Hey folks! I stole a few minutes from my day to reread recent reviews (they make my heart melt with their sincerity and appreciation, thank you, thank you!) and realized I'm overdue to give you an update. I'll post the next one in the next couple of days (once you finish today's you'll really want the next one and I won't leave you hanging). Thank again for being what I think are the best readers in all of Oz.

Today was the day.

She never wore white. It was flattering on her, but differently. He was so accustomed to her dark, understated attire and this change was startling. Even though he had seen this exact outfit on her before, article for article, and even though he knew from the beginning he'd most likely see it again.

She wore this the day Dr. Dillamond was fired and expelled from Shiz.

She was also flipping her hair wildly, in a poor impersonation of their favorite fashionista, which once was comical but now just pained him to see.

"What?"

He must have been gaping. Perhaps more so than last time, because last time he was only reeling from the chic attire that was so out-of-character. This time he was reeling from what it meant; what was going to happen.

"Nothing."

She glared at his evasion, the glitter on her eyelids and the mascara on her lashes not enough to take away from the ferocity of her gaze. She was so dolled up, not unpleasantly of course, but it hurt him because she was so special, so organic, and all this makeup ever did was try to disguise what people didn't like about her—the things he liked the most – and he sighed, knowing the simplest answer was the best one.

"It's just…you've been 'Galinda-fied'."

These moments that repeated themselves seemed slower to Fiyero. They belonged to confrontations and conversations that repeated hundreds of time in his memory. Details would become foggy in the way that a record would wear with repeated plays, and his imagination changed so much as he considered how he could have done things differently. But here, with the details crystal clear, the minutiae of the colors of the makeup and of the wayward strands of hair that fluttered about her head jumping out at him as they never did before, he couldn't bring himself from changing a truth he never regretted telling her: "You don't have to do that, you know?"

She didn't understand. The look of confusion that shadowed her face was a mirror-image of the ghost of her that existed in his mind of this day: her brow furrowed and her greenish-gray lips parted slightly, as if a soft-spoken question itched to fall from them. He wondered if he'd ever get the chance to tell her what he meant, because he wouldn't now.

"All right, take your seats class! I have something to say, and very little time to say it. This is my last day here at Shiz. I'm no longer permitted to teach."

"What?"

"Please Miss Elphaba, sit down. I want to thank you for sharing your enthusiasm, your essays – no matter how feebly structured – and even, on occasion, your lunch."

Madame Morrible swept in the classroom then with men following behind her, and the sickness in Fiyero's stomach compounded. He watched the strangers and the cart they pushed fixedly. "Dr. Dillamond!" Morrible cooed. "I'm so dreadfully sorry."

"Madame, you can't permit this," Elphaba said, taking Dillamond by the shoulder as if she could guard him from this.

"Miss Elphaba, don't worry about me. They can take away my job, but I shall continue speaking out."

"Come on, goat…"

Fiyero tentatively stood up and watched with a heavy heart as his friend was forced out of his classroom bleating, "They're not telling you the whole story! Remember that class!"

"Dr. Dillamond!" Elphaba cried after him. She spun about, glaring at her silent classmates with fire in her eyes. "Well, are you just going to sit here? In silence?"

Fiyero supposed he wasn't any better than the rest of them at that moment, but he had done what he could for Dillamond up until this point. There was nothing anyone could do now. Elphaba clearly didn't feel the same given how she swept before the students, futilely willing them to action, and he remembered years back watching her fervency in this moment and feeling a stirring inside unlike any he usually felt in his easy life. Fiyero took a moment then, realizing that maybe this was the moment he started to love her all that time ago.

"Miss Elphaba, there is nothing we can do. Please take your seat."

Elphaba continued to argue with her, waving after Dillamond, but Morrible shooed her back. Fiyero felt a pang as she waned, alone in her cause, this a first defeat of many for the rights of those like Dr. Dillamond. She shuffled back to his side, clearly still reeling and disturbed but demoralized. He sat with her then and wished desperately to take her hand in his but she was wound so tightly that he worried he'd jar her.

"Good afternoon, students! Every day, with every tick of the Time Dragon Clock, in every corner of our great Oz, one hears the silence of progress. For example, this is called a cage!"

As the scientist revealed the cage, Fiyero was greeted with the memorable sight: In the cage, crouched as if to make itself as small as possible, was the Lion cub. Even when Fiyero hadn't cared about such things, he had been able to sense the terror of the beast. Its tail, a little whip of a thing, the color of mashed peanuts, thrashed about and its shoulders were hunched. The tiny, tawny, mane-less head twisted about, with its wide brown eyes scanning as if to count the threats around him, and it let out a little terrified yawp.

"Now, we will be seeing more and more of them in the near future. This remarkable innovation is actually for the Animal's own good!"

Elphaba burst up like a released spring, her compassion like a rope that wrenched her instinctively from her seat. "If this is for its own good, then why is he trembling?"

"He's just excited to be here, that's all," the man said, and Fiyero watched Elphaba as she tried to contain herself, to sit back down and behave, but she was an overloading steam engine, heat hissing from the cracks. "Now, as I was saying, one of the benefits of caging a Lion Cub while he's young is that he never, in fact, will learn how to speak."

"Oh no." She snapped back to look at him, terror in her eyes he hadn't before understood.

"That's right, come closer," he instructor called.

They stood with everyone but like he had done once before, he hung back with her, pulled to her like she was her own source of gravity in her hysteria, needing to do something to help her but frozen to the spot as she locked eyes with him.

"Can you imagine a world where Animals are kept in cages and they never speak?"

"Now, he may seem a bit agitated but that's easily remedied."

"What should we do?" Elphaba asked him desperately. Her voice was shaking and he could see her entire form tense up, as though from the inside out, like she was a curling coil or, more accurately, an emergent charge of energy. "Someone has to…do something!"

And then, as he anticipated, that energy was released like an invisible burst of lightning, blasting out of her in a wave that sent ripples of flesh hardening across him and everyone else into some sort of fit of mind and body.

Suddenly it was quiet, save for the incoherent garbling that came as their classmates and this strange staff jerked about, and Fiyero looked down at Elphaba. Suddenly that verve in her was gone and she seemed small and terrified as her wide, strained eyes trailed the manic bodies around her. It only took her a moment to realize that Fiyero was still and coherent at her side, and she gasped and reached out for him, stopping her hands inches from his arm as if she was scared of herself or for him.

"I'm sorry, I just got mad…and—"

She didn't finish. He thought that perhaps she realized he wasn't frightened of her or judging her and so she went back to judging herself. Her attention flittered back upon what she had done, what she had caused. He could see her trembling.

He already had the cage in hand. "Well, are you coming or what?"