VELVETEEN vs. Recovery #3
You don’t even know how far you’ve come, thought the Princess, and the thought cheered and saddened her in equal measure. Miracles were meant to be appreciated. When they weren’t, sometimes the universe saw fit to take them back. Aloud, she said, “If I told you, that would spoil the surprise.”
“I know it’s not you, and I know it’s not Jack. Did you get Yelena to come?” Velveteen cast her a quick, hopeful look. “I know she and Torrey have been busy keeping Portland under control, but it’s Portland. It’s not like they’re trying to protect Manhattan without backup.”
“She wishes she could, sugar, but the two of you together, there’s no way you’d be able to avoid the media. She’s literally a neon sign saying ‘look over here.’”
“Not always.”
“Doesn’t matter. She’s not coming.” The delicate sound of crystal wind chimes filled the air. The Princess relaxed. “Oh, good. Your escort is here.”
Velveteen turned with her, all but bouncing on the balls of her feet with her eagerness to get out there and punch something. The Princess watched her out of the corner of her eye. She saw the moment the other woman’s face fell.
“Oh,” said Velveteen. “It’s you.”
Action Dude, dressed in a slate gray and black version of his customary blue and orange costume, smiled wryly as he shrugged.
“Always am,” he said. “I’ve asked about changing it a few times, but it turns out all I can really change is my code name.
Not even entirely that. People were calling Dead Ringer Liberty Belle right up until she died.
They still do it. Like what she wanted to be called and who she wanted to be doesn’t matter. ”
The Princess snorted. “People always feel like they know who you are better than you know yourself. It’s not fair, but there it is.”
“We’re getting away from the point, which is why is he here?” Velveteen pointed at Action Dude to prevent any possible confusion. “I’m not going on patrol with him.”
“Well, then, you’re not going on patrol,” said the Princess. Before Velveteen could protest, she said, “Once you take your usual team off the table, there’s no one out there who cares more about your well-being than this asshole. He’ll make sure you get out of there alive.”
“I’m going to look for muggers, not supervillains,” protested Velveteen.
“Oh, yeah, because supervillainy never takes anybody by surprise.” The Princess looked at her flatly. “Accept the escort or don’t go. Those are the terms that you agreed to, and I’m going to hold you to them.”
“This was a low-down dirty trick and I hate you,” said Velveteen.
“I can live with that,” said the Princess. Her smile was as radiant as the fireworks above the castle battlements. “You kids have fun now, and don’t stay out too late. You know how I worry.”
* * *
Kansas City had been chosen as a good place for Velveteen’s first post-return patrol.
It was big enough to have a decent amount of crime, while small enough not to have a resident supervillain with technopathic inclinations.
Having the local Legion of Naughtiness show up before Vel could punch any local muggers in the face would have made the entire exercise pointless.
“The door will stay here until you come back,” said the Princess, opening what should have been the library door to reveal a narrow alleyway. “If you pass an all-night barbeque place, bring me some. I could really do with some decent barbeque about now.”
“On it,” said Velveteen, and dove through the open door into the alley. Action Dude moved to follow.
The Princess’s hand on the collar of his cape stopped him cold. He turned to find her beautiful, unforgiving face only inches from his own. Suddenly nervous, he forced a smile.
“Yes?” he asked.
“If you hurt her, if you allow her to come to harm, I don’t care how important you are to rebuilding your little clubhouse, I will break you in ways you have never considered being broken.
” The Princess’s tone remained perfectly pleasant in every way.
“I will shatter you and leave you behind without a second thought, and the only people who’ll mourn you will be the ones who didn’t know you as well as I did. Do we have an understanding?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“Good.” She let go. “Run along now. She’s not likely to stay out of trouble while she waits for you.”
He ran along. Admirably fast, too: the Princess wasn’t sure she’d ever seen someone run along that quickly when not running for their lives. Then again, maybe she still hadn’t.
Chuckling to herself, she closed the door and wandered toward the kitchen. After all that, she’d more than earned a little pie.
Half a continent and a time zone away, Action Dude jogged to catch up with Velveteen, who was making for the end of the alley like she was afraid her shore leave was going to be canceled at any moment.
She barely spared him a glance as he stepped up beside her; the bulk of her attention was reserved for the empty street.
Nothing moved. Not even a raccoon. Privately, Action Dude thought that might be for the best: he couldn’t imagine a situation in which a raccoon would have committed crimes great enough to deserve the full force of Velveteen’s pent-up wrath.
“Do you want to hit the rooftops?” he asked. “You can get a better view.”
“No fire escapes, and I’m really not feeling up to scaling a building,” she said.
Action Dude lifted an eyebrow in answer before allowing his feet to lose contact with the ground. Drifting, he waited.
It wasn’t a long wait. It never was. Velveteen turned to look at him, already scowling. “Show-off,” she snapped. “I don’t need anyone to carry me. I’m not a trainee anymore.”
“I never said you were,” he said. “But when one half of a team-up can fly and the other can’t, it only makes sense to take advantage. Don’t think of it as me carrying you. Think of it as you riding me.”
As soon as her cheeks flushed red, he knew he’d said the wrong thing.
It was too late to take it back, and too late to avoid the finger she jabbed at his chest. “I’m not still mooning over you, got it?
I got past that a long time ago. So if you’re here because you think we can start up where we left off—where you dumped me off—then you’re out of your fucking mind. Got it?”
“Got it,” said Action Dude wearily. “Honestly, I got it a long time ago. I fucked up. If I could go back and do it all differently, I…well, honestly, I don’t know if I would, because maybe if we’d stayed together Supermodel would still be alive and screwing with everyone’s heads, and Sparks would still be pretending to be happy when she was completely miserable, and I don’t know if I could live with myself knowing I’d been that selfish.
But I’m also pretty glad I’m never going to have the chance to find out.
So please, can you give me the benefit of the doubt for one minute, and let me boost you onto the rooftop? ”
“I…” Velveteen stopped, looking at him carefully. Then, finally, she said, “Sure. We’ll have a better view from up there anyway.”
His smile was a fleeting thing, there and gone almost before it could fully register.
He opened his arms. Velveteen turned her back on him and, with the ease of long practice and training, fell into them, positioning herself so as to be easy to hoist and even easier to drop.
(When doing teammate transport, the onus was generally on the one being transported to protect the flier, rather than the other way around.)
Effortlessly, Action Dude launched himself into the sky, shooting upward at a speed that defied several laws of physics.
Velveteen was heavier than she’d been the last time he’d carried her this way, but he was stronger, and it balanced out: it all balanced out, oh, this was where his equilibrium was, where it had been waiting for him for years on years.
This was where he had always been meant to be.
By the time they reached the rooftop and he set her gently down, Action Dude was grimly certain of two things. First, that he had made a mistake by agreeing to be the Princess’s representative on this little adventure, and second…
Second, that he was a hypocrite of the worst kind, because if some cosmic force had appeared to him in that moment and offered him the chance to take it all back, he would have done it without hesitation or regret.
He would have traded a world that wasn’t better yet, necessarily, but was getting there for a world where he had been smart enough to hold on tight and never let go.
He was so screwed.
Velveteen spared him a quick smile, just a few shades warmer than professional, before creeping to the roof’s edge and peering over.
Her form was perfect. Her form had always been perfect.
Out of their training class, she had been the only one who couldn’t handle a bullet without serious repercussions, and so she had been the one to work hardest at never getting shot.
After a moment’s silent surveillance she stepped back from the edge, straightened, and started for the corner, moving at a dead run.
Action Dude realized what she was going to do a bare second before she did it.
He zipped after her, grabbing her outstretched hands while she was at the peak of her jump and using himself as a sort of human trapeze bar, launching her onto the next roof.
She rolled easily through it, getting back to her feet and resuming her run.
They fell into an easy rhythm, familiar and novel at the same time. How often had they used this pattern to canvass, him in the air but flying low, her moving under her own power as much as possible to increase their combined flexibility? How many nights, how many evenings, how many patrols?
Not enough. It could have been a lifetime—should have been a lifetime, the two of them against the world—and it would never, ever have been enough.