A/N: I know, I know, it's been forever and this is short and all that, but it's school! It's acronym season, what can I do?
Disclaimer: Really, if you don't know by now, I can't help you.
Elphaba had no idea where she was, except that it was far below the palace. Nothing in her training had prepared her for this- this innumerable plethora of twists and turns. She clutched Liir tighter to her chest; she could feel the presence of Morrible's guards on either side of her. The situation read disconcertingly like a good number of her nightmares. Morrible or the Wizard leading her down into the bowels of Southstairs, flanked with guards in those uniforms, their epaulets glaring like knives even in the pervasive darkness- but this was for Fiyero, she reminded herself. Liir whimpered a little and, with uncustomary affection, Elphaba caressed his dark curls. He was proof; that rosy interlude in her life had been real, a season's brief flowering, but real. Fiyero, she thought, conjuring his eyes, diamond-blue. Fiyero.
"Here," said Morrible, and Elphaba lurched forward awkwardly. Her blindfold was ripped off unceremoniously and she blinked, her eyes adjusting from black to grey light. And there he was. God- her stomach spun and leapt and her hands, holding Liir, began to tremble. The boy let out a small cry and the beaten man in the cell, his skin a pulpy mass of blood and ruined muscle, looked up slightly. He didn't have the strength to gasp, but his eyes widened, seeing her.
"Fae," he rasped, and she choked on two years of words and tears she couldn't cry, and she pulled free of the guards and ran to his side with Liir hanging like a monkey about her neck. She touched his face and kissed him gently and hugged him around the neck where it would not hurt. She looked as if she would spread herself over him and try to heal him with sheer force of will, but she held herself back and steeled herself and stood, turning to Morrible with her eyes iron.
"He's coming with me now," she said, her voice unmalleable. "You'll know where we are, I'm sure. This-" she gestured at Fiyero, his crust of blood having replaced any semblance of a normal dermis- "will not be continuing."
Morrible made to move her lips but recalled whatever she had been about to say.
"Very well," she answered tightly.
…
Elphaba was allowed to walk to the exit sans blindfold, the guards' services being needed to support Fiyero. They were expelled, somehow, after myriad twists and turns that Elphaba tried to ingrain into her mind but could not. They came out not in the palace, where they had gone in, but into the sunlight, where the guards released Fiyero into Elphaba's arms and Morrible told her she would be calling in a week, as if she were a doctor and not a monster.
"Don't run," Morrible leered, "We will be watching."
Elphaba said nothing, but mentally she stuck out her tongue and began plotting ways to do exactly that, and preferably kill Morrible in the process.