Hopefully this cliche isn't TOO overdone.... Mel mentioned the idea of a Fiyeraba arrainged marriage story a while ago, and I was thinking about it again. Warning: this chapter is Glinda/Fiyero heavy...

"Glinda, stop," was his half hearted protest as he pushed himself away from her.

She kept her arms around his neck, refusing. "If this is the last day we have to be together, why not enjoy it thoroughly?" She went back to kissing him.

He let himself indulge in her for a minute before pulling away again, pushing her off of his lap and sitting at the far end of the bed in an effort to calm himself down. "Because if we keep this up, I'm going to do something irrational like run away with you. We'll wind up married with a dozen children, living under a bridge."

She frowned, pushing away from the bed and crossing the room so she sat in his mostly unused desk chair. As much as she wanted to be with Fiyero, poverty didn't sound... pleasant. At all. So she decided tp try a different tactic "Are you sure there's nothing you can do? I mean, you're a grown man. It's not like you're a little boy who can be told to do this and that."

He shrugged, feeling trapped. "It's tradition... I thought I'd gotten out of it, but apparently I didn't."

She pouted. "You're about to graduate from college. You're going to be King one day. And you still have to follow an arraigned marriage?"

He beckoned her over and she sat down beside him on the bed, several inches between them. "That's exactly what I'm saying."

She pouted at him. "That's not fair," she whined as if he'd had some choice in it and had decided to marry someone else just to spite her.

"I know it's not," he said, trying to pacify her.

"I meant to me."

"Oh. Of course." He had just turned twenty-two and had dated the blonde beauty on and off for most of his three years at Shiz University. Their graduation ceremony had taken place that morning. The graduates were all in the process of packing up and heading home. Glinda's parents were waiting in a sitting room for her... she had told them she had one last person to say good-bye to. Her parents knew that she had at one point had a relationship with Fiyero, and they also knew he was now betrothed to another woman. They just didn't realize that upon hearing that news that they hadn't immediately broken off their relationship.

Glinda's pouting continued. "You've never even met this girl! How do you know you'll even get along?"

"We don't know," he said as he decided to get back to packing his belongings. The train that would take him most of the way home would be leaving in two hours, and he needed to leave for the station, soon.

"How do you know she's not evil?"

"We don't."

"How do you know she doesn't have some deep dark secret?"

"We don't."

"How do you know she's not an ax murderer by night and is only pretending to be a sweet Munchkin girl by day?"

"We don't!" Her contstant questions were taxing and were also making him parnoid. His intended wife was from a good family and her father had organized trade agreements with his. "Glinda.. please. This isn't her fault, either. It's not even her father's." He struggled with closing his suitcase for a minute.

Taking pity on him, she nudged him to the side and reorganized the suitcase so it all fit. She closed it easily and smiled at him, smug. "So you're already taking up for her?"

"I feel like I have to, what with you attacking her and her not here to defend herself." Glinda was perfectly sweet almost all of the time. Unfortunatly, now she was clearly feeling threatened and didn't like it. "It's not her fault my father decided I'm incapable of making a proper decision for myself and decided to find a wife for me, himself. It's more my fault than anyone elses. Actually, do you know Miss Nessarose, the Governor of Munchkinland's daughter?"

Glinda sniffed. The girl was very quiet and had a religious streak to her. "We don't run in the same circles."

"Anyway, she'll actually be my sister-in-law. I'm to marry her older sister, Miss Elphaba. She's twenty-one, the same as you."

"She didn't come to school?" Glinda frowned, eager to have something against her rival, merely because she was her rival.

Fiyero grimaced. Glinda had found her point. "No. She was tutored privately at home when she was a child, like her sister was. Fluent in several languages, including traditional Vinkun... which I'm not even that proficient in."

Glinda knew she was on to something. "So if she's smart enough, why didn't she come to school?"

He felt a need to stick up for his future wife, again. "She has a skin condition... she's literally green."

"Green!" That was more than Glinda could've hoped for. "What in the world caused that?"

"They don't know. She's just shy because kids are cruel and she was mocked for it when she was little." He hoped emphasizing that mocking someone over their skin was cruel and childish would make Glinda relax. It did, a little anyway.

"I still don't like it," she pouted some more.

"Stop it or your face will get stuck that way," he chided her and she quickly obeyed. "Anyway," He hesitated, unsure if he should say what he was about to, but decided to, ultimately. "Anyway, my father mentioned something to me when he told me they'd married me off. Marriage is only... a legal thing. It's up to me how binding it is."

She nodded, understanding his meaning. "Who can say where we'll be a few months from now?" She smiled and raised herself up to kiss him good-bye before leaving to go with her parents.

He smiled at her as she went, but was glad to be alone to sort his thoughts out once she was gone. Unfortunately, sorting out that mess would take more than a few hours.