VELVETEEN PRESENTS ACTION DUDE vs. Doing the Right Thing #3
“Yeah, but they didn’t let most of us down the way they did her.
They tried to break her heart, and in the process, they broke her spirit.
She walked on her eighteenth birthday. I used to think she had some sort of weird persecution complex.
Every time I saw her, she’d have a story about the company not letting her go to school or hold a job or anything normal like that.
Turns out she was exactly right. They wanted her to be a supervillain, even if they had to hound her into it. ”
The American Dream blinked. “Wait, seriously?”
“Seriously.” Action Dude nodded grimly. “Supermodel had teams harrying her up one side and down the other. Technically, we couldn’t blow her identity, since she’d quit while it was still protected, but that didn’t stop the anonymous complaints about her work, or the evictions, or the revoked financial aid.
Everything she ever tried to do, The Super Patriots, Inc.
took away from her. Starting with me. Her whole life has been like one long, slow-motion chase sequence, and I’m not going to do that to her anymore.
I’m going to let her wake up, and I’m going to let her choose, for once in her life, what she wants to have happen to her next.
Maybe it’s turning herself in. Maybe it’s going back to the holidays.
I don’t know. I just know that she’s going to decide on her own. ”
“What if she decides she wants us to help her fight?”
“Then maybe we need to have a long talk about whether that’s exactly what we ought to be doing.
When they said that there was legislation about the animus class coming together, we didn’t fight, because we didn’t want to scare people, and because there are so few animus around that it seemed better not to.
Only now it’s also technopaths, and the plant-manipulators, and they’re talking about the psychometrists and the matter-manipulators, and I think we’ve lost.” Action Dude looked at the American Dream, wishing he were a better public speaker.
Wishing anything in his training had prepared him for this.
“They’re just going to re-categorize us, one by one, until we’re all animus, and we’re all under governmental control. ”
“And you think hiding the last real animus in the world is the way to show them that they’re wrong?”
“I think it’s the last thing we can do to show that we did not stand idly by while we watched our children taken, one by one,” said Action Dude.
“If you think I’m in the wrong, if you and Dotty want to vote to expel me, that’s cool.
I just ask that you give us the courtesy of a day’s headstart before you tell anyone that she was here.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some explaining to do. ”
The American Dream stood and watched silently as Action Dude walked down the hall and disappeared around the corner. Then they sighed, shook their head, and walked in the opposite direction. It was time to talk to Dotty.
* * *
The second time Vel woke, she was not alone.
She wasn’t sure how she knew that, considering the buzzing and beeping of the machines; the sound of another person breathing should have been all but inaudible.
Somehow, though, she knew as soon as she opened her eyes.
She turned toward the sound. The man slumped in the chair next to her bed was dressed in blue and orange, his head lolling to the side, his boyish blond hair in disarray. She blinked.
“Aaron?” she squeaked.
The impact was immediate. He opened his eyes and sat up in the chair, going from sleep to wakefulness in an instant.
That had been a part of their training, she remembered: when you were under attack, you couldn’t afford to linger in drowsy dreamland, and as a superhero, there was every chance that anything that woke you up was actually attacking you.
(That particular lesson had been one of the ones cited whenever Vel or the other trainees asked about going home to see their parents.
No one wanted to see that manslaughter case.
Everyone knew that it would be inevitable, if the child heroes were allowed out into the wild.)
“Vel,” he said, and smiled, a big, wide, relieved, camera-ready smile. “You’re awake.”
Velma did not punch him, which she really considered to be the height of restraint on her part. “I am.” She jerked on the handcuff holding her to the bed, jingling it against the frame. “I’m also chained. Want to start explaining yourself before I get pissed?”
“It’s for your own protection,” said Action Dude. He pulled the key out of his pocket, holding it up for her to see. “I need you to not run away while I explain what’s happened while you were gone, okay? If you promise to do that, I can unchain you.”
“And you trust me not to lie to you?”
“I’ve always trusted you not to lie to me. It’s everyone else who breaks their word.” Action Dude held his breath, waiting.
Finally, almost imperceptibly, Vel nodded.
At the same time, her posture shifted: he was dealing with Velveteen now, not Velma.
The difference was a subtle one. That didn’t make it any less important.
He leaned across her and unfastened the cuff, trying not to breathe in the scent of her skin, or pay attention to the heat of her body next to his.
He no longer had the right to focus on those things. No matter how much he wanted to.
Velveteen sat up straighter on the bed, rubbing her unchained wrist with the opposing hand. She looked at the IV needle in her arm. Action Dude winced.
“Please don’t take that out,” he said. “You’re a lot better than you were when we found you, but you’re still dehydrated, and I’d really rather you left here back in fighting shape.
You need the fluids. You need the nutrients in the fluids.
We don’t currently have a healer on staff, so we’re having to do things the old-fashioned way.
Imagineer has some nanobots she’d be willing to let you borrow, as long as you promise not to use the fact that they have rudimentary faces to take them away from her. ”
“Why didn’t she just dump them on me while I was sleeping?” asked Velveteen, sounding curious despite herself.
He grimaced. “Because she was afraid your powers would wake up before the rest of you, decide your body’s poor health was a sign of danger, and kick off what she called a ‘gray goo apocalypse.’ I’m not big on apocalypses under, you know, the best of circumstances, and that sounded sort of like the worst.”
“That’s fair,” said Velveteen grudgingly. “So what’s wrong with me?”
“Dehydration, malnutrition, exhaustion. Imagineer said it was like you hadn’t slept in years. People aren’t supposed to do that.”
“I wasn’t always a people when I was in the Seasonal Lands,” said Velveteen.
Then she stopped, going perfectly still, one hand remaining wrapped around the opposing wrist. It was her fingers that moved first. They tightened, virtually spasming, before she forced her hands down to her lap, and asked, “Aaron, how long have I been gone?”
Action Dude took a deep breath before reaching over and putting his hands over hers.
It was a more intimate gesture than he normally allowed himself to even consider.
It was necessary. He was going to hold her down if he had to.
“You defeated Supermodel and kept your word to the Seasonal Lands three years ago, Vel. That’s how long it’s been since you disappeared. ”
She stared at him, uncomprehending, for several seconds before she shook her head and said, “You’re lying. This is a trick. It’s a mean trick, and I don’t understand why you’d do this, but it’s still a trick.”
“It’s not a trick,” said Action Dude. “Three years, Vel. We didn’t even know if you were alive or dead.
We couldn’t find anyone who could give us updates on Spring or Autumn—no one’s seen Trick or Treat since you disappeared—and when we asked Jacqueline, she said she wasn’t allowed to comment on holiday matters.
We hoped the fact that she’s your friend would mean she’d break the rules enough to tell us if you’d died, but we didn’t know. ”
“Jackie?” said Vel, bemused.
“Things have changed a lot while you’ve been gone, Vel. You’re here for your own protection. I’m sorry about the handcuffs, and I’m sorry I couldn’t be here when you woke up, but we had to know that you wouldn’t run away. We had to know that you’d be safe.”
“Safe from who?”
Out of everything, this was the part he’d been dreading: this was the part that felt the most like failure.
Action Dude let go of her hands. “After Supermodel died, with Tag out of the picture and you off in the Seasonal Lands, the government went looking for someone to blame for what had happened. You know how ordinary people are about superhumans. You took the same classes I did.”
“I remember,” she whispered. A World That Hates and Fears You 101; Great Responsibility 201; Everyone Wants to Be Special 301.
Class after class explaining that people without powers would always be afraid of the people who had them, and that nothing would change this, and that the only way to cope would always be to pretend that it didn’t hurt. Even though it did.
“I guess the government’s been waiting for a long time for the chance to start regulating things.
We have lawyers—they sort of run themselves, all we have to do is sign the checks—but all the old fights about keeping the law from impinging on the freedom of the superhuman community had been based on the idea that we were self-regulating.
Only now it turns out Supermodel was sort of evil, and we weren’t self-regulating as well as we’d always wanted people to think we were. ”
Velveteen was quiet for a moment before she asked, “What did they do?”