Work Text:
Fiyero is pulled from his stupor by the sound of birds chirping. He was lulled into a daze by the afternoon sun, the sort where his first instinct upon blinking his eyes open is to run his hands through his hair. He sighs, swaying from his reverie and to his feet.
Of course, he doesn’t have hair anymore, not like he used to, but the muscle memory— well, it’s not the sort of thing that fades, even when the bone is cut from the muscle and all that’s left is you. He doesn’t even really feel his limbs the way he used to, not in the same way a human body might, though he’s beginning to forget exactly what that feels like.
To be sure, he’s not unhappy; he meant it when he told Elphaba that she did the best she could, and he’d rather be here than not here, and that means something. There was a time where he thought it didn’t matter at all. But it does matter. It does, and he often finds himself reminded that he’s got privileges. After all, not every ghost has a house to haunt.
“You’re not a ghost,” Galinda insists when he brings it up once, put off by the idea that Fiyero thinks himself dead. Even if he is, to the world, that is, the thought of it makes her shiver, still.
“No more than I am, anyway,” Elphaba chimes in, and the two smile at each other. Some private, unfunny joke about exile, the forgetful nature of hatred, the sort of thing that Galinda has spent years trying to rid them of, though they both insist that pardons are far from their minds.
“Hush,” Galinda says, glaring at her Elphie, then Fiyero. “Both of you are here. With me. Quite solid, the last time I checked”—she slaps Fiyero on the arm, perhaps harder than she actually has to—”and still are, it seems. And that’s the end of that. Unless I am to be a ghost too, none of us are, understood?”
And that’s where the conversation ends. But part of Fiyero knows better, the part that is the only one of the three without his flesh and blood left, without the scent of springtime in his nose as he roams Galinda and Elphaba’s farm, shooing pests and watering the dry patch at the edge of the property that he needs to remember to tell Galinda about.
It’s not as simple as Galinda being a ghost too, though part of him yearns to tell her she is, that this woman she’s become is a far cry from the girl he thought he loved at school. Better, to be sure, but different, and whoever appears in the city for Ozians to cheer for isn’t her at all. Though he suspects she already knows that.
Still, even when Fiyero had nothing, moving from school to school, waiting for his parents’ return letters that hardly ever came because they didn’t know where to send them, he had his body.
It creeps up on him in the oddest of moments, realizations of the little things he misses: the warmth of a mug between his palms, the pop of his back when he’d stretch, the feeling of being kissed.
Sometimes, amongst the wheat, he’ll see Galinda holding Elphaba like she’s holding the whole world in her arms, and Fiyero will feel a misplaced ache, the kind he shouldn’t even know. Envy, yes, but not for either of his friends; but— just to remember how it is to be held. He’s almost forgotten what it’s like to be squeezed so tight you can’t breathe. If scarecrows breathe, Fiyero hasn’t figured out how quite yet.
It’s other stuff, too: he doesn’t get hungry, but he misses food. He doesn’t feel pain—the function of the spell, of course—but when he steps on something sharp, he wonders if he should.
He doesn’t sleep. But he does dream.
So it’s not all bad. It really isn’t.
Not when Galinda and Elphaba have given him free reign of the acres of land, not when he’s still welcomed inside, after everything. Not when they are so very kind to him; they’ve always been kind to him, even when he didn’t deserve it.
Not when Elphaba’s students seem just as fascinated by him as he feels when he looks all of them in their sweet, curious eyes, notices their kindness. There’s Bo, a Black Bear, who’s grown so big in just one year that Fiyero suspects it makes Galinda a little sad now that she can’t hold him in her arms; Timbre, who asks Fiyero many questions about his scarecrow nature in his own blunt, Wolfish way; June, a Fawn, who tells him you can’t just ask people why they look the way they do, Tim! There are the twins as well, Caribou: Rosemary and Camryn whom Fiyero has a particular kinship with as he’s the one who led them to the forest, who helped them to find a home here. Cam is great friends with Pfallia, a young Falcon whose family lives deeper into the woods where the trees are taller.
Fiyero adores them all, seeing the way they’ve occupied some emptiness in the farmhouse for Galinda and Elphaba, one they’re not quite ready to fill yet. He smiles, watching as Arty, Galinda’s latest apprentice and the first Snow Leopard that Fiyero’s ever met, trails after her. Timbre isn’t far behind, picking a few dandelions with his teeth. He loves when Elphaba makes flowers fly. Galinda holds idle chatter with them both while she goes about counting the sprinklers and deciding where new heads need to be hammered into the system.
It’s been so lovely to see her change. Fiyero wishes she could be this person all the time, no responsibilities or heavy crown; he wishes that Elphaba wouldn’t have to worry, or sit out here like this to watch Galinda, knowing she has to leave in a few days and trying to soak up the time.
“I think about it a lot,” he admits some afternoon, sitting on the steps of the porch with Elphaba while they watch Galinda and Arty. He’s carrying her supplies for her, bounding along behind her; it’s quite cute. “How it’s sort of my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” Elphaba replies, making herself a sandwich, cutting off the crust and feeding it to Pfallia who’s quietly reading a book she borrowed from Elphaba’s library, perched on the handrail. She and Arty are quite good friends and the most frequent young borrowers of books. “If anything, you’ve only made her happy by giving her another project.”
“I mean, the fact that things are still… hard,” Fiyero clarifies, gesturing to Pfallia as surreptitiously as possible. “Animals still displaced; endangered species; Galinda, with all her projects, still having to go back to the city. I— I messed things up for you. And her. And between you and her.”
“Oh, you give yourself too much credit,” Elphaba waves him off. “You were, and are, kind to me, Fiyero, but everything was so heavy. And that wasn’t your fault. We make mistakes, and then we forgive.”
“But Fae—“
It’s not as simple as that. They both know it. And then we forgive is the same as saying that one day, Elphaba just knew how to fly.
“And as far as Galinda— there are some wills that not even magic can bend.” Elphaba takes a bite of her sandwich. “And I love her that way.”
“As do I,” Fiyero concedes.
“And that aside, the world turns slowly,” Elphaba continues, putting a little peanut butter on the last piece of crust and placing it on Pfallia’s plate. She snatches it up immediately before turning to the next page, hardly listening to them, thankfully. “It changes even slower. I’m confident it will change, though. It has to. And some boy isn’t the reason Earth’s tilted on its axis. That’s just— nature.”
“So now I’m just some boy?”
“You’ll always be some boy to me,” Elphaba says, nudging him. He sways, smiling a little.
“I’ve been called worse,” he jokes.
“I know, I’ve heard Galinda talk about you,” she teases. They laugh together. “She loves you, you know,” Elphaba says after a moment. “Even if it doesn’t show all the time and even when she’s angry with you, she still does. And will.”
Fiyero nods, looking down at his shirt sleeves. Galinda just sewed them up for him where they were fraying, and put in new buttons on the cuffs. He’s never doubted, and he’s grateful for it, knowing he hurt her, knowing he left her alone.
It wasn’t— the sort of love they thought, none of the romance they were too young to know didn’t really exist because they were too young to know perfection didn’t either. But he still left her. He still says sorry in the way he walks up to her. They both know.
And she expresses her forgiveness just as quietly, as gracefully as anyone he’s ever known. He’s constantly amazed by it. Wherever she goes, Galinda seems to float down the hall without taking a step.
A lot of it Elphaba doesn’t even know about: The things that Galinda does for Fiyero because she can, because she wants to. Because somewhere between teaching herself how to build shelves and sew pillowcases, she saw the way his feet were beginning to wear, noticed the stitching on his elbow coming undone before he’d even realized. It’s Galinda who’d sewn him up immediately, and Galinda who’s sewn him up every time since.
“You’re the ideal model,” she told him once, sticking pins into him as she measured out sleeves for his new winter shirt.
They both know he doesn’t need new clothes, but it meant something that she tried, that by the time her project was over, she’d made him slippers as well and measured him for a spring coat she’d have ready for when he returned. It makes him feel more real, tethered to who he once was.
Honestly, they don’t talk much when Galinda is in project-mode. It gives Fiyero a lot of time to think. It’s ritualistic, and soft, and quiet, hardly any words exchanged, but at the end, he always thanks her and offers her a flower for her hair.
And then it’s fall. He’s always gone by the frost.
If he’s honest, he misses home, and it takes quite a while to get to the Vinkus on foot. He likes to be there by the holidays. Even if he can’t spend it with his family, he likes to watch the snow. It’s been too long, and they’ve grieved too much— and truthfully, he’s not sure they’d understand. Besides, he does have a family to return to, knows there will be a pile of straw waiting so he can stuff any of his loose limbs back into fighting shape. Not that Fiyero is doing much fighting these days.
He also knows it’s Galinda who put out the pile, and that she’s never once told Elphaba. Because Elphaba still feels guilty, at least in part, and it’s too much for her to continue to bear. A new life is beginning for her, and Fiyero is happy with his place in it.
Every time he comes to and fro, things are changing— sometimes just the seasons, of course, or the crop for the harvest, or the color of a neighboring fence. But sometimes in bigger ways too: more Animals than there used to be, a new classroom for the forest school to accomodate, flowers cropping up beyond the property line, their seeds dropped by a migration of birds through the woods.
Fiyero loves it every time, even as he remains— albeit with his new stitching, and his handsome new coat, and a winter hat that Galinda made for him that he accepted even though he doesn’t get cold anymore.
He returns to the farmhouse and sits with his friends at the dinner table, watching them eat. He accepts the couch when they offer it, and he lies awake and listens to the house creak; the sound of the door when Galinda finally calls it a night from her study; the click of the lock when Elphaba returns from the library. He listens to them whisper, to their laughter, and he pulls the blanket up to his chin. He thinks about his old life and what he has now. How whatever mistakes he made, he couldn’t give this up: The murmur of the home his favorite witches—and to be fair, the only witches he knows—have built together, and being welcomed inside as, in essence, the same boy that he’s always been.
Galinda and Elphaba have changed, of course. For the better. And he’s been allowed to watch.
There’s some utter peace in it. In the imaginary warmth he feels when Galinda laughs loudly down the hall and the slow mumble of Elphaba’s exhausted voice lifts enough that the far-off timber of it gives away how pleased she is. It almost— feels like Fiyero has a heart again, even though he knows it’s impossible.
In the mornings, Galinda puts out a coffee cup for him on the porch though he can’t drink anymore, a real solid, lopsided one in case his spindly hands drop it, and the care does not go unnoticed. Her care never does. It’s why he has a compass in the front pocket of his coat, despite the fact that he never asked for one— a sure, magnetic way to navigate his way back.
He’s fiddling with it one evening when Galinda finds him, amongst the wheat. Late spring, before the whole skyline seems to shimmer in perpetual gold for months on end.
“Step into my office,” he quips for a second time because Elphaba took the bait, but Galinda— she doesn’t. She’s always been easier to rile up than Elphaba. It makes him look up from the needle of the compass where he was playing with it.
Galinda eyes are bright with emotion, amber because of the sunset. “You talked to her, didn’t you?”
“Oh!” The corners of his smile pull as he speaks. “Yes, and you should know I gave great advice.”
For once, Galinda has no barb in reply. All she says is, “I know you did, thank you.” And then she sits down beside him, nudging him before lightly taking the compass from him. “Hey, if you play with the needle, it will not work as well.”
She pulls a magnet out of her tool belt, working it over the metal. Fiyero feels pride well up where his ribcage used to be.
“Of course Elphaba was unsure,” he says, instead of saying as much. He knows Galinda would just deflect, pretend to take it well, but she wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t still a bit uncertain.
“I know,” Galinda replies, handing the compass back to him, watching as he puts it in the front pocket. She smiles, one of those tight-lipped, earnest ones where one corner of her mouth comes up further than the other. Fiyero can see her dimple. “But it was good to hear her say it. To hear her tell me.”
“She’ll want you two to get married eventually, you know,” he says.
Galinda shrugs. “And if she doesn’t, that’s okay.”
Fiyero smiles. “That’s why she’s going to want to.” It suddenly occurs to him that he and Galinda were never this honest with each other as kids. Because that’s what they were— kids. It feels a bit like being naked, being with someone who has known you so well for so long.
It’s lovely, truthfully, how you never really stop growing up. He tries to remember as much on his journeys. Reminds himself that there’s nothing very wrong with not knowing things because he is, now, truly brainless after all, and only so many words can fit into the little pocket notebook he carries around now to hold on to what would otherwise get lost. His memory has surely improved—it is something of a miracle, how a scarecrow's body keeps so much score—but his penchant for new skills has not.
Perhaps that’s why he’s so impressed when he returns after a few weeks to the sound of piano playing, chords in the evening air.
It’s Elphaba at an upright in the library, the door propped open only by her magic it seems. It’s barely a tune, just the sweetened drone of a resolute cadence; the whisper of Fae humming and the sight of Galinda tending to the poppies, listening to her play.
“I took it apart so it would fit through the door,” Galinda tells him later, proud, while handing him vegetables to chop. She made him an attachment for the kitchen so he can properly hold a knife.
“Honestly it was very impressive,” Elphaba chimes in, taking some of the peppers from the cutting board and putting them into the pan on the left burner.
“And Elphie’s been spending even more time in the library than before now,” Galinda adds, her voice tinged with utter joy. “She’s getting quite good at piano.”
It must be so wonderful, Fiyero thinks, to build a shelter for your lover and watch them turn it into something more; some place warmer than even the center of a hearth.
“The children also like it,” Elphaba replies, stepping closer to the stove as if that’ll hide the flush in her cheeks. Fiyero understands; he knows the last time that Elphaba played piano she was very young, in her father’s house, the songs he told her were okay to play. It must be so different— to play a single chord and receive a standing ovation.
“You could get it to play without even sitting at it,” Fiyero tells her one afternoon, flipping through a field maintenance book, looking for something, anything that will advocate for Galinda building him a comfy chair. He supposes he could just ask, but it would be much funnier to find a picture of another scarecrow sitting in one.
Galinda is taking apart a crate in the corner. They just got some new books in. She’ll use the wood for something else.
“That would be cheating,” Elphaba replies, carefully navigating around Arty, who has dozed off on the bench next to her.
Arty has his tail in his mouth, as he so often does when he falls asleep, which means Elphaba needs to be extra careful with him.
She is. Of course she is, picking him up gently so she can hold him. Cradling his head. Getting up from the piano entirely and begins to walk around the room, most likely to try to gently urge him from sleep. It’s just after lunch, and while young cats do tend to, well, cat nap, Fiyero knows from spending enough time with the children that they can be quite a handful after dinner if they've slept too long.
It’s at this point, usually, that Galinda will rise to try to help, but this time, when Fiyero turns to her, he sees a shimmer of emotion in her eyes that feels almost too sacred to witness.
Thankfully, Fiyero has been godless for quite some time now and doing just fine. He slides over on the couch, hanging over the edge to get her attention.
“Whatcha staring at?” he asks, but he knows, because Elphaba has now taken Arty outside, sitting in one of the chairs outside, gently rocking him in her arms until he begins to stir. She’s just visible through the window.
For a moment, Galinda says nothing at all, playing with her engagement ring, the paper still perfectly sealed within smooth resin, and then— “May I tell you something I’ve never told anybody else before?”
Fiyero straightens his shoulders, trying not to pay any mind to how his head wobbles without his consent. “Of course.”
“Hi, little one,” Elphaba says, now outside, as Arty sits up in her lap, only his ears visible in the pane of glass.
“I think it would be splendidly perfect— if Elphie and I were to have a family.” Galinda turns her hammer over in her hands. She was using the end to pull out the nails. “We’ve talked about trying, to have a baby, you know. But… but it would be nice, don’t you think? If– if we had more than one, eventually. Because being an only child is oh-so-lonely, and, well—”
Well, you know the rest. After all, neither of them have any siblings.
“They wouldn’t be lonely,” Fiyero replies gently. “They couldn’t be.” And he means it. He can’t imagine Galinda or Elphaba would let their children feel as such for even a second. “I think a family sounds wonderful, especially if it were yours.”
Something unconditional wells up in him at the thought; an odd sense of certainty that nobody could do a better job at raising children than Elphaba and Galinda.
Galinda’s eyes shine. “You do?”
“I do.” Fiyero offers her a smile.
Really, they both know it’s more than that. Wrinkles. Grandchildren. It’s weird, how it doesn’t feel so far away, and at the same time, when Fiyero closes his eyes, he can almost touch the banister by the history building back at Shiz.
“And… do you think I’d be good at it?” Galinda can’t look at him now, sorting the nails that can be reused for other projects and the ones that need to be tossed out. “Being a parent. Or would I mess it up?”
“The fact that you’re worried about messing it up means you’ll be just fine,” he answers, and he knows he’s right, has seen it happen so many times in the way that Galinda will scoop up one of Elphie’s students when they fall or have a scraped knee, how she’s so careful every time.
She’s— calmer than he expects, but he supposes time has softened so much about her, all her neuroses and personal wounds. Blood doesn’t scare her anymore; Fiyero suspects it’s because it’s almost never anything too big: a scratch from a tree branch, the scrape of a knee.
But even in harder times, Galinda never wavers, a shockingly steady hand—at least to a younger, boyish Fiyero—and if anything, he’s more of a mess than her a few weeks later when Pfallia informs him that there’s been an accident, her eyes wide with fear, her wings flapping overhead.
Fiyero is fixing a fence for Galinda on the edge of the property, his fingers caught in the wire when Pfallia says he better come quick, and he hardly takes a second to think about it before he’s pulling himself free, his middle three fingers left behind. There are no specifics—Pfallia is young, after all, and she seems scared enough without him asking any more questions—and Fiyero’s mind begins to race as he dashes back to the house as fast as he can. He has the spare thought that running is harder than it used to be, but at least there’s no such thing as running out of breath any longer.
“A stupid, stupid human hit me!” Timbre chirps when Fiyero finally rounds into Galinda’s study to see that the Wolf pup is lying on a towel on the couch, his face bloody and his paw already wrapped up in tape.
“We’re letting him say words like that right now,” Galinda informs him, her tone clipped. Calm. But Fiyero knows better, knows her concern is bubbling right under the surface. “Elphie went to grab the book. She should be back any second.”
The book. Fiyero knows what that means.
“We even looked both ways before crossing!” Pfallia informs him, distressed, still flapping her wings even though she’s settled onto the desk. “He didn’t stop. And his bike had huge wheels.”
“And then he hit me! Stupidly!” Timbre chimes in again, and Fiyero is relieved he at least sounds like himself, even though he’s bleeding from left ear to nose.
He kneels down beside Timbre. “Did it hurt?” he asks quietly. He winks. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Fae or Galinda.” His eyes flicker to Galinda who gives him a nod of thanks. Animal children tend to heal quickly, they both know it, but it doesn’t assuage the worry.
“Mm, a little,” Timbre admits, his ears twitching a little. He’s got tear tracks on his face that give him away. He can’t really keep his left eye fully open. “His bike did hit me, like, directly in the face.”
Fiyero’s mouth twitches. “That sounds like it would be painful,” he tells him. “You’re very brave.”
Timbre smiles back at him. “Next time he’ll be the one falling over.” He squirms, his brow furrowing a little in pain.
“Definitely,” Fiyero agrees with a grin.
“There will be no next time,” Elphaba huffs, sweeping back into the room, the Grimmerie already open, the pages flipping without any prompting as she scans for the right spell. She takes a deep breath. “Here, found it.” Her hands shake a little as she looks between Timbre and Fiyero. She grits her teeth. “Okay, sweetheart, please be still.”
“You’re going to be the first one to have magic done,” Fiyero says, reaching to pet his shoulder and hold him steady. He just doesn’t say as much; children rarely stop moving when they’re made to. “How special!”
Elphaba gives him a grateful look. Her throat bobs. She hates doing magic like this around the children, Fiyero knows. The stronger the spell, the more can go wrong. But the hospital in town is far away, and Fiyero can tell that the last thing Galinda or Elphaba wants to do is scare Timbre by taking him there. She begins to whisper to herself, melodious words that Fiyero could never even hope to understand, and he watches in awe as the wound begins to close.
“It feels weird,” Timbre whines, trying to move, but Fiyero gently holds him down. He sees that Galinda has got his hind legs.
Elphaba hesitates but Fiyero gives her a nod. Keep going. She gnaws at her lip before she keeps chanting. Warmth fills the room, then— quiet.
“Woah!” Timbre says, opening both his eyes. “Awesome!” All the blood has been wiped from his face, and the cut has fully closed.
There’s still a scar. Elphaba looks a little queasy when she sees it. It’s a difficult balance, not going too far with the magic.
“Good job, Elphie,” Galinda says, wrapping her arms around her. “You did your best.”
Elphaba nods. “I’m going to— put this away,” she says, leaning down to kiss Timbre’s head. She stops, squeezing Fiyero’s arm. “Thank you,” she whispers. He gives her a nod, not much else needs to be said between them after all this time, and then she’s gone. Fiyero watches her go, how she scrubs a hand over her face the second she’s turned away.
“Miss Galinda?” Timbre asks behind him, his voice small but sounding more relieved, less in pain.
“Yes, sweetheart?” Galinda asks. She kneels down as Fiyero turns back around.
“Do— do you think the other kids are gonna laugh at me?” he asks. “Because my face looks funny?”
Fiyero’s legs wobble beneath him.
Galinda’s expression flickers for a moment before she schools her features. “No, darling. Of course not. The kids don’t laugh at Fiyero, do they?”
“No.” Timbre frowns. “Why would they?”
“So why would they laugh at you?” Fiyero asks, running his hand over his snout.
Timbre’s eyes widen. He gasps. “Mister Fiyero, you’re missing some fingers!”
“Yes, well, luckily my fingers can be replaced.” He boops Timbre’s nose. “You can’t.”
Fiyero has new fingers by the end of the day. Turns out, Galinda already made spares.
By the end of the next week, when Fiyero pops by the school, all the kids seem more fascinated by touching Timbre’s scar and inspecting it than doing anything with a semblance of making fun of him. Of course, Timbre loves the attention, puffing his chest out as the other Animals try to get close enough to get a good look at it.
Actually, it’s Galinda and Elphaba who seem to be having a harder time bouncing back. Galinda has hammered in at least three yield signs along the path. Elphaba hasn’t gone a day without checking in on the young Wolf.
“I always feel better after being with Miss Elphaba, but I just want to be able to play with my friends after school again too,” Timbre confides in Fiyero when he’s walking him home from the farmhouse a week and a half after his accident.
“I know,” he replies. He’s holding Timbre’s school bag for him. It’s tiny. “And you will soon. But the healing process is important, and something that we take very seriously around here. Before you were born, Miss Elphaba… dealt with a lot. Before we—Miss Galinda and her—moved out here.”
“What things?” the Wolf asks as they get past the treeline.
Fiyero hesitates. “You– asked me once, remember?” More than once. “Why I’m this way?”
“Yes, and then June told me I shouldn’t ask you anymore, so I stopped,” Timbre recalls.
Unable to help himself, Fiyero smiles a little. “Yes.” He nods. “Well, I didn’t always– look like this. I was… different. Normal, I suppose. Miss Galinda, Miss Elphaba, and I— we went to school together.”
“Mister Fiyero, if the three of you went to school together, I don’t think you were normal,” Timbre says, unflinching in his innocent honesty.
Fiyero laughs. “I do suppose you’re right,” he agrees, stopping when he realizes he’s just outside of the Wolf’s family den. “But, I– I mean, I used to be a human.”
Timbre takes his bag from Fiyero with his teeth, dropping it down next to him. “Why do you say that like you aren’t anymore?”
For a moment, Fiyero isn’t quite sure what to say. He has that odd feeling you get when you feel like you need to cry, but he can’t. Of course he can’t. He doesn’t know how to explain it, especially not to a child; how to say that there are no goosebumps, no pain or sunburns. How to say that he misses those things, more than he ever thought he could. That yes, the landscape of awe can make you feel something even if you can’t really feel it. But though he has everything that exists separate from the body still intact, and he’s grateful—how could he not be—he still misses his old face, his old arms and legs and beating heart the same way you miss your childhood bed despite the fact that your ankles hang off the edge. You can never get it back. But you still miss it. And there’s no medal for surviving who you used to be.
Sometimes, he feels ungrateful anyway. He can’t help it.
“My mom always says to me that we aren’t any less Wolf just because we don’t live out in the grasslands anymore,” Timbre tells him. “And Arty isn’t less of a Snow Leopard just because he doesn’t live in the snow. You aren’t less of a human because of what’s on the outside.” He smiles, brightening as he remembers something. “Anyways, can you ask Miss Elphaba if it’s okay with my scar if I go swimming tomorrow? My cousins are going and they said the lake has been warming up.”
Fiyero almost laughs. “Of course, Tim.”
“Thanks!” Timbre exclaims, nuzzles his leg, and then he heads inside, already calling to his parents that he’s home.
For a moment, Fiyero only stands there, listening to the whisper of parents greeting their son before he pulls out his little pocket book to remind himself to ask Elphaba if it’s alright for Timbre to swim.
The lake warming means it’s about to be properly summer, the most beautiful season especially here, over the ridge. The flowers bloom, and the fruit ripens to perfection, and well, Fiyero knows most don’t have the privilege of seeing Black Bears eat blueberries up close, but personally, it is one of his favorite parts of the season’s change: Bo’s paws dyed purple, his snout too. The Bear is hardly paying attention to the activity at hand, too enamoured by the fruit—it seems the strawberries are his next target—but the others are in the process of picking out flowers for the crowns Galinda has taken upon herself to weave.
It’s a bit of a tradition at this point: first, it was just Fiyero and the twins after he found them wandering farther north and brought them back to the house. Their parents passed some time ago, amidst a winter so dead neither Rosemary nor Cam exactly remembers when, and Fiyero knew he couldn’t just leave them. They’re a bit older than the rest of the children, but are nevertheless still included, nudging snowdrops into a pile to help Galinda and Elphaba out. They’re Arty’s favorite too, native to his family’s former habitat before they moved east, and he has plans to show his mother when he gets home. It’s the first year the bulbs Fiyero brought over from Gilikin have properly, fully bloomed; climate-wise, it shouldn’t be so.
Fiyero knows Elphaba has something to do with it.
It’s always Elphaba slipping into the greenhouse she conjured from nothing to tend to the nonnative flowers Fiyero has brought home, little pieces of home for these Animal children whose families have now made lives here. It’s the least they can do for them, to help them see where they come from, even though they don’t get to experience it themselves.
There are tulips from Munchkinland and colored variations of poppies from the grassier parts of Gilikin too; marigolds and hyacinths. Fiyero’s personal favorite are hydrangeas he brought all the way from the Vinkus.
“How pretty,” Elphaba comments, watching as the children decorate her broom as they always do at this time of year. She’s tying together a daisy chain with sunflower petals for Timbre. Yellow is the color he likes best right now, though it tends to change with the seasons.
“But will the flowers make your broom less air– aerody…” Arty’s ears flatten as he tries to get the word out. He struggles with pronouncifying his M’s. Growing canines makes it difficult, and anyway, it’s more of a rumble than a letter for most kittens.
Elphaba gives him an encouraging look. “Aerodynamic?” she offers.
“Yeah!” Arty nods. “That!”
“Do you want to try saying it?” Elphaba asks gently. “It’s all about practice.”
Arty shrugs. “I can’t say that letter yet.” He draws it in the dirt with his claw. M.
Elphaba softens. “I know, sweetheart, but if you work at it, it’ll feel easier. Galinda and I have met many big cats who can pronounce their M’s!”
Arty looks between Galinda and Elphaba, his eyes brightening. “Really?”
Galinda nods. “Really.” She reaches out to ruffle his head until his ears perk up again. She hates when he looks concerned. “And you’re right, it might slow the broom down a little. Someone’s been paying attention in science class.”
“But thankfully, I don’t have to be anywhere fast now, do I?” Elphaba finishes before Arty can get worried about something else, winking at him.
“Yeah, so stop talking and help us finish the other side,” Pfallia chimes in, on Bo’s shoulder while he holds the broom upright so she can tie a few to the end of it with her beak.
Arty grins.
***
As usual, Fiyero takes it upon himself to walk the children home. He enjoys the peace of it, all of them hugging him goodbye and chattering to each other about their plans for the next day, and when it’s the whole group, it’s always Arty that’s last. He lives farthest from the farmhouse, at the edge of the forest by the lake.
“We brought you these,” he tells Arty’s mom when she answers the door, holding out a bouquet of snow drops and jasmine. “Arty said they’re your favorite.”
“Oh! Yes, they are,” she says, nabbing them between her teeth gently and tucking them into the bag she always keeps on her side. “Thank you.”
“I was telling everybody how you and Dad used to live really high up in Gilikin!” Arty says cheerfully. “And then when you guys left, you were always wanting to see the flowers again.”
His mother’s ear flicks, her face faltering a little. “That’s true.” She licks the top of her son’s head. “You’re a good listener, sweetheart. Thank you.” She turns back to Fiyero, looking up at him gratefully. “Goodnight, Fiyero.”
“Goodnight,” Fiyero answers, tipping his hat to her playfully. She winks back at him.
At this point, it's a habit for him to wait for the door to close, just to be sure they’re safe, and he can’t help but smile, listening to their receding conversation. Arty’s mom tells him about an entire mountainside of snow, a far-off place where their kind used to live in between asking him to clean his feet in the tub before he goes into the living room.
And then— Arty replies, “Mommy, that’s silly! That doesn’t exist!”
And as much as it aches, to know that a place his parents used to call home seems so absurd now, Fiyero rushes his walk home because he has to tell Elphaba: Arty pronouncified his M’s perfectly.
When he returns to the property, Galinda and Elphaba are both working inside the greenhouse, Galinda tending to a few flowering bulbs, Elphaba whispering to the plants.
“You know, poppies only bloom in churned soil,” Galinda says while Fiyero watches from the doorway. He feels an overwhelming pull not to interrupt. He has been given such a gift— to bear witness to enough of their story that he knows he’ll be able to tell it. This feels like one of those moments to dwell on.
“Mhm,” Elphaba hums, turning the pot she’s working on to give it a little water. “That’s why they’re my favorite. How’d you know that?”
“Pfred let me borrow a book.” Galinda shrugs. “I wanted to know why you loved them so much, and I realized I never asked when we were younger.”
Elphaba leans further into the plant to hide her smile. And then, it starts to sprout because she’s got her hand on the side. Because she’s flustered. How magical.
“I was thinking,” Galinda continues when Elphaba doesn’t reply.
“Were you? This much about poppies?”
Galinda rolls her eyes. “Elphie.”
Elphaba moves the plant now that she’s accidentally made it start growing too early. “Hm?”
“Elphaba,” Galinda tries again, a little more firm but no less loving.
Elphaba looks up, cradling the clay pot between her palms.
“I was thinking,” Galinda starts again, eyes darker and kinder than they even are normally. “About churned soil. And how it can be really hard for something to grow but that isn’t a reason not to try.” She sounds almost shy as she goes on. It’s so perfectly effortful. “And I was thinking again about… us trying. And how we could have a little you, and maybe a little me—“
“—Definitely a little you too—“ Elphaba interjects with a smile.
Galinda smiles back, taking a few steps closer. “And we could watch them run around by the lake and… and also just watch them grow up.”
“They can’t run around by the lake,” Elphaba says quickly, eyebrows furrowing. “Not until they learn to swim.”
In response, Galinda simply takes the plant out of Elphie’s hand, disregarding their organization system for the moment, and kisses her. “Right answer,” Galinda murmurs, teasing. “Congrats, you passed."
“Well thank Goodness, I wouldn’t want you going and having kids with your other wife,” Elphaba jokes, dodging when Galinda goes to swat her playfully.
Fiyero can’t help but think they’re going to wonderful parents—though, goodness, he must remember to speak more about the wedding lest he forget the finer details; it’s too late now, perhaps next time—and it’s before the baby even comes, a year after the wedding, that Fiyero files his first memory away of his beloved friends becoming those wonderful parents he imagined them to be:
When he returns at the tail end of summer to Elphaba just barely showing and after so much congratulotions, Galinda pulls him aside, nursing a glass of wine, and quietly confides in him about how conception was hard, how she wanted to carry but the magic didn’t take— not this time, not yet. How Elphie is showing such braverism despite her obvious fears that the baby might be, well, green.
Of course, Galinda is unbothered by such things, loves the idea of children that are more like Elphaba than her, though Elphie wants the opposite; Galinda supposes that’s what this all should be like— to love a woman so much you’d rather see more of her in the world than see yourself.
“How exciting. You know the green are my favorite,” Fiyero hears Galinda say a few nights later, in the kitchen when Elphaba mentions that the peppers are finally on the cusp of ripening.
“Insatiable flirt,” Elphaba laughs, but there’s a warmth in her voice.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Galinda replies, grabbing a few plates for dinner, her body going soft when Elphaba takes the few steps across the kitchen to steady her where Galinda is perched precariously with one knee on the counter so she can reach. “And besides,” she continues, her voice proud around the edges as she turns to look up at Elphaba, “this time, I wasn’t even trying to flirt. I genuinely just like green peppers.”
They both know she’s lying— she was flirting. Of course. But it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Elphaba worries significantly less after this moment.
Quietly, Fiyero slips out to give them their privacy, swaying his way into his usual spot where he lies down in the field to find Timbre already taking up most of the space. He’s gotten so much bigger.
“Are they staring into each other’s eyes again?” Timbre asks drily, rolling amongst the grass. Fiyero really should tell him to stop; his mom won’t like him tracking in so many leaves, but all he can do is laugh.
“Yes, how’d you know?”
“I wanted to return my book,” Timbre explains. “But Miss Elphaba wasn’t in the library even though she always is at this time, so I figured she must be with Miss Galinda. And ever since they decided they were gonna have a baby, they’re always just staring at each other.”
Fiyero presses his lips together to suppress another laugh. “Quite observant, Tim.” Timbre’s grown into quite the teenager, moodified at times—it’s the growing pains—but funnier than ever.
Timbre shrugs. “I’ve been trying to return this book for sooo long now.”
Elphaba’s students never fail to make Fiyero smile. He misses them even more than he thought possible when he goes away. Because of course he isn’t there for everything. Of course, there are things he misses out on, because if you’re doing it right, you miss a little bit of others’ lives living your own. And Fiyero still is. He’s still living.
So he misses even more of the Animals growing up. He returns and Bo is taller than him. He returns and he hardly recognizes parts of the farm where there’s already been a harvest.
He misses the quiet conversations about names, the night where Elphaba tosses and turns until Galinda wraps herself around her and asks her what’s wrong in the softest voice. He misses Galinda promising that the world will be kind to their children, her solution that if they don’t like their names, their kids can simply change them.
Truthfully, it’s comforting in some odd way.
Sometimes Fiyero thinks about the little garden he grew by the castle growing up, his own little corner he looked after all by himself. He thinks about how he’d return from holiday and the flowers would have sprouted without him, because of course they did, and how his mother explained that things grow, even when we’re not watching. Especially when we aren’t. Lately, everything feels that way. There are some moments that you can only watch, knowing they won’t belong to you; Fiyero is learning to accept this.
Lately, he looks down at his body, which still feels new despite the time that’s passed, and he’s reminded that it’s part of his job now— to protect what grows. He knows it before Galinda or Elphaba does, that he’ll be here far longer than they ever could be, and he feels it most acutely the first time he ever holds their son. He has Elphaba’s eyes.
Out amongst the rye, he teaches Bo how to carefully handle a baby so little, and Fiyero’s eyes flicker to Elphaba wrapped around Galinda on the porch and it’s really— something. To see them like this. To see himself like this, as something finally more than everything he had already become.
At moments like this, Shiz feels like just a clock tick away. Time has begun to stretch and curl, and it’s almost as if he can revisit whenever he feels like it. It’s a great blessing, to close his eyes and feel so young again, somehow. Even as he’s seen the world, following the seasons, it’s comforting.
Somehow, now, the time he spent there feels like it matters more than it ever did to him when he was young. When they all were.
Because though he’d never say it to their faces, neither Galinda nor Elphaba is quite so spry anymore. Three children—just like they’d always hoped, of course—will do that to you. Will make you that rewarded kind of weary. That sort of weary that makes you take stock of what you have and what you don’t, what you need and what you simply thought you did.
So it comes as no surprise to Fiyero when Galinda finally retires; she has the slightest bit of grey streaked through her hair now, and she prefers to spend evenings holding Elphaba’s hand.
What does surprise him is a motion to pardon that echoes through Oz the moment it hits the Assembly floor: a motion to pardon not the Wicked Witch of the West but Elphaba Thropp; a call to expunge the charges of desertion and betrayal not of the former Captain of the Guard but Fiyero Tigelaar. Both pass, not unanimously of course. But they do.
“It was a stipulation of my stepping down,” Galinda says, waving off Fiyero and Elphaba as they read the morning news that was lodged into the mail flap. “Technically I kept my promise because I’m not signing the order. I don’t even have a say in the outcome.” She shrugs, taking a bite of her buttered toast.
Oh Galinda, always bending the rules. How Fiyero adores her. Always has. Often, he thinks about the Ga in her name, how somehow, it feels as if that young, sweet Gilikin woman got better not because she felt like she had to, but because she chose to— and that’s why she gets to keep the extra syllable now.
To be perfectly honest, Fiyero didn’t know how much it would mean, and he doesn’t think Elphaba did either— to see their names, their actual names, written in the paper after all this time before the word innocent. There are a lot of ways to die. But there are a lot of ways to keep living, too.
“Fraying and broken seams are how the light gets in,” Fiyero attempts to preach later that afternoon, puffing out his chest a little, leaning against the hay in the barn.
“Poetry doesn’t suit you,” Galinda grumbles, sewing up a spot on his back. “Good,” she murmurs to her son, who’s helping, cutting thread and handing it off to her.
She’s been bringing him along lately. Her hands shake a bit too much to snip cleanly with the scissors.
Fiyero knows that Galinda misses crafting, can see it in the way that her projects have scaled down in the last few years. But anyway, it matters little— her greatest venture is still ongoing: the children, now teenagers, preparing for university.
“When I was your age, I didn’t even have to fill out an application,” Fiyero says over the dinner table one night while the children, with eyes curious like Elphaba’s and kind like Galinda’s, gape at him.
“That’s because you were a prince,” Galinda grumbles from the kitchen, serving vegetables onto each of the places.
“Still am, technically,” Fiyero quips, and immediately she sticks her tongue out at him.
Fiyero laughs. The familiar ache. An almost-sudden awareness that has been coming on for a while: Fiyero’s same not-body in stark contrast to Elphaba’s silvering hair and Galinda’s ripened hips, the tall tomato plants in neat rows.
How when he met them both, they seemed so— sad, whether they knew it or not. And how they are not sad anymore. Thank Goodness. Even when they watch their children go away, grown now. Even when Elphaba has to cast a spell to make the stairs to the second story of their house far less steep. Even when they are both a bit too weary to travel far anymore and their eldest son takes the keys to Galinda’s bubble because she simply cannot be trusted to drive anymore. They are happy.
When Bo takes over Elphaba’s teaching position, shepherding children to and fro, and Arty moves North because he misses the mountains even though he has never been, there is a sting, of course. There’s no way there couldn’t be. But watching our children grow up is not a grace we are always given.
And yet, with the moon rising over the ridge, and more grandkids about to take their first breath, it is possible that after all of this time, Galinda and Elphaba are the closest they have been since girlhood to having everything they could ever want. The air at the top is thin though; you can’t always live here. Always is quite short, really.
“I’m not ready for you to go,” Fiyero admits, lying beside Elphaba amongst the grass. He can practically hear the creak of her bones; the sky reflects in her silvering hair. They don’t have to talk about where she might go; it is a simple reality after all— that life ends.
It seems that years passed in the blink of an eye, or maybe it’s just that they have lived forever for a bit too long.
“I’m not ready either,” Elphaba confesses.
In the kitchen window, Galinda’s shadow dances as she puts the dishes away. Their eldest grandchild is perched on the counter, all tousled blond hair and a splatter of freckles across his nose.
“Then stay,” Fiyero tells her, staring up at the stars while Elphaba only watches the shape of her wife and grandson move in the warm light.
Elphaba takes a deep breath, as if weighing the request. And then, after a moment, “Okay, I will.”
And how romantic a thought— that just because you want to, you get to. You get to stay.
“Yay, good,” he says quietly, a smile stretching across his lips. Elphaba is going to stay. He feels a bit selfish for being so glad, but he knows if Fae stays, Galinda will too. She wouldn’t go anymore Elphaba wasn’t.
Fiyero still sticks around in the last years, afraid to miss saying goodbye. As if he could ever, would ever miss it.
Galinda tsks at him when he admits as much, all while making herself a cup of tea because her throat positively aches on this particular day.
“Oh, Fi’,” she sighs. “Don’t you know I’m going to live forever? Look how good my skin is.”
She’s not. Of course she’s not, and they both know it. But still he says, “right, my mistake,” anyways. And that night, when he asks if she would like to do anything else and she politely declines, he doesn’t argue.
Instead, he only agrees and walks with Galinda to her doorway. He lingers, shifting, the whisper of straw giving him away.
“I’m alright,” Galinda says softly. Elphaba is already settled in, dozing just barely. “Don’t be afraid.” Fiyero’s uncertainty must show on his face because Galinda’s features soften instantly. “Fine,” she says, tender. “Come inside if you must. And only because I am so nice.”
Fiyero chuckles. “Right.”
Galinda tilts her head just so, her eyes bright as ever. There are new laugh lines in the shape of her smile. “Am I not nice?” she asks, all faux innocence and evergreen charm.
Fiyero dare not answer in case she revokes her offer.
“Galinda?” Fiyero asks later, moons later, sitting beside her on the porch in the matching rocking chairs Galinda carved herself. “What's it like? Growing old?”
He will never know, not in the same way, and he knows she wouldn’t lie to him.
“Some days, you remember every detail, all of it.” Galinda hums. Thoughtful. “And some days”—she looks fondly out onto her property, her and Elphaba’s own little sanctuary, gestures to her wife returning from her usual morning walk—“someone else is there to remind you of what would have otherwise gone forgotten.”
Fiyero smiles.
She was right.
He wishes he could say more about their deaths. But it’s the part he remembers the least. What he remembers is that their grandson would have been twenty in a couple of weeks. What he remembers is the Animals who came to say goodbye. What he remembers if that they went together because it was easier that way, because it made them both less afraid to know they were both there until the moment it was over— life, that is. He remembers that in the last hours, there was only the quiet thrum of the kitchen fan. The unraveling of the great design of two separate lives that are now only one singular thread.
What he remembers is pain, sharp and real— and what a relief, he thought, to feel pain again. To feel something again after all of this time, despite, despite, despite.
He stays close after that. The seasons couldn’t take him anywhere more important if he tried. Instead, he accepts the invitation to sit at the dinner table even though he cannot eat and he accepts the couch even though he cannot sleep. He listens to the door close like he did so many years ago, to the giggling and the creaking of the foundation before it settles in to hold everyone as they drift off.
Fiyero doesn’t sleep, still can’t, but he does doze and dream, and at sunrise, he sits on the porch, rocking beside Galinda’s empty chair until her granddaughter, the spitting image of her aside from her green eyes, says, “Grandma said I’d find you here.”
She has a needle and thread, too. Fiyero hardly even noticed the stitching on his arm come free.
In a moment, his body is as good as new. Galinda is such a good teacher.
Some years, Fiyero still wanders the country, but he never fails to come home each spring. Across the land, people don’t know him anymore, and when he’s gone for too long, he even forgets himself from time to time. But then he returns to the farmhouse and someone on the porch calls him by his name, and all is right once more.
Nevertheless, he craves rest. He can feel it coming. A kind of shiver up and down the spine. Earned. Because he has lived and lived and lived, and it’s time to give in. There is so much love in remembrance, and yet there is so much freedom in being forgotten. He has had some part in telling Elphaba’s story, her real story, and Galinda’s too. He owed them so much. Now, it will be summertime soon. Oh, how he loves the longer days and the shortened nights.
So when hardly anybody knows the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, only the gorgeous green girl who lived over the ridge in Quox with her beautiful wife with hair like sunlight; when the family tree is as tall as a redwood and through the generations, the few with any small gift of sorcery can only perform enough magic to do the dishes; when there’s not a clue about what happened in the Emerald City exactly; when Animals can be found explicating sonnets once more within the halls of Shiz, Fiyero wanders into the field and settles into his favorite patch of grass with no plans to rise again until a new, true calling awakens him.
The breeze tickles his nose, and when he closes his eyes, he can smell poppies everywhere. He finally sleeps.
Deep in the forest, the LFB Community School has begun its first day of summer sessions, and for the life of all the Animals in the forest, it has been years since they could remember how the school got its name.
“It’s after some teacher,” a young bear tells his friends, a book perched on his leg, glasses sliding down his nose. “They say she lived in the big house at the edge of the farm where that nice Human family lives now.”
They say that she was kind, and good.
They say that the house is rumoured to be haunted, but if you’re real nice, the kitchen will make you a snack no matter what time it is— how miraculous.
They say she had a wife whom she loved very much and many dear friends, and deer friends, that made it easy to live without running out of occasions. Some even say that the woman of the house loved so hard that ordinary things came to life and to be loved by her was to live, by some measure, forever.
In the field, there is a scarecrow, perched in a comfy chair, and they say if you shake him enough, he will wake and tell you the untold story of the witches of Oz, whom he professes to have been his friends.
He reminds his listeners that this is not his story, per se— that there is a difference between it being yours and simply being the last one around to tell it.
In some regards, it feels unbelievable, but amidst the grandest love story ever told, around the part about the two witches being forced to share a room back at college, the house always chimes in, creaking like laughter, and it makes it difficult not to take at least some of it to heart.
And the scarecrow will smile, watching the way his audience jumps when the house lights flicker on about halfway through, right after he tells them about the first time Elphaba flew.
It all feels so real.
But then again, it is perhaps true as well that all of this is nothing more than a fairytale.