Elphaba:

I waited for my killers. How funny language is, that we possess those who would take our lives. We control them in speech where we cannot in reality.

But I was merely acting philosophical, since I knew that I was not going to die. At least, not that night, and not at the hands of the ragtag group coming for me.

Addie kept staring at me, suspicious of my outward calm. But inside, I was seething with emotion. Fiyero is coming, Fiyero is coming, Fiyero is coming! He had found a Crow that I once knew, who was willing to fly messages between us. Once night came, I slipped away myself on my broom and slept at his side, leaving him when sunlight began to make its way into his makeshift shelter. Days, I spent holed up in my library, Cassie rolling around and attempting to sit up herself on the floor, searching for a spell to change Fiyero back. I had found several that I thought might work if clipped and combined into one, but of course we couldn't try until this whole ordeal was over. I worked late into the night, until I was sure his companions would be asleep, before I left, and soon I had memorized several key spells and discovered that some of my own creations worked as well.

But still, it was not the same. The second week, we had worked out all of the details of our plot and I was lying in his arms, half-asleep. But I knew I had to return to Kiamo Ko; sunlight seeped through the canopy of trees like a poison.

"You have to leave me now," Fiyero said softly, like always reading my thoughts, "so that tomorrow, we will be together forever."

I shot up to a sitting position.

"Tomorrow?!" I gasped, sounding perhaps more like Glinda than I ever had in my life. He nodded, grinning. I embraced his straw body fiercely, memorizing the still-familiar feel of him against me, and I vowed yet again that I would remedy this half-life to which I had condemned him. I felt him lean into my neck and inhale me.

"I love you," he whispered.

"So much it hurts," I responded, grasping him tighter before we finally pulled apart. Tears welled in my eyes, and I brushed them ferociously away.

"Soon," I said, half a question.

"Soon," he replied, a promise.

Hurriedly, I darted out of the clearing and took off without breaking stride, flying blind as tears filled my eyes.

I have to let him go, I told myself again, so that I can have him back.

…

The next night was the only one I was unable to see him, for he was coming then. It was pure physical and emotional agony. I lay alone in bed, clutching a pillow, my entire body on fire with the need for him. My abdomen ached with longing. I was more useless than the schoolgirl in love I had once been. I had never known such sweet and painful yearning. Every atom of me begged for him to hold me again.

Cassie was the only thing that kept me sane, she and my drive to find a cure for him. The next morning, waiting still for him to come, I found the perfect spell and euphoria coursed through me. I ran out of my study, eager and joyous, and I called out,

"Fiyero! Look-" before I remembered that he was gone.

Come back to me, my love. My heart. My missing soul. Please, I am broken and lost and you are what holds me together.

Then Addie called to me from her room; she had sighted them. Filled with anticipation, I dashed out to the courtyard to fill a bucket with water, which I dragged halfway up the stairs before running into Addie, who turned Cassie over to me. I took my daughter in my arms and headed off to put her safely in her room before the others arrived to murder me.

…

Later

Dorothy:

I tiptoed into another room silently, scared out of my wits but determined to be resolute. The Witch's back was to me, and when I couldn't stand the silence any longer I involuntarily made a small noise in my throat and immediately froze in terror.

The Witch whirled around, and two things hit me like a ton of bricks.

First, she was young. Really young. She looked like Evie O'Sullivan from back home, only just a little older, Evie, the girl who had left town to go to college, which everyone had made a huge production of, and they'd had that party for her where Jimmy Brooks tried to slip a frog down my dress and stole the ribbon off one of my braids. But the Witch, she was just a girl, really, and green, yes, but other than that she was pretty, too. She was staring at me really fiercely with hazel eyes like Evie and all the O'Sullivan kids had, and her eyebrows were lifted like Aunt Em's when she's about to yell at someone, which scared me a little. Her nose was sharply pointed, but the word I thought of was noble. Her mouth wasn't giving away any of her thoughts, and that scared me too.

But the other thing, the more shocking thing, was the baby in her arms.

She held it gently, lovingly, cradled against her. The baby was the same color as me, not green, and had big blue eyes, but I could still tell it was hers.

She had a baby?

She was a pretty young woman like Evie O'Sullivan, and she had a baby, and this was the monstrous evil I was supposed to destroy?

And then I realized where I'd seen blue eyes like that baby's before: the Scarecrow.