Fire

It was an imperceptible sound. A cough, a scuffing of heavy boots against the wooden floor, even a loud sigh would have been enough to have obliterated the sound of movement on the window seat behind her.

So it was just as well all Elphaba was doing was standing rigid. Facing the door to their room holding an internal debate with herself on the merits of fleeing to the Magicks lab to see if there was a potion for turning back time to start her evening over. She’d pretty much given up on Galinda ever moving from her perch by the window and speaking with her that night or any other night for that matter, and was left to wonder if perhaps magic could come in useful for once. 

But there it was. A light rustling of frills as the blonde turned. A creak of her gentle weight against the wooden seat. Elphaba’s hawk-like hearing, honed by years of playing alone in the dangerous forests of her youth where sharp toothed animals (definitely not Animals) wouldn’t care if their food came to them green, noticed the sound immediately.

And her desire to flee was momentarily put in abeyance as she waited for what move her roommate would make next.

Galinda hadn’t been expecting Elphaba’s back to be turned to her. And she certainly hadn’t expected her to be poised in front of the door ready to leave. She’d assumed with how quiet the room and more importantly the other person in it had been, that her bookworm of a roommate had simply gotten on with her favourite, often infuriating pastime of reading. The blonde was caught terribly off guard to not find her green friend ensconced beneath some worthy tome, making that frowny motion with dark angled brows as hazel eyes swallowed hungrily the text before her. It just wasn’t like Elphaba to be otherwise occupied in their room Galinda conceded. And before she allowed her tangential thought process to go down the path asking why Elphaba was standing rigid with her back to her, poised to leave (fleeing again?) Galinda took the rather golden opportunity presented before her of addressing the sharp spiky girl as her back was turned.

Because she doubted she’d have the courage to do it if she was looking into those steely hazel eyes.

“You know Miss Elphaba,” Galinda didn’t know her voice could sound so unsteady, it must have been her racing heart that made it so.

“You can really hurt a girl’s feelings when you try.”

She said it gently, wanting to impress upon her roommate that her behaviour had hurt the blonde, but also not wishing to sound too admonishing in case Elphaba bolted through the door as it appeared she wanted to.

Galinda, only capable of alleviating awkward situations with her frivolous...well frivolousness, hoped her words wouldn’t cause an eruption of green temper. Because she was quite wholly without anything else to say at that point, and was rather meticulously mentally counting down the seconds of silence which permeated their room once more. Hoping Elphaba’s infamous dry wit would offer itself any moment now and put the heiress out of her misery.

She sighed as the seconds dragged on, Elphaba obviously summoning up all her anger and not just the normal surface level anger she carried around with her every day. Preparing to unleash it all on the blonde girl. Once again it seemed she had said the wrong thing to her roommate Galinda thought, swallowing a sob at the realisation, steeling herself for the green girl’s wrath.

“I’m sorry.”

Elphaba’s deep timbre which usually filled the room with ease sounded small and lost when she finally broke the silence she had forced between them.

But though it was unusually quiet for the taller girl that didn’t mean Galinda hadn’t heard her words.

The blonde, who had imagined many possible sharp rejoinders from her roommate, had in fact received many sharp rejoinders from her roommate in the past but the one she had actually just received, opened her mouth to speak only to promptly shut it again when she realised all her words had taken a sabbatical. No longer swimming haphazardly about her brain but were off in the Eastern Kells or some other place miles away.

Elphie just apologised. Galinda realised rather dimly.  I didn’t even know she knew how!

She wished the tall one would turn around so she could see her eyes and know if she really meant it. But maybe, as was the case with her own facing up to things the blonde considered with rare insight, Elphaba found it easier to address Galinda with her back turned.

“I’m sorry Galinda.” Having said it once, Elphaba found that she needed to hear it again in order for her to believe she’d finally had the courage to utter the words at all.

And she found by saying those few it had unlocked all the other words within her.

Finally, the green girl sighed.

The desire to speak was actually matched with the skill.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings Galinda,” Elphaba began. “I fly off the handle sometimes, well actually a lot of the time.”

There was a measure of the old her coming through in her voice. The confident manner in which she usually spoke was trying to break the surface Elphaba was glad to acknowledge.

“Hard as it is to believe I say things without thinking them through. It’s an unfortunate habit or so I’m told. One that has followed me from childhood and doesn’t look like it’s going to leave me any time soon. No doubt it has helped create my reputation on campus for being a remote, well that is to say, a rather cold person.”

The strength was leaving her voice again, the words difficult to say.

“Despite this,” she continued, though her voice faltered in a way Galinda had never heard from the confident woman before.

“Please believe me when I tell you I didn’t mean to make you cry. I didn’t.”

She finished softly, swallowing down an unfamiliar lump in her throat as the notion struck her that the blonde might not believe her. What was she supposed to do then?

“I don’t think you’re cold Elphaba,” Galinda said from just behind the taller girl.

The green one gave a little start at the proximity of the voice. Unusually for her she hadn’t heard the graceful girl’s approach from the other side of the room. A deep breath she didn’t even know she held expelled itself in a tremulous sigh on hearing the kindness of the blonde’s words.

“And I don’t think you meant to make me cry,” Galinda continued staring at the back of square set shoulders, the tension in them obvious.

She wanted to reach out and ease her friend’s clear distress with a hand on her shoulder, as she had done that first night of shared confidences between them. She held back though fearing it might startle the girl before her. Scaring her into a silence Galinda so desperately wanted filled with what the green girl was taking such pains to try and say. Going against every instinct to reach out and wrap Elphaba in a strong embrace of reassurance, and so much more the blonde dimly realised, the smaller woman contented herself with remaining on the slightly intimate side of close to the taller girl. Waiting for what would happen next.

“You don’t?”

Elphaba barely whispered in reply, incredulous that so soon her fears of being disbelieved could be assuaged by the blonde. Could it be a trick? She’d had plenty of those played on her in the past.

“No I don’t,” Galinda responded firmly, confirming her stance with a decisive nod of her head, even though the gesture was lost on the girl before her with her back still turned. 

“Oh,” was the green girl’s somewhat less than loquacious response. She hadn’t quite expected that.

So far Elphaba considered, frowning as she did so, this was all going unexpectedly well. Granted she seemed rooted to the spot. Unable to turn a mere 180 degrees in either direction in order to put herself face to face with the girl she was actually trying to talk to. For some reason the dark wooden door was a more yielding audience right at that moment. Elphaba realised that in part this was because it offered an escape. The exit strategy of earlier hadn’t been entirely discounted yet despite how well speaking was going. After all Nanny had always taught her it was good to have a back-up plan. There weren’t many lessons Elphaba had taken from the stout old woman which she actually agreed with, but she had always thought that was one was rather apt. 

So far so good Elphaba thought quite relieved, but as she recognised what was next on her list of things to tell Galinda her buoyant mood began to deflate.

Apologise, done that. Tell her you feel something for her...gulp. A loud swallow emanated from the tall girl’s throat, quickly followed by all the moisture inside her mouth disappearing, heading south if her suddenly watery feeling legs were to be believed. All of which happened marginally before her heart palpitations began to echo the racing pace of earlier that evening.

Oh not this again.

Elphaba berated herself now recognising that leap of faith feeling, appreciating it less despite its familiarity. In this case familiarity does indeed breed contempt the green girl concluded.

The words she’d so recently recovered were slipping away again. The feelings of helplessness and confusion closing in on her. She felt trapped. Trapped by the darkened room about her. Trapped by the girl so close behind her when Elphaba breathed in she could detect a faint scent of the perfume Galinda had put on that morning before classes, patchouli with a hint of lavender the green girl so adept at natural oils detected. She felt trapped by her very own feelings which perhaps infuriated the dark haired girl the most.

Elphaba Thropp was not known for indecisiveness and inaction. She had never shied away from anything in her life. Not awkward situations (just remember the Oz Dust!) or difficult conversations (wasn’t it she who raised the Animal issue at every chance she got?). Nanny always said she was a head-strong, iron-willed girl, facing her demons head on because like afflicting her with the unique verdigris tint of her skin, that was just how nature had made the eldest Thropp girl. But what Nanny didn’t know, what none of them knew, was nature hadn’t made Elphaba that way, she had had to become that way in order to survive.

How else had the unwanted child (some would go as far as to say unloved) made it into young adulthood if it hadn’t been for facing her family’s disapproval, (a microscopic version of the disapproval waiting for her in the rest of society) with a nonchalant turn of her head and resolute indifference to their lack of affection? How else had she stepped through those awesome front gates of Shiz University to face the (not so fresh) crème de la crème of Oz high society’s offspring if she hadn’t buried her fears of ridicule, of rejection, deep down and marched forthrightly forward, believing she belonged there too?

It was simple survival instinct that had led the green girl through every path her life had crossed up to this point in time. And now her instinct was telling her to put all that self-reliance, all that faith in herself (for you see Elphaba Thropp did have faith in something, she had always had faith in herself) into Galinda Arduennas.

Irritating, frivolous, silly, thoughtful, sweet, beautiful Galinda.

Well it’s no wonder the green girl felt a little trepidation when she put it like that. How she could swing from one set of feelings to another had her head in a spin she dimly thought.

“This has got to stop now,” Elphaba huffed at herself, momentarily surprised at how loud her own thoughts could sound until she heard a gasp from behind her, detected a shuffling of feet as the blonde moved a step away, and suddenly she realised her thoughts had been versed aloud for once.

“If that’s what you want.” Galinda responded, her voice dull and low.

All the fight of earlier, the resolve to fix things that she’d felt sitting by the window realising she had feelings for her green friend, left her the instant she heard Elphaba’s frustration. Clearly it was aimed at the blonde and clearly it indicated that as suspected, the apology from the green girl had been an anomaly in otherwise normal Elphaba behaviour. Galinda backed another step away. A hollow feeling in her heart, which she thought expanded on the feeling of dullness she felt earlier in the evening, settled itself inside her. All she desired now was to be anywhere but here alone in this room with someone she wanted but couldn’t have.

For a moment a thought flashed like fire through her mind that she if she really wanted the green girl she should fight for her, the way the heroes in the romance novels she loved to read fought for the maidens they wanted.

But you’re no hero she heard her mother say.

And like a bucket of water with just that one thought the fire inside her was put out.