Hey folks! I'm sorry for my absence for so long. I'm sure you're wondering why after all this time I'm posting a new story when I should be working on The Aberration, and to that I say: It's all HollyBush's fault. She encouraged this. And the other story too, but mostly this.

Please, enjoy. Well, you know, after I kill Fiyero.

And don't forget to let me know what you think.

Everything around Fiyero was fading: the light and heat of the setting sun, the howling wind ripping into him, the little bits of life that hid as night rolled in. Fiyero wasn't a religious fellow, but he prayed with everything he was that he could fade with it. For hours his body sagged further on his cross— his torn muscles and ligaments screamed, his shattered bones shredded him from the inside out, blood congealed over a mess of distended bruises and lesions. He was too weak to cry out anymore, even as the stalks of corn thrashed and flogged against his battered legs. In the last minutes of light, the prince could do nothing but watch, with one eye swollen shut, the glistening of red blood in the husk and silk of the corn before the quiet sunset hid them away in the shadows of eventide.

At least Elphaba got away. It was the thought that unwittingly resounded in his mind with each flair up of pain. And because she had escaped, none of this was in vain. He had no regrets.

He tried to think about her, to remember every moment before he had her leave. While he could still see he would turn his eyes to the area in which they had all stood and made-believed she was still there, her dress and cloak whipping about her as they locked eyes one last time.

He wished she was there, touching his face and soothing him with her warm voice, but he hoped he'd die without this longings fulfilled, because then this, all of this, would be for naught. They would capture her. They were out there somewhere, waiting to catch a glimpse of green in the sky, no doubt mocking him while he convulsed on this pole as he stifled painful coughs and shivered violently in the cold.

Fiyero didn't know how long it took before he finally, truly began to die. He didn't know how he knew that these moments were the end, for the pain did not wane, but he felt his heart slow, as if each additional millisecond between the beats was a countdown or reparation for his anguish. And so he listened, with everything in him, to the spaces between throbs, to the promising silence in the darkness that foreshadowed peace.

Fiyero!

Elphaba's voice, unmistakable to him even in the delirium of death, made him tauten in shock, his head snapping up to find her, to wrench his one good eyelid open despite the thick blood that had glued it shut. A shockwave of pain swept over him as he reacted and his heart palpitated in turn, giving up on death to seek out his lover.

He made to call out to her, to let the first words he spoke in hours be her name, but instead he choked violently on blood and saliva, coughing out bursts of fluid over his chin and trembling from the consequent agony.

He didn't see her but he heard her, like she surrounded him, enveloped him, like a comforting blanket against the cold: Eleka nahmen nahmen, ah tum ah tum eleka nahmen…Eleka nahmen nahmen, ah tum ah tum eleka nahmen…

His weak limbs struggling feebly against their bindings as he tried to reach out to her, wherever she was. Her voice didn't seem to come from any one direction, but every direction at once, or somewhere within him, or both, or somehow nowhere at all.

Eleka nahmen nahmen, ah tum ah tum eleka nahmen…Eleka nahmen nahmen, ah tum ah tum eleka—eleka!

He didn't want to die anymore, he realized, hearing her voice once more, but the wish came too late. He gasped in an empty breath and the pulsation throughout him hesitated too long so that it couldn't recover. Involuntarily, his entire form tensed, highlighting every broken part of him, driving the nail the soldiers had hammered through the post farther into his back, forcing the inevitable reality into him. Convulsions rocked him, his body fighting itself as it struggled to suck in air it physically couldn't handle anymore, as blood slowed in his veins against his will. His last thought was of the passion in her eyes and the love she had for him that he needed so desperately to return to her before this was over. This couldn't be it. This couldn't be the end.

Elphaba…

And Fiyero Tiggular died, his shattered body an empty shell in a silent cornfield as his life left it forever.