Chapter Text
Elphaba was only five moves away from checkmate if she played her cards right. She schooled her expression into one of deep thought, careful not to give away her incoming triumph on her face lest Fiyero decide to resign; he was becoming increasingly reticent to play games with her as he rarely managed to win any of them and he was particularly poor at Ozchess so it was important to drag this game out for as long as possible.
“Oh!” Fiyero groaned, “you’re going to win, I can tell - you’ve got that horrible, smug smirk on your face!”
Elphaba frowned. “No I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” he huffed. “I resign. This game is utterly pointless, I don’t understand why you enjoy it.”
Elphaba marked another tally on her side of the box, the scores now reading 312-0, before carefully rearranging the pieces. “Go again?” she asked hopefully.
“No.” Fiyero grumbled. “Let’s do something I’m good at now - race you to the tree and back?”
Elphaba glanced outside. The desert heat was pounding down, the sun was peaking in the sky and the sand would surely scorch her feet even through her sandals. Still. Better than doing nothing.
She acquiesced with only a small amount of complaining on her part.
Fiyero won. Elphaba was sweaty.
Later that night Elphaba boiled some mushrooms and cabbage for them both to share. Fiyero tried valiantly to make conversation but after seven years of being the only person either of them ever saw, Elphaba suspected they were running out of things to talk about. Still, she thought,wasn't it better to be safe if a little bored, than a fugitive from the state? To be alive than to be forever running from some new witch hunt? Even if she ached to have a real reason to use her magic again, to fly high without fear of being seen, to have a real purpose in life again. As she carefully tidied away their two bowls Fiyero cast her a lopsided grin that suggested he was feeling particularly amorous. Now there was an idea - they didn’t have sex everyday so it was usually a welcome change in routine. In fact, it had been a while because she usually waited for him to initiate and she suspected that being stuck as a scarecrow had somewhat depleted his libido. She attempted a smile back and held out her hand to invite him closer. Fiyero leapt up with a great, big grin on his face and sure, she thought, this was a perfectly acceptable way to end a perfectly pleasant day.
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Life in the desert seemed to be a long line of perfectly pleasant days. Elphaba found herself missing other types of days. Exciting and busy days where she had fought with officers in the Gale Force, often escaping with bullets whizzing just past her head and a great rushing feeling though her entire body, schooldays where she had been buried in countless books, holed up in Shiz library blissfully unaware of how little time she’d get to explore every nook and cranny within, even bad days, if in no small part due to how many of her very worst days had involved holding her best friend’s hand. Ideally, she would relive coming to the Emerald City for the first time, or sneaking into Galinda’s rooms the night before her wedding-that-never-was without later having to rip herself away from Galinda but Elphaba knew better. There was no version of the two of them that could co-exist for very long, no matter how much she wished there to be. So there was no use lying awake at night replaying every moment she could remember having with Galinda, revisiting good and terrible memories in equal measure, trying to work out exactly when it had become inevitable that she would leave and Galinda must stay behind because, in truth, it had been inevitable from the very first moment they had laid eyes on each other. But knowing that didn’t always stop her from wishing differently.
Fiyero declined playing any games the next day which was his prerogative Elphaba supposed. Instead she re-read the only book she had run away with - a short analysis of Animal history in Gillikin and scribbled more notes in the margins wherever she had left space.
Their day together was as pleasant as any other.
Fiyero cooked with a certain amount of joviality that Elphaba rarely brought when it was her turn. He served up roasted mushrooms and cabbage made to look like a smiley face and beamed his charming smile at her at the same time. Really, wasn’t she so very lucky that this charming, funny prince had chosen her? He could have had anyone. He did have someone so much more special than Elphaba. Someone perfect.
But he was here now. In their cottage that they had built together for their perfectly pleasant life together. Elphaba stabbed her fork straight into the eye made of mushroom on her plate.
Presumably, this was what “happy” felt like.
“Did my mushrooms upset you?”
Elphaba looked up briefly and shook her head. “No. They’re good.” After a moment, she added “thank you for cooking.”
“Of course. I like to cook for you because I love you spore than anything!” He winked exaggeratedly at her and waggled his eyebrows. Elphaba snorted.
“Love you too.”
Fiyero’s straw face softens as he looks at her and Elphaba has to look away. She is lucky. They’re safe and happy here. She’s sure of it.
Knock, knock.
Elphaba blinks.
Was that-? No. She must be hearing things.
Knock, knock!
Magic sparks uncontrollably at Elphaba’s fingertips as a wave of panic rippled through her. A sharp breath is forced out of her and the walls of the cottage begin to rattle, the kettle whistle loudly as it shoots into the air and around them, the table and chairs begin to rise, she hasn’t felt this out of control of her magic in a very long time.
Fiyero’s eyes meet hers and he looks as panicked as she feels, and terrified too. He fumbles near the door until his hands wrap around a very old, very rusty and almost entirely unused rifle. He shakily aims it at the door and calls out, “Who goes there?!”
After a small pause, “It’s me!” cries someone from just outside the door. The first voice other than Fiyero’s that Elphaba had heard in seven years. It was a rather useless clarification Elphaba thought bitterly as she stared hard at the door,as clueless and afraid as she had been before the voice (possibly a child’s voice, she thought) had appeared. She takes a moment to glare hard at Fiyero: surely he hadn’t been so foolish as to let the location of their hideout - the only safe place for her in the world, she thought bitterly - fall into the hands of a child. What an utter buffoon he must be. As completely brainless as she’d assumed when they first met.
As if to prove her right, Fiyero edges closer to the door, his hand reaching out to the doorknob as he secures his rifle tight in his other arm.
Elphaba creeps up silently behind him, cloaking herself in an invisibility spell as she does so, suddenly desperate to lay eyes on another person.
She feels the moment that invisibility spell drops away from her because it happens to be the exact same moment she catches sight of their visitor.
A young Galinda Upland stands directly in front of her.
Well.
Not quite.
There are a couple of differences, firstly that the child appears male but everything else... He has Galinda’s bright and blond ringlets bouncing on his head, Galinda’s wide, lovely smile levelled directly up at Elphaba, Galinda’s small dimple nestled firmly into his cheek. He tilts his head to the side with all of Galinda’s charming cheekiness and asks - in Galinda Upland’s voice, no less!
“Well? Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
Elphaba blinks.
He was in every way an exact copy of Galinda.
Except.
Except, he’s green.