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“I’m just saying, ‘protecting the Animals’ is a flimsy plan,” he says quietly, almost absentmindedly, as he doodles little spirals and half-formed suns in the margins of her book.
He doesn’t look at her when he says it. He doesn’t mean it cruelly. To him it’s just thinking aloud, the way he always does with her. The way he never does with anyone else.
But the words land sharp anyway.
Because all her life, people have questioned her. Doubted her. Told her her ideas were impractical, naive, dangerous. Because she has spent years being shouted down by professors, sneered at by others, dismissed by authority. And because, foolishly, she had thought he might be different.
That one is on her.
Her shoulders stiffen. Something shutters behind her eyes as her guard snaps back into place, familiar and heavy.
“And let me guess,” she says, voice rising despite herself, “you’d rather ‘I dance through life’ ignoring other people’s suffering because caring is inconvenient? Because doing the right thing is a burden?”
He finally looks up, startled.
“I thought you were different, Fiyero,” she continues, words tumbling faster now, anger braided tightly with hurt. “But that’s my fault, isn’t it. I keep making the same mistake. Thinking someone actually understands why I want to help.”
The prince blinks, once. Then again.
He searches the afternoon like it might be hiding under the table somewhere. The quiet. The warmth. The soft, private ease they’d been sharing only moments ago.
“No,” he starts, confused. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Because you refuse to do somethi—”
“Elphaba—”
“I just really thought you’d understand why I want to hel—”
“FAE!”
The sound of her name, sharp and sudden, cuts clean through her spiral.
She freezes.
Really looks at him.
His brows are drawn together, not in anger but in bewilderment. Hurt flickers openly in his blue eyes, raw and unguarded in a way she rarely sees. He looks like someone who has tripped into a fight he never meant to start.
He exhales, scrubbing a hand through his hair.
“That’s not what I was saying,” he says more carefully now. “My point was that while I’m not exactly well liked by the current Vinkun king—”
“Your brother,” she cuts in, automatically.
He winces. “Yes. My brother. While he’d rather pretend I don’t exist, I am still, inconveniently, a prince. Which means I know things.”
She doesn’t interrupt this time.
“Like how the laws of the Vinkus prohibit extradition,” he continues, leaning forward now, intent. “No Animal refugee can be forcibly returned or banished. Not by Oz. Not even by the Wizard. No matter how loudly they ask.”
Her breath catches, just slightly.
“My point,” he says gently, “was that instead of freeing them only for them to be hunted down again, we can direct them somewhere they’ll actually be safe. Somewhere with laws that will protect them until you speak to the Wizard, because I know you will.”
He hesitates, then adds quietly, “I wasn’t dismissing you. I was trying to help.”
Silence stretches between them, thin and humming.
Elphaba looks down at her book. At the careless little doodles in the margins. Suns. Birds. A crooked attempt at a rabbit.
Her anger drains, leaving something more uncomfortable behind.
“Oh,” she says softly.
It’s a small word. It carries a lot of weight.
Fiyero watches her like he’s bracing for impact anyway.
“I should’ve explained better,” he admits. “I forget sometimes that the way people usually talk to you isn’t…kind.”
She swallows. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”
A beat.
Then, quieter still, “I just don’t like it when people tell me I’m wrong for caring.”
He nods, slow and earnest. “I know.”
And for a moment, the world settles back into place. A little bruised. A little altered. But still theirs. But slightly off kilter and she doesn’t like that.
Elphaba’s chest feels too tight, like she’s breathing through wool.
“Fiyero, I attacked you—”
She barely gets the words out before he moves.
“No,” Fiyero says quietly, already pushing back from the table. His voice is calm in the way people get when they are trying very hard to keep it that way. “It’s okay.”
It very clearly is not.
He gathers himself with deliberate care, smoothing his shirt, lifting his blazer from the back of the chair. The easy sprawl he usually wears around her is gone, folded up and put away like something fragile.
“Traveling with Feldspur,” he adds, not looking at her now, “I learned early how people talk about Animals. What they assume. What they dismiss.” A pause. “I get it.”
That hurts more than anger would have.
Elphaba stands, helpless as he slips his arms into the blazer. She wants to grab his sleeve. Wants to force him to look at her. Wants to explain that she hadn’t meant him, that she had meant everyone else who ever laughed, doubted, sneered.
But the words tangle uselessly in her throat.
“Fiyero…” is all she manages.
He finally looks at her then.
He gives her a smile, small and tight and carefully constructed. Not the real one. Not the crooked thing he saves for her when no one else is watching.
“It’s fine,” he says lightly, too lightly. “I know what I am. I know what I look like.” A breath. “Dancing through life and all that.”
The phrase lands between them like a closed door.
“I’ll see you later, Elphaba.”
He turns before she can answer.
She watches him go, the echo of his footsteps louder than they have any right to be, and realizes with a sick, sinking certainty that she has hurt the one person who had been trying to meet her where she stood.
And worse.
She realizes he let her.
Fiyero doesn’t go back to his rooms.
He doesn’t go to his ‘friends’.
He goes to the stables.
Feldspur lifts his head the moment he hears boots on straw, ears flicking forward. The late afternoon light catches the dark blue sheen of his coat, patient and familiar in a way people rarely are.
“You’re early,” Feldspur notes mildly. “Or late. Hard to tell with you.”
Fiyero exhales a breath he’s been holding since the library. He leans his forehead briefly against the stall door, eyes closed.
“I think I ruined something,” he says.
Feldspur snorts. “That narrows it down how, exactly?”
He pushes the stall open and steps inside, resting his weight against the horse’s shoulder. Feldspur shifts just enough to accommodate him, solid and warm.
“I said something stupid,” Fiyero admits. “Or maybe I said something right and it landed wrong.” A pause. “She thought I was showing off. Being careless. Like everyone else thinks I am.”
“And were you?” Feldspur asks, not unkindly.
“No,” Fiyero says immediately. Then softer, “I was trying to protect her idea.”
Feldspur huffs. “Ah. The worst crime.”
Fiyero laughs once, short and humorless. He runs a hand along Feldspur’s neck, grounding himself in the familiar rhythm of breathing and muscle.
“She looked at me like I’d proven her right,” he says. “Like I was just another person telling her she’s foolish for caring.”
“And you let her think that?”
“I didn’t know how to stay,” Fiyero admits. “If I stayed, I think I would’ve begged her not to see me that way.”
Feldspur’s tail flicks. “You’re allowed to be hurt, you know. Even if she didn’t mean it.”
“I know,” he says. “I just don’t want her to think I don’t take her seriously.”
Feldspur nudges his shoulder, firm and insistent. “Then don’t teach her that you disappear when things get difficult.”
Fiyero goes still.
Across campus, Galinda notices.
It’s subtle. It always is with Elphaba. No dramatics. No tears. Just a slight dulling at the edges, like someone turned the light down a notch too far.
Elphaba laughs at the right moments during dinner. She nods. She pushes food around her plate without eating much of it. When Galinda gushes about a new gown, Elphaba smiles and says it’s beautiful in a voice that sounds…rehearsed.
Galinda watches her over the rim of her teacup.
“Elphie,” she says lightly, “did someone say something unflattering about your hat again?”
Elphaba blinks. “What? No.”
“Because you get that face when someone’s been cruel,” Galinda replies. “Or when you’re being cruel to yourself.”
Elphaba stiffens. “I’m fine.”
Galinda hums, unconvinced. She reaches out and squeezes Elphaba’s hand, gentle but possessive.
“You know,” she says casually, “when you’re upset like this, it usually has something to do with someone who pretends not to care about anything.”
Elphaba’s fingers twitch.
Galinda smiles, bright and knowing and just a little sharp. “So. Did you and Fiyero have a disagreement?”
Elphaba looks down.
And Galinda, for the first time, realizes that whatever this is, it isn’t nothing.
Galinda sighs the way only someone who has never been truly misunderstood can sigh, dramatic and fond and convinced she is being very wise.
“You are two of the most dearest and stubbornest people to me,” she declares, hands braced on her hips. “And for some reason, you both find joy in discussing terribly sad things.” She waves a hand, dismissing the complexity of it all. “So whatever sad thing made you both sad clearly just needs a proper apology.”
Elphaba watches her, says nothing.
Galinda smiles, bright and confident in her conclusion. “Fiyero never gets angry. So obviously he should apologize to you, Elphie.”
The words land softly. Too softly.
Elphaba feels something twist in her chest, not sharp enough to be anger, not clean enough to be pain. Just…awareness. The quiet realization of how much Galinda doesn’t see. How deeply Fiyero feels. How carefully he hides it. How easily it’s mistaken for indifference.
She wonders, briefly, if that’s why Galinda loves him.
“Right,” Elphaba says after a moment, forcing her voice steady. “Of course. I should let him apologize.”
Galinda beams, satisfied, already moving on, certain the problem has been neatly labeled and shelved.
Elphaba is left alone with the truth she doesn’t know what to do with yet.
That Fiyero didn’t get angry.
He got hurt.
And he cared for her enough to step away rather than let it show.
Elphaba does not mean to end up at the stables.
Her feet just…take her there. Away from chandeliers and whispers and tidy conclusions. Toward hay and leather and the kind of honesty that smells like earth.
Feldspur hears her before he sees her.
“You’re not Fi,” the Horse observes mildly from his stall. “But you walk like someone who’s come to say something important and is afraid it won’t land.”
Elphaba startles, then huffs a breath. “I’m looking for Fiyero.”
“Of course you are,” Feldspur says. “He’s not here right now.”
Her shoulders sink. “I figured.”
She lingers anyway, fingers curling around the wooden slat. “He came to you.”
“Yes.”
She hesitates. Then, because there is no point pretending with an Animal who’s eyes seem wise beyond their years, she says, “I hurt him.”
Feldspur’s dark eye regards her, thoughtful. “You did.”
Elphaba winces. “You’re very direct.”
“I don’t have the luxury of being otherwise,” Feldspur replies. “Humans tend to miss things unless they are stated plainly.”
She nods, accepting the rebuke. “He was trying to help. I assumed the worst.”
“Because people usually do,” Feldspur says. “And because you’ve had to sharpen yourself to survive.” A beat. “That does not make you wrong. But it does make you quick.”
Elphaba swallows. “He hides it well.”
“He does,” Feldspur agrees. “People see shallow water and assume there is nothing beneath it. They splash. They make noise. They don’t notice how cold it gets once you step in.”
Her fingers tighten on the wood. “He looked at me like I’d proven something he was afraid of.”
“You did,” Feldspur says gently. “But not the thing you think.”
She looks up.
“You proved he cared,” the Horse continues. “And caring, for him, is dangerous.”
Elphaba’s breath stutters. “Galinda thinks he doesn’t feel things deeply.”
Feldspur’s ear flicks. “Galinda sees what he shows her.”
“And what does he show you?”
Feldspur snorts softly. “The parts that do not perform.”
Silence settles, heavy but not unkind.
“He left because he didn’t trust himself to stay,” Feldspur adds. “If he had, he would have said something he could not take back.”
Elphaba nods slowly. “I need to apologize.”
“Yes,” Feldspur says. “But not in the way you’re planning.”
Before she can ask what that means, the stable door creaks open.
Fiyero steps in, sleeves rolled, hair damp, boots streaked with mud. He smells like hay and effort and the kind of labor he does when his thoughts are too loud.
He stops short when he sees them.
“…Well,” he says, blinking between horse and witch. “This feels like a tribunal.”
Feldspur flicks an ear, unrepentant. “You’re too late, we’ve already found you guilty.”
Elphaba straightens, heart hammering.
“Fiyero,” she says softly.
He looks at her. Really looks.
The shallow water goes very still.
“I won’t leave,” Feldspur states calmly, lowering his head back to the fresh hay as if this settles the matter entirely.
Fiyero sighs, long-suffering but fond, rolling his blue eyes. “Yes, I figured. With hay this good you’re not abandoning it for emotional revelations.”
He steps closer and pats the Horse’s midnight-blue neck, fingers lingering just a second longer than necessary. Feldspur leans into the touch, chewing thoughtfully.
“Try not to say anything unwise,” the horse advises around a mouthful.
“No promises,” Fiyero replies.
Then he turns.
The shift is subtle but unmistakable. The practiced ease is still there, but it’s folded tighter now, worn like a jacket he can take off if things go badly. He gestures toward the back doors of the stable, where the air smells cleaner and the light slants low and honest.
“Join me?” he asks.
Not playful. Not flippant.
Open.
Elphaba’s heart stutters. She nods, once.
They walk side by side through the narrow corridor, boots crunching softly in the straw. The sounds of Feldspur eating fade behind them, replaced by the quiet creak of wood and distant birds.
Fiyero doesn’t rush her. That’s the tell. When he jokes, when he distracts, when he fills the space, he’s avoiding something. Now he lets the silence stretch, giving her room to step into it.
He pushes open the back door and the world spills in. Cool air. Wide sky. The smell of grass and earth.
He stops near the fence, resting his forearms against the rail, gaze fixed somewhere far off. When he speaks, his voice is even, grounded.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
He is ready to hear her apology.
Ready to explain himself.
Ready, quietly, to stay with his second ever friend
“I’m green.”
“Noooo,” Fiyero says immediately, dragging the word out with exaggerated disbelief. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
The corner of her mouth twitches despite herself. The sound that escapes her is small and surprised and real. It loosens something in her chest that has been wound tight for hours.
She looks away before she can lose her nerve.
Beyond the fence, a narrow stream winds through the grass, sunlight breaking itself into trembling shards across the surface during its last moments of the day. It moves without apology. It does not ask permission to take up space.
“I’m green,” she repeats, quieter now, like a thesis statement she’s been defending her whole life. “And I was born with magic that never learned how to be polite. No soft sparks. No tidy illusions. Just…force.” Her fingers curl at her sides. “And I have no patience for false niceties, and my father hates me.”
Fiyero doesn’t react. Doesn’t soften his expression or rush to contradict her. He just listens. She notices. It steadies her.
“I’m a governor’s daughter who is eye-catching not for beauty,” she continues, voice even but edged, “but for my skin. Not for eloquence, but because I cut straight to the heart of things whether people are ready or not. Not for beautiful magic, but for abilities that frighten people who don’t understand them.”
She swallows.
“I grew up othered. Loved, in a way, but never by my family. Raised mostly by my nanny, Dulcibear.” Her voice softens at the name. “And when anti-Animal sentiment started to rise, I found…kinship. Understanding. It felt natural to care. It felt obvious.”
Her gaze stays fixed on the water.
“And even coming to Shiz,” she says, breath hitching just slightly, “Galinda—” She stops. Inhales. “Galinda bullied me. With everyone. Every day. For six months.”
The words sit between them, exposed.
“Until the day you arrived.”
She risks a glance at him then.
He’s already looking at her.
Not with surprise. Not with pity. With recognition. Fireflies drift lazily around him, their glow catching in his hair, outlining his shoulders, lighting up his impossibly soft blue eyes. He doesn’t speak. He just gives a small nod, like he’s been keeping this truth safe for her, even before she trusted him with it.
She turns back to the stream before the moment overwhelms her.
“You laughed with a Horse like he was a friend,” she says, a faint smile threading through the ache. “You didn’t stare at my skin. You didn’t make me a lesson or a spectacle. You divert attention from me when it feels too much”
Her voice thickens.
“I think that’s when I decided you were…safe.”
A beat.
“I’m used to being too much,” she admits. “Too much power. Too much intensity. Too quick to argue. Too fast to believe people or dismiss them entirely. I’ve learned to survive by assuming the worst because the worst has so often been true.”
She turns fully to him now, finally brave enough to face what this costs.
“But my scars are not your fault,” she says firmly. “And they’re not your burden to carry.”
Her hands unclench.
“I attacked you because I felt threatened. Because I heard echoes of every voice that’s ever told me I was foolish for caring.” Her eyes shine, but she does not look away. “And I accused you of things I know are not true.”
She exhales, slow and deliberate.
“I’m sorry, Fiyero.”
The apology is not dramatic. It is not loud.
It is complete.
The stream keeps moving. The fireflies hover. And Fiyero stands there, holding the weight of everything she’s just trusted him with, ready at last to answer her with the same care.
Fiyero is quiet for a long moment.
The stream keeps whispering over stones. Fireflies drift lazily, unbothered by the weight settling into the space between them. He shifts his grip on the fence rail, knuckles whitening briefly before he exhales and lets go.
“I’m the youngest of six,” he says finally, voice low, almost conversational. “Literally a surprise. The kind that makes people laugh later and ache immediately.”
Elphaba doesn’t interrupt.
“I was born late,” he continues. “Too late. My mother was already tired. Already worn thin by heirs and expectations and courts that never let her rest. Carrying me weakened her.” His mouth curves, humorless. “She died when I was eight.”
Elphaba’s breath catches, silent.
“My father never forgave me,” Fiyero says. Not bitter. Just factual. “Sent me away to boarding school the day after her funeral. Packed my things himself. Didn’t even look at me.” A pause. “I barely knew my siblings. They were all so much older. Already grown. Already aligned.”
He glances at the stream, watching the water split around a stone.
“My father died when I was ten. They said heartbreak.” A small huff of a laugh. “My eldest brother said it was my fault. He never forgave me either.”
Elphaba’s fingers curl into the fabric of her skirt.
“I was the youngest,” he goes on. “No hope of ruling. No real place. Just…a spare voice. A mouthpiece without power. Smiling when told. Nodding when corrected.” He shakes his head. “And no one ever noticed when I stopped asking questions.”
His gaze flicks briefly to her, then away again.
“No emotional support,” he adds lightly. “Just a boy dragging his suitcase across the country, pretending it was all an adventure.”
He softens then.
“Except for Feldspur.”
Elphaba smiles faintly through the ache.
“He was young too. Orphaned. Unwanted. I saw him standing alone and thought…” Fiyero shrugs. “‘Well. There you are. A kindred soul’.”
His voice warms with memory.
“We faced everything together. People deciding I wasn’t worth teaching when the words got mixed up. When I couldn’t focus. When I learned better by moving than sitting still.” He scoffs quietly. “Watching adults give up on you is a strange thing. You start doing it for them.”
He rests his forearms on the fence again.
“When they mistreated him, I stayed. Slept under leaky roofs with him instead of warm rooms without him.” A half-smile. “That’s how the reputation started. Trouble. Irresponsible. Impossible to manage.”
He breathes out.
“By the time I got here,” he admits, “caring felt like work I hadn’t done in years. Easier to coast. Easier to smile and float.”
His eyes meet hers now, steady and unguarded.
“But you didn’t give up on me,” he says simply. “You challenged me. Expected more. And gods help me, it mattered.”
Silence stretches, thick with understanding.
“So,” he finishes quietly, “similar to you…I have scars too. And I shouldn’t blame them on you.”
Elphaba’s chest aches, tight and full all at once. She steps closer before she can think better of it, the words leaving her without armor.
“I’m sorry, Fiyero,” she says, voice soft but certain. “Truly.”
The apology settles between them, mutual now. Not a wound reopened, but something carefully cleaned.
And for the first time, neither of them feels quite so alone standing there.
“I’m sorry too, Fae,” he says softly.
The nickname lands gently, not teasing, not deflecting. Earnest. Offered, not taken.
“And… thank you for apologizing.”
He steps closer, just enough that the space between them changes temperature. Just enough that Elphaba can feel him there without being touched. The sun has fully dipped below the horizon now, leaving the world washed in indigo and gold. Fireflies drift lazily around them, small living stars caught between dusk and night.
In their glow, Elphaba looks unreal. Ethereal, even. The green of her skin deepens in the twilight, rich and luminous rather than stark. Her hair curls softly around her face, catching pinpricks of light. For once, she isn’t braced for impact. She isn’t defending herself. She’s simply… standing there.
Present.
Fiyero swallows.
Neither of them speaks for a moment.
And then, quietly, it hits them both at the same time.
No one has ever apologized to them before.
Not really.
People have excused themselves to Fiyero, perhaps. Smoothed things over. Told him it wasn’t personal, that he was charming enough not to mind. Apologies wrapped in dismissal, in expectation that he would laugh it off, be easy, be forgiving.
And Elphaba? She’s been apologized around. Apologized at. People ‘sorry’ she ‘felt the way’ she did, ‘sorry’ she ‘misunderstood’, ‘sorry’ she ‘made things uncomfortable’. Never sorry for the harm itself.
This is different.
This is someone saying: I hurt you. I see it. It matters.
Elphaba’s breath trembles as she lets that truth sink into her bones. Her hands curl slowly at her sides, not in defense this time, but to keep herself grounded.
“I didn’t know how much I needed to hear that,” she admits, barely above a whisper.
Fiyero nods. “I didn’t know how much I needed to say it.”
The fireflies drift closer, as if curious. The stream continues its soft, tireless movement, carrying everything forward without judgment.
“I think,” he says after a moment, voice careful, “we’ve both been surviving in a world that expects us to absorb damage quietly.”
She looks at him then, really looks. At the boy who learned to smile so people wouldn’t ask questions. At the prince who made himself light so no one would notice how deeply he felt.
“And tonight,” he continues, “we didn’t.”
Something warm and dangerous blooms in her chest.
They stand there, close but not touching, the understanding between them no longer fragile. Changed. Deepened. Shared.
Something rarer, maybe.
Two people who finally know what it feels like to be met with accountability instead of dismissal.
The fireflies glow brighter for a moment.
And neither of them moves away.
They linger.
Not touching, but close enough that the air between them feels held, charged, as though it has weight. Like if either of them moved too suddenly, the moment might fracture into something sharp and irreversible. Fireflies drift lazily around them, indifferent witnesses to a quiet intimacy neither of them knows how to end.
Then it arrives, inevitably.
The pink-wearing, blonde-haired elephant standing squarely in the middle of the clearing.
Elphaba is the first to remember how the world works. Her place in the story of the two beautiful people she cares for, and how easily she can be written as the villain if she forgets herself.
She clears her throat. The sound feels too loud in the hush.
“Right. Um. Galinda actually told me to find you,” she says, the words tumbling out a little too quickly to be convincing. “So you should probably…go thank her.”
It’s a lie. A clumsy one. She hears it the instant it leaves her mouth and hopes the night will be kind enough to swallow it whole.
Instead, memory answers back.
‘Fiyero never gets angry.’
Galinda’s voice, bright and certain.
As if anger were the only proof of hurt.
Fiyero’s mouth curves into a gentle smile, fond and knowing. He recognizes the retreat for what it is. He doesn’t call her out. Doesn’t push. Just meets her exactly where she’s stepped back to.
“Well,” he says lightly, “she does hate talking about sad things.” His eyes soften. “So we’ll just thank her quietly. In our minds. For knowing me so well.”
Elphaba huffs a small laugh, relief and regret braided tightly together.
“I’m gonna go,” she adds, taking a step back before she can reconsider. “Check on Nessa. Her date with Boq.”
She doesn’t miss it, the brief furrow of his brow at the names. A flash of concern, of foresight. He can already see the disaster brewing between her younger sister and the red-haired Munchkin boy hopelessly in love with Fiyero’s own girlfriend. Then, just as quickly, he smooths it away, ease slipping back into place like a well-practiced mask.
“Of course,” he says, nodding once. No questions. No pressure. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She turns to go, heart steadying around that simple promise, when his voice follows her.
“I’ll spend the night thinking of ways to annoy you.”
There it is.
The twinkle is back in his blue eyes, bright and familiar and just a little wicked. The version of him she sees. The one that makes everything feel lighter, safer, less sharp at the edges.
Elphaba smiles, real and unguarded.
“I can’t wait to dismantle all your attempts, your highness,” she replies, arching a brow. “Thoroughly.”
He laughs, soft and genuine, then catches himself mid-word. “I won’t make it easy, my witc—” He stops, clears his throat. “I mean. The best sorceress in training.”
The title lands like a gift she hadn’t known she was hoping for.
He gestures vaguely back toward the stables. “We should…go.”
She nods.
They part without ceremony. Without promises. He turns and walks back into the stable toward Feldspur, who watches him with knowing eyes and a pointed flick of the tail, unimpressed by human complications.
Elphaba heads toward campus, the lights of Shiz glowing softly ahead, warm and distant.
As she walks, she realizes something startling.
She’s smiling.
Not the sharp, defensive version she’s learned to wear like armor. But a quiet one, tucked just under her breath. Private. Unexplained. Something that belongs only to her.
Inside the stable, Fiyero rests a hand on Feldspur’s neck, fingers curling into familiar warmth, watching her retreating shape through the window until she disappears fully into the dark.
Their little world rights itself.
And something else remains:
A flower, small but strong, growing through the cracks.