AN: This chapter will explain... not everything, but a lot. The rest will probably be explained in the next chapter.

Moreanswers24: That made me laugh. Hard. But that's not what's going on :P.

Musicgal3: ...he can sleep on the plane :P. And yes, that was a Love Is All You Need reference. I could have made it cake, or sandwiches, or some other type of food, but I purposefully chose pie just to see how many people would go 'NOOOO! EATING PIE!' You were the only one. You creepy mindreader :P.

Elphaba'sGirl: I swear, I swear I'm not making this up, but I didn't describe the couple's first kiss in my story, so I can't use that to determine the baby's gender, either :'). I'm loving this game, though. Can you come up with something else? :D

Chapter 5. The green girl

"Is he still looking at us?" Elphaba whispered.

Gazilon subtly glanced at the other side of the café, where Fiyero was sitting with Nessa and Galinda. "He is."

"Feed me a piece of cake," Elphaba ordered, and he looked at her.

"El," he said. "Galinda is looking, too."

Her eyes narrowed. "Galinda is looking? Are you serious?" She quickly lowered her voice as not to give anything away. "Just do it, Gaz. I hate this even more than you do and you know that. You barely even know Galinda, but Fiyero..." She sighed.

He took her hand and squeezed it – this time not for the act, but meant as a genuinely comforting gesture.

She squeezed back. "Now do it."

He nodded and cut off a small piece of his cake, then fed it to Elphaba, who giggled. He smiled a bit sadly at her.

"You know?" he said. "You're a great actress."

She shrugged. "I've had lots of practice," she said. "I practically spent my entire life acting. Pretending to be invisible when I was around my father. Pretending that all those remarks about my skin didn't hurt me. I've done a lot of pretending in my life, Gazilon. That's not what's so hard about this. I can giggle and blush and act like I love you; it's just that…" She trailed off.

"Hey." He tilted her head up to look into her eyes. "I know."

She offered him a weak smile. "You do." She pinned a piece of her own pie onto her fork and tried to feed it to him. He kissed her fingers and she giggled again.

"You know?" she said as she leant forward to kiss him briefly on the lips. "You're not such a bad actor yourself."

He gave her a wry smile. "Yay for me."

She rolled her eyes. She looked down at their entwined fingers resting on the table and opened her mouth to ask him something, but he gave her the answer before she could even utter a sound.

"Yes," Gazilon said. "He's still looking."

Elphaba blushed. "Am I that predictable?"

He just smiled.

She played with her fork, eyes still trained on the table. "Please tell me that at least he doesn't look so sad anymore."

Gazilon cast another glance in Fiyero's direction and grimaced. "Um…"

Elphaba closed her eyes for a moment, then pushed her chair back. "Excuse me for a minute," she said. She all but fled into the girls' bathroom, locking herself in a stall and taking deep breaths to calm herself down.

You can do this, Elphaba. You don't have a choice. If you don't do it, the consequences will be far worse.

The door opened and a female voice sounded. "Elphie?"

Elphaba bit her lip.

"Are you okay?" Galinda continued, stopping in front of the closed stall. "I saw you going in here and I thought…"

"I'm fine, Glin." Elphaba opened the door and smiled brightly at her roommate. Gazilon was right – she really was good at this acting thing. "I just needed to use the bathroom. That's all."

Galinda eyed her up and down observantly. "Are you sure?"

"Of course." Elphaba threw the blonde a glance as she washed her hands and dried them with some paper towels. "Why wouldn't I be okay?"

Galinda shrugged. "I don't know… it must be hard to see Fiyero like this," she said softly.

Elphaba sighed. "I don't like it," she admitted. Well, that was the understatement of the year. But she couldn't afford to give away much more than that. "But he'll be fine."

Galinda smiled at her. "He will be." She linked her arm with Elphaba's as they walked back into the café together. "Lunch tomorrow?"

"I'd love to."

Galinda beamed at her and threw her arms around her friend in a big hug. "Yay! And then you can tell me all the, you know," she lowered her voice, "details about your relationship with Gazilon."

Elphaba groaned. "Glin…"

The blonde just winked at her and skipped off to her own place again.

Elphaba sighed as she sank back down into her seat across from Gazilon. "We're going to have to rehearse yet another story."

He looked confused. "Another one? I thought we had already covered everything…" He started summing them up. "How we met, how our relationship came to be, how I came to be at Shiz…"

"Galinda wants to know the details of our relationship," Elphaba informed him, and Gazilon blanched slightly.

"Oh."

She smirked at him. "Come on," she said, standing up and tugging at his hand. "Let's take this conversation elsewhere. Your dorm room?"

He nodded and they left the café together, heading towards the boys' dormitories. Just like Fiyero, Gazilon had his own suite – and a big one at that.

Elphaba curled up in an armchair next to the fire, which Gazilon got going quickly. He then sat down on the couch across from her.

"So… what would be believable?" he asked her.

She wrinkled her nose. "Galinda knows me too well," she said. "She knows I would never… you know." She blushed.

Gazilon understood what she meant, thank Oz. "Okay, so we haven't done that yet." He tapped his fingers against the arm of the couch. "Anything else?"

"I'd say we stick with 'just kissing'," Elphaba decided. "Glin knows how I feel about myself, and… well, let's just say it took over six months before I finally got comfortable with her seeing me in my underwear." She made a face.

Gazilon nodded, not pressing the issue. "Okay, so just kissing."

Elphaba sighed and rose to her feet, starting to pace the room. "Gaz, I… I don't know how much longer I can keep this up," she confessed quietly.

He stood up as well. "Sweetheart –"

"Don't," she said furiously. She stopped in front of him, jabbing a finger in his face. "Don't call me that," she hissed. "Not when we're alone. For Oz's sake, Gaz – just a little longer and we're going to believe in this foolish nonsense ourselves!"

"Maybe that would be for the best."

She let out a bitter laugh, turning away from him. "Yeah. Maybe you're right."

"El?"

She looked at him.

"I know none of this is real," he said. "But I like to think that at least we're friends."

She nodded. "We are, I guess."

He smiled faintly at her. "I just want you to know that even though you don't love me, and I don't love you… you can still talk to me. I'm here for you."

She gave him a smile – a genuine one. "Thanks, Gaz."

If she didn't already love Fiyero, she mused as she looked at her fake boyfriend, she might have fallen in love with Gazilon eventually. Galinda was right – he was handsome… though the blonde hadn't exactly put it that way. 'Hottie extraordinaire' was the phrase she had used, if Elphaba remembered correctly.

Anyway, he wasn't bad-looking and he wasn't mean or insensitive either. He was kind and smart and he understood the way she thought. She could have done worse. If she had to be stuck in this whole freak show with someone, she didn't mind so much that that someone was him.

But then again, she figured as she watched him, even if she actually did love him, it probably wouldn't work out, anyway. They were too much alike. She needed someone light, optimistic and happy, someone who saw the best in things – even her – to counter her own pessimism. Someone to pull her from her worrying if need be, someone to hold her back when she lost her temper, someone to cheer her up when she was feeling gloomy. She needed… she needed the one person she couldn't have.

She needed Fiyero.

One night, about a week later, Elphaba came storming towards where Gazilon was talking to some classmates of his. Without saying a word, she grabbed his arm and dragged him all the way back to his dorm room, closing the door behind them.

"This is it," she declared. "I can't do this anymore."

Gazilon just looked at her. "What happened?"

She sighed and sank down into an armchair. "I had another fight with Fiyero," she said softly. "Gaz, I… I didn't tell you this, but last week he came to talk to me. He asked me if my father set up an arranged marriage between you and me and if that was the reason for all this."

Gazilon's eyes widened. "What did you say?" he asked her anxiously.

She let out a soft, mirthless laugh. "I lied, of course," she said. "What else? I told him I just loved you and that was why we are together. I mean… I didn't really lie," she tried weakly. "We're not in an arranged marriage…"

Gazilon rolled his eyes. "El…"

She sighed. "I know, okay? I know. I just kept on saying to him that I loved you and that he needed to stop doing this… I said some really awful things to him, Gaz. And then… then he said…" She curled into herself, drawing her knees to her chest and resting her chin on top of them. "He said he loved me," she whispered. "He said he's loved me for over six months now."

Gazilon laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

She looked up at him. "Today, when I talked to him," she said quietly, "we… we argued again. He wanted us to be friends again, and… well, basically I just made up excuses, because I can't be friends with him, Gaz. It's too painful."

He nodded, understanding.

"And then eventually I did say yes," she continued. "Because I just… I couldn't hurt him any more than I already have. And then I said he's just making this harder on himself…" She closed her eyes. "I was mean. I was really, really mean. He stood there, telling me how hard this is for him, and all I was doing was blaming him for his own pain!" She opened her eyes to look at Gazilon again. "He thinks I don't care," she said in a choked voice. "And then, I… I got… emotional. Fiyero thinks I got mad and that's why the chairs and tables started shaking, but that wasn't the reason. My magic doesn't just respond to my anger, it responds to my other emotions as well, and I was just…" She sighed.

Gazilon looked at her worriedly. "You got so emotional you lost control of your magic? From what I've heard, that hasn't happened in quite some time," he said, frowning.

She nodded, gaze trained on the wall. "You're right." She bit her lip. "The last time was… was the day I fell in love with Fiyero. Almost seven months ago."

Gazilon kept quiet.

"I just can't take this anymore, Gazilon," she said, sounding near tears. "That look on his face… and then, when I was in the hallway, he dragged me into a janitor's closet and he kissed me, and he swore to me that he was going to do everything in his power to get me back." She looked at Gazilon sadly. "I can't lie to him like this, Gaz."

"You have no choice," Gazilon said fiercely. "Elphaba, look at me."

She did.

"Remember what will happen if we don't keep this up?" he asked her. "If we fail to convince everyone – everyone – that we're happy together?"

Elphaba bit her lip.

"He's unhappy," Gazilon said softly. "I know. And I'm sorry about that. But at least he's alive."

Elphaba closed her eyes, still biting her lip. "I know," she whispered.

"That's why we're doing this," Gazilon continued. "For them. For the people we love."

She nodded, staring at the floor.

He squeezed her shoulder. "Do you want me to walk you back to your dorm room?" he asked her.

She looked at him a bit shyly. "Can I… stay here?" she asked him hesitantly. "I mean… Galinda is having a sleepover in our dorm tonight, so I told her I might stay over with you or with Nessa… and I just don't think I can face her right now and lie to her face."

Gazilon nodded. "Of course. I'll take the couch, don't worry," he assured her, walking over to his closet to grab himself a blanket.

She waited until she was almost sure that he had fallen asleep; only then did she allow the tears to come. She buried her face in one of the pillows and cried herself to sleep.

Gazilon, still awake, listened, feeling torn.

After that, it only got worse.

Both Gazilon and Elphaba put up a convincing act. They kept going, kissing and laughing and sharing looks and smiles, holding hands. All of Shiz was convinced that they were in love… except for a certain Vinkun prince.

Fiyero was there. All the time. When Elphaba was in class, she could feel his eyes on her. When she was at the Primrose Café with Gazilon, she could see him from the corner of her eyes, watching them. Even when he wasn't actually there, she thought he was. She saw him behind every corner and in every shadow. Even in her dreams he was haunting her.

One night she had a particularly vivid dream. She dreamt that she and Fiyero were together and that Gazilon and Galinda were dating as well, and they were all happy. It was a good dream… right up until the point where men with rifles suddenly jumped out of the trees and started shooting at them. The next thing she knew, there was an explosion and she was knocked to the ground. When the smoke finally cleared and she shakily rose to her feet, all she could see was a wounded Gazilon, holding Galinda's dead body in his arms as he cried; and Fiyero. He was covered in blood and he wasn't moving; and even without moving closer or checking his pulse, she knew that he was dead.

Her own agonised scream woke her up and she shot up in her bed, shaking and breathing hard. She was sticky with cold sweat and her heart was thundering in her chest.

"Elphie?" Galinda's worried voice sounded from the other side of the room. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Elphaba said faintly, taking deep breaths and rubbing her forehead. She closed her eyes for a moment. "Just a nightmare."

"Oh." Galinda sat up and lit a candle on her bedside, looking at her friend in concern. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Elphaba shook her head. "Not really. It was just a nightmare, Glin," she said, though inwardly, she was happy to see her friend alive and well after that horrible dream. "You can go back to sleep, I'm just going to find another nightgown. This one's soaked."

Galinda made a face. "With sweat? Ew."

Elphaba couldn't help but smirk at that.

She quickly moved out of her bed and into the bathroom, stashing her nightgown in the laundry basket and freshening up a little before putting on a new one. She splashed some cold water in her face and stared at her mirror image for a few moments.

This is why you're doing this, she reminded herself. This is why you can't be with Fiyero. You have to remember that. If you drop the façade, if you slip up, if you listen to your heart instead of your head, your nightmare might become reality. And do you want that?

No. No, of course she didn't want that. Because there was only one thing in the world that was worse than seeing Fiyero unhappy; and that was seeing him either wounded or dead.

Taking a deep breath, she crawled back into her bed and tried to fall back asleep.

Even though it's not completely explained yet... Elizabeth, I think I dropped enough hints so that you now realise that you were right with your earlier predictions, didn't I? People, this is why Elizabeth and I decided that we must be long-lost twins. SHE'S IN MY HEAD. SHE READS MY MIND. Elizabeth, you're creepy. But I wuv you.