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“Tin Man, do you remember when we failed to slay Elphaba?” asked the Scarecrow out of the blue one night, hovering outside the room Princess Ozma had delegated them, his body uncharacteristically still.
Boq remembered the moment Dorothy had attempted to slay the Wicked Witch of The West, quite vividly in fact. He could picture it in his minds eye perfectly. The tremors that wracked through the young girls body as she heaved the pail of water into her arms, the expression on the Witch—no, Elphaba’s face when she approached, not one of fear, but instead a careful sort of understanding, like she knew this was going to happen inevitably. He also remembered, clear as day, the way his hatred had bled out of him. All at once his anger had dispersed, like leaves flying through the wind, tumbling away and out of his reach. Suddenly, he hadn’t been able to bear it. He would not allow Dorothy to become a killer, he couldn’t let himself stand there and watch as the woman he’d once considered a friend was slaughtered.
So, with jerky, stiff movements, he’d dropped his trusty axe, the weapon clanging sharply against the old tiles of the fortress, and reached for the bucket of water. Dorothy had startled at the sound, hands darting instinctively up to cover her ears as it pierced the air around her, and two things had happened in quick succession.
The pail tumbled to the ground, the water spilling out towards the source of the noise, covering Boq instead, his joints starting to rust from the water and dampness in the air immediately. And then, almost instantly after it had happened, Glinda the Good came running out from a hidden passageway, a large tome in her delicate hands.
Boq didn’t remember much after that, other than the feeling of his torso and lower body beginning to rust and lock up. It was just a blur of voices and wails, the latter coming from Dorothy’s terrified form, all of them trying to yell over each other and make themselves heard. The guilt had started up then too, which had been odd, considering he had no heart to feel those emotions, and he’d realised, very belatedly, that he’d doomed them. She would kill them now, wouldn’t she? Dorothy wouldn’t get to return to her star, to Kansas, she would die there in a desolate, gloomy castle without getting to say goodbye to the family she missed so dearly, and it was all his fault. The Lion (or more accurately Brrr, as he knew him now), who had travelled with them despite fear, despite having a safe forest to hide in, would never get to have his courage gifted by the Wizard. The Scarecrow – sweet, clumsy Scarecrow, who was so familiar to Boq for reasons he couldn’t explain, who was wittier than he gave himself credit for, would never get his brains, would never get the chance to think like the rest of them. Nor would Boq himself get his heart, but after what he’d just done, what he’d been doing, he had wondered if he even deserved to have one. Maybe he’d always been destined to be heartless.
Blue button eyes had entered his line of sight then, successfully breaking him out of his guilt ridden stupor. Two straw-filled hands had grasped his own, pulling him up from the ground he hadn’t even realised he was crouched against. His limbs had groaned loudly in response, the scrape of rusted tin grinding against each other echoing out. If tin could flush, Boq would’ve.
“Dot,” the Scarecrow said, turning back to look at the gingham clad girl. She’d been curled up against Brrr from what Boq had been able to see, hands running through his fur in self soothing motions. She’d looked calmer than before too. “Do you still have the oil can? It seems like our metal friend here is starting to rust.”
“Oh,” Dorothy had responded, searching around her dress before retrieving the aforementioned oil. With a slight shake she’d stood up, Brrr following close behind as she walked over to them, silver heels clicking loudly against cobblestone. Carefully, she started to oil Boq’s joints, her eyes boring into him with a mix of curiosity and worry. Now that he looked back on it, they’d all looked at him like that. Once she was done she’d placed her hands over the Scarecrow’s, aiding him in pulling their metallic companion up. “There we go. You’re good as new.”
“Thank you, Dorothy,” he’d replied, voice scratching strangely against his throat, almost like he was choked up. It was a sensation he remembered from his time with flesh, he’d been quick to cry when he was human. In his tin body, though, it had been unfamiliar.
“Why did you do that?” she had asked, her voice soft and understanding, like she already knew the answer. “You… you stopped me from killing her, for which I am grateful. I never wanted to hurt anyone. But… Why? I thought you, out of all of us, wanted this most.”
That had thrown him through a loop for several clock-ticks, his mind turning over the question with the speed of a Horse in molasses. Why had he stopped her? He’d been ready to do whatever the Wizard asked of them, his bitterness preparing him for any action he’d have to take. But when push had come to shove, and shove it did, he’d disregarded all of it.
Had it been nostalgia? Had the time blurred memories of Rush Margins, of a green skinned girl playing tag with him when he couldn’t befriend anyone, been what stopped him? Had the recollection of their days at Shiz, with their charmed group of friends, been what halted him in his tracks? Or had it been some higher, more moral reason? Did anyone, even the wicked, deserve to die in such a gruesome way? She’d been sweet once. She’d been funny and headstrong and smart, taking the world in her stride no matter how cruelly it treated her. He didn’t know if she was the same person anymore but he had known she didn’t deserve to melt, especially not for the crimes of her sister, the very thing that’d set him on this path in the first place. He’d thought it would make him feel better to take that hatred out on her, the closest thing he’d get to the Wicked Witch of The East anymore, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. She’d cursed him, yes, but he’d never get answers through this senseless violence.
What would killing her have even gained in the end, other than the Wizard’s favour? It would’ve turned a young girl into a murderer and maybe, at most, calmed Oz until someone else, even more wicked and frightening, came along. It didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel worth it.
“Because I was wrong,” he admitted finally. “She doesn’t deserve to die, Dorothy. I’m so sorry. Now you won’t be able to go back to your star—“
“It’s okay,” she had smiled, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pulling him into a hug, her skin warm against the metal. Boq had realised then how grateful he was for the young girl and her sunny outlook, no matter how rainy the day became. “We may have come up with a plan of sorts. The Witch—sorry, Miss Elphaba and Miss Glinda can fill you in on it, come on.”
With that she’d led him towards the two witches, her hand steady and comforting in his own. When he’d looked behind him, checking to see if the rest of their quaint group was following, his eyes had locked once again with the Scarecrow. The man’s sewn on smile grew in size, almost ear to ear, when they looked at each other and, though it must’ve been a trick of the light, it had looked like his button eyes were glistening. Boq blinked and the expression was gone, the Scarecrow having replaced it with his usual, achingly familiar grin as he and Brrr had begun to follow after them.
Everything after that had been a cyclone of various plans being explained and enacted. Elphaba, though a little reluctantly, gave Dorothy her broom, her proof of slaying the Witch, and the quartet embarked on the yellow brick road once again. It was less cheery the second time around, more melancholy as they walked towards The Emerald City with lies on the tips of their tongues. They’d made their choice, they were helping the most hated woman in Oz, and they couldn’t back out. Every yellow cobbled step brought them closer to the Wizard and in no time they’d been face to face, the four of them conning the most successful conman in Oz.
Everyone knew the story after that: the Wizard flew away in his hot air balloon, Dorothy missed her cue and used the silver slippers to return home instead, Glinda took up temporary rule while she searched for the lost Princess Ozma and cleared Elphaba’s name, Dorothy returned to them all and the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man became national treasures. Glinda even went so far as to write her own play to be performed at The Clock of The Time Dragon, regaling her side of the whole story.
“Yes,” Boq replied, head titled slightly at the other. “Why do you ask, my dearest friend?”
“No reason. I was just… reminiscing, you could say.” The Scarecrow carefully reached his padded hand on the bronze door handle and opened it, walking inside their shared room with quiet footsteps. Boq followed quickly after him, his metal footfalls much louder in comparison. That was one thing he never got used to in his tin body, he’d been so quiet, so unnoticed before, now everyone turned his way when that sound rang out. With a flourish the other man span around and toppled onto his bed, looking at Boq with an unreadable look. “There was something Glinda said earlier, about being able to recognise Elphaba from her mannerisms alone and it got me thinking of that moment. Of when you jumped forward to stop Dot. It just reminded me of someone, I guess.”
Boq’s eyebrows raised at that. It was rare that the pair talked about their pasts, usually only mentioning vague things if the topic ever did come up. Boq had never really had a problem with it, there were lots of things in his life he wanted to forget about and letting them out into the open would only solidify them, immortalise them among the wind. He had assumed the Scarecrow must be the same. Slowly he made his way over to him, perching on the edge of his bed, a familiar action he’d done a million times before, and he reached for the other’s hands.
“I understand,” Boq whispered, surprising himself. That was not what he was going to say, but now it was out of his mouth, he found it was true. “You remind me of someone I used to know too. A prince actually, if you can believe it.”
The Scarecrow’s button eyes went impossibly wide then, the blue dazzling and, if Boq was being completely honest, breathtaking. How a man made completely out of sacks and straw could be so emotive was beyond him. “A prince? Really?” he asked, blinking at Boq. “What was he like?”
“Well…” Boq titled his head in thought. “He was very charming, the charismatic sort. He could rope anyone and everyone into his shenanigans. We met at school, you see, and he somehow convinced everyone to sneak out to the Ozdust.” He realised, a little belatedly, that the Ozdust was, and probably still is, illegal. A puff a steam exited out the top of his head in response to his embarrassment. He was a treasured representative of Oz, he doubted anyone cared what illegal things he got up to in his youth, but the ingrained fear of getting caught still made him anxious. “Anyway, he was a friend of mine. I liked him a lot, maybe more than I should’ve now I look back in it, but I was too wrapped up with… nevermind. You sound like him sometimes, always so chipper and magnetic, luring us all in with your tall tales. Sometimes you even move like him, so weightless.”
Suddenly, a melancholic feeling overtook him. Boq had found out what became of Fiyero not much longer after his initial return to the city, having overheard it from the mouths of the Gale Forces. He’d apparently been beaten to death after threatening Glinda and conspiring with the Wicked Witch, strung up to a pole and left to bleed out in a corn field. His body hadn’t been recovered, many theorising vigilante justice as the reason why. Some believed the Witch had turned him into one of her Flying Monkeys, and though he never asked her about it, Boq knew that wasn’t true.
“He… was presumed dead a while ago. The Gale Forces got him. I only found out recently, I was quite rusted when it had happened, you see… But anyway, now is not the time for sadness. You said I reminded you of someone?”
The Scarecrow’s expression had gone through several flurries of emotion during his little speech, currently settled on something like hope. The reason for such was one Boq couldn’t guess, his best friend was an enigma in the best and worst of ways. “I… a boy I knew, you remind me a lot of him. I went to school with him as well, actually. When you stopped Dot from throwing water on Elphaba, you looked so anxious, so scared, but you did it anyway. He was like that too, so incredibly nervous, yet he still put himself out there when he needed to.” He fiddled with a loose piece of straw by his fingers, Boq stilled the movement with gentle hands, tin meeting burlap once again. “He was sweet, a little shy, but a good friend nonetheless. You share a lot of mannerisms with him, like that little lean you do, he used to do that all the time. And that silly little bowtie, he had one too. I wish we’d been closer, it’s one of my regrets in life but we… lost contact when he went back to Munchkinland.”
Boq felt the heart shaped mechanism in his chest still for a few seconds, his mouth opening and closing like a Fish. Suddenly, he was the brainless one. There was no possible way… No, certainly not, the Scarecrow couldn’t possibly be talking about him, right? There were many Munchkins in Oz, he most certainly wasn’t the only anxious one, nor was he the only one with a penchant for bowties. Surely, he was talking about someone else. Despite this obvious truth, he let his mouth ask his next question, leaning closer like it would somehow bring the answer to him quicker.
“What was his name?”
“Oh, um,” the Scarecrow coughed awkwardly, so unlike himself that it was starting to worry Boq. He didn’t seem unnerved by their proximity though, even leaning a little closer himself, like this was a secret being kept between them. “I’m not used to… to fumbling like this. His, uh, his name was Boq. Boq Woodsman,” he whispered.
It was like every mechanism in Boq came to a screeching, grinding halt. Every sense was alert, pinpointed directly on the man in front of him. They were so close that their breaths, which they didn’t actually need, were mingling together. The Scarecrow knew him. He knew him before Nessarose became the Governess, he knew him before every piece of metal in her room flung towards him, fusing with his skin in the wake of Elphaba’s spell, he knew him when his only goal in life was to prove his family wrong, to be more than their expectations. He ran every interaction with every person he met in Shiz through his mind, searching for any similarities he could snag onto. The boisterous personality, the gangly limbs, the cheery demeanour, the kindness, all the things that made his closest friend who he was, they were all things he had seen before. Had known before. He just needed to figure out who.
Boq’s eyes honed in on the Scarecrow’s, silver meeting dark, familiar blue.
Oh.
Oh.
”Fiyero,” he whispered, realisation dawning on him like an axe chopping wood, all at once and all encompassing. The Scarecrow was Fiyero. His best friend in the whole wide wonderful Oz was Fiyero. The man he was sort of a little bit in love with was Fiyero.
A grin split Fiyero’s burlap face and he leaned even further forward, hands fluttering energetically at the sides of Boq’s jaw. The hope was gone now, instead replaced by all encompassing joy. Boq was once again shocked by how expressive scarecrows could be. “Boq,” he whispered back, hands finally settling on the sides of his face as he pressed their foreheads together. “I always thought you were so familiar but I didn’t connect the dots. I didn’t… It’s you.”
“It’s me,” Boq grinned, cheeks straining from the pure happiness of the action. Suddenly an impulse struck him, just like in that fortress in Kiamo Ko, and it’d gone so well when he listened to his impulses last time, surely it would go well now. Carefully he raised his own hands to Fiyero’s face, mirroring his action, and he ran a thumb over the rough skin of his cheekbone. “So,” he started, breathless, “a prince to a scarecrow, huh?”
Fiyero laughed at that, cheeks dimpling, the sound jingling like bells and so perfectly similar to how he used to laugh back at Shiz. He was so beautiful that it hurt, and maybe Boq was a crazy person for finding a scarecrow beautiful, but he’d wear that badge with pride.
“Can I kiss you?” Fiyero asked suddenly, button eyes shining brightly in the moonlight streaming in through their window.
The contraption in Boq’s chest ticked so fast it was audible.
“Yes.”