See, Leia? I'm updating, so need to throttle me :) While I usually post my updates late night Sunday, it is actually before noon here! I've been impatient all week to share this next part. It's what we've all been waiting for, after all, isn't it? I hope you all might consider leaving a review, because your poor writer's been stressed lately and she could use a boost :) Okay, enjoy!

When Fiyero awoke from his deep sleep, he was not happy. When he was sleeping, he didn't have to see where he was, deal with the bullying guards when they came by on their rounds, have to feel the pain and discomfort of his injuries, and most of all, dwell on the memories and realizations of the last few days.

So, when he heard a noise that brought him back to consciousness, he felt determined to go back to his nap. He rolled over to his side, groaning slightly at the effort, and tuned out the sound. Good, it stopped– maybe he'd be able to catch up on that shuteye he was forced to miss.

Well, there was only that problem of feeling like he was being stared at.

"Oh, go away," he grumbled, covering his face with his arm.

Whoever or whatever it was, didn't leave. It was getting irritating.

He propped himself up on his elbow and glared at his audience. To be truthful, he had been expecting a big, ugly guard, not a mysterious hooded figure. Nevertheless, he wasn't going to be bothered by anyone's taunts and cruel words, or, in this case, creepy staring.

"What do you want here? Are you going to mock me too? Did those stupid soldiers send you over here as a joke? To see how I'll react?"

"I came here to break you out," spoke a woman's voice indistinctly from under the dark, looming hood.

Well, that's an interesting idea, he thought.

Fiyero rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself up to his feet (he learned the hard way this was the least painful way of getting up to avoid overworking his tender midriff). He was able to look over this stranger better from this viewpoint, and the only thing that seemed to stand out to him other than the black cloak that concealed this figure were the long, slender arms that seemed to glow against the dark outfit and surroundings.

His eyes narrowed at her; why would someone who would break into the Emerald Palace – home of the Great Wizard of Oz and hundreds of Gale Force soldiers – to release one of the prisoners, be clenching her fists so tightly as to make the knuckles even paler when she managed to find him? Was she nervous?

"To break me out?" Fiyero repeated to her. He laughed bitterly. "Who sent you? Hmm? Madame Morrible? The Wizard himself?"

He paused his accusations on the stranger only for a moment to consider her. She was too tall to be Glinda, not that the Good Witch would need to hide her face anyway. Fiyero guessed this person was a member of Elphaba's resistance efforts.

She had mentioned her work briefly and vaguely, and then she emphasized very strongly about how she didn't want him involved with it at all because it was more often than not unlawful and quite dangerous. Even brainless Fiyero could guess that he should heed Elphaba's adamant orders for him if this was a Resistance member, and know that she was intelligent enough not to claim association with the Captain of the Guard at all with anyone in this Resistance in the first place.

That left his theory that this was more likely than not meant to test his guilt; a ploy by Madame Morrible.

It seemed his accusations left the cloaked woman fumbling for words. Maybe that meant he was right.

"Did they send you down here – to break me out, you said? – in order to test me?" Fiyero ventured. "Well, my story isn't changing, and I'd rather stay in this hellhole than to give up my chance at one day really getting out. I'm innocent."

He really wasn't, and he was well aware of that. He wasn't able to do any more for Elphaba, so there was no use in sacrificing himself again.

She was dead.

He lost count of how many people had told him. Guards came out of their way to tell him and rub it in his face. Madame Morrible herself paid her ex-student a visit, confirming it by "expressing her condolences" (he might have accepted it if she weren't smirking so). Most important of all, the stone walls of the palace echoed with songs of the Witch's melting, and all who cheered and sang did so without any knowledge that he was there, listening. So he knew she never made it.

Melted, though… He couldn't accept that. He never considered himself essentially smart, but he had his moments of attentiveness in school. On an especially good day in Life Sciences, he remembered jotting down some statistic or other about how bodies were primarily made of water, so how could anyone be allergic to it? Even if that person was indeed born green? But then again, how was it possible for that person to be born with green skin anyway?

Thinking about it gave him a headache.

Whatever happened, though, she was found in the middle of a small town near Colwen Grounds with everything she owned, including those things she told him in private she kept close because they were incredibly important to her or her cause, strewn upon the Yellow Brick. Many soldiers took glee in describing the scene in detail: the puddle of green, all of the blood…

At first, he grieved, but once someone mentioned Glinda, how she had been the one to handle the situation and verify Elphaba's demise, he realized he couldn't be selfish anymore in his mourning. So he hardened up and came up with a story, for Glinda's sake. Whether he was with the socialite any longer or not, he loved her and he knew her well enough to know that she would be dying inside alone without either of her best friends with her. He needed to be with her and help her through this difficult time. Then they would be able to grieve together.

So he told anyone who questioned him that he had been put under a spell. Simple. Somewhat true, even. He never mentioned that spell was love (something he knew the men in his guard would never let him live down) nor that he willingly fell under it, but he hoped his sudden change of attitude would help convince them he was no longer a victim because "whatever spell she placed on him must have worn off"…or something to that effect, anyway.

Lying like that tore him up inside. The only kind of comfort he received was because she would have told him to do so. She always cared more for his safety than her own.

So he resumed.

"—I'm not being controlled anymore and I'm not going to change that story to participate in whatever plan you claim to have. You must think I'm really stupid, don't you?"

By this time, the woman seemed to have come back to herself, for she straightened up and squared her shoulders huffily. He didn't know much about how women worked, but one thing he knew was that was never a good thing.

"No, not really stupid," she said, and Fiyero felt his mind go blank at the familiarity of her voice and his heart flutter at the due sarcasm. She pulled the hood down from her head angrily. "Do you ever let anyone else talk?"

Holy Shiz, she was alive.

"Elphaba," he breathed in astonishment.

He felt a whirl of emotion inside of his chest as her dark hazel eyes stared hard at him. If nothing else was familiar about her at all, he would know her from that strong look from her deep eyes alone. A simmer of longing filled his stomach, and as he gazed at her through the bars that separated them, he found himself missing that strange color that was for some reason absent from her skin. Her unique complexion was one of the things that made her most who she was, while not directly of course; he silently prayed that this was a transient illusion she had conjured to hide her ethereal and conspicuous appearance.

Despite the dramatic difference, however, he discovered he wasn't at all surprised of the changes that had occurred since they had last seen each other. Dashes of déjà vu and fantastic imagery filled his mind of the weird dreams he had of her as he grieved her death, and as he thought about it, this was how she looked. At the time, he hadn't even noticed.

He had no idea how long they stood there, staring at each other, both of them breathing unsteadily and seemingly loudly in the unnerving silence. How is it that someone like Elphaba, one who needed to commandeer conversations and express herself liberally so often, could just stand there, quiet as could be, with a deafening void that needed to be filled?

Then again, he wasn't usually shy or subdued either.

Fiyero felt like a million thoughts were flying around his head all at once and completely empty of anything intellectual or meaningful at the same time. He must have looked like a fish out of water, opening and closing his mouth repeatedly as he tried to find something, anything to say to her.

Suddenly the words he threw into her cloaked face came back to him, of how he had let himself be controlled by her, trapped under her spell...

"Look, Elphaba, what I said—"

"It doesn't matter—"

"Yes, it does, because—"

"I thought you were dead," they said simultaneously.

In the uncomfortable quiet that followed, he watched as her face split into a crooked smile and her crazed cackle filled the stillness like a blaze in the night before fading into sweet laughter. Her expression went from looking as if she had been through a lifetime of hardships in a dozen hours to relief, like the tension that had been building inside of her and the dam of emotions seemed to just break over the absurdity of their lives. It left Fiyero momentarily stupefied as he stared at her from the other side of the thick, metal bars.

Before long he was grinning as well. This was why he was so in love with her: her passion was intense and her life force was uncontrollable and unpredictable. She constantly left him hypnotized. The soft, harmonious laughter didn't last long and she wiped the cheerless tears still hanging upon her tired face, but the smirk of mirth continued to grace her lips.

He wanted nothing more than to reach out and kiss her beautiful, smiling mouth fiercely. Unfortunately for him, that was part of what was so funny to her because they still stood feet apart from one another with a fortified prison gate impeding their long-awaited reunion.

"So, you're going to break me out of here, then?"

"I've considered it, yes."

"Oh, well, that's good," he bantered lightly as he looked around for weaknesses in his cell. "It's either that or I wait to be sentenced to be put to death, again, which doesn't seem all that appealing from where I'm standing."

It took him a couple moments to make sure the two gaps in the bars in front of Elphaba were actually there; in the darkness and layered against her black-clad body it was nearly impossible to see. As he reached out and waved his hand in the peculiar hole between them, he asked, "How did this happen?"

Her smile dropped some, and she shrugged, holding up her hands, which were covered with ashy, black dust. "I was upset," she said in a reluctant tone, as if somewhat embarrassed by another wild outburst of her power in his midst.

"You make it sound like it's a bad thing," Fiyero rejoined. "Look, whatever you did cracked the stone at the bottom so if we can somehow loosen it some more…"

"We need to do it quickly," she said, unexpectedly sober as she glanced over her shoulder down the dark corridor that led out of the prison. "There are guards coming."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I can sense it. I kidnapped someone to find you and then let him go. He must have found some Forcers by now. But at the moment I'm more worried about the guard on rotation…"

She reached forward to handle the two broken bars jutting out of the ground just as he did the same. Their hands brushed together, his over the tops of hers, and they both hesitated for a moment at the contact.

"Step back," she whispered, avoiding his gaze. She didn't want to hurt him; he could tell that just from the look in her eyes.

He did as she suggested and watched patiently, interestedly, as she took a deep breath and wrapped her long fingers around the metal. A clock tick later, a small blast echoed in the deathly quiet dungeon, shaking the stone momentarily and sending a small wave of energy that extinguished a nearby candle.

"Well, if the guards weren't coming before, they are now," Fiyero said, accepting the vicious glare she shot at him before helping her pull the waist high poles from the now pulverized stone floor. One came out easily, and just as Elphaba stood upright with it in her hands, they heard the door swing open at the end of the hallway.

"What's going on down there?"

Fiyero craned his neck to see who was approaching, and he was irked to realize it was one of the guards he wasn't particularly fond of. He turned back at Elphaba to find out what she was going to do or say to him, but she vanished in a silent swish of her cloak into the neighboring shadows. If not for her slight breathing, he wouldn't have known she were there.

Well, he could play along.

"Did you hear that sound? Woke me up," Fiyero grumbled believably, leaning against the gate as the guard stepped up in front of him.

"The door was unlocked. Why?" the man asked him, clearly trying to remain superior to the former captain with his tone and stature. In his haughtiness he didn't seem to notice the openings in the poles between them or Elphaba at all.

"I decided to go out for a stroll," Fiyero responded mockingly, making the sentry stare daggers in return. "How should I know?"

"You were always a miserable excuse for a soldier."

"Perhaps," Fiyero agreed coolly, and saw Elphaba shift angrily in the shadows out of the corner of his eye as though stepping towards them. He smiled smugly. "But while you were watching over dead bodies and empty cells, I was involved with the most renown, powerful, and sexy witches in Oz. Beat that."

Elphaba slipped out of the darkness, hooded and menacing, and clubbed the guard over the head with the heavy rod she still had in her hands.

"There are times that I forget how stupidly male and arrogant you can be, and then it all comes back to me," she said crankily at him, but he could see a faint smirk under the hood. "Feel better?"

"I do," he responded with a smile as he kicked out the second bar the witch had slackened from the floor. "It was nice to get that out of my system. I needed a good brag."

Fiyero wiggled as best as he could out of the small hole they managed to create in his cell and stood next to her, hitting the unconscious soldier on the floor with his boot was satisfaction. She grabbed him by the arm, drawing his attention.

"Don't! Don't touch him," she ordered him as they started walking towards the entrance. "You mustn't hurt them. Don't fight anyone who tries to stop us."

She had always done that to him– demanding him around like that. That, of course, was one thing that first attracted his attention to her when they were younger, for no one else ever spoke to him that way. He was fascinated and goaded by it every time, but, despite being the prince that he was, he also always listened. How could he not? She was brilliant and enticing all at once.

"What do you expect me to do then?" Fiyero asked back. Her steps faltered slightly and she looked up at him; he wished more than anything right then he could see her face under that dark cloak of hers.

"I need you to fight me," she said, resuming her quick pace while pulling her befuddled lover along.

"That's ridiculous. I'm not going to fight you."

"You say you're innocent right? Then don't act guilty."

"Elphaba… Fae…" he pleaded, pulling her around to face him. Her hood fell slightly and he could see the glint of her eyes peering up at him.

"Fiyero, this isn't really the time," she insisted, but placed her hand affectionately against his chest anyway, perhaps as some sort of self-assurance to his presence.

"For all we know, this is the only time."

"Oh, don't be overdramatic…"

They both could hear hurried footsteps and voices through the thick door that was only feet from them, so Elphaba gripped his shirt anxiously and said, "Remember, fight me. And I'm sorry if I hurt you."

Before he could ask what she meant, four guards, fully armed, burst through the door and stopped to stare at the scene in front of them, which Fiyero had to admit would have seemed out of the ordinary: a prisoner was being held outside his cell by his collar by an ominous figure in the middle of a spooky dungeon? That certainly wasn't anything he experienced on the job, and he chased and dated witches for a living.

He didn't want to struggle against her as he didn't want to harm her at all, even though that was what she asked for, so instead he simply stood there meekly and whimpered to the soldiers, "Help?"

"Get them!"

Elphaba, still clutching Fiyero by the front of his shirt, threw him forward into the line of guards, toppling the front three like dominos as his heavy form landed ungracefully on top. The one soldier left standing stepped around the tangle and pointed his pistol at the witch, but she knocked the side of the gun away from her; it discharged and the bullet went pinging around the stone hallway, missing all six of them. Taking advantage of the guard's momentary distraction, she struck him in the solar plexus with the tip of the metal bar she still held in her other hand, knocking the wind out of him, and roughly drove his gun-arm downward. The gun fired once more but this time, because Elphaba had forced the point of the pistol down between them, the slug penetrated the flesh of the man's thigh and he fell to the floor screaming.

"Hurts like a bitch, doesn't it?" she gibed as he grasped his injured leg, moaning.

Elphaba swung the rod into the side of another soldier's head who slipped away from the mess of wriggling limbs, knocking him out. When she reached out to take Fiyero's sleeve and lift him up, the material of his shirt ripped further with the weight, primarily because one of the fallen guards anticipated her move and grabbed Fiyero's injured torso. The cloaked woman swelled with anger when her prince cried out in pain and she landed a kick in the soldier's family jewels to effectively allow Fiyero to slip away. She quickly grabbed him under the joint of his shoulder and pulled him up, purposely forcing his weight roughly to one side so he stepped and tripped on the two men still struggling below him.

They were only a couple feet from the open door at this point, so she heaved Fiyero's body forward through it. The one guard she hadn't managed to hurt badly stumbled after them and caught the witch by the cloak. Her momentum faltered as the clasp tightened against her throat, cutting of her airflow, and though she fumbled momentarily she didn't lose her balance completely. She whipped around and in one swift move pulled her cloak with her free hand and launched the metal bar end-over-end at the soldier hindering her escape, knocking him back.

Fiyero and Elphaba both threw themselves forward and slammed the heavy door shut, nearly crushing one man's hand as he made one last desperate attempt to stop them. With frantic wave of her arm, the large lock magically fell into place, sealing the doorway shut.

The raven-haired witch exhaled lengthily and stayed propped against the door for quite a few moments, listening to the muffled yells and desperate attempts to unbolt the exit from their side. But the men there were trapped, and she and Fiyero were temporarily safe.

Elphaba felt his fingers slide around her waist and gently pull her backwards towards him. She turned to face her lover as he gently guided her against his surprisingly warm body. Outside of the dreary prison there was light and for the first time she was able to see him properly.

He was grimy and filthy, unsurprisingly, considering the condition of his cell. He was also covered in the dry blood as she discovered earlier. She was afraid to lay her hands on him, unaware of where he was hurt or how badly. Although he acted as though he was all right, as she stared down at his shredded and stained shirt she remembered vividly the guards stabbing and beating him back at Colwen Grounds.

"It's okay, you can touch. I don't mind," he said, and she looked up at him doubtfully. But his crisp blue eyes, even more vibrant in comparison to the dark crimson that discolored half of his face, seemed to almost beg for physical nearness with her, so she carefully ran her hands under the edge of his tattered shirt and lifted it up. She couldn't repress a gasp; his normally golden skin was marred by ghastly yellowing bruises the size of her hand and long, jagged scars that seemed as roughly shut as the wound on her leg.

"Is it painful? Did I hurt you worse?" she asked, and regretted their necessary performance in their getaway as she brushed her fingertips against the contusions. He winced lightly but smiled.

"No, you didn't make it worse. But I do think one of the guards elbowed me in the face as I 'accidentally' shoved their heads into the floor."

Elphaba looked at him, letting the shirt drop back down against his stomach, and brought a hand to softly stroke the pink splotch on his tan cheek. She simpered as her eye caught the tiny white line left from the small lion cub so many years ago; that was the day she realized she had strong romantic feelings for him.

And in spite of her self-control, her rationale and her conviction that she wasn't that girl and the one for him, here she stood years later in his arms.

"I think you'll live," she whispered, and slowly brushed the small white spot with her thumb as she cupped his stained cheek. How had they gotten so close?

"I have so many questions," he told her, his eyes moving down to her lips.

"I think we both do," she agreed.

His hand was at the small of her back, strong and stable, and with that they were flush against each other. She felt her body heat up at the contact. Time seemed to stop as they closed the distance between each other, their lips nearly touching…

A loud bang resounded in the hallway, making them both step apart and stare at the emerald and gold door next to them just as another crash rumbled. Elphaba's hood nearly fell but she pulled it farther forward, engulfing her face in shadow once again.

"Sounds like they found something to ram the door," Fiyero said, clearly maddened at the timing. "They'll be through there in a matter of minutes. Come on, we need to go."

So, with one last pining glance at each other, they ran.