"Ugly, verdant freak! You clash with everything!" some of the nastier kids in the neighborhood taunted the young Elphaba as she walked on by, wearing a brand-new golden dress that she had only just purchased about a day ago. Pain and anger filled Elphaba's heart as she heard all of the names and insults hurled at her, but she simply turned away and kept on walking, fighting to ignore their cruel words. The moment she got home, however, the little green girl tore off her dress and vowed never to wear it again.
"They're right!" she stressed as she looked at herself in the mirror. "I do clash with everything!" and from then on, Elphaba decided she would only ever wear black, since everything went with black. Even Elphaba-Emerald. All the black did make her look rather miserable, old and ugly, like some kind of freaky hag, but at least the colors didn't clash...
"It's the green girl," the Shiz students whispered as Elphaba Thropp walked briskly down the halls, ignoring their horrified stares.
"Eeew, what in Oz is she wearing?" one of the girls asked in horror. To answer the question, Elphaba was wearing a very dark blue shade of the school's uniform. It was the closest they had to black.
"I don't know, but it's ugly. It clashes terribly!" another girl whispered loudly.
"Oh, come on guys! We all know she clashes with everything!" one voice rose above the rest in shrillness and cruelty. It was Galinda Upland, Elphaba's own roommate and worst enemy here at Shiz. Elphaba had to physically bite her lip to keep her temper in check, and she picked up her pace as she brushed on past the bratty little blond who continued to mock her with all of Elphaba's other tormentors (which was the entire school).
"I saw you on that first day here, Elphaba!" Galinda shouted at the retreating green girl. "You're so ugly that even your dad thinks so! Why else would he have gotten your sister a gift but not you?!"
"It's because she's too ugly!" one of Galinda's most loyal cronies shouted, and then everyone in that hallway began to laugh and point all over again. At last, however, Elphaba had had enough. She paused right in the middle of her jog down the hallway. She turned around slowly, muttered something under her breath, then pointed at Galinda's dress...
Suddenly, the whole hallway was in a panic. The dress had evaporated into a swarm of bugs and insects. Galinda's screech was the loudest and shrillest of all as she dissolved into a raw panic, the roaches and centipedes swarming all over her naked form. Elphaba watched in grim satisfaction as the other students practically dove out of the way to avoid being touched by Galinda. It was like the girl had a nasty disease from the way everyone else was treating her. Elphaba thought it was hilarious.
But Elphaba was merciful, and reverted the spell after only 15 seconds of watching Galinda dance. Suddenly, the bugs all turned back into cloth, and Galinda's dress was restored. Mostly. Although it was a solid dress again, not a single creepy-crawly thing in sight, the color was a bit off. Instead of being pink, there were brownish splotches everywhere from where the dress hadn't 100% reverted. Suffice to say, Galinda had been outraged. Although it took quite a while for her to recover from that traumatic experience, when she did finally get over it, she was beyond furious.
"Mean, green, beast!" Galinda cried. "She really is a monster. She clashes with everything!" and the little blond continued to curse her roommate and arch-nemesis under her breath as she inspected her brown-stained dress. Because these particular marks were done by magic, nothing would wash them off. The dress had been ruined!
"I've never seen something so ugly before in my whole life!" Galinda continued to snarl as she tossed her dress into the trash. "No wonder she wears black all the time! It's all she's good for! And I should know, I'm a fashion person!" Oh, how Galinda loathed Elphaba. And the feeling was mutual. (The very next day, Elphaba could be seen darting along the hallways in a uniform she'd dyed black. So, for all her work against Galinda, it was clear that the cruel reminder of how ugly she looked in every color but black had still managed to get under her verdant skin).
But funnily enough, only a few months later, everything had gone in a total reverse. Suddenly, Galinda found herself gazing at Elphaba instead of glaring at her. Against all odds and expectations, the two roommates had not only managed to enter a truce, but a friendship. It had all happened following a nasty prank at a ball one of the students held in the campus' master ballroom. Although the prank was Galinda's fault, because she'd been willing to stand up for Elphaba and apologize properly afterward, Elphaba had accepted an uneasy alliance with her, and that slowly developed into something more. Much more... Now, hours later, the ball was long over and the two roommates were sitting side by side, sharing one bed. Quite a contrast from mere hours ago when they could barely even share a room!
But here they were now, sharing that bed and talking all about how to be popular (a lesson courtesy of "Professor" Galinda). Galinda had spent most of the rest of that night trying to get Elphaba to see the wonders of popularity, but they were stuck on the idea of fashion. Galinda hunted madly through her wardrobe for something Elphaba could wear that would be bright, but not clashing, but she wasn't able to find anything. Galinda suddenly wished her old words about Elphaba's skin clashing with everything hadn't been so very true.
But there was one color Galinda could think of that would suit Elphaba. It was a color that Galinda had actually shoved aside and forgotten about until recently. She knew she could pull that color out again now and have it work for Elphaba, but it would hurt Galinda too much to do so. And what was this color, exactly? Pink. Galinda's trademark. Yes, pink went well with green, particularly, Elphaba Green. Galinda Pink was the only color that went well with Elphaba's particular shade. That was why Galinda usually wore white until the day she befriended Elphaba. Back then, she had been so determined to be Elphaba's opposite that if Elphaba wore black, then Galinda was going to wear white, but now?
Now, here she sat, possibly drunk on whatever had been in the punch at the ball, and she was pretty sure she was falling in love with Elphaba as she spoke. It didn't matter that all of this was happening in one night, all that mattered was that Galinda suddenly didn't want to be Elphaba's opposite anymore. She wanted to compliment with the green girl, instead of clash. And the only way to do that was to think pink. And Galinda really did want the pink to be with the green, but she was still so uncertain about her relationship with the green that she could hardly even bare to look at the colors! But when it seemed that no other color would really suit Elphaba,
Galinda finally put aside her foolish concerns and dared to pull out her trademark pink. She found a large hairclip with a pink flower on it and nestled it in Elphaba's black locks. As she surveyed it there, contrasting perfectly with Elphaba's verdigris, she uttered one of her most famous lines of all time:
"Pink goes good with green!" and indeed it did. In fact, in time, this remark would mean more than a simple fact about complimentary colors. In time, it would define the very way their relationship went.
Elphaba had smiled broadly after Galinda had spoken this little line. Galinda, after all, had just succeeded in being the first and only person to ever find something that Elphaba didn't clash with. Actually, scratch that. Galinda wasn't just the first person to find a color Elphaba didn't clash with, she was the first person to even considered her worth all that effort. Galinda was the first person to ever even try to help Elphaba out, let alone stick around until they succeeded. That thought made Elphaba's heart flutter... in a good way. But she was too shy to say it. Oz forbid Galinda find out and hate her for being even more of freak than originally thought!
Elphaba's thoughts were interrupted by Galinda giving her a mirror, and calling her beautiful. Galinda was also the first person to do that. Elphaba tilted the mirror so that Galinda was in her line of view as she peered at her own reflection within the smooth and silvery surface. Elphaba smiled again. Pink went well with green, like, really well... Wait. No, she couldn't think like that! Could she?
"I have to go!" Elphaba whispered, brokenly and desperately, as she fled the room in confusion, leaving Galinda just as puzzled. Galinda hoped she hadn't already scared Elphaba away. Curse that mean green thing for making her fall in love!
Years later, however, the loathing had returned in full force, and the witches of Oz faced one another angrily.
"You left me Elphie! Don't you dare try and justify this, or call yourself my friend!" Galinda (now renamed Glinda) snarled hotly.
"You idiot! Do you think I wanted to go?" Elphaba cried angrily. "If I had had any choice, I would've stayed with you!"
"But you did, Elphie, you did!" Glinda's frustration was through the roof. "You had the chance to stay back, but it was you who decided to go off on your crusade against the Wizard! What happened to us is all your fault!"
"That's only because that man is a tyrant, and if you had any ounce of brain, you'd understand that!" Elphaba roared back. The two had been arguing this loudly and intensely for the past 15 minutes or so, but then at last, there came a point when Elphaba waved her arms up over her head in her exasperation, and the movement caused something to fall from the sleeve of the black robe she always wore. It was Glinda's pink flower hairclip from all those years ago... The argument stopped right then and there, mid-shout and mid-word.
"You kept this?" Glinda whispered as she knelt down to pick up the clip. "After all this time?"
"Always," Elphaba admitted, suddenly unable to look Glinda in the eye as the stupidity of their argument hit her over the head like a house. For a moment, then, there was only silence. Glinda looked tenderly down at the little flower clip in her hand, then she looked back up at Elphaba. Then, she lunged at Elphaba, tackling her in a hug.
"Oh Elphie! You do care!" she cried. "I thought you'd forgotten about me!"
"That would never happen, my sweet. I've missed you every day," Elphaba promised, holding Glinda tight and breathing in her scent again after far too many years apart. What ensued was the reunion that should've happened without the preceding argument.
As the reunion came to a close, however, Glinda grew frantic.
"Wait! Don't go yet!" she pleaded as Elphaba looked ready to leave once more. It had been risky enough, answering Glinda's demand for this clandestine meetup, Elphaba didn't want to risk either of their lives any longer by sticking around for even more time that she couldn't afford. But Glinda wasn't ready to let Elphaba leave her all alone again.
"Please don't go! At least not without me! Let's defy gravity together! Just like you always wanted! Does pink still go good with green?" Glinda continued to beg. For a moment, Elphaba only looked at her with uncertain eyes, but then slowly, a smile spread across her face.
"Does pink still go good with green?" she echoed. "Let me see..." then she extended a green-skinned arm to Glinda, and Glinda's own smile spread across her face, and it was just as wide and sincere as Elphaba's.
Hours later, the couple sat in the castle of the west, catching up on each other's lives.
"-been so busy! But I never forgot you. I did, no, I do, love you so!" Glinda rambled as she continued to explain to Elphaba just how much she'd really missed her. But when Glinda finally made this admission of love, Elphaba flinched and interrupted.
"Love me?" she asked, stunned. Glinda flinched, too, when she realized her mistake.
"I meant platonically!" she cried. "I meant nothing by it! Oh, I should've kept my mouth shut! You aren't mad at me, are you?"
"Oh, I'm not mad at you," Elphaba replied as Glinda finished her terrified apology. "I'm mad at myself!"
"What? Why?" Glinda asked, confused.
"Because I was going to tell you the very same thing, but you stole my thunder," then a big grin spread across Elphaba's face again, and Glinda heaved a giant sigh of relief before her face began to mirror Elphaba's again.
"So you love me too?" Glinda asked, hardly able to believe it.
"I do," Elphaba replied, reaching out to touch Glinda's arm in her sincerity, then she pressed their lips together as well.
"Pink goes good with green," Glinda sighed dreamily as her pink lipstick made contact with Elphaba's green skin...
A few months later, Elphaba approached Glinda with a box and a question.
"Do you still think pink goes good with green?" she asked as she opened the box, revealing a little gold ring with pink and green gems intertwining on the band. Glinda's reply to Elphaba's question was quite a few tears and two words long:
"I do!"
AN: Just wanted to write a fic surrounding what is, in essence, the Gelphie tagline.