VELVETEEN vs. The Consequences of Her Actions #2
“You know what the worst thing about this is? That makes perfect sense to me right now.” Yelena cupped her hands around her mouth and called, “We’ve talked about this, Victoria.
Aaron didn’t have anything to do with the registration process, and Velma’s been in the Seasonal Lands.
She had no idea what we were going through. You need to put the laser down.”
“Again they cause you harm, and again you would forgive them?” Torrey stopped firing in order to shoot a withering glare at her girlfriend. “I love you, my Pol, but your blind spots for the bunny are well-established, and no longer to be borne. This ends tonight.”
“Not in my house, it doesn’t,” said the Princess.
Her words fell into the space between them like bricks into a wall, cold and implacable and terrifyingly heavy.
Yelena winced. Velveteen leaned back, eyes wide, to stare at the woman in front of her.
Suddenly, the Princess looked like a stranger. A dangerous one.
“Y’all are guests in my home, and I expect you to comport yourselves accordingly,” continued the Princess.
“If I let you kill each other in front of me, you think that’s going to do me one poison apple piece of good?
I’m holding on by a thread here, Victoria.
They’re trying to make you a villain in word, but they’re not going to stop there with me.
You know that. I know that. Now calm the fuck down. ”
Torrey opened her mouth to reply. Then she stopped, sagging in the arms of the topiary dragon. “My apologies, Princess.”
“Damn right, your apologies. Vel?” The Princess turned, looking down at the crouching woman.
There was something like pity in her eyes.
There was also something like disgust. It was jarring, seeing that combination on her face.
“Tell the nice hedges to put her down, and put them back where you found them.”
“Right.” Vel straightened up. The dragon holding Victory Anna lowered her to the ground before lurching back into its original position.
It was badly damaged, but it still made the effort to curve its neck majestically before it froze.
The other topiary followed, all of them going still as the animation left them.
Velveteen sagged, looking unsteady. Action Dude hurried to slip an arm around her waist, holding her up while she got her balance back. She offered him a wan, grateful smile.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m still getting used to having skin again.”
“Charming as that image is, how about you say your hellos, and we move on to the meat of the thing?” The Princess crossed her arms. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, and time’s not as long as it used to be.”
Victory Anna smoothed her skirt with the heels of her hands.
She was no longer holding her laser gun.
It didn’t appear to be clipped to her belt, either.
Sometimes Vel suspected all gadgeteers of having access to some sort of extradimensional pocket.
“I don’t want to talk,” she said primly.
“I already know what she’s going to say. ”
“Oh, really?” Action Dude angled his body slightly, keeping himself between Vel and Victory Anna. “What’s that?”
“She’s going to say it isn’t her fault.” Victory Anna crossed her arms. “She’s going to say she couldn’t possibly have known that this was going to happen, even though she should absolutely have known this was going to happen.
The writing was on the wall before she walked through that door.
This was inevitable. She did it anyway. She left us behind.
She let us take the brunt of everything she didn’t want to deal with.
Now we’re villains in name and the Princess is in the process of becoming one in fact, and nothing is going to take that back.
Why should I forgive her? Why should anyone forgive her? ”
“Because forgiveness is all we have left.” The voice was weary and almost familiar, just enough to the left of what it should have been that Velveteen straightened, turning to look in confusion at the speaker.
It was a woman. She was wearing a red and white ball gown—the Princess put everyone in ball gowns if given half a chance—and her hair was a shade of white that somehow reflected in blue and pink and purple, like she had worked an aurora into the strands.
Her face would have been familiar, if not for the color of her skin: it should have been blue and glittering, like the world’s tallest, bustiest Smurf.
Instead, she was pale as winter, with rosy cheeks and naturally red lips.
She looked at Velveteen like her heart was breaking.
“Hello, Velveteen,” she said.
Vel blinked. “Who the fuck are you?” she asked.
* * *
The Princess had stepped in after Jacqueline appeared, sweeping everyone off to her council room.
Like everything else in the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle, it was opulent to the point of becoming ridiculous: the floor was marble, the walls were mahogany drowning in velvet, and the table where they were all instructed to sit was solid stone, like something stolen from a production of Camelot.
The chairs were leather; the chandelier was crystal; the air was cold.
That last was the hardest for Velveteen to ignore.
In between stealing glances at Jacqueline and trying to avoid meeting Victory Anna’s eyes, she looked around the room and noted the shadows in the corners.
The drapes closest to them were a deep pomegranate red, but the fabric seemed to darken the further it got from the table, until it was a true and unrelenting black.
“All right, sugar, let’s get down to business,” said the Princess, standing at the head of the table and leaning forward so that her weight was resting on the palms of her hands.
Everyone else was seated. The difference in their heights was calculated in a way that sent a shiver down Vel’s spine.
The Princess she knew liked to be one among equals. This Princess…something was wrong.
The Princess looked at her and said calmly, “I was the last person to see you before you took off. Did you know that? I let you leave from here. If I really think about it, I can remember that it was the right thing to do. But it’s a little harder to see that every day, because see, after you left, after the government finished painting you as public enemy number one, the bogeyman we needed to defeat if normal humans were going to be safe, that’s when they started coming after me.
Did I know where you were. Did I know when you were coming back.
They even sent this inept supervillain to one of my press conferences, like he could trick me into saying something I didn’t know.
I guess that should have been a clue that I was in trouble. ”
“It wasn’t just Vel,” said Yelena. She was sitting between Velveteen and Victory Anna, keeping them apart but keeping them close at the same time.
This close, it was impossible for Vel not to see how tired she was.
The past few years hadn’t been easy on any of them.
“We painted a target on you when we took refuge here.”
“Oh believe me, I know, and I have to fight the impulse to wring your scrawny neck every time I look at your moon-eyed face.” The Princess shuddered.
It was a bone-deep motion, seeming to originate in her spine and sweep through her entire body.
“We’re approaching the point where it won’t be safe for you to stay.
I don’t know what’s going to happen then. ”
“My father says he can offer succor for the Nice,” said the stranger with the white hair, the one everyone but Vel seemed to think belonged. “I’m so sorry, Carrabelle, but…”
“But we both know that if you have to run to get away from me, I’m going to be on the Naughty list,” said the Princess grimly. “There’s no escaping it.”
Velveteen raised her hand. “Okay. I’m exhausted and malnourished and I’m probably going to collapse soon, or start sucking the life out of everything around me like a fucking vampire, but could you please explain what the hell is going on?”
“I am the manifestation of the dreams of children,” said the Princess.
Her voice was almost serene. “I was chosen because I was the best vessel in the world for the ideal of the fairy tale princess. I was the little girl that the magic looked at and said ‘yes, her, she’ll do.’ And because I helped you, because I sheltered villains, because I refused to let myself be taken or controlled, there are people out there right now manipulating the narrative. They’re using my own power against me.”
“Movies, books, comics, rumors on the Internet—they’re blanketing the world with the idea that the Princess is a bad guy,” said Yelena.
Her voice was hollow. She sounded like someone who’d already lost. “It’s so easy, sometimes, to trick people into thinking the worst of someone they’ve always had questions about. ”
“It’s not fair,” snapped Victory Anna. “The divinity which suffuses you should be smarter than this. Less vulnerable to manipulation. Better.”
“Maybe if your world hadn’t popped like a balloon, it would be,” said the Princess. “Too bad the multiverse decided this reality worked better. And here, if people change my story, they change me.”
“There has to be a way out of this,” said Action Dude.
The Princess fixed him with a level gaze.
“Honey, I don’t suggest you start trying to tell me you had no idea, because you and I both know it would be a lie, and this ain’t the best time for lying to me.
You knew I was having problems. You had problems of your own.
That’s fine. When the part of me that doesn’t want to start breaking out the spindles and the shears backs off, I even understand.
But that part of me is dwindling, and right now, it’s best that you don’t attempt to deflect blame. ”