VELVETEEN vs. The Consequences of Her Actions #3
“That’s not what I meant,” protested Action Dude. “Couldn’t you…I don’t know, couldn’t you let go of your story? I mean, of your powers? We’d still have to go somewhere else, but at least you wouldn’t have to worry that you’d end up hurting someone.”
The Princess went very still. Then, in a strangled voice, she said, “Get out.”
“What?” Action Dude looked at her blankly. “Why do you want me to—”
“Get out!” Her voice was a howl of agony, at war with itself.
Velveteen grabbed his arm, ready to drag him out of there, only to freeze as someone grabbed her shoulder. She twisted around to find the white-haired stranger holding onto her. She had what looked like a snow globe in her free hand.
“Sorry,” she said, and hurled the snow globe at the ground. It shattered. Snow rose up around them, swirling and skirling, and the council room went away, taking the Princess, Yelena, and Victory Anna with it.
* * *
When the snow settled, Velveteen, Action Dude, and the stranger were standing on one of the castle battlements.
The sky was dark, and filled with fireworks.
The sky was always dark and filled with fireworks from this particular battlement.
They somehow cast enough light for everyone to see clearly.
The Princess’s domain might be changing, but its essential laws were, for the moment, still the same.
The white-haired woman let go of Velveteen’s shoulder like it was hot, dancing back, out of easy hitting range. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to touch you without your permission, but after he said that—”
“After I said what?” asked Action Dude blankly.
Velveteen sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand. “The Princess owes too much to her story. She can’t just give her powers up. It doesn’t work that way for her. Maybe you could walk away if you thought it was the right thing to do, but she can’t. She doesn’t have that option.”
Action Dude opened his mouth. Then he paused, and closed it again. After a long, silent moment, he said, “Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t think.”
“I know. And I know you didn’t mean anything by it, and hopefully she does too, because if she’s about to make the switch from Princess to Evil Queen, I’d rather not be her first target.
” Velveteen lowered her hand and turned to the white-haired woman.
“Next order of business: who the hell are you?”
“You know who I am,” said the white-haired woman. She sounded almost apologetic. Somehow that was worse than the way she wore her face, which looked so wrong cast in pink, when it should have been glittering blue. “I know she took you through the Hall of Mirrors. You saw me there.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Action Dude looked between the two, visibly confused. “Vel, you’re the one who introduced me to Jack. When we were filming our first holiday special, remember? She took us home to meet her parents.”
“That happened,” said the white-haired woman. “But it also didn’t happen.”
“Damn right it didn’t happen,” said Velveteen. “Who are you, and what have you done with Jackie?”
The white-haired woman visibly flinched, closing her eyes for a moment as she composed herself. Finally, she opened them and said, “My name is Jacqueline Claus, and I didn’t do anything with Jackie. Jackie did it to herself. Jackie acted against her nature.”
It was Velveteen’s turn to stop dead. She became a statue, so still that she might as well have been one of the gargoyles that littered the battlements around them.
Action Dude took a step backward, suddenly aware of just how sharp the claws on those gargoyles were.
Sure, he had superstrength, flight, and virtual invulnerability, but that didn’t mean he wanted to get his ass kicked by a piece of statuary. It was embarrassing.
“What do you mean, exactly?” asked Velveteen. Her voice was low and tight: a danger sign if there’d ever been one.
“You know what I mean,” said Jacqueline. Her voice was as low as Velveteen’s, but it was far from tight: it was filled, top to bottom, with the deepest sorrow.
“No. I don’t.” Velveteen glared at her, stubborn suspicion written in every line of her too-thin face. “Jackie is my friend. If you’re trying to take her place, you’re in for a shock, lady.”
“You guys are giving me a headache,” said Action Dude.
“What are you talking about? We’ve known Jack since we were kids.
I mean, hell, when Marketing was trying to convince the world that you were the worst, the fact that you spent half your time with Santa’s daughter was one of the things your allies used to argue.
Santa’s daughter wouldn’t have been one of your best friends if you were bad. ”
“I’m Santa’s daughter, but I’m not his child,” said Jacqueline.
Action Dude frowned, and she continued, “He adopted me when I was just a few days old. When my skin was blue and my hands were freezing. My biological parents—if it’s really biology when they craft you like a living snowman, Frosty taken to a new extreme—are Jack Frost and the Snow Queen. ”
“Stop lying,” said Velveteen.
“My mother made me because she wanted an heir, and then she looked at me, my father’s magic turning snow to skin, blizzard to breath, and she realized that she didn’t love me.
She was never going to love me. I was less of the living Winter than she was, than her husband was; they both rose from the seasonal subconscious, while I was a choice.
I was a handicraft, like a stocking stitched and stuffed with care.
” Jacqueline’s voice turned bitter. “She made me because she wanted me, and then she realized I wasn’t perfect by her standards, and she didn’t want me anymore.
And in some realities she kept me anyway, because even if I wasn’t perfect, I was hers, and the Snow Queen doesn’t share.
In those worlds, the cold never left my hands.
I grew up slinging ice and snow and racing through the world, trying to stop the freeze from spreading all the way to my heart. ”
“That sounds awful,” said Action Dude, sounding bemused and a little horrified. Velveteen didn’t say anything at all.
“It was, and it wasn’t,” said Jacqueline.
“Some of those versions of me let themselves freeze, either because it was easier, or because they didn’t find any friends worth thawing for.
They call themselves ‘Frostbite’ or ‘Glacier,’ and they don’t care that they’re cold, and they’ll all be Jack Frost’s replacement someday.
Others thawed too much, and they live in heavy coats and never take off their gloves for fear of the cold, and they’re going to be our mother’s heir, and they hate it.
They call themselves ‘Snow Princess,’ usually.
They try so hard. That’s probably the worst outcome, because no matter what they do, our mother won’t love them, and they won’t stop trying. ”
“And then there’s you,” said Velveteen.
“And then there’s me,” agreed Jacqueline.
“My mother—the version of the Snow Queen who made me—realized she was never going to love me, and told my father to get rid of me. She said she couldn’t stand the sight of my face.
So he took me to Santa, because he’s not cruel.
Jack Frost is the playful side of the season.
He’s killed his fair share of people who didn’t come in out of the cold.
He’s never done it without a good reason. ”
“Santa and his wife adopted you,” said Velveteen. “They thawed you. All the way down to the bone.”
“Hence the snow globes,” said Jacqueline. “I’m still enough Jack Frost that I can travel through a swirl of snow, but I can’t make it for myself. Santa has them made for me, to get me out of trouble.”
Velveteen looked at her steadily for several seconds. Jacqueline didn’t look away. Finally, in a voice gone dead and dull from exhaustion, Velveteen asked, “Where’s Jackie?”
“Everyone who serves a season is an archetype as much as they’re an individual.
You know that. You know what each season would have asked you to become.
Because I was born there, I had choices.
Different ways for me to be. I could be Frostbite, the cruel edge of Winter, not caring who I froze, as long as I never had to thaw.
I could be the Snow Princess, guiding travelers home, risking myself against an uncaring cold to make sure that there was safety in the storm.
I could be Jacqueline Claus, a girl who existed because of kindness, spreading and magnifying that same kindness through the holiday season.
Or I could be Jackie Frost, always hungry, always reaching for more.
Selfishness without malice. Self-protection without persecution. ”
“What happens to a seasonal archetype who acts against their nature?” Memory was starting to slither into the forefront of Velveteen’s mind, slow and implacable and undeniable.
A frozen world; a challenge unanswered; a transformative shell of ice and snow that had been somehow warm, like it wanted her to be safe more than it wanted her to be possessed.
She hadn’t seen Jackie craft the dome that had kept her from the cold long enough for Winter to remake her, but she hadn’t really needed to see Jackie.
She’d known that the other girl had been there.
“It depends on what they did,” said Jacqueline.
She looked at Velveteen, and while she didn’t nod, she didn’t have to: her expression of resigned acknowledgment was enough.
“For someone who was the selfish side of Christmas, it would seem like acting to save a friend was within their archetype, right? Selfishness endangering the world. Unless that person knew that saving their friend would come with consequences. Unless they put someone else’s good ahead of their own.
That would be an act of selflessness. That would be enough to cost.”
“How much?”