Title: Entertaining Destiny

Author: Aerohead

Email: you can find me at capricornangel103 at

Website: The RPG, One if by Land, Two if by Sky that this story is based off of, can be found on geocites. just type in , then put a /, then wickedoibltibs and you'll be there.

Pairing: Fiyero/Elphaba, Fiyero/Glinda, OC/OC

Rating: PG

Disclaimer/Dedication: For L. Frank Baum, Gregory Maguire, Stephen Schwartz, and Winnie Holtzman who own this idea that I'm extending. Thank you for giving me the first part. Also, Destin belongs to Tori.

Warning: spoiler for the ending of the musical Wicked, but that's pretty much about it.

Genre: Romance, adventure (book/play amalgamation)

Summary: The Vinkus is being used as a way for Quadlings to be taken to the Gillikin emerald mines. When a Quadling boy helps her daughter, Elphaba decides to stop the Gale Force from using Kumbricia's Pass as a way to smuggle people.

Author's Notes: Part One is not beta'd, so I'm not sure if there are any mistakes. Also, this story is the preface to my RPG – the URL at in the "website" box - and each consecutive chapter will be another year.

Part One

...Good news, she's dead...

...we shall still revere the lessons learned...

...no father is not proud of you, no sister acts ashamed...

...though I do admit it came on fast...

...something baad; sorry, bad...

...life is painless for the brainless, why think too hard when it's so soothing...

...now that I've chosen to become a pal, a sister and advisor, there's nobody wiser...

...I wasn't born for the rose and the pearl...

...I'll be back for good someday to make my mark and make my way...

...for I think everyone deserves the chance to fly...

...I'd sooner buy defying gravity...

...though it is, I admit, the tiniest bit unlike I anticipated...

...save him please just save him, my Boq, my sweet, my brave him...

...there are precious few at ease with moral ambiguities...

...say there's no future for us as a pair... .

..one question haunts and hurts too much, too much to mention...

...for once I'm glad I'm heartless, I'll be heartless killing her...

...I do believe I have been changed for the better...

...good news; good news...

Words. Words that came together, that told a story; though out of context they meant nothing. Ten years ago, the words had been fresh on the lips of every Ozian citizen that lived within the confines of the Wizard's reign. How things could go around full circle, it amazed the woman standing in front of the mirror to no end.
She could remember all of it crystal clear, as if she had never pulled herself away from that life. She could remember being ostracized and teased while others paraded around smiling and doing good. She remembered the fighting in her own dorm room. She remembered all the fuss made over a Winkie prince of dwindling intelligence.
Of course, she remembered other things, too. She remembered her roomie; her best and only friend. She remembered Boq, her childhood friend whom she thought she could trust. She remembered the first time she had ever felt free. She also remembered the hurt and angry look on her friend's face that night at the engagement party.
"You think too much." said a voice from behind her.
"I make up for the lack of thinking you do." She turned to look into painted blue eyes, smiling lightly.
"That hurt." Said the Scarecrow, crossing his arms. He looked at her curiously, before, "so, what were you thinking about?"
The woman turned from him to look back into the mirror. "Life; ours, Glinda's, Oz's. How can we know that the series of events we set off was correct?"
"How about this; if you didn't set off those events, I'd be dead, and where would you be? An insane old woman with a hundred cats and a strong dislike for small children."
She couldn't help but to laugh at that. "But if I hadn't shown up in the first place..."
"I'd be stuck groveling and scraping and playing second-fiddle to Glinda's goodness." The Scarecrow shrugged. "I don't mind, really. And, once you figure out how to reverse it, then we can live happily ever after as outcasts." He hugged her close to him. "Believe me, I don't mind."

There were two shots in succession. Aran opened his eyes to find himself face down in the mud. For a moment, he thought he had been shot, then realized the only pain he felt was in his head from where he had been hit by the wrong end of the gun.
He pulled himself out of the dirt, only to see what had been shot. A small figure lay a few feet away from him. He could hear low voices behind him, but he didn't care. He pulled himself close to the body; it was a small, greenish boy whose blue eyes – now filmed over – were wide with disbelief. He struggled, but got the eyes to close just as two tall dark men with strange tattoos along their arms came over. They looked at him, disgusted by his appearance, before they carefully picked up the body of the little boy.
He could still hear voices; though. Another man came over, but this one touched a trail of blood that led into the tall grass next to the path. He motioned toward it, and then there was rustling in the grass. But the man stayed with him. He was picked up and the man started to follow the trail of blood with Aran in his arms.
The man veered away from the blood trail, however, and started to walk up to a large, forbidden-looking castle. The man knocked on what appeared to be a servant's entrance, and it opened. He handed Aran to a concerned looking woman, and explained something to her in a language Aran didn't know. The woman nodded, and set Aran onto a table.
"Can you stay up by yourself?" Asked the woman. Aran nodded, for the first time noticing the tattoos on her arms, also.
"Well, what do you think, Mellesse?" asked the man who had brought Aran into the room.
She pushed the left side of Aran's hair away, looking at the long, deep cut that spanned the left side of his face. She touched it, but he didn't wince. Eyebrow's raised, the woman grabbed a moist cloth, dabbing the blood off. She studied the nearly healed cut in amazement, before looking over at the worried man. "Well, Pfen, you're a medicine man, what do you make of this?"
The man looked at the cut on Aran's face, eyes calculating. "It seems fine to me."
"Exactly!" cried the woman. "And you know what, Pfen? It shouldn't be! He should still be bleeding. A cut like that! Why, the poor boy should have brain damage!"
The two strange people looked at each other, before looking at Aran.
"What's your name, boy?" The man – Pfen – asked.
"Aran of the Naeva clan." He answered quietly.
They looked at each other again. "Naeva clan?" said the woman. "Never heard of them, duckie." She said, trying to look soothing to the petrified boy.
"Where are you from?" Pfen asked.
"Ovvels, I think." Pfen nodded, turning to the woman.
"Post-traumatic stress; he'll have memory loss of the events leading up to that bang on the head for a couple of months, if not years along." The woman nodded, sending Aran a sympathetic look. Then her head popped up, an idea striking her. She grabbed Pfen's hands, jumping up and down excitedly. "What is it, Mellesse?" He asked, trying to stay rooted to the ground. She smiled, still bouncing on the balls of her feet. Aran had never seen such high-energy adults before. Of course, he couldn't remember a lot of anything that happened up until two weeks previous.
"We should send him up to the Mistress; she wants someone to help the child after everything that's happened today, so why not send him? He'd be good for her, I think. She needs someone her own age, you know." Mellesse didn't seem as if she would be letting go of Pfen anytime soon, so he sighed, resigned to his fate.
"Mellesse, I have been asked to..."
"To take care of the wound, I know. But what about the mental stress?" she asked, pulling away to put her hands on her rather spacious hips. "I'm no miracle worker, Pfen, like you claim to be, but I do know a thing or three about small children. After the little Master's death, the little Miss is going to have a hard time adjusting; I think she needs someone to be friends with." She turned and smiled lightly at Aran. "You go out through that door, Master Aran, and up the long staircase straight in front of you. Follow it all the way up, and open the door it leads to, the Mistress should be in there."
Aran nodded and got off the table gingerly. He followed the directions that were given to him and came to a room where there was quiet talking. He felt someone behind him and turned to see a white-faced and panting Pfen.
"I thought it would be a good idea if you were escorted as the Mistress can be...temperamental when she is upset." Pfen said, before knocking.
"Come in!" Came the slightly brisk reply from the other side. Aran opened the door, and was greeted with what would have been a wonderful picture of just how creepy the castle really and truly was.
The room was sparse; with only a mirror, a small dresser, a few chairs, and a bed it seemed to be a place to keep the dead and unwanted than a place for a child to be. There were three people already in the room – a nervous female maid, a figure draped from head to foot in black, and of all things a Scarecrow. The Scarecrow seemed to be very drawn and upset, and was looking at the bed with a frown. Aran from his angle couldn't see the bed, and was starting to wish he hadn't come to the room, as the figure in black started to turn.
"Who's this, Pfen?" the figure asked, standing. From the voice, Aran assumed a woman was under the never-ending cascade of black.
"He says his name is Aran of the Naeva Clan of Ovvels." Pfen said, putting a hand on Aran's shoulder.
"A Quadling," the woman said, nodding. "But what's he doing here?"
"I assume they were taking him to Ugabu and from there to Gillikin and the Glikkus to mine emeralds." Pfen said. No one in the room had to ask who 'they' were; everyone knew that the Gale Force was getting increasingly out of the control of seventeen-year-old Shiz student Dorothy Gale.
Pfen nodded, his grip on Aran's arm tightening. "He seems to have been hit on the head with a blunt object – possibly a musket – and has sustained a large head wound. However, it's almost fully healed, although I think it should still be bleeding."
The faceless woman looked at Aran. "What does this have to do with Faeba?" She asked, voice not betraying any outward emotion.
"I think, well, that is to say Mellesse thinks that they would be good together. He could help her, and if he could get her to wake up then I can work on the leg and..."
Pfen looked down as the woman touched Aran. He would have though she wouldn't be gentle – she seemed to him to be the rough type – but she was very gentle, and touched the scarring wound on his face with light fingertips. She came face-to-face with him, and he could see verdigris in her skin-tone and dark, sorrow-filled eyes. "If you can wake up my daughter, then I promise you that I will allow you to stay here and I will find a way to keep the Gale Force out of the Vinkus and away from you. Is that a deal?"
Aran nodded. The woman smiled, before getting up. "There's an empty room one floor down, if you'd like it." Said the maid as Pfen and the woman left the room.
"Uh, sure, thanks." Aran said, not sure what he was getting himself into.
"Yes, sir." Said the maid, curtseying before fleeing the room. As she left, Aran started over to the bed. He sat down in the chair the Witch had vacated, looking at the bed.
A girl lay under a large quantity of white sheets and a light blue puff, and although her eyes were closed she was shivering. Her hair was dark and curly, falling around and into her sweat-streaked face. Aran reached out, pushing a strand of nearly black hair off of the girl's face. He stopped in his actions as he looked in wonder at the contrast between their skin; he had never seen anybody, not even Pfen, Mellesse, or the maid, with skin that dark before. He trailed his index finger down her cheek, pushing stuck strands of hair off of her face as he went. He stopped at her neck, looking curiously. There were blue markings on her neck – four blue diamonds, two on each side. He touched one, realizing that they were slightly different from the ones on Pfen's arms and face. He wondered what they meant, but then resumed what he had been doing before; looking, not touching.
From the brief contact he had made with her skin, she had felt as if she was burning up from fever, and he now understood the blankets and the shivering.
"Who are you?" he whispered to the sleeping form. "Why do they want me to take care of you? You can't be much younger than me, can you?" The eleven-year-old Quadling put his hands on his knees, looking at the girl intently.
"Her name's Fabala." Came a male voice from behind. Aran turned, looking at the Scarecrow. "From the Unionist saint Aelphaba." Aran nodded dumbly, still not used to the talking inanimate object.
"Is she...uh...you know...?" Aran felt himself blushing at his sudden dumbstruck demeanor. "I mean, that woman...who, eh, was she?"
The Scarecrow seemed to smile at that. "That depends, who do you think she was?" he asked.
Aran looked down, shaking his head. "No one; I don't think she was anyone I should worry about," he looked at the Scarecrow, "right?"
The Scarecrow nodded and left without another word. Aran looked over at the form of the girl, before pushing the chair back and getting up. He went over to a small pitcher of water and searched until he found a small piece of cloth. He wet the cloth and wrung it out, bringing it over to the bed. Gently, he leaned over, placing the cloth onto the girl's head.
And pulled it off quickly when the figure in the bed started to flail. Aran inspected the place where the cloth had been, blinking in surprise at the angry red mark left on the dark skin.

Three more days went by, and Aran was getting barely any sleep. Pfen came and went, occasionally with the Scarecrow, both filling Aran in on gossip from the Emerald City and beyond.
"A Gillikin man is supposed to come next year and try and work out a policy between Gillikin and the Vinkus to allow the Gale Force to pass through here to get to the Ugabu region." Pfen said conversationally one afternoon.
"Do you think they'll get very far into negotiations?" asked Aran, always eager and terrified about news from the Emerald City.
The Scarecrow and Pfen looked at each other, before, simultaneously, they started laughing uproariously.
"The Mistress allowing a Gillikin to pester her?" sputtered Pfen.
"She won't even let him get within ten feet of the stairwell leading up to her room!" The Scarecrow said.
Aran nodded. "I thought as much." He said. He was watching Fabala's body, intent on using mental power to get her to move. When the water had had such an astounding effect on her skin, Aran had asked Mellesse and Pfen for some rosemary salves, one of the few things he could remember his mother ever doing. And from the teary smile he got from Mellesse when he told her, it was apparently a miracle he could remember that at all.
Aran didn't listen to the chatter around him, but watched the dark lips of the even darker girl lying on the bed in front of him. They were moving ever so slowly, and it was taking Aran a few minutes to actually realize that they were moving. "Pfen, look!" he said, pointing at Fabala.
Pfen and the Scarecrow stopped in their chatter about the Gillikin who wanted to come to the Vinkus, and Pfen was next to Fabala in an instant. "Aran, go to the Mistress' room and get her." Pfen ordered. Aran didn't move, he just stood, staring at Pfen as if he were insane. Pfen turned, dark brown eyes flashing. "NOW!"
"Y-yes, of course!" he stuttered, before getting up and running out the door. He got down about two flights of stairs before stopping. He realized for the first time he didn't know where the Mistress' room was.
However, he could hear her voice.
"Miss!" he called, now going down the steps three at a time. "Miss!" he had reached the landing on the first floor, and could see the disgusted look on Mellesse's face.
"We have visitors, Master Aran." She said, though the words were bit through closed teeth.
Aran looked over at a young boy, of the Yunamata tribe, who was followed closely by a Gillikin man wearing the dark green befitting a man of power in the Emerald City. Next to him was a scrawny boy about two or three years older than Aran was, wearing starched and perfect – if not a little bedraggled – pleated pants and a dark blue shirt. Aran looked at him skeptically. "Oh."
"They were caught traipsing around in the Thousand-Year Grassland, too close to Red Windmill for comfort." said the young Yunamata. "I thought, since it is Arjiki territory, they should be prisoners here."
The boy smiled maliciously as the Gillikinese man bustled like a picture of the Wind, while the Gillikin boy seemed nervous. "We are not going to be prisoners! Once my fiancée finds out about this, she'll...she'll...she'll come here right away and release us without having to go through anyone of your people." He said, bristling. Aran wondered if the man had noticed that he wasn't the only foreigner in the room.
"Who are you?" Aran asked, as politely as he could, under the circumstances.
The man blew himself up more than necessary. "I am Lord Bromley of Nokomyu Hall in Dixxi House, soon-to-be husband to Her Goodness herself!" He huffed, before clasping a slightly porkish hand around the lithe boy in front of him. "And this is my son, the next Lord of Nokomyu Hall, Destin."
Mellesse's lips were pursed. "At the mention of his beloved, the Mistress decided it best if she didn't come down." Her face softened when she turned to Aran. "But what did you want, Master Quadling?"
Ignoring the blank stare of Lord Bromley and the first human looked from young Master Destin, Aran, grabbed Mellesse's hands, barely able to contain himself. "Fabala's lips are moving; I don't know if it means anything, but Pfen told me to fetch the Mistress."
Mellesse drew herself up, pulling Aran down the hall. "And fetch her you shall."
The two raced down a hallway to a closed door. "Mistress!" called Mellesse, pounding on the door and bouncing on the balls of her feet.
"What?" came the curt reply from behind the mahogany door.
"You tell her, child." whispered Mellesse.
"Uh...Miss? It's Fabala."
The door opened, and Aran looked up at the green face of the woman behind the door. "What about Fabala?" she asked, apparently nervous.
Aran quickly recapped everything that had happened, and she nodded, following him through the kitchen and up the staircase.
When they reached the room, they were quite the procession; Aran led the way, with Mellesse close at hand and Elphaba right behind her. Also following were two very shell-shocked Gillikinese captives. Pfen looked up at their presence, smiling as he stood in front of the bed. "She's awake!" cried the Scarecrow, hugging Elphaba.
"And in a lot of pain." came the indignant reply from the bed.
Pfen moved away so that Fabala was in full view. Aran heard a small gasp from behind him, and turned to Destin, whose deep green eyes had become the size of dinner plates.
It was understandable, to Aran at least, but the Gillikin only received two glares from Elphaba and the Scarecrow. The boy flushed quickly, before looking away.
"Who...are all these people?" asked Fabala, wincing every time Pfen washed out the bullet wound.
Looking around the room, the Witch smiled to her daughter. "This, Fabia, is your family, for as long as they are here." Her smile turned to Aran, and she put one green hand on his tan shoulder. "You've done what we've asked you to do, Aran, you can stay here as long as you like or need."
"Thank you, Miss...?"
"Miss Elphaba." She said, before she turned on Lord Bromley, a frown etched over her face. "As for you two, we will arrange for you to leave on the next caravan that comes through the Vinkus, unless, of course, Glinda decides to send for you personally, although I hear she's been very busy after all these years."
Lord Bromley, very pale and sickly looking at the sight of Elphaba, pointed. "Yo-you're supposed to be dead!"
"Mmm, and I was supposed to be enjoying the afterlife with my family, until you decided to pop in unexpectedly." She scowled, before grabbing Lord Bromley and pulling him away. "Now, we have to discuss what you will and will not tell your beau when you return to the Emerald City." She said as they exited the room, Destin on their heels.
Pfen finished cleaning Fabala's leg, and looked up at Mellesse and the Scarecrow. "So, poor unfortunates gone vacationing in Fliaan?" he asked conversationally.
Mellesse's lips pursed again. "I wouldn't doubt it." She grumbled as she helped Pfen pack his medical equipment. The Scrow scowled at his companion, before checking Fabala's leg once more. They left in a heated discussion about how long it would take for Lord Bromley's presence to be missed in Dixxi House.
Once they left, the Scarecrow moved over to Fabala, whispering something in her ear. She nodded, smiling, and hugged him back. "Be good my little Fabi." He said quietly, his painted lips brushing against her forehead. Aran winced at the memory of the water, but let it go as the Scarecrow left, clapping him on the back with one straw hand on his way.
Alone, Aran moved closer to Fabala, before taking a step back. She turned to him; up close, she had the most impressive blue eyes he had ever seen, and he had to gulp in order to keep himself in check.
She smirked at him, watching his expression. Even the glint of mischief in her eyes seemed slightly dead. "So, you were the Quadling they were taking to the emerald mines?" she asked, nodding toward the chair near her bed.
Aran moved over to it, and sat down. "Yeah, I was."
Fabala picked at a loose string in the blue duvet cover, before looking up at him. "Pfen said you've stayed by my side all night for the past three nights, and that you weren't going to let anything happen to me." Aran could only nod. "Thanks." Fabala said quietly.
"You're welcome." He thought for a moment, before looking back at her. "Though, I did try to stop your fever with water, but it didn't work."
Fabala smiled wryly at that. "You know, they said Mother melted, but she was never allergic to water; I am." Aran made a mental note to remember that, before pointing to the small bottle next to her bed. "I did use rosemary oil, and yesterday I had some calamint oil. That right there's thyme extract." Fabala considered it.
"I've never thought of that before, but it's a good solution to it; when in extract, they cool your body, don't they?"
"Yes." They were silent for a few moments, just staring at the bottle, before Aran held out his hand. "I'm Aran of the Naeva tribe in Ovvels." He said.
"I'm Fabala of the Arjiki tribe in Red Windmill and Thropp Second Descending of Nest Hardings, on my mother's side." She said, putting out her hand. They shook, sealing a friendship that would see many things, much more strange then the circumstances in which they began.