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The air buzzed about him noisily, unceasingly, painfully. He could feel the vibrations of it in his bones, the cracked parts of which grinded against each other abrasively and felt even more brittle in the cold.

He could feel it; his heart was slowing. Each painful throb made his world flash red.

He was heavy, and his limbs were dead. His arms, useless and bruised, were strapped to the perpendicular pole while his heels were lashed to the vertical post behind him. Heavy. Oz, he was so heavy.

She was just in front of his eyes, sitting in a train car, sarcastically speaking of carrot juice; but how was he no longer there? How was he here?

And then her sorrowful voice called into his mind, and jerking and jarring shook his wrecked body. Fiyero woke suddenly and a harsh, sharp, involuntary breath filled his lungs. He exhaled and immediately his body sucked in another agonizing gulp of air as though it thought it could fight death with oxygen alone, as though it was determined for each lungful to not be the last. Fiyero pitched forward, arms flailing wildly, and upon the realization they were no longer bound to the surface on which they had been stretched across his eyes snapped open of their own accord. Light assaulted him violently and he cried out, clapping a hand over his face to shield himself, but his senses continued to be battered: creaking, thumping, bumping, rattling deafened him.

"Fiyero!"

A voice, louder than even the onslaught of noise that beat his already aching head, called out, and he started, jerking back as if to protect himself from his newest attacker. No, he wasn't dead yet, he wouldn't give them the satisfaction of killing him, and he swatted blindly at him.

His world, a jumble of vibrations and jolts, spun wildly and he with it; he fell against a vertical surface and crashed to the ground, where his long, aching limbs were trapped in a seemingly tight cubby.

Bleary vision revealed the carriage that trapped him. No, this couldn't be…

This was his carriage, and the face hovering just at the edge of his cognizance was that of Aerijk, his driver he hadn't seen since that fateful day.

He choked back the wave of nausea that threatened to take him, even though a fear of a different kind was clenching at his stomach, fighting to will its contents forth.

He wiped saliva from his chin with the back of a shaky hand and tried to determine their location through his watering eyes. This did not look like Munchkinland, and the path to the Emerald City was one he knew well. And the rolling green hills and scattered trees did not belong on the road to the Emerald City from Shiz.

And this rumbling, juddering cab was not that of an EC-bound train.

"Here we are, sir! Shiz University!"

"No." The word was left strangled, as the distress and anguish that he felt hit him as if he was driven over by the wheels of this carriage, as the weighty implications of that blue-stoned building glinted in the sunlight.

He roared in his grief, trembling, crying unashamedly, because he had given it his all.

He heard his name again and a hand at his shoulder but fought against it, so consumed by his sorrow and torment that he knew at that moment he was destined to feel again and again, perhaps for eternity, and feeling so isolated that the touch of the ignorant was like a scald to his skin.

But then the hand slapped him.

His wet eyes shot open then to see dark ones close to his own and he felt Elphaba's strong hands grip the sides of his head firmly, forcing him to stay awake, to keep his focus fixed upon her, to steady him until he could steady himself.

He recognized the maturity that faced him. He knew that face.

And yet he didn't know to whom it belonged: his lover or the girl he yearned to be his lover?

His eyes flashed about the small space, taking in details of crimson-upholstered booths, the white jacket that squared off her shoulders, the old wood of the interior of the boxcar.

"Fiyero, wake up. Say something."

He tried to heed her, but words were caught in the narrowing channel of his throat and leaked from it as a painful sob.

He was too distraught to be embarrassed as she shushed him soothingly and brushed away the tears that ran rampant down his face. Elphaba let him shake and cry until he was too exhausted to do either. When that finally happened, he was able to register that he was but a heap in their train car, his head wedged uncomfortably against the base of the bench while his body was contorted across the old, trodden carpet flooring that rattled angrily underneath him. Somehow Elphaba had managed to find a small spot to crouch, and it was there she waited, anxiety written into her features.

He pushed himself into a sitting position on the floor, pulling himself away from the gentle hold she had on his face. His legs were still sprawled next to her, but he was too knackered to do anything but leave them where they were. She didn't seem to care.

"What did you dream about?" she asked composedly. She wouldn't look away from him.

Now that awareness was seeping back into him, so was shame. "Nothing."

"Do you have some other excuse for ending up on the floor weeping then?" Elphaba challenged him, but not meanly.

It made him aggravated, regardless.

"I'm going to take a walk," he said, and made to push himself up to slip from this tiny compartment as quickly as possible, but she grabbed the front of his shirt and kept him there.

"Is this really your secret, Fiyero? Nightmares?"

"You make it sound exactly how silly it is," Fiyero muttered. He didn't doubt that she could feel him still trembling.

"I don't think it's silly," she insisted, her expression of sadness. "I have them too, sometimes during waking hours. And sometimes my dreams, good and bad alike, become actuality. So no, I don't think it's silly at all."

"That makes one of us."

She frowned at him, like a silent scold. "How long has this been going on?"

He didn't want to talk about this. He wanted this to be his silent woe. But her eyes were concerned and attentive and she chose to kneel and stoop in that small space he left on the cab floor while she waited for his answer.

Maybe she could see his inner struggle, for she asked more softly, "How long?"

"Ever since...you know…" Fiyero couldn't say it, so he didn't. He looked away, trying to pretend the phantom aches from being stretched across that cross didn't still plague his nerves.

His throat was tight and he couldn't muster words, just unwanted tears wetting his eyes that he refused to allow to pour over. Her grip softened then, unclenching her hand from the material of his shirt until it was flat over his heart, which raced and pounded beneath his sternum.

"What had you so frightened, Fiyero?" she asked, her voice gentle and her eyes searching.

There was no point denying that fact, given the hammering organ under her clever fingers, but still he said nothing. He could have left the compartment then, but he was too drawn to her to imagine leaving, especially at the show of compassion she just displayed for him and the lack of judgment she was showing for his humiliating display.

Still, he felt the need to say, "I'm sorry."

"I'm the last person you should apologize to for baggage, Fiyero," she said calmly, rocking back so she was on the floor with him, her back against the opposite bench. The outside of their legs rested against each other, and it was a familiar easiness despite its novelty.

How could someone as unpredictable, as impulsive, as hot-tempered as her, be such a calming influence on him?

"I don't have a very good perception of normalcy." Her dark brows furrowed morosely as she determined her words. "Being…the way I am…didn't exactly provide me a life in which I could determine a constant. But in the face of that, I recognize idiosyncrasy; and you, sir, fit the bill." He pouted at that, and she sighed, not liking to be misunderstood. "I mean, the more I learn of you, the more of the eccentricities I've always noted make some semblance of sense, like the strange things you'd say which seemed to have connotations that were beyond me that I had always attributed to my social ignorance. Or how often I'd see you loitering about outside in the middle of the night; how you behaved yesterday when all I wanted you to do was rest your head a bit."

"I like the control of wakefulness. The ability to choose to not think of things—it's always been a gift of mine."

"I think for most others sleep is the escape from the unruliness of the mind."

"As you implied: I am an oddity."

"And what does your brain conjure at night that you are so desperate to withdraw yourself from?"

Thinking of the cornfield and the torture that belonged to it, he mumbled, "Memories. Or mutations of memories. Or metamorphoses of those mutations so I'm left with the ugliness of the events but new afflictions."

"Don't you ever dream of pleasant things?"

"Sometimes. But always of things I cannot have." It took the intensity of his fervent, unfiltered stare for her to seem to understand his meaning, and it was enough to have her squirm slightly where she sat. Impulsively, he reached out and placed his hand on the inside of her knee. He left his hand there, even after he felt her twitch of surprise, giving himself a moment to be selfish. "It is from those dreams I'd rather not wake, but I always do."

Fiyero could feel the heat of her blush blaze through the material of her dress, and it created a flame of his own ignite deep within him. He couldn't resist sliding his hand until he could caress more of her thigh, wanting more of that warmth, but that was when she stopped him, lacing her fingers through his and moving them so they were both on her knee. To his wonder, she kept them there.

"And what of now?" she asked, the question catching in her throat some as she resumed her composure. "I sense that whatever you just dreamt was not of the amatory variety. What scared you so much?"

It had only been a few minutes since she had slapped him into consciousness, though the nightmare itself seemed like hours ago for how it misted in his mind. But the shame, fear, self-doubt, and utter hopelessness of it still fused to him like sweat stuck to skin and recalling it made him so insecure that he gave up the casual intimacy of their fingers laced together and the reassurance of their eye contact.

Fiyero tried to articulate the happenings of his nightmare, but the severity of his emotions made any words unintelligible in his head.

It would be easier to brush her off as he has been. But he knew she wouldn't let him and in the depths of him he didn't want to. He wanted to give her everything he was, even the nightmares that plagued him that he kept to himself because they had no bearing on her fate. What's more was that she evidently truly wanted to know.

"I died again, on that stake. It hurt so badly, and I could have sworn I was feeling it all again." It was his turn to feel the pressure of her comforting hand on his leg. A momentary glance at her green face showed it drawn with sympathy. He fingered the cords of her boots to distract himself from it. "That's nothing new."

She let him play with her shoestrings while he thought, while he remembered. "I woke up in my carriage at Shiz, that first day, like the last few months were wiped away. Gone, just gone. And that was worse than death. That everything had been for naught, that I would have to do it all again, live these months always circumspect about what to say, how to behave, what to do every single minute, this time wondering at every turn whether it was for not because what was to keep me from being sucked back to that damn carriage, to live it all again? Over and over and over. It was a curse that felt like a stab wound that would drain me of everything I am, to endeavor and fail eternally, all the while being a stranger in your eyes. And that is something I could not survive again."

"Fiyero…"

"I'm so tired, Elphaba. I feel like I've given this everything I had and if I had to relive that experience of being nothing to you… To be completely alone again with this compounded history…"

As if to keep him afloat against the suction of his despair, she squeezed his calf, as though to keep him grounded to his physical self and not lose himself in his mind.

"Do you really dread this?" Elphaba asked him. "I don't think magic works that way. Once you cast a spell, it can't be uncast or changed."

"I can't say that my unconscious concerns itself much with rationality."

"What would you have done differently if it had been real?"

"I don't even know. I mean, because of how magnificently I've mucked everything up with you, I've reimagined circumstances and how I could have been less imprudent. But to do it all again…"

He trailed off. It had always been too shallow a thought. He remembered the lights of the Ozdust, the taste of the punch, the burn of the Vinkun liquor he drowned himself in when she rejected him…

"I had this fancy when I was at the Ozdust waiting for you to arrive this time around. In it you knew me, you had been transported just like I had, and when we met there, we recognized each other. And without words we embraced passionately, shamelessly, in front of everyone and left hand-in-hand to live a life free from danger and heartache together." He dragged his thumb across the laces of her boots pensively. "Maybe there was something to that. Maybe I'd march right up to you, ask if you believed in magic, and kiss you right then and there."

"Fiyero, people don't flirt with me but even I know that sounds like a terrible pick-up line."

Fiyero couldn't help the slight grin at that, which matched her own bittersweet smirk. "Well, if you can think of a better opener, I'm all ears." His expression faded as disheartened thoughts swept over him. "Maybe I'd never go to Shiz, never speak to you at all. Then I could never hurt you, and you would never abhor me as you do."

"Do not speak for my feelings, Fiyero," she snapped, but ended up biting her thinned lip in contemplation. "Do I get no say in this?"

"I don't understand."

"I've grown accustomed to you in my life, and frankly, as challenging as things are, I can't desire your absence. I can't say I was happier these last weeks without you. You've been my friend; one unlike any I've ever had. Would you take that away from me? Are we to both live lonesome lives?"

He was about to argue that she wouldn't be alone, that she would have Galinda, but he remembered the story of their friendship, and that without the Ozdust they would have carried on loathing one another. The astuteness of her scrutiny told him she knew this too.

"I suppose not."

"I wonder, if your consciousness had been pulled to the past once more, what would be sitting across from me?"

"The blasé, brainless prince of old, I'd imagine. Or nothing at all."

"As much as I would prefer it if you didn't cease to exist, facing an unwitting version of you wouldn't be any pleasanter."

"Was meeting me that awful?" Fiyero teased.

She raised a brow at him. "Somehow, I'd have to explain why he was stuck on a moving train with a green person heading to the Emerald City. And I don't have any advantage of knowing what early you had been like, how such information would be taken."

"Would you tell me the truth?"

"I would feel obligated to. Let him decide how he would make his life from there."

"It could damage him. I'm sure you of all people are aware of the millstone of such knowledge."

"That's assuming he believed me at all." She sighed. "I suppose I appreciate your quandary that much more."

"What could we do to convince each other? What secret do you have that I could say you told me to tell you if I had to do it all once more?"

It almost felt like a game, save for the fact that he was proof that time travel was not some make-believe thing and that such a hypothetical question had real potential practicality.

She ruminated about something only she knew. Her expression fell some as she said, "One winter, before Nessa was born, my father went off on some sabbatical to find himself or God or what-have-you, leaving my mother and me home alone. I could sense her madness at being neglected; she was fidgety and irritable, being left with only me for company, and took comfort in pinwobble leaves and wine. She must have thought me slow of mind – which was a reasonable assumption as I didn't utter my first words for months yet – for she would speak so candidly and harshly. 'Shall we go walk by the edge of the lake today and maybe you'll drown? Or take a boat ride and tip over?' she'd ask me, drunk, assuming I didn't understand. But I did, more than I should have." Elphaba stopped, frowning. "I've never told anyone that."

His heart felt like it was being shredded and he struggled to pull words from his heavy chest, his tight gullet, to provide her even some solace that would compensate for the deprivation of her childhood. He had always assumed that had Melena Thropp lived that maybe Elphaba would have been cherished as she should.

"You needn't be so glum, Fiyero. I'm not." Fiyero knew she was lying, but it was a lie on which she relied, so he didn't call her out. "I'm sure she loved me in her own way. And I have better memories to provide me some resilience to her more apparent failings as a mother. Your turn."

"How am I going to top that?" he joked half-heartedly, and her mouth merely came up in her signature smirk. "All right, I've got one. When I was about 10 or so my little sister had a little pet bird named Flip-Flap – don't give me that look, a four year old named it – and its cage was kept on a shelf, so we'd have to use a stool to open it and let it out. So, one day, I was bored, so I decided I wanted to play with the bird, and after I let it out I hopped off of the stool to the ground. Somehow – and I can't even figure out what the chances of this happening are – the bird swooped right underneath me and I ended up landing on it. Killed, right there. I was so horrified that I just grabbed the bird and put it in the cage and told my sister and my parents that I found it like that."

"The poor bird!"

"Poor me!" Fiyero contested. "I was traumatized but didn't dare tell a soul lest I be accused of birdslaughter! I thought I was doomed to Southstairs."

"That's awful! That's what you want me to know?"

"This is my deepest, darkest secret! You tell me that and I'll believe anything you say. You're the one that needs everlasting convincing."

"Fine then. See this shadow on my skin?" She held out one arm, exposing the skin of her forearm just above the wrist, where a small area of skin slightly darker than the rest was. It was so faint that Fiyero would never have noticed it if she hadn't pointed it out. "Once as a child I tried vigorously to rub off the green, hoping that maybe there would be ordinary skin underneath it. It didn't work, of course, but there you go."

"Don't you have any secrets that aren't depressing?" he complained, pouting to Elphaba's scoff.

"Oh, like yours is any cheerier."

"Touché. You know, if we're talking scar stories, I've got a couple good ones to show off. It would involve me taking off my clothes, but I would be happy to oblige."

"I'm fairly certain that the poor stewardess has enough distress visiting our compartment without walking in on you doing a strip-tease while we're on the floor."

"I noticed that you didn't personally object to the idea," Fiyero joked, much to her immediate annoyance. "So, you do want to see what's hiding underneath this suit, don't you? I have on very good authority that you're going to like what you see."

"Fiyero, do me a favor and stop talking."

It was effortless in times like this to fall into raillery; for Fiyero, these interactions were practically euphoric in how they affected the gravity of his heart. But was he little better than her mother in moments like this? Using her as a drug to forget sorrow and strife, neglecting her miseries or risking augmenting them? In the Shiz forest, Elphaba even criticized him for his pattern of inanity, the pretenses he used as deflection. Humor may have been a comfort to him, but she wasn't laughing. The light in her was still eclipsed by her mistrust and misgivings.

Yet, because she was Elphaba Thropp and more decent than people deserved, she still put his comfort ahead of hers. Rather than returning to the cushioned booth, she stayed next to him on the unforgivingly hard, vibrating floor, taking his book of notes into her lap and resuming her immersion.

Such was the injustices of life that he should fall so absolutely for a woman of whom he could never hope to be deserving, and that this extraordinary, magnificent soul in front of him was deemed repellant by those perhaps worthier of her due to societal mores. Fiyero watched her verdant hand finger the corner of a page she was reading – her nails almost gray from pallor, the contrast of green against the white of the paper, the darkening colors where shadows lived between the digits – and his heart ached for her; he would give her the very skin from his body if wearing it could give her the life she deserved. He would ask that time send him back to her infancy, so he could find her a home with those that could love her abundantly, even if for him it meant growing old alone. He would stand aside and let her love someone else without complaint if it meant her happiness.

A judder of the train knocked their knees together and broke him of his neurotic, tormenting thoughts. It was enough for him to notice Elphaba's upward glance and simper at the contact, her nonchalance comforting and charming to him.

He never could have anticipated that love would be so capricious and distressing, but Oz damn if the small, intimate moments like that didn't make the chaos worthwhile.