VELVETEEN vs. Everything You Ever Wanted #3
There was Velma. She was wearing her costume, or something like it; she was wearing the costume he guessed she would have had if she’d been allowed to grow into it, updating and refining it with every stage of her superhero career.
It was still burgundy and brown, still form-fitting, but the neckline was gently scooped across her chest, neither a child’s turtleneck nor a sexpot’s plunge.
Marketing hadn’t designed that neckline.
She was wearing neither mask nor headband—this was a private moment with her family, either right before or right after patrol.
A pair of fashion dolls were holding up a bowl of mash, while she steered a spoonful of the same stuff toward the smaller child’s mouth.
He must have made a sound, some small, almost inaudible expression of longing and dismay, because she looked up, and she smiled at him. Really smiled at him, the way she used to before he broke her heart and left her unwilling to trust him ever again.
“There you are,” she said. “I was starting to worry that you weren’t going to have time to grab something to eat before we had to go.
Do you want some lasagna? I can reheat it for you.
Or you can reheat it for yourself while I handle the kids.
” Unspoken was the threat that if he asked her to fix his dinner, he was taking over childcare.
He wanted to take over childcare—he wanted it more than he’d wanted anything in years—but he had no idea how to handle children, and besides, he was about to take that smile off her face.
He didn’t want to be holding one of her children when it happened.
“Blueberries,” he said, in a low, almost strangled voice.
Velma blinked. “We don’t have any,” she said. “It’s lasagna or you could make yourself a sandwich. There are some cold cuts in the fridge. Or there’s Sho’s mash, but she’ll get mad if you eat too much of it.”
“I…” He stopped, shaking his head to clear it, and said, “You know, we made one mistake when we were kids.”
“What’s that?” asked Vel. She put down the spoon, standing up a little straighter. She was starting to look wary. That was a good thing. She might be less furious with him if she caught on without him actually needing to say it.
Who was he kidding? He was an intruder in her home. He had replaced her husband and failed to keep her daughter from jumping off the stairs. She was going to straight-up murder him once she realized what was going on. “Remember how we used to play ‘How Would You Know If I Got Replaced’?”
“Yes,” she said slowly.
“We didn’t account for the fact that maybe our code words would be different from world to world.”
Velma froze. Utterly froze. Aaron waited. He knew what came next.
When she started moving again, she was Velveteen, even without the mask and rabbit ears.
Her posture was tight, her motions sharp; her every angle screamed “justice,” even if there was nothing here for her to fight.
“Katie, why don’t you take your sister and see if you can find all those Legos you dumped out in the backyard? ”
“Can’t the dollies do it?” asked Katie.
“They could, but this way it’s like a game,” said Velveteen. “Go on, now. If you can find them all before I come outside to get you, you’ll get a prize.”
“Okay, Mommy,” said Katie, and slid down from her seat, waiting until Velveteen had freed the smaller girl from her high chair before taking her sister’s hand and skipping toward the back door. Velveteen watched them go, posture still tense.
The children vanished out the door. The door swung shut. A surprising number of plush toys appeared in the corners of the kitchen, pulling themselves out from under shelves, stepping out of shadows. A few of them had knives. Because that wasn’t terrifying or anything.
“Who are you, and where is my husband?” demanded Velveteen, in a low voice.
“My name is Aaron Frank. I go by the code name ‘Action Dude’ in my home dimension. I—do you know a Jacqueline Claus, or a Snow Princess, or anybody like that?”
“I know Jack Claus, Santa’s son.”
“Okay. Okay. So I went into the Hall of Mirrors at the North Pole with my world’s version of you, and my world’s version of Jack, because we’re trying to find a special door that Santa Claus told us to look for.
” The more he talked, the more ridiculous it sounded.
“Um, anyway. I’m not your Aaron, I’m not sure whether I’m inhabiting his body or what, but this isn’t my costume, so I guess probably?
And I’ll leave just as soon as I know how, I promise. ”
“You could have tried to lie to me. You could have passed yourself off as my husband.”
“I would never lie to you,” he said—and even though he had, if only by omission; even if he’d allowed his Vel to think, for years, that he didn’t love her, that he loved her best friend instead—he absolutely meant it.
He could remember a life lived without lying to her.
He could remember their wedding. His eyes widened. “And I think we have a problem.”
“Oh, trust me, you have a few dozen problems right now, and I can come up with twenty or thirty more if you give me a few seconds.” She bared her teeth.
It wasn’t a smile. It was closer kin to the expression he would expect to see on a cornered animal.
“I’m an animus in a house with two small children.
Do you know how many things in here have faces?
You shouldn’t have approached me on my home ground. ”
“If I were here to attack you, do you really think I would have told you that something was going on?” Their honeymoon, spent on a cruise ship owned by the company the Princess worked for, miles from shore or supervillainy; Velma, trading in her civilian clothing for a swimsuit that had stolen most of his capacity for rational thought for days…
“Please. Listen. Something’s wrong.” His voice broke on the last word.
Maybe that was what made her stop, looking at him warily, and ask, “What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m not your Aaron, I know I’m not your Aaron, but the longer I stand here,” he waved his arms, indicating the kitchen around them, “the more I remember of his life. Like the swimsuit you wore on our—on your—honeymoon.”
She blinked before smirking at him and saying, “You know, somehow it doesn’t surprise me that if you were going to remember one thing about our marriage, it would be that damn swimsuit.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Neither am I. Aaron, take a deep breath, and focus. I believe you when you say that you’re not from this reality, especially if you’ve been hanging out with Jack again.
I just think that you’re also my husband.
You’re experiencing a dimensional overlay.
Hold on, and it will pass.” Concern shone in her eyes.
“We’ll need to go back to base and have Apothecary take a look at you, but it’s not like this has never happened before. You’re going to be fine.”
It was like a rope thrown to a drowning man. Aaron took a sharp breath. “You really think so?”
“I don’t want you near the kids until this has passed and Apothecary says you’re all right, but I know my husband, and you’re my husband. I know so.”
The doorbell rang.
Velma smiled wryly. “All right: you can’t answer that right now. If Katie comes back in with Sho, give them juice and come get me. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”
“Okay,” said Aaron, and watched as she walked out of the kitchen.
Most of the toys stayed behind, their knives still pointed at him.
That was soothing, in its own weird way.
She might believe that he was her Aaron, but she wasn’t going to leave him alone in her house, with her children close by. She was going to protect them.
Could he be her Aaron? Was there any possible way that she was right when she said that?
His memories seemed so bright and clear, and increasingly improbable in the face of this comfortable kitchen, in this lived-in home, with those little girls—his daughters—playing outside the window.
How could that be any more real than this?
Snow swirled in the middle of the kitchen. A white-haired girl in a red sweater patterned with snowflakes appeared at the middle of the portable blizzard, sagging with relief when she saw him. “Aaron,” she said. “There you are. We’ve been looking everywhere.”
“We?” asked Aaron blankly. She looked a little bit like Jack Claus, heir apparent to the North Pole, but Jack would never have worn pants that tight, or let his hair get that long.
He liked the casual playboy look. It got him into more bars.
“I’m sorry, have we met? And what are you doing in my house? ”
The woman wrinkled her nose. “Maybe we should have looked a little faster. Aaron, it’s me, Jack. We lost you when we stepped into the mirror. I need you to come with me. Vel’s waiting, and we still need to find Lena.”
Vel was in the other room, and the children were out in the yard, and this woman’s words were calling images out of the depths of his memory, thin and wavering and already fading away.
He could go with her. He could fight. Or he could give in, just once, and be happy.
He could be happy. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about, but my wife is in the other room, and I think you should go.
She’s going to be angry if she finds you here. ”
“You’re not angry, because you know you don’t belong here. Aaron, please.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, with genuine regret. “I don’t know you. Please leave.”
The woman looked pained. She produced a snow globe from inside her sweater and smashed it against the floor. A swirl of snow rose around her, and she was gone.