"Fabala!" Shell walked into the sunlit dining room unhappily. "What's going on?"
Elphaba looked up from her toast curiously. She'd gotten up earlier than usual and Fiyero had told her that he was going to get a little more sleep and that he'd be down to join her in fifteen minutes. It'd been forty-five minutes by then, but she figured he'd only slept late. "What do you mean, Shell?"
Shell had been staying at the mansion since the war had ended, and it didn't look like he'd be returning to Munchkinland any time soon. It looked more like he'd be marrying Juni – though he was only seventeen and she sixteen. He spent his days at the castle and his nights back in his guest room upstairs. "Juni's sulking around. She asked me to leave her alone for the day; it's just a hard day to get through for the family, she said. What does she mean?"
She stood up and walked into the living room with Shell following her. Fiyero had insisted upon a calendar on the wall to remember important dates, such as birthdays and anniversaries. Elphaba had teased him that he only needed it because he couldn't remember their anniversary otherwise, but she'd only been kidding. In truth, she barely ever looked at it and hadn't used it much, but Fiyero had been quite attentive to it. Staring at it, she blinked slowly. "Oh."
"What?"
Elphaba pointed at the scrawl on the calendar date for that day.
"Is he the one that…?"
"Yes."
"I get it. So, looks like we're alone for the day. Let's do something."
"We are not alone for the day. Juni is a sixteen-year-old girl; she's bound to mope around. My husband is not." Elphaba reminded her brother haughtily.
"Then where is he?"
"Upstairs being a lazy oaf. I'll deal with him. Then maybe the three of us can do something, all right?"
Shell muttered something to himself and collapsed on a couch in the living room. "If you don't come downstairs within half an hour, I'll entertain myself in the library."
"Don't be so depressing. I'll be down in just a few minutes." Elphaba assured him. She headed up the stairs and crept quietly into the bedroom. "Fiyero?"
He groaned and turned over in the bed.
She chuckled lightly. "Oh, darling, we weren't up later than usual last night, I don't know what your problem is." Striding to his side of the bed and looking at him she asked, "What in Oz do I have to do to get you out of bed?"
He buried his face in his hands so she couldn't look at him. "Nothing. I'm not getting up right now."
Elphaba sat gingerly on the side of the bed and examined him. "Are you sick?"
"No."
Elphaba took a deep breath and pushed him over in the bed. "Do I have to join you?"
"No."
She'd been hoping she wouldn't have to bring it up. "Do you think I don't know what this is about, Yero?"
He opened his eyes then and gazed up at her. "He would've been turning twenty today. He would've been getting married today."
"To some woman he barely even knew," she said drearily. "Look, Fiyero, I know you miss him, of course you do, he was your brother, but…"
"It should've been me."
"Okay, that's it." Elphaba undressed quickly and threw herself back into the bed. "I am not letting you say that." She pulled the covers up and crawled under them and hugged him. "You know I would've gone crazy had something happened to you."
He turned away. "Does that make me any better than him?"
"No. But you're alive and he's not and you have to make the best of that. Fiyero, he wouldn't want you to do this." She ran her fingers through his hair lovingly.
"He wouldn't want me to mourn him?" He turned back to her, eyes lit angrily.
"No! Fiyero, please. You never do this. He wouldn't want you to lay around in bed all day and brood about it." She touched his cheek gently.
"I can't help it, Fae." Fiyero admitted, softer suddenly.
"I know. Come here." She opened her arms and he scrambled into them. Elphaba stroked his chin as he often did hers and let him lay his head against her bosom. "It's okay to be sad, Fiyero. I understand that. I just don't want you like this. It worries me."
"I miss him," he mumbled.
"I know you do," she soothed, "I know."
"Will you stay here with me all day?"
"I don't know if this is healthy," she said apprehensively.
"Please?"
"You knew you had me won over. I won't even fight." She felt Fiyero's legs wrap around hers and she returned the motion slightly. "Do you want to talk?"
"Maybe a little."
"Oh, damn."
"What?"
"Shell… the door's open. And he said if I didn't come down soon he'd go upstairs to the library. The stairs are right there." Elphaba explained unhappily.
"Should I get up?" Fiyero asked.
She bit her lip. "He's seventeen. It's not like we're really doing anything. I don't think it'll make much of a difference."
"You're still related to him."
"Do you want me to stay here with you or not, Fiyero?"
He closed his eyes. "Stay."
"Besides," she said softly, "the damn guards are probably just outside the door watching us anyway," she raised her voice on the word "watching". There was a cough from the doorway. "Number Five, if you think you're getting a show soon, visual or audio, you're not. Now can you please get the hell out of the way of the door?"
"Snow White wants us at further distance," Number Five muttered to the other guard, Number Seven.
"Got it." The two walked a bit down the hallway.
There was a thumping on the stairs that made all four occupants of the second floor jump. "Oh," Number Five waved a hand dismissively, "it's only the kid."
"I'm not a kid!" Shell snapped. "I'm seventeen!"
"Fine. Whatever."
Shell slipped through the doorway and grinned at the couple in bed (though they were covered up to Fiyero's chin and Elphaba's ribs by blankets). "It figures. I told you, sis."
"Shell, leave us alone now." Elphaba mumbled, shifting uncomfortably.
"Of course. Only way to cheer him up is to do the nasty." Shell chuckled and headed out the door.
Fiyero lifted his head for a moment and called after him, "You'd better hope you never talk to my sister that way or you're in for it."
"Elphaba!" Shell whined.
"He's right." She called. "You never talk to a woman, especially your girlfriend like that."
"She's not my girlfriend, I told you!" Shell mounted the stairs.
"Oh, so that little kiss you two were sharing in the garden three days ago was nothing? I was seeing things?" She teased.
Shell stomped up the stairs angrily.
Fiyero's eyes widened. "He kissed my sister?"
"Hush," she held his face in her hands. "It was just a little kiss, I promise. You have no right to yell at them for simply kissing, anyway. They'll be getting engaged any day now."
Fiyero nodded passively and curled back up into her. "Do you think he went somewhere better?" He was once again referring to his own brother.
Elphaba didn't answer. Fiyero knew her feelings on religion very well and he'd just put her in an incredibly uncomfortable place.
"Screw what you think," he said after a moment.
Elphaba giggled. "Normally, I wouldn't be so happy with you saying that, but we'll make an exception here."
"I'm acting ridiculous, aren't I?"
"No. Everyone has his or her own way of grieving, even if it takes a year to really happen. We're all different. You know that."
Fiyero seemed relieved. "How do you grieve?"
"Hmmm?" She felt dazed. Wrapping her arms around him, she wondered aloud, "I don't really know, Yero. I've had some bad times, but I've never really had anyone to grieve, not since I was very young." A pause. "Ha!"
"What?"
"I knew there had to be something good about my life. I can name two. For almost two decades, I have had no one to grieve, knock on wood," Elphaba literally reached out and knocked on the bedside table, "and I have you," she added quietly.
"Fae," he murmured, barely audible, "if I haven't said it already once today, I love you. And I… I appreciate you being this understanding."
"I love you, too. I'm not going to just sit here and tell you to wise up. That would be wrong. I'm sure that, if Nessa died, Oz forbid, I'd do something much more destructive, in my way."
"Let's not think about that, okay?" Fiyero scooted up and kissed her on the mouth. "Can we just think about each other, and love and happiness and those sort of things?"
She smiled. "Of course." Their hands intertwined and met, as did their lips, as did their bodies, as did their love.
At lunchtime, Elphaba lay awake still, watching the clock. She was not hungry, but she knew Fiyero hadn't eaten. However, she'd asked Perria not to bother them for meals, that she'd get her husband and herself down to eat when needed. Fiyero seemed to be sleeping soundly next to her.
Her eyes drifted towards the form of her husband and she studied his face. All of her little fears were put to rest by one observation: he was smiling; and he slept with that smile, an altogether look of peace and tranquility came over his features.
It took all she had not to kiss awake that sweet, happy face.