Chapter Text
There are so many thoughts running through their minds as time passes, as the train heads towards the platform at Shiz.
I must have been dreaming all of this, there’s no way this is real.
Maybe she’s not everything I remember, maybe she’s not half of what she’s become in my memory…
There’s no possible way he’s real, he’s looking forward to seeing me again… none of this can possibly be true…
You don’t invent something that imperfectly perfect, do you? I wouldn’t’ve made up a green girl completely from scratch, from nothing? You couldn’t invent that…
Everything’s about to shift… what I thought was perfect… what was perfect for a short time…
The train stills to a halt at Shiz station, pausing both the thoughts of the woman on the platform, and the man waiting impatiently by the train doors, with nothing but a small holdall for the weekend.
He steps off the train the moment the doors let him, and then the world seems to stop.
People move around them, and they both stand still.
Elphaba, her heart thumping because the beautiful illusion she’s had for the past weeks, that she’s helped build the scaffolding for - she thinks it’s about to crumble.
Fiyero, because suddenly he’s never been any closer to where he’s meant to be, and there’s a woman on the platform, a woman who means more than anyone he’s ever known, and call him stupid, but he thinks she might represent the rest of his life.
The other people, with other places to reach, with other appointments, other loved ones, other romances, bustle away.
And she’s standing there, looking at him.
It doesn’t take him many steps to reach her, once the throngs of people have cleared.
She looks small, in front of him, and she’s looking across at him with a thousand questions on her face, like she’s not sure what he means to her, she’s not sure what she means to him, she’s not sure what the last weeks of their life have meant.
When he reaches her, he wants to take her in his arms, but everything feels tentative, everything feels like he should be careful. He reaches out and puts a hand on either of the sides of her arms, letting his holdall fall, forgotten, to the floor.
She looks up at him.
“Fae.” he breathes, so quiet you almost can’t hear it at all, and suddenly the spell is broken. Suddenly she looks like there are tears ready to well up in her eyes, and her chest is heaving with her fast breathing, and he’s right in front of her when she thought maybe he was nothing but a wonderful dream.
The world stops, and he takes two steps closer to her.
“Yero.” she whispers, and everything’s real, everything’s close, everything’s true. He leans his head towards hers, for some reason ready for a rebuttal, for some reason ready for her to turn her face away.
But she doesn’t.
Her lips meet his, like they never left. Like there’s somehow both a thousand years and no time at all between them, all at once.
He kisses her like the world is ending, like they’re dying, like it’s the last time.
And she kisses him back like she’s never kissed him before, like their first kiss, like she barely knows him.
It’s beautiful.
As she pulls back, a smile rests on her lips.
“Hey.” she whispers, finally letting her eyes meet his.
“Hey.”
***
An indiscriminate amount of time passes, and they stand in each other’s arms. Anything could be happening in the world around them, time seems to pause. As it is, a few stragglers from the train move past, they even get some small smiles from an elderly couple, who walk past them hand in hand. Between kisses their foreheads rest against each other, and Elphaba dares to close her eyes.
“I have missed you so much.” he is the first to break the silence. She lets the beginnings of a smile grace her lips.
“You too.” her voice is low, breathy, and for a moment he can hear the tone in it that he’s missed, the hint of her wanting him.
But they are trying to be civilised young adults, and things like that have to wait until later. He reaches a hand out to cup the side of her face, letting his smile reach his eyes, and they’re twinkling. For a moment Elphaba’s heart stops and the reality of it all comes crashing down on her. She can’t deny the truth in his eyes, and with that look on his face that man has been missing her just as much as she has been missing him.
Somehow, he’s completely enamoured by the green girl, and she can see it etched into every inch of his skin. He runs his thumb along her cheekbone lightly, and she leans into his hand.
“I didn’t know you could miss anyone this much.” he utters at the same time as she starts, “I think I love you” and the whole world stops turning.
She hasn’t felt fear like it, ever in her life. It’s a different kind of fear to anything she’s ever experienced, because she’s gambled, and she’s possibly gambled away what she is quickly deciding is the most important thing that has ever happened to her. But with all his feelings written so brazenly all over his face, and the fact that she hasn’t felt so safe, so seen and so understood in the last month as she does in his arms, even if they’re on Platform 2 of Shiz train station, somehow enticed her to make that gamble, take that risk. Which as soon as she’s said it she starts doubting, thinking it might be the worst mistake she’s ever made in her life.
He swallows, and he looks away from her eyes. That can’t be good, right? If he can’t look her in the eye anymore, she’s sure the next step is him stepping away, and this haphazard little happiness she’s built crumbling underneath her. They weren’t the best foundations anyway, she’s only known the man for three beautiful days and a series of letters. She braces herself. For the first time in her life, she can’t tell herself she’s gotten through worse.
She’s not sure she has. She’s never felt like this, she doesn’t think she’s ever been this invested.
But he turns his eyes back to her, and when he does, his wide, beautiful brown orbs shine slightly brighter, there’s a glaze of a tear over each of them.
She grits her teeth. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen eyes look that honest before, certainly not looking at her.
“I think I love you too.” he whispers, and now his eyes won’t leave hers. “I wanted to say it to you… I just thought it’s so early, and I didn’t want to look like a fool… and we’re still getting to know each other… and more than anything I didn’t want to scare you away, Fae…” his smile widens, and one tiny tear slips out of one of his eyes, “but I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with you. And I think I’ve fallen a long way…”
There isn’t anything to do in that moment but reach up and press her lips against his gently, chastely, full of promise. And then she takes his hand and starts wordlessly leading him away.
***
After those big words are spoken, there’s a time of quiet. Like they suddenly don’t need as many words, like the words are sitting heavy over them, and it would be too much strain to fill the silence with other words. But hearts are thumping in both their chests and joy is bubbling in both of them as she takes him back to her room, he sets down his overnight bag, and she suggests they go for a walk in the late afternoon sunshine.
Their hands fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, and again she takes a fleeting moment to stare at the beauty of the green fingers laced with the pale ones. They walk down to the river, and they walk mostly in silence, though occasionally she rests her head lightly on his shoulder, and he always seems to sigh.
“I had so many words I wished I could say to you, these last weeks…” she muses.
“And now the silence is full.” he squeezes her hand. “We’ve got all the time in the world, all the time we need, to fill those silences…”
She stops him, giving his hand a gently tug, and looks up at him. “Do you mean that? We have all that time?”
He shrugs, the carefree Winkie Prince smile setting free. “I don’t know, Fae. I’ve never known a lot-” she starts to interrupt him, to scold him, but he puts a finger up to her lips “-and I feel I know even less when I’m around you, or I’m thinking about you… you make me brainless… but I know I’d like to try. I’ve never been so sure of anything my whole life. I am not the same man I was before that night at the OzDust, before I met you, and I don’t want to go back to that man… I don’t think I could go back to that man…”
She smiles shyly, kissing his finger.
“No one has ever…” she swallows, “No one has ever made me feel like you do… and that’s not just you wanting me…” her eyes darken a little as she says it, and his follow close behind, “...you’re one of the only people who’ve ever made me feel… like I’m worth existing…”
It’s raw, it’s pained, it’s hard for her to say, and for him to hear. The silence is full, and he doesn’t interrupt it. He gives her space, he gives her time, to keep talking.
“...Galinda tries, but she’s so wrapped up in being Galinda, and Nessa has always needed me… but sometimes I think that’s all it is, need… but when you look at me, it’s like someone wants me to be here, right in front of them… and no one’s ever made me feel that…”
Her words break his heart, because how has his beautiful green girl gone through twenty years of life and no one has ever made her feel like she’s worth anything? He’s again astounded by how steely and strong she is, she’s always been, to survive like that.
“I want you here, right in front of me, for as long as you’ll have me, Fae…”
She smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Promise?” she asks, and it sounds tentative, frightened. “Because boys like you don’t fall for girls like me… and I know you think you’re feeling like I am right now… but my whole life nothing’s ever even started… so I don’t know how to believe this is going to last…”
He knows she’s not doubting him. She’s been made, exactly as she is, by the cruelty and indifference of the rest of the world for her whole lifetime. And somehow it’s become his job now, to rebuild all those pieces. There’s no job he’d rather have, there’s nowhere he’d rather be. He’s never had a calling, had a role so important in his whole life.
“One day at a time.” he whispers, snaking his hand around to thread into her hair at the base of her skull, to pull her slightly closer to him. “Every day, I’m going to be there when you wake up in the morning, or I’m going to wake up at school and you’re going to be the first thing I think about… I promise you, Fae, with everything I am, that I am prepared to spend the rest of my life, Lurline forgive me, proving to you that I have fallen in love with you, and I am going to want you forever…”
It’s enough, for now, and she leans forward to meet his lips with hers.
Galinda’s visiting a rich aunt this weekend, and with the room to themselves he’s going to show her just how much he wants her in this very moment this evening.
More than once, if she’ll allow.