Prologue

Silence.

What I would have given for it back at Shiz, and how I hate it now. Fate has a sense of irony, that much I know.

I am alone, so alone. Shiz spoiled me in so many ways. I grew accustomed to Glinda's amicable chatter, to Nessarose being busy and cared for and away from me. To teachers who liked me and who were proud to call me their student. To…friends. Glinda, Fiyero. Boq, occasionally.

It broke through my hardened, thick green skin. But, like everything else in my life, that seemingly sweet interlude served only to make my isolation now all the more painful.

I am alone, hated. Reviled. Vile, evil, live. This is my existence.

The Emerald City

Am I the only one in Oz who isn't blind, metaphorically and literally? Elphaba Thropp wondered not for the first time as she freely walked the city streets, glancing occasionally at the wanted posters of her own distinctive green face that decorated the city at frequent intervals. She wore a hood over her dark hair that shadowed much of her face and a scarf that held it in place and concealed her mouth and nose, but it was hardly a sophisticated disguise. She should have been tense and worried, as the other citizens were, running about through the wintry twilight, darting warily in and out of shops. But neither witchcraft nor terrorism were enough to keep the shoppers from their urgent pursuits three days before Lurlinemas. And Elphaba, the threat they so feared, was less anxious than they were as she stood languidly staring at a shop window, gloved hands in the pockets of her black coat. Tonight, she had no assignments to fulfill, no hidden meetings to sneak to, nothing to pass off to another disguised comrade. Simply put, she had nothing at all to do. So she simply stared at the green and gold spectacle before her, until she noticed, in the street behind her reflected in the glass, which she had been watching without even her own conscious knowledge, a familiar figure. Two familiar figures.

Shit.

Golden curls spilled out from beneath a hat that even Elphaba knew was the latest fashion, so rampantly was it displayed by the shops and so rabidly was it snapped up by the shoppers. The voice she remembered so well bubbled and chattered over the low murmurings of the other's, punctuated by occasional laughs and shouts of joy. Glinda.

And the other. She turned her head slightly, almost imperceptibly, to look at him, and suddenly, Fiyero's blue eyes, bright with laughter, met her audaciously undisguised hazel gaze accidentally and a light of recognition went off in them.

"Elph-" he called reflexively, and she watched as he stopped, as he remembered that she was someone else now. Someone dark and dangerous and forbidden. Someone, judging by his uniform, that he was supposed to hate. Supposed to capture. Supposed to kill.

And she ran.

Her black boots pounded against the lightly snow covered sidewalk, but she moved to quickly to find enough purchase even to slip. She ducked down alleys and twisted through side streets, never looking behind her, until she darted quickly into a foreign doorway and waited, breathing hard, as she heard Fiyero's footsteps slow, and then quicken again, and fade away.

She stepped boldly back out into the alleyway, her quiet evening destroyed, and turned to go "home" when her arm was grabbed from behind.

"Ha!" said Fiyero, for a moment simply joyous with the instinctual triumph of catching one's prey. Then he grew solemn and realized he had not thought any further than this.

"So you caught me, Captain. What are you going to do know?" asked Elphaba, eyes and words sharp as knives, as usual pinpointing his weakness.

"I…don't know," he found himself admitting.

"What a tone of authority. I'm quite intimidated and shall surely submit and tell you everything now," she went on.

"You're very rude."

"I didn't get on all those wanted posters for my vaunted finishing school manners."

"You don't have any care at all for people's feelings, do you?"

"It would make it easier for you if I didn't, wouldn't it, but I do. You know that. I also care for their lives. And Animals'," she said quietly. "Now please let go of my arm. I won't run away from you. Unless," she paused, "Unless this is an arrest? In which case I'll do all in my power to get away from you, and I'll succeed, unless you've got a pair of handcuffs hidden in those pants, which I doubt very much, but if you do, can you get them on me without using either of your hands?"

"It's not an arrest," he told her, releasing her. She stood straight and stiff, losing all the graceful easiness she had possessed earlier.

"Then what is it?"

"I don't know. A meeting, between old friends?"

"That it's not. Old friends don't chase each other through miles of the city's darkest twists and turns and trick each other by hiding in doorways and pretending to run off past them, because old friends don't know how."

"A re-encounter between a terrorist and the captain of the guard, who once were friends?"

"That, dear Fiyero, would be an arrest."

"But we are, so it is, and it isn't."

"You've beaten me out for most cryptic, I see," she commented wryly.

He flushed. Her approval shouldn't mean so much, but the fact that she was mocking him, however gently, made him feel as humiliated as if she had pulled his pants down in the middle of the street and left him standing there half naked.

Well. Maybe it wasn't quite that humiliating. But for some unfathomable reason, he found himself wanting her to think well of him.

"And you get more cryptic. Why, now you're not saying anything at all! How am I to interpret that?" she prodded, half-smiling.

"Are you-" he began, then stopped, not knowing what was going to come out of his mouth. Are you…evil? A terrorist? A murderer? Seeing anyone? "Cold?" he settled on at last.

"A little," she admitted, sounding unsure for the first time. "Why?"

"Well, when old friends meet, generally they do it somewhere warm, like a coffee shop," he said.

"I thought we agreed that that wasn't what this was," she said. "A meeting between old friends."

He shrugged. "Even jails are warmer than this."

"Is that a threat?" She tried to pass it off lightly, to return to their old levity, but her eyes didn't lose their wary edge. "Hardly a way to behave toward one's old friends, blackmailing them into coffee shop gatherings. Though completely appropriate for handling dangerous criminals."

"Inviting them to coffee shops?"

"Threatening them."

"I wasn't threatening you!"

"Then what are you doing?"

"Last time I checked, I was trying to communicate with you."

"Impossible."

"Evidently."

They stood at an impasse in the alley as snow gathered on Fiyero's hair and Elphaba's hood, and they expelled slow clouds of breath into the cold night.

"Fine," said Elphaba at last, and began walking briskly toward the end of the alley. "Are you coming?"

"Fine, what?" asked Fiyero. "Fine, it's impossible to communicate with you? Fine, we're old friends, fine I'm arresting you, fine, it's cold, what?"

"Fine, we can go to a damned coffee shop," she said. "What about Glinda?"

"I told her to go home."

She quirked an eyebrow. "Dangerous terrorist on the streets?" she queried.

"Exactly."