A/N: Hey! It's been a while but here we are and I thought I would try my hand at some Gelphie! As always, please review and tell me what you think! Please Enjoy!
"Oh Oz…" An emerald skinned girl whispered under her breath, just waiting for everything to fall apart.
Elphaba Thropp had been waiting all her life to go to Shiz University. As a child she was moving a lot, with her father being a preacher of his so called "Unnamed God," she never had the chance to settle down like other children, though she probably wouldn't be able to have a normal childhood anyway.
Early on, she learned several rules in her household that still were instilled into her till the moment she got on the train with her sister Nessarose to go to Shiz. There were three rules in total.
The first one was whispered down to her by her slightly overweight father when he came home one day to find his wife entertaining someone else. For once, her father had forgotten about the deformity that had haunted his family and his eldest daughter and he bent down on his knees, struggling with his arthritis, to whisper to the doe eyed emerald girl,
"Love is bullshit, never trust someone bewitched by love, especially a woman."
As a small child she shuddered away when she saw her father spit such venom towards her mother and spoke such forbidden words, as he had chided her when she came home after her friend Boq had taught her several choice words.
The second rule was to pretend she was normal. After watching her father being chased away literally when he tried to speak passionately about his own religious beliefs, he had taken his older daughter with him in an attempt to escape his unfaithful wife under the pretense that he was only meaning to make more money. They moved to a small rented out room with several others in a boarding house. That was the second longest place Elphaba had lived, where she was able to spend enough time to attend one year of high school. After being in school for over half a year with the expected bullies, she was walking home one day when several students in her class came up behind her and threw rotten fruit at her. It was no lie that Elphaba was poverty stricken, giving students even more ammunition to tease her with besides her unusual skin color. Feeling threatened, she relinquished any remaining self control she had left and found herself creating a sand storming around herself, leaving the other kids unintentionally with burns from the sand and wind. They had run away and screamed, freak, to anyone who could hear.
The newly found witch had collapsed on the earthen path and sobbed into her knees until she felt strong arms scoop her up and she knew her father had found her. As they walked back to their small cottage, he spoke softly into her raven hair,
"Pretend you're normal, then they won't have anything to hurt you with."
The final rule was one that had followed her for 18 years of her life. Elphaba was still a baby when her father had spoke into the soft tufts of her growing baby hair. Frexspar had just spent the past sixteen excruciating hours by his wife's bedside as he watched her struggling through her second labor. Earlier he was borderline on a panic attack and prayed to the unnamed god that his second daughter wasn't going to be an asparagus like his first child. After everything went wrong, when Elphaba's mother started screaming at the top of her lungs, did Elphaba wonder what was happening. She toddled over to hold onto her father's knees.
"Can I see the baby?" Elphaba asked in anticipation, bouncing on her toes.
"Not right now, your mother and Nessarose are resting."
"Nessarose?" She asked, stuttering with the new name.
It was then that he told his daughter the first of many times,
"It will be your job to protect Nessarose."
He looked into her large, doe like eyes until she whispered into his shoulder,
"Okay."
—
The public carriage that had driven Elphaba and Nessa from the train station left them in the front ivy covered gates. The amount of ivy was overwhelming and absurd to Elphaba, it trimmed the gates and started to weave through the iron bars that made up the gates. The green girl was still trying to be optimistic, since she had waited for this moment all her life. Finally, she would feel the exhilaration of unlimited knowledge at her fingertips and even a place where having magical abilities already was praised. So far she wasn't, just extremely anxious, but so anxious in fact she was currently losing the meal she had been fed on the train that just wouldn't sit right.
"Are you quite alright dear?" A strangers voice called out to her as she bent over the bushes.
Embarrassed, Elphaba completely forgot the bizarreness of her skin color to strangers and wiped her mouth with the side of her school uniform blazer. She then turned around to face the first Animal she had seen on campus. The Animal in question, a Goat, jumped a little at his first sight of her, but tried to mask it. They stood in silence till he inclined his head, making her realizing she hadn't answered him yet.
"Yes, thank you though sir." She spoke in haste.
"You sure madam? Your face is looking quite…"
"Green, yes, I know," looking down at the pavement beneath the Goat's hooves until he broke the silence yet again.
"Dr. Dillamond, Professor of Science and History," he extended a hoof.
"Elphaba Thropp, and this is…" She looked around for her sister in a sudden panic for Nessa after realizing that the younger Thropp was nowhere in sight. "Oh Oz…"
Elphaba berated herself, not even thirty minutes into her first day at Shiz and she had already broken one of her father's rules. Tears started to build and cloud her vision till the green girl couldn't see the Goat infront of her.
"You mean the young lady in the wheelchair? I saw her near the orientation hall."
A large sigh escape her unintentionally. So, she hadn't failed her father completely, yet. Upon seeing her relief, Dr. Dillamond asked her kindly,
"Would you like to join me for afternoon tea?"
The green girl saw her chance and immediately took it, happy to have an excuse not to confront the other students yet.
—
"Wow," Elphaba muttered louder than she intended after walking inside the orientation hall, making Dr. Dillamond pull her from her thoughts by saying,
"Quite, I still remember my first time entering this University."
The inside of the University was no less impressive than the outside, with red brocade curtains covering ceiling tall windows to allow the impressive chandelier in the center of the vaulted ceiling room to illuminate the room. Carpet hugged each wall, with flowers patterned into every inch, which Elphaba assumed was made by some one of the Winkie tribe that lived in the A Thousands Years Grassland. After noticing these, her attention was drawn to who, or rather, what, was standing at the front of the room.
"Madame Morrible!" Dr. Dillamond politely tried to kiss her hand before it was snatched away violently in hidden disgust.
"Ahh, Dr. Dillamond! I assume you just returned for the beginning of term?" The woman answered with a facial expression of someone trying to ignore a bad smell.
Elphaba knew better than anyone that staring is extremely rude, but she couldn't help but stare at the headmaster of this school. A flamboyant wine colored dress that gather at the rear and bound the woman's legs tightly with a separate train that flared out at the ground made her look like a fish, followed by a heavy layer of dense white powder on the woman's sour face. Red lips and purple lidded eyes just added to the ensemble, with curly blonde hair piled on the top of her head to finish the ensemble.
"Yes, Madame, I arrived on the morning train, but found Ms. Thropp here, exploring, and decided I should lead her to the correct place.
It was then that Madame noticed Elphaba, and took her in all at once. With a facial reaction rivaling her opinion of Dr. Dillamond, Madame Morrible tried to mask her face of disgust and horror with an awkward smile. It was finally then that Elphaba spoke up,
"I presume you have met my younger sister, Nessarose?"
The green girl saw the realization spark in the elder's eyes realizing that the tragically beautiful girl was related to the beautifully tragic girl.
An awkward silence followed, one that was only broken by the roaring laughter coming from the doorway announcing the arrival of several other students.
What looked like a future queen bee and her faceless cronies had entered the room, though the lead girl had a veil on her cream colored hat that covered her face from the green girl's view. But as this girl entered the room, and lifted up the veil, Elphaba broke yet another one of her father's rules.
Elphaba Thropp had fallen in love, but even worse, with a woman.