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Elphaba had nearly disappeared into the blackened marsh ahead, leaving vines and branches to snap behind her. Fiyero followed clumsily, too clumsily for his pride, but refusing to sacrifice time to compose himself. He was offset by the wriggling mass tucked in his coat, mewling and hissing anxiously at every stumble Fiyero took, and most of his attention was fixed on making sure the cub didn’t claw any deeper into his already mangled shirt. As he paused to heft the baby against his hip instead, he drew his fingers across his chest, wincing at the pain beneath the pinpricks of seeping blood.
“Can we stop for a second?” He called Elphaba, barely perceivable if not for the angry rustle of foliage ahead. “We shouldn’t-”
Elphaba stomped back in an instant with a deep flush on her face. It was surprising, the way her face had shifted from sage to cinnamon, her hair wild and stuck with leaves. Those furious, electrified, emerald eyes, the righteous crease of her brow, her wine dark lips shaping a flurry of fiery words... He realized had been staring longer than he had been listening.
“ –and if you really think I’d let you take him back, then you’re stupider than I thought! You’re–”
Fiyero stuttered, pulling the whimpering baby closer to his chest instinctively. “I wasn’t going to–”
“ –just like everyone else! You waltz around without a care in the world, and when you realize you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, you–”
Her eyes locked him in place, almost rendering him speechless, if not for the bubbling frustration brewing in his throat.
“I wasn’t going to suggest that! Why do you always assume everyone is conspiring against you?!” He snapped, wincing at the claws that gripped at his shoulder. Sighing, he looked down at the cub, running a thumb over his whiskered cheek, then risked a glance back at Elphaba’s wide eyes.
Elphaba had stilled, awkwardly shifting her gaze to the side. A mumble escaped her, maybe an apology, based on the stubborn embarrassment on her face. Fiyero sighed, cooling his irritation with practiced ease and focusing his attention on the issue at hand. An old, familiar, dreadful weight settled on his scratched-up shoulders.
“We need to figure out where to take him.”
“We can’t just leave him out here, alone.”
Fiyero sat against a gnarled root and closed his eyes, needing a moment to think. “I realize that. Just… give me a second.”
Shockingly, begrudgingly, but still silently, Elphaba acquiesced and knelt across from him. She had seemed as shocked as he was, that moment she had cast that spell on the class. The way terror overtook her once determined face had lit something inside him, and he wondered if she had somehow charmed him too. But of his own accord, he went to the cage and scooped the trembling baby out, wrapping him in his velvet Shiz jacket and snuck the three of them down the back halls of the school, through the dilapidated section of the gardens, and into the winding wetland that sprawled out into the Gillikin wilderness. They’d been running, then jogging, then trudging in no specific direction (excepting away) for a half hour.
Peeking one eye open, Fiyero appraised his unlikely ally-in-emancipation. The late afternoon sun cast mottled light across her skin, vibrant greens against darkened sage. Her hands held her face, the tips of her fingers resting under her glasses, and with her hunched shoulders and tucked legs, she looked so small. Unnervingly small. Elphaba was short, compared to Fiyero, but she had always seemed larger than life, bold, unapologetic, and vaguely frightening. A quiet pang of sympathy compelled him to speak.
“I’m sure we’ll figure something out. It’ll be okay.” Despite not wholly understanding the origin of this need to soothe her worries, he recognized the impulse as the same one that got him in this mess in the first place. An unease had crept into his throat as he spoke.
Elphaba groaned in response, and a defense to whatever new complaint she had against him poised itself on his tongue. Her hands dropped to her side, and the tired look she gave disarmed him immediately.
“You can’t know that for certain. For all we know, he could die out here, and it’d be our fault.” Another angsty groan, then she continued. “All I do is cause catastrophe after catastrophe. I can’t believe I thought I could save him, like I know anything about what’s good for a lion cub! Augh!”
At her mention of him, or perhaps due to the volume of her self loathing, the cub shakily crawled out from his swaddle. Fiyero awkwardly juggled the cub between his arms and knees, frustrated at the sudden escape attempt. “Gods, he’s wiggly.”
“He’s a baby. Babies wiggle. Give him here.”
Fiyero carefully lowered the cub in Elphaba’s open arms. “Babies make terrible evening companions. Though he’s not thrown up on me or stolen my wallet yet.”
Elphaba scoffed, beginning to rock the cub gently against her shoulder. Her typical sharpness had eroded away, and Fiyero was certain that few had the privilege of seeing this softer side to her. The uneasy feeling in his throat had risen to his head, leaving him dizzy, and he wondered, once again, if she had hexed him. If he wasn’t in the middle of the jungle and didn’t already feel tipsy, he’d make to pour himself a sizable drink.
“Dr. Dillamond could have helped us,” she said, her voice tight. “Oz knows what they’ve done to him.”
“... I’m sorry.” Fiyero’s chest ached, another uncomfortable betrayal of emotion in his body. The voices of his parents, the court, and a jumble of governesses, professors, and statesmen all clamored to the forefront of his mind, chastising whatever had made him stand when those officers dragged the professor away. There was nothing they could have done, right? It was out of their hands.
But Elphaba did something. She stood, demanded, cried out at the injustice, and it didn’t matter. She magically hypnotized an entire room full of people to save a helpless Animal, and they may have put him in greater danger. This was precisely why he avoided responsibilities like the plague; neither of them knew what to do, but they had to do something.
“Are you… thinking?”
Fiyero’s eyes snapped up. She was watching him with a strange look on her face, an expression simultaneously smug and concerned. Maybe he imagined the second part.
“How dare you.” He mumbled back, internally wincing at the half-hearted delivery. Elphaba’s eyes narrowed, so he started again, voice laced with dry wit. “–actually, shockingly, yes. Maybe you hit me with that spell somehow and… now I can think.”
“Doubtful. You can barely string together a coherent sentence.”
“Really? You’re insulting me? I’m the only person actually trying to help you!”
“Well you didn’t have to!”
Fiyero stood, gathering up his torn jacket and sighing. “Fine. I’ll go, since you clearly don’t want my help.”
Right as he turned to stalk off, her hand grasped his, sending a jolt of electricity through him and short circuiting every command his mind sent to his body to move. He looked back, over his shoulder. She held the cub tightly with one arm, his tail lashing anxiously and his little hindquarters pawing helplessly to keep from falling.
“No, please stay,” Elphaba yelled, pained. Given their dynamic, he knew he should assume it had hurt her pride to appeal to him. That had to be it, why her face had twisted in desperation, right? He watched her eyes so closely he thought he may disappear into the verdant depths of them. They flicked down to their hands, and his gaze followed, and in an instant, they both drew away.
Elphaba stepped away, widening the distance. She clutched the cub with both hands, her eyebrows knit tightly. “He’s holding on so tightly, and he won’t stop shaking. I… I didn’t mean to scare him.”
The typical certainty that once underpinned her every word had melted away, leaving behind a vulnerable woman, cradling a lion like he was the most fragile creature in all of Oz. Fiyero instinctively stepped closer, hand reaching but not daring to touch her, lingering close enough to hear her quiet, hitched breath.
“What did you mean to do?” Fiyero whispered, leaning his head to catch her eye. “And why was I the only one you didn’t do it to?”
Elphaba looked through her eyelashes at him, then dropped down to his chest, and his heart skipped. “You’re bleeding.”
“Am I?” It was barely a question, and one he certainly already knew the answer to. He wasn’t sure why he said it, but the self-reflection passed as his eyes danced over her downcast face, tracing over her furrowed brows, thick, obscuring eyelashes, freckled cheekbones, and tender frown.
“He scratched you really badly.”
“Yeah, or maybe he scratched me, or something,” he responded automatically, his attention drawn again to her lips, velvet like dark rose petals. Her lips parted slightly, and he wished deviously that it was intentional.
Concerned etched itself into her features, and she reached a tentative hand towards his chest. She grazed the cotton of his shirt, over a dried splotch of blood. Emerald eyes flicked up to his once, and his heart thudded hard against his ribs. Bewildered by the cacophony of sensations in his body and all-too-familiar, wicked impulses forming in his mind, he lurched back, panickedly stammering.
“I’ll get to safety, I mean,” Fiyero yelped (yelped?). “I mean! I’ll get the cub to safety! I’ll take him somewhere safe.”
Elphaba stood just as quickly, earning herself a new scratch along her collarbone. Fiyero looked away at the same time he reached for the cub, trying to ignore the way his hands clashed against her arms and brushed against her chest. She was stammering something in return, clearly yet inscrutably perturbed as much as he was. Once the baby was squared away in his jacket again, Fiyero stumbled past, shouting a polite farewell while his mind raced equally as fast as his feet.
He looked back once, barely still in sight, but she had disappeared.