Hello!

Thank you so much for all the support, and I'm stoked that you all are giving this a chance!

Here's the next chapter. Sorry it's taken a little while! I got some Fiyeraba interaction for you, though!

The word stalking sounded a little too…wrong for what I felt I was doing. There was such a bad stigma attached to the word, and I wasn't a bad person, and what I was doing was completely justifiable. Stalkers had victims, and I just simply had someone I was curious about. Stalkers had a room devoted to their victim, pictures and quotes and cut outs decorating the place. I didn't have a spare room to do that. Not that I would if I did. No. I wasn't stalking a person. If I were in the Vinkus, I could be stalking game. Even then, though, I preferred the word 'hunting'. Stalking was for lonely people, and I was not lonely. I was people watching. Person watching.

Currently, I was watching a figure cloaked in black weave her way through the morning rush in the Emerald City. I cancelled coffee with Glinda to do this watching, and I didn't feel about it. There was no way she didn't know that Elphaba was in town with a child. Not just anyone's child. Possible hers, fathered by Avaric. I inwardly gagged at that. Anyway, Elphaba was the person I was watching. Having to follow her in order to watch her was merely a technicality.

She, unknowingly, lead me to a downtrodden area of the Emerald City. I frowned at the smell the hit me when we reached the second block of the area. It smelt like piss and death. The streets were no longer the sleek, paved material the streets in my area were. These ones changed from gravel to cobblestone every so often. It seemed that the cobblestone streets marked the business areas and gravel for residential blocks. The smell was worse than the changing terrain, though. I don't know how it didn't travel throughout the City and cause permanent nose damage to its residents. I can guarantee that no part of the Vinkus was this impoverished. We prided ourselves on our low poverty rate. Even our nomads were more well off than this neighborhood.

Elphaba ducked into a store without warning. Well, not like she was going to tell me she needed to go in for a second or fifty. I allowed myself the risk of getting accosted in order to keep out of her line of sight when she'd come out. So I hung back a little and gave a few good coins to an old woman who came up asking if I had some to spare. I didn't retain the information, but I struck up meaningless conversation with her until Elphaba came out of the store with four satchels strategically strapped across her, several baskets dangling off her arm, and a thick bag hanging off one of her shoulders. I gave the babbling woman in front of me a couple more coins before excusing myself.

I ended up losing more money as the morning wore on, but I kind of thought it as a price I had to pay to find out information about the mystery the green woman had turned into. My money was lost on homeless elders and young people alike coming up and asking for change as I followed Elphaba down alley ways. Two of the baskets were disposed of first, each given to a person sitting on the ground in the alley. The first one was a woman with a child hanging around her skirts. Elphaba was gentle with her when she handed her the basket and then took the child's temperature and check a bandaged wound on her leg. The second was to a man with one leg and one eye to match. He opened it right away and dug into the first loaf of bread he pulled out.

Okay, so baked goods were in the baskets, medical supplies were in the thick shoulder bag, so what was in the satchels?

She got through all the baskets before coming back out to the main road, a cobblestone one, and up to a niche in the wall that was selling food and beverages.

"Just a coffee, please." I heard her tell the vender when she reached the front.

"Make that two," I popped up beside her, purposefully startling her. I grinned innocently as she looked at me like I had no right being here. "Having a good morning?" I asked after the man had given us our coffee, and I left several notes and forcibly steered Elphaba away before he could give me back my change.

She yanked her arm free and moved a couple inches away from me with a scowl, "What are you doing here?"

"What?" I took a sip of the coffee. It tasted like shit, but I kept it. "Can't a man enjoy a walk on a nice day?"

Elphaba gave me a skeptical look.

"Why didn't you send word you were in the City?" She didn't even acknowledge my question, just blew softly on her steaming cup. "What are you here for? Work? Do you normally help the homeless? Is Avern your child—"

"Have you been stalking me?" She snapped, cutting off my interrogation.

"Well, is he?"

"Have you?"

"I don't stalk." I defended myself.

She raised her eyebrows. "Go home, Fiyero," Elphaba sighed and started walking away from me. I smiled at my name coming from her mouth.

"What about Tenmeadows?"

"My life is none of your concern." She retorted sharply.

"You and him never got along." I fell in step with her. "You used to rant about him all the time, going on and on about how ignorant and self-absorbed he was. If I remember correctly, you spent a whole night in my arms after that one night at the OzDust."

"And if I remember correctly, you're married with a child." She spat.

"Not anymore." I mumbled.

Elphaba stopped, "You left Sarima?"

"She died," I crossed my arms over my chest and looked down at the ground. "A couple of weeks ago. I wasn't there."

"Oh, Fiyero," Elphaba's voice lost the chill she had been sporting. She put a hesitant hand on my arm and gave it a light squeeze. "I'm sorry."

"She wanted to leave me since graduation anyway." I shrugged. "We were both unhappy; it was only a matter of time before something happened."

Elphaba was quiet for a while, but her hand was still on my arm. I held on to the feeling of the weight of her hand on my arm. It was a ghost of a feeling. It was one I would take with me, though.

"Avern and I are quite fond of that restaurant on the corner of 3rd and 44th," She told me after retracting her hand. "I usually take him there around sunset at the end of the week."

"That's like six days from now." I complained.

It raised a chuckle out of her, though. "We haven't seen each for years, Fiyero, a couple more days will hardly kill us."

"Speak for yourself."

She rolled her eyes.

"At least let me finish shadowing you for the day. We've gotten this far."

She let out a long suffering sigh, but ultimately let me follow her to the rest of her rounds. Obviously, she set rules: I was not allowed to ask questions; I was not allowed to make innuendos or outuendos; I could not stand too close to her; I could not stray to from her; I could not tell people who I was; I could not flirt with people (including her); and I was not allowed to do anything that could be taken the wrong way. Basically, I could walk and breath. Smiling could be seen as flirting. I only followed some of her asinine rules, telling her she was just protecting herself from falling in love with me. She cackled so loudly, it was almost a blow to my ego.

We kept going deeper into the heart of the neighborhood, the satchels still hanging from her. Elphaba stopped a lot of times to talk with some people who were milling about. She asked about their children, their siblings, their parents, or their pets. She called most of them by name, and the ones she didn't know, she walked away knowing. It was something to watch her interact with these people. I didn't even really know what she was doing, but she was intriguing me in a way she always had. A young man stopped her in one of the alleys, and the two chatted for a while. They had to be talking to each other for a good twenty minutes before the man pointed me out. Me, just standing uselessly behind Elphaba, fiddling with my thumbs while this joker so blatantly flirted his ass off with the green girl. If I thought the cackling was a blow to my ego, her telling him that I was just a Winkie do-gooder was ten times worse. Stab me in the heart and toss me in the river, why don't you.

The young man addressed, speaking loud and slow, like we weren't taught how to speak the official Ozian language back in the Vinkus. I stared blankly at him and then to Elphaba. Actually, I may have glared daggers at her. She had enough good grace to excuse us from the conversation shortly after that. Too late, though. I started disregarding her rules with the next person we came across. Call me a Winkie again and I'll make sure people ask about me every time you come down her, you green devil.

"Do you do this everyday?" I asked her after taking the satchels from her and carrying them myself. She didn't tell me what they were, but they were heavy. I couldn't believe she had been toting them around since the morning.

"I try to." She said, pointing to the next street we needed. "Most of these people lost a family member or an entire family to an insurgency. Sometimes they're collateral damage or sometimes in the heart of the incident. I would feel bad if I left them with nothing when I have so much."

"Have you lost someone to an insurgency?" I didn't give her time to answer before I went on. "Is Nessarose alright? Your father?"

"Right here." Elphaba gave me a gentle push towards the walkway to a house.

I had to think that the satchels weren't exactly for the needy. The couple who answered the door looked no less off than Glinda or myself. Their cloaks were thick, bodies cleaned, hair brushed, and teeth polished. Elphaba also seemed to be more distant to these two than she had with the people we met on the street. When they glanced cautiously at me, Elphaba told them I was with her, and they didn't even question it. I handed one satchel over to each of them. The man took his and brushed past us, disappearing into the steadily growing foot traffic. The woman offered to put some tea on the stove if we weren't in a rush. Elphaba smiled gratefully at her but declined, stating that we needed to be on the other side before the afternoon was up. She promised to come by sometime before the week was over, though, and that seemed to please the woman. She strung her satchel across her body and bid us a farewell with a soft spoken, "See you, Fae."

"So Fae?" I smirked as we made our way up traffic.

"It's just a nickname."

"Did Avaric give it to you?"

My breath caught in my throat when she pushed me into the wall of a building and held me there with a firm hand on my chest. No one even blinked an eye! She was assaulting me, and no one even cared. Where were we even at and would they care if she ended up killing me? Wherever we were and whoever our company was, I made special note of Elphaba's reaction to Avaric being mention.

"If you're going to slum around with me, you don't get to talk about him."

"Aye, aye, Madame Elphaba."

"You don't need to use honorifics with me, Fiyero." She gave me a last shove before continuing her walk. She didn't confirm or deny her current relationship state, though.

"Can I call you Fae?"

"You can call be Elphaba."

"Elphie?"

"I don't even know why I bother with you."

"It's my animal magnetism."

"Of course it is." The corners of her lips twitched like they wanted to smile but was refusing to let herself.

"I need food, Elphaba."

"I'm not taking you out," She shot warningly.

"I'll take you out, then. Get a little grub and call it a date."

"I have a rule about not going out with a man with a dead wife."

"Since when?" I snorted.

"Since Winkie do-gooders decided to pester me."

"We have a date at the end of the week."

"That is not a date."

"Play date for the kids, dinner date for the parents. If you play your cards right, I may even kiss you at the end of the night."

Elphaba let out a bark of laughter and snapped at me to keep walking, but I could see the blush creeping up her neck from under her collar. That rule was bullshit, and she knew it.

.

"You just may be the worst friend ever." I said to Glinda as I shut the door to her office in the Emerald Palace behind me.

"I beg your pardon?" She stared at me like I had grown another head but didn't ask who let me in.

I think the guards had grown accustomed to my visits after all these years. They barely batted an eyelash when I slipped through the gates that separated at the Palace from the square preceding it. They never called their superiors about me anymore, but they never actually opened the gates for me either. I'd bet that some of them even found entertainment in watching me try to make it through the bars without cutting myself or my clothes. I had grown quite great at it. I liked to think that the guards and I had a special relationship by now, but Glinda kept 'assuring' me that none of them gave two cahoots about me outside of the gossip I gave them.

After the guards at the gates, the ones in the Palace were cake. The maids were even easier. Ladies love a sharp dressed Vinkun. I should have been more ashamed about the maids I grew acquainted with over the years, but I really didn't have it in me to feel bad about my current ability to sneak into the Emerald Palace without a problem. Besides, I had plenty of allies from the Palace now, and was making allies ever a bad thing? No. Allies were never something to regret, no matter the means at which they were acquired. Of course, Glinda begged to differed and threatened the placement of several parts of my anatomy if I made allies with her closest handmaids and secretaries. I was sure to steer clear of most of them.

"Should I start with asking when did Elpharic happen?"

"When what happened?"

"Or the child it produced?"

"I don't know who you're talking about, Fiyero."

"Or how long they've been together?"

"Fiyero!"

"Or just knowing how long the Elphaba half has been in Oz would be nice."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh, is right." I plopped down in the chair in front of her desk. "A friend would have kept me in the know."

"Oh, honey-"

"Don't 'oh, honey' me, Upland." I snapped.

She gave me a critical she would give a child. "And don't you get snippy with me. Elphaba's life is her business and not one for me to gossip about. She has her reasons for things, and I am not in a position to question her." Glinda slammed the book she had been looking at shut. "But, if you must know, Avaric died before you even started coming to the City." Glinda frowned.

"Died?" She nodded. "How?"

"Elphie says that he just got sick and never better. She doesn't talk about it much, and I don't ask."

"Can you at least tell me if Avern is theirs?"

"I don't know." She shook her head. Her blonde curls moved perfectly along with the movement. "She really doesn't tell me much of anything that could be in anyway related to Avaric. I always assumed so, though. They just have this bond that I can't explain, so I figure it must be something between a mother and child. Sorry, Fiyero, dear."

I slumped in the chair, quirking my lips to the side. "She looks great."

"Fiyero," Glinda moved uncomfortably in her chair. "You know I love you." I nodded. "And I truly do want to see you happy and understand you've sold yourself into the delusion that Elphaba makes you happy."

"We're not talking about this, Glinda."

"No, no, you're right." She folded her hands and set them on the desk, leaning slightly forward. "But be careful, will you? Unpacking his box with Elphaba, you may find more things inside than you remember."

I snorted, "What could be worse than a child?"

She didn't laugh, just kept a serious face and frown, "You'd be surprised."

Curious? Wondering? Enough to leave a review? Those things are stellar;)