Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Galinda Upland stepped onto the train platform bound for Shiz with her back straight and chin high, just as her mother had taught her. Her pink satin coat—worn thin at the cuffs, the lining a slightly different shade than the rest—fluttered slightly in the breeze, and she willed herself not to tug at the hem. It had been borrowed from Old Miss Penchett, who hadn’t attended a gala in years but still liked to believe she might again. The hem had been let out, and the sleeves taken in. It was a miracle it fit at all.

“Keep your shoulders back, girl,” her mother whispered as she hugged her tightly. Galinda could feel the tremble in her mother’s bones, though her voice was firm. “You’re going to be a queen up there. Remember who you are, who you can be, and what we said.”

“Get good grades. Get noticed by someone rich,” Galinda repeated, numb and rehearsed. Her stomach was in knots.

“And don’t you dare forget what we owe this village,” her father added. His calloused hands were clamped on her suitcase like he couldn’t let it go. “Every ribbon, every book, every stitch you’ve got on you was paid for with someone else’s kindness. You’re not just goin’ for you.”

Galinda nodded, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them back before they could smudge her powder.

It had taken the entire village to get her to Shiz. Miss Penchett’s coat. The hair ribbons from the Alder daughters, who never used them after their mother died. A broken-handled suitcase the cobbler’s wife had mended with bits of leather scrap. One of the wealthier families in town—who owned a shoe shop and often reminded the village of it—had sent her off with a “donation” of pristine white slippers and a reminder that she’d better “bring back a husband with a title.”

It wasn’t that Galinda didn’t appreciate it. She did. But it was heavy, carrying a thousand hopes that didn’t quite belong to her.

Miss Coddle stood at the base of the great marble staircase, eyes sweeping over the incoming students like a farmer grading grain. She barely glanced at Galinda, which meant she passed the first test.

Smile. Be forgettable, but polished. Don’t speak unless spoken to.

Galinda dipped a practiced curtsy.

Name? Miss Coddle said, with a fatigued voice. “Galinda Upland”. Miss Coddle scanned the list, “you’ll be rooming with Miss Thropp’ you’ll find your schedule inside the room”. And with that Galinda was dismissed.

The room was already occupied.

A dark-haired girl sat cross-legged on one of the beds, a book open in her lap and several others stacked beside her. She didn’t look up as Galinda entered.

She had sharp shoulders and sharper eyes and wore plain black like it was a deliberate provocation. Most notably, her skin was a verdant green. Galinda decided she wouldn’t ask any questions, as she had secrets of her own to keep, and attempted to disguise her surprise.

She extended her hand. “Galinda Upland.”

“Elphaba Thropp,” the girl said, but didn’t shake her hand.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Galinda murmured, lowering it.

Elphaba returned to her book.

Galinda turned to unpack, cheeks burning. Her blouses were folded too neatly. Her shoes too scuffed. She pretended not to care. She would need to obtain some shoe polish to cover the cracks and scuffs before classes began. She hoped she would have enough to cover the cost. She carefully put away her (primarily borrowed) belongings and neatly made her bed with the quilt the innkeepers wife had gifted her.

No one could know.

Chapter Text

Shiz was cold in a way that wasn’t about weather. The other girls came wrapped in furs and confidence, their laughter like polished glass. Galinda smiled with her teeth and mimicked their poise as best she could, her tongue sharp with wit and her posture impeccable.
She had practiced this moment in the cracked mirror above the hearth at home: the poised entrance, the gentle smile, the light laugh that said I don’t worry about things like grades or money or working too hard. Just charm. Just shine.
It was working.
The first week was survival.

Galinda clung to her practiced smile like it might catch her if she fell. She learned names. Laughed at the right jokes. Let boys carry her books and asked leading questions in class to seem smart, but not too smart.

She let Pfannee and ShenShen pull her into their orbit—girls with polished accents and polished nails and wardrobes too coordinated to be accidental. She sat at the right tables for meals where she pretended that a small appetite and desire to keep her figure was the reason for her sparse plate, not the cost. She rose in popularity.

The only person who seemed to pay her no mind, who was invincible to her charm, was her roomate. And for a girl who had lived her entire life being looked at—by leering men, by judgmental women, by her own reflection—this was something altogether unfamiliar.

Unsettling.

Galinda smoothed her skirt and didn’t let it show.

Chapter Text

Fiyero noticed her first week there. Of course he did. Everyone did. Her golden curls, her soft voice, the practiced flirtation in her eyes. It wasn’t that she wanted the attention. But she did need it. She needed someone like him to want her. Her future depended on it.

~

His hands strayed once during a party. Just a little too low. A little too familiar. When she stiffened, he laughed it off and offered her more champagne with a seemingly genuine apology. Her fingers shook as she took it. Later that night, she vomited into the dormitory bathroom and didn’t tell a soul.

When she mentioned it lightly to her mother in a letter, “He was too forward, Mama. It made me feel… wrong.” The reply came sharp and unforgiving:
“You think we all get to feel ‘right,’ Galinda? He’s a prince. A little discomfort for that kind of opportunity is a small price to pay.”

She stopped writing about that kind of thing. She supposed her mother was right, it was time to give up childish notions of romance, of autonomy even.

~

And then, one day, Galinda caught herself watching Elphaba instead of Fiyero. Watching the way she bit her lip when she read, the way she threw her head back when she laughed (a rare thing, but golden when it happened), the way she moved through the world without trying to belong to it.

Galinda began dreaming about her. At first, the dreams were confusing—unmoored and secret and filled with guilt. Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind:
“You’re not there to make friends. You’re there to be chosen.”

But Galinda didn’t want to be chosen by the people who kept touching her when she didn’t want to be touched. She wanted—she didn’t even know how to say it—she wanted to be seen.

~

Elphaba was the worst kind of person to notice Galinda. She noticed her like she was an open book with torn pages and ink-smudged truths. Galinda hated her for it.

Hated how the green girl saw through her polished smiles. How she didn’t care about frills or boys or proper etiquette. How she challenged professors and didn’t try to charm anyone. How she looked at Galinda not like a prize, but a puzzle.
It was maddening.
It was…dangerous.

Chapter Text

Galinda had imagined university would be different.
She had pictured lecture halls full of bright, curious minds, instructors who spoke like poets, and classmates who saw her—really saw her—for her cleverness, not just her curls.

She hadn’t expected so much reading.

History of Oz and Imperial Influence required over one hundred pages a week. Thick, crinkly pages. Long words, dense arguments, and names that ran together like soup.
Galinda read each page three times before anything stuck. Sometimes she had to whisper the sentences under her breath, like spells she was trying to unlock.

The essays were worse.
She understood the material. She could talk about it well enough, had even impressed a professor once in class, but when she tried to write it down, it all came out wrong. The sentences twisted. Words she knew fell apart on the page. One professor called her tone “frivolous.” Another wrote, “Lacks structure and depth.”
She had cried in the washroom and powdered her nose twice before returning to dinner.

She knew she wasn’t stupid. But she also knew she couldn’t look like she was trying. Her momsie had always said that boys liked a clever air, not actual effort.

“Charm them, darling, don’t challenge them.”

⸻

Elphaba, for her part, was impossible.

She never missed a lecture. She never asked questions unless it was to point out a flaw. She annotated everything. Her margins were filled with lines like: “Flawed conclusion,” “assumes binary logic,” and once, “author might be under the influence.”

Galinda glanced over one such page during a shared study hour and raised an eyebrow.

“Honestly,” she said, “do you ever enjoy anything?”

Elphaba didn’t look up. “Not when it’s written like this.”

Galinda crossed her arms. “Well, I thought the section on trade consolidation was rather interesting.”

“You read that section?” Elphaba asked, glancing at her. Her tone wasn’t curious, it was sharp, like a blade wrapped in velvet.

“Yes,” Galinda said. “Twice.”

“Mm. Took you long enough,” Elphaba muttered.

Galinda felt the heat rise to her cheeks. She straightened her back. “Well, it’s easier for some of us to read when there isn’t something so bright nearby.”

Elphaba looked up slowly.

“You’re calling me green. How original.” Her voice was flat.

Galinda faltered. “I meant, just, you know, contrast, aesthetically speaking…”

“I’m aware of what you meant.” Elphaba snapped her book shut. “It’s good to know you’re consistent. Shallow outside and in.”

The words landed harder than Galinda expected.

She bit the inside of her cheek. “You know, for someone so clever, you really don’t know how to talk to people.”

“For someone so popular, you really don’t know how to think,” Elphaba shot back, gathering her notes.

Galinda blinked. “Is that supposed to be an insult or just a personality trait?”

“Take your pick.”

Elphaba left the study hall without another word.

⸻

Galinda stared down at the pages in front of her.
The lines blurred slightly. Not from tears, she wouldn’t let that happen, but from something worse: the dull ache of being looked at and not seen. She had thought Elphaba was different.

She turned to her math problems. Numbers didn’t judge. Numbers didn’t smirk.
Numbers didn’t ask for elegance or eloquence. They just behaved.

With a mechanical pencil and a blank grid, she worked through a proof no one in class had solved yet. It took her twenty minutes, and when she was done, she smiled quietly.

She understood things. Just not the things people cared about seeing. Not from people like her.

And that, perhaps, was the real problem.

Chapter Text

The history paper came back with a red slash across the top.

52%. See me.

Galinda folded it neatly in half before anyone could see, though the crimson ink seemed to bleed through the page like a wound. She tucked it into her folder with fingers that didn’t shake, not here, not in public, and kept her face arranged in polite disinterest.

She glanced sideways. Elphaba was already frowning at her own paper, except hers had been marked 97%, and still she looked disappointed, as if anything less than perfection was a personal insult.

Galinda didn’t let herself sigh. She’d known she would fail. She hadn’t even finished the essay; the words had started swimming halfway through and she’d run out of time untangling the sentence she’d written in the margin three times: The cultural imperial shift did not align—no, rely—no, result… before giving up entirely.

She had hoped it would be different at Shiz. In her daydreams, university was where brilliance was allowed to be quiet. Where the way she saw patterns and held formulas in her head without trying—like constellations she didn’t even know she was tracing—would finally matter more than her handwriting or how many spelling errors her page had.

It hadn’t.

⸻

Later, in their room, Galinda slipped the paper from her folder and shoved it into the bottom drawer of her desk.

Too slow.

Elphaba, already halfway through tomorrow’s reading, glanced up at the crinkling sound.

“What did you get?”

“Nothing of interest,” Galinda said breezily, smoothing her skirt.

Elphaba didn’t buy it. She rose quietly, but deliberately, and walked over. She didn’t ask. Just looked.

The paper was still visible, half-stuck out from the drawer.

“Fifty-two?” she said flatly. “That’s… generous.”

Galinda flushed. “Well, some of us weren’t born with books in our cribs.”

“No,” Elphaba replied, sharp as ever, “some of you were born to marry well and let other people read for you.”

Galinda didn’t answer. Her breath caught—not because Elphaba was wrong, but because she was far too close to being right.

⸻

That night, Galinda stared at the dormitory ceiling long after lights-out.

She could feel the number—52—like a stain, printed behind her eyes.
A second failure and they might begin to ask questions. About her grades. About her background. About whether she really belonged here at all.

She turned onto her side, fingers curled in the blanket.

If she lost her scholarship, she’d be sent home.
She already knew what was waiting there.

She sat up.

⸻

By morning, she had resolved to speak with Dr. Dillamond, quietly, of course. Respectfully. Maybe he’d let her complete a supplemental project. A paper, or extra credit work. Something.

Not because she deserved special treatment.
But because she couldn’t afford failure. Not even once.

⸻

That afternoon, after avoiding Elphaba all through lunch, Galinda escaped to the back corner of the library and pulled out her mathematics workbook.

Not the assigned chapter. Not even the week’s lesson. She was already six chapters ahead.

Proofs and theorems soothed her.
The rules never shifted.
Equations didn’t care about her accent or her spelling or whether she used the wrong punctuation.
She didn’t need to guess what the author was “trying to say” because in mathematics, you either proved it…or you didn’t.

She worked silently, quickly.
When she got stuck, she didn’t panic, she just flipped to the appendix to cross-check, then returned to the page with a small, satisfied nod.

At the end of the table, a boy from her class scratched his head over a basic linear problem. Galinda looked away. She wouldn’t help. That wasn’t what girls like her were supposed to do.

She never raised her hand in math class.
But she always got full marks.

It was easier that way. Safer.
A polished face, a gentle smile. Emptying her face of the excitement she felt, just in case anyone looked too closely.

Still, when she solved the final problem on the page—one the professor had called “optional. For the overachievers”—her heart lifted, just a little.

Not from pride.

From relief.

She was still in there.

Somewhere.