I'm glad you're all still liking this story! A lot of you seem to be waiting for something bad to happen. As I said before, I mainly focused on Elphaba and Fiyero's relationship in this story and on how it changes both of them; but of course there will be drama, too, at some point. This chapter, though, gives some background information on Fiyero's family and the girls in Morrible's brothel.

6. The Family's Talk

When Fiyero got home the next morning, his grandmother was the one sitting in the kitchen, although Fiyero doubted she'd been there all night. He'd stayed out a bit longer tonight than last time, just wandering the streets and losing himself in thought, and he knew Calinne liked to rise early. Being up at six in the morning wasn't such a strange thing for her.

The prince sighed as he lingered in the doorway. "Let me guess. We need to talk?"

His grandmother's lips quirked into a half-smile. "How did you guess?"

"It's not what you think, though," Fiyero defended himself. He faltered when he realised where his grandparents probably thought he had been and where he had really been, exactly. "All right, well... it sort of iswhat you think," he conceded, "but I didn't do what you think I did. Or," he corrected himself again, grimacing, "I did, but then I... Oz, this is hard to explain."

"Why don't you tell me where you were, dear," Calinne suggested, cradling a cup of tea between her hands. "I think your grandfather and I have let you get away with this nonsense for long enough now, don't you? Frankly, I think everyone has been letting you get away with your behaviour for too long already."

He bristled. "It isn't nonsense and no-one has ever let me get away with it. Mum and Dad have tried –"

"Oh, I'm sure a lot of people have tried," his grandmother interjected, her brown eyes piercing. "But it wasn't until recently that someone actually succeeded, was it?"

He gawked at her.

She smiled and patted the seat of the chair next to her. "Take a seat, dear," she advised him. "And a cup of tea, too, perhaps. This might take a while."

"How did you know?" he asked her even as he poured himself a cup of tea and sat down next to Calinne. "Was it that obvious?"

"A mother sees these things," said Calinne. "I may not be your mother, but I'm a mother nonetheless. You're a lot like your father, did you know that? In a lot of different ways, actually. He insisted on digging in his heels, too, at about the same age you started all this. Like father, like son, I suppose." She regarded him shrewdly. "Is it a girl?"

He spluttered and she laughed. "You're different, Fiyero," she told him. "It's not that hard to see. It's equally clear that you're still a little bit in denial about it, but that's all right. You'll get there. Who is she? And how come you're still returning home so late? Do you need such a long walk to clear your head every time you've seen her or is there some other reason for it?"

Fiyero sighed, glumly sipping his tea. "There's a different reason." He hesitated, but his grandmother suddenly frowned and leaned forward, sniffing Fiyero's clothes.

She was still frowning when she looked at him. "Have you been to The Fish's Lair again?" she asked him. "You've smelt like this a lot the past week – like that horrible perfume Morrible always uses on everything to make the place smell good."

He tried to make light of it. "Well, of course I've been there. I'm a twenty-three-year-old guy who is forced to live with his grandparents. There's a brothel here. Guys like me get bored, you know, Grandma."

Calinne wasn't fooled, however. "Oh, Fiyero," she said, heaving a deep sigh. "It's one of Madame Morrible's girls?" As before, she didn't wait for a reply. "While I'm glad you've found someone whom you feel understands you, dear – assuming that that is what turned you around – I can't say I'm happy it's one of those girls."

"Why not?" Fiyero demanded, suddenly angry. "What's wrong with them? Just because they do that work, doesn't mean –"

"Fiyero," Calinne cut him off sternly. "That is not what I meant. I do not judge people by their lives or their profession, unlike yourself – for the past years, at least."

Fiyero looked down, ashamed; and his grandmother placed her hand over his.

"But I worry for you," she told him gravely. "If you really care so much about this girl, you're going to want to take her away from here, perhaps even make her your queen, and that is going to be a very hard thing to do. Madame Morrible doesn't let her girls go easily and the Vinkus will have a hard time accepting a former prostitute as their queen."

"I don't care about the Vinkus," Fiyero said hotly. Upon seeing his grandmother's scrutinising look, he amended, "All right, fine, I do. I guess. A little. But I'd figure something out, Grandma. As for Morrible, she knows who I am and she likes me. I pay her a lot. I'd pay her even more to get Elphaba free – so much she wouldn't be able to refuse. And besides," he added, "who ever said anything about marriage? I hardly even know her. We've only kissed once and I'm not even sure that counted as a real kiss. I won't deny that I care about her, but there is no way I'm marrying anyone anytime soon." Of that, he was certain, no matter how much he might have changed in such a short period of time.

Calinne sighed, but didn't say anything else. She stared down into her tea for a while, lost in thought, before looking up and taking in her grandson's appearance.

"Why don't you go and get some sleep?" she suggested. "You look terrible. We can continue this talk later today, when your grandfather is awake as well."

Fiyero agreed and pushed away from the table with a sigh, trudging out of the kitchen and into his bedroom, where he kicked off his shoes and then collapsed on the bed, still fully clothed, only to wake up hours later because the late morning sun was shining into his eyes. His head was pounding and he groaned. He hadn't even had anything to drink the night before. If this was what thinking felt like, he wondered if maybe he was better off sticking with his brainless act.

Then he thought of Elphaba, however, and the things she'd said to him – about him being able to help people, make good, and be a great king – and he pushed himself up into a sitting position.

He'd meant it when he'd asked her if she really had that much faith in him. He had been causing trouble since his early teenage years and he'd been partying and evading his royal responsibilities since he was eighteen; he didn't think any of the people around him had had faith in him in a long time. Even his parents and grandparents had given up on him at some point... or so he'd thought. He was starting to think now, after this talk with his grandmother, that maybe they'd never actually given up on him. Maybe they'd just been biding their time, waiting for something to happen that would coax him into changing his ways – knowing that something like that would happen at some point.

The talk he had with both his grandparents that day was long and exhausting, but good. He told them all about Elphaba and he even talked to them about how he had felt all these years, knowing he couldn't choose what he wanted to do with his life. They understood, but they also explained to him how it had made his family feel – that his parents felt guilty because they never wanted to force this responsibility on him, but didn't have a choice. Fiyero had never known that and that, in turn, made him feel guilty. He'd only seen his own unhappiness and it hit him now how selfish he had really been.

"Write to them," Kevon advised him. "Tell them everything you just told us. They'd want to know. They'll be thrilled to have their son back, Yero – they've felt like they couldn't reach you for so long, they'll be happy to really be in touch with you again."

Fiyero followed his grandfather's advice and wrote Hamold and Lori a long letter, explaining the way he'd always felt and the reasons for his behaviour and apologising for it. He felt lighter, afterwards. He actually found himself wondering why he hadn't done this sooner, but then he thought of all the royal duties that lay ahead of him, all the expectations and responsibilities, and he remembered why he'd started rebelling in the first place.

Still, he promised himself that was in the past now. He would try to be better from now on. If he could help even one girl like Elphaba when he was king, it would be worth it.

Elphaba was glad to be feeling completely well again now, allowing her to venture into town the day after Fiyero's second visit to spend her afternoon at the library. She'd always loved to read. When she was a little girl in the orphanage, she used to dream of studying at a university one day and becoming someone important. Of course, reality had soon forced her to let go of that dream, but she'd never given up on trying to learn as much as she could about anything. After all, one never knew when such knowledge might come in handy.

This time, however, she couldn't quite keep her attention on her book. She knew why that was. She could never concentrate when she was thinking about something and right now, she just couldn't stop thinking about Fiyero and why in Oz he would have kissed her if he wasn't interested in... well, what every other man who came to her was interested in.

She kept musing over that as she walked back, carrying three books with her to The Hidden Depths. She was still thinking about it that night, as she spent her night off sprawled on her bed on her stomach with her feet up in the air, reading the books she'd brought. Galinda was working, but Lulu was off as well and Elphaba sneaked out of her room at some point to visit the other girl.

Elphaba had never bonded with many of the other girls. They were all sent away at age twenty-five, when Morrible thought they were getting too old to attract the audience she wanted, so a girl left every year or so. New recruits came in sometimes, but not very often, so the group of girls had remained mostly the same since Elphaba had come here. Morrible usually kept between eight and twelve girls and many of those who joined were only barely sixteen and had been kicked out of the orphanage and sold themselves to Morrible until their twenty-fifth birthdays out of necessity, just like Elphaba. There were, after all, only so many ways a young female orphan could stay alive in the streets.

Of the others, Ruby – Pfannee – had been working here the longest: over seven years, since she was sixteen. Crystal, or Milla, had come in not long after Pfannee and the two had already been friends when Elphaba had arrived. They were two of the girls who actually enjoyed what they did and had no intention of leaving as long as they were still treated well by Morrible. They were also Morrible's favourites, so they had more rights and liberties than the other girls did.

Onyx – Shenshen – and Jade – Delani – had both been here for five years, also since they were sixteen. Galinda had come in when she was fifteen and so had worked here for nearly four years now; she had been the newest girl before Elphaba came and the two of them had become friends immediately, both still relatively new to everything, each with her own story, needing someone to confide in. Elphaba was still incredibly grateful for her frilly, blonde, pink-loving best friend. Galinda had been the one to talk her through those first few weeks and teach the green girl everything about this life. When Elphaba had asked her why, Galinda had simply smiled.

"Girls like us need to look out for one another, Elphie," she'd said. "With lives like ours, we don't trust easily, but we need at least one person to have our back or we'll go crazy. I'll have your back if you've got mine." From that day on, Galinda had become the best – and then only – friend Elphaba had ever had. She'd had an even rougher life than Elphaba, in some ways; she'd known a normal life and the love of a family, but her parents had passed away in an accident when she was twelve. Galinda had been sent off to live with her aunt in the Vinkus, who treated her like garbage and only accepted custody of the young Gillikinese girl to get access to her parents' money. Grieving and scared, Galinda had endured that treatment from her aunt for three years before catching Morrible's eye on the street. Morrible, knowing Galinda would make a very desirable addition to her girls and being familiar with Galinda's aunt, had talked to the other woman and Galinda's aunt had agreed to sell her niece to Morrible's brothel for a high price. It was horrifying, but stories like that one were reality for most of Morrible's girls.

Sapphire, or Lulu, had come after Elphaba, when Elphaba had been with Madame Morrible for nearly a year. Keeping Galinda's words and her own experience in mind, Elphaba had been the one to approach the terrified young girl, sixteen at the time and straight from the orphanage, to try and help her through everything. The two had bonded over some mutual experiences in their past as well as a shared dislike of most of the other girls, such as Pfannee and Milla, because of their arrogant attitudes and desperate desire to be the best in their profession. Lulu mostly kept to herself and so did Elphaba, but that was fine with both of them – neither of them talked much, anyway. Sometimes they just sat together in the same room for hours, Elphaba reading and Lulu embroidering, without so much as saying a word. Elphaba valued that about their friendship; it was quite different from Galinda's cheerful, idle chatter, but the green girl loved it just as much.

Lulu was only barely eighteen now, a child still, really; and Elphaba often worried about her. Despite the fact that new girls had come in after Lulu (Diamond, or Olia, come in a year ago at age sixteen; Amethyst, or Nalenne, come in half a year ago at age fifteen; and Pearl, or Falin, come in half a year ago at age sixteen), they had all seemed to cope better with the whole change than Lulu had. Even now, Elphaba felt like out of all of them, Lulu was the one who seemed the least suitable for this kind of life and the most easily broken. She hated doing what she did, but she had nowhere else to go, much like Elphaba herself and some of the other girls.

Now, Elphaba slipped into Lulu's room. The younger girl looked up from her embroidery and flashed Elphaba a smile; the green girl returned the smile and then curled up in the arm chair across from Lulu's with her book. Lulu reached out to pour her friend a cup of tea from the teapot on the side table and pushed it in Elphaba's direction before returning to her embroidery, content to spend the night in companionable silence. That was just how their friendship was and honestly, Elphaba wouldn't have it any other way.