“I...I have to go,” Elphaba jumped up abruptly and shoved the mirror back at Galinda before bolting out of the room.
“Well you’re welcome,”
She distantly heard Galinda yell after her as she ran as fast as she could, and surprisingly quietly considering the heaviness of her boots, along the hallway.
Without even thinking about it she went across the walkway to the main school building, the locked door was no impediment to her instinctive use of magic to unlock it, then up the stairs again to the rooftop garden that had been her only refuges since arriving at Shiz. Slowing to a walk she sat down on the low wall that surrounded one of the gardens and started taking deep breaths to try and calm herself down.
That was probably not the best way to react to Galinda being so… nice, but then Galinda is fairly thick-skinned and…
The thought trailed off as she heard a noise, or thought she did, that sounded like someone else in the garden but who could possibly be up here at nearly the first hour of the morning? Frowning slightly she tried to remember if she had unlocked the door to the rooftop when she came up here – it was usually locked at sunset so she should have had to but this time she hadn’t and just had not noticed the fact until now.
Someone, or rather a couple of someones, probably snuck up here after the party, she though irritably, it wouldn’t be the first time she had come close to interrupting a couple’s private time. This would happen on a night when I really want to be alone.
Rolling her eyes and decided she had as much right to be up here after curfew as any other students who were supposed to be in bed she stalked across the roof and pulled herself up to perch on the higher wall. It gave her such a thrill to look out over Shiz, towards Shiz City, and know there was nothing beneath her feet but several storeys of empty air – it reminded her of the dreams she sometimes had of flying.
Fiyero heard the door open and leaned further into the shadowy corner with a soft sigh, he had thought that this would be the one place in the school where he was unlikely to run into anyone. He couldn’t even ask them to leave because it was bound to be someone who would know who he was and want to talk to him or worse, if it was a girl, flirt with him. Not that he objected to the flirting in general but he’d had to think of nice things to say to most of the women at the party earlier that night and he really just wanted some time alone.
He stepped out into the main part of the garden again and looked around.
I could have sworn I heard someone up here, he thought, when he couldn’t see the person. They must have left.
He turned away from the building and nearly tripped over his own feet in surprise when he saw someone sitting on the outer wall of the garden.
“What is Oz are you doing?” he exclaimed before it occurred to him that startling the person was not the wisest course of action.
Elphaba’s natural reaction to people raising their voices at her was to jump to her feet and give back as good as she got (unless the people in question were family of course). Time seemed to slow down as she heard the man’s shocked yell and recalled, moments too late, that the nearest place to put her feet was six storeys down.
It was far easier than it should have been to break the restraints Madame Morrible had helped her, months ago, put on her powers ‘to protect herself and others’ the Headmistress had said but obviously she needed to use her powers to protect herself now so that didn’t apply.
None of the spells they had covered in Sorcery class mentioned anything about falling, or rather not falling, they were still covering what Madame Morrible referred to as “the Basics of the Art” – like how to use a training wand without making it explode or fly across the room.
Something Madame had started to teach her, when it became obvious it was going to take longer than expected to learn the wand work, was visualisation. It was, so Madame said, not a substitute for ‘true control’ but for emergency use quite acceptable.
All of this thinking happened very quickly and Elphaba was only a meter or so down from the top of the wall when she reached down with her magic and imagined she was standing on solid ground already. It worked almost too well; she actually crashed into the magical platform before she could stop herself.
That wasn’t so bad, now to get back up there before that idiot runs off to get help.
She could, and probably should, have climbed the wall itself but she was in a hurry to get back up before the other person left so she just focused on ‘telling’ the air that it was stairs and climbed back to the top of the wall.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded, standing on the top of the wall and glaring at the retreating figure.
Fiyero turned around and stared at her in shock, he knew she had fallen it was impossible that she could be back on the roof!
”You’re… you… how did you?”
The girl, Galinda’s roommate he realised, slid down from the wall with an ungracious bump and shrugged sullenly.
“Magic,” she muttered in a tone of voice he couldn’t quite pick, though there was a definite note of ‘well how else?’ in it.
“You’re a…” he paused for a moment, he’d spoken Ozian and Arjiki all of his life but he still had to stop and concentrate on translating some words, on this occasion he was trying to recall the Ozian word for magic users. “A witch?”
“Well done, Master Tiggular, top marks.”
Guessing from the heavy sarcasm that she didn’t care for the title he changed the subject quickly.
“What are you doing up here anyway, Miss…?”
“Elphaba Thropp, Galinda’s roommate, we’ve met twice now.”
“Twice?” repeated Fiyero slowly. “Oh that was you up here yesterday afternoon I didn’t realise you were a student.”
“To answer your question,” she continued, in a softer tone. “I was… overwhelmed by Galinda’s sudden enthusiasm for pursuing a friendship with me. What’s your excuse?”
“My ‘excuse’?”
“Do you have trouble with my accent or something? Your excuse for being up here, alone no less, in the middle of the night.”
“You thought I was up here… with someone?”
“To be precise, I thought someone was up here with someone. You are avoiding the question.”
“I was… overwhelmed by everyone’s enthusiasm for pursuing a friendship with me,” replied Fiyero, trying to mimic her accent in hopes of amusing her, now that he had realised what she was he really did not want to upset her.
“How droll,” she replied dryly. “Well far be it for me to interrupt you, goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” muttered Fiyero as she walked past him without so much as a backward glance.
I do wish Galinda had warned me how cranky her roommate was, he thought irritably and then he felt a bit ashamed of himself for blaming Galinda when she hadn’t exactly had a chance to do anything of the sort. I’ll be extra nice next time I see her to make up for thinking unkindly of her. She’s a pleasant, pretty, thing and I’d rather like to spend more time with her.
Shiz University was particularly quiet, even for a rest day, the next morning due to the majority of the student body having been out until curfew and awake for hours after discussing the party.
Elphaba had a particularly miserable day, in addition to the usual stares and whispers she received lectures from both her sister (for daring to turn up at the party) and, more worryingly, from Madame Morrible for using magic outside of sorcery class.
Meanwhile Galinda slept in until the blissful hour of noon, gasped over the mess her hair was in, spent an hour repairing the ‘damage’ to her appearance then another half an hour casually strolling around the campus with Pfannee and Shenshen in hopes of meeting Fiyero. Her friends managed to keep silent for fifteen minutes before they just had to find out how much of the gossip flying around the campus was true.
“Galinda, dear,” began Pfannee. “I just can not stay silent for another moment, I simply must tell you of the rumours going around about you!”
“We were both at the party and we know what we saw but we don’t understand what it means,” explained Shenshen.
Galinda had known this moment had to come, of course, and she was prepared to deal with it with her usual charm.
“Dear Pfannee, dear Shenshen, I can only assume that you are referring to my including … my roommate in last night’s festivities.”
Both girls nodded emphatically so Galinda continued speaking, oozing sincerity with every word.
“I just felt so ashamed of myself, of course it was an absolute riot to see her in that… dress and hat but it was such an unladylike way to behave. I’m sure my dear mother would shudder to think that I could be so cruel to someone who has already had so much misfortune in her life. I had forgotten my noble breeding, dear ladies, in favour of revenge against someone who was simply born different and in less lucky circumstances to most of us. Of course you, being ladies yourselves, know that it is our duty to help the disadvantaged in any way that we can and I hope you will see, as I have, that it is below us to mock such a person.”
“You really are simply too good, dear Galinda, we should have known immediately that you could have only the purest motives for your actions!”
“Shenshen is absolutely right!” agreed Pfannee enthusiastically. “It makes perfect sense that you were being kind to her, even though she doesn’t deserve it after some of the tricks she played on you.”
“But, as Galinda said, she can’t help being born the way she was and I suppose that’s enough to affect anyone’s personality in a negative fashion.”
“And you couldn’t find a person with a more negatively affected personality!”
“Perhaps,” offered Galinda, after Pfannee’s last outburst. “Being in polite company will help her learn some manners?”
“It might,” agreed Shenshen. “She is a Governor’s daughter after all, surely some sort of manners must have rubbed off on her even if she doesn’t use them.”
The girls nodded thoughtfully to each other, all silently weighing noble blood against a ‘negatively affected personality’ such as Miss Elphaba’s.
“I believe Galinda has done exactly the right thing,” announced Pfannee confidently. “We were all a bit… high-spirited when we started school here and we just got off on the wrong foot. I’m sure if we had been polite, as we should have, from the start Miss Elphaba would have done the same.”
Galinda was nowhere near as certain but nodded agreeably and let Shenshen speak her thoughts.
“And once everyone else sees that the three of us are being reasonable to, and treated reasonably by, Miss Elphaba I am certain they will do the same.”
“We should start as soon as possibly then,” agreed Pfannee. “We’ve got months of damage to undo. That is, if you think Miss Elphaba will be agreeable?”
“Well who wouldn’t want to be popular by association with us?” asked Galinda rhetorically, vowing to herself that she would darn well make Elphaba do what was good for her.
Author's note: So this one looks a little Elphiyero with that beginning scene – at least it does to me, but I promise that it’s friendship Elphiyero and Fiyero/Galinda romance. ^_^