"Ah, you did the best you could." Fiyero's words echoed in his own head. Yes, she had. He was hung on a splintered pole in the middle of a cornfield, beaten and bloodied, waiting for the final blow. His only thought was that without his help, Elphaba might be caught. Then without warning, the tingle began in his toes and worked its way up to his head. The cornfield swam before his eyes and blackness hit him like a runaway carriage.
When he came to, Fiyero had been shocked to feel no pain from his bruises. Glancing down, he'd seen straw poking out from the ends of his trouser legs. Emotions had rushed him all at once – fear, anger, dismay, but finally, sheer determination. So long as he had legs, straw or any other, he was going to be with Elphaba.
He'd made his way to the top of the castle at Kiamo Ko, thrilled when she popped out of her hiding place. Elphaba had been so stricken that his urge to comfort her overcame his own troubling questions. "Go ahead, touch. I don't mind," he'd assured her. "Ah, you did the best you could."
Now here he sat, head in hands, tears pouring out of eyes that were all too real, spilling into a lap that was anything but.
"Careful," she warned him, her voice scratchy with disuse. "You'll mold." A stricken laugh wrenched itself from his throat, and then Fiyero groaned as if in pain. "Yero…" He looked up, more tears threatening. "Come sit?" Elphaba patted the bed beside her weakly, and Fiyero nodded, climbing in beside her. Slipping one arm beneath her shoulders, he cradled his witch gently. Her face, once the proud color of a polished emerald, now paled to the sickly shade of a new apple. "Yero," she whispered.
"Shh," Fiyero said, trying to stem the tide of tears before he worried her more.
"Tell…Glinda…"
"I know." And he did. He'd known that he'd always shared Elphaba's heart with the vision in pink, who he loved in his own way. "I'll tell her, I promise. Sleep, love." One shallow breath later, Elphaba was gone. Fiyero sat, silent and stunned, holding her until darkness overtook the room.
After escaping Kiamo Ko, while they were making their way through the Vinkus toward the safety of Fliaan, Fiyero had asked Elphaba exactly what enchantment she'd done to make him into a man of straw. Embarrassed, she had admitted to recognizing only a few words in the title of the spell: "never die".
It was only now that the fullness of those words came to him, and settled around his heart like a vice. What good was immortality if he had to live without Elphaba? Slipping out of the bed, he rested her head against the pillow and tucked her still form beneath the blankets. Kissing her goodbye one last time, Fiyero struck out from the little cabin they'd called home for fifty years. It might be the last thing he'd do in this life – hopefully, he thought, it will – but come what may, he was going to find Glinda and beg her to end his misery.
FIN
