Chapter Text
Elphaba had always been fine on her own.
That was the way it had always been. That was the way it was meant to be.
She didn’t get sick. Not properly. Not like the other girls with their fluttering coughs and fluttering eyelashes and handkerchiefs that matched their gowns. Elphaba simply continued — head down, books in hand, no-nonsense stride across the Shiz campus, the wind whipping through her coat and slicing into her chest like knives.
And so when the headache started, she ignored it.
When her throat burned, she told herself it was the chalk dust.
When her lungs caught and rattled in the night, she turned her face to the wall.
⸻
Galinda noticed first.
Not that Elphaba had been acting particularly differently — she’d always been prickly and dry, sarcastic and strange — but there was something off about her now. Her movements were slower. Her voice hoarser. She’d started skipping breakfast, then lunch, then even her precious independent study sessions in the library.
And the cough. Oh, the cough.
It shook her frame like it was trying to escape. Violent, bone-deep, and wholly ignored by the girl herself, who simply pressed a sleeve to her mouth and carried on like she hadn’t just turned grey-green.
“Are you—” Galinda tried one morning, biting into a peach. “—feeling alright?”
Elphaba, hunched at her desk, didn’t look up from her scribbling.
“Fine,” she said. “I’m not like you. I don’t faint at the sight of a stiff breeze.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Don’t you have a hair ribbon to re-curl or something?”
“Excuse me for caring,” Galinda snapped, bristling. “Some of us happen to worry when our roommate looks like she’s about to keel over mid-theory lecture.”
Elphaba didn’t answer. Just turned away, shoulders tight, shoulders trembling, and muttered something Galinda didn’t catch.
“What?”
“…You don’t have to pretend.”
Galinda blinked. “Pretend what?”
“That you care. That you’re worried. That I’m not just some green burden you’re stuck rooming with because of Madame Morrible’s arbitrary assignments.”
Galinda’s mouth opened, then closed again.
And then, gently: “You really think that?”
Elphaba said nothing.
⸻
By Monday, things were worse. The wind off the lake had turned brutal, slicing through Elphaba’s too-thin coat as she marched — always marching, always alone — across campus like she could outrun the infection brewing in her lungs.
She didn’t eat. She didn’t sleep. She barely made it through her Ethics in Magic recitation without doubling over coughing. Her voice was gone entirely now — just a rasp, a breathless wheeze.
Over the next few days, Galinda tried subtlety. (She was not good at subtlety.)
She left a mug of honeyed tea on Elphaba’s desk. It went untouched.
She offered to carry her books. Elphaba snatched them away.
She suggested skipping seminar just this once. Elphaba glared like she’d suggested arson.
And still — the cough got worse. Her eyes grew glassy. Her breath shallow.
On the fifth morning, Galinda was woken not by her alarm, but by the thud.
She sat bolt upright in bed.
“Elphaba?”
No answer.
She scrambled across the room and found her roommate collapsed beside the wardrobe, green skin drenched in sweat, limbs tangled awkwardly, breath whistling weakly through cracked lips.
“Elphie—oh Oz—Elphie—!”
She dropped to her knees. Shook her gently. Elphaba groaned, trying to push her away with all the force of a dead leaf.
“Don’t—’m fine—”
“You’re not fine!” Galinda snapped, tears springing to her eyes. “You’re burning up! Why didn’t you say anything?!”
“…don’t need anyone,” Elphaba rasped.
Galinda pressed her forehead to Elphaba’s and whispered, “You’ve got me anyway.”
⸻
They couldn’t carry her alone.
Fiyero — who had just come sauntering down the hallway humming some ridiculous Vinkun ballad — stopped cold at the sight of Galinda sobbing and shaking, cradling Elphaba’s limp body.
“I need help,” Galinda choked.
He was there in an instant. No jokes. No flirtation. Just calm, solid arms and a quick scoop of Elphaba off the ground.
“She weighs nothing,” he muttered grimly, holding her like she might shatter. “How long’s she been like this?”
“I don’t know—she wouldn’t let me—”
“Hospital wing. Now.”
⸻
Pneumonia, the matron said. A bad case. Too far gone to catch earlier, nearly critical.
“She’s lucky,” the woman muttered, adjusting the oxygen charm. “Another day and her lungs might’ve given out.”
Galinda didn’t leave her side. Not when they undressed her to get her temperature down. Not when she vomited from the fever. Not when she cried out in her sleep for a mother who had never come.
She just sat there, fingers twined in green ones.
And when Elphaba woke — disoriented and hurting — the first thing she whispered was:
“…you stayed.”
Galinda’s voice cracked with the force of it.
“Of course I did, you utterly stubborn cabbage.”
Elphaba let out a breath that turned into a cough. But she didn’t let go of Galinda’s hand.
Not this time.