The Land of What-Might-Have-Been

by Straightjacketed

After spending so many years wishing that things had been different, what happens when, halfway through their final meeting, Elphaba and Glinda find themselves unexpectedly plunged into the worst of all possible worlds? AU.

41. Undisputable And Incontrovertible

A/N: Aaaaaaaaaaaargh! *gasp* I'm alive! Don't ask me how, but I'm alive. Remind me never to schedule anything for Christmas day ever again ladies and gents: trying to squeeze in time for writing between work, shopping, Christmas prep and everything else under the sun almost bloody killed me. And for most of January, I've been squashed flatter than a cheap placemat under one event or obligation after another, and it's only recently that I've been able to get a working battery into this jalopy of a laptop. So, lesson learned: hubris is often its own punishment. Of course, another thing holding up this chapter: it's a very talky one, and a very emotional one at that. Quite apart from the complicated work of getting the emotions and the dialogue to fit with the characters and their experiences, I can say without exaggeration that I actually felt a little uncomfortable during some of the more emotionally intense moments in this chapter. Hopefully, the quality of the overall work is worth it, though as always, you'll have to be the judge.

Thank you all for reading, reviewing, favouriting and following, in the meantime; I can only do my best to be more prompt and try not to tempt the fates by scheduling ahead of time.

Calliax: oh yes, I love battle royale scenes as well - especially with all the buildup that's required to make them work. Rest assured, there'll be a few more incoming in the next chapters. Thanks again!

CJ: It's always good to know I can fulfil the dreams of my readers - thank you so much for the lovely review! I agree, seeing Idina Menzel in a full-blown Complete Monster villain role would be interesting; I think that's one of the many things that inspired me to explore this idea in the story, particularly the Empress's special brand of crazy: it's easy to convey a gibbering lunatic, but it gets really interesting when the lunatic is as downplayed as possible. The Empress is undeniably mad as a hatter-fox-march hare hybrid on bath salts, but she conveys it in as organized a manner possible: she doesn't gibber and droll or convey anything that could make her citizens call her mad; her madness is conveyed in ideology, in dogma and dystopian ideals, in the "visionary" aspect of her character. In fact, if I can compare her to anything that doesn't belong to me, I'm going to have to pick Mr Teatime from Terry Pratchett's Hogfather - a mind like a corkscrew, astonishingly sharp but fundamentally twisted. Thanks you so much!

Nami Swann: Glad you enjoyed the battle and the final arrivals of all the long-awaited characters. Rest assured, you'll get to see more of Elphaba's reactions to Glinda... and much much more!

Special thanks to A.N. Tesla for providing me with some much-needed inspiration during these exhausting times.

Anyhow, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Wicked. Believe me, the last virtual reality scenario when I tried to pretend I was went very vershfisnhfksnmy

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---

If it hadn't been for the chill of the water around her, Glinda might very well have drowned.

She'd been a heavy sleeper all her life, and after the chaos of the battle, her exhaustion could have kept her unconscious even as she slipped beneath the waves; had the lake stayed as warm as it had been following the Empress's departure, Glinda would have remained fast asleep even as she'd drowned. Fortunately, the waters of the lake were now ice-cold: suddenly wide awake, she kicked her way to the surface, coughing and spluttering and struggling for a foothold on solid ground.

Unfortunately, the nearest solid ground appeared to be about twelve feet below the waterline; Glinda wasn't exactly a good swimmer at the best of times, and weighed down by her gear as she was, she probably would have ended up sinking right to the bottom if her arm hadn't caught the edge of something bobbing gently in the water alongside her. She had just enough time to recognize the disturbing texture of melded bodies and conjoined limbs before Kiln's spindly arms descended from the shadows overhead, winding themselves around her shoulders and hoisting her onto the makeshift raft.

"Easy now," he warned, as she tumbled aboard. "Try to avoid rocking the boat if you can; I've done my best to make it as buoyant as humanly possible, but there's only so much you can do with an ex-riot shield. Plus, the average human body generally can't contain this much gas without eventually rupturing, even with all the alterations I've made to the skin, so try to sit still."

The bodies that composed the raft did look worryingly bloated, so Glinda remained still as Kiln checked her for injuries, taking this as an opportunity to catch her breath and survey the surrounding area. Unfortunately, she didn't recognize this particular stretch of lake at all: it was obvious that they were still deep underground, but there was no sign of the Mourning Hall's carved idols or welcoming shoreline, and though the Hall's distinctive "singing" once again echoed through the caverns around them, distance had muffled it to a dull hum. Worse still, there was no sign of land anywhere; no shores, no islands, no tunnels leading to the surface, and the only phosphorescent fungi for light. They were adrift in the middle of subterranean ocean, with no way to dry land and no idea how to get out…

Or how we got here in the first place, Glinda realized.

"What happened back there?" she asked. "What happened to Elphaba? How did my wand start a cave-in How did we get here? Who… what was that… thing impersonatiating Colonel Gloss, and why did he bring us here?"

"The who I don't know just yet," said Kiln gloomily. "But as for the what… well, suffice to say the Amorphous League have finally picked a side in this conflict."

"You mean Omber finally got through to them?"

"It would seem so. Of course, they still haven't contacted the Mentor yet, so official negotiations haven't started yet; it appears they've decided to send an emissary to keep an eye on us for the time being and provide aid if necessary. Of course, they aren't the only neutral party taking an interest."

"What do you mean?"

"You saw the way the lake changed right before we collided with it, Glinda: the Mistress of Mirrors is also in on this little arrangement – probably the only reason why we're still alive. She teleported us through the reflections in the lake, sent us as far away from the cave-in as possible… from the looks of things at any rate," he added, somewhat hastily.

"Well, that's amazifying and everything, but if she's on our side then why hasn't she bothered to keep us together? Where's Elphaba? Where's Vara and Branderstove and the Scarecrow and the Tin Man? I mean, why didn't we all just wake up on a beach somewhere warm and sunny?"

Kiln shrugged. "As far as location goes, your guess is as good as mine."

Why do I not believe you when you say that?

"…but as far as getting separated goes," the doctor continued, "the currents down here are a little on the insistent side. We've been floating steadily north for the last ten minutes since we arrived; for all we know, the others could have emerged from the reflection-portal dozens of miles south from here."

Glinda gently hid her face in her hands. "In other words, they've probably been rescued by now," she grumbled wearily.

"Well, give it some time and we'll find out."

"If we're going to give it some time, is there any way of towing this thing south? I'm not in any particular hurry or anything, but I'd like to be on dry land sooner rather than later – the shield/raft is starting to creep me out."

"Don't worry, we'll be rid of all these bodies long before they start to decompose."

"It wasn't the decompositiazation that worried me, doctor. It's the fact that we're sitting on a raft made of dead people."

The mage-surgeon sighed deeply. "Glinda, they aren't going to bite you or anything like that – I wasn't trained in Polyandrum, I'll have you know. Besides, they're not corpses anymore: they're just timbers, ropes and seat cushions."

"Doctor, this seat cushion has eyeballs."

Kiln coughed loudly, and hastily hid his mouth behind his hand. "Honestly, Glinda," he scoffed, "What is there to be afraid of?"

Somewhere in the distance, a loud splash echoed across the cavern. A moment later, something rushed past their makeshift lifeboat, sending a flurry of ripples dancing across the surface of the lake. With only the weak glow of the cave fungus to see by, the water was pitch-black and almost opaque, but Glinda got a brief but nerve-jarring glimpse of glistening red flukes slicing through the lake as the creature dived beneath the raft.

There was long and distinctly terrified pause as the two of them stared down at the ripples expanding across the lake. Eventually, Glinda managed to swallow her fear just long enough to whisper, "What… what kind of things live in these sorts of lakes?"

Kiln, who was already drawing a bone harpoon from his left arm, thought for a moment. "Well, I'm a mage-surgeon, not a zoologist," he remarked. "But given that some of these tunnels can reach as far as No-Man's Land, I'd imagine we could see anything from cave sharks to…" He took a deep breath. "To the Hellion," he finished.

"You're serious?"

"Does this really sound like something I'd joke about?"

"I don't know, I've never joked about encounterating underground sea monsters while sitting on a riot shield-turned-raft made of corpses. Is there any way of moving this thing without having to jump out and push?"

"Do you have a backup wand, by any chance?"

Glinda winced, remembering how the obsidian wand had exploded: it had been such a beautiful wand, too. "No," she admitted.

"Then unless you can master wandless magic in the space of sixty seconds or less, we're both fucked."

A moment later, the water rippled again – and then erupted. This time, nothing was left to the imagination: the monster lurched upwards out of the lake with a roar, seizing the raft on all sides with a legion of ugly crimson tentacles as its massive jaws opened wide to swallow them-

"Honestly, you people," grumbled Branderstove. "Every time, every damn time I take off my exoskeleton for a paddle, beachgoers and other odious bystanders seem compelled to start screaming about sea monsters! Good gods, haven't either of you dealt with scarier things in your time?"

Glinda finally released the breath she'd been holding, only to let out a loud, involuntary squeak along with it.

"Apparently not. Anyway, I have been duly appointed as your rescue vehicle and chauffer in clear violation of the contract signed on behalf of this shitpile town. Your gratitude is much appreciated, and by that I mean I expect your immediate grovelling thanks: failure to respond with anything other than cringing self-abasement will be met with immediate and grievous bodily harm, which is apparently all I have left to keep me going on the days between failed attempts at revenge."

He sighed. "Sorry. It's been a very long day. Anyway, do you want to let go of each other at some point in the dim and distant future?"

There was a pause, as Kiln and Glinda gently extracted themselves from each other's arms and tried to look as nonchalant as possible. "Erm, I don't suppose you've seen the others, have you?" Kiln asked loudly.

"Dr Coil and I have been gathering them together for the last few minutes," the Leviathan explained. "Some are still unaccounted for, so we've made camp on an island a couple of miles south of here while we continue searching."

Kiln blanched. "Dr Coil?"

"Yes, Dr Coil. I thought you'd remember him; I've no doubt the two of you will want to reminisce on the good old days when you could just rip handfuls of flesh off defenceless businessmen with impunity, but that'll have to wait until we've finished gathering the others and patching them up. So, if you'll kindly follow me-"

"Have you found Elphaba?" Glinda asked.

"As a matter of fact, we have – one of the reasons we were looking for Kiln here in the first place. Now, if you'd kindly sit on my shoulders, I think it's time we attended to our critical labour shortage back at the island. Oh, and before we get going, this is yours…"

One of his tentacles slid upwards from the depths, and pressed something distinctly jade into Glinda's outstretched hands: despite the splattering of dirt across its lips, it was still clearly recognizable as Glinda's mask.

Branderstove smirked. "I've no doubt your friend will want an explanation for why you're on the front lines, Miss Glinda – a very detailed explanation at that. You'll want to look your best when the time comes to face the wrath of Elphaba, I'm sure…"

---

Elphaba's return to consciousness was a languid one.

For what felt like years, she floated in and out of sleep, opening her eyes just long enough to take in the sight of concerned faces hovering over her before slumping back onto her pillow and slipping back into dreamless slumber. Often, she tried to speak, but her throat was so raw from screaming that she could barely manage a whisper; and when she tried to reach out for some of the more familiar figures hovering on the periphery of her vision, her trembling arms were gently pushed back beneath the blankets, soothing voices urging her to save her strength until she finally fell into blackness once more. But as delirious and frustrating as this experience was, at least it was better than the nightmares she had to contend with when she did dream.

Again and again, she dreamed of the cemetery, the endless graveyard of victims who'd died at her hands or on her account, now lit from above by the ice-blue eyes of Dorothy's nightmares, hovering above the endless field of headstones like binary moons in some sick parody of the night sky. And on every visit, a horde of victims chased her from one end of the necropolis to the other, a veritable army of fallen friends, long-dead relatives, innocent bystanders and casualties of war all charging after her, baying for her blood. But no matter how far she ran or in what direction she fled, her path always ended in a cul-de-sac: there, Glinda would be waiting for her, a bullet-riddled corpse dredged from the lake, still soaked to the skin, still weeping softly.

"I warned you," she would say. "I told you this would happen if you didn't join them. I thought you loved me, Elphaba. I thought you would save me... I thought you would do the right thing…"

Invariably, Elphaba ran for her life – only to walk straight into the waiting arms of her mother, a desiccated corpse in funerary garb. Mother would always sigh contentedly and say, "At last, we're a family again," right before she drove her fingernails into Elphaba's eyes. And in that moment, the dream would end and Elphaba would wake up screaming, barely aware of anything except the pain rippling down her back, and perhaps the sound of Dr Kiln shouting "Hold her still! Hold her still!"

It was impossible to guess how long this went on; for all she knew, it could have lasted for days. In the few glimpses she caught of the world around, she saw that they were still deep underground, wherever they were, and with no means of measuring the passage of time. She'd have asked the others if they had a pocket watch on hand, but her throat was still too weak for coherent speech.

One way or the other, Elphaba opened her eyes one day, fully expecting to remain hovering in limbo for perhaps a minute before lapsing back into unconsciousness once more; but instead of nodding off, she found herself suddenly wide awake. Blinking in confusion, she took in the world around her for the first time: wherever she'd awakened, it was pitch black overhead, the improbably distant ceiling almost invisible behind a dense mantle of shadows. Closer to ground level, someone had lit a campfire, illuminating a miniscule island of jagged rocks and boulders sitting in the middle of a vast black lake; Elphaba was lying on a makeshift hospital bed somewhere at the centre of the tiny islet, well away from the shoreline and whatever lurked in the waters beyond. And just on the periphery of her vision, the gargantuan bulk of Branderstove sat in silence, gloomily tending the campfire.

Elphaba tried to sit up, but the muscles in her back gave out after the first few inches off the ground. Groaning, she tried again, this time scrabbling for a handhold on the crags surrounding her; unfortunately, her hands were practically numb with pins and needles, and she once again crashed back into the inflatable pillows. Exasperated, she opened her mouth to call out to anyone in earshot, but all that emerged was a spate of coughing that practically flayed her throat bare.

A split-second later, Kiln's bald dome dipped into view, concern written on every cadaverous feature. "Try not to move, Elphaba," he advised. "Those puncture wounds on your back didn't heal easily; shift about too much, and you could tear the whole lot open again."

"Where are we?" Elphaba croaked.

"Still in the Mourning Hall… I think."

"You don't know?"

"Well, I'm reasonably sure this cave network was part of it, and I'm pretty confident that this is the same lake. Trouble is, the Mourner's Lake isn't the only subterranean body of water in the area. The way we were teleported, we could be in the middle of the Loam River for all I know."

"Teleported? What the hell happened back there, Kiln? And where's-"

"Elphie!"

Glinda shot into view, blonde curls bouncing in all directions, her expression jubilant despite the weariness written plain on her face. She was still dressed in her crumpled battledress, her jade mask now hooked over the coil of her belt, and much to Elphaba's surprise, she was missing her usual bevvy of cosmetics and makeup; she hadn't even bothered to put on lipstick.

And for good measure, you're here on the battlefield after everything I did to try and keep you safe, Elphaba thought wearily. What are you doing here, Glin? How did the Mentor convince you to follow me? What did the deranged old cow think she could get out of this? And how in the blood-streaked syphilitic depths of hell did you manage to wield the kind of power I saw on the battlefield?

"Are you alright?" Glinda babbled excitedly. "I mean, Kiln said you'd be alright but you just kept screaming in your sleep and I was just so worried and you've been like this for the last day and a half and we haven't seen anyone and we don't even know where we are and I thought you were going to-"

"I'm fine, Glinda, I'm fine," Elphaba reassured her. Then she realized what Glinda had just said: "A day and a half?" she wheezed. "What the hell happened?"

Kiln explained the situation as quickly and succinctly as he could, while Glinda went about helping Elphaba into a sitting position – allowing her to get a good look at the other inhabitants of the island. It turned out the survivors of the cave-in consisted of roughly three-quarters of the group that had followed the Empress into the caverns: the Tin Man and the Scarecrow were still unaccounted for, as was the shapeshifter that had replaced Colonel Gloss. Over the course of the last few hours, however, Branderstove and the inexplicably oversized Dr Coil had managed to dredge a few other survivors from the waters of the lake, most of them members of the defending army swept into the depths by the cave-in. Today, Coil was still trawling the lake for other survivors, while Branderstove and the "reinforcements," as he'd sarcastically dubbed them, now busied themselves as best as they could around the island, some struggling to dry themselves by Branderstove's meagre fire, others anxiously surveying the lake for unwelcome arrivals. By and large, they were a sorry-looking bunch, consisting only of Vara, Captain Wolton, Dr Corone, the bodyguards Arkady and Gerhardt…

"And half a militiaman," Kiln concluded.

"You're joking."

"I only wish."

He pointed to something just behind Elphaba; peering over her shoulder, she saw a heavily-bandaged shape lying prone on the rocks, almost lost in the heap of pillows cushioning its back. He was missing both arms and both legs, the ragged stumps of his limbs barely emerging from the blankets that shrouded him; it was, of course, Chief Billiam Marchfly, somehow still alive even after all the punishment the Empress had inflicted on him.

"We found him on the other side of the lake," Kiln explained. "He was trying to swim, if you can believe it – apparently had some mad idea of hunting down the Empress and avenging the death of the mayor with nothing but the knife between his teeth. Gods only know how he'd ever get into stabbing position, but we haven't been able to talk him out of it: I've had to sedate him just so he doesn't try to leave before we've finished patching him up."

"Does that include giving him new limbs?"

"Well, Corone and I are still going through preliminary operations – amputating vitrified tissue and sterilizing malignant enchantments – but that is on the agenda, provided that Marchfly himself consents to it. I mean, you saw how twitchy he got about the possibility of being press-ganged into the Irredeemables: imagine his reaction to waking up with a set of arms he never asked for. The last thing we need now is another lunatic to add to our overwhelming surplus."

"Don't you think it'd be safer to wait until we get back to Loamlark? Call me crazy, but I think that sterile facilities might be called for in a situation like this; besides, where are you going to get the raw materials to make all these extra limbs?"

Kiln's frown deepened. "In all honesty, Elphaba, the odds of getting back to Loamlark aren't looking good: we still haven't found any way past the cave-in; if there are any search-parties looking for us, they have no idea where we are and no route past the cave-in either. True, we've been fortunate enough to recover a radio from the lake, but we haven't been able to get a signal through all this rock. Long story short, we're on our own. If we intend to get out of here on our own steam, we're going to need all the help we can get; another pair of hands, so to speak, is desperately needed at this point. So, we sterilize the area as best as we can and get to work.

"As for raw materials," Kiln added with a grin, "I may have used up most of my reserves in the last day or so, but… well, let's just say the water is full of replacement parts. Our ex-riot shield, for one thing, and a number of other unfortunates drowned in the lake. I mean, where did you think I got all these cushions from?"

Elphaba very gently closed her eyes, and tried not to think about the pile of inflated human skins she was currently lying on. "Doctor," she sighed, "Has it ever occurred to you that there are some things I honestly don't want to know about?"

"Sorry. But that's the long and short of it: we won by default, we're trapped, and we've got nothing to eat but fish; end of story."

"Not quite."

"Beg pardon?"

"That's not quite the end of the story, Doctor Kiln: you've left out a few important points – things I actually want to know about." Elphaba paused, allowing her anger to slowly build for a moment or two before continuing: "For example, what the hell wasGlinda doing in the middle of a war zone AFTER I SPECIFICALLY TOLD THE MENTOR THAT I WOULDN'T STAND FOR IT!?"

Suddenly, everyone on the island was staring at her, but at that point, Elphaba was beyond caring. "The only reason why I agreed to work with your boss in the first place was because she promised me that Glinda would be kept out of this war," she hissed. "I made it very clear that if either of you made any attempts to use her as a weapon, then the deal would be over. So, I ask again, what the hell is she doing here risking her life without my knowledge or consent?"

There was a long and awkward pause, as Kiln visibly struggled with the urge to run for his life. "I know this looks bad," he began, tentatively, "But I can honestly say that the only reason why you managed to survive this latest battle without self-destructing is because of Glinda."

Glinda blinked in astonishment. "It is?" she asked blankly. "Hang on, does this have anything to do with the crystals in your back?"

Elphaba's heart sank. Oh god damn it. The cat's out of the bag now.

"I'm going to have to explain things for both of you, aren't I?" Kiln groaned.

"Please do."

"Alright. To cut a long story short-"

"When is anything ever a short story with you?"

Kiln actually had the temerity to give Elphaba a dirty look before remembering himself. "To turn an epic into a novella," he continued wearily, "the Mentor was intending to pit Elphaba against the Empress all along, specifically due to her potential for raw magical power. Unfortunately, we didn't have the time to wait for all that potential to awaken on its own, so we had to skip a few steps with certain performance-enhancing drugs."

"So that's why Elphaba started sprouting crystals?" Glinda asked. "That's what happens when the drug goes wrong?"

"You… could say that, I suppose. Erm, technically, it's also what happens when the drug works properly: it-"

"Crystalizes the flesh, causes crystals to grow across the body, gradually transmutes user into mass of magic-conducting minerals, blah-blah-blah," Elphaba concluded. "There, end of story. Now, Kiln, it's time you explained why exactly you and the Mentor chose to renege on the deal."

Another long-suffering sigh from Kiln. "I just love how it was suddenly my idea too," he muttered under his breath. "Ahem. Once they've left the early stages of crystallization behind, witch-crystal users may – the key word being may – experience brief but dramatic periods of chemical and thaumaturgical instability. During this time, the users' powers are temporarily expanded even beyond the enhanced norm; unfortunately, the body's chemical makeup becomes extremely volatile: if exposed to too much magic, crystallization spirals out of control – sometimes fatally… and during your time on leave, a routine blood test showed that you were entering an instability stage."

"And you didn't think to tell me about this earlier? You didn't think, "oh well, the horse has officially bolted, I might as well tell Elphaba all about how her blood's going to turn to nitroglycerine in a fortnight – on top of all the other potential health problems she's going to be suffering over the course of treatment." What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Elphaba, if everything went according to plan, you wouldn't even need to know about it: the overwhelming majority of subjects never experience this particular development, and those that have only did so under very, very rare circumstances; near as I can tell, the factor that kicked off this little debacle was your battle with the Champion – more specifically, the sword shards he left in your hands." He paused for breath. "We planned for this, too, though: if you entered an instability stage, we would have just kept you on medical leave until the danger passed. Unfortunately, the Mistress of Mirrors supplied us with information suggesting that Unbridled Radiance was preparing for a major assault on Loamlark, and the Empress was leading the troops. So, the Mentor decided to risk sending you back to the front in the hopes that you'd be able to counter her – and because she couldn't put you at risk without a failsafe, she also supplied Glinda with an energy sink."

"A sink?" Glinda echoed. "You're talking about my wand, right?"

"In a word, yes. Essentially, a thaumaturgical conductor designed to draw off excess magical current from a pre-set target: as long as the two of you were in the same vicinity, Elphaba would be able to use her powers without risking a meltdown, and you'd be able to make use of the surplus energies."

Elphaba's temper flared once again, and only Glinda's hand on her shoulder kept her from exploding once again. "And why exactly did you have to give the sink to Glinda?" she asked coldly. "You could have given it to any of the magicians in my platoon – you could have used the damn thing! So why was it so important to have Glinda dicing with death on your behalf? Think very carefully before you respond."

"Again, I love that it's now my behalf all of a sudden."

"Kiln…"

"Alright, alright. The intrinsic magical energies of an individual can't be easily siphoned off: even if they aren't consciously aware of the process at work, the subject psychically resists the draining of magic every step of the way, not unlike the body's immune system reacting to an infection. If the sink is to work, the user has to be someone implicitly trusted by the target-"

"Hence Glinda."

"Look, I know this sounds bad, but Glinda's safety was totally assured: she had the protection of me, Vara, you – and all the power she could channel via the sink."

"Right up until the damn thing exploded."

"Well, there's only so much energy a sink can contain, and only so much energy the user can project. At critical mass, sinks like this are designed to either vent their stored energies in one dramatic blast, or self-destruct: when the Empress figured out our performance-enhancing drug of choice, the energy started pouring in quicker than the sink could store it, and you started overloading. So, we had to re-use it as a grenade."

Glinda's face fell. "So I wasn't really doing anything special in the last battle, was I?"

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, you coped well with the influx of raw power-"

"And I'd imagine that's because she had some magical training prior to the battle." Elphaba smiled mirthlessly, lips twitching as she struggled to suppress another outburst. "Am I right?" she asked quietly.

There was a very uncomfortable pause.

"AM I RIGHT?"

"Elphie, I-"

"Not now, Glinda. Kiln, you can answer this now or we can see just how quickly you can reattach your limbs. Has Glinda been trained in magic in preparation for front-line combat, yes or no?"

"…yes," said Kiln softly.

"And how long has this been going on?"

"According to the Mentor, the training began during your second day in Loamlark."

"Brilliant. Just brilliant. You know, I actually thought it was bad enough when you were given the job of following me around and drugging my coffee, if only because I thought your boss couldn't stoop any lower than that. Now…"

Elphaba would have gotten to her feet at that point, if only so she could bellow her next words in Kiln's face, but a sharp pain in her back sent her concertinaing backwards into the pillows. So, still fuming with rage, she continued as best as she could: "Now you tell me that she couldn't even wait for a whole forty-eight hours before stabbing me in the back and reneging on our agreement. I told her I didn't want Glinda being trained in combat magic; I told her I didn't want her caught up in this war; I told her I didn't want her getting hurt! In the last battle, she could have been killed in Lurline only knows how many ways – shot, stabbed, burned, transfigured, transmuted, cursed, electrocuted, disintegrated, the list goes on and on – and that's just what you and the others could have defended her from. Do you think you'd have been able to save her from being crushed when the roof caved in, or drowned in the lake, for instance? Did you and the Empress have a plan for that, exactly?"

Kiln smiled with all the mirth and good humour of a man at the gallows. "At the risk of sounding unnecessarily sarcastic," he said wearily, "I didn't have a plan for anything, Elphaba. I'm not a schemer: if I was a schemer, I wouldn't be here. I'd be at home, directing events from afar while ensuring that the Mentor actually receives treatment this week and doesn't get a chance to indulge her ongoing death wish. As it is, I'm currently standing several hundred feet underground on a tiny island in the middle of a lake full of waterlogged corpses and overfed cavefish, being yelled at by yet another patient with a death wish, and wondering how I'd become the second half of a duumvirate without even knowing about it. Seriously, how is this my plan as well all of a sudden?"

"Because it wouldn't have gotten off the ground if you hadn't given it your blessing!"

"There are other mage-surgeons in the Deviant Nations, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Yes, and I bet they've been lusting after the Mentor since their university days as well. Tell me, does the vague promise of sexual favours guarantee their unquestioning loyalty, or is that unique to you, Dr Boq?"

A look of affronted, disbelieving shock blossomed across Kiln's pallid features; then, his frown deepened into a furious scowl. "That," he snarled, "was uncalled for. Worse than that, in fact: that was beneath you."

"Kiln, Heart, Boq – whatever the hell you feel like calling yourself, it doesn't matter right now. Listen to me very carefully: you and your secret l-"

"The word you're looking for is "employer," and nothing else."

"Fine. You and your employer have been pulling my strings ever since I stumbled into this misbegotten excuse for a country, and I took a dim view of all the scheming even before I found out you were intent on getting my best friend killed. Now I find out that you and the Mentor decided to force Glinda into joining the war effort behind my back-"

"Elphie…"

"Not now, Glinda. Kiln, if you think that rubbing salt in a few open wounds is beneath me, then you really have no idea how lucky you are: the only reason why I haven't killed you here and now is because we're still in danger and mage-surgeons are in short supply. And as for the Mentor, the moment we get back to civilization, the deal is off: you can forget about your so-called secret weapon, and you can forget about me. If conscription really appeals to you so much-"

"Elphie, I-"

"-you can practice it on your own damn citizens and see how much they like it. Glinda and I – we're out of your hands, we're out of this war, and we're out of this cesspit of a dimension. I don't care if I have to track down Lintel and scrape the inside of his dead skull clean, but I'll find a way back to Oz – without your help."

"Are you going to do this before or after you finish taking revenge on the Empress?" Kiln inquired coldly. "I mean, you seemed quite intent on killing her regardless of how many crippling injuries you'd sustained in the meantime. Are you really just going to give up now?"

There was a short pause as Elphaba realized her mistake, before burying her head in her hands with a long, drawn-out snarl of frustration.

"I didn't think so."

"Going for the hard sell again, I see. Well done, good point, but you're not going to force me back into your war. Oh, and before you even think about it, whatever you threatened Glinda with won't work on-"

"Elphie, I wasn't f-"

"-and all of a sudden, it's my war, as if I owned the fu-"

"Shut it, both of you! Now, Doctor, I don't need the Mentor's help to get revenge, and I certainly don't need to spend the rest of my life under the thumb of another dictator; if you think the only way I can make the Empress pay is by siding with that glorified slave-driver you've been drooling over for most of your adult life, you've got another think coming, and if you're honestly thinking that I'd let her press-gang Glinda into military service-"

"ELPHABA, LISTEN TO ME!" Glinda screamed.

Once again, everyone on the island was staring at them. There was a distinctly shell-shocked pause, as the echoes slowly rippled out across the lake, growing steadily fainter with every repetition; then, Glinda finally took a deep breath and said, "I wasn't press-ganged, Elphie. I wasn't threatened, bullied, coercified, or conscriptiated. Nobody forced me to be here today, and nobody made me do anything against my will: I wanted the training, and I wanted to be here so I could help you. Do you understand?"

An even longer silence followed this little confession. Eventually, Elphaba managed to recover just long enough to ask, "Why? Why would you possibly want this?" She gestured vaguely at the cavern around them, at the ruins of the battlefield somewhere just beyond the cave-in. "After everything you went through in Exemplar, I'd have thought you'd have at least been willing to stay as far away from this mess as possible – as if you'd ever had any interest in it before – so why did you sign up for this? Why didn't you tell me about it?"

Glinda had the decency to look embarrassed. "Well, I didn't want you to worry over nothing," she admitted. "I mean, to begin with, it was just training. I didn't think it was going to go anywhere for a while if at all, and when it turned serious, I was warned not to tell you anything about it-"

"Oh, of course," Elphaba fumed.

"As for the why, I already told you I wanted to help. Besides, I spent my entire career in Oz doing absolutely nothing while you put your life on the line for the sake of Animal Rights; now you're part of an even bigger war, and I'm supposed to sit around doing nothing while you dice with death again? I thought it was time I did something for a change!"

"Glinda, has it ever occurred to you that the only reason why I took this position in the first place was because it meant you'd be kept safe? Now I find that you've been fully prepared to throw your life away because you think you might help-"

"But I did help!" said Glinda indignantly. "The sink worked, didn't it? You're still alive, aren't you?"

"And how many times could you have been killed in the last battle? Look, I don't care how glorious the Mentor made the idea sound when she-"

"Before you even say it, I wasn't forced! And I wasn't tricked into it, either-"

"Oh for gods' sakes, that doesn't matter! I don't care how she convinced you to sign up for this, what she promised you in return, or how grand she made this little mission sound: it's not worth it if you end up getting killed!"

Glinda's expression briefly flickered between frustration and shock, before finally settling on something that Elphaba had never seen on the amateur witch's face before: anger - not the usual petty forms of irritation and annoyance she'd seen cross her face at Shiz, but genuine righteous fury.

"So it's only okay when you put your life on the line?" she snapped. "Nobody else is allowed to take risks, is that it? I mean, you think I'm throwing my life away by following you out here, but what about you and this witch-crystal stuff?"

"What about it?"

"You said this stuff gradually turns you into living crystal: I mean, I know there's a risk of it killing you in these instability stages, but what about at other times? Could the drug actually kill you even if you were perfectly stable?"

"I don't see how that's-"

"Yes," Kiln interjected. "As the crystallization continues, it's very possible for it to overtake vital organs: the risk rises with every stage of transmutation, you see, and the instability stage is just the first major spike in the graph."

Glinda took a deep breath, and promptly rounded on Elphaba again. "You knew about this and you didn't tell me? And you think I'm the one throwing my life away?"

"This is different, Glinda," said Elphaba – a little more defensively than she'd intended. "The crystallization might kill me; the key word being might, given that it's only a distant possibility unless Mr Elastic Scalp here has any more nasty surprises up his sleeve. On the other hand, getting shot in the head will kill you. Being crushed in a cave-in will kill you. Drowning will kill you. Need I go on?"

"What, and they won't kill you? Or any of the other men and women stationed up here? A lot of people were killed in the last battle – I should know, I've seen about three dozen of them floating past us over the last couple of hours. You could have been one of them, even if the Empress hadn't shown up."

"You're missing the point: I don't take unnecessary risks-"

"What, breaking ranks and charging the Empress without even conjuring a shield doesn't count as an unnecessary risk? And what about the secrets? Is there any particular reason why you didn't tell me about the crystallization?"

"Because I didn't want you to worry!" Elphaba all but shouted. "Because I didn't want you to get any ideas about joining me at the front – except now I find out that you were planning on doing exactly that all along! For Oz's sake, Glinda, don't you understand? All of this – the agreement, the witch-crystal, the secrecy, the fighting – all of it was to keep you safe, and to make sure you got home in one piece! It's too dangerous for you out here!"

"Oh for Oz's sakes! The last time the chance for us to work together cropped up, we'd have been two witches up against the Wizard, his army, and just about every single law-abiding citizen in Oz, and we'd have had no support from anyone except the Animals. Now we've got the support of the Deviant Nations and all their armies, along with a local militia group, a team of hobbyist shapeshifters, and the Mistress of Mirrors herself! So why is it suddenly too dangerous for us to work together this time?"

"Look, even if the odds had been in our favour during the last battle, even if we'd had enough soldiers to repel the entire invading army, we'd have still suffered casualties, and you could have been one of them! And another thing, this has nothing to do with the last time!"

"It has everything to do with the last time! Elphie, when you first suggested rebellion against the Wizard, you wanted me to join you! Don't you remember? Because I do – and I remember how sad you were when I turned you down! I spent the next year regretting my choices that day, and now we have a chance to work together as a team, you want me to stay behind and do nothing all over again! Why won't you let me help you?"

"Because I don't want to lose you as well!"

This time, the silence that followed was all-consuming: even the echoes died in mid-flight. For twelve seconds, everyone on the island was lost for words, and Glinda was left staring at Elphaba in something not unlike alarm. In all honesty, Elphaba couldn't blame her: she hadn't meant to say those words out loud, and more to the point, she hadn't even been intending to speak at that moment. But with most of the island now staring at her and Glinda clearly waiting for some kind of explanation, it was too late to opt for dignified silence… and as sound slowly returned to the cavern, something about the haunting "music" echoing through the tunnels overhead seemed to loosen Elphaba's lips further.

"I don't want to lose you as well," she said quietly. "The Empress might have been wrong about a lot of things, but she got this much right: everyone close to me ends up suffering or dying or worse, and all because they got tangled up in my sad excuse for a life: I've just about lost count of all the Animals who were killed or captured in last-ditch attempts to cover my escape; Nessa's life fell to pieces thanks to my rebellion, and that was before the Wizard had the bright idea of having her assassinated to draw me out of hiding; and Fiyero… well, you know how that ended. I don't want anyone else running to my rescue, Glinda; I don't want any more "heroic sacrifices," I don't want any more friends targeted by association, I don't want anyone else hurt because I tried to magic their problems away, and I don't want you dying on my account." Elphaba took a deep breath, and found herself suddenly blinking away tears. "I thought we could be partners once, I really did, I thought we could change the world together… but that was when I thought I could help anyone without it blowing up in my face, when I could…"

She choked back a sob. "… When I could still believe I was unlimited. Now I know better: I can't help anyone, I can't heal anyone, and I can't save anyone. I'm a destroyer, just like the Empress said. I think I've known the truth for years now, but I've never had the courage to admit it to myself – not until that day at Kiamo Ko. I almost did what had to be done, then; I almost made certain you'd be safe… but then we got trapped in this reality and I started lying to myself all over again."

"Elphie, you were going to let a mob rip you to pieces! You were going to kill youself, for Lurline's sake! How would that have-"

"At least you'd be safe – safer than you are now, at any rate! If you follow me into this war, Glinda, you're going to die. Do you understand that? You're going to die. Maybe it'll happen because I screw up something important and you try to rescue me – or sacrifice yourself on my account; maybe because you get wounded and I end up killing you in a botched attempt at saving your life; maybe you'll be shot dead on the battlefield, too far away for me to reach. One way or the other, it will happen: you'll die, and it'll be my fault. Please don't make me do this again; please, just promise me you'll go back to Greenspectre, and stay safe – please."

In that moment, rest of the world might very well have ceased to exist; the silence fell so thick that it seemed almost apocalyptic in its finality, as if sound itself would never travel again and no voice would ever pierce the void which no blossomed around them. As the seconds dragged, Elphaba scanned the faces of her audience for any sign of agreement – or at least any visible sign of agreement: Kiln's expression was locked in an apprehensive frown, as if he expected the situation would only continue exploding from heron. Meanwhile, the angry scowl had vanished from Glinda's face; in its place was… compassion, understanding, sadness, maybe even a little guilt, but no sign that Glinda was considering giving up and going back to the capital.

"Do you remember Café Absurdium?" she asked suddenly.

Elphaba blinked, briefly thrown by the non-sequitur. "Er, no. Should I?"

"We walked past it on the way to the Chapter Temple a few days ago – big place, glowing purple sign, extremely weird drinks – it was in the middle of the commerce district, remember?"

"Right. Vaguely memorable, yes."

"While you were away, I got into the habit of eating lunch over there between training sessions – mainly because it's one of the few fancy cafés that haven't been closed."

"Ah."

"Or, at least, it was. While we were still en route to Loamlark, one of the radio operators started talking about a bit of news he'd heard just a few hours after we left: Greenspectre was attacked again – some new kind of bomb that can phase right through the shielding enchantments. By the time the Mentor's sorcerers managed to reinforcificate the shields, the entire commerce district was on fire. Emergency services still don't know how many people were killed or how many businesses went up in smoke, but apparently it all started when a bomb landed on Café Absurdium."

Glinda took a deep breath. "It was a direct hit, too: killed everyone in the building before they could leave their seats – customers, staff, everyone just... dead. Just like that. No survivors, no wounded, just thirty-seven people burned alive and crushed in the wreckage. I could have been one of them, Elphie: if it hadn't been for this mission, I'd have gone down to Café Absurdium for lunch as usual and died with the rest of them… or I could have just gone for a shopping trip around the district and gotten blown to pieces – or burned, or crushed, or trampled or what have you. I could have died that day without getting anywhere near Loamlark, and you know what? This isn't the first time it's happened. I was in the palace when the Empress attacked it a few days ago, and that could have killed me in so many different ways it's almost funny. Now, would you have blamed yourself if I'd died in the one place in the world you thought was safe?"

She sighed. "You can't protect me forever, Elphie. Even if you flew me to the other side of the world and hid me away in a cavern even deeper than this one, the war would still catch up with me. Unbridled Radiance won't stop until it's conquered everyone and everything, and more to the point, I'm pretty sure the Empress wants me dead just for the sake of hurting you. This isn't Oz; I'm not safe here, and I never will be. And I have to spend the rest of my time in this world in danger, I'd rather I didn't spend it repeating history: I've told you before it was bad enough watching you put your life on the line while I did nothing. If I'm going to die-"

"Glinda, you're not-"

"-Then I'd rather die helping someone-"

"But-"

"Elphie, please, hear me out: I've spent my entire adult life masquerading as a porcelain doll, and it's only in the last few years that I've realized just how miserable I've been because of it, because all the play-acting and pretending was worth nothing and meant nothing.Back when you first rebelled, you didn't want me to carry on pretending, you wanted me to help you: I don't want to start pretending again, and if I know anything about you, you don't want me to either. So please, don't make me start all over again, not when I've gotten so far…"

Elphaba looked helplessly around for much-needed guidance, and to her despair, found herself turning in Kiln's direction.

"She's right about this much," he said softly. "You can't protect her forever. She's a responsible adult, not a doll."

"I've told you before, I can't lose her too-"

"Then don't push her away. You know full well that this world will never be safe while the war continues, so don't send her back to Greenspectre. If you hope to keep her safe – however futile that hope may be – then do it here on the battlefield. I mean, you've always wanted to be a team: isn't it the duty of a team to protect one another in battle?"

For another minute, the lake was silent except for the rasping hiss of Elphaba grinding her teeth in frustration.

"Besides," Kiln added helpfully. "Now that she's here, it's not as if she can just leave, is it? We're all trapped for the time being. You might as well accept her help as long as we're still in this mess, at least until we've found a way aboveground."

For one dreadful minute, the silence continued unabated. Then, at long last, Elphaba let out a noise that started as a snarl and ended as a sigh.

"Barely a week's training?" she asked wearily.

"Hey, it was an emergency."

"Fine. Fine. I'll accept that… and I'll accept this little arrangement, however much I'll regret it. "

Glinda's eyes lit up. "Oh thank you, Elphie, thank you so-"

"On one condition: while you're at the front, I take over your training."

Glinda's face split into an ecstatic grin. "Done," she almost giggled.

"I wouldn't take this lightly if I were you: if the sink was the only reason why you did so well in the last battle, you're going to need a lot of work before you're ready for the front. Now, I don't know what kind of arrangement you had with the Mentor, and quite frankly, I don't care: when you're on leave in the capital, she's dictates the terms of training; when you're here in Loamlark, I'm in charge. You're going to be spending every single hour of free time down at the gym, and I will not be satisfied until you've mastered the art of bulletproof shielding, and I will not conclude these sessions until you're able to cast, enchant, and counterspell at a moment's notice, entirely under your own steam – no sinks, no talisman, and above all, no witch-crystal. This is going to be the biggest makeover of your entire life, Glinda: understand?"

"Perfectly," said Glinda. Her smile now threatened to decapitate her.

And then, without warning, she lunged forward and enveloped Elphaba in a crushing hug. "I'm so sorry I lied to you, Elphie," she said breathlessly.

"And I'm – ow – sorry I lied to you, Glinda… but could you loosen your grip a little? My shoulders are killing me."

"Results of the overload, I would imagine," Kiln remarked airily. "The crystallization was as rapid as feared, though thankfully not as malignant as expected. I managed to stymie the conversion rate before it spiralled out of control, but you'll still have about twelve new crystals to show for it."

Now it was Elphaba's turn to laugh. "No apology, then?"

"Well, I imagine you'd only be willing to forgive me if you got the chance to punch me in the face, and quite frankly, I don't want to undo all the work I've done on your hands."

"You know me too well, doctor."

"Thank you. Speaking of which, what is it with you and your hands, by the way? Every time I've had to patch you up, it's something to do with your hands or your wrists: if it's not self-inflicted wounds, its burns; if it's not burns, its broken bones; if it's not broken bones, its sword-shards; if it's not sword-shards, its burns all over again. Seriously, I think your guardian angel has some clause excluding injuries to your upper limbs."

Elphaba rolled her eyes. "I take it that you haven't got any problems with this new training arrangement, then?"

"Oh, of course not. I'm just glad you didn't suggest a collaborative training session with the Mentor." He grinned mirthlessly. "There's not enough money in the world to pay for the property damage, believe me."

"Don't celebrate too soon; for all I know, the blood-crazed harridan might very well suggest it herself just to patch up our little contract, or worse still-"

Elphaba's next words were abruptly drowned out by a thunderous splash from the water's edge: Doctor Coil had finally returned, and was now coiling anxiously around a large stalagmite protruding from the lake.

"I found them!" he hissed urgently. "But that metallic maniac didn't trussssst me to bring them back, not after what he'sssssss been hearing about Elphaba; he jumped off, the ssssssilly bassssstard – had some mad idea about walking the ressssst of the way…"

"Who?" Glinda asked.

"Mr Heart, for gods' sssssssakes! The Tin Man, or whatever you want to call him – he's on his way and-"

There was another splash from the lake, and all further conversation was lost in the bloodcurdling warcry that suddenly split the air.

Boq, dripping wet from head to toe and still gleaming brilliantly despite the sparse lighting, landed on the beach with the clang of a thousand overturned saucepans. Frantically scanning the island, his eyes wide and unblinking, he paused just long enough to take in the sight of Elphaba sitting in the centre of the island, now struggling to her feet; then he let out an earsplitting scream of rage and charged towards her, his axe raised to strike.

For the briefest of instants, nobody could stop him: Wolton, attempting to tackle the Tin Man to the ground, was unceremoniously elbowed across the island with piston-like force; a barrage of hideously organic spells from Corone pulsed through the air towards him, but Boq was moving too fast for anything to make contact; Branderstove's tentacles lashed out at meteoric speed, only to soar harmlessly over the Tin Man's head; and though Arkady and Gerhard were excellent shots, their bullets did little more than dent the target's skin. Then, at the very last moment, Glinda stepped in front of him: Boq skidded to a halt less than three feet from her, almost dropping his axe in the process; instantly, the mask of unreasoning hatred was suddenly gone from his face, his expression swiftly giving way to shock and confusion – and a not-so-subtle hint of longing.

There was a pause, as the stunned Tin Man struggled to find a way around Glinda without actually resorting to violence, to no avail; Glinda followed literally every single move he made and blocked every single step he took, keeping her arms raised as if preparing to cast a spell. Of course, without a wand she was magically helpless, but then again, it wasn't as if the Tin Man would be willing to call the bluff. Eventually, with the other survivors taking careful aim and his dignity visibly wilting, Boq reluctantly cleared his throat and proclaimed "Stand aside, Miss Glinda," in his most authoritative voice – admittedly, not his best attempt: Boq's neurotic mumble found its way into the Tin Man's commanding monotone all too easily.

For her part, Glinda didn't even dignify the order with a response.

"She needs to explain what she did to m-" For a split-second, Tin Man's features twitched violently, his eyes suddenly clenching shut as if in pain; then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the fit subsided. "She needs to account for what she's done. She needs to-"

"No."

"You don't know how dangerous she is, Miss Glinda. I'm not just here to bring the witch to justice; I'm here for your protection. Please, trust me on this: I need you to stand aside-"

"No." And though Glinda couldn't quite keep the fear out of her voice, even Boq couldn't ignore the stubborn edge to her tone or the intended message: Glinda wasn't going to budge unless someone physically removed her.

"But-"

"I said no, and I meant it. Now, Mr Tin Man, if you want to protect me, then apologize to Captain Wolton and start looking for a way out."

Boq, who'd obviously unearthed some long-buried obstinate streak of his own, took a deep breath and continued. "You know I can't let her escape, not after what she's done: as long as she's alive, she's a threat to all of Oz! She needs to answer for what she's done, and I need to guide you to safety-"

"Oh for Lurline's sake, look around you! Escape? Where the hell could she possibly escape to? We're miles underground and gods only know how far from the nearest mineshaft. She isn't going anywhere, and quite frankly, neither am I – unless you've found a way out, of course."

There was a distinctly embarrassed pause.

"Well?"

"No," Boq admitted. "But you'll be safe with me – safer than you'll be with her! And even if you weren't in danger, someone has to do something about her, someone needs to-" Again, the manic twitch rippled across the Tin Man's face, and for a moment, he appeared to be having difficulty deciding what to say next. Eventually, he managed to blurt out "She needs to pay for her crimes-"

"What crimes? She's innocent of everything the Wizard and Morrible accused her of, and more to the point, I can prove it! What evidence do you have of-"

The Tin Man's face, already deeply etched with yearning and frustration, suddenly contorted into a mask of rage. "THE EVIDENCE OF MY OWN EYES!" he roared. "THE EVIDENCE STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU! SHE DID THIS TO ME! NESSA, MY HEART, THIS BODY, ALL OF IT!"

There was a pause, as Boq visibly suppressed his anger, and continued with an even deeper breath. "I know the two of you were friends once, but she's no longer the woman you knew at Shiz-"

"And just how do you know that, exactly?" Glinda demanded. "I'm pretty sure my friendship with Elphaba was strictly classifatoried as a state secret, and most of Oz doesn't even know she attended Shiz, so how the hell did you learn about all this?"

Once again, Boq struggled to contain an explosion. "Miss Galinda-" he began, immediately clapping a hand to his mouth with a loud clang as he realized his mistake.

"And that's another thing you've got to explain: about the only people in Oz who still remember that name are my parents, so how did-"

This time, containment failed altogether. "SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!" Boq bellowed, louder than ever before. Even Elphaba couldn't help but flinch at the display: as a Munchkin, the jittery little man had never exploded quite like this, not even on the rare occasion when his temper had actually snapped. This topped even his previous outburst, an eruption of pent-up rage emerging in a stream of barely-punctuated shouts and screams that swung from the almost-coherent to the near-gibberish with only the barest modicum of connectivity.

"I DIDN'T WALK ALL THIS WAY JUST TO LET HER LIVE!" he howled. "NOT AFTER WHAT SHE DID TO ME AFTER WHAT SHE AND HER SISTER DID TO ME AFTER THEY RUINED MY LIFE AND MADE ME A SLAVE AND MADE ME LIE SHE MADE ME LIE TO HER AND COWER AND BROUGHT ME TO THIS MADHOUSE AND THIS PLACE IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE AND THERE'S ANOTHER EMERALD CITY OUT THERE IN THE DESERT AND THE DREAMS THE DREAMS WON'T STOP AND SHE'LL PAY SHE'LL EXPLAIN SHE'LL HELP ME SHE'LL…"

The spasm of pain flickered across Boq's face once again, abruptly silencing his tirade. As Elphaba watched, his axe slipped from his fingers and clattered to the ground, and his hands shot towards his head, instantly clamping down on his temples in a vain attempt to suppress the chaos inside his skull; in the same instant, his legs buckled and he collapsed to his knees, groaning between clenched jaws as he struggled to keep himself from toppling over altogether. For almost thirty seconds, he could only kneel there, teeth gritted in an agonized rictus, eyes rolling wildly in their sockets with the nerve-jangling hiss of metal rasping against metal.

Then, just as it looked as though the Tin Man might be on the verge of recovering, Kiln made his move: darting in from the right and ducking neatly under his counterpart's flailing arms, he swept a hand across Boq's shoulders, sending a liquid wave of pallid flesh rippling across the dented tin torso. As it flowed along the Tin Man's arms and down his front, it solidified, rapidly toughening into a solid web of muscle and sinew around his upper body; by the time he realized what was happening, the muscle had already started constricting. In a matter of seconds, Boq found himself quite literally straightjacketed.

As his captive vainly struggled to dislodge his restraints, Kiln grabbed him by the jacket collar and began hauling him away towards the western edge of the island. "A little privacy if you please, ladies and gentlemen?" he called out. "My young friend and I have matters we'd prefer to discuss alone, if you don't mind."

There was some muffled disagreement from the other survivors, but eventually they complied, shuffling awkwardly towards the more populated end of the island. Meanwhile, Kiln went on dragging his other self towards the western shore, over the rocks and crags that bordered the rough cavern beach and into the shallows of the lake, until the two of them finally vanished behind a large boulder.

---

"There," said the pale figure, brushing non-existent dust from his hands. "Now we can talk sensibly."

By now, the two of them were almost waist-deep in water, and Boq was already beginning to worry about rust; not that he could do anything about it, of course: as if having his arms glued to his side wasn't bad enough, his captor had decided to up the ante by adhering the back of the straightjacket to the boulder, and had even gone so far as to tie his legs together just so he couldn't kick his way to freedom. Of course, it wasn't the imprisonment that was driving him mad: after years of indentured servitude to Nessa, days of rust-induced paralysis, and god only knows how much time spent unconscious captivity in the Hellion's lair, he'd almost gotten used to being held against his will. What enraged him was how close he'd gotten: he'd almost had her, he'd almost been able to (Take revenge? Demand answers? Take her prisoner? Beg forgiveness? What did he want? What did he want?) get whatever he'd wanted out of the witch, and just like every other good thing in his life, it had slipped through his fingers. No, worse than that: Glinda had been there, too – he could have explained things to her at last. And just like every other good thing in his life, it had been cruelly snatched away from him, all because he'd lost his temper and focussed on the wrong people.

Boq had exhausted most of his rage in the last few minutes of attempted revenge, and the headache now rippled across his skull more painfully than ever before, but even now he still had enough energy left to scream a few well-chosen expletives in his captor's direction.

"Relax. I'm here to help you. It might not make much sense at present, but explanations are forthcoming, I assure you. Trust me, I'm a doctor." He offered a smile that was clearly meant to look reassuring, but looked more like some kind of debilitating facial spasm. "I just need to go over your current symptoms," he continued, "just to make sure I haven't been misinformed."

Boq's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "…symptoms?" he echoed.

In spite of himself, his still-smouldering temper and the throbbing pain in the back of his skull, he actually found himself feeling the subtlest sense of curiosity about his jailor. Truth be told, he'd been so focussed on Elphaba and so distracted by Glinda that he'd overlooked just about everyone else in the island; now that this "doctor" had his undivided attention, Boq found himself examining the man in detail for the first time. Whoever he was, he wasn't exactly a pleasant sight: if anything, he looked like the cavefish he'd seen writhing in the depths beyond the island than anything human, a pallid, ghostly husk of a man with barely enough flesh to cover his warped skeleton. Bald from crown to chin, his face framed by sharp cheekbones and marred by a daggerlike nose, his eyes hidden by tinted black spectacles, there was something distressingly cadaverous about him, too; those opaque lenses fit so well over his face, it almost looked as though he had no eyes at all, just empty sockets oozing with black ink.

But who was he? Why was he working with Elphaba – or Glinda, for that matter? What did he mean to the two of them?

And why, in spite of every ghastly feature in that near-alien face, did he seem so uncannily familiar?

"Your current condition isn't without its fair share of negative aspects, as I'm sure you've noticed by now," the Doctor continued briskly. "Among other things, you've been suffering chronic headaches ever since your transformation; isn't that right, Boq?"

"How do you know about that? How do you know my name? Who are you?"

"As I understand it, these headaches coincide with thoughts of Elphaba: whenever you think of her, you trigger another attack. Now, have only my rather limited perspective on your condition to guide me here, but from what I can tell, the severity of these attacks depends on the severity of your… fixation. At present, I'd imagine you'd be suffering something akin to a cluster headache, yes?"

"I'm suffering something akin to someone chiselling my skull open with a corkscrew and opening an umbrella inside my head!" Boq thundered. "Now, now the hell do you know all this?"

"And the mood swings? I imagine the two are quite inextricably connected, though the triggers are evidently quite different: you've had difficulty controlling your emotions regarding Elphaba ever since the accident, yes?"

Once again, Boq's temper got the best of him. "AFTER WHAT SHE DID TO ME – AFTER EVERYTHING SHE TOOK FROM ME-"

"Please, I'm well aware of your reasons for hating her, valid or otherwise. However, I'm also aware of your feelings for Glinda: once upon a time, you'd have been willing to stand down if she'd commanded it; once upon a time, you'd have been willing to do anything for her. But in the last few minutes, you've shouted at her, you've gotten dangerously close to threatening her life, and you've done the one thing you promised yourself you wouldn't do: you ignored her. You dismissed her. To the best of my knowledge, you spent your entire adult life pining for her attentions; you'd have sacrificed anything in the world to be with her, to spend the rest of your life with her – if she could only notice you: well, Boq, you had her undivided attention back there, and you were more interested in putting an axe through Elphaba's skull. Do you really think she'd forgive you for that? Did you even think of her at all? Since when does your hatred of Elphaba outweigh your love for Glinda?"

As if magic, Boq's rage wilted in the face of the accusations. "…I… I-I don't…"

"Does that sound like irrational hatred to you, Boq? Because it certainly seems that way to me."

"B-but it's not irrational!" he insisted, trying desperately to recover a modicum of certainty. But once again, his attempts to rally failed before they could even begin. He couldn't even sound the part: his voice didn't sound strong or authoritative or even vaguely confident; he sounded like a befuddled child more than anything else, a keening neurotic whine that sounded so much like his old voice, it hurt. "I have my reasons!" he plunged on. "Don't you see? Elphaba-"

"Did something to you, yes. Unfortunately, you aren't certain what she did: you're aware of the transformation and the loss of your heart, but you can't account for all the symptoms that have emerged in the meantime… including all those holes in your memory, I might add. From what little I can tell, your memories of that day begin and end with you walking into Nessa's office and finding Elphaba there; you remember feeling anger, resentment, relief, and joy, but you don't remember why. You don't recall what was said, what happened, or why, and definitely what happened afterwards: the last concrete memories you have is of someone reading the Grimmerie… and then, of pain – here." A long, wormlike finger glided forward and tapped at the hollow where Boq's heart used to be. "And then, waking up as you are now: the Tin Man. So tell me, how are you sure Elphaba is to blame for everything?"

Boq couldn't answer.

"And more to the point, you can't even determine what you actually want to do with her, am I right? The more effort you put into trying to decide, the more your options seem to slip through your fingers, and your certainty goes with it: you want to bring her to justice – or some semblance thereof – and yet you want to know what happened to you and why; you want to kill her, and yet you want to beg her forgiveness. You can't explain why, even to yourself, but I'd wager that the headaches, the emotional problems, the gaps in your memory, and this chronic indecisiveness all have a common cause. And-"

Boq sighed wearily, by now too exhausted to be angry or even mildly upset. "Don't tell me – the dreams I've been having are another symptom, and that hallucination of another Elphabas was just another sign that I should be locked in a padded cell with a stick between my teeth, is that right?"

"Quite the contrary, believe it or not: the fact that you're still capable of dreaming and synchronizing with this reality is actually a very good sign; it means your mind is still capable of functioning at normal levels. And the thing about the two Elphabas… er, we'll get to that in a bit. Ahem, unfortunately, functioning or not, I'm afraid you have to face the distinct possibility that you are actually suffering from a very serious case of brain damage and, if you are ever to recover, you'll have to seek treatment as soon as possible."

For a moment, Boq could only stare in a mixture of disbelief and bemusement. Then, from somewhere beneath the constricting web of muscles and tendons that shrouded his chest, there was a series of ragged, wheezing gasps vaguely reminiscent of a long-rotted set of bellows, an impression only worsened by the echoing metallic edge to the sound; it took Boq a little while for him to realized that he was, in fact, laughing. For almost a minute, he could only lean against the boulder, almost paralysed with laughter and virtually dead to the world around him: he wanted to stop, to force his jaws shut and suppress the giggling, but he couldn't– for reasons that escaped him, his body, battered tin monstrosity that it was, didn't seem to be responding as it should. He wasn't even sure why he was laughing at all, for nothing about the situation seemed especially funny; the realization didn't hit him until the fit had finally subsided and he was almost in control of his body once more, and then he could only chuckle weakly at the ridiculousness of it all.

"Seek treatment!" he guffawed mirthlessly. "Sweet Oz, look around you! Look at me! I'M MADE OF METAL! Who am I supposed to seek treatment from, a surgeon or a welder? More to the point, unless you're an amateur blacksmith as well as a doctor, and you can somehow repair brain damage in transmuted metal brains - in low light, with improvised tools, a non-sterile environment, and Oz only knows how many bugs just waiting to start making nests in my skull..."

"I'd be lying if I said that wasn't outside my skillset," the doctor admitted.

"Then how, in the name of all that's sane and sacred, how am I supposed to seek treatment?!"

"I'd imagine by following us back to civilization… assuming that help arrives, of course, and assuming that you're willing to put aside your present grudges until you're capable of reviewing them objectively. I may not be able to repair the damage on my own, but I can help you manage the headaches until we can find professional help; as a mage-surgeon, my skills aren't much help when it comes to the metallic, but even I can conjure the odd sedative pulse."

"And this… professional help… could they make me normal again? Could they reverse the spell, or whatever was done to me?"

"Some things are simply too powerful to be reversed, I'm afraid: the spells of the Grimmerie cannot be undone, Boq, only… amended. And for that, I'm afraid you'd need someone with an instinctive grasp of its reality-warping intricacies, someone who can effortlessly translate the eldritch script in which it was written. Long story short, if you ever want to achieve normality – or something close to it – you're going to have to make peace with Elphaba."

In spite of himself, Boq actually managed to suppress the explosion before it happened. Instead, he took a deep breath and said, "Even if what you said about her was true, then why would she be willing to help me?"

"Because, my dear Boq, she can't stand another mistake on her conscience; her overdeveloped sense of guilt would never allow it."

"Supposing I don't believe you; I could just force her to-"

"Yes, you could force her to cast the spell… and then you could live out the rest of your tortured existence as a patch of fungus growing from the cavern roof, or perhaps a barnacle clinging to the ass-end of the Leviathan's exoskeleton. Believe me, unless you've somehow gained the ability to translate the Grimmerie on your own when I wasn't looking, it's really not wise to threaten the only living being capable of using it at will. And before you get any further ideas about trying to force her, or hurt her, or kill her, focus on this little detail: Glinda is watching."

"But-"

"The woman you love is watching. Her friendship with Elphaba can't be broken easily, and definitely not by you. If you make every effort to ensure our safety and the safety of Elphaba in particular, she might be willing to forgive you – the key word being might. Who knows? In time, you might actually strike up some kind of friendship of your own; maybe, just maybe, you'll beat the astronomical odds stacked against you and find love with her. But if you choose to indulge this little grudge of yours any further, regardless of whether you succeed in killing Elphaba or not, Glinda will never forgive you; the only thing you'll have gained is the everlasting hatred of the woman you love. I say "everlasting" because Glinda might very well be prepared to risk using the Grimmerie to take her revenge on you. Of course, as physician and protector to both witches, I'm legally and morally obliged to nip this unwanted outcome in the bud… and that brings me to why we're out here, waist-deep in water."

The ghastly smile vanished from the doctor's face. "I'm giving you a choice, Boq," he said solemnly. "You can admit that you might have been wrong and agree to work with Elphaba until treatment is readily available… or you can see just how long your fantasies of revenge can sustain you. Now, I can tell when you're lying, Boq: you've got about five very obvious tells going on right now, especially that compulsive blink. So, I urge you to think very carefully about what you say, because my patient is arguably the single most important woman in the land, and if I determine you to be a threat to her safety, you'll never see Glinda ever again. I'll leave you bound to this rock, with the cavern entrance bricked up, the very phosphorescence scoured from the rocks and another fifty feet of water pumped into this cavern. And in lightless isolation you will remain for all eternity, forever drowning and forever rusting with only your self-hatred and madness for company, until corrosion finally renders you down into lifeless scrap metal. Do I make myself clear?"

For a moment, Boq could only gape. Then, he managed to blurt out the words "Who are you?"

By way of an answer, the doctor reached up to his face, wormlike fingers gliding smoothly over his glabrous features… and then, under them. As Boq watched in amazement, the doctor's hands passed through his flesh as if it were no more solid as water, his skin bulging and deforming as the mage-surgeon went about reshaping his face from the inside-out. Seconds later, the doctor lowered his hands, and even Boq couldn't suppress a gasp of astonishment at what had emerged beneath them; staring back at him was a face he hadn't seen in months, a face that seemed at once impossibly alien and familiar as an old friend… because it had once belonged to him.

The other Boq smiled at him, an awkward, gawky grin that the real Boq hadn't worn for almost a year.

"These days I go by Doctor Kiln," he said. "But you can call me Mr Heart."

---

Perhaps an hour later, Dr Kiln reappeared, striding out of the shallows of the lake with Boq once again in tow. At some point over the course of their contretemps behind the boulder, the Tin Man had been released from his straightjacket, and was now lying unconscious on an improvised stretcher; little more than a membrane of flesh suspended between two distended lengths of bone, one end of the fleshcrafted contrivance was held upright by Kiln, the other by a fleshy set of primitive limbs shuffling along the ground behind him. And as the two of them drew closer, Elphaba couldn't help but notice the subtle differences in the mage-surgeon's features, growing ever subtler as Kiln visibly returned to his default face; he'd obviously reshaped himself in the last few minutes, by why? What had he been doing out there?

"What's happened to him?" Elphaba asked.

"Far too much for his own good," said Kiln flatly, as he set the stretcher down at last. "I had to let the cat out of the bag on just about everything that's been happening over the last few days. The good news is, he's agreed to a truce for the time being, and he's consented to remain in a magically-induced coma until he's actually needed."

"A coma? Do you really think that's necessary?"

"Well, I've other means of controlling the headaches and the mood swings, but the coma is the only one that'll actually allow him at least a few hours of proper sleep; with any luck, that'll be able to whittle down the worst of his symptoms."

Elphaba took a deep breath. "Symptoms. Brilliant. Is this the result of something that happened to him on the way over, or is this all because of what I… because of transmutation?"

"Good gods, where to begin? Diagnostic spells have picked up so many possible origins for the symptoms, it's a marvel he's still at least partially coherent."

"Well, just do your best to summarize what happened to him, I'll do my best not to feel any worse about this situation; fair enough?"

Kiln rolled his eyes. "And I was just talking about your overdeveloped sense of guilt," he grumbled quietly. He cleared his throat, and continued. "To begin with, he's suffering from a not inconsiderable case of brain damage. Diagnostic spells, dream-memories and your testimony all confirm that it was most likely due to the loss of his heart: before your transmutation spell took effect, our friend's brain was deprived of blood just long enough for cerebral hypoxia to set in. All that trauma was preserved and transmuted into metal along with the rest of him. All these symptoms – the violent episodes, the impulsiveness, the indecisiveness, the headaches – all due to serious damage to his brain and nervous system, worsened by the fact that he doesn't appear to have experienced a single day of natural sleep since he was transmuted. Also, he's experiencing a significant sense of uneasiness about his new body, especially his missing heart, but that's to be expected."

He paused for breath. "Of course, that's only the beginning: in the last few days, he's been assaulted by the Hellion, he's been subjected to environmental hazards that would have probably killed ordinary human beings, and he's taken a wander through No-Man's Land on foot – and on a route that took him right through the ruins of the Emerald City." Kiln shook his head. "Ground travel through the wastelands is never a good idea, believe me: even if you don't end up getting killed, the sights alone can shatter the psyche and distort human consciousness to the point of permanent catatonia. Even in Unbridled Radiance, only the most desperate and dishonoured soldiers join the expeditionary forces sent out there. Boq's survived with his sanity intact… but only just." He sighed deeply. "And on top of everything else, his brains are starting to rust."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Another side-effect of wandering the wilds for so long, I'd imagine. Thankfully, it doesn't look too advanced, so it hasn't impaired higher brain function too much; I'm no metallurgist, but I think it might actually be repairable. As for the rest of him… well, I'm afraid we'll have to wait and see."

Elphaba gently closed her eyes. "This is my fault, isn't it?"

"What?"

"These symptoms are my fault, aren't they? They were caused by my transmutation spell – the rust, the headaches, the mood swings – all a result of my interference. That was what you were going to say, wasn't it?"

"Here we go again," Kiln muttered under his breath, "And just when I thought we were on the road to recovery." He coughed loudly, and continued in the slowest and clearest tone of voice he could manage without actually treating her like an imbecile: "Elphaba, it's not always your fault: there's a limit to what you can be blamed for, especially considering that it was Nessa's fault that Boq lost his heart to begin with-"

"And neither of them would have been in that situation if I hadn't been there for Nessa!"

"Well… maybe, but you forget: I… Boq chose to be there. He might have been unable to leave once Nessarose started tweaking the laws and instating slavery in all but name, but it was his decision to be with her in the first place: Boq mightn't have started lying to Nessa of his own accord, was the one who played along with Glinda's encouragements, and he was the one who allowed the situation to spiral out of control. Nobody told him to continue lying to Nessa, nobody told him to be a coward, nobody told him to obsess over Glinda; he did that entirely of his own free will. Yes, you may have worsened the situation by not being there for Nessa – the key word being may – but that doesn't mean you're the only one at fault. You didn't encourage Nessarose to act on her desperation and loneliness, and you sure as hell didn't talk her into becoming a dictator. You can't be blamed for everything, and you can't be responsible for everyone."

He took a deep breath. "Besides, you saved Boq's life, for better or for worse. That's got to count for something, doesn't it? You saved him, right?"

"Oh yes. A mini-stroke, a hole where his heart used to be, a body on the verge of rusting into paralysis, and enough emotional issues to keep him in a straightjacket until the end of time. I've saved him alright."

Kiln very gently lowered his face into his hands and groaned with the sound of a million dying steam engines. "Sweet Lurline's quim, you're not going to be convinced until you can hear this from his own lips, are you?"

From somewhere just beyond the shallows, there was a muffled splash, and a half-choked voice gasped out, "Oh gods…"

There was a pause, as all eyes on the island slowly turned in the direction of the noise; even with every single portal light in the area pointing towards the sound, it was still almost impossible to recognize who or what had arrived on the border of the island, but as the seconds dragged on, Elphaba finally discerned a vaguely human shape hauling itself out of the lake and shambling up the beach towards them. "I know this might sound odd," the figure wheezed, "But does anyone have a very large clothesline on this island? Short of wringing myself like a sponge, I don't know how the hell I'm going to dry out otherwise."

Dr Coil let out a sigh of volcanic proportions. "It's my other passenger," he grumbled. "I'd wondered where you'd run off to after the Tin Man left."

"Urgh. I didn't run anywhere. In case you didn't notice, I tend to snag very easily on sharp objects, including axes. How are we on that clothesline?"

As the waterlogged figure continued struggling up the beach, the survivors crept towards him to get a better look, all of them carrying as many portable lights as they could carry – most of them courtesy of Dr Corone's detachable bioluminescent pseudopods. Having been judged well enough to walk on her own, Elphaba followed them, Glinda and Dr Kiln supporting her by the arms as she hobbled towards the shore. And as the lights drew closer, they finally recognized the man shambling towards them: his hand-me-down clothes were torn and tattered, his burlap body was hopelessly waterlogged, and his straw hair dangled in limp strands from his sackcloth skull, but there was no mistaking the familiar shape of the Scarecrow.

There was a pause, as the lights slowly ground to a halt and the Scarecrow got his first good look at the figures waiting for him on the shore; Elphaba felt her heart sink as she saw the look of recognition in the strawman's badly-made eyes. She could already tell that this was going to be another variation on Boq's attack, another colossal avalanche of misunderstandings and stupid mistakes on the part of just about everyone involved, the only mitigating factor being that the Scarecrow didn't have a grudge against her and probably be much good in a fight anyway. She could already see how this would go: there'd be screaming and shouting and paranoia and demands to know where she was keeping Dorothy and what she'd done with the Tin Man… and every second of it would be excruciating.

And Kiln expects me to find a new home away from Oz in this dimension, she thought bitterly. How am I supposed to do that when Oz won't leave me alone? Maybe it's the distant past of this reality, maybe it's the Oz I was born in, but it keeps on stalking me with one shameful reminder after another – of how much they hated me, how badly I failed… Oh well, I might as well get this bit of theatre over as briskly as possible.

So it was that Elphaba was getting ready for another round of condemnations, when the bedraggled Scarecrow unexpectedly cried "Elphaba!" Charging out of the shallows, he hurried forward and flung his waterlogged arms around her and Glinda, drawing the two of them into an extremely soggy hug.

Wait, what?

"You have no idea how much I missed you both!" he whooped. "I thought, I honestly thought I'd be spending the rest of eternity with the two of you just out of reach, but here you are and it is so good to see you again – especially you!" And then, to Elphaba's utter disbelief, he leaned forward and kissed her passionately on the lips.

This is most irregular.

Glinda cleared her throat loudly. "Alright, alright!" she snapped. She was clearly just as shocked as Elphaba, but after the Tin Man's unpleasant arrive and having her clothes drenched all over again thanks to the Scarecrow's hug, she was almost too indignant to let her confusion show. "Moment's over! Get off her! Give her a little personal space and you can tell us all about how you got here and how long you've been travelling… and while you're about it, would you mind explaining how you know her?"

Now it was the Scarecrow's turn to look astonished. "Glinda, it's me!"

Subterranean crickets chirped.

He sighed. "I keep forgetting you can't recognize me like this," he muttered. "Sorry, I got a little carried away there. Um…" He took a deep breath, and drew himself to his full height. "Glinda, Elphaba," he began. "It's me: it's Fiyero."

Glinda opened her mouth to reply, but only a muffled squeak of bewilderment emerged.

This time, Elphaba was the more coherent of the two: after about ten whole seconds of dead air, she managed to blurt out a flat mumble of "What," somehow managing the immensely difficult task of pronouncing the absence of a question mark without even meaning to.

"I know this might sound impossible to believe," said the Scarecrow, "but I really am Fiyero."

Once again, silence descended upon the island with devastating swiftness, a void of sounds billowing down over the crags and gravel like a blanket of woven lead. For the next twenty seconds, the Scarecrow waited patiently for a reply, Glinda tried and failed to find a response, Kiln's eyes slowly extended out of his skull on the end of stalks as he went about inspecting the new arrival, and the other survivors slowly began edging away from Elphaba.

For twenty seconds, Elphaba remained completely silent and completely motionless: outwardly, she was without expression or emotion, serene and calm despite the situation; inwardly, though…

She took a deep breath, clenching and unclenching her fists as she struggled to suppress her rage – even as the first telltale wisps of smoke began slowly curling from her fingertips, even as magic began pouring into her hands, drawing on both ambient currents of thaumaturgic energies and her own intrinsic power.

"If this is a joke," she said quietly. "Then it's in very, very, very poor taste."

If the Scarecrow had noticed the sudden change in temperature, he didn't show it. "I promise you, Elphaba," he insisted, "This is no joke: I really am Fiyero Tiggular-"

There was a muffled whoosh, as Elphaba's smouldering fingertips slowly erupted into luminous blue flame. "Fiyero is dead!" she screamed, as the flames rippled down her fingertips, engulfing her hands and wreathing her arms in incandescent magicks – harmless to the caster, but soul-searing to anyone unlucky enough to earn the caster's wrath.

As one, the survivors took a step back – all except for Glinda and the Scarecrow.

"Fiyero is dead," she repeated. "Tortured to death by the Wizard's men – the same Wizard you were happy enough to support back in Oz – and unless you can give me a very good explanation for this… this cheap impersonation, I guarantee you that you'll go the same way as him-"

Dr Kiln coughed meaningfully. "Uh, Elphaba, far be it from me to start providing advice at this point-"

"Do not make me repeat myself, doctor: I know perfectly well what happened to Fiyero; I felt him slip away even after all the magic I poured into him. He's dead, and this man…" She prodded the waterlogged Scarecrow in the chest. "…Is not him."

"Could I just-"

"SHUT IT."

"Do you want me to explain myself or shut it? I can't do both."

"Nobody likes a smartass, Mr Scarecrow. You can start by explaining why you're trying to impersonate Fiyero."

"I'm not impersonating anyone, Elphaba. I really am Fiyero. Let me prove it to you-"

Fire gouted from Elphaba's nostrils for at least eight seconds before she managed to get her temper under control. "Alright," she said quietly. "Alright. If you're going to be difficult-"

Glinda put a hand on her shoulder. "Hear him out, Elphie," she whispered.

"Wha- you don't actually believe him, do you?"

"I-I don't know, but maybe, maybe, just maybe-"

"Glinda, I know you didn't see it for yourself, but you have to believe me when I-"

"I never said I didn't believe you, Elphie, I just…" Glinda hesitated, a myriad of emotions flickering across her face as she paused for breath; fear, concern, suspicion, and apprehension were all in evidence, and yet all of them secondary to the one emotion slowly dominating Glinda's face: hope. "Just give him a chance, okay?" she pleaded. "That's all I ask. Hear him out; he could be the real Fiyero after all."

Elphaba wanted to say no. She wanted to explain all the ways that this couldn't be possible, how the Scarecrow obviously couldn't be trusted, and why they needed to keep him under lock and key until they could confirm he wasn't going to try something. She wanted to recount every last minute of the day when Fiyero had died, every last step she'd taken in her abortive attempt to save him: every spell, every incantation, every last pulse of magic she'd sent echoing across the sky towards Munchkinland, right down to the moment when Fiyero had vanished from her senses, when she'd realized she'd failed. Here and now, she had to be pitiless: Boq had already proved just how dangerous new arrivals like this could be, and she had to make sure that the survivors wouldn't be endangered again. She had to look at the situation with an ice-cold eye and make decisions without sentimentality or remorse; she had to do what was best for the group, even if it would hurt Glinda's feelings. She had to do this…

And then she took another look at the almost hearbreaking look of dawning hope slowly blossoming across Glinda's face, and realized that she couldn't do any of it. Something about that expression seemed to wither Elphaba's resolve.

So instead, she took a deep breath, smothered the flames in her hands, and muttered, "Alright. Mr Scarecrow, you've got your chance: if I were you, I'd make the most of it."

Fiyero took a deep breath. "We met at Shiz," he began.

"Oh come on, you'll have to do better than that."

"My chauffeur almost ran over you on my first day on campus: you gave us both hell for it, and I joked that he'd gotten a green signal."

"Do you know how many people were there that day? You could have gotten that information from Glinda, the chauffeur, maybe even Boq – Oz only knows you've been travelling together long enough."

"That night at the Ozdust, you wore that hat for the first time: Glinda joined you on the dance floor, and I –"

"Again, you could have gotten that information from just anyone in the building, including Madame Morrible I might add. Now, unless you want me to assume this really is some hoax on the part of the Wizard-"

"The day we rescued the Lion!"

Elphaba blinked. "What?"

"Lots of people saw you lose your temper, but nobody saw what happened next – nobody but me. While everyone else was under your spell, the two of us got the Lion out of the classroom. I know, because I was the one carrying the damn cage. We stopped outside campus just long enough to get into an argument, remember? I asked you if you had to keep on causing commotions, and you said you didn't cause commotions-"

"I am one," Elphaba finished, almost inaudibly.

It was something of a minor miracle that she'd been able to speak at all, for in that moment, Elphaba was almost mute with shock. She hadn't been expecting any evidence of this nature, and the mention of the Lion's rescue had just about stopped her heart: as far as she knew, nobody had figured out exactly what had happened that day; the witnesses remembered nothing except the frenzied dance they'd been sent into, and Morrible (naturally eager to remove any obstacles from her meal ticket's path to success) had claimed that the Lion had escaped of its own accord during the confusion. It was logically impossible for the Scarecrow to know any of this, unless…

…unless…

She couldn't bring herself to finish that sentence, even in her own mind: it was too much to hope for, too obvious a step towards disappointment. Even if she wanted it to be true, even if she wished with all her might that the Scarecrow really was the man she'd loved…

Wishing only wounds the heart.

Meanwhile, the Scarecrow was still talking, still providing details that only Fiyero could have known in clear defiance of reality. "And then you told me I could have just walked away," he plunged on. "And you tried to tell me I wasn't as superficial as I-"

"Stop," Elphaba whispered. She'd heard enough by now; the last thing she needed was to start lingering in nostalgia when she needed to concentrate on the matter at hand. She couldn't start reminiscing on the good times she'd had with Fiyero, or the awful day when she'd let him slip through her fingers, or worse still imagining the impossible – that he might actually still be alive. So, she repeated herself, a little more shakily than she'd intended.

But the Scarecrow didn't appear to hear her. "…And I said I really was that shallow and self-absorbed! You stayed behind on the edge of campus, and I ran off to release the Lion into the forest, and-"

"I said stop."

"And what about the day I helped you escape from the Emerald City, how we ran off into the woods together? If this was really a hoax, do you think I'd know what we said to each other that day? If I was just one of the Wizard's trained dupes, do you think I'd be in a position to know that we promised to make the most of our time together, to make every last moment last-"

"Please, just stop..."

"That night, you told me that for the first time, you felt 'wicked.' How would I know that if I wasn't Fiyero-"

"I SAID STOP IT!" Elphaba screamed. "YOU'RE NOT HIM!"

She looked away, furiously blinking away tears. He won't see me crying, she told herself. I won't give him the satisfaction of knowing I might believe him.

"Why is it so hard to believe that I might actually be Fiyero? I mean, we've had more than our fair share of weird and impossible events in our lifetimes, even before we got sucked through the portal to this… wherever this place is. So why is the possibility of me surviving as the Scarecrow so impossible to you-"

"Because Fiyero is dead, and it's my fault!" Elphaba took a deep breath, and continued, desperately trying to keep her voice steady even as the tears went on streaming down her face. "I was the reason he was captured in the first place; the guards caught him covering my escape, saving me from my own recklessness again! I had it in my power to save his life – I had the Grimmerie open in front of me – and I still failed: I don't know if the guards went as far as to torture him all the way to the bitter end or if my spell ended it all before then, but I could sense what was happening in that cornfield; I could feel Fiyero dying, vanishing from my sight. And it's my fault. I don't care who you say you are… or who you think you are… but you're not Fiyero."

"Elphaba, look at me. Please, just look me in the eye, that's all I ask."

She wanted to keep her gaze averted, but the Scarecrow reached out as if to turn her head towards him; Elphaba immediately swatted his hand away with a sound that began as a snarl and ended as a sob, only for the Scarecrow to latch onto her wrist at whiplash speed – and for a man made entirely of burlap and straw, he had a surprisingly strong grip. At some point during the brief struggle that followed, Elphaba found herself with her hands around the Scarecrow's face, Lurline only knew why. Maybe she'd been trying to shove him away, maybe she'd been trying to rip his head off, she didn't know and didn't care. One way or the other, the struggle concluded with her staring right into the strawman's eyes, just as he'd wanted.

Given that he was just an animated scarecrow, the eyes themselves were little more than images painted on his head, but even Elphaba couldn't help but notice that they were the same dazzling sky-blue shade as Fiyero's. And in spite of herself, she found herself noticing all the subtle similarities that she'd overlooked until now: the shape of his nose, the distinctive smile, even the way he wore the lengths of straw that now passed for his hair. And what about the tattered rags he wore? It was hard to guess at what they'd once been after all the wear and tear they'd endured, but could those be the same clothes Fiyero had been wearing on the day he'd…

She had to know: maybe he was lying, maybe he wasn't; one way or the other, she couldn't avert her eyes any more.

"If you really are Fiyero," she said haltingly, "Then how did you survive?"

The Scarecrow smiled. "You saved me," he said simply.

"What?"

"The spell worked, Elphaba; I don't know much about magic, but I know for sure that you're the only reason why I'm alive today. By then, the guards had pretty much given up on getting any information on me, so they started torturing me for revenge: they beat me bloody with rifle butts, stuck needles under my fingernails, broke my knees with hammers – anything they could do to make me scream. I think… I think I was dying towards the end: I felt like I was floating away from the whole mess, just watching them torture my body from above, getting fainter and fainter until I couldn't even feel the knives in my side. Then I heard your voice, echoing in from the west, chanting the words of a spell – I couldn't understand the language, obviously, but… well, it was almost as if I was hearing the meaning alongside the words: 'let his flesh not be torn, let his blood leave no stain, though they beat him, let him feel no pain; let his bones never break and however they try to destroy him-"

In that moment, Elphaba's heart stopped.

"Let him never die," she finished. "Oh gods… oh gods, it's you… it really is you…"

She was crying once more, and now she didn't care if the Scarecrow – if Fiyero saw it or not. By now, she was almost overwhelmed – not just with grief and shock, but with remorse. For twelve dreadful seconds, she could only trace the contours of Fiyero's face, gaping in horror at her handiwork. "Oh gods," she whimpered. "Oh gods, what did I do, what have I done, I… my gods, Fiyero, I'm so sorry…"

"Hey, you didn't know it was me. Like you said, you honestly thought I was dead; it's mainly my fault for not getting around to revealing myself sooner. I mean, I tried at Kiamo Ko, I had a letter ready and everything, but-"

"No, no, I… it's not that it's… oh god, what did I do to you? I've…" She struggled for a coherent response. "I've ruined you. I thought I was making you invincible, but… Sweet Lurline, I've made you even more vulnerable. God, how close did I get to burning you alive? And gods, back in the lake, you could have been torn apart by the currents or just dragged to the bottom by all the wet cloth, and-and-and… Oh my gods, Fiyero, I'm so sorry, I…"

"Elphaba, I'm not made of glass or anything like that. Like I said, you're the only reason why I'm even alive to begin with. You saved me, remember?"

"But I-"

"But nothing: you saved me."

And something about that simple sentence seemed to unravel every single self-loathing thought pouring into Elphaba's mind. The grief and remorse were gone, evaporating before she could even spare another thought for her mistakes; and in their place, something almost like hope was beginning to blossom.

"Now, come here…"

And with that, Fiyero drew her into one of the most welcome hugs of her entire life.

A moment later, Glinda joined them, flinging her arms around the two of them as though she'd been expecting this all along. A moment later, she yanked her arms away with a yelp of surprise. "Ouch! Fiyero, why have you got a pin in your back?"

"Why have I got what?"

Elphaba peered over Fiyero's shoulder, and found that there was indeed a small metal pin stuck in his back; attached to the pin was a note: though waterlogged and torn from Fiyero's journey through the lake, the neat handwriting was still legible enough for Elphaba to recognize the message:

Submitted for your approval: the man you love, saved from a horrible death and truly changed for the better. How's that for incontrovertible proof?

There was a stunned pause, as Elphaba slowly remembered the letter she'd received back in the Emerald City, the one promising undeniable evidence of…

"Fiyero," she asked quietly. "Have you been staying in a jail cell for the last few days?" she asked innocently.

"Er, yes. Why do you ask?"

"No reason. I just…"

In spite of herself, she found herself smiling through her tears.

I saved someone, she thought.

It was ludicrous, but here it was, complete with the incontrovertible proof the first letter had promised.

I actually saved someone.

Somewhere at the back of her throat, a giggle began to form, voicing itself before she could stop it. The giggling grew to a guffawing, the guffawing grew to a chuckling, and suddenly, Elphaba was laughing, hooting and howling in unrestrained hilarity as the fit of mirth enveloped her, even with tears still streaming down her face, even with the cavern roof still looming bleakly overhead and no escape in sight. She didn't care. Then and there, all her anxieties were dead in the water: they'd find an escape; Glinda would receive training in magic and be a thousand times safer for it; the witch-crystal would go on growing safely with Kiln's help; the Tin Man would be made sane again; and the war would be won. She had no idea how she'd found this sudden burst of confidence and she was pretty sure it would be gone by the next battle, but no matter how nonsensical these notions seemed, she knew they were possible: after all, hadn't she just achieved the impossible? Hadn't she, the single most luckless individual in the cosmos, actually saved someone?

For what felt like decades, she went on laughing; eventually, though, she paused for breath, gently chuckling to stop. Then she noticed the bewildered looks on the faces of the spectators, and suddenly she was laughing harder than ever.

"Elphie, are you alright?" Glinda asked, tentatively.

Elphaba just grinned. "I'm okay," she said, half-laughing, half-weeping. "I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay…"

And them, pausing only to give Glinda the single longest hug she'd ever endured, she darted away and drew Fiyero into an embrace of her own – finally, finally kissing him.

I'm going to be okay…

Everything's going to be okay.