She was unconscious before she hit the ground – too tired to even make her way to her bed.

--

Chapter Twenty-Five:

Fiyero found her the next night as she was huddled underneath the thin sheets of her bed. She looked like she was about to cry with both despair and joy at the same time. He sat down beside her and she shrunk into his warm body. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No questions and I'll tell you no lies," she said. Fiyero nodded and fell silent. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and she shrunk even further into his hold. "Don't leave me," she murmured. "I love you too much. You don't understand Yero… Yero my hero."

Fiyero's heart melted at the nickname. "I'm not going anywhere," he whispered into her ear.

"You just don't know how much you've helped me."

He kissed her then. And their bodies became one as they intertwined together underneath her sheets. He knew when she was agitated; her lovemaking was far more fierce and rough when her emotions were barely being contained behind her iron-will. It seemed as if she was using the act of sex to expel all her anger and fury. It scared him a little, but he never broached the subject. He feared she was still not ready for such a thing.

When they were finished they laid together, face to face, chests heaving. Fiyero tangled his hand in her hair. "Down at the betting parlor I heard some interesting rumours," he said.

"Mh?"

"The young Emminent Thropp – Miss Nessarose – can walk now. I happy miracle some are saying. A great magickal spell by Glinda the Good others say. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

Elphaba shrugged. "No questions, no lies," she murmured as her eyes slid shut. She was tired from the fierce effort she had put into their lovemaking.

"You weren't working for the revolution these past weeks, were you?" His hand slid down her back, over the curve of her hip. "You went to Nest Hardings, didn't you? You visited your sister… helped her, didn't you?"

A shrug and an incomprehensible murmur was all he got in response. He sighed, letting his hand slid down the side of her leg – forgetting, for a moment, that he was not supposed to touch her there. However, the Witch herself seemed not to notice as she melted further into his body. He kissed her, a kiss that lingered on her lips as she unconsciously let her legs part slightly. His hand slid between her thighs and, to his shock, gently caressed over the many scars that Letozay and his paying customers had dug into her soft flesh. Fiyero's hand froze and his lips pulled away from hers. Elphaba opened her eyes and stared at him in confusion for a moment until she realized where his hand was on her body, what he could feel. He had dropped his gaze to stare at her naked body, the blankets had fallen from the bed hours ago, and the Witch followed his gaze to find that he could see – due to the moonlight that shined in through the window – the scars as clearly as he could feel them.

Elphaba's eyes widened in horror and she pushed him away. He tumbled off the bed and landed harshly on the wooden floor. "No!" she shrieked, grasping for the corner of the bed sheet that had tangled around the bed frame. She pulled it from the floor, wrapped it around her naked body, as she scooted backwards so that she hid in the corner between the two walls that the bed was shoved against. "You weren't! I told you! You were never! You shouldn't have seen! I told you not to!" she screamed, frantic.

Fiyero stared at her as realization began to settle in his mind. He was naïve, to some extent, but he was not that naïve about the world. He had been to enough clubs, enough betting parlors, full of drunken men and scarcely dressed woman, to know what those scars meant. "You sold yourself," he stated simply, in shock. He wasn't quite sure why he was so shocked for she had done the very same thing back at Shiz.

But it was not that severe, he reasoned with himself as he recalled how many scars had marked her thighs. It was never that many men.

"No!" the Witch shrieked. "No and no! You must go now! And never come back!"

He stood up, slowly, made his way back to the bed but Elphaba bolted from it; ran to the other side of the table. "You have ruined it!" she continued to scream. "You have gone and ruined it all! You need to go!" She pointed at the door with one hand as her other one clutched the bedding around her body – hiding her scars from him.

"Elphaba, Fabala, Fae," he whispered, making his way towards her. She ran from him, back towards the bed.

"Go! I am disgusting! You must go!"

"Fae…"

"Do you know how long?" she shrieked, terrified. "Two years! Maybe even three! I cannot remember anymore! He locked me in that damn room! Night after night they came! Men and women! Doing anything they wanted to me! Anything!" She hoped to send him away with the disgusting facts of what had been done to her. "I am used Fiyero! I am trash! I do not deserve you and you must go now!"

"Elphaba…" He reached for her; she skirted around his grasp and bolted to the cooking counter.

"I meet a need Fiyero! Nothing more! I am a person good only for sex! Don't you see? I am a whore!"

Then it all came together. The sick, sordid puzzle of her life seemed to fall into place in Fiyero's mind. Why she had never allowed him to come during the day. Why he wasn't allowed to touch her below her waist. Why she had been so utterly terrified that he would not come back after their first time together.

Why she was hurting so very, very much.

He reached for her, caught her as she tried to flee from him. He pulled her close, wrapped his arms around her lower back and her chest met his. He buried his head in her hair. "You were raped," he whispered as he took in the intoxicating smell of her hair all riled up by sex. "I do not judge you for that, who could?"

She tried to squirm away from him but he was too strong and he would not let her go. "I chose it," she muttered; her voice choked by her barely suppressed sobs. "At first I… I did it by choice."

"You did it in desperation."

"But I chose it!" She refused to believe him, refused to put the blame of her life on anyone else. "It was me and only me! I failed Fiyero! I became the whore because I chose too!"

He led her to the bed, laid her down. The blanket fell from her trembling body and he locked his eyes with hers as his hand traced over the scars on her thighs. "Did you choose to be locked in a room? Did you choose for those men to scar you like they did?"

"My choices led to that!" she shrieked, trying to get away but he would not let her go.

He let his gaze fall over her body. She felt bare in front of him as he seemed to be treating her now like all the other men had treated her. The lust in his eyes scared her a little but she was frozen by her fear and her shame. She could not move and he seemed to sense that. He lowered his head down to her thighs, slowly kissing the scars there. She shuddered and stared at the rafters before closing her eyes to try and stop her tears.

She could not.

They sneaked out of her eyes, trailing down the sides of her face and burning her skin. Fiyero looked up at her and brought his hands to her face. His hips settled on top of hers but not in any indication of sex – he simply wanted to be near her, to comfort her. He placed both his hands on the sides of her face and wiped the burning tears away with his thumbs. "You don't understand," she choked out, her eyes still closed. "You just don't. You can't. You never will."

"They raped you Fabala. No matter what you think, or what choices you made before then, they forced themselves upon you."

"No…" Her voice was weak and lacked the strength she prided herself on.

"Look at me," Fiyero ordered. "Open your eyes and look at me." She did. "I love you," he whispered. "I love every part of you. Green skin, secrets, scars, and all."

She shook her head. "You can't!" she screamed. He held her still even as she tried to thrash her way out of his grasp. She looked deranged – half insane – but even so Fiyero would not leave her. Not now, he loved her far too much to abandon her in such a desperate state. So he kept her pinned against the bed but it terrified her; reminding her of all the times she had been pinned against a bed, a wall, a street, and used for nothing but her body.

"They cut me open!" she shrieked. "They were drunk and they took a knife, splitting me open like some piece of meat just to… to use me!"

Fiyero's eyes were full of despair as he held her down. He was trying to keep her from harming herself but she was getting stronger as he was getting weaker. She was getting more energy, more fight in her, while he was growing more and more exhausted.

"Fae…"

"I am not a woman!" the Witch screamed at him. "I am not a person! I am a tool! I am an object! I do a job! Provide a service! There is nothing more to me than that! I will never be anything more than a whore!" She threw him off of her then; scrambled from the bed. She grasped for the blanket but Fiyero was quicker and grabbed it, trying to keep it from her. She ran to the other side of the kitchen table, trying to keep something between herself and Fiyero. "You must go now! You need to leave me be! You need to go!"

"Fabala…" He made his way to the opposite side of the table and simply looked at her. "Fae…"

"You will never understand!" she shrieked. "Now go!" She pointed at the door with a shaking hand.

"Fae please… try to calm down."

"Go!"

"I'm not going anywhere!" he screamed at her, regretting raising his voice as soon as he saw the hurt in her eyes. "Look, I'm sorry," he said quickly but she backed away from him. "I didn't mean to yell."

She closed her eyes and shook her head. "Go," she whispered. "Please… you have to go and never come back. You saw and you know and you have ruined it all!"

"It's not ruined Elphie. I don't care. Don't you understand? You were raped! That wasn't your fault! I don't blame you for it! I don't find you disgusting because of it!"

The Witch snapped her eyes open. "Go!" she screamed but even as the words left her mouth her body began to fail her. The emotions swarming inside of her overwhelmed her frail body and she had worked herself into a frenzy so fierce that she collapsed into a heap of green on the floor. She fell into the grip of one of her physical fits that took away her control of her body. Fiyero flew into action. Pushing the kitchen table and chairs out of the way and kneeling down beside her; placing his hands on the sides of Elphaba's face – trying to keep her head still to protect her head and neck. Her limbs thrashed about and her breaths came out in choked, shallow gasps. Her eyes were wide with fear and panic as the fit stole away her control of herself for just over seven long minutes.

When her body finally calmed down she found herself covered in sweat that stung her skin. Fiyero scooped up her now exhausted body in his arm and laid her on her bed. He took a relatively clean cloth from the cooking counter and used it to gently dab the sweat from her brow. She looked up at him with hazy eyes and simply watched as he worked on trying to get the stinging sweat off of her body. She raised a heavy hand to grab his wrist as his hand got dangerously close to her thighs. He looked at her in concern.

"Please," she muttered. "Just… don't."

Fiyero nodded and let the cloth fall to the floor. He crawled next to her naked, trembling frame and she shrunk into his body. He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close, and she buried her head into the soft flesh of his chest.

She cried.

The Wicked Witch finally gave into her carefully held back emotions. She sobbed. Big, fat, wet tears that burnt her face and traced salty paths down Fiyero's chest. She let the years of pain and horrible memories that haunted her dreams pour out of her as she felt like a blubbering toddler. Elphaba's body shook terribly as her pain overwhelmed her and Fiyero held her tighter, closer, and whispered nonsense words in a comforting tone to try and calm her down.

"I'm filthy," Elphaba choked out. "How can you stand to be near me?"

"You're not filthy."

"Do you know how many men have touched my body? Do you know how many men, and… and women, have used me? Have been… inside of me! My body is already mutilated beyond anything recognizable of a woman's body… and that is filthy enough on its own! But… the men. There were so many Fiyero. So many!"

"It's okay," Fiyero whispered. "It's going to be okay. I'm here now. I'll help you. It's going to be okay."

She raised her head, kissed him. She let the tears fall down her face as her mind sent her back in time to the years she was locked in Letozay's house. To the nights of terror and rape that shook her to her very core. "So many men," she muttered as her eyes slid shut and she shrunk back into Fiyero's hold. "You could never know."

"It's going to be okay."

"You don't know that."

"Calm down," he whispered. "I'm going to be right here, I'm not leaving you, okay?"

Elphaba nodded and in time her choking sobs calmed down and the force of her tears seemed to lessen in severity. Fiyero held her long into the night, even after she had fallen into a fitful sleep, and simply watched her – protected her. His heart ached for the pain she lived with, for the memories that haunted her. He could not fathom how she still functioned, how she had not succumbed to the insanity that was so close to consuming her soul. She had a strength he could never image attaining.

"You're so strong Fae," Fiyero whispered to the sleeping green form he held in his arms. "I only wish you could see it in yourself."