A/N: Okay, this story's turn for an update. Yay!

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Glinda bit her lip and stared at the girl in front of her.

"Damn it!" she cursed, uncharacteristically, under her breath. "Outside?" she clarified. Cass nodded. "Damn." She forced the smile back to her lips and lowered her voice even further. "Go down that hallway," she murmured, "turn left. You'll find the back door. Unlock it. Come back to the living room, say a polite goodbye, go out the front door, go get them, bring them up through the back and run upstairs. Clear?"

Cass nodded and ran off to obey. Glinda waited until the girl returned, then the pair walked calmly back into her book group and Cass excused herself charmingly. Listening hard even as she spoke banally about the author's flowery prose, Glinda heard, a few moments later, the opening of a door and the sound of feet running quietly up stairs. She breathed a silent sigh of relief and darted a glance at the clock.

Fiyero and Elphaba had evidently started an argument while the other four had been waiting, Cass discovered once all five were upstairs, awaiting Glinda in a guest bedroom.

"I can do whatever I choose, Fiyero, no matter what the circumstances," Elphaba hissed haughtily.

"You cannot," Fiyero whispered firmly, "travel miles across the desert without guarantees of consistent food or water, bumping over stones, crossing mountains for Lurlina's sake, and through hostile territory no less, when you're pregnant!"

Elphaba made a rude gesture. Fiyero groaned and buried his head in his hands.

"I can and I will do whatever I want, and that's what I want, so that's what I'm doing," Elphaba announced.

"No, you can't!" said Fiyero, exasperated.

"Yes, I can!" she insisted. "I have the capability to do so, and the will, so I can. And besides, it's not hostile territory."

Fiyero made an odd, half-snorting sort of noise.

"Not to me," Elphaba went on, ignoring him. "Maybe to certain idiots who keep running around with certain weapons-"

"Oh, that's rich!"

"What is that supposed to mean?!"

"I run around with weapons? What about you?"

"Hardly the same-"

"How is it different?"

"Refusing to resolve ancestral feuds that are merely bloody and serve no purpose is different than working for a regime change when one lives under a corrupt, oppressive, dictatorship!"

"Not that different! And besides, I'm not actively engaged in a war with any of those tribes."

"And does it look like I've got the former government officials, many of whom are still in power, lined up against the wall right now?"

"What are they even arguing about?" asked Cass.

"I don't know," said Liir. "I forgot."

"Whether we can go to the Vinkus while she's pregnant," supplied Nor.

"Oh, right," said Liir.

"And do you know what else?" Elphaba asked, a triumphant look on her face.

"No, but I'm sure you do, since you know everything," Fiyero commented snarkily.

"Would you rather make the journey with a sobbing, equally vulnerable, shitting infant or a quiet, odorless, slightly less vulnerable considering the fact that I can fight without stopping to ensure that it is in a safe place fetus?"

Fiyero sighed.

"It's not a question of what I'd rather do," he said. "I don't want you to give birth in the middle of the journey, either."

"Damn it!" Elphaba threw up her hands and muttered under her breath.

"What did you say?" asked Fiyero.

"My kingdom for a knitting needle," she snarled, and stormed out.

"What does that mean?" Fiyero asked the teenagers. Liir and Nor shrugged. Cass looked uncomfortable.

"What is it?" asked Fiyero.

"She meant a knitting needle to, you know, to stick….you know…to, um, get rid of it," Cass explained uncomfortably.

"I don't think she was serious, though," Liir blurted quickly, covering his own shock at this revelation rather well.

"Shit!" Fiyero almost yelled. He dashed out of the room in search of Elphaba, whom he finally found curled on the bed in another guest bedroom.

"Stop curtailing my autonomy," she hissed when she heard him come in the room.

"If that means what I think it means, I don't think I am," he said.

She laughed a little, sat up, and made room for him to sit beside her. Dangling her legs off the bed, she leaned into him.

"I'm sorry that I said that," she said quietly, as if forcing the words out. "I wouldn't really do that. Not now, not with you here."

"You shouldn't have said that in front of Liir," he reprimanded gently. She moaned.

"I know. I know. I honestly don't think I can screw that boy up any more than I already have."

"He's not as bad as you are, so you must have done something right." She whacked him with a pillow.

"Thanks."

"Any time. I'm sorry, too" he admitted. "I'm sorry if you feel like I'm-"

"Curtailing my autonomy," she volunteered.

"Right. I just don't want to lose you again."

"I know. I'm a bitch. An angry, bitter, cynical, pregnant bitch of a witch."

"No, you're not," he said pulling her closer. She lifted her eyebrows.

"I'm not pregnant?"

"No! The other things."

She laughed. "I know." She gave him mischievous look. "But as for the pregnant part…"

"Yes?"

"Let's just make absolutely certain."

Finally rid of her book group, Glinda hurried blithely up the stairs, looking forward immensely to seeing her friend again. She opened the door of the guestroom where Elphaba and Fiyero had stayed before, and found Liir, Nor, and Cass staring at her.

"What- where are Elphie and Fiyero?" she asked.

"In there," Liir pointed to the adjacent wall with false cheerfulness. A noise emanated from it regularly.

"Three guesses what they're doing," added Cass. Nor gave her a disgusted look.

"Oh." said Glinda. "Well then, we'll just wait."