AN: Apparently, we're back to ruining my review page (I am not at ALL looking at you, Fiyeraba's Love Child :P).

4. A Heartache

When Glinda entered the breakfast room, it was to find Fiyero sitting on the other end of the table. She faltered in the doorway for a moment before raising her chin and striding forward, taking a seat herself and asking the maid that came to serve her for some fruit and scrambled eggs.

"Glinda?" Fiyero asked softly.

She nodded coldly at him. "Fiyero."

He sighed. "Glinda... I'm sorry. I never meant to –"

"Shush. I don't want to talk to you." She sipped the orange juice that had been placed before her as she waited. The maid returned soon with a small bowl of fresh fruit and a cup of tea, promising that the scrambled eggs were on their way; and Glinda ate with small, delicate bites in complete silence, never speaking a word to Fiyero or even glancing in his direction.

Her eggs were brought in and she ate those, too, then emptied her glass of orange juice as well as her cup of tea and nodded that the maid could take everything away. Only then did she look up at Fiyero.

"Glin," he tried again, but she interrupted him.

"I know there is someone else. Who is she?"

He blanched and opened and closed his mouth a few times, which made him look a little like a fish. She would have laughed if she weren't feeling so murderous.

Glinda slammed her fist on the table suddenly, making him jump. "Who is she, Fiyero? Who is this girl you've been in love with for..." She trailed off. "How long have you been in love with her, anyway?"

He didn't reply, instead looking down at his plate.

"You said you're not in love with me." Glinda took a few deep breaths in an attempt to keep herself calm and reasonable, but she still felt like screaming and hurling plates at him. "You never really have been, have you? But there is someone else. I know it. I can feel it. Only love can change a person the way you have been changed and if it wasn't love for me, it must have been love for someone else. Have you been in love with this other girl since the beginning?"

"Not..." He swallowed. "Not really since the beginning."

With those words, he implicitly confirmed her suspicion that there was, indeed, someone else. She'd known – she'd been absolutely certain – but it still hurt to hear him say it.

"But for a long time?" she prodded.

He nodded, not looking at her. His shoulders slumped. "Yes."

Glinda bit her lip. "Who is she?"

He shook his head, clearly not wanting to tell her, but she snarled at him. "Who is she, Fiyero? I have a right to know! You've basically been cheating on me for three years!"

"I didn't cheat on you!" he protested. "Nothing ever happened! She doesn't even know – I never let her know, and we never did anything, so I didn't cheat on you!"

"You did emotionally!"

He had no reply to that.

"Tell me, Fiyero!"

"I..." He sighed. "I don't suppose it really matters, anyway," he said. "Just... promise me you won't look at her any differently because of it. She doesn't know. She never knew, I didn't say anything... she could probably never return my feelings, anyway."

"Wait." Glinda had blanched a little. "I know her?" She hadn't even considered that. She thought this girl must have been someone he met in the City or someone he knew from back home in the Vinkus. She hadn't really considered the possibility that she could know this person, too. Her mind instantly flashed back as she tried to remember every girl she and Fiyero both knew well, but there weren't all that many. Neither of them had really made any friends since...

"Shiz," she whispered. "Neither of us made any friends since Shiz. So unless you already knew her before that... but you didn't have contact with anyone from the Vinkus once you came to Shiz except for your parents." Her head jerked up, only to see Fiyero cringing slightly, a clear indication that she was right.

"A girl from Shiz?!" It made sense, in a way. He had started to change his ways when they had been at Shiz, after all.

He muttered something and she gritted her teeth, annoyed with him for not speaking up. "What?"

He lowered his gaze and said, a little louder, "It's Elphaba."

Glinda stared at him for a long time. She suddenly wished she hadn't drunk all of her juice, because if she had still had some left, she would have thrown it into his face right about now.

"All these years," she breathed, "you've been in love with my best friend?!"

He nodded. "But she doesn't know, Glinda," he tried. "She's your best friend – she always has been. Don't let me ruin that."

She snorted. "Don't be so self-conceived, Fiyero. You don't have the power to ruin a friendship for me, especially not one as special as mine and Elphie's – not even by telling me you are in love with her. What Elphie and I had... have," she corrected herself, "has nothing to do with you. I hate you for falling in love with my best friend, but it does not change the way I feel about Elphaba." Unless she loves him back. The thought crossed her mind for a brief moment, but she pushed it away. She would never hate Elphaba. Not even if she did love Fiyero back.

Had Glinda herself ever truly loved Fiyero? She thought she had. Not in the beginning, when her feelings for him had been a mere schoolgirl crush. Not near the end, when he had been acting strangely and she had begun to realise that her life was not by far the fairy-tale she had always imagined it to be. But somewhere in between those two periods, she had loved him.

When she looked at him now, however, she saw only betrayal. She wanted to rise above this the way her parents had taught her and forgive him for doing this to her, but she couldn't.

"I am sorry, Glinda," he said.

She looked at him for a long time. Then she asked, "What are you going to do now?"

He took a breath. "Have you read the newspaper yet?"

She shook her head and he pushed the paper towards her across the table. She picked it up and her attention was immediately drawn by the headline.

GOVERNOR THROPP OF MUNCHKINLAND SUPPORTS ANIMALS.

She quickly skimmed over the article, knowing immediately what Fiyero must have thought when he read this. "That's her."

Fiyero nodded.

"It's her influence. It has to be. Nessa would never do this by herself." Glinda looked up at her former fiancé in excitement, despite everything. "She's alive!" She had never been certain of that fact for two years, ever since Elphaba left. She'd heard things occasionally, of course, but she had never known for sure.

Then her brow furrowed. Was this the news from Munchkinland that the Wizard had wanted her to distract the people from? It would make sense. A major province leader declaring to support the Animals was not something the Wizard and Morrible would want to be public knowledge; but the fact that it was on the front page of the Ozian newspaper now meant that their distraction had failed.

She could see the irony of that. She'd thrown the surprise engagement party in order to distract the people from something she hadn't even known about, and it had resulted in not only the distraction attempt failing, but also in her losing the man who had almost been her fiancé.

She glanced at Fiyero. "What does this have to do with your next move?"

He just looked at her a little guiltily and she gazed back down at the paper, only to realise what this meant. Her heart sank.

"This means she's in Munchkinland," she said quietly.

He nodded.

"And you're going to find her." It was not a question, but she received another nod in reply nonetheless.

Glinda let out a mirthless laugh. "I don't believe this. You've been searching for her so frantically ever since you joined the Gale Force, I was almost starting to think you had forgotten the way she was at Shiz... that you had started to believe the rumours. You were so driven, so..." She trailed off as realisation suddenly hit her like a ton of bricks.

"Oh my Oz," she whispered. "You joined the Gale Force to find her."

He winced.

"What if you had found her before?" Glinda asked, more talking to herself than to him. "What if you'd have found her a year ago? Would you have gone with her? Declared your love to her and followed her around like a helpless, lovesick puppy? Would you have abandoned me just like that?!"

Fiyero finally had enough guts to look her in the eye. "I love her, Glinda."

She nodded calmly. "Yes. So you do." She rose to her feet and walked around the table. "This would have been beautiful and quite touching, had I not been so ready to rip your head off right now."

He hung his head again. "I know."

"Fiyero."

He looked up.

She punched him straight in the face. He heard a crack and his hands flew up to his nose, blood streaming from between his fingers. He quickly grabbed a napkin from the table and pressed it against his nose to try and stop the bleeding.

"Just for the record," Glinda hissed at him, "that does not even nearly make us even. Understood?" Without waiting for an answer, she stomped from the room.