A/N: I watched "The Wizard of Oz" last night, and this idea struck me. Just a fluffy little one-shot about an oddly familiar dream that Fiyero has one night. I took a bit of artistic liberty… okay, a lot… in making the setting happier than the one which either the book or musical leaves us. I DO know the original endings, I promise. ;) For the sake of general cheerfulness, please suspend all skepticism for the time being.

Disclaimer: The Wizard of Oz is the property of L. Frank Baum, Wicked is the property of Gregory Maguire, and the first line of this story is the property of the much-beloved and sorely missed Jonathan Larson.

"Last night I had a dream."

Elphaba glanced up from her coffee, fixating a sleepy gaze on her husband. She tilted her face up expectantly, and he lowered his lips to hers in a short, sweet kiss.

"Good or bad?" she asked thickly as he dropped into the chair next to her, laying his head on the tabletop. Habitually she buried her fingers in his shaggy, rich brown hair, and he moaned softly in appreciation.

"Dunno," Fiyero murmured against the glass pane of the table. "It just was."

"Mm." With her free hand, Elphaba brought the mug of coffee to her lips and took a sip. "What 'was,' then? Or were you merely announcing that you had a dream to hear the sound of your own voice?"

"Both," he said absently, reaching up to take the mug from her. He took a few swallows, made a face and smacked his lips before handing it back; Elphaba always liked her coffee strong and spine-tinglingly bitter, whereas Fiyero preferred his to be sickeningly sweet, and more milk than espresso. Yet another bafflement of life… she still teased him half-seriously that he should have ended up with Glinda.

She stared at him, silently urging him to explain himself, but he started to nod off, oblivious to her unspoken cue. Sighing, Elphaba rose to her feet and crossed the kitchen, rummaging about quietly for a few moments, and returned to the table with a cup of sugary milk with a little coffee in it. Clunking it down on the table, she reached out and closed her husband's fingers around the handle, and he smiled, still half-asleep.

"You appeared in this big puff of red smoke and terrorized a bunch of… weird, dolled- up Munchkinlanders," he mumbled. "And I was…" He chuckled softly. "You're going to think I'm nuts."

"I already do. Drink your coffee."

Fiyero took a sip and attempted to sit upright, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "I think I was made of straw. And I was talking to this funny little girl about wanting a brain."

Blinking slowly, Elphaba smirked and took another swallow of coffee, mumbling something under her breath about subconscious manifestations of grumble-grumble-laugh.

"Yeah, well, that's not all. Boq— remember Boq, from school?— he was there, but he was made of aluminum foil or… something. And he wanted a heart. So for some reason the creepy little girl told us we should all go see the Wizard, who would supposedly give us organ transplants, I guess…" Elphaba choked on her coffee, shaking with uncontrollable laughter. "No, no, wait, it gets better. So then we're walking through the forest, and this random Lion jumps out at us, but he's a total coward and he starts crying. And of course, the Wizard will give him courage, too, so we bring him with us to the Emerald City…"

"Where you are dragged down to Southstairs and systematically tortured, starved, beaten, raped, and slowly sapped of life over the course of the next few months?"

Fiyero bit his lip, his eyes dancing. "Nope. He told us he'd grant our wishes if we killed you."

Elphaba's eyebrows shot up. "Well, that, at least, is plausible. And then, once I'm dead, then he'd kill you, because you know too much."

"Wrong again," her husband said. "You tried to set me on fire—"

"Tried?" Elphaba snorted. "That's not what you said last night…"

"—and then psycho-girl threw water on me, but it hit you and you melted."

Groaning, his wife threw her head back in dismay. "Where the hell did that rumor start anyway? This whole melting business…"

"I think it was Galinda… back in the day when we pronounced the 'ga'. She said something sarcastic along those lines to PfanPfan or Shennee or whatever their names were, and it got around."

Elphaba made a face. "Remind me to thank her for that."

"Thank me for what?" Glinda said, entering the kitchen from the adjoining wing that was her private suite. On her hip sat a smiling, bright-eyed baby boy, with his father's nose and his mother's long, slender build. His dark hair was still dripping wet from his morning bath, and he wriggled right out of his towel as he reached for Elphaba, who took him into her arms with a smile and a kiss, ignoring the acidic pain that dripped from her son's hair onto her shoulder.

"Tell her the story," Elphaba insisted, still grinning from ear to ear. "You'll get a kick out of this, Glin."

As it turned out, Fiyero had to repeat the contents of his bizarre dream several times throughout the day, to a wildly amused audience that varied with each telling.

"And you were there, and you, and you… all of you," he said for the fifth time that morning, over his third cup of coffee-ish liquid.

"Tell them the part about me and that hideoteous silver hat thing," Glinda begged, her eyes wide. Hands on her hips, she turned to Elphaba with a look of disgust. "I can't believe I'm a redhead in Fiyero Dreamland." She reached up and scrunched a handful of her flaxen curls. "This is all natural, you know."

Elphaba nodded absently, bouncing her son on her knee. With an almost frightening intensity, she asked, "So what did I look like when I melted? Like green candle wax, dripping into a shapeless puddle?"

Her husband shrugged. "No. Actually, it was pretty unimpressive. You just shrunk down into nothingness with a burst of steam."

"Well, there's a lack of imagination for you," she grumbled, disappointed.

"Or not wanting to see my wife melt, even in my imagination," he pointed out, earning a half-smile and a kiss.

"Mama melt?" the baby, Liir, asked suddenly, his blue eyes wide with distress. Everyone fell silent, staring. They were his first coherent words, aside from the distinctly unoriginal "Da-da-da" and "Ma-ma-ma."

Elphaba was the first to recover from the shock. Shaking her head, she answered seriously, "No, Mama doesn't melt. Your Father just has an overactive imagination."

The baby seemed to accept that, for he looked over at Fiyero with a disgruntled expression and then leaned against his mother's breast, almost protectively.

"Hey," Fiyero protested, palms up in defense. "I don't control my subconscious thoughts. Besides, the entire time I was sleeping, I kept wanting to leave that Oz-forsaken place and get back to you and your Mama, little guy." He reached out and tickled his son's back, and Liir's pudgy little face cracked in a smile despite himself.

Elphaba rolled her eyes to the ceiling, shaking her head. "There's no place like home," she mocked in a high-pitched voice. "Frex used to say that. I always thought it was terribly cliché."

"I like it," Glinda put in with a little pout.

"So do I," Fiyero said.

And cliché as it was, Elphaba held her infant son close, looked alternately at her husband and best friend, and privately agreed.

A/N: I think that's probably the happiest, fluffiest thing I'll ever write, haha. Hope you enjoyed it! And remember, it's really simple to click that little review button and give fanfic writers such as myself a little bit (or a lot) of feedback! I love to hear it!