Headconnon that years after they leave Oz, Fiyero looks like one of those crazy quilts, with different patches sewn on completely covered by embroidery; courtesy of his talented and much more nimble-fingered wife.
It starts in one of the first actual towns they find. An older Bobcat is teaching mending classes, and Elphaba attends, knowing it will be needed because her husband is rather clumsy and has torn himself quite a few times on their journey already. While she learns all the basics, the Bobcat also teaches embroidery, and knowing how vain Fiyero used to be, and probably still is, she decides to try it over some of the larger mends he has. Just a few daisies on his side, uneven petals and grouped too closely, but she catches him trailing his fingers over them whenever they have a few moments. So she continues.
Slanted geometric shapes on his ankles. Vines winding up his seams. What was supposed to be a poppy next to his stomach, but looks more like a tomato splotch. Fiyero loves each and every one and loves the process of her sewing them onto him, squinting in the candlelight, muttering to herself when the thread won't cooperate. talking her out of pulling a whole piece out because it doesn't look how it was supposed to.
Eventually, so many places are pinched together, stitched up and hemmed that he no longer looks so human anymore. One arm is shorter than the other, ringed with Vinkus designs. His shoulders have visible dents in them covered in constellations. His walk is much more stumbly jummbly because the straw keeps catching on all the patched holes. His waist is almost concave on one side embroidered in a field of flowers.
One day he leans against someones oven for too long, he swears he didn't notice it heating up, and his shoulder blade starts to smoke. The hole is only a bit bigger than a postage stamp, but with all the mending that's been done before sewing it up would most likely make him a hunchback.
They've had this talk before. If changing the straw dosn't affect him, then Fiyero must be the cloth itself, correct? Would adding new fabric change him? Take some of his memories? Make it harder to move? But they can't put this off any more, and can't think of any other ideas, so Elphaba goes ahead and buys whatever fabric she can.
Pale pink cotton on his side, Deep red wool covering his knees, bright yellow linen lines his upper back, which only helps make the stars there shine. An old checked scarf clashes horrendously with the Vilcus patterns, but neither of them really minds.
Eventually, he's all even and smooth again, covered in so many patches and designs you can barely see the green. (Fieyro is secretly glad of this; he never liked that uniform.) And now whenever Elphaba looks at him, so he sees himself in the mirror. No longer do they see that horrible day and its consequences, but instead all the time spent making him feel safe and beautiful, literally covered in her love.
