Author's Note: Oh my goodness, you guys. I suck. Seriously. Two years? A two year, unannounced hiatus? I AM SO SORRY. I hope this helps at least a little. I'm going to do my best to finish this sometime soonish. It's just hard, with school and all that. NOT that that's an excuse, I know...

Also, there's a poll on my author page. If you don't hate me...vote? Anyway...read and review!

"So anyway. You should probably ask her, like, now," Fiyero suggested, trying and failing to act casual.

"Remind me again why you care," Avaric said suspiciously, narrowing his eyes.

"…Because I'm…a good friend?" Fiyero tried, flashing Avaric a would-be innocent grin. Well, he could go deal with Boq and Nessa now if he really wanted to, but he had a feeling that with Galinda, even his oh-so-perfectly devised plan could very easily be blown to smithereens, so he kind of wanted to see the whole thing happen.

"Uh huh." Avaric arched an eyebrow. "I'll ask her later tonight. But seriously, the curiosity is killing me. Is it possible that Fiyero Tiggular is going to go to a function alone?"

Fiyero decided that it would be easiest to ignore the fact that Avaric was still acting beyond bizarre and just consider his question. Telling the truth was probably the best way to go, because knowing his luck Elphaba would find out that he hadn't told anyone and assume that it was because he was ashamed of her when exactly the opposite was the case. Whatever that meant. On the other hand, maybe she'd get pissed if he did tell people, because she didn't want anyone to know until she actually showed up with him. At long last, he blurted out the neutral, "You'll see her Saturday?" and immediately wondered why he only seemed capable of talking like Galinda, Pfannee and Shenshen in the midst of gossip mode today.

"You don't have a date," Avaric accused, his amusement evident. "It's cool, Yero, just tell Galinda you were confused or something. If you are, don't wait too long though, 'coz then I'll have already asked her and you'll be screwed." Fiyero blinked, wondering a) why Avaric even cared about his love life at all, and b) how he'd managed to some off as sympathetic and arrogant at the same time.

Instead of asking either of these questions, however, he replied, "Not asking Galinda. Gotta go!" and made his escape at top speed.

LLLLLLINNNNNNNE

So, good, you've got a dress." Nessa exclaimed brightly. "But do you have shoes that match?"

Elphaba, who had been in the midst of returning to her traditional black, froze. "Shoes?"

"Oh, for Lurline's sake," Nessa groaned, tipping her head back to gaze in utmost frustration at the ceiling. "It's late, Fabala, we'll deal with shoes in the morning."

And true to her word, she arrived at Elphaba's door with the sun the next morning, lap laden with shoeboxes, and pounded on said door until her extremely irritable-looking sister threw it open. "Nessa, what the hell?" she demanded. "It's six thirty in the morning!"

"Like you were sleeping," Nessa answered matter-of-factly, rolling her eyes. "Anyway, I brought you shoes," she added, as though her purpose weren't perfectly obvious.

"Nessa," Elphaba replied slowly, now speaking with world-weary exasperation, "if none of your dresses fit me, why would your shoes be any different?"

"Oh. I don't always buy shoes in my size," the younger Thropp answered, pure innocence. "Since I don't need to actually walk in them, I buy them in whatever size I can find."

"Great," Elphaba answered with a sigh, only half sarcastically. "Well, the Princess is still asleep, and I doubt we're going to want to deal with her dramatics when she finally rolls out of bed, so do you mind taking this to your room?"

"Not at all," Nessa answered merrily, spinning her chair around before Elphaba could offer to help her with any of the boxes and wheeling down the hall.

What followed was not quite as unpleasant as the day before had been, seeing as Nessa had fewer pairs of shoes than dresses, and only a select few (read: about eight) actually matched the dress that Elphaba was wearing. She had reached the final pair of said shoes when there was a decidedly unexpected knock on the door. "Coming!" Nessa sang out, carefully steering around the boxes strewn all over her room to pull it (the door, not the mess of boxes) open.

"Nessa, hi!" The voice was familiar. Far, far too familiar. Stunned, Elphaba tumbled ungracefully off the bed, narrowly missing impaling herself on one of her sister's abandoned, spike-heeled shoes and deciding to remain there, as though not moving would render her invisible. "Okay, so, I'm freaking out a little. Can I come in?"

"Are you looking for Elphaba?" Nessa asked wickedly, her amusement poorly masked.

"No…but I did want to ask you something about her, and it's really, really important."

"Well you've found her," Nessa replied, cackling madly, "and she's only trying on one last pair of shoes, so she's free for any sort of…questioning you may want to pose to her."

Traitor. Elphaba shot a murderous glare at her sister's back and stood, having apparently forgotten that she was wearing only one gold lace-up sandal, and resultantly teetering and falling back onto the bed with an obnoxious thump.

"Elphaba!" Fiyero exclaimed as Nessa zoomed backwards to let him in. "Hi." This came out slightly less dashingly than he'd intended, and he attempted to make up for it by smiling as charmingly as humanly possible.

"Fiyero," she answered, inclining her head a little in a desperate attempt to maintain her dignity.

"Soooo, I have been dying to know," he began, walking nearer to her and trying not to wince at how much he sounded like Galinda/Avaric (yesterday, apparently…Lurline, there must have been something incredibly strange in the water). Why couldn't he just be casual with her, damnit?

Elphaba, of course, picked up on his incredible suaveness and sophistication (cough cough) and fixed him with a beady stare. "Dying to know what, exactly?"

"What…are your favorite flowers?" he finished sheepishly.

She narrowed her eyes. "Why?"

Bewildered by her apparent suspicion, he shifted from foot to foot. "Be—because I wanted to get them for you!"

A tiny smile crossed her lips, but it was gone so quickly that he convinced himself he'd imagined it. Well, that was more likely than him succeeding in making her smile, anyway, at least lately. "You don't have to worry about that," she replied flatly.

He cast a help-me look toward Nessa, but as it turned out, this gaze ended up harmlessly piercing thin air, because Nessa had vanished. "But I want to," he insisted childishly. "And if you don't tell me what they are, I'll just ask Nessa. She likes helping me." He pondered sticking out his tongue, but decided that it was a little extreme.

She contemplated for a second, apparently realized how very serious he was, and rolled her eyes. "Fine, then. I like…poppies."

"Sweet." He pulled a pen out of his back pocket and scrawled the word poppies on the palm of his hand. Then he smiled pleasantly at Elphaba, who was eyeing him much as one looks at someone whom they have just discovered is utterly insane. "Whaaat? I don't want to forget," he explained, as though this made perfect sense. And, in fact, in his mind, it did.

Elphaba was silent, yanking off her shoe and getting to her feet, snatching both sandals off the ground as she moved toward the door. "I should go."

"Wait!" he exclaimed. "Are you mad at me still?" He wasn't sure what made him ask the question, and he was well aware that his wording made very little sense (also, if she were still mad at him, he was one hundred percent positive she wouldn't be going to the dance with him) and it was the first thing that he could think of to ask in his desperate attempt to prevent her from leaving.

"No, she answered, and now he was sure she smiled ever so slightly as she left. Fiyero plunked himself onto Nessa's bed in complete confusion, staring helplessly at the empty air where she'd been standing.

"What did you do?" Nessa asked, wheeling back in as though she'd simply been hiding out in a darkened corner of the hallway right outside of her room (…not that she had been or anything) and attempting to gather up her shoes. Immediately, Fiyero knelt on the floor to help.

"Nothing, I swear! I just asked what her favorite flowers are, and she left!"

"Poppies," Nessa answered promptly. "Would you mind putting these away for me?"

"Of course not. And, um…right, well, she told me, and then she left."

"She what?" Nessa's jaw dropped and she shook her head. "Dear, sweet Lurline, is it a full moon or something?"

He blinked. "Is that weird?"

"Do you know her?" she shot back. "Oh…and thanks."

"Any time." He beamed. "But yeah…I should probably go, because I have some matchmak—heyyy. Are you excited for Saturday?"

Really, he should have known better. Nessa forced a completely unbelievable smile after seriously considering screaming at the top of her lungs and kicking him out of her room. "Yes, I suppose I am," she answered finally.

His face fell as he (finally) realized his mistake. "It'll be fun, Ness, I promise!" And with no ado whatsoever, he ran off to find Boq.

HEY, LOOK, A CHANGE IN SCENE! HOW FANTASTIC!

Ha! Found her! Avaric smirked and sped up, putting himself directly behind Galinda on the path she was quickly tracing through the dirt in her kitten-heels. She was walking alone, unusually enough, and he was fairly certain that if he didn't take advantage of the moment, he'd have to seriously be an idiot. The way he'd set the whole situation up resulted in (as planned) a direct collision with the typically perky blonde, who was so stunned that she wasn't alone that he actually managed to knock her off balance without really hitting her hard. Instinctively, he wrapped an arm around her waist to keep her on her feet. "Miss Galinda. I'm so sorry," he told her smoothly, offering a tiny smirk.

"Ugh, it's..." (she looked at him, and her eyes widened for a split second) "it's...quite alright," she finished, a little breathlessly, lowering her head and regarding him through her lashes. It was a move that had caused many a man before him to swoon, and Avaric recognized that fact. He also knew exactly what it meant, and had no intention of letting the opportunity that it presented pass him by.

"Are you alright?" he asked, in his best seduction!voice, leading her suavely over to conveniently placed bench.

"Fine, fine," she assured him, smiling. "I was just a bit...startled, is all."

Damn, but she had a gorgeous smile. Not that, you know, it affected him or anything. For Lurline's sake, he had dated, like, a million girls. But whatever, it didn't mean he couldn't appreciate beauty when he saw it. "Well, good." Ohhhkay, so there were a few ways to play this from here. But which one would lead to the desired...oh, who was he kidding? She'd just broken up with her boyfriend, and there was a major social event coming up. She wasn't going to care how he played it.

Probably.

No. Definitely.

Where the hell was all this random uncertainty coming from?

"So, Miss Galinda, I heard a rumor earlier today," he murmured in his best 'I've got a secret' tone, leaning a bit closer to her, as though it was imperative to keep it between them.

"Oh?"

"Indeed." He glanced around (even though he knew the area was utterly deserted), and then whispered, "Something about your boyfriend being completely oblivious to what an amazing thing he had with you." It was insanely cheesy, but he figured, what the hell. Couldn't hurt to flatter her. After all, her ego must have taken quite the beating.

But she drew back. "What?"

Uh oh. "What I meant was, do you have a date for the dance on Saturday?" Insert the charming grin that had the potential to successfully render 98 percent of the heterosexual female population speechless here.

But Galinda Upland was not just any girl, and she huffed poutily. "I fail to see how that is any of your concern."

What. In the world. Was going on? Had he somehow become a different person without noticing it? "I'm really, terribly sorry, Miss Galinda. I didn't mean to offend you."

She had figured as much. Triumphant, she repressed a smile with effort and tossed her hair, fixing him with a frosty glare. "What did you intend, then, Master Avaric?"

"I had hoped, perhaps, if it interested you...that you might accompany me to the dance."

"And why would I do that?"

"Aside from making me the happiest person at Shiz," he began smoothly, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing it gently, "it would make Fiyero insane with jealousy, I'm sure."

"Are you so certain that I wasn't the one to end the relationship?" she challenged, but they both knew, when she didn't pull her hand free, that he had won.

"Not at all. But even if you were, you wouldn't just skip the dance, would you?"

"Never. So..." (she smirked slyly) "I suppose I could go with you, then."

"Is that a yes?"

She got to her feet and started to walk away, and he let her. But just before she disappeared from view, she turned around, and one word found its way back to him. "Yes."