The Effects of Gravity 21/?, by ainsleyaisling
Title: The Effects of Gravity 21/?
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG-13
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Pairings for Story Overall: Glinda/Fiyero, Elphaba/Fiyero, Glinda/Elphaba
Summary: *cough*fillerchapter*cough* Nessa and Elphaba, and Glinda's plotting
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Previous section can be found here.
~~Elphaba~~
Nessa was looking petulant. This was not a surprise.
"Did you have a good trip to the City?" she asked somewhat coldly on seeing her sister entering her room.
Nessa was so entirely divorced from the reality of what Elphaba and Glinda's life with the Wizard was like that it was almost comical. "It was fine," Elphaba replied. "We're back in one piece."
"That boy is still hanging around, you know."
"Which boy?"
"Fiyero's little Munchkin friend?"
"Oh, him." Inwardly Elphaba had to suppress a smile. "I don't actually think Fiyero knows him. But his roommate does."
"Whoever knows him. He won't leave me alone."
Elphaba sat down on the end of Nessa's bed and crossed her legs awkwardly. "He's bothering you?"
"Well . . ." It was clear that Nessa was struggling with fairness. "Not bothering exactly. But he's always there - wanting to talk to me, or walk me somewhere -"
"You don't like him?"
"I don't even know him, Elphaba. So why would he want to hang around me all the time?"
Elphaba fought the urge to point out that Nessa now had her very own Biq. "Do you think you could like him, if you knew him?"
Nessa raised one sharp eyebrow, in that one gesture probably doubling the resemblance between the sisters. "I am not taking boy advice from you, thanks."
Ignoring the jab, Elphaba asked, "Then why did you bring it up?"
"To tell you to get him to leave me alone."
"Do you really want him to leave you alone?"
Nessa practically growled in her frustration. "Elphaba . . ."
"I just think you should give him a chance, that's all."
"So that's what you would do if a boy were chasing you all around school?"
Elphaba bit her lip. "Nessa, that's mean. There's no need for that."
"I didn't mean that." Nessa rolled her chair closer to where her sister sat on the bed. "I just meant -"
"Yeah, I know." Elphaba shrugged. "Look - Rikk -"
"Who?"
"Fiyero's roommate. He said this boy really likes you -"
"He said this to who?"
"To me. He wanted me to talk to you -"
"Kiren did?"
"No, Rikk wanted me to talk to you about Kiren."
"Oh." Nessa frowned down at her lap. "So you're doing this as a favor to . . ."
"Rikk, and no, not really. I'm just saying that's what he told me. I'm talking to you because you're my sister and I'm supposed to look after you."
"So, do you like him?"
Elphaba was beginning to get a headache. "The Munchkin boy?"
"No, Rikk."
"He - seems nice I guess?"
"I mean, is that what this is about? You like him, so . . ."
"Oh. No. I don't like him that way. I only barely know him."
"I only barely know Kiren. You were just telling me I should give him a chance."
"Nessa, this conversation is getting ridiculous. Fiyero's roommate is not interested in me. He's interested in getting his lovestruck friend off his back. And I'm interested in seeing you make new friends and get out sometimes and stop mooning around over -"
"Don't say it."
"Fine, but - would it really be that terrible to talk to him?" Elphaba fumbled for a way to express what she wanted to say without mentioning Boq. "I mean, don't you ever feel sorry for those poor boys who fawn around after pretty girls who won't give them the time of day?"
"I suppose," Nessa said, looking a bit sulky.
"You don't have to make me any promises. Just think about talking to him, maybe, please?"
Nessa sighed. "Fine."
When Elphaba went up to her own room Glinda greeted her with, "I've been thinking about something."
"All right." Elphaba settled herself on her own bed, facing Glinda where she sat perched at her desk. "What?"
"We should have a more comfortable chair in here," Glinda said, looking around the room.
"That's what you were thinking about?"
"No. I was thinking, we're agreed Morrible and the Wizard each want to use one of us. Right?"
"Sort of." Elphaba bent to unlace her shoes. "I don't really think the Wizard knows that Morrible wants to use you for her own purposes, but basically that's right."
"So what's Morrible's plan?" Glinda said rhetorically. "She has to make me more popular with the people than you are."
"Then she will have a very easy time carrying out her plan."
"Shut up, would you?" Glinda left the desk and came to sit at the end of Elphaba's bed instead. "I mean, she has to make sure they like you less -"
"Again - not difficult."
"Shut up, Elphie, really. I mean, she has to be thinking of making people trust her more than the Wizard. Right?"
"I guess."
"And you're part of that. I think she knows you don't trust her, so she has to make sure the rest of Oz doesn't trust you."
"I agree."
"So this is what I was thinking about." Glinda crossed her legs in front of her on the bed and studied Elphaba. "We have to make you -"
"If you say 'popular,' so help me . . ."
"But I'm right, aren't I?" It was clear that Glinda wasn't waiting for an answer. "This is all about perception and you know it - Morrible's perception of you and me, the Wizard's, the people's perception of both of us - the Wizard's going to be trying to make everyone think of us as wonderful and celebrated and . . . helpful, and Morrible's going to be trying to undermine that."
Elphaba shifted position uncomfortably under Glinda's scrutiny. "So what do you suggest?"
"I don't know. I haven't thought of the solution yet. But I will."
"I'm just glad you realize the entire solution doesn't lie in making me wear ruffles."
"Please Elphie, I know you well enough now to know that you in ruffles would be appalling. But you've also known me long to enough to know that appearance is at least part of the solution."
"Granted," Elphaba said unwillingly, "but what is there to do about it? There's nothing in the world that's going to turn me into -" She gestured. "- you."
"No. But there is something that will turn you into the most irresistible you possible. I just have to think of what it is."
"Glinda . . ." It was clear, at least to Elphaba's mind, that Glinda was trying to distract herself from the many truly disturbing things that had happened on their trip. It was also clear that it wasn't really working, much as Glinda was focused on this new problem. "You know I wish I could take Morrible's focus off you."
"I know." Glinda climbed in a rather un-Glinda-like ungainly fashion up to the headboard to settle beside Elphaba with their shoulders touching. "And you've helped a lot, getting the Wizard to meet with me along with you so I didn't have to be alone with her."
"Still . . ."
"No still. It's unpleasant - more than unpleasant - but we've thwarted her at every turn so far, haven't we?" Glinda patted Elphaba's hand until Elphaba linked their fingers together.
"At every turn we know about," Elphaba pointed out. "We don't know what else she's been up to here."
Glinda leaned her head on Elphaba's shoulder. "Let's think about that later, all right?"
"All right. What do you want to think about now, then?"
"Nothing," Glinda breathed. "Can we just sit here for a while?"
"Of course." Having become accustomed to her role by now, Elphaba held herself carefully still while Glinda adjusted comfortably against her. "It's only a little while till dinner," she said. "Why don't you close your eyes?"
"I'm not tired," Glinda said, but she hadn't been sleeping well at night and already her eyes were drifting shut.
~~Glinda~~
She sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, heat from the fire wafting over her, eyes pressed tightly shut, concentrating with all her might on the vision in her mind.
On meditation it seemed that the answer had to be here, somewhere - somewhere lurking in that night in the Emerald City, when Glinda had been so mixed up and turned around but not everything could have been just what Morrible was making her feel. She had decided that already - Morrible had meant to make her feel something was more compelling than Elphaba, not to make her feel - that way, about Elphaba. Which meant quite simply that something about this situation was stronger than Morrible - easy enough to see. Which meant there was something about Elphaba, even if no one but Glinda had yet seen it. And it had to be tied up in the way she had looked that night when Glinda opened the door, with her hair long and straight and damp and wild and her shoulders bare and her nightshift clinging to her body, plastered in places with the dampness from her hair - certainly she had not looked pretty, not pretty like other girls flouncing about in fancy frocks with their hair curled.
That was it, maybe. Elphaba thought she was beneath pretty, when really she was past it. Pretty, maybe, was for girls like Nessa. Like Glinda. Perhaps by virtue of her greenness, or perhaps by virtue of her mind, or her sharp jaw and the long line of her nose and the arch of her eyebrows, perhaps Elphaba had been born already too old for pretty. But just old enough for something very different . . .
And certainly it wasn't as if she were unattractive, exactly, not the way ordinary plain girls were. Why, Elphaba would never have noticed it, but in the City sometimes a passing young man - wearing those lovely green glasses that blocked out the singularity of Elphaba's complexion - had turned his head to stare. And not at Glinda. At the dark, mysterious girl who managed to look tall when she wasn't, who looked alternately as if she could start a fire or freeze a river just with her eyes.
Glinda opened her eyes and twisted over her shoulder to look at Elphaba in the firelight. She'd been peacefully asleep for at least an hour, leaving Glinda to her quiet thoughts. In the slowly coming springtime warmth, helped along by the fire Glinda had kept up, heavy blankets and nightclothes were no longer needed and Elphaba's shoulders were left bare by the thin straps of her nightgown. Her back was to Glinda, her hair braided off her neck, the sharp angles and rarer curves of her spine and her shoulder blades exposed in the dancing orange-yellow light. She was lovely like this, like a sleeping dark goddess.
Glinda bit her lip against her own silliness, but maybe that was the answer after all. Elphaba wasn't an earthly beauty, so what? So she'd have to be an unearthly one. Looking unlike anything Oz had ever seen before couldn't be all bad. And looking that way while being slim and more-or-less-strangely graceful and possessing a way of holding people in her gaze - that had a lot of promise.
This would require a bit more thinking about.
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG-13
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Pairings for Story Overall: Glinda/Fiyero, Elphaba/Fiyero, Glinda/Elphaba
Summary: *cough*fillerchapter*cough* Nessa and Elphaba, and Glinda's plotting
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Previous section can be found here.
~~Elphaba~~
Nessa was looking petulant. This was not a surprise.
"Did you have a good trip to the City?" she asked somewhat coldly on seeing her sister entering her room.
Nessa was so entirely divorced from the reality of what Elphaba and Glinda's life with the Wizard was like that it was almost comical. "It was fine," Elphaba replied. "We're back in one piece."
"That boy is still hanging around, you know."
"Which boy?"
"Fiyero's little Munchkin friend?"
"Oh, him." Inwardly Elphaba had to suppress a smile. "I don't actually think Fiyero knows him. But his roommate does."
"Whoever knows him. He won't leave me alone."
Elphaba sat down on the end of Nessa's bed and crossed her legs awkwardly. "He's bothering you?"
"Well . . ." It was clear that Nessa was struggling with fairness. "Not bothering exactly. But he's always there - wanting to talk to me, or walk me somewhere -"
"You don't like him?"
"I don't even know him, Elphaba. So why would he want to hang around me all the time?"
Elphaba fought the urge to point out that Nessa now had her very own Biq. "Do you think you could like him, if you knew him?"
Nessa raised one sharp eyebrow, in that one gesture probably doubling the resemblance between the sisters. "I am not taking boy advice from you, thanks."
Ignoring the jab, Elphaba asked, "Then why did you bring it up?"
"To tell you to get him to leave me alone."
"Do you really want him to leave you alone?"
Nessa practically growled in her frustration. "Elphaba . . ."
"I just think you should give him a chance, that's all."
"So that's what you would do if a boy were chasing you all around school?"
Elphaba bit her lip. "Nessa, that's mean. There's no need for that."
"I didn't mean that." Nessa rolled her chair closer to where her sister sat on the bed. "I just meant -"
"Yeah, I know." Elphaba shrugged. "Look - Rikk -"
"Who?"
"Fiyero's roommate. He said this boy really likes you -"
"He said this to who?"
"To me. He wanted me to talk to you -"
"Kiren did?"
"No, Rikk wanted me to talk to you about Kiren."
"Oh." Nessa frowned down at her lap. "So you're doing this as a favor to . . ."
"Rikk, and no, not really. I'm just saying that's what he told me. I'm talking to you because you're my sister and I'm supposed to look after you."
"So, do you like him?"
Elphaba was beginning to get a headache. "The Munchkin boy?"
"No, Rikk."
"He - seems nice I guess?"
"I mean, is that what this is about? You like him, so . . ."
"Oh. No. I don't like him that way. I only barely know him."
"I only barely know Kiren. You were just telling me I should give him a chance."
"Nessa, this conversation is getting ridiculous. Fiyero's roommate is not interested in me. He's interested in getting his lovestruck friend off his back. And I'm interested in seeing you make new friends and get out sometimes and stop mooning around over -"
"Don't say it."
"Fine, but - would it really be that terrible to talk to him?" Elphaba fumbled for a way to express what she wanted to say without mentioning Boq. "I mean, don't you ever feel sorry for those poor boys who fawn around after pretty girls who won't give them the time of day?"
"I suppose," Nessa said, looking a bit sulky.
"You don't have to make me any promises. Just think about talking to him, maybe, please?"
Nessa sighed. "Fine."
When Elphaba went up to her own room Glinda greeted her with, "I've been thinking about something."
"All right." Elphaba settled herself on her own bed, facing Glinda where she sat perched at her desk. "What?"
"We should have a more comfortable chair in here," Glinda said, looking around the room.
"That's what you were thinking about?"
"No. I was thinking, we're agreed Morrible and the Wizard each want to use one of us. Right?"
"Sort of." Elphaba bent to unlace her shoes. "I don't really think the Wizard knows that Morrible wants to use you for her own purposes, but basically that's right."
"So what's Morrible's plan?" Glinda said rhetorically. "She has to make me more popular with the people than you are."
"Then she will have a very easy time carrying out her plan."
"Shut up, would you?" Glinda left the desk and came to sit at the end of Elphaba's bed instead. "I mean, she has to make sure they like you less -"
"Again - not difficult."
"Shut up, Elphie, really. I mean, she has to be thinking of making people trust her more than the Wizard. Right?"
"I guess."
"And you're part of that. I think she knows you don't trust her, so she has to make sure the rest of Oz doesn't trust you."
"I agree."
"So this is what I was thinking about." Glinda crossed her legs in front of her on the bed and studied Elphaba. "We have to make you -"
"If you say 'popular,' so help me . . ."
"But I'm right, aren't I?" It was clear that Glinda wasn't waiting for an answer. "This is all about perception and you know it - Morrible's perception of you and me, the Wizard's, the people's perception of both of us - the Wizard's going to be trying to make everyone think of us as wonderful and celebrated and . . . helpful, and Morrible's going to be trying to undermine that."
Elphaba shifted position uncomfortably under Glinda's scrutiny. "So what do you suggest?"
"I don't know. I haven't thought of the solution yet. But I will."
"I'm just glad you realize the entire solution doesn't lie in making me wear ruffles."
"Please Elphie, I know you well enough now to know that you in ruffles would be appalling. But you've also known me long to enough to know that appearance is at least part of the solution."
"Granted," Elphaba said unwillingly, "but what is there to do about it? There's nothing in the world that's going to turn me into -" She gestured. "- you."
"No. But there is something that will turn you into the most irresistible you possible. I just have to think of what it is."
"Glinda . . ." It was clear, at least to Elphaba's mind, that Glinda was trying to distract herself from the many truly disturbing things that had happened on their trip. It was also clear that it wasn't really working, much as Glinda was focused on this new problem. "You know I wish I could take Morrible's focus off you."
"I know." Glinda climbed in a rather un-Glinda-like ungainly fashion up to the headboard to settle beside Elphaba with their shoulders touching. "And you've helped a lot, getting the Wizard to meet with me along with you so I didn't have to be alone with her."
"Still . . ."
"No still. It's unpleasant - more than unpleasant - but we've thwarted her at every turn so far, haven't we?" Glinda patted Elphaba's hand until Elphaba linked their fingers together.
"At every turn we know about," Elphaba pointed out. "We don't know what else she's been up to here."
Glinda leaned her head on Elphaba's shoulder. "Let's think about that later, all right?"
"All right. What do you want to think about now, then?"
"Nothing," Glinda breathed. "Can we just sit here for a while?"
"Of course." Having become accustomed to her role by now, Elphaba held herself carefully still while Glinda adjusted comfortably against her. "It's only a little while till dinner," she said. "Why don't you close your eyes?"
"I'm not tired," Glinda said, but she hadn't been sleeping well at night and already her eyes were drifting shut.
~~Glinda~~
She sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, heat from the fire wafting over her, eyes pressed tightly shut, concentrating with all her might on the vision in her mind.
On meditation it seemed that the answer had to be here, somewhere - somewhere lurking in that night in the Emerald City, when Glinda had been so mixed up and turned around but not everything could have been just what Morrible was making her feel. She had decided that already - Morrible had meant to make her feel something was more compelling than Elphaba, not to make her feel - that way, about Elphaba. Which meant quite simply that something about this situation was stronger than Morrible - easy enough to see. Which meant there was something about Elphaba, even if no one but Glinda had yet seen it. And it had to be tied up in the way she had looked that night when Glinda opened the door, with her hair long and straight and damp and wild and her shoulders bare and her nightshift clinging to her body, plastered in places with the dampness from her hair - certainly she had not looked pretty, not pretty like other girls flouncing about in fancy frocks with their hair curled.
That was it, maybe. Elphaba thought she was beneath pretty, when really she was past it. Pretty, maybe, was for girls like Nessa. Like Glinda. Perhaps by virtue of her greenness, or perhaps by virtue of her mind, or her sharp jaw and the long line of her nose and the arch of her eyebrows, perhaps Elphaba had been born already too old for pretty. But just old enough for something very different . . .
And certainly it wasn't as if she were unattractive, exactly, not the way ordinary plain girls were. Why, Elphaba would never have noticed it, but in the City sometimes a passing young man - wearing those lovely green glasses that blocked out the singularity of Elphaba's complexion - had turned his head to stare. And not at Glinda. At the dark, mysterious girl who managed to look tall when she wasn't, who looked alternately as if she could start a fire or freeze a river just with her eyes.
Glinda opened her eyes and twisted over her shoulder to look at Elphaba in the firelight. She'd been peacefully asleep for at least an hour, leaving Glinda to her quiet thoughts. In the slowly coming springtime warmth, helped along by the fire Glinda had kept up, heavy blankets and nightclothes were no longer needed and Elphaba's shoulders were left bare by the thin straps of her nightgown. Her back was to Glinda, her hair braided off her neck, the sharp angles and rarer curves of her spine and her shoulder blades exposed in the dancing orange-yellow light. She was lovely like this, like a sleeping dark goddess.
Glinda bit her lip against her own silliness, but maybe that was the answer after all. Elphaba wasn't an earthly beauty, so what? So she'd have to be an unearthly one. Looking unlike anything Oz had ever seen before couldn't be all bad. And looking that way while being slim and more-or-less-strangely graceful and possessing a way of holding people in her gaze - that had a lot of promise.
This would require a bit more thinking about.