Prompted by a headcanon I had...which turned into a series of headcanons, which resulted in this fic. Posting from tumblr. It sort of turned into an Elphaba character study... oops?
It was Nessarose's birthday…which meant, of course, it was the one day of the year that Unionist ideals went out the window and suddenly the young brunette got material possessions and sweets and all of her favorite things in life.
Elphaba tried not to be jealous of her little sister. She was, after all, disabled, and for the most part was a very reserved and well conducted six year old. She was pious and a tad bit arrogant, but in her short life Elphaba had found hardcore religion had that effect on people.
Still…on her birthday, the green girl was lucky to get anything more than a book or secondhand dress Frexbar had fished from the clothing contributions to the poor. Nessie got prayer beads and books and dresses and hair ribbons and shoes and—and trips to the candy store. Something Elphaba could only dream of.
Candy was generally off limits in their house. It was sinful and considered an extra, according to Frexpar. They, as Godly people, should not indulge. Nanny, of course, ignored Frexpar's decree and bought herself little tidbits all the time, but Elphaba and Nessa were forbidden to even look at the sweets for risk of punishment.
But somehow Nessa always managed to convince her father to take her to the town sweet shop on her birthday.
It was a beautiful and sunny Saturday. Nanny had the day off, as her contract dictated. While Elphaba was almost eight and was certain she could have very well taken care of herself for the afternoon, Frexspar made her come along. The green girl trailed along after her sister and father, hands in the pockets of her secondhand dress (the pockets she had sewn in all by herself), knowing this trip would be an exercise in torture.
Going to a store full of chocolate and ribbon sweets and candied nuts and not being allowed to have any of it…
They got to town and Frexpar and Nessa went inside the shop while Elphaba slumped against the doorframe. She watched a line of ants stream across the pristine white paint of the shop window ledge. She toed the dusty road with a holey cloth shoe. She looked up and counted the clouds that drifted lazily past.
Finally, blissfully, her father and sister came out of the shop. Nessarose clutched a colorfully wrapped parcel in her lap and had another one open, plucking the contents from within and pushing it past her full lips and into her mouth. The green girl peered curiously despite herself: candied pineapple. The sugar crystals gleamed in the bright afternoon sun and Elphaba, despite never having had candied pineapple before in her life, salivated.
"Come, Elphaba. We're going."
Elphaba straightened and followed her father and sister back home.
.
.
.
It was dark. Frexspar had gone away to do…something. Elphaba had shut herself in her room to read. She was halfway through a particularly riveting paragraph about mitosis when there was a knock on the door.
"Elphaba?"
Resigning herself to having to do something for Nessa—cook her a meal, reach her down something from a shelf, etc—the green girl closed her book and went to open the door.
"What is it, Nessie?"
"Do you want?" The younger Thropp held out her hand, in which a little tin of hard candies rested. "I don't like the way they taste…but throwing them out would be wasteful."
Elphaba blinked stupidly, then reached for the little tin. "I…sure. But why not give them to Nanny?"
"She didn't want them."
"Oh…well…thank you."
"You're welcome. Fresh dreams…don't forget to say your prayers."
Elphaba had not said her prayers in almost a year. She made a noncommittal noise and closed the door, staring at the tin of practically untouched candies in her hand. They were hard and green and smelled vaguely of mint when she brought them under her nose. Carefully she plucked one from the tin and very carefully put it in her mouth.
It was delicious. Sweet but not too sweet (like the candy ribbons Nessa got for her birthday one time but did not like—so Frex had given them to Nanny who had given one to Elphaba), deliciously minty but not in a way that made her eyes water. It was too hard to chew, so the green girl simple sucked until it was nothing but a sliver on her tongue.
She looked at the tin, desperately wanting another but knowing she would probably never get them again. She closed the little tin and slipped it into her pillow so Frexspar would not find it, then picked up her book and started in on mitosis again. She read on late until the night, unconsciously licking her lips over and over to capture the sticky sweetness that lingered there.
-/-
Elphaba rarely got money. She was expected as the preacher's daughter to work for free, but occasionally she would earn a little money, pulling weeds or helping the librarian fixed tattered tomes. It was never much—a few green pennies here or there—but saved over time there were more. Books were a hundred green pennies (or more) each, and fifteen green pennies bought a tin of hard candy.
The eldest Thropp sister saved all the pennies in the old (now sadly empty) hard candy tin, and in a jar with no lid she had spirited away from the kitchen one night. She kept the jar on a shelf hidden by all her books—when they moved she would cushion it and its contents with socks, then stuff it in her pillowcase with the candy tin.
Every few years she would have enough, and would sneak away from the congregation on weekends with her loot to go buy herself a new book and a tin or two of hard candy (depending on how many green pennies she had left over). She would spirit them home and hide them from Frexspar—he would know about the books, but the hard candy was Elphaba little secret from the world.
Hard candies were saved for occasions—the anniversary or her mother's death, whenever she cried (which was rarely), two for her birthday. The forty little lozenges generally could last until she had saved up the money—but not always.
-/-
Elphaba went to Shiz University with two new books she bought herself, seven textbooks, and five little tins of candy tucked in amongst her secondhand clothing. Her father had been gracious enough (keeping up appearances, most like) to buy her textbooks for the semester…all second hand. But that had meant the money Elphaba had been saving up for textbooks could be spent on books for herself and her favorite sweet.
She rarely treated herself like this, but she figured she did not know if Shiz would have a candy store, and even if it did, she figured it would not be as good as the ones in Munchkinland.
She figured she had two hundred hard candies—enough for one each night of the semester, and two on bad days.
She kept the little tins stacked by her books on her bookshelf, and every night after she got ready for bed she would retrieve one of the little candies and suck on it while she wound down. Her pretty little roommate noticed her little lozenge habit but did not comment.
Which is why the next semester Elphaba was very surprised to move back in to her dorm to find a pink-wrapped package on her bed. She had been friends with her roommate only for a month or so, so she figured it was a little odd to be giving gifts…but then Galinda did not often follow the societal norms Elphaba had come to expect.
"Galinda, what is this?"
"Open it and find out, Elphie!"
Elphaba picked up the package dubiously and slit the tape. She unwrapped it carefully and pulled out a box. "Just what I've always wanted. A box."
Galinda, from where she perched excitedly on her bed, threw a fluffy pillow at the green woman's head. "It's what is in the box!"
"I'm aware," Elphaba quipped back, dodging the pillow with ease. She pulled the lid off and was shocked to see twenty lozenge tins of all makes and flavors staring back at her.
"Happy belated Lurlinemas!" her Frottican companion exclaimed, tossing her arms up in the air. "You already know everything and I figured a book would just bore you…but you were always sucking on those candies before bed so I thought…"
Galinda trailed off, watching the green girl pull the tins out of the box one by one and hold them closer to her face so she could read their labels. She waited with baited breath for any indication from her.
Finally, Elphaba packed all the tins away and placed the box gently on her bookshelf. She stared at it for a moment, at if unsure of its existence. Then,
"…Thank you, Galinda."
The blonde beamed. "You're quite welcome, Elphie."