AN: I really hate doing this, because there is most likely only one more chapter after this one, but I still have to leave it on hiatus... like, I'd love to update now, but I haven't actually written that final chapter yet :3.

I am leaving you with a very cute, nice, and fluffy chapter, though.

Chapter 27. To mend a relationship

"You are back together?!" Galinda actually clapped her hands in delight, eyes shining as she bounced up and down on the balls of her feet. "For real?"

Elphaba grinned a little shyly at her friend and Fiyero squeezed her closer, beaming at the blonde. "We are."

Galinda flapped her arms and squealed, then threw her arms around both of her friends at the same time. "Oh, Elphie, Fiyero! I'm so happy for you! Finally!" She punched the air with her fist. "Operation Fiyeraba has succeeded!"

Upon seeing the blank looks her friends gave her, she giggled and waved them away. "Never mind." She tilted her head slightly to the side. "Now we need to work on Operation Bessa."

Elphaba sighed. "Nessa and Boq still haven't made up?" she asked in exasperation.

Galinda shook her head. "He wasn't chivalrous enough," she said, rolling her eyes as she quoted Nessarose, "and she is treating him like a servant."

"She kind of is," Fiyero muttered.

"She totally is," Elphaba agreed. "You all know how much I love Nessa, but even I can't deny the fact that she's terribly spoilt."

"They'll work things out," Fiyero assured Galinda. "They always do."

"That much is true," the blonde conceded. She looked at her friends. "So what's going to happen now?"

Elphaba shrugged. Fiyero just said, "We're going to work things out."

Galinda nodded firmly. "Good. Well, if you don't mind, I'm off to sleep now – I need a certain amount of sleep each night, you know, so that my skin…"

Both Elphaba and Fiyero zoned out after that.

As Galinda, still chattering, disappeared into the bathroom, Elphaba turned to face Fiyero.

"So… I'll see you tomorrow?" he asked her hopefully.

She nodded, fidgeting with the strap of her bag. "Breakfast?"

"Brunch," he corrected her. He leant forward to kiss her softly. "Come to my room around ten. I have plans."

A smirk made the corners of her mouth twitch. "The great and scandalacious Fiyero Tiggular has plans. That can't be good."

He playfully tapped her nose. "Be nice."

"Aren't I always?" Then she realised what she'd said and with a pang, she remembered everything she had said to him when they had been fighting. She looked away. "Okay, stupid question," she muttered. "Forget I said that."

His heart sank a little at that – it made him realise that they weren't there yet. They still had so much to work through… but they would. Together.

He caught her chin and turned her head back.

"I love you," he told her solemnly.

She rewarded him with a careful smile and he kissed her again. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay," she agreed softly. She watched as he walked down the hallway. Just before turning the corner, he looked back one more time and gave her a lopsided grin. He blew her a kiss.

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.

He grinned again and then left.

When she arrived at Fiyero's dorm room the next day and knocked on the door, he opened it for her with a beaming grin that nearly split his face in two.

"Close your eyes," he greeted her.

She raised one eyebrow.

He rolled his eyes and put his hands over her eyes, carefully leading her into the room. "Stay here. Don't look yet." He closed the door behind them and turned around, inspecting everything. Deciding it looked good, he grinned and said, "Okay, open your eyes."

She did.

The curtains were drawn shut, making the room completely dark if it weren't for the candles. There were candles everywhere – on the desk, the nightstand, the floor, every surface there was to be found in the room. He had pushed the couch aside and spread out a blanket in the middle of the room. There was a large basket with food, too – fruit, croissants, hot chocolate, juice, toast, even scrambled eggs.

She stared at it for a few long moments, then turned to stare at him. "You…" Her throat suddenly felt constricted and she sniffled. She just couldn't believe he had done all this… for her.

He smiled and took her hand, squeezing it softly. "Come on." He helped her sit down and then flopped down next to her, filling a mug with hot chocolate and handing it to her, then taking one himself. He clinked their mugs together.

"Here's to us," he said.

She took a sip of the hot liquid. Fiyero picked up a strawberry and dangled it in front of her face. She tried to grab it, but he pulled it away. "Not like that."

She scowled. "Fiyero, I refuse to let you feed me strawberries and make us look like one of those sickeningly sweet couples on the cover of Galinda's favourite romance novels," she warned him.

He pouted playfully. She snatched the strawberry from his fingers and ate it.

After a while, he pulled her into his arms. "Fae?" he whispered, his breath tickling the hair in her neck.

"Yeah?"

He paused for a moment, as if unsure of how to proceed. Then he nuzzled her cheek and whispered, "Are you happy?"

She started, unprepared for that question; and she tried to pull away, but Fiyero kept a firm grip on her.

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to," he said. "And if you do answer, you can be honest with me, I promise."

She sighed and her shoulders slumped as she gave in.

"I don't know," she said, biting her lip. "I guess… I guess I never really thought about it. Have I ever really been happy?" She shrugged. "I don't really know." She looked at him. "But I'm happy we got back together," she confessed.

His eyes lit up. "Really?"

She laughed softly. "If I hadn't been happy about that, I wouldn't have done it, Fiyero."

He smiled and kissed her.

They spent the rest of the morning on that picnic blanket, slowly emptying the basket. When they had both had enough to eat, they put the food aside and they kissed for a long while, Fiyero slowly lowering Elphaba so that she was lying on her back on the blanket, with him hovering over her. He kissed her until he was dizzy, drunk on the feeling of finally having her in his arms again and kissing her.

After a while, she sat down between his legs, her back resting against his chest; and he pulled out the journal he had written. They went through it again, together this time.

'She was my best friend. She wasn't like the other girls that came to Adurin Iir sometimes – the ones that were being trained to become ladies, the ones who only wanted to drink tea and play with dolls and who complained about their dresses and shoes getting dirty if we played in the gardens. Aliyra climbed trees and played tag with me. I challenged her to jump onto the pond once, promising her my dessert of the night if she'd do it, and she jumped without hesitating for even a clock-tick.

I didn't start loving her until later on, when we both grew up and calmed down a little. We read together sometimes, or we would go out; but mostly we talked. About the future our parents had laid out for us, about… everything, really. She was so easy to talk to. Our first kiss was after we'd been out riding. We both smelt like horses and we were covered in mud, but it was the happiest moment in my life so far.'

Fiyero grimaced a little. "I… I'm sorry about that," he said, looking down. "I mean… I didn't initially write this for you – mostly for myself. And I wanted you to read it because I thought it might help you understand things better – my feelings for her, and my feelings for you… but this is a little bit embarrassing. And probably kind of painful for you. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." Elphaba shook her head. "I know how you felt about her, Fiyero," she said. "That doesn't bother me. Really. I understand you've known each other for a long time and you were in love with her. That wasn't what I was mad about before, either. It doesn't matter to me how you felt about her in the past, but it matters how you feel now."

"I will always love her," he said, and Elphaba nodded.

"I know."

"But I don't want to linger in the past," he continued. "She'll always have a place in my heart and I will never forget her, but I'm moving on. And I love you, Fae. Maybe even more than I ever did love Aliyra, because… well, with her, I kind of grew into it, you know? We were friends, we were engaged, and then it naturally became something more. She was my partner in crime and my best friend, but sometimes I wonder if we would ever have gotten together if our parents hadn't arranged our marriage."

Elphaba laid her head against his shoulder.

"It was different with you," he said softly, stroking her hair. "I won't say it was love at first sight, because you'll snort and roll your eyes…"

He chuckled when she did just that, and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

"But it was definitely interest at first sight," he said, eyes twinkling. "There was just something about you that drew me to you. And despite the walls you had up around yourself, despite the sarcasm and the fact that you tried to push me away, I just knew I wanted to get close to you somehow. I loved it when you finally let me in and allowed me to befriend you. I loved it even more when you let me in further, let me come that much closer… with Aliyra it was easy because we'd been friends for so long, and because she was just easy in general. She had been loved by people all her life, which made it very easy for her to love other people in return. With you… I had to work hard to get close to you, but somehow I just knew beforehand that it would be worth it. And I was right."

'Her first symptoms were hardly noticeable. A cough, a rash, a headache. She got a fever at one point and we all thought that was it – just a case of the flu. Not pleasant, but not serious, either.

But her fever didn't break and her symptoms didn't disappear – if anything, they got worse, and new ones were added every day. Dizziness, tingly sensations in her hands and feet, blurry vision. She started throwing up, too. Once a day at first, then twice, until she could hardly keep down any food at all and she lived off the small amounts of water the doctor made sure she took in. He said it was a rare disease, the name of which I forgot, but it was deadly and she would most likely not recover.

I stayed with her a lot during that period. I gave her water and dabbed her forehead with a wet piece of cloth. I read to her, told her stories, even sang her lullabies; but she drifted further away from us every single day. She lost her sense of taste and smell. At some point she had started complaining about her hearing, that everything sounded as if she was under water. The doctor told us those were all symptoms – she was slowly losing the use of her senses, her muscle tissue, everything. Her entire body was deteriorating. She got worse and worse, losing weight and growing thinner and paler, her eyes sinking deeper into her face, every single day. She lost her vision and she could barely hear us anymore, but by then she was already so far gone that she was hardly even conscious anymore. She had feverish dreams, hallucinations. She thrashed and screamed, but she couldn't hear her own voice. It was awful.

And then one day, about four months after her first symptoms had appeared, she just… left us. One moment she was there, and the other she wasn't. I wasn't with her when she died, but her mother was. She later told us that it had been rather peaceful – Aliyra had just stopped breathing, calmly passing away in her sleep. Until today, though, I am not sure if that is true or if her mother just said that to make me feel better. I was, after all, only eighteen, and I had just lost the girl I loved and was supposed to marry.'

Elphaba wasn't surprised when she felt something wet in her neck. She turned to wrap her arms around Fiyero. He buried his face in her neck and cried, holding her tightly.

"It was just…" he choked out when he could talk again. "It was just so awful, you know? The way it happened, she…" He shuddered. "She didn't recognise us anymore. She yelled at her parents to get away from her and she didn't remember who I was. Every person was a stranger to her. I remember…" He swallowed. "I remember wishing at some point that she'd just… that she'd just go ahead and die…" New tears spilt over and he wiped them away. "…because then at least she wouldn't get even worse… she suffered so much, and all of us with her." He sniffled. "Even aside from my relationship with her… even if she had been a stranger, it would have been horrible to watch. But she wasn't a stranger, and…"

"Shh," Elphaba whispered, resting her chin on his shoulder. "It's okay. I understand."

They went through the rest of journal together, Elphaba asking any questions she had and Fiyero explaining and elaborating on things he wanted her to know about. It was getting dark by the time they finished, and Fiyero looked at Elphaba.

"Shall we go and get some dinner at the Primrose Café?" he suggested.

She agreed and they spent the rest of the evening there, talking and drinking coffee and tea, and holding hands.

Fiyero didn't ask if she wanted to stay over in his room that night and she didn't ask if she could, yet they somehow both ended up there again, wrapped around one another, kissing passionately. He pushed her down onto his bed and gave her a thorough back massage; and when he eventually flopped down next to her, ready to go to sleep, she snuggled up against him, her head pillowed on his chest.

He stroked her hair. "'Night, Fae," he whispered, pulling the blankets up around them and dropping a kiss on her brow.

She yawned and draped her arm across his stomach, pressing her cheek to his chest. "'Night, Yero."

She paused briefly. "Yero?"

He was already half-asleep, nuzzling her exotic-smelling, soft hair. "Mm?"

"I love you."

He was awake in an instant and he pressed a lingering kiss to her hair, his heart singing.

"I love you, too."

Until after London! Bye!