A/N: I took this down at the beginning of the summer when I did my massive clean-out of my account. It is definitely not my favorite thing I've ever written. However, I've received several requests about it, and after rereading it, I realized that, with a few minor changes, it wasn't perhaps quite as bad as I thought, and decided to resurrect it.

The story is bookverse, set very soon after Fiyero's arrival at Shiz, so he knows Elphaba, but the two aren't particularly close… yet. .: grins :.

There is mild language used, so if swearing offends you, feel free to exit the fic at any time. You have been warned.

Disclaimer: That sound you hear is me laughing sarcastically.

One of the first things Fiyero noticed about the mysterious Miss Elphaba was that the girl harbored an intense, unnatural dislike for water. He found it strange that, although she could sit by the lake for hours, although she liked to stand and look at the fountain outside her dorm, although she would sit at her window and watch the rain fall, she would not let the liquid touch her. It was as though she was almost… dare he even think it?... afraid of the shining droplets.

She went out of her way to avoid any physical contact whatsoever with moisture. She liked to walk through the grass, as doing so made her routes around campus more direct, but early in the morning or when it was raining, she stuck to the paved footpaths with an almost religious devotion, lest the dew or rain from the lawn be flung up as she walked to catch her on the backs of her legs. If she had to venture outdoors in the rain – and she refrained from doing so as much as she possibly could – she swathed herself from head to toe in a billowing black cloak and carried a large umbrella to be doubly sure that she had effectively guarded against the wet.

He was on his way back from Life Sciences on one such rainy day when he noticed Elphaba striding along in front of him, a dark figure in her voluminous cloak, umbrella raised to protect her from the dripping sky. As she walked, she came face-to-face with a couple of girls – some of Glinda's crowd, maybe? – coming the opposite direction. Somehow he sensed that she wouldn't want him to have any part in this encounter. But for some odd reason, he felt that he almost needed to see it, if only to learn more about her. So he quickly ducked behind the nearest tree, ignoring the drips that pelted him, to watch what ensued. The wind carried their voices to his ears.

"Hello, Miss Elphaba," one of the girls said cautiously.

"Miss Shen Shen. Miss Pfannee," Elphaba replied just as warily, inclining her head slightly in a sketchy imitation of a polite nod.

"My, what… um… lovely weather we're having today," offered the second girl – Pfannee, Elphaba had called her – apparently at a loss as to what else to say. Clearly, conversation with the green girl was not a daily event.

Elphaba shrugged noncommittally. "Maybe if you're a Quadling. Or a frog."

This caused the two girls to exchange a significant look. "Well, that's not necessarily true," Shen Shen contradicted. "From what I hear, not all frogs enjoy the water." Then a malicious smile crossed her face. Fiyero looked on from his position behind the tree, wondering what dirty trick they were about to pull, but guessing that it had something to do with Elphaba's avoiding water like the plague. "In fact, I know of one in particular who hates it!" As she spoke the last two words, Shen Shen's foot suddenly came to life and stomped hard in a puddle that lay between them. The water flew in all directions, most of it splattering onto Elphaba's bare shins. Her back was to him, but Fiyero heard her cry out in surprise and… pain?

Taking advantage of the green girl's dismay, Pfannee stepped forward and snatched the big black umbrella away. Elphaba had been walking with the hood of her cloak down, as the day was rather warm despite the rain, and this left her completely exposed to the element she so despised. She moved quickly to raise her hood, but not quickly enough. Shen Shen's next splash was well aimed, and caught her right in the face. Elphaba screamed again, and her arm instantly flew to her face as she used her sleeve to wipe the water away.

This made the two cruel girls burst into peals of laughter. Combining their efforts, they moved as one and, catching Elphaba off guard, managed to shove her off the path and send her toppling into the wet grass, which elicited another shriek. Then Pfannee scornfully threw the umbrella down near her, and she and Shen Shen sauntered off, looking very pleased with themselves.

When they were gone, Elphaba groped for the umbrella. Not that it would do her much good now – she was soaked through. She sat there, seeming dazed and shaken, for a moment or two. Finally she struggled to her feet and continued slowly towards Crage Hall. Not sure quite why, he decided that he needed to follow her. He knew she would very probably never speak to him again if she knew he had been watching when the girls ganged up on her. But for some reason, he felt that she… needed him somehow. So he trailed behind her.

Strange. She didn't seem to even notice that he was there. Usually she could sense a person approaching from a hundred yards away. But today she didn't even glance over her shoulder. She simply climbed up the porch steps, fished out her key, unlocked the door, and slipped inside. The instant she was out of sight, Fiyero ran to grab the handle of the door before it closed on him. He would wait in the lobby for a few minutes, so she wouldn't know he'd been watching her, and then go up to see if she was all right.

xXxXx

Elphaba staggered down the hall towards her room, shivering and in excruciating pain.

Water…

Cold, impersonal… flowing over me… splashing up from below… burning me like a fire that refuses to die…

Those wretches… those horrid, obnoxious, self-important, stuck up, conniving bitches… how did they know…?

Glinda. Glinda told them. The wicked little gossip. This was supposed to be a secret… she wasn't supposed to tell anyone… but she told them anyway. And now, on top of their verbal jabs, as if humiliating me wasn't enough, they've forced me into a hell of physical agony as well.

No one knows. Not even Glinda. No one truly knows what water does to me.

Searing coolness… frigid flames… leaving my skin raw… red… blistered… burned.

Oil… need my oil… it hurts… hurts so much… oil…

People say that hell is full of fire. They're wrong. Hell isn't fire. Hell, if indeed such a place exists, is water. Water is my own private, personal glimpse of eternal damnation.

She made it to her door and stumbled into her room, her safe, dry, quiet room, so desperate to find relief from her pain that she didn't even bother to close the door all the way. Dropping the umbrella in a corner, she shed her cloak with the efficiency of practice, deftly turning it inside out as she peeled it off so that the wet wool wouldn't touch her skin, wouldn't burn her any more than it had already. Except, of course, the damage was already done. Then she went to the bathroom, toweled off as gingerly as she could around the sores that were already beginning to form, and exchanged her sodden dress for a dry skirt and camisole – both also black, of course. Forcing herself to ignore the sting as the damp bit her hands, she haphazardly threw her long black hair back into a messy bun to keep it out of her face.

Picking up the bottle of oil that she used instead of water to keep clean, she carried it out into the bedroom, sank down onto her bed, and went to work. She started with her legs, where Shen Shen's first attack had landed, soothing the oil into the wounds. Elphaba hissed in pain at the unguent's brief sting, but knew she must endure it to heal the destruction the water had caused. In just a few seconds, though, a lovely cooling sensation began to spread through her skin where she had applied the oil. Her shoulders relaxed and she let her breath out in a long sigh as the medicine took effect. Then she worked some of the oil into the injuries on her arms. These weren't quite as bad, since her cloak had largely protected her upper body. Next were her chest and shoulders, followed by her face (though she could tell that she'd wiped the water off in time to prevent any serious harm from being done there).

She was just rubbing a few drops of oil on the bridge of her nose when a knock sounded at the door. Startled, she looked up quickly to see Fiyero poke his head through the opening. Oh, no… why is he here, now of all times? Why didn't I close the bloody door?…

She tried to turn away, but it was too late. His eyes widened as he caught sight of the angry abrasions that decorated her visible skin. "Elphaba, what happened to you?" he asked, horrified, as he stepped into the room.

xXxXx

Fiyero wasn't sure what he had expected to find when he ventured up to Elphaba's room, but this was most certainly not it.

The girl had pulled her hair back and changed into dry clothes – a skirt that fell slightly below her knees and a sort of undershirt with narrow straps, a more form-fitting and feminine item of clothing than she usually went in for. Not surprisingly, it was all black. What was surprising were the wounds that seemed to cover the entirety of her exposed skin. They looked almost like… burn marks, raw and red, and appeared excruciatingly painful. The ones on her legs looked the worst, but her arms and shoulders had their fair share, as did her throat and neck and the top of her chest. Even her face had a faint splash of red across it. These injuries must have occurred very recently, he realized – within the last few minutes, in fact. He'd been sitting near her in class, and he hadn't seen anything of the sort then.

She held a bottle in one hand, and seemed to be applying some sort of oil or medicine to the sores. Her head shot up at the sound of his voice, and she looked at him with almost a guilty expression. She tried to turn around to hide the fact that anything was wrong, but she knew he had seen her.

"You know, Fiyero, you have about the worst timing of anyone I know," she finally said quietly without facing him. "And I don't recall saying you could come in."

"Answer my question."

"It's nothing. Why does it matter to you?"

"Because I'm your friend, Elphaba. Because I care about you. That's what friends do, in case you didn't know."

"I hardly have any friends to begin with, so how would I know? There's just you, and Boq, and Glinda." She paused to scoff. "And some friend she is. She promised she wouldn't tell anyone… but she obviously told Pfannee and Shen Shen. That's why they were…" Then she stopped abruptly, and seemed to grow angry. She stood and rounded on him. "Dammit, Fiyero, why do you always do this to me?"

"Do what?" he asked, perplexed. As far as he could recall, he'd done nothing to incur the green girl's wrath. But then again, you never could tell what might upset her.

"Trick me into saying things I didn't mean to! I'm always doing it around you – I can't seem to help myself."

"Elphaba, what are you talking about? I don't try to trick you into saying anything."

"Oh, yes, you do. You may not try to, you may not even realize that you do it, but you do. The things you say, that… that look you give me – "

"What look?"

"There, the way you're looking at me now. Don't look at me like that, Fiyero!"

"Elphaba, calm down! You're acting like you've lost your mind." He went over and gently pushed her back down to sit on the bed once more, then sat next to her and laid a hand on her forehead.

"Don't touch me," she spat, pushing his hand away.

But he had already answered his own unasked question. "You're burning up," he observed, concerned. "You've got a bad fever. Elphaba, I'm going to ask you again, and I want you to answer me. What happened?"

She gave him a bitter, humorless smile. "You mean you haven't guessed yet?"

"I have no idea."

"The brainless act may work for Glinda, but on you, Fiyero, it's just pathetic. I'm disappointed, really."

"Elphaba, I honestly don't have a clue as to what's going on here."

"Oh, come on, you can figure it out. Think."

Fiyero gave her a look, but the expression in her eyes frightened him, and he decided to humor her. "Well… whatever it was, it just now happened. I saw you on the way out of Life Sciences, and you didn't look like – well, like this."

"A reasonable start. And then?"

"I saw you talking to Pfannee and Shen Shen. They splashed you and took your umbrella and shoved you on the grass."

Now it was Elphaba's turn to fix him with a questioning stare. "Where were you, Fiyero? How did you see all that?"

"I was behind a tree. And I was raised learning how to hunt – it's just sort of second nature for me to follow things."

"And I happened to be your quarry of choice for the day?" Her lips curved up into a sardonic smile. "I'm flattered."

"It wasn't like that! I just happened to be walking behind you, and when you ran into those two girls, I decided I wanted to see what happened without being seen."

Elphaba raised an eyebrow, clearly conveying what she thought of this explanation. "All right. So you saw Pfannee and Shen Shen being complete bitches. And what happened next?"

"You came back here. I followed you. I waited downstairs so you wouldn't think I had followed you."

"Very clever," she commented dryly, "considering you just blew that chance sky-high."

"Yes, well, you haven't killed me yet, so I'm gambling that you might just forgive me."

"Don't count on it. Anyway, continue."

"Well, then I came up here, and… here we are."

"And you see no connection anywhere in any of that?"

"Not really, no."

"Well, you were obviously watching. Where did Shen Shen splash me?"

"On the legs first," he recalled slowly. "Then in the face, but you wiped that off. Then Pfannee stole your umbrella…"

She gestured to herself, inviting him to examine the pattern of her injuries. They were worst on her legs, especially the fronts, below the knees. Her face, too, showed signs of the strange burnlike marks, but much fainter, as if whatever had scarred her had been removed from that area much quicker. Her arms were dotted with sporadic sores that had no discernable pattern, no way to tell the direction of their origin.

Wait a minute… His mind finally made the connection. Shen Shen splashed her first on the legs… and the burns on her legs are the worst. Then in her face, which she wiped away… and her face is far less severely injured than the rest of her. Then Pfannee stole her umbrella, leaving her exposed to the falling raindrops… and her arms are spotted with angry little red dots…

"Elphaba… are you saying that the water did this to you?"

"Give the gentleman a prize!" She smirked unpleasantly. "Took you long enough to figure it out."

"But… water? How could plain water do something so… something… well… like this?" he wondered, uncomprehending. He reached out and laid his fingertips against the raw surface of her cheek, but drew back when she drew in a sharp breath. "I don't understand."

Now that her little guessing game was over, she seemed to lose some of her sarcastic attitude. "Neither do I, actually. But I've always been this way. I think I'm allergic to it somehow. Even when I was a tiny baby, my mother and Nanny had to bathe me in milk because I absolutely refused to let myself touch water. Now I use this." She held up the bottle of oil in her hand. Then, without warning, the fierce manner returned. "Oh, there I go again!" she cried furiously. "I can't control what comes out of my mouth when I'm around you!" She stood quickly, in a fury, clearly intending yell at him, to make him leave, to do something. But for some reason, she simply… stopped. She didn't move, she didn't speak. She just stood there, a peculiar look on her face.

"Are you all right?" he asked anxiously.

"I'm fine," she insisted forcefully. But then she suddenly paled, and swayed on her feet. "Dammit…" she moaned. And she pitched forward and collapsed back onto the bed, practically into his arms, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out on her forehead.

"Elphaba! Elphaba, say something!" Fiyero pleaded frantically. But he got no response. Scooping the girl up bridal style – she weighed surprisingly little, he reflected – he moved her so that she was laying in the proper direction and pulled the blankets over her. Then he hurried off in the direction of the infirmary in search of a doctor.

An hour later, the doctor had been and gone. He had left medicine to lower Elphaba's fever, as well as a cream for the burns the water had created. Fiyero had dragged over the chair from one of the girls' desks and was sitting by the green girl's bed, watching her sleep. He couldn't wait for Glinda to return. He was planning to give her a large piece of his mind – this whole thing could be blamed on her, after all, if the green girl had trusted her with her secret and Glinda had betrayed her confidence. If someone tells you something that important, and asks you to keep it a secret, then you'd damn well better do it. How can you call yourself their friend otherwise? Glinda ought to be ashamed of herself…

"What're you thinking about?" asked a weak voice. Elphaba's voice. He looked down to find that her dark eyes were open and focused on him. Finding her glasses sitting on her bedside table, she reached for them and slid them on. "You had such a funny look on your face – what's on your mind?"

"I was just planning all the different ways I'm going to kill Glinda when she gets back here."

"Once I get through with her, there may not be much of her left for you to kill."

"I'm glad you're not trying to defend her. This is all her fault, you know."

"I know. The instant she sets foot through that door, her ass is mine. She won't even know what hit her."

"Woah, hold up there a minute. You're in no condition to be beating anyone up at the moment. Doctor says you need to rest."

She propped herself up on her elbows, wincing as she accidentally settled her weight on one of the burns. "I hate doctors." Frowning slightly, she continued, "And I don't need you to fight my battles for me. I'm more than capable of taking care of myself."

"I can see that," Fiyero agreed a bit sarcastically.

"And since when do you want to fight my battles for me? Why are you still here?"

"Because the doctor also said that you need to have someone with you at all times for the next couple of days." That was the easy answer, anyway.

"No, Fiyero. Why are you still here?"

Her hazel eyes burned into his, and he had to look away as he thought about it. Why was he still here? Why did he care this much? Elphaba had never been what you might call 'friendly' to him. On the contrary, she always had some witty and often stinging remark on the tip of her tongue, a biting comment ready to fling. But underneath the tough façade, he had seen pain and heartache and loneliness. And for some reason, he wanted very much to make it all disappear. Taking a deep breath, he met her gaze again and answered, "Because I want to show you that you don't have to assume every single person you meet is going to betray you. Because you need me."

"I need you? Now that's an amusing thought." She laughed softly. But not meanly. Then she let herself settle back down until she was lying flat again. "What did they give me? I can feel my eyes closing as we speak."

"Don't try and fight it. Like I said, you need to rest. I'll wake you up when Glinda gets here, and you can kick her ass from here to kingdom come, for all I care. But for now, you've got to sleep so you have the strength to do it."

"You promise?"

"Absolutely. As long as you don't mind if I join in."

"Be my guest." Elphaba rolled gingerly onto her side facing away from him, trying to avoid hitting the worst of the burns.

Her hair was still pulled up, exposing the back of her neck and shoulders. Due to the fact that she still wore the black camisole she'd had on earlier, he could see from this angle that there were a few small wounds marring the skin there. He decided that they were probably from some rain that had managed to creep below the collar of her cloak before she put the hood up when her umbrella was taken. He also decided that Elphaba had most likely not gotten any oil on these particular burns, as they were located in that one infuriating spot that simply can't be reached no matter how hard one tries. So, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, Fiyero reached over and grabbed the bottle of oil from her nightstand. He poured a little into his hand and, after warming it between his palms for a moment, began to rub it gently into the sores on her back.

He felt her stiffen slightly. "Told you before," she slurred. Evidently the medicine the doctor had given her was quite fast-acting. "Don't… touch me…"

"I know, I know," he told her, but he didn't stop. Before long, he felt her relax, and her slow, steady breathing informed him that she had fallen asleep.

The oil was all worked in, but still he kept his hand on her bare upper back. Her skin was surprisingly smooth, and much softer than he would've expected. He ran his thumb back and forth over it, being careful to avoid the tender spots.

If he hadn't known better, he would have sworn he heard her give a little sigh of contentment.

xXxXx

Elphaba felt herself slipping under again. Damn it all, what had the blasted doctor given her? She hated medicines and drugs – they made you act completely unlike yourself. She would have fought the medicine's effects and tried to stay awake. But she was so tired… so tired… Finally Fiyero promised that he'd wake her up when Glinda arrived and let her give the blonde girl what for.

Why was he staying here with her? What had she ever done to make him think she would want him to stay with her? Though she did like him (even if she would only admit the fact to herself), she had always been careful to give the exact opposite impression. But it seemed that despite her best efforts, he had somehow grasped her true feelings. Or… could it possibly be that maybe it wasn't her feelings that were keeping him here… but rather his own?

This concept would definitely bear farther investigation once she was up to it. But right now, she could hear peaceful oblivion calling her name, and she was ready to answer. She turned onto her side facing away from Fiyero, managing to keep from irritating the worst of her injuries. There was a slight stinging sensation in the top part of her back, and she realized she must have missed a few burns. Oh, well. She'd take care of them later, when Fiyero was gone. She was too tired and too comfortable to do anything about them at the moment. And besides, for some reason, the thought of him watching her apply her oil made her very embarrassed… because it didn't sound nearly as unpleasant as it should have. She was glad her face was away from him so he couldn't see her blush.

Then she felt a warm hand on her back, right where the little twinge of pain was coming from. Something burned like fire for a second, and then the heat subsided to a gentle coolness, taking the pain with it. Is he actually…? She was suddenly and inexplicably frightened, and a bit annoyed that he would touch her without warning when he knew how jumpy it made her. "Told you before," she murmured, hating how out of it the medicine was making her. "Don't… touch me…" But she was unable to put the force behind the words that she wanted to.

"I know, I know," he replied. But he continued to smooth the oil onto her skin.

She was about to protest again. But then she realized… what he was doing actually felt good. She liked having his hand on her back, moving gently back and forth. It was… comforting, in a way. Soothing. Reassuring. It made her feel protected, safe. He kept his hand there even after the oil had been rubbed in, his thumb tracing a little back-and-forth path across her skin. A strange, peaceful feeling engulfed her, and she relaxed beneath his touch. She finally dropped off to sleep, a tiny smile on her lips.

So, there you have it! Review si'l vous plait, my pretties!