Her hair was wild.

It had fallen loose, having been caught in branches and undergrowth they had been climbing through as they sought safe haven in the heart of the forest. She had her legendary hat clutched tightly in the pale green of her hand, treating it with a surprising amount of inattention as she pushed past rough bark and crisscrossing boughs in her way, using it and her broom as tools to aid in her movement.

A Finch had found them, warned them of soldiers combing the outer edges of the woods, and they had spent the next couple of hours rushing feverishly through the verdure. She knew this forest well; she knew at the core of it had trees and shrubs congested so tightly that the only way a corps of men could possibly comb it to find her would be to cut it all down, an undertaking that would buy her plenty of time to escape.

They were invisible here. They were safe.

She had been frustrated for a while; she hadn't spoken to him beyond terse navigation instructions and snapping at his every attempt to assist her, whether it was a hand at her back up a short escarpment slick with moss or when he reached to remove the thorny sprig caught in the loose threads from the torso of her patchwork dress.

He was losing his patience too. He tried to rationalize it. They were tired and they were scared. But a part of him was beginning to think that he had become exactly like that thorn stuck in her dress: He was now an encumbrance, slowing her down, distracting her; he was an inconvenience and a nuisance. They had given into their passion enough by now that it must have been gone for her and this trek through the woods had shaken from her the last of her nostalgia for him.

She pushed him through a thicket with an unyielding tangle of branches, which had scratched at his face and hands mercilessly, but the only mercy he wanted was from this apparent wrath. He stumbled into the smallest of clearings and whipped about, apathetic to her hard mien as she, too, pressed angrily into the glade.

When she looked up at him, he became staggered by how feral she really was. Her eyes seemed as black as the tangles that clung to her damp temples and her breaths were staggered through clenched teeth, so throaty they were like a growl within her.

He prepared himself to say the things he wanted to say, the things he needed to say: that if she didn't actually love him then so be it, but that he would not be brushed aside lightly, that he wouldn't give up even if he was constantly faced with her cold shoulder or should he have to face this passive-aggression every day…

Heedlessly, she threw down her few possessions – her hat, her broom, her shoulder bag – and he made to speak before she did but her arms wheeled at him of their own accord, grabbing him about the shoulders and bounding onto him. She crashed against his lips with the same jarring intensity that her body did as she clenched her legs around him and he caught her, his hands digging into the flesh of her behind as he kissed her back just as hungrily, mouths claiming each other so in a way so rough that they throbbed and stung from the frenzy of teeth and lips.

He guided them until he felt resistance—a tree at her spine, not large but strong enough for him to pin her, to release her mouth from their battle and move to taste the sweet saltiness along the length of her long throat…

"You're a fool, Fiyero," she gasped, arching into him and moaning as she clutched him – her long fingers buried deep into his damp hair – to her neck. He could feel the vibrations of her slow, angry voice against his lips and her words burned at him, angered him, and urged him on. "You're so stupid!"

"You only just figured this out?" he retorted, insulted, his hands yanking mercilessly at the length of dress caught between them until he had purchase to her legs. Her skin was burning hot against his frozen fingertips and her flinch into him made him mad with want, with need, and she whimpered from loss as his hand left her to unlatch his suspenders.

"You shouldn't be here," she said, her hands cupping to his face with an unexpected gentleness. "If they catch us, if they find you, you'll be dead—dead! All because you're a damn fool Fiyero!" She kissed him again, her fingers still soft on his cheeks but her kiss as desperate as her voice. "You shouldn't love me, you shouldn't—"

Irritation at her made him steal the words with his mouth. Of course he should love her; no one deserved it more! He pushed against her, crushing her against the rough bark, using pressure and touch and heat to speak for him, for words were useless against her madness. She cried into his mouth, her hands falling from him, and he traced her side and up her arm, impatient to feel her again, wrapping his large hand around where hers had seized a tree branch just above them. Her other pulled at his clothing.

"What if they find us?" she hissed, removing from his kiss but still pulling down at the material at his thigh franticly. Her eyes were wide, locked on his with alarming concentration, her fear real.

"They won't," he grunted, kissing her hotly. "You know they won't."

"They could," she said. And that was the truth—maybe the Gale Force wouldn't find them in this thicket, buried deep within a forest so vast the entirety of the Wizard's army could waste days scouring it, but it wasn't impossible. If they weren't spotted now they could be sighted tomorrow or the next day or the next day and when that day came he couldn't point a rifle at the Wizard so they could make their escape. They would be bound and beaten and tortured or killed and this love affair, this romance of theirs, would be nothing but a lost memory.

And it was that distress that had them adjusting only what was necessary in order to take each other, to give into fear and love and each other and just feel. It was wanton, rushed, and deep; they panted into open mouths, kissing muffle cries that escaped, unchecked, from them both, and they lost themselves in each other, in the woods around them, in the rising moon.

Fiyero sat up, his Shiz dorm room shadowed around him in the early morning glow that streamed through his open window, and grunted as he took in himself: sticky with perspiration and aching with tension that had him coiled from the inside out, needing release.

It felt so real. It had been real, once. Enough time had passed for so many of the memories with Elphaba to start waning but at night, when he could not control his mind, they came with crystal-clear focus and with the pain and loneliness of withdrawal.

He yelled out, swiping at the objects at his bedside table, knocking his lamp and his clock away and cursing into the silence. He was so jaded by this room, by the smell of pine that drifted through his open window— clearly familiar enough to his subconscious that it gave him dreams of Elphaba but different enough from his sentient senses that he was constantly reminded that the forests were not the same. The one of which he dreamt existed on the other side of Oz and in a future he couldn't reach, and most importantly, it had a woman who had loved him fully that no longer existed for him.

Trembling, he lurched from his bed and at the door, racing down the stairs of his dormitory with hard steps against the stone in an attempt to free himself from feeling caged by that room. It wasn't until he was halfway across the lawn outside that he realized he was barefoot – the early morning dew stung with coldness at his feet – and he was dressed immodestly in just drawstring pants and an undershirt.

He shouldn't be out here like this. It was inappropriate, it was immature, and it was unnecessary. Despite these thoughts, he remained still, his head hung and his eyes crammed shut as he calmed his heart rate and as the cold lulled his arousal away until another day.

Details of the dream had already begun to fade away as they usually did but his stomachache remained, for he couldn't forget this one entirely. It had actually happened once. The memories clung to him, like the knotted hair that caught at his fingers, how the taste of her lips seemed different in their fervency – less crisp and refreshing like the flesh of a tart apple but richer and more heated like cider that would burn, tangy, on his tongue – and the eye contact, blackened with lust and trepidation, that they kept until their bodies wouldn't let them anymore.

"Fiyero?"

He became even more rigid at the voice than he already had been, for it was the only thing that he didn't want to hear right now, the one thing he couldn't deal with. How could it be that Elphaba would find him at this exact moment of misery? What kind of sick higher power was watching him, screwing with him like this?

No, he didn't believe in that mumbo-jumbo. Yet she was there.

Fiyero hadn't even noticed her outside. He hadn't really looked. He sighed heavily. She seemed to always be nearby, yet ceaselessly unattainable. It pissed him off.

"What do you want?"

"Just making sure you're okay," Elphaba's voice said behind him. He didn't think he could handle looking at her, so he didn't turn around. She seemed to sense she shouldn't approach any further as well. "Where are your shoes? Are you sleepwalking?"

"I'm fine," he said, trying to will away the butterflies her worry brought him. "What are you doing here?"

Why did she have to be around on mornings like this, when the nightmares broke him? Why must it be when he felt so susceptible? There were enough mornings he was collected, when a hot cup of sweet coffee and some Gillikinese apricot shortbread cookies were enough to relax him, to bring a smile to his face, to wipe his emotional slate clean for the day. She wasn't around for any of those.

"I saw you run past, so I thought I'd—"

"No, what are you doing outside?" It wasn't asked kindly. He didn't know why.

"You're not the only one who is allowed out, you know," she said, catching his attitude. "I took a walk. Galinda whistles in her sleep sometimes—it's maddening."

He was in too much turmoil to engage in a snappy repartee and so he waited, quiet, insecure.

"Not that I need to explain myself to you," she added touchily, as if to further assert her independence.

He breathed deeply and finally faced her, and as he expected the very sight of her made his sensitive stomach churn. Her hair was pulled back, neatly braided, with that old skullcap she sometimes wore to warm her head. Her eyes, behind the thin frames of her glasses, caught the light of the rising sun and gleamed with color in the new light. There was no patchwork dress clutching at her curves but instead some faded frock, loose and ugly, under an aged cardigan that seemed to be short at her wrists and her waist, like it was a hand-me-down (hand-me-up?) from her sister.

It was all wrong; everything about this girl seemed to be a reminder of all that he lost. He never usually separated the two versions of her he knew so significantly, for they were truly one in the same, but never before did he feel such a sense of loss as he stared at her.

She wasn't the woman with whom he ran away, who kissed him fiercely and held him close in the night. That woman didn't exist and the hurt he felt at that was indescribable. He grieved for that woman.

He had never even held this girl's hand.

But Oz damn, they were identical in every way that mattered. The severity of her expression – distant and cold in her impatience – hammered into him, igniting his blood with the same ire as he thought about the woman who stared him down in that thicket. He roiled with frustration and felt the heat collect deep within him, in a familiar place, and he realized that just as he was then he was waiting for one of them to snap.

He had that same craving to seize her, to push that frock up and take her against the nearest lamp post, to release his anxieties into her as he had done once before.

And Fiyero was horrified with himself. For just a flash, she had been an object to him to be used. But no, it was more than that. He had lost himself to this fantasy in which he wanted to be used just as equally, to be wanted and to be loved just as much.

He could see that potential in her in this very moment and it was making him crazy.

He could see the way Elphaba's fingers flexed in the air, as if itching to reach out and touch something. He saw the weighty loneliness on her shoulders that screamed to be lifted. He recognized the deep-rooted longing in her eyes – to be more, to have more, to want more – and that intense passion that seemed to always burn in there as well, as unruly as a brush fire, one waiting to be gratified and the other waiting to be matched.

He could see the way she kept peeking down at his chest, where diamonds glinted in the light just over the hem of his shirt without proper outerwear to conceal them, only to snap back to focus moments later. Her jaw set and her brow drew as she quelled whatever interest she had.

Yet Elphaba was oblivious to all of this. She was too hotheaded, too suspicious, and too prickly to consider him.

And still, nothing was really changed. Fiyero still longed for this girl in front of him. He knew who she could be and he could see it all, simmering underneath the surface. It eased his agitation.

He smiled softly and fleetingly, grateful to the young woman she was and also to the woman she would become, and walked away wordlessly, seeking the solitude of his dorm before the rest of Shiz woke and took notice of him in his nightclothes outside their residence hall.

And he glanced behind him, curious if she was still staring, but she had walked away too.

He committed himself to another couple of hours' sleep after that, praying it would be enough to normalize him in front of Elphaba later. It worked; he arrived to Life Sciences leaping over the front-row seat to occupy his own, greeting her.

She didn't say anything except hello and set herself to listen to Dillamond, but that actually quite customary. He shrugged it off. She seemed to have no interest in discussing their odd little encounter. Good. He popped his boots up on the chair in front of him as class began and she sent him an exaggerated huff and peeved glare over her shoulder.

All was well.

Happy secular and nonsecular Easter to everyone.