A/N: Warning for some violence in this chapter. Thank you, if you're reading. It's greatly appreciated.

"Stay right there, Glinda. I'm going to – "

Pip pip pip.

"Hello?" Glinda shook the receiver. "Hello?" She shook it again. Nothing. "Ev, Elphaba, carry more change!"

Picking up her handbag she pushed past the barman, out into the street to see what was happening.

"Hey, don't you want the rest of your wine cooler?"

"I'll be back!"

There was a lot of noise, more sirens from indeterminate directions. A Guard almost slammed into her as he careened past.

"Sorry, Ma'am!"

"Wait, Officer, can you tell me what's going on?"

"It's the students – they're rioting!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean there's a riot!"

"Can't you go into a bit more detail?"

"Stay indoors, Ma'am, let us handle this."

"Hold on!"

She tried to run after him, but her shoes weren't made for speed and her heel almost caught in a crack in the pavement, bringing her to a sensible stop.

What could she actually achieve, if she followed the cops and the sirens? She didn't have a camera crew. She was on her own. All she had with her was a notebook and pen.

The best thing to do would be to power-walk back into the Ritzy, call EBC1 and get hold of Amanda. Notify someone. Call her parents, and tell them just enough so that they wouldn't go crazy.

"Oh, hey," the barman greeted her.

"Can I use your phone again?"

"Your friend just rang up. She left a message. She said that callboxes are a scam for taking money from people hand over fist. By rights she should have had another minute left. She said it was indicative of the commercialisation of interpersonal communication."

"That was the message?"

"She also said to tell you that she spoke to your boss, and she's getting on the next bullet train with Eric."

"Avaric?"

"That was it."

"Thank Oz."

Glinda said it more to herself than to the barman. Elphaba would know how to handle this sort of sudden interruption of the Real. She would know what to do, in a dangerous place.

"What's happening out there, then?"

"It's a riot," said Glinda.

"No kidding? I've never been in one of those."

"Neither have I."

A girl's voice screamed from somewhere – it had to be close. It was a wordless scream, thin and desperate.

The barman was a big man, but he looked scared. "That doesn't sound good."

"Help! Help, please! Somebody!"

"Call the Guards," said Glinda.

He tried the phone. "The line's busy."

"Try again."

"It's still busy!"

"Stop it! Oz, you're going to kill him!" The scream broke into a sob. "Stop kicking him!"

"We can't just stand here. We've got to help her!"

The barman hesitated. "I can't leave the bar."

"There's nobody here! I'm your only customer!"

"Someone might come in off the street and loot all the crisps while I'm gone."

"Lock the door!"

"What if they smash the windows?"

"Sugar and fudge! Stay here, then!" Glinda went to the door again.

"Where are you going?"

"There are plenty of Guards out there. I'm going to see if I can get one to come with me and help that girl!"

There was a lane off the street just up ahead from the Ritzy, offering a shortcut that would take her out nearer the Canal – which was where Glinda thought the girl's voice was coming from, although it was hard to be sure. Heart hammering, she cut down the lane.

At the other end, when she stumbled out, she saw a girl kneeling over a boy curled up on the cobbles. Five Guards stood around them. The sight of them struck her with blessed relief.

"Fascists," the girl was crying, cradling the boy in her arms like a broken doll. Her hands, where she clutched at his donkey jacket, had blood on them.

One of the Guards saw Glinda. "Ma'am, you shouldn't be here."

Glinda couldn't find her voice. She was looking at the blood on the girl's hands, the blood on the stone cobbles, the boy's face turned towards the ground as he rolled over with short, wheezing breaths.

"Ma'am," said the Guard again. She noticed he was wearing Sergeant stripes. "There's an ongoing public order situation in this part of town. You should go home. Stay off the streets."

"I'm a reporter."

Three of the other Guards came to stand behind the Sergeant. They all had riot helmets on instead of the usual police caps. The last of the sun, flaring low in the sky, reflected off their plastic visors, and she couldn't see their eyes properly.

"This boy assaulted one of my officers."

"He didn't!" said the girl, cradling her boyfriend's head. She looked right at Glinda. "They beat him up. Look at him!"

"He was resisting arrest. We were trying to restrain him."

"You liar!" cried the girl. "That's lies! He threw one punch at you! And he doesn't have a baton, and he doesn't have those boots – "

"Get them up," the Sergeant said to his men. "That's enough, Miss," he said to the girl. "Time to go."

The two Guards closest to the girl and the boy hauled them both to their feet.

"Where are you taking them?" said Glinda.

"They're under arrest."

"This boy needs a doctor."

"He'll see a doctor at the police station."

"He looks like he needs to go to hospital."

"Ma'am, I know how to uphold my responsibilities."

Glinda could feel her nails digging into the palms of her hands. She realised she must have left her gloves back in the Ritzy, with her unfinished cooler.

She shouldn't be getting involved. She shouldn't even be here.

"I really think – I really think you should take him to hospital first. Re-consider what you're doing."

The Sergeant pushed his visor up. He had niceeyes – the colour of periwinkle. They didn't go with the rest of him. "What we're doing here, Ma'am, is trying to restore order. What you're doing is getting in the way."

"That's not my intention. I'm just concerned."

"You're obstructing the proper course of the law."

The girl, who was scuffling with the Guard trying to hold her, kicked at the Guard's knee. "You're not the law! You're just tin men!"

The Sergeant barked an order. "Cuffs!"

Another Guard pinned her wrists behind her back and handcuffed them. Another two guards did the same for the boy, yanking his arms back and forcing him to cry with pain.

Glinda moved forward. "Don't!"

"Ma'am, step back."

"This isn't necessary!"

"The necessities aren't up to you."

"You're a public servant," said Glinda. "I'm the public. That means it is up to me."

"I won't warn you again, Ma'am."

"What are you going to do – arrest me?"

The Sergeant snapped his visor down. "Consider yourself arrested."

"You can't do that."

"Yes, I can." He tapped his badge. "Do you see this?"

"You're a disgrace to that badge!"

"Don't get hostile."

"I'm a television reporter! I'm from EBC!"

"Ma'am, I don't care if you're from the Hall of Approval." The Sergeant turned away. "Okay, boys, let's get in the van and get these good people up to Ticknor Circus. Sooner we drop them off, sooner we get back out."

Glinda's cell at Ticknor Circus was a small square room with yellow plaster walls covered in scrubbed graffiti. It smelled of bleach and had no heating. She alternated between walking around to keep warm, and sitting on the hard wooden bench that ran along one wall, trying to fill in the blanks in the graffiti marks.

The Custody Officer brought her a cup of vending machine coffee, let her make a couple of phone calls - one to Morrible, one to her parents - and asked for her autograph.

"The only thing I'll be signing is a detailed letter of complaint, to the Commissioner of the Guards! Let me out of here and I'll think about leaving your name out of it."

"Ma'am, I can't let you out until someone bails you out."

"What happened to the boy?"

"What boy?"

"When those other Guards brought me in, there was a girl. And a boy."

"Being processed," said the Custody Officer.

She couldn't drink the coffee he'd brought her. She let it go cold.

At midnight she was sitting on the bench with her hands tucked into her coat. It was the first Lurlinemas in her life she hadn't been at home, back in her old bed in her old room with her old posters still on the walls and corsages from forgotten promenades pinned around her mirror.

She felt bad about her parents. She felt worse about the boy. And she couldn't sit in the cold cell and not think of Southstairs, its sub-city clutches and its carceral logic.

"Which cell is it? These doors all look the same. Which one have you hidden her behind? Unlock it. She's not a calendar ornament. She's not a cuckoo you can keep in a clock."

Angels sang.

The Custody Officer unlocked the door and there was Elphaba in the doorway looking like she'd flown in on the north wind from the High Plains.

"Miss Upland, you're free to go."

"She should never have been un-free. Freedom of the press is enshrined in legislation. It's part of any civilised society. Cretinous peelers! You don't even know the law you're supposed to be holding up." Elphaba moved past the doorway, into the cell. "Glinda. Are you all right?"

Stiff and numb and so relieved, there were all sorts of ways Glinda could have answered that but instead she just threw her arms around Elphaba.

"What are you doing?" Her voice was muffled by Glinda's hair.

"I'm glad to see you."

They stood there, Elphaba letting Glinda hug her. Not for long, but it was nice.

"Unhand me," said Elphaba after a second. "I'm glad to see you too, but I stink of chloride."

"Chloride?" Glinda stepped back.

"Teargas," the Custody Officer supplied helpfully. "A common lachrymatory agent, occasionally used in crowd control."

"Teargas?" Glinda looked at Elphaba properly, and saw that her eyes were sore and red; she noticed, too, the clinging odour of something chemical.

"It wasn't very pleasant," said Elphaba. "Doubly unpleasant, for me. But Avaric and I weren't in the worst of it. I'm fine. The riot's over. So's the student occupation. The Guards cleared them out, quite comprehensively."

"Do you know how it started?"

"The Guards say the students were setting off fireworks on the roof of the Library. One of them hit the police cordon. I only managed to speak to a few students, but they said the Guards went in first and the fireworks came afterwards."

"Did you get a good report?"

"We got a report. Avaric kept getting stitches and slowing us down."

"Where is he?"

"Waiting outside."

The night was quiet when they left the police station: no sirens to be heard, just bells chiming in the distance from the tower of the Chapel at St Prowd's to mark the turn of day. An ancient tradition, going back to the days when wristwatches didn't exist and Shiz ran on holy time, the monks tolling out the passing of the hours for the scholars to measure their studies by, and the people of the town to measure their lives.

Avaric was standing at the bottom of the steps with his camera bags slung over his shoulder, Glinda's luggage from the train station beside him on the ground, and a hip-flask halfway to his mouth.

"Of all the places, in all the world," he said.

"Do not," said Glinda.

"Don't what?"

"Just do not. Is that my stuff?"

"It's got your name on it. Nice tags, babe."

"How did you get it out of the locker without the token?"

"Elphaba frightened the left luggage attendant." He offered Glinda the hip flask. "Bracer?"

"What's in it?"

"Bourbon."

"No thanks."

Avaric screwed the top back on the flask and put it in his pocket. "This isn't exactly what I had planned for Lurlinemas. I was going to stay up. Play some Solitaire. Wait for Preenella. Watch for falling stars."

"You can do that from the hotel," said Elphaba.

"But I won't be as close to the sky as I would have been on my balcony."

"Perhaps they'll have put you on the top floor."

"Maybe they would have, if the tightwads at EBC1 had booked us into the Shiz Carlton instead of some identikit travelodge that's only three storeys high."

"Where did they book us into?" asked Glinda.

Elphaba looked unwilling to answer – which Glinda noticed but Avaric didn't.

"The Peach and Kidneys," he said.

Following the affair of the unfortunate Minister, the Peach and Kidneys had gone into a period of decline. It had changed owners a few times then closed down for several years, until it was bought up by a corporate hotel chain who refurbished the whole place and stripped the notoriety out of it. Since then, it had turned a good profit with business travellers and tourists looking for somewhere fairly cheap, fairly comfortable and fairly soulless, with fairly reliable room service.

A Monkey wearing a fez with a gold tassel was working the concierge desk, a radio beside him tuned to the late-night request show on Shiz FM.

"…it's been a tough night in town, but we're here until Lurlinemas morning to bring you the most essential smooth soul jams…this one's for Kurt, from Espadrilla…"

The Monkey turned the radio off when they entered the lobby and straightened his fez. A porter yawned by the elevator.

Elphaba marched up to him. "We're here to check in."

"Do you have a reservation?"

"The names are Thropp, Upland and Tenmeadows. Billable to EBC1, Emerald City. Someone should have called earlier."

"Let me check the system…" said the Monkey. "Oh, yes. We've got it. Two rooms. Late check-in requested."

"Three," said Elphaba. "There should be three rooms."

"We only have you down for two."

"Fine. There must have been a mistake Just give us an extra room."

"We don't have an extra room, I'm afraid."

"Why not?"

"We're booked out because of the snow at Dixxi earlier, and everything else. Lots of unexpected stopovers."

"I bet those dum-dums from Channel 2 are here," said Avaric. "Turning up wherever we go, trying to catch a jump on me and the Green Flash." He turned to the concierge. "I'm not complaining about the room thing. I'm happy to share."

"You are not sharing," said Glinda, poking him in the chest. "Elphaba and I will have to take one room, and you take the other. On your own."

"Is it because you think I might snore? Because I don't. I'm not a kicker, either."

"We have you booked in on the second floor," said the Monkey. "Room 202 and room 209. Both premium rate double rooms, ensuite. Fully stocked mini-bar, ice-bucket at the end of the hall."

"Glinda is quite right," said Elphaba, sounding neither particularly put out not particularly pleased. "Avaric, you take 209. We'll take the other one."

"If I've got to sleep alone, I'd rather do it in 202," said Avaric.

"What's wrong with 209?"

"I've got a thing about staying in hotel rooms with odd numbers."

"He'll take 202," said Glinda to the concierge.

"Excellent choice!" the Monkey said, with a butler's grace. "If you need anything, dial 1 from your room phone to speak to me, 2 for room service, or 3 for an outside line. Please do enjoy your stay."

They eschewed the services of the porter and took the elevator up to the third floor, where Avaric went one way and Glinda and Elphaba went another.

"Ladies. Goodnight. Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me."

"Goodnight, Avaric."

Elphaba unlocked the door to their room and flicked on the lights as Glinda set her luggage down and went to the window to close the curtains. The room faced out over the car park.

"Spectacular view," she said, but when she turned Elphaba was moving strangely around the room, patting down the carpet where it met the skirting board around the edges. She put a finger to her mouth, indicating to Glinda not to say anything, then stood up and went to look in the wardrobe.

"Yes, it's very poor," she said, her voice echoing back over a rattle of coathangers. She closed the wardrobe and then got down on her hands and knees to look behind the television, before checking under the television and then under the table the television was sitting on. The chair by the window and the little cube tables on either side of the bed received the same treatment. Glinda watched, uncomprehending but keeping quiet, as Elphaba took off her boots, stood on the bed, and examined the central light fitting – lampshade and lightbulb and all. "But we aren't here for the view out of the window." She climbed down off the bed, checked underneath it, and went into the bathroom. "Whatever – " Glinda heard her opening and closing a cabinet, the swish of the shower curtain, and then Elphaba came out of the bathroom, seemingly satisfied with her inspection. "Whatever Avaric might think, there's no correlation between public service broadcasting and luxury travel. What's luxury, anyway? Superfluous, if you ask me. Do you want to go ahead and use the bathroom first? I don't mind waiting."

"All…right?" Glinda gave her a questioning look which Elphaba answered with a short shake of her head and a cautionary look of her own. Whatever she was doing, she was still doing it. Glinda took off her coat, left it on the chair, picked up the bag that had her overnight things in it, and headed for the bathroom. "All right then."

She took a shower, turning the temperature of the water up as high as she could stand it, and stood in the hot steam until she felt some of the tension go out of her shoulders. She twisted her hair up in a handtowel while she changed into her pyjamas and saw to her face. Finally she brushed out her hair and dried it with the hotel hairdryer.

When she came out of the bathroom Elphaba was sitting in the chair by the window reading a book. "I thought you'd fallen down the plughole."

"You sent me in there," said Glinda, folding her clothes.

"It's safe to talk now. I didn't find any listening devices."

"Oh." Glinda sat down on the bed, exhaustion pressing down on her. "That's what you were doing." She lay back so that she was looking at the ceiling. "I wish we were in the Shiz Carlton."

"This isn't the room where the Minister left his briefcase, if that's what's making you feel uncomfortable. This is hardly even the same Peach and Kidneys it was then."

"Places hold onto the past," said Glinda. "History clings. You know that."

"Do I?"

"Otherwise you wouldn't have left Colwen Grounds the way you did."

"I meant to turn my back on a certain future, not on the past."

"But you understand me, don't you?"

"Yes," said Elphaba, very simply.

Glinda wanted to close her eyes, but she was afraid that if she did she would see the wax-white face of the beaten boy. "Did you ever think it would come to this? Checking hotel rooms for bugs. Being listened to. It's like when they found the oil in Dixxi. Striking the black under the ground. And they had no idea how much black stuff there was, when they first started drilling. That's what this feels like."

"A rich profusion of corruption."

Glinda pushed herself back up into a sitting position and looked over at Elphaba. "It's nice that you can be poetic about it."

"Another superfluous luxury," said Elphaba. She stood up, stretched, and tossed her book onto the table by the television. "I'll take my turn in the bathroom, I think."

There was a little reading lamp set into the wall over the bed. Glinda turned it on and turned the main light off, the lower light making the room seem warmer. She checked the door was locked properly and then put her bags away in the bottom of the wardrobe. Elphaba's coat was hanging next to hers, still with a trace of teargas about it. She straightened it out so that it hung more neatly on the hanger, seeing as she did so that there were tiny cursive letters sewn into the lining at the collar. She'd never really been close enough to notice them before.

M.T.

She touched the thread lightly. A monogram. The bankrupted stockbroker, she supposed – the person whose coat it had been before it had been Elphaba's. Glinda wondered if he'd been as attached to it as Elphaba was, and whether he'd made his fortune back and bought a new one.

Then she closed the wardrobe door because imagining the past lives of Elphaba's raincoat felt like a weird thing to be doing. She turned down the crisp white covers on one side of the bed and got in just as Elphaba emerged from the bathroom in her striped pyjamas. Her hair was shining. Her skin glowed. She looked tired and clean and wonderful.

She crossed over to the chair by the window, rolled up her sleeves, and started to tie her hair back loosely.

"Don't you leave it down when you sleep?"

"What?"

"Your hair," said Glinda.

Elphaba pushed a hairgrip into place. "Sometimes. Sometimes not. it's really too long." She went to the wardrobe and took out her coat.

"Are you going somewhere?"

"No," said Elphaba, going back to the chair. "You can have the bed. I'll sleep over here."

"Don't be ridiculous. You can't sleep in a chair!"

"I've slept on worse."

"Is that a dig at my sofa?"

"Not at all."

"You don't have any covers."

"I've got my coat."

"Elphaba," said Glinda sternly.

"Yes," said Elphaba, a striped beacon in the dim light. "What."

"I don't snore, and I don't kick."

"Maybe I do. Consider that."

"Just get in the bed."

Elphaba did.

"Stay on your side," she instructed Glinda.

"Lurline, stop being so precious! Draw a line down the middle, if you want. Can I put the light out?"

"I'll do it."

The pillows were soft. The bed was warm. Glinda blinked into the darkness. She thought about the Bear cub on the train, and his mother. She hoped they'd managed to reach their destination.

She turned over. Elphaba was way over on the far side of the bed. Glinda could just make out the outline of her back.

"Are you going to flip about like all night?"

"No."

Glinda fidgeted with her section of the duvet.

"Do you," said Elphaba out of the darkness, "want to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?"

Elphaba shifted around so that she was facing Glinda. "What got you arrested. If it's keeping you awake."

"It's one of the things. I begin to lose track."

"You should write them down," said Elphaba. "Actually – don't. That's not wise. Unless you burn the list immediately after you write it."

"You've been reading too many spy novels."

"Who said anything about novels? We're acquainted with a working spy."

A quietness settled between them.

"Didn't Morrible tell you what happened with the Guards?" said Glinda.

"I heard her version of what you told her."

Glinda tried to think of the appropriate place to start.

"There are plenty of good Guards."

"I didn't suggest otherwise."

"I know," she said. "I'm saying it for me to hear, not for you. I just…happened to run into some of the bad ones."

"That makes it sound like an accident."

"It sort of was."

"You put yourself in their way. That's not an accident. That's a choice."

"Don't try to tell me you wouldn't have done the same."

"Probably," said Elphaba.

"What do you mean, probably?"

"I'd probably have given them a lot more than obstruction."

"Is it terrible, that I'm glad I didn't see them hitting him?" Glinda kept her voice close to a whisper. "That by the time I got there, they'd already stopped? Because then I didn't have to. Stop them. Or try to."

"What you might not have done, in a situation that didn't arise, doesn't matter now."

"But I didn't do anything, anyway, except get myself in trouble, and ruin my mother's thermidor. Although the thermidor's not really important - the point is that I ruined my parents' Lurlinemas. And I hardly helped that boy. I should have stayed out of it."

"You don't believe that."

"Don't I?"

"You know you don't," said Elphaba, as if bestowing a confidence.