VELVETEEN PRESENTS TAG vs. Being Alive #3
Not that he particularly wanted to, unless it was in the more socially acceptable “bringing your loved ones genuinely back to life, not powering them with your own life force” way.
Which seemed unlikely. He peeled away another sheet of misspelled lettering, shaking it into oblivion.
As an animus, he was more powerful than his power set appeared on the surface, but as someone who liked his little slice of the superhuman world, he was unlikely to ever push for much more than this.
The best heroes, in his eyes, were the ones who spent as much time serving communities as they did stopping crime.
They weren’t cops, they didn’t have the social remit that the police did, and behaving like cops had never helped anyone feel more like they belonged among the people who needed them.
He peeled another skewed tag off the wall, letting it wisp into nothing.
If he didn’t belong among the people, he didn’t have any business where he was.
The teens cheered as this revealed the stretch of open wall they’d been hoping for, and they fell upon their canvas with hunger. Tag stepped back, smiling as he let them work.
This was better than being dead. This was worth living for.
* * *
Tag stayed with the teens while they worked, observing their art, making suggestions when they seemed like they’d be welcome, and keeping the authorities from breaking up the party, which was the absolute definition of not hurting anyone.
The wall looked so much better after they repainted it that this whole evening could really only be called civic improvement.
“You okay, guy?” asked the leader of the group, nudging him with an elbow during a pause in painting. “You don’t gotta stay and babysit us, you know. We can take care of ourselves.”
“I know. But I’m enjoying the night, and it’s so nice to just smell paint and hear the cans going and know that I’m here, and I’m alive, and this is all really happening.”
“You were really dead, huh?”
“Yeah. I was really dead. It kinda sucked.”
“Did you like, go to hell or something?”
“Thankfully, not so much. I don’t think I ‘went’ anywhere.
I died, and then I wasn’t dead anymore, and the middle was like a long, dreamless nap, but one of the ones where you wake up and your neck hurts and you don’t know what day of the week it is anymore, you know?
I’m glad to be awake again, but nothing really happened while I was gone.
I’m glad to be back.” He paused. “I’m not sure I’d said that in so many words before now. ”
“How did you come back? If it’s not like, mad rude for me to ask. I’ve never talked with a formerly dead guy before.”
“I don’t know whether it’s rude or not. There are probably support groups in some of the bigger cities, but there isn’t one around here, so it’s not like I’ve asked anybody what should or shouldn’t offend me. Just please, no zombie jokes, okay?”
“Deal.”
“Cool. Well. I died, and you know Velveteen?”
“City hero, yeah? We’ve seen her a time or two.
She never messes with us. Like, ever. She’s come charging through where we were working a few times, and she doesn’t stop, and she doesn’t come back later.
It’s not like I ever felt like she approved of us, but she didn’t object, either.
She got a soft spot for graffiti artists? ”
“Something like that.” Tag smiled, thinking of how big her soft spot for graffiti artists had sometimes been. “Anyway, after I died, she helped get my body to the Princess, who put me in one of her glass coffins to wait for someone to come along and wake me up.”
“You mean true love’s kiss?”
“Something like that,” repeated Tag. “The lady who’d come to wake me up kissed me, I woke up, we made out—a lot—and now I’m here and she won’t talk to me. I can’t tell if I did something wrong or what.”
“If I were her, I’d be afraid I’d done something wrong, or that like, you would feel all obligated to stick around and play happy families with me even if what you wanted was to blow this burger stand and get back to living your life.”
“I don’t feel obligated, and the Princess would have told us if true love’s kiss came with an inability to leave when I wanted to. Maybe we’ll break up someday, but right now I want to get back to living my life with the woman I was already dating when I died.”
“Have you tried telling her that?”
“She won’t spend more than five minutes in a room with me.”
The teen shrugged. “Some of us are pretty good at nonverbal communication.” He indicated the wall, where one of the others was putting the finishing touches on a bouquet of spray paint roses while his partner grinned at him, both of them lost in their own worlds, fingers sticky with paint. “You could try it.”
“I guess I could,” said Tag. “You’re pretty smart for a kid who breaks into parks at night to paint things.”
“I’m in my second year of community college, getting my degree in social work,” said the teen. “I’m going to be a community organizer after I graduate. I better be pretty smart, and my hobbies don’t have anything to do with it.”
Tag laughed. “No, I guess they wouldn’t,” he agreed.
Patrol could wait. He’d just come back from the dead, and this was more than enough for his first night on the streets.
No one would blame him. Leaning against the wall, Tag watched his new friends painting and contemplated how he could best explain to Velveteen that she wasn’t keeping him against his will, and he just needed her to talk to him.
There had to be a way. And he was going to find it.
After all, he was alive, and they had all the time in the world.
* * *
Velveteen returned from her own patrol shortly after midnight, slouching into the house through her bedroom window, which was only ever locked when she was home.
(Leaving it unlocked when she wasn’t home created an opportunity for her housemates to have a fun encounter with a home intruder who, by breaking into a house filled with superheroes, would not be breaking into a house filled with civilians.
Unless they lined the windowsill with valuables or otherwise tried to make their house seem more appealing to the criminal element, it wasn’t considered entrapment, and as long as there wasn’t a robber landing on her while she tried to sleep, Vel had no issues with the idea.)
She allowed the tension to leave her shoulders as she slid the window closed behind herself.
Patrol was a part of her job, and she enjoyed it more than she could really put into words, but it was dangerous, and the thought of returning home hadn’t done anything to help her stay relaxed. It had just been so hard since…
Well, since she’d gone and brought her boyfriend back from the dead. If he even was her boyfriend anymore, which wasn’t something she felt qualified to decide on her own.
Something tugged on her ankle. She looked down, and there was one of the fashion dolls, standing on perpetually pointed toes and offering her a long-stemmed red rose. Vel blinked and reached down to take it.
It was perfect, each petal curved exquisitely, each thorn just blunt enough to not draw blood.
She sniffed the rose, automatically, and was unsurprised when it smelled of watermelon and cherry—scented markers, the kind that came in a pack of twelve different colors, used with exquisite skill to create something miles away from her own awkward attempts at art.
She looked behind herself, and there was a teddy bear holding a sunflower, and another fashion doll, this one with some kind of orchid, and a toy robot with a gloriously impossible flower like something out of a children’s storybook. She sighed.
“All right,” she said. “Bring me your flowers.”
All the toys in the room started moving toward her, and she waited where she was and let them come, taking flower after flower until her rose became a bouquet, then an armload of fruit-scented blossoms, only some of which could have been purchased at the local florist.
When the last flower had been added to her pile, she looked around one final time, then dropped the whole lot onto the bed. “Tag?” she asked. “Are you in here?”
There was no reply. She sighed, straightened her headband, and moved to ease the bedroom door open. There was no one in the hall outside. “Right,” she said, and started toward the living room.
Yelena and Torrey weren’t there when she arrived, which was something of a relief, since they didn’t need to witness every conversation she took part in.
Instead, Tag was sitting on the edge of the couch.
He was in uniform, just like she was, and he was watching the hallway with a heartbreaking hope.
“Hey,” she said, subdued.
“Hey,” he replied. “You got the flowers?”
“I did. Thank you. How long did those take to draw?”
“Not long,” said Tag. “I wanted to make you something nice. Did you like them?”
“They’re very pretty, thank you.”