Hey folks! Thanks for the reviews. I've loved them! Man, nothing is better than reviews. Really, I'm thinking about it and making lists, going, "Nope, donuts aren't better, yo-yos aren't better, Star Wars teaser trailers aren't better..."
This is chapter is short, but I'll post two the make up for it.
After he escorted Galinda to her class, he continued past his own and escaped the stone hallway for the sunlight beyond it. He cut across campus, tracing habitual paths toward Briscoe Hall, the boy's dormitory. Students turned their heads and spoke behind their hands, perhaps originally because his reputation beat him here but also, no doubt, his behavior surely contradicted it. He didn't care.
Fiyero knew he did not act like a student who had only just arrived to Shiz less than a half-hour before. He did not glance up to double-check the name of the building before he entered it. He did not hesitate before turning in a doorway to the corner tower and taking the steps within the stone spiral staircase two at a time. He did not falter before turning left when the stairs ran out, down the sun-lit corridor on the third floor and he jammed his nickel key into the door without fumbling. But he did have to take a moment to adjust to what lay beyond the archway: his old dorm was barren, save for the trunk that was brought up for him, and was far too still.
It was just another thing here that seemed so familiar but did not make him feel welcome.
He shook it off, closing the door behind him and tossing his bag on the bed. Pulling open the drawn curtains and pushing open the glass windows helped, letting light and air filter out his room and his mind. The view had not changed, naturally: his south-facing window still faced one of the campus's large lawns, where crisscrossing cobblestoned paths and students cut over green grass and through hedges; it was a lovely, calming sight, one that he had come to appreciate in his time at Shiz. The east-facing windows, on the other hand, were of more interest to the other boys in Briscoe Hall. To the east, above the rounded tops of a few fruit trees and a private stable, was Crage Hall, where the vaulted and rarely-draped windows of the girls' dormitory constantly exposed girls in various stages of undress, far enough away to blur any details but close enough to entertain.
His eyes were trained to one window in particular; one that, in his first year at Shiz, often had within it a flash of green. Why he looked now he wasn't sure; no doubt Elphaba was in class with the majority of the inhabitants of Crage Hall.
He wished she were here with him. Was it only yesterday he held her in his arms? How cruel the fates were to make him wait so many years before he could find her only to lose her again, potentially doomed to repeat his fate. It was yearning and denial that kept his hearing alert for the sound of her at his door, for little spark of hope he had had that his lover had been transported here as well was slowly fading into ember, and if he was indeed alone, then he was the only person in all of Oz who could save Elphaba from her terrible fate, not to mention his.
At least he had the advantage of premonition. At least now he knew that back at Shiz his attraction to a certain prickly green girl was not unrequited. No, he thought contentedly —she had kissed him with as much fierceness as he did her, both of them desperate to compensate for lost time, for lost opportunities. He wouldn't make those same mistakes again. He was confident that if he played his cards right, she would be kissing him again in no time and he could do things right this time around.
While he managed to sleep off the last of his hangover before arriving at Shiz, he still felt strange in his own body. Like it wasn't his. When he saw his reflection not long later in the communal lavatory down the hall (which was empty this time of day), the man that stared back was not the same. It was inexplicable: there in the mirror were his eyes and nose and teeth and ears, but his hair was thicker and lighter and the face was slightly wrong as was the body. He peeled off his vest and shirt stared, noting how skinny he seemed compared to the strong, fit soldier he had been.
If he went too long without blinking, ghostly fists and boots seemed to rain in on him, causing him to flinch horribly. He shook it off, but invisible bruises and rope burns still ached and broken bones still throbbed under his unblemished, golden skin. The metallic scent of his own blood followed him everywhere, as though it was on every strand of hair on his body, and the bitterness of it wouldn't leave his tongue.
The shower he took was scalding hot but it seemed to burn the immediacy of the fresh, tormenting memories from him until the only phantom touches that remained on him were those of an emerald-skinned beauty; even the hot stream of water couldn't stop the goose bumps from rippling across his flesh at them and his fingers curled against the wet tile as a tension of a different nature filled him. Before long he was fumbling for the tap, twisting it until the water the rained over him was icy cold and his teeth were set on edge.
It was possible this was going to be harder than he thought.