DISCLAIMER: The characters you recognise from Wicked aren't mine, obviously. But the other characters are.

Chapter 2: 4 AM

Two days later, Fiyero found himself suddenly awake at four am.

It wasn't the first time that it had happened since his father had died, and it was always with that same jolt he'd felt that night, to be jerked from sleep by that dreaded knock on the door with his heart pounding.

This particular morning, however, his thoughts were not on Ibrahim, but on the empty space beside him. Elphaba.

In the immediate days after Elphaba had left, the first few nights of being in the bed without her and being unable to sleep, Fiyero had spent hours trying to remember their last night together.

Surely there'd had to have been some sign, some clue that she was unhappy or about to leave? Surely when you were sharing a bed with someone, you couldn't hide everything.

But all Fiyero could recall was a haze of grief and misery.

Lying in the darkness and staring at the empty side of the bed, Kasmira's words came back to him.

'If there is even a chance that you believe that, you should try and find her.'

Was Elphaba the love of his life? She was certainly the first girl he'd ever loved, there was no doubt about that; and though he'd known he loved her from a few weeks into their relationship, it had been from his birthday and the fairytale exhibit that he'd known she was the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

"Once upon a time in a faraway land," he murmured under his breath, and rubbed a hand over his face tiredly.

"Serves me right for living in a fairytale."

Sitting up in bed and lighting the lamp, he grabbed the letter and ring from the nightstand, hesitating only briefly before opening the box. The diamond glinted in the lamplight, and Fiyero stared at it sombrely.

The moment he'd read the telegram from his mother that day, it had been so clear to him, proposing to Elphaba. He'd known with every fibre of his body that returning to the Vinkus without Elphaba was not an option, and the solution was to marry her.

So, yes. Elphaba was the love of his life.

But how confident was he in her love for him? She had never told him that she loved him. But her actions… Fiyero had thought that her actions said what words she couldn't speak. Now he wasn't so sure.

Maybe she didn't love him- at least not enough to marry him. Or maybe just not enough to withstand the expectations and pressures that came with the royal lifestyle. And honestly, could Fiyero blame her for that? He'd spent much of his adolescent years wishing he didn't have to deal with that lifestyle, at least Elphaba had a choice. He just really wished, if that were the case, she'd talked to him about that.

Fiyero eventually drifted off back to sleep, still clutching the ring box in his hand. He may not have had any answers, but he had made a decision.

"I've been thinking," he said to Kasmira at dinner the following night.

"About?"

"Elphaba."

Kasmira raised an eyebrow slightly. "Oh?"

"I don't know if she loved me, at least not in the way that I loved her."

His mother sighed. "Yero-"

"Mom, please let me finish," Fiyero cut her off. "I know that I love her, no matter what. And even if that's not being with me, I want her to be happy. And I know that Shiz will make Elphaba happy."

"What does this mean?" Kasmira asked cautiously.

Fiyero took a deep breath. "I'm going to find Elphaba. Just to let her know about Shiz, nothing else."

The dowager queen gave a small nod. "Ok," she said slowly. It wasn't what she was hoping for, but it was a starting point.

"And how are you going to go about this?"

"I don't know," Fiyero admitted. "I thought about contacting Shiz, but I know for a fact the only address Elphaba gave them to contact her was here."

"Well, where do you think she might have gone?"

"Back to the Emerald City, I guess."

Kasmira nodded. "Alright. Well, I suppose that's the most logical place."

So, Fiyero sat down and wrote to Elphaba's manager at The Pinnacle, asking if he'd seen or heard from her. He received a reply a week later, stating that Elphaba (or Fae, rather) had not made contact with them looking for a room or a job.

Fiyero didn't panic or worry at that- there were dozens of hotels in the Emerald City, and perhaps The Pinnacle wasn't hiring at the time. Next he contacted The Omega Inn, recalling Elphaba had been staying there when they first met. He didn't like it now, any more than he had back then, but assumed she had resumed her goal of saving as much money as possible for her Shiz tuition. If nothing else, the Omega was cheap.

Fiyero was working off a list of hotels from the Emerald City guidebook, and as the weeks passed, more replies came in from hotels that they had no guests or employers registered as Elphaba Thropp, or Fae Skarr. Only then did Fiyero start to get nervous, wondering exactly where she had gone. You always heard stories about public caravans that were less than reputable- passengers getting mugged, drivers scamming them out of money, etc.

And then Fiyero realised another problem that he hadn't considered- he'd met Elphaba under a fake name, and there was nothing to say that she had gone back to that same fake name. If she was living and working under a different fake name, he may never find her. He certainly just couldn't start asking people about 'the green girl', for the simple matter that Elphaba simply did not stand out in a city where everything was green. No one gave her skin a second thought there.

By the end of June, he'd exhausted all the hotels in the Emerald City and had to concede defeat. Elphaba wasn't there- at least not under a name where he was going to find her.

"Did she ever mention going anywhere else?" Kasmira asked when Fiyero informed her.

Fiyero had been racking his brain, trying to answer that very question. "I think Shiz," he said tiredly. "She mentioned something once about getting a job in the town, maybe. Close to the uni."

Kasmira paused. "Do you think she- she might of gone home?"

"Home? To Munchkinland?" Fiyero asked in disbelief. Then he shook his head firmly. "No. No way. Back to her father and that- that life?"

"I know her relationship with her father isn't ideal, from what she told us," Kasmira acknowledged. "But it is her home, Yero. Her sister's there-"

"No. No. Only as a last resort. Going back to Munchkinland would be giving up every hope of going to Shiz and having her own life," Fiyero said. "She'd leave Oz before she went back to Munchkinland, unless she had no other choice."

He really hoped she hadn't left Oz. Then he'd absolutely never find her.