He let his feet blindly lead the way, his gaze never diverting from the woman in his arms. He would get there, eventually. It didn't matter anyway, he had all the time of the world now.
She had grown paler ever since she had taken her last breath, and he wondered, just for a moment, if she would go completely pale as time went on. If so, she would get her wish after all. Though she had never said so aloud (not anymore), she still wished to be rid of her green skin. Not for selfish reasons – Elphaba was anything but selfish, sometimes annoyingly so. No, she just wanted to be beautiful for him. He had always insisted she was beautiful, and she returned the sentiment every time and even gave up resisting his words, but she never truly believed him. He blamed her family and society for making her believe she wasn't, knowing she wasn't, as she would say. Though on some level it still hurt Fiyero. He would never lie to her, he would always tell her the truth, and yet she just wouldn't believe she was beautiful. She was.
Together they had led a long and loving life. They had lost count of the days, the weeks, and eventually even the years; the changing seasons the only sign that time moved on no matter what. They had walked and walked and walked, always careful to avoid human contact. The Animals were always friendly and spoke highly of Elphaba. That always surprised her as she had met few of those specific Animals. He fondly remembered how shy that would make her, and every so often, she would even blush. He loved her for her passion, her devotion and many other strong qualities she possessed. That didn't mean that he did not adore her softer side, as side that he only got to see and admire far too few times in his opinion.
But as time passed, they came across less and less Animals and more and more deserted villages. They never found out if the Animals had gone extinct or that they had moved to a better Oz. An Oz where Animals were seen as equals to humans, an Oz ruled by Glinda.
Elphaba had always longed to see Glinda again. But along with other things, she had stopped voicing that desire as the years went on. Only recently, when old age was truly starting to tighten its grip on her, did Glinda's name resurface. Elphaba told Fiyero to go back to Oz once she was no longer among the living. Surely he would still be remembered as a hero. He could go back to a comfortable life, something Elphaba had always felt guilty about for taking from him. He could see for himself what great things Glinda had done for Oz. And above all, Glinda could certainly, with the help of the Grimmerie, make Fiyero a man of flesh and blood again. Undoubtedly Glinda, with her royal life style, would outlive the fugitive Elphaba. But there wasn't a moment that he actually considered following through with her proposal, but for her sake he promised to consider it, which he had, for two seconds.
No, he kept to his original plan. A plan which he, sadly enough, had thought of years ago. Being isolated from the rest of the world for as long as Elphaba and Fiyero were had robbed them from any interesting conversation topics, leaving their own thoughts often the only thing to get them through the day.
Once she had left him for a better world (she had put up a magnificent fight, but, just as any mortal lost in the end), he would take her away from their house.
When Elphaba started to wear down, Fiyero had finally convinced her to truly settle down. They did so in one of the abandoned Animals villages, not too far off the Ozian border. With a water well, and a mild climate, they managed to easily produce all the food they needed. Elphaba didn't eat a lot anymore and in his Scarecrow form, Fiyero didn't share the need of food with her. Living in the village gave them as close to a normal life as they would ever get.
And though Elphaba could defy gravity, she couldn't defy biology. At first glance one would say that living a life crossing deserts and plains with a minimal amount of nourishment is an unhealthy lifestyle and bound to wear anybody down in a matter of years. But the truth was that Elphaba, already adjusted to a scarce amount of food due to her Wicked Witch time, was actually as healthy as could be. With no human contact, she couldn't get infected with diseases. Walking where no one else had, left no viruses or bacteria around to try and knock her down. So in the end, it was truly old age that claimed her exhausted body.
Fiyero knew exactly where to go, and trusted his feet to bring him to their final destination. On his way, he contemplated what to do, something he had saved for this journey. Next to promising his everything that he would consider moving back to Oz, he had also promised her he would not burn himself, or find some other way to take his own life whenever she had passed on. She wanted him to make the most of his immortality, as least get something out of his predicament. But in his eyes he already had; he had had so many years spent solely with Elphaba.
He would make good on another promise, he would always stay with her, no matter what. With her spirit no longer by his side didn't mean he would abandon her body. At first he wanted to bury himself along with her – since he had no need to breath, that would still not break the no suicide promise. But that posed the practical problem of burying himself. He would need someone else to finish the job.
Then he would simply not bury her. He would stay next to her until there was nothing left. Hopefully he would be gone before her. But, next to the fact that he thought he wouldn't be able to bear watching her body deteriorate into nothingness, she didn't deserve that. She deserved the same treatment as anybody else. And though she may not be there to witness it, he would give her the same as anyone else in her position, for the first time in her life, for the hopefully first of many times in her death.
By the time he reached their destination, he had finalised the plans. For the first time in three days, he let her out of his arms. He set her against the lonely dead tree, surprised that her body had gone completely stiff. He took his time digging her grave by hand, and didn't look back to her until he was done.
If he had been able to cry, he would have when he laid her in her grave and was forced to straighten her out. That hit him harder than covering her body up, beginning at her feet. It hit him harder than seeing only her face left uncovered by the soil. Harder than touching her face one last time and pressing his lips to hers for the last time. Covering her face with the dirt wasn't more difficult, as he had foreseen all of that, he had prepared himself. Even breaking a twig off of the tree and writing his inscription the soil didn't top it.
He began real simple, as any other headstone would read.
In loving memory of Elphaba Tiggular
True, they had never married. Elphaba insisted that there was absolutely no point in doing so. There was no one to officially marry them, they wouldn't part form each other and nothing would change. But he still insisted on saying his farewell to her as a Tiggular, as in his eyes she was. She had wondered, on that first in the forest, how long she would be his. Now she would always be.
Reminiscent of that night, he continued.
Death does not weaken the spell you have me under
We made every last moment last
I am forever yours, you are always mine
He looked up at the dead tree next to the grave, which carried letters in similar handwriting as the soil now did. Apparently the tree had not lived much longer after they had come across it, as the letters were still quite slim and definitely readable. In an uncharacteristic romantic moment, Elphaba had let Fiyero carve in the tree and even carve a heart around the letters: EFFY. Though they knew that even if someone would come across this tree, they wouldn't figure out who had claimed it as their own, Fiyero and Elphaba decided to play it safe and carve it with EFFY. They had combined their names to the world and their names to themselves. Elphaba, Faba, Fiyero, Yero.
Life had no meaning, no purpose, without his Faba. He could wander the lands forever trying to find something that wasn't there. Nothing would be the same without his love by his side.
He let his gaze drift away from the tree and took in one last look of the world around him. And though the emptiness of the area didn't represent the beauty that the world could have, he knew it had to do. Besides, he wanted to remember the world, the lavish nature they would come across always being outshone by Elphaba's own beauty, her beaming face as she took in her surroundings.
His eyes settled on the soil that covered Elphaba. From his current position on his knees, it was only one step from lying down. He moved so his body covered hers. If it weren't for the layer of soil that separated them, their foreheads and noses and so much more would be touching now. He closed his eyes and let the world go black.
He stayed with her, even in her death. He knew that one day he would be reunited with her. That knowledge gave him all he needed to wait. He would wait out his time, there on the very spot. He would wait forever if that was what it took to be with his Faba again.
And if he ever, in all those years that he waited, had cared to look up, he would have seen that, as the seasons relentlessly changed, the tree that they had marked as their own had regained life again, its leaves a familiar shade of green.