AN: Does anyone, by the way, recognise the titles of this chapter and the previous one? Any Glee fans, perhaps? I listened to the song endlessly after I heard that Cory Monteith had died...

Fae Tiggular: I get why you were confused... I just figured that Lori and Hamold were there as Fiyero's parents, not really as King and Queen, just worried about their son, and so in my head, the doctor just kind of treated them like any other patient's parents, without all the titles and stuff. Does that make sense? It made more sense in my head :P.

Anywho, thank you all SO MUCH for reading and reviewing, I love you all! (Still not in a creepy way.)

Chapter 15. Can I open my eyes?

His eyes were open.

The moment she opened her own eyes, that was the first thing she noticed. He was watching her with those sapphire blue depths of him that she had feared she would never see again, and she stared back at him, shocked. Then he opened his mouth and croaked, 'Fae?'

That was enough to make her lose it completely. She pretty much flung herself at him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and clinging to him almost desperately as she burst into tears.

Fiyero blinked a few times, but wrapped his arms around her, gently holding her to him. His mother was crying, too, and even his Dad's eyes were suspiciously misty as he moved closer to the bed and squeezed his son's hand. 'Yero…'

Doctor Gopa and Hamold almost literally had to peel Elphaba off him so that he could be examined. The King and Queen, as well as Elphaba, had to leave the room as Gopa and a few nurses worked on the prince. They waited in the hallway anxiously, Hamold constantly pacing up and down and Elphaba finally giving in and chewing her nails nervously.

After what felt like hours, the door opened again and the doctor came out, looking utterly confused.

'And?' asked Lori anxiously. 'Is he alright?'

Gopa shook his head. 'He… he's fine,' he said in obvious wonder. 'Well, not literally 'fine', but… but there doesn't seem to be any brain damage… none whatsoever. And his concussion…' He shook his head again. 'I would have sworn that it was much worse than this, and also that his head wound was much more severe,' he admitted. 'Something must have gone wrong somewhere… results gotten mixed up… there must have been a mistake earlier.'

Then he looked up at them again. 'You may see him again now,' he told them. 'His life no longer appears to be in danger… if you want, you can ask the other boy in here, too,' he offered, and Hamold nodded.

'I'll go get him,' Elphaba volunteered. She was dying to see Fiyero again, but at least she knew that he would be alright now, while Cohvu was still waiting for any news about his best friend.

She hurriedly ran off towards the waiting room, where he was still sitting on a chair, staring off into the distance. When she burst through the doors, he looked up. Before he had a chance to say anything, however, she had already jumped him, hugging him tightly.

Elphaba wasn't really one for voluntary hugs, with the exception of when she was extremely upset, like today; and so for a moment, it made Cohvu fear the worst. When he pulled back to look at her, however, he noticed that her eyes were shining.

'He's awake!' she told him happily. 'He's awake and he's going to be fine, Cohvu! The doctor said there is no lasting damage done!'

A wave of relief washed over him and this time, it was him who hugged Elphaba. 'Thank Oz,' he muttered into her curtain of black hair. 'Thank Oz…'

She grabbed his hand and pulled him with her. 'Come on,' she said. 'You can come and see him.'

Lori and Hamold quietly talked to Gopa, discussing what would happen next. 'He will need to rest a lot,' the doctor warned them. 'He can't move around too much, and he will need to come back a few times so that we can check on him, but otherwise… I think he's well enough for you to take him home.'

Lori burst into tears again and Hamold rubbed her back soothingly. Cohvu grinned at his friend. 'Do you hear that, Mr. Prince? You can come home with us!'

Fiyero managed a grin in reply. 'You just wait and see,' he muttered. 'Give me a few days and I can kick your ass again.'

Cohvu rolled his eyes. 'Just make sure to let your ribs heal before you try,' he advised the prince seriously, and Fiyero chuckled softly, grimacing when pain jolted through his ribs. 'Ouch.'

'Careful,' Doctor Gopa warned him as he approached them again, but Fiyero just gave the doctor another one of his lopsided grins. 'I'll be fine, doc.' Then his face darkened. 'Unlike the person that caused me to end up here in the first place. What happened to him, anyway?'

'He left,' replied Cohvu. 'But he really did feel guilty about what happened, Yero. He never meant for this to happen, and he never wanted to kill Elphaba, either. Sure, he's annoying and obnoxious, but he's not heartless. He's not a murderer. And you should let it go,' he warned his friend. 'You wanted revenge the first time, and look where that got you.'

Fiyero growled. 'When I'm done with him, he's going to have a lot more to worry about than a few broken ribs.'

'Shut up!' Elphaba suddenly snapped, shoving her chair back and rising to her feet, eyes glimmering dangerously. 'Shut up, Fiyero! Here I was, all this time, thinking that you had a brain somewhere down there, but clearly I was wrong. You're an idiot, Fiyero Tiggular. You're an Oz-forsaken idiot. Avaric only tried to apologise to me, so why did you chase him in the first place? You almost got yourself killed! And now you just want to go and try again? Why? So that this time, you really end up with brain damage? Or dead? Is that what you want?'

She was fuming, and Lori and Hamold, as well as Cohvu, kept quiet. They all knew what Elphaba could be like when she got mad, and they also knew that the sensible thing to do was just to stay in the background and let her fume.

Doctor Gopa must have realised this, too, because he didn't say a word. Fiyero, however, didn't have as much common sense… or maybe he just didn't care if Elphaba exploded.

'Fae, calm down,' he said with a roll of his eyes. 'You're being overdramatic. Brain damage? Seriously? I have a few broken ribs, Fae – it's not that bad!'

'Not that bad?' she echoed, disbelief flashing across her face. She slammed her hands on either side of the bed and raised her deadly gaze to meet his. 'Fiyero,' she said in a low voice. 'You arrived here in a pool of your own blood. We've been waiting for hours while they performed surgery on you, and when they came to get us, they told us that you might die. They told us that you most likely had brain damage. It's nothing less than a miracle that you got away with some broken bones. But do not,' her grip on the sheets tightened, 'tell me that I'm being overdramatic. Not to mention that that's very rich, coming from you, because who just went after a boy that was only trying to apologise?'

'He wasn't trying to apologise, he was trying to-'

'Stop it, Fiyero.' She backed off, slumping down into a chair. 'Just stop it.'

The moment she sat down, however, she rose to her feet again. 'You know what?' she said tiredly. 'I need some air.'

With that, she strode out of the room.

Fiyero looked at his parents, uncertain. 'Is that true?' he asked in a small voice. 'Did I almost die?'

Lori nodded, tears in her eyes, as she took his hand; and he paled a little. 'But…'

'She's right,' Hamold said quietly, sitting down on his son's other side. 'You got very, very lucky. But you scared us all to death, Yero. And I understand why you got mad at Avaric, I really do, but Cohvu and Elphaba told me that he wasn't trying to do anything to you… so why did you try to do something to him?'

'I know why,' Cohvu spoke up grimly, drawing the attention of everyone in the room towards him. He moved to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, looking at his friend pointedly.

'You're in love with her, and that's why you did it,' he said. 'Because Avaric almost killed the girl you loved.'

Silence filled the room for a short moment, before he continued, 'But Yero… it was an accident. She forgave Avaric, we all did, and you should do that, too, before you get yourself killed over it!'

'You scared us to death, Yero,' Lori added quietly, squeezing his hand. He looked at her. 'I'm sorry.'

She laughed softly. 'It's okay,' she assured him, hugging him. 'Just don't… don't do it again. Ever.'

'I promise.'

'Let's get you home now, shall we?' Hamold offered. Fiyero nodded, grimacing. 'Please. I hate hospitals.'

Hamold laughed and looked at Doctor Gopa. 'Is there any paperwork we need to fill in?' he asked, and the man nodded. 'Just follow me, please.'

'I'll go find Elphaba,' Cohvu offered, before dashing from the room.

He found the green girl in the hospital garden, sitting on a bench with her knees drawn to her chest and her chin resting on top of them. She looked up when she heard him approach and he went to sit next to her. 'Hey.'

'Hey.' She sighed. 'I'm sorry for snapping at Fiyero. I didn't mean it like that-'

'No, don't apologise,' he cut her off. He picked up a few pebbles and tossed them into the pond a few meters away. 'You were absolutely right. He knows that, too. He just needed someone to tell him that.'

'Okay.' It came out as a sigh, and when he looked at her, he realised she didn't look relieved. 'What else is wrong, El?'

'What makes you think anything else is wrong?' she asked flatly. He just raised an eyebrow and she sighed again, opened her mouth, then closed it again and shook her head.

'Hey.' He touched her arm. 'I'm your friend, remember? You can tell me anything.'

She looked at him sceptically. 'You won't run away screaming?'

He chuckled. 'No. I promise.'

They were both quiet for a while. Then she spoke up, softly. 'I think… I think I healed him.'

Cohvu looked at her, slightly bewildered. 'Who? What?'

'Fiyero.' She sighed and stared at the pond. 'I touched his head, where the wound was, and… and then it started tingling… there were these weird green sparks, or something… and then he woke up.' She bit her lower lip. 'Doctor Gopa is still debating whether there has been a mistake or just a miraculous recovery, but I'm pretty sure that I had something to do with it.'

'El,' Cohvu said gently. 'If that's true, that's amazing!'

She looked at him as if he had gone completely crazy. 'No, it's not! How can you say that?' she demanded in a high voice. 'First I make all the water in the room explode when I get mad, and now this? What is happening? What does it mean? Am I a witch? A sorceress? Because I don't think so, Cohvu.' She curled into herself again. 'I think I'm just… weird.' She let out a soft, mirthless laugh. 'Perhaps Galinda is right and I really dropped down from the moon. It sounds the most plausible to me… I don't even really think I'm human anymore.'

'Elphaba,' he said firmly, grasping her arms. 'You're human. Of course you're human. People don't drop down from the moon and you know that.' He paused. 'You just have… powers, apparently. You're different. Special. There's nothing wrong with that.'

She cackled – a mirthless, spine-chilling sound that made Cohvu swallow. 'That's where you're wrong, Cohvu,' she said quietly, almost ominously.

'There is so, so much wrong with that.'

After that, she barely said anything else for days.

Cohvu tried to coax her into talking to him, but she refused to say anything else about the subject. She didn't even talk to Fiyero or his parents as they all travelled back to Adurin Iir in a carriage, even though Lori and Hamold both tried to engage her in conversation.

When they arrived at the castle, Elphaba hung back as Fiyero was moved to his room; but when she had assured herself of the fact that he was fine and being taken care of, she left and didn't come back for the rest of the day.

'Where's Fae?' Fiyero asked about four days after he had gotten home from the hospital. 'I haven't seen her at all since I got back.'

Lori, who was sitting with him, sighed and shook her head. 'I don't know, Yero,' she answered truthfully. 'Every day when she comes home from school, she either locks herself in her bedroom or the library to study, or she goes out for a walk on the beach, and she barely talks to us at all.'

Fiyero furrowed his brow. 'Is she still upset because I went after Avaric?'

Lori shrugged helplessly. 'I don't know. She won't talk to me – or to any of us, really.'

Suddenly, Cohvu spoke up from a corner of the room. 'I think she feels guilty.'

Lori and Fiyero turned to gape at him. 'What?' Fiyero choked out. 'What for?'

'She told me this when we were in the waiting room together,' Cohvu replied quietly. 'While you were in surgery. She thought it was her fault… that you got hurt. It was because of her that you went after Avaric and she feels guilty about that.'

Fiyero was shocked.

'I don't think that's all of it, though,' Cohvu continued, and he looked at Lori. 'Is it true that she healed Fiyero?' he asked bluntly.

The Queen hesitated, then nodded. 'I… I think so,' she said faintly. 'I haven't given it too much thought – I was so concerned with regard to Fiyero's health - but now that you mention it… and after what happened the other day, when she got mad… I think she did.' She looked at Cohvu and nodded. 'We established last time that she has magic powers,' she said simply. 'I guess her power over water isn't the only power she has.'

Fiyero, meanwhile, was gawking at them. 'Elphaba healed me?!'

Lori nodded, brushing some hair away from his face. 'I think she saved your life, Yero.'

He was completely stunned, and unable to speak for a moment. She saved his life… had she really healed him? He couldn't help but shiver as he thought of his parents' grave faces when they told him that what Elphaba had said was true, that it was a miracle that he didn't have brain damage… that he was alive at all.

Was Elphaba the cause of the miracle? It amazed him just to think about it.

'Where did she go?' he asked quietly, and Cohvu nodded towards the window. 'Beach.'

'To think, most likely,' Lori added, smiling softly when she remembered something. 'I used to go for walks on the beach myself, when I needed to think about something.' She looked at both boys gravely. 'It must be hard for her,' she said softly. 'I know she has always felt different, despite the fact that she tries to hide that from me, because she's afraid she will appear ungrateful for what we've done for her… but it must be really difficult, to discover these kinds of things about yourself, things you can't explain and of which you don't know what they mean.'

'It is,' Cohvu agreed. 'She's really struggling with it sometimes. Glin talked to her about it, and so did I, but the truth is that there's not much we can do – we know nothing more about her origins than she herself does.'

Lori sighed heavily. 'I wish I knew how we could help her.'

Suddenly, a flash of lightning lit up the room, and thunder roared in the distance.

Fiyero shivered. 'I hate storms.'

Lori and Cohvu, however, immediately looked at one another in alarm. 'Elphaba!'

Fiyero's eyes widened when he realised what they were saying. 'Oh, Shiz!'

'There's no place to take cover from the rain for miles out there on the beach,' Cohvu said anxiously. 'If she got caught in that downpour…' He didn't finish that sentence, but they all knew what that would mean.

Fiyero jumped out of bed, ignoring the stabs of pain in his ribcage and the pounding in his head. 'I have to find her!'

'Yero,' his mother began, 'the doctor said you can't-'

'I don't care!' he yelled back over his shoulder as he made for the door. 'I have to find her!'

With that, he bolted from the room.

Yes, I'm leaving you with a cliffy once again... but I'm sure you'll be happy to hear that the next chapter will FINALLY have some Fiyeraba. And not just friendship Fiyeraba ;).