No cliffies yet. Instead, there will be some more Frex... because I've written him mean so many times already and I wanted to do something different for a change whilst still keeping it realistic. (And of course there is Fiyeraba, too.)


29. Close to You

When Frexspar entered the room and found his daughter lying on the bed next to the sleeping Vinkun prince, he frowned. "Elphaba."

She jumped, apparently not having heard him come in, and she turned apprehensive dark eyes on him.

"I'd really much rather not have you sleep in one bed with a man," he told her.

Normally, she would have rolled her eyes at him and made a sarcastic remark; but she was very well aware of the precarious position she and Fiyero were in and she was not entirely certain Frex wouldn't call the Gale Force on them if she angered him, so she supposed it would be best to try her hardest to stay in his good graces. Still, his remark was ridiculous – for one, Fiyero was still too weak to sit up, let alone do other things; and she was already pregnant, anyway, so what was the point of sleeping apart?

All she said, however, was, "I'm sorry, Father, but I really just want to stay with him right now." Which was also true.

Was it her imagination, or did Frex soften a little? "I understand, but..."

"Father," said Nessa, who came wheeling into the room after him and had apparently overheard most of the conversation. She sounded amused. "What are you afraid will happen if they sleep in the same bed? Fabala falling pregnant?"

The governor's gaze was drawn to Elphaba's baby bump again and he sighed. "All right. I see your point."

Nessa smiled at him and moved closer to the bed. "How are you feeling?" she asked her sister – quietly, since she noticed that Fiyero was asleep.

"Okay, I suppose. Relieved," the young witch admitted. "Despite what the doctor said, I was worried he might not be okay, but he seems to be doing quite well. So I'm good."

Elphaba yawned and Nessa added teasingly, "And tired, by the looks of it." She studied the green girl and frowned a little. "You still haven't slept, have you?"

"I napped for a bit when you were staying with Fiyero," Elphaba admitted and Nessa tsk'ed.

"You need to get more sleep, Fabala."

"I'm fine."

"Elphaba," Frex said from where he was still lingering near the doorway. "You need your rest and so does your child. The doctor will be here soon to check on the prince once more, but I want you to try and get some sleep after that. You need to stay healthy."

She looked up at him, clearly taken aback, and even Nessarose was surprised. Frex merely nodded curtly at his eldest daughter before leaving the room and Nessa turned her gaze to her sister.

"You know," she said, "I think he does care about you."

Elphaba snorted. "Yeah, right."

"No, really," the younger girl insisted. "He didn't want to talk about you all this time, constantly insisting that you disgraced us, but he's been helping you now. He took you in, made sure Fiyero saw a doctor, and he keeps saying these things that suggest he cares... in his own way. He's never been good at showing affection, especially not towards you, Fabala, but maybe it's there nonetheless."

Their conversation was interrupted by the return of Frex, with the doctor in tow; and Elphaba lightly touched Fiyero's shoulder. "Yero? Wake up, the doctor is here."

He didn't stir and for a moment, she panicked a little; but then she remembered what a heavy sleeper he was and she brushed his hair away from his forehead, gently shaking him a little. "Fiyero?"

"Mmh."

"Wake up. The doctor has to look at your shot wound."

His eyes fluttered open and focused on her face. Blearily, he blinked a few times. "Huh?"

She couldn't help but smirk a little at how incoherent he always was when he just woke up. He'd never been much of a morning person, but sometimes she could swear it had only gotten worse with time. "Doctor," she said slowly, pointing at the man standing behind her. She pointed at his chest. "Shot wound."

He scowled at her. "I'm not an idiot," he muttered, even as she moved aside to give the doctor some room.

She chuckled. "Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that."

She was not faint-hearted at all, but when the doctor unwrapped the bandage from around Fiyero's chest, revealing the ugly shot wound beneath, she had to look away. The bullet had penetrated his lung and left his body through his back. If it hadn't been for her healing spell, he wouldn't have survived at all; as it was, her spell had managed to heal most of the damage the bullet had done on the inside and the doctor mainly concerned himself with Fiyero's stitches and keeping the wound clean.

The examination was done quickly and the doctor declared that Fiyero seemed to be healing well. "If there are any complications, don't hesitate to call for me right away," he told the Thropp family, "but it looks like he'll be just fine. He will need to rest for another while, though." He gave them some medication for Fiyero to take that would help with the pain and the healing process and then glanced at Elphaba. "Do you want me to have a look at you, too?"

"Why?" she asked, genuinely confused, and he nodded at her baby bump.

She felt sheepish. "Oh. Right. Um, sure. Why not?"

Frex insisted they use her own bedroom for that and she rolled her eyes but complied, leading the doctor there and allowing him to check her over. She watched a little anxiously as he listened to her baby's heartbeat and prodded her stomach. "Well?"

He glanced at her face and smiled reassuringly when he saw the worried look in her eyes. "Your baby seems to be perfectly fine, Miss Elphaba. You're about twenty-five weeks along, right?"

"Right," she agreed and he nodded.

"Have you felt any movements yet?"

"Not really," she said. "I don't think so, anyway. Is that normal? I was talking about it to Nessa the other day, but she wasn't sure if it was normal, either, and –"

"It's normal, Miss Elphaba," the doctor assured her. "Don't worry. I hear a strong heartbeat. It's possible that you don't feel anything yet, but it's also possible that you have been feeling your baby move, but you just didn't realise it." He looked at her. "Many women who are pregnant for the first time confuse their baby's movements with normal intestinal rumblings. Most women describe the feeling as a fluttery or tumbling sensation."

She thought about that. "Maybe. I wouldn't really know," she confessed. She hadn't paid that much attention to her pregnancy at all the past few weeks. "I've been a little busy with, um, other things... lately."

"Oh, of course." The doctor nodded. "I know. Or, well, I suppose I can guess. Just know that there is no need to worry. If you do want to feel your baby move, I suggest you try to pay attention to him during a quiet moment sometime – I'm almost positive you should be able to feel him – or her, of course. In fact, judging by his size now and from what I felt during your examination, it shouldn't be long before you could feel him move from the outside, too."

She thanked him and they returned to the guest room where the others were waiting. Frex, Nessa, and Fiyero all gave her a questioning look when she came in and she said, "Everything's fine."

Frex nodded briskly. "Good. I'll let you out," he said to the doctor and both men left the room.

Nessa merely glared pointedly at Elphaba. "Now sleep, Fabala," she ordered before wheeling herself out of the room as well.

Elphaba climbed onto the bed next to Fiyero again and he looked at her worriedly. "Is everything really fine?"

"Yes," she said. She lay down on her back and placed both her hands on her stomach, trying to concentrate on the baby.

He watched her for a while. "Fae?"

"Mmh?"

"Why don't I believe you?"

She turned her head to look at him. "What?"

"You're acting strange," he stated. "What did the doctor say?"

"I'm not acting strange. I'm trying to feel the baby move. The doctor said I should be able to." She focused on her stomach again, wondering what exactly she was supposed to feel and when. How often did a baby move in the womb, anyway? For all she knew, he was asleep right now and wouldn't move at all for a few more hours.

Fiyero's hand slid down her arm to where her own hand was resting. "Could I feel it, too?"

"I'm not sure," she confessed. "I don't even know what to look for myself."

They waited for a while and then Elphaba suddenly gasped.

"What?" Fiyero asked instantly. "Did you feel something?"

She nodded, unable to speak. It was strange, really – a fluttery sensation, like the doctor had said it would be, but stronger than she had expected. Now that she knew what it was, she realised she had actually felt this before, but she had indeed either not really noticed it or thought it to be something else. She'd been so focused on other things, flying around on her broom most of the time, that she hadn't been paying attention at all to what her body was telling her, but she felt it now and it was amazing.

"Where?" the prince asked and she guided his hand to the spot.

"I'm not sure if you can feel it," she said.

He kept his hand on the spot for a while, but shook his head, disappointed. "I don't feel anything."

"You will soon." She heaved a sigh and laid her head against his shoulder. There were a thousand things she wanted to talk to him about, but he was still hurt and he needed his rest, like the doctor had said. There would be time to talk later. "You should sleep. I'll go back to sleep in the other –"

"Stay," he interrupted her. His grip on her tightened. "Please."

She huffed, pretending to be annoyed, even though she was actually relieved. She hated leaving him, even though his life was no longer in danger and she would only be a room away. "Fine, then I'll just go to sleep right here."

He smiled, nuzzling her hair and inhaling the scent of it. It smelt like the almond and vanilla shampoo he knew she had always used back at Shiz – when they were a couple and she sometimes stayed over in his room, she'd left a bottle of it behind in his bathroom. He remembered sniffing it a few times when he was unable to sleep and he missed her, pathetic as that was. It seemed strange that the smell reminded him of Shiz, of happier times with her, and yet here it was in the middle of this crazy time in their lives. A lot of things felt like that these days – strange in their familiarity. It was like their lives had been divided in two, before and after the attack on the Wizard, and things from before just didn't seem to fall into place in the after. Things like Elphaba's almond and vanilla shampoo... and her father.

"Fae?" he whispered. "Why is your father helping us?"

She made an odd sound in her throat. "Honestly? I haven't got the faintest clue. Nessa seems to think he does care about me and he wants to somehow make it up to me, but I don't think so. I think he might be doing it to placate Nessa – she told me they've grown apart in the time I was gone because he hated talking about me. Or maybe he was afraid of leaving us on his doorstep and having the neighbours talk." She snorted softly. "Or maybe he really doesn't want to help us, but he can't bring himself to turn us in, either. He's not heartless, I know that. He's always loved Nessa and he's a good person, deep down inside – he's not cruel. He just... never saw past my skin."

"That's not "just"," he corrected her sharply. "How can you say that? How can you say he's a good person when he's treated you the way he has all your life?"

She shrugged listlessly. "I deserved it."

He was getting worked up now and he tried to push himself into a sitting position, fuming. "Elphaba, you know I do not –" He cut himself off with a gasp of pain and she was hovering over him in an instant, worry clouding her dark brown eyes.

"You're not supposed to sit up," she scolded him, helping him lie back down. "For Oz's sake, Fiyero, just be careful and take your time to heal!"

"Only if you stop saying such things!" he said hotly, although the effect was ruined a little by the fact that he was still wheezing a little because of the pain in his chest. "No-one deserves to be treated that way by her own father and certainly not you! You did nothing wrong! You didn't choose to be born the way you were and even if you did, he should have loved you regardless, because that is what parents do!"

"He's not even my real father." She lay back down and turned her back towards him. "I wonder if he knows about that... I wonder if maybe, deep down, he's always known. Maybe my skin – or what happened to Mama and Nessa – wasn't the only reason he treated me the way he did. Maybe he's always sensed that something was off about me... that I'm not his."

"Maybe." Fiyero shook his head. "But even then, he shouldn't have taken it out on you. Stop making excuses for him, Fae. There is nothing that can justify what he has done to you."

She didn't say anything and he sighed, reaching for her. "Fae, come here."

"I'm right here."

"I want to see your face."

She turned around and he drew her closer, holding her as best he could without jostling the stitches in his chest. "I hate the fact that you still feel guilty for so many things that weren't your fault," he murmured, resting his chin on the top of her head as she pressed her cheek against his chest – as far away from his shot wound as possible. "Honestly, I mostly hate the fact that I don't seem to be able to make you see that those things in fact weren't your fault. I could tell you a thousand times that Frex was wrong for treating you the way he did, that the milk flowers killed your mother and crippled Nessa and not you, or that it was my own choice to come with you that day in the City; but it's not making much of a difference, is it?"

She heaved a shaky sigh. "I don't know. It's just that... all my life I've believed that everything bad that happened was my fault – because I did something wrong or just because I was born at all, because I'm cursed..." She trailed off. She could hear his heartbeat speed up; even if she couldn't, she would have known it upset him when she said such things. It always did. To her, however, this was the truth. "Everyone always told me that," she said softly. "It's what I've always thought to be the truth. And I love that you're trying to change that, Yero, I really do, but it's not so easy to erase twenty years of blaming, bullying, and name-calling by pretty much everyone around me."

He stroked her cheek, resting his own cheek against her hair. "Then I guess I'll just have to spend the next twenty years trying to convince you," he whispered. He smiled a little. "Or thirty, or forty, or fifty..."

That made her smile the tiniest bit, too, and he closed his eyes. "I'll gladly spend the rest of my life doing just that, Fae. You know that, right?"

"I know," she whispered, because she did. Despite the fact that there were still many things she didn't believe when he told her, she did by now believe that he loved her. She didn't understand it, she didn't know how it was possible, and she was at times still afraid that he would come to his senses and leave her; but she did believe that he loved her and that was a lot more than she could have said a few years ago.


Also, I just want to say thank you to everyone who has nominated and/or voted for me and/or my stories in the Greg Awards! I really, really appreciated and it makes me really, really happy ^_^. If you haven't voted already, go and do so - for me or for one of the other amazing authors and/or stories on here! Fae'sFlower is hosting this year.