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A/N: Hi I tweeted about this and then I literally could not get it out of my head and wrote it in a few hours. I hope this is still compelling enough. Could not stop thinking about this particular version of a soulmate AU with gelphie. Super obvious title, I know, but what else could I do? I'm on Twitter and Tumblr @maximoffvizh if anyone wants to come hang out and watch me tweet an increasingly long list of Gelphie AU ideas.
Warning: as this is a universe where your soulmate's injuries appear on your skin, there are some lines that skirt towards the ideation of self-harm for the sake of getting someone's attention. The implication of this is dark, I understand that, so if that idea is potentially triggering for you please take care of yourself and don't read.
Enjoy! Let me know via a comment or a kudos if you do :)
Scrapes and bruises happen easily to little children. So it's hard to tell when the bruises begin to belong to another, when the marks of a matched soul start to appear on young skin.
Galinda Upland is six the day a gash appears on her forehead, her mother fussing even though all people know another's wounds don't bleed, and you feel only a fraction of your soulmate's true pain. Her mother still dabs the cut with a deep purple liquid that stings, promising her daughter it will make it all better, meeting eyes with her husband. They both know their little girl didn't hurt herself like this. It is their first sure confirmation she has a soulmate.
In Munchkinland, a bear fusses over her charge, handling a needle so delicately for someone with such huge paws, stitching up the wound left by a wicked child throwing a rock at a young girl. Just for her green skin.
Parents explain to children that the cuts are nothing to be scared of, that they mean a soul is out there that matches theirs, someone they can find one day. After that day, Elphaba Thropp stares at the dark bruises on her green skin with curiosity, prodding them in wonder, knowing someone is out there that is perfect for her. Despite everything people say.
Galinda knows that something must be very wrong with her soulmate's life when the bruises appear on her wrists, her ribs, cuts on her shoulders. Her parents whisper to each other, wonder if they should search for this soulmate of their daughter's, welcome them into their home. A safe, soft place. But they cannot trace anyone who bears their daughter's marks on their skin, and carry hope with them each day.
Elphaba always has an odd sense of accomplishment when a mark appears on her skin, knowing it will appear on someone else's. She always imagines her soulmate, what they will be like, tries to steer her dreams to seeing them. It never gets her any further than gold and cinnamon.
Galinda is growing up and watches her friends with their marks, proudly showing off bruises and scrapes, everyone basking golden in the knowledge they have someone out there for them. The day a burn appears on the back of her hand she shows it off proudly, white scoring across red skin, and her friends all gather around and wonder if her soulmate is some hero, to be so injured.
It is tradition to save oneself for one's soulmate, but they are young and rich and foolish, and Galinda lets a boy she meets out riding kiss her, leave a bruise on her neck. She tips her head back and closes her eyes and thinks of her soulmate, and pushes him away when his hand reaches for the ruffles of her skirt.
Elphaba wakes up with a bruise on her neck, staring at herself in a dusty mirror, pressing her thumb to the mark. It means her soulmate has let someone else touch them, and it puts a hollow in her stomach. Her father sneers when he sees it, staring at her neck with lip curled. "Someone who doesn't save themselves," he grumbles. "Not that anyone would save themselves for you."
Shiz University provides Galinda's new life, bright as a dancing sunbeam. She sits on the boat to be taken there kicking her feet, staring at the bright fish darting beneath the surface on the water. She presses a hand to her hip, the bruise beneath her skirt, and wonders if her soulmate will be a fellow student, waiting for her to find them.
Elphaba sleeps that night as a new person, watching her new destiny unfurl before her. She stares at the wall while her flighty little roommate snores delicately behind her, and raises her hand to touch the graze of a splinter on her ring finger, wondering where that person might be.
They always look away from each other, that sure sign of respect. If they were to look, they would notice that their bruises and scratches and stubbed toes match. The day they oppose each other in combat, Elphaba might see the round bruise on Galinda's ribs, or Galinda might see the dark line across Elphaba's shin that got her into trouble with the professor for fighting dirty. But neither of them look.
The day Fiyero arrives to Shiz, Galinda decides he simply must be her soulmate. He is a royal, and perhaps had a childhood of roughhousing, and he easily could have scratched himself on the journey, like the new scratch that has appeared on her thigh. He slides from his horse as she watches with a smirk and a charm that makes her toss her hair and sashay out to win him.
After the Ozdust, Galinda and Elphaba sit up until the sunrise, and when Galinda shifts in her short little nightgown Elphaba notices the bruise on her knee, touches it with gentle fingers, the contrast of their skin distracting both of them for a moment. "That looks painful," she whispers, loathe to disturb the gentle calm of their room.
"It's not mine," Galinda says, eyes shining. "It's my soulmates."
And Elphaba remembers falling in the woods while sneaking back to Shiz, and swallows the thought down. Galinda is star-bright with talk of Fiyero, and she needs more time to wonder if it's true.
Galinda remains sure Fiyero must be hers, and Elphaba does nothing to correct her. Can't correct her, can't ruin this fragile new friendship that feels spun from gold, can't subject Galinda to a life with her. When Fiyero tumbles from his horse and Galinda receives none of his injuries, Elphaba simply assures Galinda that sometimes the soulmate bond must take a moment to slip into place, that it surely will, that Fiyero has to be hers. They are perfect together.
After Doctor Dillamond is fired, after those moments in the woods and letting the lion cub loose, Elphaba returns to their room and finds Galinda staring at her wrist, utterly mesmerised. Three thin red scratches trace from the heel of her palm almost to her elbow, the same scratches that trace down Elphaba's arm, still weeping blood that she has to wipe on her sleeve. "It's really him," Galinda whispers in wonder. "You took the cub, and now I'm scratched! Fiyero is mine!"
And Elphaba doesn't know what reckless manner possesses her to say it, whether it is the frustration of having even a soulmate who chooses someone else, but she shouts, "It's not him! The cub didn't scratch him!" When Galinda turns those wide cinnamon eyes to her, full of trembling hurt, Elphaba yanks up her sleeve and shows her the scratches, and quietly says, "It's me."
"It's you?" Galinda says it breathlessly, her eyes wide and warm with candlelight, fingers still reverently pressed to the scratches on her arm. Both of them stand for a moment in the breaking of the daydream they've both had their whole lives of the moment they knew their soulmate, and then Elphaba turns and starts to leave.
Galinda darts across the room to grab her arm, and then they are kissing. Only once, and it tastes of fear, of a future that feels out of reach, of the not quite fantasy of it all. But it feels right, and that scares both of them more than anything.
They both pretend in the cold morning light that it didn't happen, that they don't both know. But they begin to sneak glances at each other, seeing each other's marks on the other's skin. Galinda knows when Elphaba becomes frustrated in her sorcery classes and slams her hand into an old pile of books by the dull tingle in her palm. Elphaba knows when Galinda slips while wading in the river by the scrape down her hip, the dulling of the bright hue of her skin when she looks.
When they go to the Emerald City together, for a second they both see their future as it could be, green and gold and grand. And when it all falls apart and they stand at an open window and stare at each other, their arms scratched from the flying monkeys' claws, the girl who is now Glinda ties the cloak around Elphaba's neck tight enough that a dull red line appears at the hollow of her own throat.
Elphaba leaps in front of them all, and she falls for long enough that Glinda begins to think she will be dashed on the ground below, wonders how she will explain when she screams in pain too, when she collapses as surely as if her own bones were broken. But Elphaba shoots over their heads with a vicious, beautiful battle cry, and Glinda is taken to her new room in the city, wishing she had kissed her soulmate goodbye.
They know each other for five years only by their injuries. Elphaba touches the fingerprints on her hips and stares darkly at the sky, wondering who Glinda is with. Glinda wakes up one morning with a black eye and spends precious time covering it up until no one can tell. No one can know that her skin matches that of the Wicked Witch of the West. When Elphaba crash lands during a storm, and Glinda wakes up aching all over, her breasts and stomach speckled with tiny dark bruises, they look at the same sky and hope that the other might be safe.
(But then, it is not quite five years of only. They see each other three years in, a clandestine meeting in a dark room where people don't know their names, and they kiss so hard it tastes of blood, of anger and longing and the vicious line between love and hatred. Elphaba leaves a dark bruise on Glinda's neck and digs sharp nails into her back, and Glinda bites down on her shoulder and begs her to stay, begs not to be left behind, begs her soulmate to keep the promise she made so many years ago.
Elphaba is hit by an arrow leaving that meeting, and Glinda goes home to a fiancé who touches the wound at her ribs and worries for their old friend.)
In her darkest moments, Glinda thinks of bringing Elphaba home, stands at the top of the spiralling staircases in the Emerald City and wonders if throwing herself off would make Elphaba come home. She sometimes stares at knives for a little too long, the sharp shine of their blades, and thinks about what she would write to Elphaba in her skin. I hate you. Come home. I miss you. I want you. I love you.
She never does. When they see each other again, it is with a house behind them and Elphaba screaming about her sister, and there is no time to wonder what they are, no time to regret and no time to hope. Everything happens so fast, until they are back in that tower and Elphaba is staring at her with huge, wet eyes, pressing the Grimmerie into her hands. Her eyes are the same as the night they knew they were soulmates, the night that changed them both, and Glinda leans in and kisses her.
It tastes of regret, of wasted time, of salted grief, and she pulls away and whispers, "I've always loved you."
"I know," Elphaba breathes, and pushes her away. She stands in the shadows and watches the little girl step forward bravely, bucket in her hands.
Glinda supposes it's a mercy that she feels no pain. Despite Elphaba's hideous screams, sounds that will haunt her dreams, it means that she felt nothing either. She stumbles out in the light when it's all over with the Grimmerie in her arms and her heart breaking apart.
After she has attended Munchkinland, after she has watched the effigy of her soulmate spit sparks into the sky as it burned to ash, she stays the night in an inn while she awaits the train. She slips out of her grand gown and takes off her tiara, and stares at herself in the mirror.
There is a scratch on her cheek. Thin and shallow, as if from a tree branch, or a piece of debris whipping against her face. It wasn't there before she spoke to the people.
She touches it in wonder, watching the light come back to her eyes, a smile pulling across her face.
Elphaba is alive.
Beneath the trees in a forest so dense it's dark in the middle of the day, Elphaba leans away from the dying embers of a fire, pulls up her sleeve and smiles at the mark on her wrist. A burn, as if from too hot water or steam from a teakettle. At the right angle, it's almost the shape of a heart.
She bends her head and presses a kiss to the mark, and the trees shiver at the hope in her whisper of, "Hold out, my sweet."
Five years later, when the hopeful bud of Oz's future has ripened into sweetest fruit, Lady Glinda ascends the stairs as she does every year on the anniversary of the day that began to make things better, ready to watch the sun rise over her new Oz.
For the first time, she is not alone. The figure in black turns to face her, a smile spreading over lips she's tasted but thrice, and the Lady bursts into tears and gasps, "Elphie!"
When their lips collide this time, as the gold rays of the sun begin to blaze across the land they both fought to make better, it finally tastes like hope. Like warm spring rain, and a shared bruise, and the destiny that was handed to them both.
For the first time, they taste nothing in their kiss but pure joy.