Wicked fic: hoofbeats, heartbeats
Fandom(s): Wicked (movie)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 6,070
Summary: Misunderstandings are a bitch. Or: 6,000 words of Elphaba realizing Fiyero and Feldspur were not, in fact, laughing at her that night in the forest.
Author's Notes: Canon divergence AU where the Ozdust doesn’t happen, so the status quo is still status quo-ing.
Elphaba Thropp prides herself on not letting things get to her. At least, not showing that they do. She hasn’t had a choice. It’s either that or drown in wave after wave of vitriol, laughter, condescension, and, most maddening of all, pity. She wouldn’t have survived this long if she weren’t able to shrug it off. Raise her spikes and shield herself.
But every now and then, she’s too slow in getting those spikes up and the words pierce her right in her exposed underbelly. One hundred and eighty-four days she’d lasted at Shiz without buckling; something was bound to give. Professor Lenx is no Dr. Dillamond, barely willing to tell the class to calm down, let alone soothe the sting with kindness afterwards.
She’d managed to maintain a façade of stoicism until dismissal, after which she’d promptly taken to the woods. The woods would not judge her. Neither animal nor Animal would spit the things her classmates had. Here, she could disappear. Blend into the foliage, as a certain egotistical prince had put it once.
She doesn’t know how long she walks, only that by the time she stumbles over a root system and has to steady herself against a tree, the sky is a deep twilight and hot tears are running down her cheeks.
She sits down on a nearby stump. Easier to break down while not face-planting into the dirt that way.
Get it together, Elphaba. You’ve heard worse.
And she has. There’s no reason today’s diatribe should affect her so; the dam had simply finally broken. It’s harder to escape at Shiz than it was at home in Munchkinland. At least there, for as much as Father reviled her, she still had the benefit of the Thropp name and knew the repeat tormenters well. Here, the name carries far less weight and the gauntlet she has to endure from people she hasn’t even met is endless. She doesn’t get a reprieve in her own room, either, albeit Galinda’s passive-aggressiveness has faded into white noise by now.
Eventually, aided by the faint, rhythmic sounds of nature around her, her sobs subside. However, that also means darkness has well and truly settled over Gillikin Country, and although she’s good with directions, she hadn’t been very focused on where she was going. She just wanted to get out, and she’d brought no lamp by which to light the way.
The moon, at least, is full, which might be enough to find the main road that she can follow.
It’s as she’s dusting herself off and doing her best to get her bearings that she hears in the distance her name being shouted and approaching hoofbeats. Normally, she might be wary of who in Oz’s name would be traveling through a forest on horseback this late — except, in this case, she can easily guess the traveler’s identity. Indeed, a moment later the moonlight glints off familiar flaxen hair.
Of all people. Of all times. How had he even found her?
Setting her shoulders, she regards Prince Fiyero with an imperious, “Can’t you get a better hobby than trying to run me over? That’s twice now.”
He smoothly dismounts, unruffled by her tone. “Actually, I quite enjoy this one.”
Elphaba crosses her arms protectively over her chest. Judging by her itchy, swollen eyes and the pull on her cheeks from dried tear tracks, she suspects the evidence of her breakdown is on full display. Not that there’s anything to be done about it now. To his credit, Fiyero doesn’t comment.
“Why are you here?” she asks tiredly. “To mock me?”
“Mock you?” He sounds genuinely surprised. “I was looking for you. You weren’t in the library.”
He would know, she supposes. He’s always hanging around being a layabout when she’s trying to read or do homework. Whether he’s already there or arrives later, his presence is inevitable. He doesn’t ever do any studying of his own, of course. When he does manage to locate a book, he rarely turns any of its pages, merely props up his feet on the polished wooden tables and plays coquet with the gaggles of students vying for his attention. Over two months he’s been here and everyone still acts like he’s a celebrity instead of their peer. Idiots.
Granted, she does appreciate the occasions Fiyero slinks through sections he has no business being in. It usually means she’s soon approached by the aforementioned gaggles asking if she’s seen him. She feasts on petty delight at their disappointment when she claims she hasn’t. Why exactly he slinks, she hasn’t asked. He thrives on attention; surely he’s not hiding from them. But whatever his motives, it’s none of her concern, even if sometimes she’s curious.
Never more so than the days he thanks her once everyone’s given up. Despite telling him she’d done it for the entertainment, not for him, he always sounds so earnest and regards her for long enough to be uncomfortable. Like he’s waiting for her to say something else. Then, when she doesn’t, he leaves without clarifying and she stares after him unable to help wondering what it is exactly that he’s expecting.
In any event, it’s annoying. There has to be somewhere else he could go to while away the hours.
She tunes back into the present conversation as Fiyero explains, “Galinda said you never came back after Professor Lenx’s class, so —”
“— you decided to costume yourself as some knight in shining armor?”
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t bring any armor, shiny or otherwise.”
“Witty.”
“I’m just here to offer you a ride, Elphaba,” Fiyero sighs. His voice has dropped slightly, losing its usual silver-tongued affectation the way it had upon their first meeting. His real voice. She hasn’t decided whether to interpret it as a compliment or insult that he doesn’t keep it up around her.
“It’ll take you hours on foot and this forest is a maze,” he adds. “I’d probably have gotten lost myself if it weren’t for Feldspur.”
She considers seizing on that statement, snarking about how he must have failed his princely lessons in addition to his academic ones, or bristle at him forcing his Horse to do all the work, or any number of things. But the events of the day have drained her, and if she’s being honest, the latter at least is unfair. She’s seen firsthand how much fondness there is between him and his steed. Fiyero wouldn’t have ridden Feldspur out here if the Horse hadn’t agreed.
That doesn’t mean she’s inclined to accept charity.
“I can make my own way. I always do.”
“Yes, but you don’t have to.” Fiyero cautiously steps towards her, as though anticipating her magic will blast him into a tree. “I know you think the worst of me. Message received. I want to help, that’s all.”
She wishes there weren’t so many shadows so she could better read his expression. Admittedly he at least sounds sincere, and, well, now that he’s mentioned it, walking home by herself in the dark with only a vague sense of which way to go sounds much less appealing than what he’s offering.
Presumptuously, he picks up her bag from the ground and hoists it over his shoulder. She wants to object on principle alone, but he turns away before she can and calls out for Feldspur. The Horse leisurely traipses over, masticating clumps of vegetation.
Squeamish at the idea of riding an Animal, Elphaba asks, “Are you sure it’s okay if I —?”
“Of course, Miss Elphaba,” Feldspur says. “That’s why we came.”
We.
At that, anger and sorrow rise inside her. Anger at what Dr. Dillamond had divulged, that Animals are at a faster and faster rate losing their ability to speak. Sorrow at the prospect that the blue-hued Horse in front of her could one day follow suit. What, she wonders, would Fiyero’s reaction be if his friend were to neigh and nicker instead of chatter and chortle? If no longer could Feldspur consent to being ridden? Would he do something about it? He’s a prince, maybe he could do something about it. Maybe —
“Elphaba?”
She is yanked from her thoughts to find Fiyero bent at the knee with his fingers clasped together, clearly waiting for her to move. Feigning confidence, she places her boot into his foothold and lets herself be lifted onto the Horse. Sitting directly on Feldspur’s back with nowhere to secure her feet is disconcerting — she eyes Fiyero’s well-worn, well-made saddle with envy — but she’ll survive.
As fluid as any dance step, Fiyero mounts up like he’d been born there and commands, “Hold on to me.”
She obeys without argument, just this once, hyperaware that Fiyero is all that stands between her and a cracked skull. As she loops her arms around his waist, she notes with mild interest that Feldspur’s tack appears to be largely decorative; there’s no bit in the bridle and the reins remain knotted to the pommel, unused. Apparently, Feldspur has as much of an affinity for pomp and vanity as his prince.
An embarrassing yelp is pulled from her lips as the Horse lurches into motion. Jostling every which way from the bouncing trot, Elphaba feels as though any second she’s going to tumble unceremoniously to the ground. Actually get trampled under Feldspur’s heavy hooves instead of almost getting trampled. How is Fiyero so calm? What would possess him to choose to ride all the way from Winkie Country to Shiz? How does anyone enjoy this? She can’t wrap her mind around it. They’ve barely even gotten started and already she wants off.
Fiyero grunts as she constricts him like a startled serpent. “Don’t laugh,” she warns.
Slightly strained, he replies, “I’m not laughing. You’re squeezing the life out of me.”
Well, how could she not, with Feldspur thundering across the forest floor, his powerful hindquarters rippling beneath her, branches bending perilously close around them? She stiffens a little as Fiyero’s hands cover hers and she glances up to see him twist around in the saddle. He seems infuriatingly at ease. “I won’t let you fall, Elphaba. I promise.”
Even with her long-practiced skepticism, something in the steady tone of his voice and relaxed posture makes her do as he says. Tentatively, she leans back, loosens her grip by a fraction — and, as promised, does not fall. On the contrary, as Feldspur’s gait lengthens into a methodical canter, she begins to gain some stability. Satisfied, Fiyero turns frontward.
“Sorry.” The word sticks in her mouth. “I don’t ride much.”
“I figured. Richest family in Munchkinland, I bet you were chauffeured everywhere you needed to go.”
“Oh, like you’re one to talk, Your Highness.”
Fiyero groans. “Don’t call me that.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“Even so.”
“Why?”
He goes silent for a while. Feldspur’s strides, muted by the pine needles and damp earth below, are all that break through. She’s nearly sorted out an acceptable position to sit in when finally, Fiyero answers, “Not you.”
“What do you mean not me?”
“I don’t want — just, don’t.”
She stares at the back of his head, bewildered. Sarcastic usage or not, he should be puffing out his chest in self-importance. He preens like a peacock whenever someone calls him by his title; what’s special about her, specifically?Her question goes unasked as she realizes he’s still holding onto her. Unnecessarily so. She freezes as he starts to lightly, hesitantly, brush the inside of her wrists, the motion too deliberate to be an accident, and his thumbs come to rest on her pulse points. He turns almost enough to meet her eyes over his shoulder but stops just short, like he’d forgotten whatever he planned to say. Beneath her fingers splayed across his hard abdomen, she feels his muscles shift with each hoofbeat to remain centered in the saddle. To test that very discipline, she experimentally digs the tips of her nails into his sides. Though a sharp exhalation escapes him — his straight-backed position briefly wavers — he does nothing to relieve the pressure. His shirt catches on the sharp points of her nails as she drags them downwards; yet, if anything, he tightens his grip on her.
Interesting.
She doesn’t know what to make of it. All she does know is that a small — very small, insignificant really, hardly worth mentioning — flutter materializes low in her belly, growing larger and larger the longer she stays flush against him. She swallows uneasily.
I want to help.I was looking for you.
I won’t let you fall, Elphaba. I promise.
Hastily, she retracts her claws, pulls out of Fiyero’s grasp, and the diaphanous flutter is stamped out. She chooses not to acknowledge the way he stiffens at the absence of her touch.
This is stupid. She’s being stupid. Her compromised emotional state and anxiety over the riding situation is sending her imagination down a wild path, which is not acceptable. It doesn’t matter why he cares what she calls him, so it’s not a battle worth fighting. He can be Fiyero if he wants. Just Fiyero.
After what she estimates to be several miles, Feldspur slows to a trot then a walk, needing a respite from the weight. Fiyero dismounts gracefully; her, less so. He doesn’t look at her as they soon fall into step beside Feldspur (fair play, she can’t bring herself to look at him right now either), at which point the pair begin bickering.
“Getting lazy in your middle age, are you?” Fiyero goads.
“Keep running that mouth, young prince, and I’ll leave you here to take Miss Elphaba the rest of the way myself.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I would.”
“Remember last time —”
“Do you remember last time?”
Elphaba fights off the smile that threatens to curve her lips at the incessant squabbling. Insouciance has been Fiyero’s raison d’être ever since they’d chanced upon each other in the forest months ago, but this is something else. The mask she’d identified long ago has slipped entirely from view, and Elphaba can’t help but be intrigued. She’s only caught glimpses beneath it before.
Eventually, he and Feldspur agree to a truce, not that Elphaba suspects it’ll last. Though she’d suppressed the smile, the kernel of jealousy at their friendship — brotherhood, really — is a tougher task. She’s had Nessa, but Father’s shadow has always cast a pall over them, much as Elphaba has striven to ignore it. And while she loves Nanny Dulcibear dearly, it’s not the same.
At the end of the day, she has no one. Not in the way Fiyero and Feldspur have each other.
To stifle her brooding, Elphaba comments, “You know each other well.”
“Too well, maybe,” Fiyero says. He pats Feldspur’s neck affectionately. “No one else has put up with me for so long.”
“Only because Their Majesties pay me a pretty penny.”
Fiyero scoffs in indignation; Feldspur answers with a chuckle.
The exchange flashes Elphaba back to Fiyero’s first day in Dr. Dillamond’s class, the cursory introduction he was asked to give. While he’d done so in his usual blasé fashion, there’d been a warm sincerity there, too. (For parts of it, that is. Much of the rest was pure bloviation.)
“Fiyero mentioned that you saved his life once when he was a child,” she says. “Drowning or something?”
Fiyero’s head snaps over to stare at her, inscrutable.
Feldspur answers in his stead, “Mm. He fell through some ice while playing on a pond and I pulled him out. A gangly little terror he was, ten years old with a set of ears he hadn’t yet grown into. Still hasn’t done that, mind.”
“Now wait a minute —”
“Burr in a hoof, that one,” Feldspur continues over Fiyero’s protest. “He’s got a knack for wriggling under your skin and staying there.”
“Don’t listen to him, Elphaba. I’m a joy to be around.”She snorts. “Could’ve fooled me.”
Feldspur laughs, but he does so alone. A muscle in Fiyero’s jaw twitches, then he leans over to whisper something in the Horse’s ear. Feldspur nods his assent and ambles on ahead. Not far, still in plain view to lead the way — but out of earshot.
“So, answer me something,” Fiyero says quietly. “Why do you hate me so much? Because I’ve gone over the last two months in my head a thousand times and I can’t figure it out.”
Elphaba blinks. “I don’t hate you, Fiyero.”
“Don’t you?”
“Of course not.”
“But you don’t like me either.”
“Not really.”
“Why?”Elphaba appraises him slowly. While he’s not in formal dress and his hair is tousled out of its usual perfection, even in the dim, the quality of his clothes is unmistakable: supple leather boots toed in bronze, shirt embellished with gold thread, quilted riding vest dyed the deepest of blues to match his eyes. To say nothing of Feldspur, his coat brushed until it glitters, his body draped in raiments of silk and fine-weave wool, a monogrammed medallion gleaming around his neck.
Royalty through and through, the both of them, whether Fiyero wants to be addressed as such or not.
Her gaze flicks up to his. “Forgive me if I don’t have much sympathy for pampered princes.”
“Says the daughter of a governor.” Elphaba shoots him a glare, which he ignores. “It isn’t that. You’ve been hostile since the minute we met, before you even knew who I was.”
Elphaba grits her teeth. This is not a conversation she’d ever wanted to have. Especially not now, right when her evening had, dare she think it, started to improve from the disaster it was before. She doesn’t want to relive the fleeting moment of humanity she’d felt. It’d ended the way things always do: with her the butt of a joke.
“I deserve an answer, Elphaba,” Fiyero presses.
“And I deserved to not be some kind of game to you!”
“A game? What are you talking about?”
She thinks of that butter-wouldn’t-melt smile, his surprise but not disgust at the color of her skin, the easy parrying of her rote speech. The way it’d almost seemed like …
Then the other shoe had dropped. Feldspur’s laughter, Fiyero’s shushing followed by a pathetic who-me? expression when she’d caught him in the act. The offering of a ride as though she was incapable of walking ten minutes to campus by herself. As though he hadn’t humiliated her for his own titillation.
She relays it all to him, every ounce of pent-up bitterness, fueled in no small part by tonight’s events. Professor Lenx’s class, yes, but that other thing, too. The ghost of him dances along her fingertips; the flutter rattles at the bars of its cage. It’s too much.
Instead of shame, apology, or another round of laughter, however, Fiyero’s face is a study in pure bafflement. He shakes his head like she’s being the unreasonable one. “Elphaba … it was me Feldspur was laughing at, not you.”
“And why exactly would he be laughing at you?”
“Because he found it hilarious that the girl I was trying to flirt with kept shooting me down.”
Elphaba’s breath hitches in hesitation. After what she’s witnessed of Fiyero and Feldspur’s bond, it would be thoroughly within Feldspur’s nature to snicker at his friend’s charms failing. More so than snickering at the girl picking leaves off her skirt that he’d nearly run over. It’s hard now to imagine that the Horse — or indeed Fiyero himself — would be so mean.
Her pride decides that’s a distinction without a difference. Whatever the pair’s intentions, “You flirt with everyone.”
Fiyero lets out a growl of aggravation. “There’s no winning with you, is there? You know, for someone who suffers judgment from others, you’re remarkably judgmental yourself.”
“Here’s what’s not going to happen,” she hisses, poking him in the chest for emphasis. “I’m not going to be lectured by a man whose entire lifestyle is performative.”
“Excuse me?”
“You may have everyone else under your spell, but not me. You go around claiming you don’t care about anything, when you care more than all of them combined and are one of the unhappiest people I’ve ever met. Maybe I am judgmental. But at least I’m not lying to myself.”
Stunned silence crackles in her wake. A silence she fully relishes —
— for approximately thirty seconds.
“Sounds like you’ve got me pegged,” Fiyero says leadingly.
He’s awash with smugness, far from the shock he’d been in a moment ago. It’s unnerving, and more than that it makes her realize that in her knee-jerk anger, she’d said too much. While she’d picked up on his nihilism the day he arrived at Shiz, she’d also stormed out halfway through his mission statement. No, her assessment could only have come from noticing him, watching him — and he knows it.
“You’re not hard to figure out,” Elphaba replies loftily. “We’re in most of the same classes and Galinda constantly yaps about you to her friends.”
It’s not a lie. Just not the entire truth either.
Given Fiyero’s raised eyebrow, he doesn’t believe her.
“The point is,” she continues, “I don’t trust you.”
“Why? Because of something that didn’t happen? I told you, that night wasn’t what you thought it was.”
“I don’t care. I’m playing the odds.”
Fiyero’s mouth thins, his cocky demeanor vanishing. “So that’s it? Not even the truth is going to change your mind?”
“I don’t have the luxury of trusting people. Especially not ones brought up with a silver spoon in their mouths who haven’t experienced hardship a day in their lives.”
“You’re wrong about me.”
“No. I’m not.”
At her conviction, hurt begins to creep into all the handsome angles of his face. She can’t say a small part of her doesn’t feel guilty for putting it there, but as soon as she envisions Fiyero doing what everyone else does, cackling and jeering and taunting, the guilt dissipates.
She can’t take a chance that he’s different. She just can’t.
She watches with some discomfort as Fiyero’s mask slips into place as though it’d never left. His mouth twists into an empty smile, in polar opposition to the one he’d had for the past hour. She doubts anyone at Shiz would be able to tell. They haven’t so far. They see his dimples flash and melt in the honeyed timbre of his voice and hang on every word he says.
“Come on then,” he drawls. “Feldspur gets cranky when he has to wait.”
“Fiyero —”
She doesn’t know why, but as he goes to move past her, her hand darts out to grab his. His skin is warm, palms rough with callus from years of swordplay. He looks at her through wounded eyes, but she can think of nothing else to say. What is there to say that hasn’t been said?
So, as abruptly as she’d reached for him, he pulls away and calls out, “Feldspur! Time to go.”
Elphaba hadn’t thought she could ever miss Fiyero’s presence. And yet, she does.
It’s weird to walk into class and not have a cheeky smile or wave thrown her way. It’s weird being in the library without him lounging like he owns the place. It’s weird to realize that she hadn’t avoided him in her place of refuge nearly as much as she thought she had.
Like the time Dr. Dillamond had partnered everyone off to critique the other’s assignment, and when Fiyero handed his over, she’d discovered it was … fine. Not up to her standards, but not bad either. The thesis statement was coherent, the sources were solid, and it was the required length. While she’d had to polish up the paper’s grammar, syntax, and structure, it’d taken barely a quarter of the time or effort she thought it would. She’d glanced over at him during her second pass-through and saw him actually reading hers, teeth gnawing absently on the cap of his pen. He’d had a correction for her, no less, that she was off by a day on when the Great Drought was officially declared (“Couldn’t forget that even if I tried — anniversary’s the same day as my birthday. The midwife called mine an ‘inauspicious’ birth. Which I guess it was, since I’m the only heir to the throne”). It’d been a side to him she hadn’t expected, and a coin in the jar of evidence she’d been inadvertently compiling to support her theory that there was indeed more to him than he liked to show.
Or the time she’d spotted him and Avaric Tenmeadows chatting up a storm a few tables away. She’d been ready to shut them up, but stalled at realizing it was Vinkun they were speaking. While Father had not skimped on tutors, the language of the West had not been on his list of priorities. It’d been fascinating to see Fiyero so animated. It had never occurred to her that he might feel isolated. That forging a connection with someone who shared his culture might be comforting. The intent to chastise them had died in her throat, and she’d resumed her homework. More than once she’s wondered whether Avaric thinks she has an unspoken vendetta against him, for she does her best to pivot whenever the two are conversating. Something about the way the molten syllables drip off Fiyero’s tongue makes it hard to focus, which altogether defeats the purpose of being in the library.
Or the time she’d been searching for an Alchemy textbook and almost had the living daylights scared out of her, for there he was on the ground, leaning against one stack of books with his feet braced against the opposite stack, blankly contemplating the engraved ceiling. It’d been the first time she’d seen him hiding — there really was no other word for it — and she’d kicked his knee to get him to move. Instead of doing so, he’d yanked her down with a hissed, Quiet! He hadn’t elaborated and she hadn’t cared enough to pry, just reached past him to fetch the book she needed and went about her day. Incidentally, that’d also been the first time one of his admirers had asked her if she’d seen him, and she had the privilege of lying. When next she ran across him similarly out of sight, she knelt down of her own volition, he asked her which book she needed, and once more they parted ways. No harm, no foul.
There’s a Fiyero-shaped void in her life is what there is, and she doesn’t like it.
Others notice, too: For a full week, she has to listen to Galinda lament that he’s grown distant.
“Did something happen?” Galinda demands one evening in their room after, apparently, her toss-toss-ing yet again fails to work on him. “That night in the woods. He hasn’t been the same since.”
With a noncommittal shrug to belie her quickening heartbeat, Elphaba replies, “You should ask him, not me.”
“I did! He said it was nothing. But it’s not nothing if he’s thinking. It worries me.”
“Oh, no, how dare someone think.”
Sounding to Elphaba one complaint away from stomping her foot, Galinda repeats, “You’re sure nothing happened?”
Elphaba settles for an exasperated glare rather than an answer. Mainly because she doesn’t know how to articulate one. Galinda wouldn’t listen to any of the context, she would shut her ears off after learning Elphaba is technically the cause of her precious prince’s bad attitude.
Galinda’s sculpted brows pinch together. “Okay, so if it’s not that … something with his family?”
She gestures at Elphaba’s desk where the daily Ozian Post sits, a publication Elphaba’s positive Galinda has never once flipped through. “Snow is forecast for the Vinkus Mountains,” she reports dryly. “And Chieftain Marilott and Baxiana are set to hold an audience next week about a water rights dispute between some of the villagers. Maybe Fiyero is super stressed about that.”
Galinda throws up her hands in exasperation and flounces down on her bed. “I don’t understand.”
Elphaba has no interest in consoling her roommate, nor put up with any more dramatics. So, summarily she stuffs her books and notebook into her bag and announces, “I’m gonna finish up in the library.”
Galinda’s response is muffled in her comforter. Assuming it requires no acknowledgement, Elphaba strides out of the room — but not to the library. Tonight, her target is the other end of campus.
However, having not thought much about her plan besides the direction in which she’d be walking, it isn’t until she’s approaching the West Dormitory that it occurs to her this probably isn’t one of her brightest ideas.
But she’s here now, isn’t she? Elphaba is many things, but lacking courage is not one of them. Taking a self-assuring breath, she climbs the stairs to the top floor and knocks on a door at the end. There’s only one otherwise empty private suite on this side, the mirror of hers and Galinda’s, and she can’t imagine they’d stick a prince in any old dorm room.
Her already-slapdash strategy goes awry immediately: It is not Fiyero who opens the door but Avaric, clearly as surprised as she is.
“Uh … hello, Elphaba,” he says. The tattoos of blue diamonds that curve around his left eye and trail down the side of his neck are as striking as ever against his ochre skin.
“Hi, Avaric. Is Fiyero around? I need to talk to him.”
Avaric raises his eyebrows but complies, “Yeah. One sec.”
He retreats into the room. She can’t hear what he says within, but she does hear the distinct sound of objects crashing to the floor and, “She’s what?”
A moment later, Fiyero takes Avaric’s place at the door. Given the hour, he’s dressed simply, a loose linen shirt over a pair of Shiz-branded pants. The shirt he’d only bothered to button halfway, leaving her to try very hard not to notice the dark hair spread across his chest.
(It doesn’t work.)
“Hi,” is all the greeting Fiyero affords her, his hands jammed in his pockets.
She gestures vaguely at where Avaric had disappeared. “I figured you’d have this place to yourself.”
“Why, because I’m too self-absorbed to have a roommate?”
“That is what you pride yourself on. Or what you tell people you pride yourself on, anyway.”
His jaw is a little too tense, his eyes a little too sharp to adequately conceal that he’s still upset. “What are you doing here, Elphaba? It’s late.”
“I know. It’s Galinda. She said you’ve been ‘moodified’ lately — her word — and won’t stop harassing me about it.”
“You’re here on Galinda’s behalf?”
“No, mine.”
“What do you want me to say? It’s true what I told her.” His voice takes on an odd edge. “Nothing happened.”
Elphaba glances behind Fiyero into his room. This is quickly becoming a conversation she doesn’t want being eavesdropped. Fiyero ushers her out into the hallway and shuts the door behind him, then crosses his arms expectantly. Through the slight sheerness of his shirt, she spots blue diamonds not dissimilar from Avaric’s snaking around both biceps. An Arjiki thing, it would seem. Curiosity piqued, she makes a note to find out the meaning of the tattoos later.
Returning to the task at hand, she asks, “Are you punishing me or something? Making Galinda worry, avoiding the library, avoiding me, is this all because I didn’t bend to your will?”
“Bend to my will? Elphaba, all I asked was for you to get over the grudge you held against me over a miscommunication.”
“Well —”
“Which you didn’t, and strangely enough, I take that kind of thing personally, especially when I’ve done nothing wrong. You should be happy I’m not darkening your doorstep anymore.”
“It’s not you specifically that I don’t trust, Fiyero. I don’t trust anyone.”
“Sounds like a lonely existence.”
“Better than laying out the welcome mat for mockery.” She bites the inside of her cheek in consideration, then, unable to resist, asks, “What does it matter what I think of you, anyway? You’ve got all the friends and admirers you could ever need.”
“You said Galinda talks about me,” Fiyero says. “What does she talk about?”
“What everyone else does,” Elphaba replies, puzzled by his change of subject. “That you’re handsome and royalty. She spent an hour yesterday fantasizing about the interior decorating of your family’s castle. I made the mistake of informing her you have two of those, although one is —”
“That’s my point,” Fiyero interrupts. “People care about my birthright, not me. Everyone except you. You don’t care about any of that. You never have.” A corner of his mouth ticks up. “And don’t pretend you haven’t paid any attention to me.”
“Knowing some Tigelaar trivia doesn’t mean I pay attention to you.”
“No, but the other stuff does.”
“What other stuff?”
Holding up one finger after another, he lists: “Everything between us in the library. Remembering what I said about Feldspur in a two-minute introduction months ago. Checking whether I had any letters to send since you were going to the post box. Asking what the Vinkun traditions are for Lurlinemas. Lending me a book you thought would help for exam prep. It did, by the way.”
“Congratulations.”
“How many people here do you think would do any of that?” She assumes the question is rhetorical. “You treat me like a person, not a thing. My own parents don’t even do that.”
And you treat me like one. You always have.
She digs her nails into her palms in an effort to quell her brain’s unhelpful commentary. “So what? It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It does to me.”
The nail-digging is woefully ineffective, for something else Fiyero had said is dragged to the forefront of her mind:
Feldspur found it hilarious that the girl I was trying to flirt with kept shooting me down.She’d brushed him off by accusing him of flirting with everyone. Which is true — he has the entire school wrapped around his finger. But the way he’s looking at her now, the way he’d looked at her in the forest, it’s … different. He’s perfected the art of a mask, yet he lets it fall around her, over and over.
Fiyero narrows the distance between them by a half-step. “Tell me again you’ll never trust me. Say you don’t care for me, and I will walk away. But I need a reason, Elphaba.”
Nervous energy she refuses to give in to fills her veins under the intensity of Fiyero’s gaze. There would be no escaping or deflecting this time. His explanation of the night they met does, in retrospect, maybe make sense. But being told that and believing that are two separate things. Believing he’s been genuine from the beginning, that his nicety and candor have never had strings attached … if she were to accept those things as fact … she must accept the rest as fact, too.
The girl I was trying to flirt with.I was looking for you.
I won’t let you fall.
Anyone thinking of her in that way would strike her as wildly suspicious. For someone like him — crown prince of the Arjiki, desired throughout all of Oz, charm wrapped in seduction wrapped in silk, a face armies would go to war for — to think of her in that way is inconceivable. And even if he did, somehow, a lifetime of experiencing the worst of humanity doesn’t lend itself to willful vulnerability. Whatever promises Fiyero could swear, she can’t stomach the thought of opening herself up to that kind of pain and embarrassment.
“I’m not asking for your hand in marriage here,” Fiyero says, almost amused.
“I know,” she flushes, “I just … don’t understand.”
“Which part?”“All of it. I’m not that girl, Fiyero.”
He takes another half-step forward. “What do I need to do to convince you that you are?”
“I — nothing. You can’t.” His closeness is distracting.
“Fine. Your trust, then. Can you give me that?”
She searches for earnestness, feels the heat in his stare. Before her self-doubt can put a stop to it, she surrenders, “Yes.”
Fiyero grins, a real one, one that finally reaches his eyes. It sends an unexpected, though not unpleasant, shiver up her spine. “Well,” he says, “that’s a start.”