A/N: Today is a special occasion: The one year anniversary of my membership to this site! Yes, I have now been writing on here for 365 days. So I felt like I should write something. (I'm one of those people who likes to write things to commemorate special days.) It's just a little oneshot from Fiyero's POV. I've always wondered - if Elphaba died, what would Fiyero do?
Disclaimer: Yes, I own all of this. And I'm also the Easter Bunny. I wish.
If Only Because Dust is What We Come To
Everyone claims that the Wicked Witch of the West died many years ago, melted by a bucket of water. But you know – people are so empty-headed these days, they'll believe anything. The truth is, the Witch, or Elphaba, as I call her, did not perish at all, but escaped and lived for a good many more years in hiding in lands outside of Oz, across the Deadly Desert. I know because I spent these years by her side - her close companion, her faithful follower, her lover…and later her husband.
We never had any children. How could we? I was a Scarecrow, and Elphaba didn't want to pass her green skin on to future generations even if it had been possible. In a past life, I wouldn't have cared at all, but when the time came that most couples would be diving into the challenge of parenthood, I found myself regretting my straw body and Elphaba's stubborn resistance even to adopt. In the lands outside Oz, nobody knew of the Witch of the West, so even though we lived in a little traveled region it would have been achievable to take an orphan as our own – but it never happened.
Elphaba was never quite the same after faking her own death. I always thought it had something to do with the necessity to trick her best friend, and the fact that they would never get to see each other again. In fact, for the first few weeks after the Great Escape, as we would later come to call it, Elphaba would barely sleep, eat, or speak. She eventually turned back into her usual cynical self, but something inside her had been changed for good.
I guess I changed, too. Not just my form, though that must have been a big part of it. I…grew up, several years late. I became more feeling, more thoughtful, which is ironic because I supposedly lost my brain. I had no doubt that it was all due to Elphaba, which only made me love her more.
Life in Ev, which is the name of the country we made our home, was nice, but it was a little too relaxing, and neither Elphaba nor I was used to country life, so it was a lot to get used to. I never had to eat, but Elphaba did, of course, so I became a farmer, harvesting food, most of which we kept but some of which we sold to get money for other things.
Sometimes I would come home to find Elphaba clawing desperately at anything she could get her hands on, bored out of her mind. At those times, I would take her in my arms and try my best to calm her down with soft encouragements.
She managed to procure a large fishbowl of some kind, and set it upside down on a table, making it into a crystal ball of sorts. But the images only came occasionally, and when they did, they were faint and hard to make out. It was through this orb that the two of us learned of Glinda's ascension to the throne as Supreme Ruler of Oz, of Boq's appointment as Governor of Munchkinland, and of the reinstatement of Animal Rights laws.
So, peaceful as we were, we were never truly happy in Ev. I missed the family I'd left behind, and Elphaba missed the whole country terribly. Everyone in Oz believed Elphaba hated the place and wanted to destroy everything good and happy in it – but it was just the opposite. Elphaba loved the country; it just didn't take to her.
And so many years passed, until the seventieth anniversary of the Great Escape was just around the corner. I was just as chipper as ever, but, at the ripe old age of ninety-three, Elphaba's life was slowly coming to an end. She never lost her beauty, not to me, for the attraction she held over me had always been on the inside. But she was very old, and she couldn't walk anymore or act as she used to, so she spent most of the time in bed.
One day, as I was coming in from raking the garden, Elphaba called me to her bedside.
"I'm going," she told me softly, with absolute certainty.
A pang went through me, but I only nodded. Both of us had known this day was imminent, and although I was sorry, I had already planned out what I was going to do when my wife was gone.
"I know what to do," I said before she could continue.
Elphaba always expressed a desire to be cremated. The idea of her body being buried beneath the soil for all eternity had never been appealing to her, or indeed to me. She'd once told me that when she died I had to burn her body and scatter the ashes to the wind. 'That way,' she said, 'nobody will have any body or remains to gawk at.' Like anybody would come to pay respects to her, anyway. We didn't know anybody here.
And so the time had come at last. I took her withered hand in my cloth one.
"I love you," I told her, wishing I could cry to show her how much.
She smiled, but concernedly. "Fiyero…we will see each other again, won't we?"
I smiled widely. "Elphaba, we are going to be together always. No matter what."
One last smile of appreciation, and then her eyes closed and her grip on my hand slackened. She was gone.
I stood up, kissing my lover's green forehead and folding her arms over her chest, gazing at her face for a moment. Then I went out of the house to begin my task of gathering wood.
It took a little while, for I could not carry much weight in my flimsy arms, but I finally thought I had gathered enough kindling and piled it around the bed where the body lay. Then I found a box of matches in the dresser drawer, and, climbing over the wood to the bed, sat down beside Elphaba.
What I had not told Elphaba was that I was going up with her. I had determined a long time ago that I could not stand to live forever when the love of my life was gone. I didn't want to. So I made the decision to sacrifice myself to the fire in Elphaba's name. It wasn't technically suicide – who wanted to live forever? I was just ending my lifespan at the proper time for the human I'd once been.
I took a deep breath, lighted a match, and let it drop onto a log. The dry stick lit immediately, spreading around to its fellows until there was a blazing wall of flame surrounding the bed, slowly creeping closer. I threw the remaining matches and the box into the flames and lay down on the bed, taking Elphaba's lifeless hand in my own as a spark jumped onto my straw body.
Feeling excitement at the thought of being with Elphaba forever, I drifted off into eternal sleep.
A/N: And the verdict is...?