The Witch spent the night petting Malky and trying, desperately, to lock away the memories that Fiyero had dredged to the forefront of her mind.

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Chapter Twenty-One:

The Witch returned to her home after completing an odd-end assignment for the revolution to find that her solitude protection above the abandoned corn exchange was already occupied.

"Get out," she hissed between clenched teeth as she stood at the door; her hands balled into fists at her side.

"But Elphie –"

"I told you to never come back!"

Fiyero stared at her, his eyes cold and determined, as he sat at the small table. Without a single word he pointed at the neatly organized lines of white powder – left there in preparation when the Witch had left in the morning – at the opposite end from where he sat. "You said it wasn't like it was back at Shiz."

Her mask fell for the briefest of moments but it was all Fiyero needed to see the hurt and regret that lingered just underneath the surface. He stood up then and made his way towards her. He dared to take her in a hug and the act was so completely foreign to the Witch that she stiffened and tried to pull away.

Fiyero would not let her go.

"You don't know," she said, her voice muffled by his chest.

"I know that what you're doing isn't going to help."

She tried to pull away again but Fiyero still would not let her go. "Please," she whispered, pleaded. "Please… you must go."

"I'm worried about you."

"And I'm worried about you associating with me!" She closed her eyes and finally managed to wriggle her way free of Fiyero's grasp. "Please Fiyero, you have a wife… children. You cannot risk your life by visiting me."

"But –"

She sighed and turned her head away. "But if you must stay," she interrupted him, "then ask no questions and I will offer you no lies."

He smiled as he realized that he had won; a small victory but a victory none the less. "Then you will permit me to stay?" he asked.

"For a while then." She walked to the table and slowly, carefully, brushed the white powder into a small bag and tucked it into a hidden pocket within the bosom of her dress. She sat down then and motioned for Fiyero to sit across from her, like he had the time before. "You must never come in the day again," she began – not exactly a promising start to their conversation. "Night only, and on days I say you can. If you come here one more time unannounced then I will pick up and move and you will have no chance to see me again unless it is on the stake of the ignorant people of Oz."

The Witch stared at him, waiting for his response, and dearly wishing he would just leave but she knew that he would not. She was doomed to him now, doomed to be reminded of her past every time she saw him.

"So what of you?" he said, making no indication that he had even heard the rules she had spoken to him. "What have you been up to these – what has it been? – five years since disappearing from all our lives?"

"This and that," the Witch replied; twisting her fingers together in nervousness. "I said no questions."

"I cannot hope to help without at least some measure of understanding."

"I don't need your help."

"Yes you do, you just won't admit it. Like always."

She stared at him; cold eyes in a stoned, expressionless face. "If you knew even a measure of what I have done, what horrors I have been the cause of, you would not be offering me your help."

"You speak but say nothing. You run your words around like a circle that leads to no answers."

"There's a reason for that."

Fiyero let out a heavy sigh and his shoulders slumped slightly in defeat. They lapsed into silence for a while before the Witch could organize her thoughts in a way to form a coherent question. "What do you hear of Boq?" she eventually asked.

The conversation that came then was a blur to the Witch as she tried to keep Fiyero talking to prevent him from asking her any sort of questions that would force her to lie to him. In time she broke out the ale again and they drank in comfortable silence. He asked her a few more questions that she skirted around and she asked more of people she vaguely remembered from her days at Shiz.

"I hope you're not angry at me," Fiyero said, shocking the Witch from her desperate attempt to keep her past locked behind the iron walls of control she had created in her mind.

"Whatever for?" she questioned; sounding as if she was afraid of the answer she would receive.

"I… well… it just happens to be that sometimes… well… more than sometimes…" he stammered.

"Just spit it out."

"Avaric and I tend to cross paths a lot and in time we have become… well… almost friends. I know what he did to you was wrong," he hastily said to interrupt Elphaba as she had opened her mouth to speak. "But he has expressed his… regret over his actions before. I do believe he really feels guilty for what he did to you at Shiz and that he has… matured so to say… since then."

"Matured?" the Witch shrieked. She stood up in anger. "If you knew!" She was furious now. "He… he has… there is no change… he was… he came then… and… you need to leave!"

Fiyero was shocked, baffled. With no knowledge of the terrible life Elphaba had lived under the control of Letozay he had no way of knowing how Avaric had come then to use the Witch for her body just as he had at Shiz. He had no idea how much his confession had hurt the fragile green woman before him. "Elphie… I… I don't understand."

"Go!" She pointed towards the door. "I should never have let you stay! I thought that… that you were… that… but Avaric… and you… friends! I just… you must go!"

He stood up. "Elphie… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

"But you have! You have upset me!

"Please… just hear me out."

"Go!" she repeated. The room began to shake, the sun seeming to dull as it shined in threw the window, and her overflowing river of emotions within her was beginning to break through her control. She couldn't stand it, she couldn't bear it, and she needed Fiyero to leave so she could find some way to lock away her feelings again.

He would not leave. He approached her and gently took a hold of the shaking hand that was pointing towards the door and lowered it. She stared at him; trying to find the drunken haze of lust in his eyes that all the men before him had showed her. It was not there.

The Witch pulled away from him and turned around so that her back faced him. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulled her close. Her back met his chest and she crossed her arms as she tried to adopt an air of annoyance and frustration so that he would leave her. He did not.

"Elphie… please… I'm sorry," Fiyero whispered as he leaned into her, his lips so close to her ear that she could feel his hot breath against her skin. "I didn't mean to anger you. I just… wanted you to know the truth."

"You should be home, with your family," the Witch replied. "Why do you insist on visiting me like this?"

"I want to help you."

"I'm the so-called Wicked Witch of the West!" she spat out. "I cannot be help!"

"Yes you can."

The Witch grabbed his hands and peeled them from her waist. She took his hand in her own and gently led him from her home; down the stairs, out the door, through the street. Malky followed a few steps behind them, scared by the Witch's sudden change in mood, and waited with baited breath for what was to come. He recognized the path they were on – he knew where they were going – and he feared for what would welcome them when they got there.

When the Witch reached her destination she stood before the door in silence for over half an hour. She still held Fiyero's hand.

"Elphie…"

She did not respond to Fiyero's questioning murmur. Instead she reached for the doorknob and gently, quietly, opened the door. The stench that assaulted her nose nearly made her vomit but she held back her natural reaction. She had to pull Fiyero through the house to get him to follow her.

They stood before Jay's bloody, mutilated body. His flesh had begun to rot and maggots and flies had set on it to feed off of his lifeless body. Fiyero had to turn away, cover his mouth with his hand, and swallow back the vomit that had lurched up into his mouth. The Witch was shocked that no one, not a single person, had come to take his body away and claim the house.

Malky tucked his tail between his back legs and simply watched. He was unsure of the Witch's motives for bringing Fiyero here and he was afraid that she was trying to push him away; trying to scare him into leaving her for good.

"This was my fault," the Witch whispered. Fiyero did not respond. He still could not turn around to truly look at Jay's broken body without the fear of expelling the lunch he had ate before arriving at Elphaba's home.

"My fault," the Witch repeated. "He killed himself because of me… because he loved me and all I did was use him for my own selfish needs."

"Elphie…"

"I was envious of him," the Witch whispered, "because he had the strength to do what I cannot."

Fiyero finally turned around to look at Elphaba in horror. "You… you're not… are you?"

"I still have sins to atone for," the Witch replied. "And until then I will suffer through this nightmare that is my life."

"You… want to die?"

"I would not despair if my work in the revolution kills me," she said. She turned to look at him then, and for a moment her mask was gone to reveal the swirling emotions in her eyes. But then it was back again and Fiyero was doubtful it had ever been gone to begin with. She reached into her pocket, Fiyero watched, and pulled out a box of matches.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

She dropped her head slightly to stare at Jay's body through a curtain of loose black hair that she had forgotten to tie back. "He deserves more than to have his body rot away, eaten by maggots and flies. I just… cannot do anything more than this." She struck the match, let it fall from her hands to land on Jay, and watched as his rotting flesh lit on fire almost instantly.

They fled then – the three of them – and stood on the street as the old, dilapidated house began to burn. The Witch draped a shawl she procured from her coat pocket over her head and slipped on her gloves to better hide her green skin; the beacon of what she was. Malky sat at her feet and meowed in fright. She picked him up, held him close to her chest, and slowly petted him to calm him down. The fire frightened the Cat just like it would frighten any Animal – or animal.

The grief tore through the Witch then. Ripping at her soul and shattering her heart. She closed her eyes and fell to her knees, clutching Malky tightly and burying her head in his soft fur. She choked back sobs and didn't pull away as Fiyero kneeled down beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He held her close but as the fire grew bigger he knew they had to leave. Malky, sensing that they needed to flee, squirmed his way out of the Witch's grasp.

Fiyero scooped her thin frame up in his arms and she shrunk into the warmth his body provided her. She fell into a listless, almost-sleep as he carried her back to her home – ignoring the strange looks that he received – and struggled up the small stairwell. He set her on her bed and tucked her dirty sheets around her trembling, cold body. He dragged a chair from the table to her bedside and sat down; watching her, protecting her.

She opened her eyes to look up at him. She felt the tug of… something… inside of her. Was it love? She couldn't tell. She had been so long without any sense of true feelings that to experience so many in such a short time was overwhelming. Kimber's murder and Jay's suicide had filled her with grief and suffocating guilt while Fiyero's reappearance in her life had made her feel somewhat alive when all she wanted was to feel empty.

"I'm sorry," Fiyero whispered, "for losing him like that."

"Remember when… back at Shiz… I broke the looking glass, tried to kill myself with it?" the Witch asked; it was the first time she had voluntarily relived a memory of her past in years. It felt… odd.

Fiyero nodded. He couldn't find his voice to answer.

"I never realized, until Jay did it, how much it hurts the ones around you." She frowned at the memory, at the pain she had caused. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

The Witch nodded, letting her eyes slide closed, and soon found herself slipping into a fitful sleep. She felt comfortable, protected, with Fiyero near and she couldn't help but relish in the affection he was showering her with. It felt… different. He felt different. He wasn't like the other men she had wasted away her nights with. He seemed, as far as she could tell, like he really did care.

The Witch, however, could not shake the last thread of terror that still squeezed the life out of her barely beating heart.