Beautiful
Title: Beautiful 1/?
Rating: currently PG but i don't know where it will end up
Subject: musicverse immediately following Popular
Disclaimer: I don't own them I just like to play with them
Galinda had begun to wonder what had happened to her taciturn roommate. She had seemed happy, though with Elphaba it was often so difficult to tell, when Galinda had offered to enhance her social standing. The blond had been enlivened at the prospect of making Elphaba popular. It would be the feat of a lifetime and Galinda was fully confident she was up to the task. It had all gone so well, she had even drawn a rare smile forth from the green girl, all up until she had made the surprising observation that Miss Elphaba was indeed beautiful.
That comment had sent her friend running from the room over an hour ago. It was rather unlike Galinda to notice the comings and goings of anyone other than herself but this situation seemed somehow different. It wasn’t like Elphaba to run from a situation and it certainly wasn’t like her not to be in her room at this early hour of the morning. Galinda was not unaccustomed to coming home in the wee hours after a night on the town but to her knowledge Elphaba had never had a night on the town prior to this and had always been tucked away in their room when Galinda would try and sneak in as silently as possible.
The blond was, could it be, worried about her roommate. That feeling in and of itself should have startled the girl for she never worried about anything. Not to mention she certainly never worried about people, they were usually too busy worrying about her. That was how Galinda’s world had, up to now, functioned; she was the one to be worried and fussed over, complimented and comforted not the other way around.
This had been true right up until the moment Elphaba had walked into the Oz Dust wearing that hat; right after Galinda had been informed that because of Elphaba she would be allowed into Madam Morrible’s sorcery seminar. It had been the perfect set up for a great laugh at the green girl’s expense until Galinda had shocked even herself by, of all things, dancing with her. Galinda knew there would be social consequences for her action, knew Misses Phanee and Shenshen would be appalled at her behavior and Fiyero would doubt her sanity but she didn’t care. For the first time Galinda had felt like doing the right thing for someone else not for herself and she had done it.
Now it would seem she was feeling that sensation for the second time. Wherever Elphaba had gone she probably shouldn’t be out there alone in the half light of dawn. None of the University buildings would be open at this hour and there was still a chill in the early spring air. Galinda was determined to find Elphaba and figure out what was going on in that green head.
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Safely hidden in the shadow of the doorway of the library Elphaba sat with her back to the locked door, her knees pulled up tight to her chest twisting an astonishingly pink flower absently in her long fingers. Removing it from her hair had allowed her dark locks to curtain her face causing her to blend further into the shadows. Normally she did not allow the words of others to affect her, or at least she never let on that they did. Her rebellious, tart tongue protected her from the idea that she had a sensitive side. Years of practice had hardened her to the more ignorant comments and actions that were so often directed toward her. Nothing, however, had prepared her for kindness.
She hadn’t even seen it coming, not from Galinda. Up until a few short hours ago their relationship had been contentious at best, right up until Galinda had shone her benevolent social light onto Elphaba’s sister and encouraged Boq to ask her out. And then, shockingly, Galinda had put her own social standing on the line to come to Elphaba’s rescue at the Oz Dust, not, of course, that Elphaba had wanted or needed to be rescued from further social ostracism. She was quite accustomed to her role as outcast it was, after all, all she had ever known.
What she was decidedly not accustomed to was having someone like Galinda look at her and tell her she was beautiful. No one had ever said anything that came close, not even her mother. She had always just been green. But for a brief moment sitting on her roommate’s astoundingly pink bed with that flower in her hair smiling and looking into that mirror she had heard the words and dared to believe them. That was what sent her fleeing the room. Not the prospect of popularity, not the attention, but the idea that she had been foolish enough even for a moment to believe in her own beauty.
No matter how well pink went with green one flower did not cancel out the obvious problem with the notion that she could possibly be beautiful, especially in the eyes of someone so perfectly, well, blond. Galinda was the definition of beautiful and everyone around her knew it, you couldn’t help but see it; Elphaba herself had been nearly blinded by it, though she would never admit that out loud. So it made no sense, it was completely illogical that Galinda would think Elphaba was beautiful, which left the green girl at a loss to figure out why her roommate had said those words.