could hear it. One man dropped a pile of battered books and reached for his inside pocket. Fiyero lifted his gun and shot him dead, the bullet burying itself right between his eyes. He walked into the room, and his men followed him, professionally taking down everyone in the room. Nessa twirled around and screamed something as her men were disarmed and constrained.
"Shall we?" asked Elphaba. She and Glinda were still standing in the corridor.
"I wouldn't miss this for the world." Glinda grinned at her wickedly and helped her through the door and the sound barrier into her old dorm room.
"You! This is all your fault!" Nessarose shouted, pointing a finger at Elphaba.
"Your logic, as always, is a little hard to follow," said Elphaba, but she was barely concentrating on what she was saying, now. The feeling of the other world was overpowering and so near, though none of the others seemed to be reacting to it at all. She knew where it was coming from, too. Her eyes fixed on the leg of one of the two beds in the room.
"You just have to ruin everything about my life, don't you?" Nessa screamed, beginning to roll her chair towards Elphaba. Fiyero grabbed its handles and stopped it, then calmly stuck a piece of broken wood under the front wheels to stick it in place.
"I make you the Eminence of the East by staying away. I suppose you could call that ruining. I stop you from murdering my girlfriend and stealing something that doesn't belong to you. Yeah, I'm a goddamn monster, aren't I?"
"Where is it? You know where it is, don't you?"
"I might do," Elphaba said.
"You do?" asked Fiyero anxiously.
"Then take it," Nessarose said, visibly forcing herself to calm down. "Sister, dear. Please. I'm sorry I've interfered with you. I'm so sorry. Take it, give it away, do whatever you wish with it. There! It's yours. Even if you give it to me now, I won't take it. That's a promise, as long as - as long as you do the right thing, the sisterly thing. You will, won't you, Fabala? You'll give me my legs?"
The look on Nessarose's face was so open, so familiar. Elphaba could remember seeing it on her face often when they were children. This was Nessie when she wanted something so badly it hurt her childish heart; Nessie who longed, Nessie who needed. Elphaba was used to giving her what she wanted.
Elphaba shut her eyes, and bent her head. "No."
"Fabala! Yes you will! You will give me my legs! I demand it!"
"No. You don't deserve to walk. You don't deserve even that chair. I was a fool to let you have power." Elphaba leaned on Glinda, as if for support, but her hand flashed out fast as a snake inside Glinda's jacket pocket and pulled out Fat Margie. She pointed it at her sister. "You rather deserve to die before you cause more damage."
Nessarose grew quiet and stared at her, her eyes wild and wide, her face pale, her hands gripping the arms of her chair. One of her men shouted her name and struggled to break free, but Fiyero's man sat on him and forced him to stay still.
The moment drew out. Elphaba thought about it. There were things that needed doing, and she'd always done them, regardless of herself. She'd killed. She'd bludgeoned. It had been necessary. This was necessary. She wasn't Elphaba Thropp, at this moment. She was just the tool of necessity.
Her finger tightened on the trigger. She pulled it. The bullet buried itself harmlessly into a table leg.
She dropped the gun and fell on her knees on the floor. "Bed leg," she said quietly. "The larger bed, the one closest to the door, the left end leg. It's hollowed out." Elphaba lowered herself onto the floor and curled into a ball. The room around her burst into activity. There was the sound of crashing wood. All she could concentrate on now was the hum of the other world, her pain, and the warmth of Glinda's hands and body as she lifted her into her lap and cradled her.
"It's more than I thought it could be," someone said with a gasp. "It's..."
"Give it to me!"
"Shut up!"
"It's beautiful."
"Give it here," commanded Glinda's voice sharply. Elphaba opened her eyes. Glinda looked like her saint namesake, resplendent in the shady candlelight. Fiyero's face appeared above, and he slowly handed her a green glowing thing. It shimmered and shone like a living thing, like a piece of a green star pulled down on earth. "It didn't look like this before," Glinda said in wonderment. Elphaba reached up and touched the Grimmerald.
The glow intensified, brightened, flooded the room, turning everything in it as green as Elphaba. Glinda exclaimed, Fiyero shielded his eyes, there was a shout. Elphaba's fingers closed around the jewel, and it changed in her hand. The edges began to spread out, widen. She put out her other hand, allowed the jewel to grow. There were sparkles in her eyes and a crash and roar in her ears. She blinked and found herself holding a large book.
"What... is it?" asked Glinda, her eyes wide with surprise.
"The Grimmerie," Elphaba read. The name was carved on the cover in swirling letters. She blinked and could read them; she blinked again and could not. She opened it. The text on the pages was the same, and the images as well - they winked into meaning and out.
"It's perfect gobbledegook!" Glinda said. "Is this some kind of a disguise for the jewel?"
"Book! The book of power!" Nessarose said excitedly, twisting at the wheels of her chair uselessly. "Give it to me, I've read about it, I'm sure I can use it."
Elphaba's could barely hear them, so loud was the humming of the book. She sat up, her injuries sending jolts of pain through her body, and let her fingers find the page she needed. It was a spell - a real spell, a powerful spell, not just a two-penny charm. She'd never attempted anything like it. It called for pewter, glass, blood. She thought of her own blood, and took the pewter out of an ashtray stuck on a water-damaged closet at the window, lifted the broken glass she'd heard in the inn before from her memory. The images she conjured became the things themselves, swirled into existence before her, and she spoke the words.
The green light flashed white and disappeared.
Elphaba stood up whole, her clothes splattered with blood from wounds that were no longer there. Glinda and Fiyero stood back, amazed.
Nessarose stared at her. Then, slowly, she stood up as well.