Chapter 37

We traveled for the better part of the night, following the Vinkus River to keep ourselves upon the right path to the City. The moonlight was the only illumination we had to go by, but it was enough. I kept my eyes closed for the beginning of that night's flight, unable to shake the feeling of shackles closing around my wrists and neck, cutting off my air as well as my freedom, if you could ever call what I had "freedom" at all.

Eventually Chistery pulled my hair just to be irritating. I forced myself to open my eyes and ignore the strangling sense of being fettered, to glare at the troublesome monkey. Looking over my shoulder, I shot Chistery a look before turning back to watch Fiyero, to help him catch any mistakes in form that might throw us off. His back was ramrod straight, his muscles overly taut as he leaned forward to maintain a steady speed. I could tell he was nervous, as it was his first time flying in the open, especially since it was quite possible that it would also be his last. Keeping one hand securely around his waist, I stroked the other down his back to get it to loosen a bit.

"Relax. If you stay this tense it'll be harder for you to move and correct yourself if you start slipping up. Keep yourself calm. You're doing fine."

"I haven't been doing this as long as you have, you know that, right? Plus, I'm still unsettled by our being out here. What if we're seen before we even get to the City?" he said, his voice a little higher than usual. Even still, I felt the muscles in his back release under my hand as I stroked it down his spine again, and his posture became a little more normally settled.

"We won't be seen before we get there. There's enough cloud cover tonight to mask our presence. You, Fiyero, of all people, have nothing to be afraid of. You fly this thing better than I do, for Oz's sake, and I've had it for years now. Think like we're back in the caverns and I'm only testing you, if that makes it any easier for you to deal with."

"What happened to Chistery? I haven't seen much of him tonight."

"He's following behind us, since he doesn't really know where we're going; he was pulling my hair a minute ago."

"That sounds just like him -" he said, cutting himself off as I felt both babies kick simultaneously, clenching my jaw against the pain. Fiyero's back seized up for an instant, then relaxed.

"Even I felt that one. Are you alright, Fabala?"

"I'm still not used to this." I sighed. "It's been almost six months and I'm still not used to the feeling."

"I can understand why you wouldn't want to be."

"It's not even winter and I'm freezing." Chistery whined, gliding up next to the broom.

"I'm sorry, Chis, but there's nothing I can do about that." I said. He pouted.

"But you know magic stuffs, right? Make the weather warmer."

"I don't know how to do that, and even if I did, I wouldn't. Weather magic is dangerous. Glinda and I learned that the hard way."

"When did that happen?" Fiyero asked, "I don't remember either of you trying to do something like that at school."

"For one, I never tried it; I just watched Glinda make a fool of herself in trying to prove herself to me. For another, I don't think you'd come to Shiz yet."

"What happened?"

"This all happened right after she and I became friends, or at least on better speaking terms, after Dr. Dillamond's death, just so you understand where I'm coming from. She'd just begun to really apply herself in Miss Greyling's sorcery classes, and was all gung-ho about showing off her 'flair' with enchantments and incantations. It was raining, and the air in our dorm room used to get damp from it. I was getting a headache from both the moisture and Glinda's going on about her 'talents with magic', so I said something sarcastic like 'if you're so adept at all things sorceric, why don't you make it stop raining so you can shut up, having shown me what you're capable of?' So Glinda got all huffy on me and tried to make it stop raining just to prove she could. But, being as she'd only just started those magic classes under that dimwit of a teacher, and weather magic is at best a risky business in itself, Glinda only succeeded in making the clouds open up further, setting free lightning severe enough to fry entire trees. Which was exactly what happened, of course. An aspen that grew near the school went up in flame from being struck by the electricity. Thankfully, the sky was dumping so much water the blaze was extinguished quickly, but not before it attracted heinous amounts of attention. Glinda ended up cowering under the covers all curled up in the fetal position for the rest of the night, hoping no one would be able to trace the magic back to her. Me, I tried in vain to go to sleep, as Glinda had only succeeded in making the room damper than it was before, and my head felt as if it were going to split open."

"I can just imagine Glinda doing something like that."

"At the time her antics disgusted me, but now that I look back at it, it would've been something to laugh over, her cowering there for the remainder of the night, afraid Morrible would find out she did it."

The breeze picked up as Fiyero increased our speed some. I shivered in the night air, pressing myself closer to his warmth.

"You cold?"

"A little. Chistery's suggestion does sound appealing, but, as at the present time, my magical abilities are less than that which Glinda had at the age of fifteen, I'm not even going to dream of attempting a spell like that."

"D'you want me to land for a little while?"

"No, keep going. I'm alright."

"You're sure?"

"Yes. The faster we get there, the better."

After the one night of travel we were closer to the Emerald City than I'd anticipated. It would only take us maybe three hours or so for the first green spires of buildings to come into view. I was anxious to get there, even more so since it was so close, but neither Fiyero nor myself were willing to risk continuing after sunrise. The day was spent under a fringe of trees not far from where the river emptied out into Restwater lake. It wasn't much, but it would have to be adequate cover until we'd be able to take off again that night. Chistery dove headlong into one of the trees, swinging himself from one of the branches, absolutely in his element.

::At least the monkey's occupied.:: I thought, watching him weave through the boughs like a little tawny-furred acrobat.

The lack of distance between myself and the City taunted me from the moment I set foot back on solid ground. Hence Fiyero, who was slightly more together than I was at the moment, insisted on my getting some rest before we'd have to leave after sunset; at least it would keep me from becoming overly anxious. I figured he was right, but as he tugged on my hand to get me to sit with him, I ran into another problem. The size of my stomach was making it more and more difficult to bring myself to sit, especially since it was already larger than it should be, what with two children inside it. When I did make it to the ground, aggravated and tired, I leaned my back against a tree, sighing in a long rush of breath. I pulled the scarf from around my waist and fingered the roses, just to have something to look at.

Fiyero pulled me onto his lap and kissed my cheek, then brushed his mouth against my ear. "So far, so good." he said, and I could feel the words there as he spoke.

"If you say so." I replied, looking out to the sky through the canopy of leaves.

"Look, you can't start stressing now. We have to take things as they come. Like you said last night, keep yourself calm." He absentmindedly fiddled with the fringes of the scarf, beginning to lose himself in thought.

"Coming from you, who were stressed to hell and back last night. Normally you're the one doing the reassuring, not me. I'm not good at that." I replied, rolling my eyes.

"You do alright, Fae. You managed to allay my fears well enough. It took my mind off flying out in the open, anyway."

"Now if only I could get my own mind off everything else." I muttered before lapsing into a mute state of observation, watching his face and waiting for him to speak. After a while I noticed the vacancy in his eyes as he stared at the scarf and I spoke, unable to stand the silence any longer. "What is it?"

"How old is this thing?"

"Fifteen years, give or take."

"I can't believe...after so long, we're still here, you and I, that the love is still here."

"And we have this to thank for it, or at least for what we've got now." I said, running a hand over the scarf as he nuzzled his face nearer to mine, "If it wasn't for this I'd have never managed to get myself back to you. I keep it with me; you never know when I might need it...I hope what we're getting ourselves into won't give me a chance to try using this thing as a focus again. If it does..." I trailed off.

"I don't intend on losing you, Fabala. What could possibly happen for you to need to use it?"

"I don't know, and I hope I never find out."

"Fae? Where's that monkey? He's not careening around in the trees anymore, and I don't remember seeing or hearing him come down."

"I don't know -" I said, trying to push myself up.

"Hang on a minute, let me help you." he said, quickly knotting the scarf back around my waist before helping me up. It felt nice to know I had someone else looking out for me besides myself.

Back to the task at hand, I quickly swept my gaze over the trees, looking for some sign of movement that might betray Chistery's presence. There was nothing. It unnerved me, his absence. I tried to tell myself that he was probably exploring farther into the trees, since it was a Chistery-like thing for him to do, always poking his nose everywhere, but my mind would not be put to rest. I was always the one to fear the worst...

"He's probably just exploring." I said, addressing the wind and trying not to worry excessively. I wasn't managing to convince myself in the least.

"You're probably right." Fiyero replied, kneading his fingers into my shoulders. "Chistery can take care of himself."

"Dammit, Fiyero, I hate the guesswork! I hate not knowing, especially now..."

"Shhh. Stay calm. He'll make his way back when he's ready. Don't forget this is the most freedom he's ever had, since whenever you had to flee and hide he did as well."

"And that freedom of his is more than I've ever had, and probably ever will."

"Stop saying things like that. We'll get out of here eventually."

"Your optimism sickens me." I was being curt with him, and tried to relax a bit; when I was agitated my words tended to become either overly terse or they poured out in an unintelligible rush. Fiyero rolled his eyes and his mouth curved into a wry half-smile.

"Well, someone's got to be the optimist here; who'll keep you from saying things like that if I don't?"

I turned to look away, farther into the trees, searching in vain for my monkey.

Chistery failed to reappear that day. By sunset I was fraught with worry, and doing my best to beat it into submission enough to keep it from showing on my face. Each moment that passed as the light diminished added to the anxiety. It wasn't like Chistery to disappear on me like this. When the darkness finally provided enough cover to leave we were left with no choice but to continue on to the City, with or without the monkey. Any time wasted here would be that much less for us to emerge out of this unscathed; all of us, including Boq and his family.

"The seams in this operation are beginning to split and so are those holding together my sanity." I muttered, "Did I not tell you we shouldn't have taken him with us? Did I not say we should've left Chistery in the caverns?" Fiyero stared at me for a second before looking out to the sky.

"It's no use thinking about it, Elphaba, we have to go now, or lose another day to get to Boq."

"I know that!" I snapped, about to be pushed over the edge. "I know..." I stared at the trees for another moment longer, feeling Fiyero run his fingers through my hair in an attempt to comfort me. I felt guilty, worrying more about the monkey than Boq, but where Chistery went trouble seemed to follow, and more often than not he would lead that trouble back to me... I closed my eyes, trying to collect my thoughts into some semblance of order while I felt my lover smooth back the dark strands of my hair, his fingers caressing the edges of my face as he did so. I shivered slightly, a bit chilled although the evening was fairly warm. I was unsure if it was from the sensations left by his touch on my face or from fear or both. I was strangely becoming accustomed to the feelings of a subtle chill creeping through me, fear's accomplice, attempting to ice over my heart.

Fiyero felt the tremor that ran through me and began to rub my arms; "You're trembling."

"Yes, I - I'm cold." I lied, shrugging him off. He looked a bit put out but quickly shook it off, refusing to let my aversion bother him. He knew how much we had to lose if somehow things went wrong; trifles between us in the calm before the storm meant nothing.

"Let's go." he said, leaving my side to retrieve the broom.

"Where are we going to land?" Fiyero asked as we neared the City, "It can't be too close to the palace, or to my old hovel of a place. There's sure to be authorities or Guardsmen around them."

"I know where we can go. This way." I said, reaching around Fiyero to lay a hand on the one of his, steering him in the direction I wanted him to take us. As we crossed over the City wall, the emerald buildings glowed faintly in the moonlight, radiating a soft silvery luster that reflected off nearby homes and other structures, making them glow even brighter. It was lovely, a marvel to look at, but loveliness with a price; the price of the brutality that laid within it, and that of the havoc it wreaked.

The wind picked up from a gentle breeze to a rapidly strengthening wind, causing the last few denizens of the street to keep their heads bent against it as they walked, all the better for Fiyero and myself to remain hidden, despite it's being a clear night. Fiyero struggled for a few moments, trying to keep the broom steady in the wind, but once he got the hang of it his movements once again became fluid and easy.

"Elphaba, where are we going? You're steering us toward the other end of the City. We haven't been there in years..."

"Precisely. We'll have a relatively good chance of safety if we stay...there." He now knew where I meant for us to go, and smoothly navigated a path over the same streets he'd walked countless times when he used come to visit me in my room above the corn exchange. I knew what disturbing memories of mine would be evoked by returning there, but it would be the safest place I knew of for us to bide our time...

"Do you still have your key to this place?" he asked.

"I destroyed my key long ago. But anyway, I won't need mine."

"What?"

"I have yours."

"How did you ever come across that?"

"The day when the Force tried to kill you, I guess you'd opened the door and dropped the key as you entered, since I found it lying on one of the bottom steps of the staircase when I returned home. I put it away in the purse I'd been carrying that night; I knew you'd have been more careful than that if you hadn't been worried or preoccupied by something, more than likely that something being me and what I'd been partaking in. It was then I figured out that you must've disregarded my words when I told you to stay away. It was then that I started to grow afraid."

"You remember all that?"

"I remember every gruesome, grief-stricken specific of that day." I replied quietly, resting my cheek against his back and holding him all the tighter as I waited for us to draw nearer to the flat where I'd spent a good five years of my life.

"I never thought I'd be seeing this hell-hole again." I murmured a little later as my eyes fell upon that gods-forsaken rattrap above the corn exchange. "At least we won't be here for terribly long; thank Oz it's only to wait until it's late enough to get to the Palace and Boq."

Fiyero brought us down behind the ramshackle building as I ferreted the key out of my bag, the very same bag I'd hidden under my cloak on that baleful Lurlinemas Eve so many years ago, the one that had been housing Fiyero's old key ever since I'd found it on the steps that night. I unlocked the door and put the key back in my purse, laying a hand on the doorknob for a long moment before turning it. The stairs creaked ominously as we climbed them, possibly the first people to do so in a little more than fifteen years. Holding my breath and closing my eyes against the inevitable onslaught of memory, I led the way through the pointed arch marking the doorway. I stood there for a few moments in the stillness of the undisturbed room, not wanting to see what had become of the place, but some morbid curiosity pulled at my eyelids, telling me to open them and look. Unable to hold back any longer, I forced my eyes open.

Everything was exactly the same as I'd left it that night, down to the very last detail still hanging poised so vividly in my memory. A thick layer of dust coated the room, but it wasn't enough to veil the bloodstains still covering much of it. They had faded over time, but dark rusty shadows of them still remained, spattering the walls, the floor, the bed. I slowly made my way over to the counter on the other side of the room, where I'd seen a dull silver glint as I walked in. Just as I'd feared, the knife I'd used to try to take my own life rested there, the long-dried blood from my wrists still coating it's razor edge. Bile rose in my throat as the memories rose in my mind. Short flashes of the scenes that had taken place here almost two decades ago flared up in my memory; I was experiencing it all over again, feeling it all over again, wanting it all gone.

::The pain of the nights I'd lived through when there had been someone else's rough hands on my skin and bloody kisses on my lips instead of Fiyero's gentle caress.::

::The exchange of short words with Fiyero in the temple, running from him, when all I really wanted was to be able to talk to him again - no, it was too dangerous - no one could know of my existence or my engagements. No one could know...::

::The many nights he helped me discover what love and lovemaking were supposed to feel like.::

::The agonizing failure of Lurlinemas Eve, all due to my fault of foolish, feeble-minded sentimentalism. I couldn't go through with it; it would've killed too many innocents, mostly a throng of very young girls I didn't have the heart to do away with. Strong, I was. Heartless, I was not. On the contrary, I had too much of a heart.::

::The sharp intake of breath when my eyes swept over the bloodied mess of my room.::

::The burn of tears in my eyes as I fell to my knees beside Fiyero's broken form; the burn of blood on my hands as they probed the wounds on his body, growing more hopeless by the moment, too grief-stricken to realize he was still alive.::

::The feel of my fingers closing around the handle of the knife, the deep breath before I touched the edge of it to the inside of my wrist. So this was all my heart had done for me; in sparing a group of mindless young girls it had cost me the only one I'd ever truly loved.::

I swayed slightly on my feet and reached out to brace a hand on the counter to steady myself, until Fiyero's hand closed around my upper arm to do so for me. With his other he took the knife and practically threw it into one of the drawers; his hands shook as he drew away, watching my face intently. Once the blade was out of sight I took a finger and traced the scar on one of my wrists; the pale, slightly raised line of flesh seemed more prominent tonight than it ever had. I stared straight ahead, unseeing, my finger still running itself over the scar.

"Fae, don't. Please, you can't dwell on that now...you've got enough weighing on your shoulders without it..." His hands closed around mine, both to pull me closer and to stop them from trembling. I was retreating back into myself; he could see it in the way my eyes had become hard and vacant, and did his best to get me to snap out of it.

"Look at me, Elphaba." When I wouldn't do so on my own he cupped my cheek in his hand and turned my face for me. "Stay with me or you'll drown in it." On impulse he reached to pull my face to his, kissing me with a fierce desperation. It didn't last long, but it left both of us slightly stunned.

"I wasn't expecting that." I said, my voice a little unsteady.

"To tell the truth, neither was I, but I have a feeling that you needed it as much as I did."

"Thanks. I can't afford to get lost in things I'd rather never let my mind fall upon again." I said, my eyes lowered, and I ran my hands up his torso before letting them rest lightly, almost hesitantly, at the nape of his neck. Nuzzling my face against the curve where his neck met his shoulder, I planted a kiss against his collarbone, relaxing as his arms snaked around me. One of the babies began to kick with a vengeance so I brought one arm down to wrap around my stomach, but Fiyero beat me to it. He pressed his palm to my belly, a soft smile spreading across his lips. I bit my lip to quell the pain, and when the child stilled itself Fiyero sat on the edge of the bloodstained bed, pulling me onto his lap. For Oz knows how long we just stayed there holding each other, until I glanced out the skylight at the steady darkness.

"I think we should get going." I said abruptly, forcing myself to my feet. "Take the broom, just in case..." Fiyero picked up the broom as I paused, fingering the scarf at my waist for a moment, before descending the stairs and venturing out, stealing like shadows toward the menacing cold green spires of the Palace.