The two did not return to the cave until later that evening, when the sun had long since begun to dip below the horizon. After their run in with Lorgen, Elphaba visited the medical center to see if there was anyone in need of help. They'd found that most of the patients had only minor injuries, nothing that required her to retrieve her spell book. After that had been a short trip to take stock of supplies, and then they'd finally departed with Elphaba promising to return tomorrow.
They walked in silence as they returned to the cave. Elphaba seemed satisfied by the day's work, while Fiyero was still thinking over all he'd seen. He couldn't get over fact that this place seemed just as civilized as any other part of Oz, or that the Wizard's goal was to stomp it out. Fiyero hadn't seen even a glimpse of the Animals' supposed savagery throughout his visit. Nothing even remotely resembling a fight had broken out over the course of the entire day.
The two entered the cave and Fiyero stepped closer to Elphaba until his eyes adjusted to the light, as her all-black attire made keeping track of her difficult. After what seemed like an eternity of following blindly, Fiyero bumped into her as she stopped before the entrance to the cave.
With a sweep of the hand the boulder rolled back, and Fiyero was blinded once more as the light from the cave penetrated the darkness. He wondered how on earth Elphaba's pupils ever adjusted to such rapidly changing ambiance.
The first thing Elphaba did upon entering the cave was pick up her spell book and recite a brief incantation. As she finished, Fiyero felt the sensation of the bonds he hadn't even noticed before releasing him. With that finished, the two were left standing awkwardly in the middle of the cave, unsure of what to say.
Elphaba turned away and moved to the other side of the room to hang up her cloak. Fiyero took this moment to initiate an awkward conversation. "I uh…thanks for letting me tag along. It really is wrong. What the Wizard is doing, I mean. I'm glad I got a chance to see that."
Elphaba turned, looking pleasantly surprised by his admission. "Yes well, ignorance seems to be the main problem in Oz these days, doesn't it? Perhaps if people knew what was actually going on, they wouldn't be so ready to condemn. Of course, anyone who does fight the Wizard's lies is immediately denounced as a traitor, so I suppose I see why that option isn't very appealing."
"I'm sorry about what happened to you," Fiyero said softly as Elphaba finished her rant. He was rapidly coming to terms with the fact that the Wizard might be exactly what Elphaba said he was. He couldn't continue to deny it after everything he'd witnessed.
Elphaba gave him an odd look for a moment before she asked, "Why are you doing this?"
Fiyero raised an eyebrow. "Doing what?"
Elphaba rephrased her question. "Why don't you hate me? I kidnapped you. I'm holding you as a prisoner. I've basically ruined your life. Why are you trying to justify that?"
Fiyero thought this over for a moment. In all honesty, he wasn't sure why he didn't feel more contempt for the woman in front of him. He knew that what she said was true, and yet there was something that made it hard to loathe her. Perhaps it was the fact that she'd obviously had a much harder life than he had, or the fact that she was so passionately working for a good cause. It took Fiyero a few moments to answer the question. "I'm not sure. It's not your fault that you kidnapped me. You didn't have a choice. I was the one trying to capture you."
Elphaba looked down at her hands and said, "Even so, I'm keeping you here against your will. You're one of the Wizard's men, and you've had his principles drummed into your head your entire life. I honestly find it rather hard to believe that you'd completely change sides in under a week."
Fiyero studied her for a moment, suddenly understanding her line of questioning. She didn't trust that he believed in her cause. He supposed that was a logical conclusion. He was a Gale Force guard tasked with capturing the Wicked Witch of the West. It probably seemed suspicious that he'd so readily become an ally. She probably believed that he'd wanted to see the Animal camp as an excuse to search for a means of escape. But capturing the Witch had always just been orders for him. He'd never chosen it for himself.
While it was true that Fiyero wanted to return to the comforts of his previous life, his imprisonment was beginning to feel like an opportunity for change he hadn't realized he'd been searching for. When he'd been a part of the Gale Force, he was one in a sea of officers mindlessly doing the Wizard's bidding, but now he was seeing the ugly truths of the country he lived in for the first time. He felt as though there was a hollowness within him that was slowly being filled with principles and the ability to think for himself.
He turned his thoughts to the Witch herself, or Elphaba, as he'd now come to know her. It was strange how much his opinion of her had changed in such a short period of time. Ever since college, he'd heard terrible stories about the Wicked Witch of the West and the way she terrorized Oz. She was almost iconic, the ultimate fear of every Ozian citizen. That had certainly included Fiyero. Ever since he'd first read about the woman in the papers, he'd been scared out of his mind at the prospect of ever meeting her face to face. When he'd become captain of the guard those fears had only deepened, and he'd gone out on each assignment plagued with the thought that he might not come back alive.
Yet now that he'd actually met Elphaba, he couldn't believe how much time he'd wasted living in fear of a person who didn't exist. There was no Wicked Witch of the West, only a passionate, headstrong young woman who'd paid for the Wizard's shortcomings. A woman who, Fiyero had begun to notice, was actually quite lovely once the initial shock of her odd coloring faded.
Once again, Fiyero tried to force the intrusive thoughts from his mind, but he found that the task was growing increasingly difficult. Fleetingly, he tried to think of Glinda, but the thought of his fiancée did nothing to quell the strange feelings beginning to bubble up in his chest. He'd found himself starting to admire Elphaba more and more since they'd left the camp together. He kept trying his best to look the other way, to convince himself that he was only seeing these things because he was male, and she was the only human female in range.
And yet somehow, deep in the recesses of his recently activated brain, Fiyero could sense that this wasn't the case. The strange sensation he'd been experiencing around her was unlike anything he'd ever felt before, even when with Glinda. Whenever he was close to her, he felt short of breath. He could feel his stomach tying in knots. At first, he'd written this off as the aftereffects of his initial fear, but now he couldn't help but think that it might be something more. The thought scared him.
Fiyero broke from his train of thought and came back to reality. He refocused his eyes and realized that he'd been silent for a concerning length of time and that Elphaba was staring at him with a curious expression on her face. He took a breath and tried to recall what they'd been talking about, then responded, "I know you may not trust me, but I honestly do believe in your cause. I don't hate you, Elphaba. I may not be happy with the current circumstances, but I know you did what was necessary to ensure your survival.'
Elphaba gave him a strange look, and her expression suddenly became unreadable. Fiyero soon became uncomfortable with this, and asked, "What?"
"Nothing. I just never thought I'd see the day when one of the Wizard's men grew a conscience," she said. She gave him a weak smile, which he returned.
The two lapsed into silence, though it was not as awkward as he would have expected. Something about the air of the room had turned odd, though Fiyero couldn't quite place it. He stared hard at Elphaba, as if trying to read her mind. For a moment, he thought he saw some of his own muddled feelings reflected back at him in her confused expression. Vaguely, through the haze of his scattered thoughts, Fiyreo took notice of the fact that their faces seemed to be moving closer together.
Time in the room seemed to freeze as the rest of the world faded into white noise. Fiyero forgot his current situation and who the person standing across from him was. All sense of reason fled his mind as he suddenly leaned in and kissed the Wicked Witch of the West.
Fiyero's capacity for thought abandoned him as he lost all sense of self and rationality. He was not Fiyero Tigelaar. He was not engaged. The woman on the receiving end of this kiss was not the most dangerous fugitive in all of Oz. Fiyero's hands traveled to the small of Elphaba's back and he pulled her close against him. He shuddered slightly as her fingers brushed the back of his neck.
Then, as suddenly as they had begun, Elphaba jumped away from him as though she'd been scalded. The abruptness of it surprised Fiyero, and his eyes shot open to the sight of a very flustered witch.
Elphaba seemed shocked by what had just happened. Her eyes were wide, and her hands had flown to her lips as if she couldn't believe they'd just been pressed against Fiyero's. She held this pose for a couple of moments, before a look of anger flashed across her face. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she demanded. Her cheeks were flushed, but Fiyero couldn't say whether it was from anger, embarrassment, or something else entirely.
"I-I-" he stuttered. Reality came crashing down around Fiyero in an instant. He blinked a few times as his mind began to process what had just taken place. He'd just kissed the Wicked Witch of the West. Setting aside how utterly insane that was on its own, he hardly knew this woman. What he did know included the fact that she was both his captor and a wanted fugitive. And he was engaged.
Even as these very rational thoughts began to flood Fiyero's mind, he couldn't completely shake off the residual feelings of what had just happened between them. His face was warm, and he could feel a strange electricity buzzing just under his fingertips.
Fiyero spared another glance toward Elphaba, who looked distraught as she raked a hand through her disheveled hair. Fiyero knew that this was not something they could leave unresolved. "Elphaba, I-"
She whirled around and cut him off. "Stop calling me that!" she demanded, her voice taking on some of the shrillness it carried when she was playing the Wicked Witch. She threw her hands up in exasperation and said, "You hardly even know me, and I know nothing about you. I have no idea what it is you're playing at, but you can stop it this instant. If you think I'm the type of woman to be unmoored by such things, you are very sorely mistaken. "
Fiyero was not surprised by the outburst. He'd just been mulling over Elphaba's very clear distrust of him, and then he'd gone and made the matter several times worse.
He was at a loss on how to explain any of this. He didn't quite understand what had happened himself. "Look, I'm sorry. I don't know what-" he began, but Elpahaba quickly cut him off.
"That's enough. You-are-my- prisoner. I know I'm not entirely blameless here. I've allowed you too much leeway, and now you're thinking that I'm naïve, that maybe you can exploit my weaknesses to your benefit. I'm not a fool," she said
Fiyero began to feel as if he was slowly suffocating. He didn't understand anything right now. He felt as though he were back in college, staring in confusion at an exam he hadn't bothered to study for. All he knew was that he hadn't done this out of malice. He wasn't trying to hurt or manipulate the woman in front of him. He just had no idea how to communicate that as Elphaba continued her tirade.
"All of this ends now. There will be no more field trips or blatant errors in judgment on my part. We will return to our previous arrangement. You will remain in your cell at all times, and I would appreciate it if you would just go back to hating me." She tried to keep her voice low and even, but Fiyero didn't miss the slight break in her words as she finished her last sentence.
Fiyero took a breath to calm himself and responded, "I don't want to hate you, Elphaba. I know that you're a fugitive and I'm aware that I'm a prisoner here, but I don't hate you." He leveled his gaze at her and asked, "Have I given you any reason not to trust me?"
"You're the captain of the Gale Force!" she shot back. Fiyero had hoped keeping his demeanor calm would help to settle Elphaba's temper, but it seemed to be having the opposite effect. Her voice had risen almost an octave and her hands were balled into fists.
"I know that," he said, allowing a small amount of frustration to seep into his voice. "But that wasn't even my choice. It was decided for me. Everything in my entire life has been decided for me for as long as I can remember. I've never so much as thought about what I believed, or what I thought was right. I don't want to be that person anymore. I need you to trust me," he finished.
At his words, Elphaba's eyes blazed, and she responded, "Trust you? What has trusting people ever done but cause me grief? I've been perfectly fine by myself. I would have continued to be perfectly fine by myself if you hadn't been hunting me!"
"I'm sorry, okay? I was just-" Fiyero stopped himself before he could finish with 'following orders'. Somehow, he didn't think that would be a good enough excuse. He sighed. "I'm not a very good person, okay? You're not wrong about that. I'm spoiled and sheltered and selfish. But I haven't been lying to you. I'm sorry about what just happened. I have no idea what came over me. I won't let it happen again. But please don't shut me out. I want to change," he said.
Elphaba still eyed him with distrust, but she seemed to have calmed for the time being. Her breathing was still slightly ragged as she searched his face for any evidence of deceit. After a moment, she deflated.
"I've never been any good with people," she said. "I don't understand them. I've never been particularly adept at sensing ill intentions, so I've found it's easier to just assume them from the start. But I'm tired." Fiyero could see the truth in her words. There was a depth of exhaustion in her eyes that was far beyond her years. "If you're doing this to trick me, or capture me, so be it. Let trusting you be my downfall."
Fiyero felt his heart constrict at the sheer defeat in her words. He realized again that Elphaba was just a person. She was a remarkably strong one, but a person all the same. She'd had no one to rely on but herself for years. He wished there was a way to make her believe that he wished her no harm.
"I swear that I'll earn your trust," he said, infusing as much conviction into the words as he could muster. "You'll see."
She stared at him for a little while longer, but Fiyero hadn't the faintest guess as to what was going through her mind. After a moment, her eyes darted from his face to the doorway of the small cavern behind him. Fiyero got the message.
Without protest, he turned and made his way back into his makeshift prison. He stood staring at Elphaba from her place across the room, his expression set. Fiyero thought he saw the briefest moment of hesitation, before the boulder rolled into place and blocked her from view.