Elphaba and Fiyero's love affair

Elphaba and Fiyero's love affair is the most intimate and devastating relationship in Elphaba's life, a secret passion that briefly redeems her from isolation before its violent end condemns her to years of guilt and a relentless search for forgiveness. Meeting again by chance in a chapel in Saint Glinda's Square, the two former Shiz classmates—she now a hardened underground activist, he a married Arjiki prince on business—are drawn into an affair that becomes the emotional core of Elphaba's middle years, transforming her from a fugitive into a lover and, after his murder, into a woman haunted by the need for atonement.

Reunion and Recognition

Fiyero first glimpses Elphaba in the dim oratory of Saint Glinda's chapel, where she is praying under a lace shawl, her hair skewered with ivory haircorkscrews. Though she initially denies her identity, insisting "You have confused yourself," Fiyero persists, recognizing her unmistakable green skin and sharp profile. He follows her through the city streets after she tries to escape through a servants' entrance, finally cornering her at the door of her hideout—a boarded-up corn exchange in the low-rent warehouse district. "You're in trouble, let me in," he insists, and when she protests, "You're trouble. Stay out," he forces the door open with his shoulder, grunting with the effort. Once inside, she relents, and he sees her sparse living quarters: crates arranged as seating, a bedroll, a sallowwood table with elegantly carved doe's hooves, and an elephant skull hung from a rafter with dried roses emerging from its cranium. She keeps a white cat named Malky, and when Fiyero jokes about it being her familiar, she retorts, "Well, I'd as soon be thought a witch as anything else. Why not."

The Course of the Affair

The affair unfolds in Elphaba's room above the abandoned corn exchange as autumn weather sets in. They meet on appointed evenings, and she waits for him sitting naked under a blanket, reading political theory or moral philosophy. "I don't know that I understand them, I read them as poetry," she admits. Fiyero brings her a traditional Vinkus fringed silk scarf—roses on a black background—which she wears as a costume for lovemaking. He calls her by her code name, Fae, which she whispers as if even to keep it from the cat. She will not let him see her naked in the light, but in the moonlight he admires the curve of her flank, the tender fragility of her knee, the bony ankle, and notices her pubic hair growing "almost more purple than black, in small spangled curls." Their intimacy is intense and secretive; she tells him, "I don't exist, so you're still not being unfaithful, either." He writes weekly letters to his wife Sarima, signing off with "Kisses to Irji, Manek, and Nor," but never writes kisses to her, hoping the chocolates he sends will suffice.

Political and Moral Tensions

Their relationship is shadowed by Elphaba's underground work against the Wizard. She is part of a secret cell planning a major action, though she tells Fiyero, "I don't know what it is yet, and I don't even know who decides." He presses her about the morality of her cause, asking whether innocent bystanders might be killed. She responds with cold pragmatism: "Any casualty of the struggle is their fault, not ours. We don't embrace violence but we don't deny its existence." When he accuses her of eschewing personal responsibility, she retorts, "What is worse, Fiyero? Suppressing the idea of personhood or suppressing, through torture and incarceration and starvation, real living persons?" Their arguments grow heated; she tells him, "Love is wicked distraction," and he counters, "Now you have put me off my lunch." Yet their passion remains fierce. One morning, as she rubs oil on her skin, wincing with sensitivity, she tells him she needs a fortnight of privacy for the campaign. He has a sudden premonition that she will leave him. "No!" he says. "That's not on, Fae-Fae." She expands: "Not you and I, I mean the other we." He asks if she is the dart, the knife, the fuse, and she replies, "I am too green to walk into a public place and do something bad. It's all too expected."

The Lurlinemas Eve Plot and Its Failure

On Lurlinemas Eve, Fiyero stalks Elphaba through the snowy streets of the Emerald City, watching her from a distance as she makes her way toward the Lady's Mystique theatre. She is dressed in long dark skirts, a tall wide-brimmed hat, a purple and gold scarf pulled over her mouth, and steel-toed boots like those worn by miners in the Glikkus. He sees her mount the steps of an ancient wool market, something hidden under her cloak. The target emerges from a carriage: Madame Morrible, the Head of Crage Hall, sweeping forward in a tidal wave of black silk and silver spangles. But as Elphaba prepares to strike, the doors of an adjacent school burst open, and a swarm of schoolgirls pours out, surrounding Madame Morrible with their laughter and games. Elphaba's hands fight with each other beneath her cape, struggling to decide whether to proceed despite the children. She crumples, sinking back against a pillar, shivering with self-loathing so violently that Fiyero can see it from fifty yards away. He pushes toward her, but by the time he reaches the steps, she has vanished.

The Attack and Aftermath

Fiyero rushes back to Elphaba's room, where he is ambushed by members of the Gale Force. They beat him with clubs, and he sees his own blood squirting onto the white cat, which flees through the open skylight into the snowy night. His body is never found. Elphaba, having failed in her assassination attempt and discovered Fiyero's fate, takes refuge in the Cloister of Saint Glinda, where she is found by the novice maunt, crouched like a monkey in the dark corner of the stone porch, blood on her odd green wrists. She spends the next seven years in the mauntery, first under a vow of silence, then working in the infirmary, and finally tending to the incurables, where she encounters Tibbett, who recognizes her and forces her to become an individual again. When she finally leaves for Kiamo Ko, she carries the burden of Fiyero's death, seeking out his widow Sarima to confess her role. But Sarima refuses to hear the truth, and Elphaba remains trapped in guilt, unable to obtain the forgiveness she craves. Years later, when she learns that the Scarecrow traveling with Dorothy may be Fiyero transformed, she dares to hope, but the Scarecrow proves to be only straw and air, and her last chance at redemption dissolves.