Just A Picture

by GoodWitchesOfOz

When we left Oz, I continued to have doubts about leaving everyone behind. So many things were my fault, there were so many things I still had to fix. But I had Fiyero. Sweet Lurline, he kept me going.

Title: Just a Picture
Category: Plays/Musicals » Wicked
Author: GoodWitchesOfOz
Language: English, Rating: Rated: K+
Genre: Romance/Angst
Published: 04-18-11, Updated: 04-18-11
Chapters: 1, Words: 2,143

Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Hi there! You may have seen me around as the anonymous reviewer GoodWitchesOfOz; well now I have an account (under the same name because I'm so creative). And this is my first fanfiction piece, I hope you enjoy it.

Disclaimer: I do not own Wicked, the Wizard of Oz, etc. etc. If I did, would I seriously be writing/reading/reviewing fanfiction? All I own is my story here.

Our lips part as I gaze into those shimmering blue eyes. They're the most stunning shade of cerulean I have ever seen: as full of depth as the summer sky. That is the one physical thing that didn't change when I turned my lover into a scarecrow. But Fiyero doesn't seem to mind – we just have to be careful around fires. And now I'm alone with him, at last. But still I can't let go of the others I left behind in Oz.

We left home a week ago, and are traveling out of the country through the "Impassable" Desert. What a weird pair of travelers: a scarecrow and a green woman. It's late now, almost 11, and we settle down to sleep in the dunes. Yero takes out a blanket from our burlap bag of possessions and sets it down against the sand. I light the lamp and hang it from thin air so it illuminates our faces gently. Then we just sit there and look at each other.

Fiyero studies me, trying to read my expression. "Why the long face?" he asks, tucking a wave of raven black hair behind my ear. His cloth features then droop slightly as he figures out what I'm thinking: that all the dead, maimed, broken people we left behind at home are my fault. He knows that I've been brooding over something ever since we left Oz, and now it finally hits him. My scarecrow also noticed my hesitation to come with him and leave Glinda behind, weeping over her only true friend's "death".

"Fae," he starts, "Listen to me. Glinda, Nessa, Boq—"

Hearing those names out in the open snaps something in my heart. "Are all lying in their graves or heartbroken because of me! If I had gotten to Nessa sooner, if I had stopped my sister from losing her temper, if we had told Glinda the truth, none of this would have happened! We could be sitting happily in Kiamo Ko or Glinda's palace, eking out a life in the country where we were born. Instead, we're running away from everything we've ever known, arguing over what we left behind."

I turn away from him angrily, tears brimming in my eyes. My hand slips into our bag, finally closing around something hard and wooden: a picture frame.

I take it out and blow the dust off the glass. Boq originally made this for Glinda—well, I guess it was Galinda back then—for her birthday. He hand-carved it out of scrap wood in one of the storage rooms one day, sanding it smooth and carving it with delicate swirls and hearts. He claimed it was prettier with no paint, and I agreed. So he gave it to Galinda, who pecked him on the cheek (Boq was walking on cloud nine for the rest of the day) and set it on her dresser. One day, my bubbly friend handed it to me out of the blue.

"Here, this would make that picture on your desk so swankified!" she had said. "For some reason I love that photo, and it would be so much better if it had this to go around it!"

"But Galinda," I stated, quite bewildered, "Why give this to me? Boq gave it to you for your birthday, remember?"

"Yes," she had said, waving a perfectly manicured hand impatiently at me, "but I think you would use it more than I will."

So I took it, thinking how confusifying my blonde roommate could be. The space in the frame was large enough to fit the outsized picture on my desk, so I slipped the family portrait in. And it's remained there ever since.

Now, in the desert, I look at the photo in the lamplight: my broken dad and sister posing on the way to a family friend's house in Munchkinland. Fiyero sits beside me, slipping an arm around my waist. "Is that your family?" he asks, pointing to the picture.

I nod, my face expressionless. "That's Nessa on the left, obviously, my father Frex in the middle, and me in the corner over there. It was taken when I was 15, so Nessa was 12 at the time. Some random photographer had taken it on the way to a family friend's house."

Frex stands in the middle, smiling smugly as if he knew something the camera didn't, with one hand on Nessa's wheelchair. A sort of anger mixed with the tiniest flake of pity boils in my heart at the sight of the man who raised me.

I close my eyes and tell Yero all about my father. After all, he never actually asked since we left Oz. "My dad…never acknowledged I existed to anybody outside of our little trio, so people basically thought he only had one daughter. He put the blame of my mother's fate and Nessa's condition on my green shoulders ever since I was old enough to understand such a concept. He never supervised my schoolwork, praised me, never acknowledged my straight A's as the work got harder and harder. In fact, the only reason I went to school was to take care of Nessa, period. Frex couldn't have cared less whether or not I actually got an education. To him, I didn't exist at all unless it had something to do with my sister."

Fiyero looks at me with a mixture of pity and shock. "I…I never knew your father was so horrible to you. You never told me!"

I examine his face. "I just did."

I move on to the person on the left. Nessa is sitting in her wheelchair – the same one that she wheeled around at Shiz. Or rather, the same chair that Boq and I wheeled around at Shiz. She's wearing a pretty red dress and black flats, her straight chocolate hair up in a ponytail. She smiles up at the camera with a genuine twinkle of happiness in those hazel eyes. That was probably due to the fact that for all three of us to go out together was rarer than Galinda without makeup.

"What exactly happened to Nessa?" my scarecrow asks suddenly. "I heard a couple rumors, but…they never exactly told me what happened. All I knew was that…well…she died under a house?" He looks at me a little fearfully, afraid to both know the truth and twist the dagger in my heart.

My throat tightens at the memory. "Yes," I begin slowly, "you see…I—I came back one day, still on the run, to plea to my father to help me—but Nessa told me quite abruptly that Frex was dead. Not that I ever loved him very much, but…it still hurt…" a tear runs down my cheek at that. I shakily wipe it off and continue. "So I asked Nessa for help. But she denied me assistance, saying that though I was so powerful, saving Animals I've never even met, I never even thought of helping my own sister walk. Clouded with guilt, I used a Grimmerie spell to transform those silver shoes—you know, the ones my father gave her at Shiz?"

Fiyero nods and smiles dimly.

"And so Nessa could walk again," here I start talking faster for some reason, as if that will clear the pain, "But then Boq declares his love for Glinda and tries to leave. I doubt I'll ever forget Nessarose's face – so pale, stunned, filled with fury. My sister has obviously fallen deeply in love with him, and out of anger and betrayal, she shrinks his heart so he won't lose it to anyone. Then she pleads with me to save Boq's life, saying that they deserve each other…So I turn him into the Tin Man, to live without a heart."

My voice fades into the silence. It felt good to get all of that information out to another person, who now wrapped his arms around me. I can see the sympathy in his eyes as he holds me close. A cold gale blows through my hair and pushes Fiyero slightly backward on the blanket.

"Listen, Fae," he begins again with almost the same words, "how Glinda and Nessa and Boq turned out is not your fault." I open my mouth to protest, but Fiyero presses on. "Nessa…you did help her! You helped her walk, you did use your powers to help her. She had a moment of joy in her life, all because of you."

"If only I had done something," I reply. "I could have stopped her from handling the Grimmerie, from eventually having Boq turn into an animated pile of metal."

"You were shocked from hearing that your father was dead!" Fiyero interjects. "You have to stop blaming yourself for things beyond your control. You're not perfect."

I ponder this while my lover continues his little speech. "And Glinda. I didn't want to leave her behind, you know that." I reluctantly nod. "But we had to. She couldn't have known we were alive. If she knew, she might slip that fact and Oz could rise against her. She could be in danger!"

"But we left her alone thinking we are both dead!" I yell at him. "Sweet Lurline, you think she would be a fool if we told her the truth, and go and blab to the citizens of Oz that the Wicked Witch of the West is alive and well? Glinda's not stupid."

Fiyero sighs. "I know Glinda's not stupid. Far from it, actually. But I just had a horrible gut feeling that if we told her, something was going to go wrong."

I consider everything he said, piece by piece. "I see how I couldn't help Nessa and Boq, fine, I'm not perfect. But Glinda…I want to go and tell her."

Fiyero looks at me with a fair amount of caution, as if I'm about to fly off on my broom back to the Emerald City, and gently takes one of my emerald hands in his own. We stay like that for about five minutes, each lost in our own thoughts. He speaks first.

"So, maybe, I was wrong. Glinda could handle the fact that we are both alive. But I still think that it would be crueler to tell her we still exist than to just leave it as is."

"But she would be living a lie," I snap. Then I don't talk for several seconds, thinking it through.

We both know that Glinda can handle the fact that we are both alive. But if she knew, we would have to go and see her without being caught. Is that really better? Living a half-life based off the broken one you left behind, or acknowledging the fates of your friends in the old world and moving on to start over? Although part of me feels like that would be doing Glinda a great injustice, a new, growing part thinks that leaving Oz permanently would be like starting over, a clean slate. Maybe that is better after all. As I said before, my best and only friend can manage herself.

"I see what you mean," I conclude, slowly producing each word. "Leaving Oz behind would be like starting fresh, a new life with you."

Fiyero sighs in relief that I finally understand his point of view. "So we'll be happy together?" he asks.

Why did he ask if he already knows the answer? I kiss him gently under the starry sky and then pull back slightly, my arms around him.

"Of course," I say. "Always and forever."

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