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At the entrance to the so-called Haunted Forest—really, Elphaba? ‘I’d Turn Back If I Were You’? Surely there were more intimidating options—Fiyero pulls a half-loaded revolver out of his jacket as the Lion tries to turn tail and run.
“Why do you have a gun?” Dorothy hisses, flinching at a particularly loud hoot from an owl.
“In case we run into trouble?” says Fiyero. He doesn’t mention that the trouble he was thinking of was more along the lines of “bloodthirsty uninvited party members” (Boq alone is quite enough, thank you very much) than anything that lives in this forest or that Elphaba might send after them, but she doesn’t need to know that right now.
“We’re not—you can’t just shoot a witch!” Dorothy retorts under her breath, as behind them Boq wrestles the Lion back towards their path. “Surely if it were that simple someone would already have done it.”
Fiyero gives a soft, humorless laugh, the sound of wind through tall dry grass. “You give far too much credit to the Wizard’s guards,” he mutters.
Then Boq and the Lion catch up to them, and together the four of them (five, counting Toto) set off deeper into the forest.
It doesn’t take them long to run into trouble, and Fiyero doesn’t use his gun, but he does get half his guts strewn across the forest path. Totally painless, extremely disconcerting, and highly inconvenient.
Also, Elphaba has apparently asked the flying monkeys to kidnap Dorothy. Lovely.
Once he’s been put back together, Fiyero suggests that the three of them split up to look for ways into Kiamo Ko. This is partly so he can avoid revealing that he already knows several surreptitious routes into the castle, and mostly so he can try to get Chistery to come to him.
He whistles the summons that he used as Captain of the Guard two weeks and a hundred years ago, which is somehow softer—almost mournful—through his straw-stuffed lips, then waits for several agonizing minutes.
Eventually Chistery flutters down next to him, silent as ever, suspicion and confusion written across his face.
“It’s me,” says Fiyero, immediately feeling rather foolish. Of course Chistery won’t recognize him—neither the Wizard nor Morrible did, after all. Even Elphaba didn’t. “Fiyero, that is. Elphaba’s spell worked, she saved me, just… in a bit of a different way.”
Chistery inclines his head, then tilts it slightly: understanding, a question.
“Can you take this to Elphaba for me?” he asks, pulling a folded letter out of his shirt. He wrote it a little while back, when he was feeling more frantic than he is now, but the information is still what he wants her to know so it’ll do. “I’d ask you to take me to her, but I need to make sure my companions don’t do something foolish and get themselves into too much trouble trying to rescue me and the kid.”
Chistery nods, takes the letter, and silently flies away.
Fiyero goes to find his companions so they can sneak into the castle together. Elphaba’s been having, well, a frankly terrible two weeks, but hopefully she hasn’t done anything too awful to Dorothy.
He doesn’t think she’s likely to have, but despair can do funny things to people.
They need to get this over with as soon as possible.
Fiyero wishes Dorothy, Boq, and the Lion well, tells them he’s going to clear things up here and they shouldn’t wait for him in the Emerald City, and sends them on ahead. Before they leave, he gives Dorothy the melody of his whistle.
“If the Wizard can’t help you”—and the Wizard probably can’t—“and there’s no other way for you to get home”—just because the Wizard is a fraud doesn’t mean Glinda is, and the shoes on the kid’s feet are genuinely enchanted—“whistle that melody, and someone might come; I can’t make any promises, but you might be able to send me a letter that way, and if you can then I’ll see what I can do for you.”
“Thank you,” says Dorothy, and she hugs him around his straw-stuffed waist before going to join the others. He waves to them as they leave, walking down the road to the Emerald City with Elphaba’s broomstick.
As soon as they’ve stopped looking back, he heads back into the castle and up to the observatory, where he knocks softly on the trap door.
Elphaba emerges a moment later, still damp from the bucket of water, worry creasing the corners of her eyes.
Fiyero has never seen anything more beautiful.
“Fiyero,” she says softly, relief and regret mixing in her voice, reaching out a hesitant hand towards him. She stops with her hand still inches from his face.
“Go ahead, touch,” he says. “I don’t mind.”
She presses her palm into his cheek, and Fiyero tries not to think too hard about how he both can and can’t feel the contact.
“Fiyero,” she says again, helpless and mournful. “I didn’t mean—”
“You did the best you could,” he says firmly, because she did and because he’d certainly rather be alive as a scarecrow than dead as a human, thank you very much. “You saved my life.”
Elphaba stares at him for a long moment, then says, “You’re still beautiful.”
Fiyero laughs wryly, the rustling-grass sound that escapes his mouth still surprising him. “You wouldn’t say that if you could see me clearly,” he says.
“I—wait, what?”
“Here,” he says, and he fishes inside his shirt for a moment before pulling out a small, flat box and handing it her.
When she flips it open, she lets out a startled little laugh. “Where did you even get these?” she asks, gently lifting her delicate, wire-rimmed glasses out of their case.
“After Morrible made that—broadcast—the first one—I went to collect them from your room,” he admits. “I meant to give them back to you as soon as I found you, but I got a bit distracted last time”—her cackling laugh at that is music to his painted ears—“and then… well. I didn’t have a good opportunity until now.”
Elphaba unfolds her glasses and settles them on her face, blinking rapidly and sweeping her gaze across the room. “You know,” she says, “if I’d known I was about to become an enemy of the state, I would’ve brought these to the Emerald City with me, all those years ago.”
“To be fair,” says Fiyero, “I don’t think any of us saw that one coming.”
She turns back to him and gives him a long, lingering look. “You’re still beautiful,” she says firmly.
“You don’t have to lie to me,” he says. “I know you can see me better than that now.” Behind her glasses her eyes shine bigger and brighter, and he can feel himself falling even more in love with her.
“I’m not lying!” she insists. “I—it’s not—it was never your face I fell for.”
Rather than keep arguing the point—really, he’s a scarecrow now, it’s definitely a downgrade—he says, “If I can’t call you a liar when you call me beautiful, you certainly can’t call me one when I tell you the same.”
She’s smiling now, though she seems to be fighting it. “I suppose that’s fair.”
Elphaba leans forward and wraps her arms around him. He hugs her back, and for a time they sit together in a peaceful quiet on the observatory floor.
Soon enough, they’ll have to leave Oz, but right now they have time enough to set down their burdens and rest.