Velveteen vs. The Multiverse Page 16

  Had been…

  Had been Yelena, back when they were Velma and Yelena, best friends, not Velveteen and Sparkle Bright, teammates, or Velveteen and Sparkle Bright, mortal enemies. Lena was the only person Vel had ever lived with happily, and even though all that had been years ago, sometimes she still missed waking up and knowing that there was someone else she really, truly trusted in the room with her. Under normal circumstances, she probably would have grown up to fill that role with a boyfriend or a husband, but she’d never had normal circumstances, had she? She’d never had a chance.

  What she got instead was superpowers, and an unwanted housemate from a dimension that didn’t exist anymore by way of a dimension that never existed in the first place, and a cold rooftop under a starry sky, and waiting for someone who might not decide to show up. In short, what she got was her life, and now that she had it, she was going to have to live with it.

  Somewhere in the city below her a horn blared, and somewhere else, someone screamed. Velveteen twitched toward the sounds, but forced herself to stay where she was. Portland had survived before she showed up; it could survive for an hour or so now that she was on the job. Besides, Tag and Jory were both out there on patrol, fighting the good fight against petty crime, parking violations, and the occasional really stupid mugger.

  (Velveteen understood the attraction of living a life of crime, she honestly did. Make your own hours, be your own boss, and never worry about the office dress code. She just couldn’t understand what would drive a person without superpowers to take up a life of crime in a city that had a resident superhero. Especially since the plural of “super human” was essentially “squadron.” It was extremely rare for any one with powers to be fighting solo for very long; they attracted each other, like self-illuminating moths with a tropism toward worldending crisis events.)

  Fifteen more minutes. She could wait on the roof for fifteen more minutes before she had to admit that Blacklight wasn’t coming, and either she’d been wrong about Blacklight’s secret identity, or that secret identity was the reason that Blacklight wasn’t coming. It didn’t matter which it was. If she was still alone in fifteen minutes, she would leave the roof, return to street level, and dispense justice until she was tired of punching people in the face. Which, judging by the way she currently felt, might be the better part of a year. Fifteen more minutes.

  Those fifteen minutes raced by like they had super speed. When the last one was gone, Velveteen closed her eyes and sighed heavily. “Damn,” she murmured.

  “I’m not sure the situation calls for profanity,” said a voice behind her. Velveteen turned to see a familiar female figure, dressed head to toe in form-fitting black spandex, hovering about six inches off the roof. Her toes were pointed demurely downward, the flying ballerina. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “It’s okay,” said Velveteen, and stood. Her hands were shaking. She balled them into fists and stuck them behind her back, where hopefully they wouldn’t be noticed. Keep it together, Vel… she thought. “Thanks for coming. I know I don’t usually call you out of the blue like that, but this was sort of important.”

  “I’m always open to a team-up with you,” said Blacklight. The black mask that covered her face shifted slightly, like she was smiling under the fabric. “Your call surprised me, I’ll admit. Is everything okay with you? You sounded a little bit stressed out in your message.”

  No, everything is not okay with me; everything hasn’t been okay in a very long time. Velveteen took a breath, trying to sort through her thoughts. Then she opened her mouth to say what she’d called the other heroine to Portland to hear. What came out instead was: “Do you want to go beat the holy crap out of some muggers too stupid to find themselves an unprotected city?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” said Blacklight. By the tone of her voice, this time she was definitely smiling.

  It is a generally accepted truth that superhumans do not make friends easily. Their jobs are naturally isolating; they have trouble forming casual bonds with the people around them, fearing that too much familiarity might lead to murder or mutation. Classes of superhumans can be common, but some specific power combinations are incredibly rare or even unique, leading to enhanced feelings of isolation. A superhuman with an uncommon power set knows, deeply and without question, that no one understands them.

  As a consequence of this daily isolation, when a superhuman does manage to form a close emotional bond with another individual, whether superpowered or non, those bonds tend to acquire strength at an accelerated, almost unhealthy rate. Friendships and undying rivalries are born in a matter of hours, all fueled by the desperate, undeniably human need to connect—to know that someone, somewhere, understands them well enough to love them, or hate them. It doesn’t seem to matter which emotion wins. It’s the connection that matters, the feeling that, for one brief moment, they are not alone in this world.

  Superhuman relationships can change forms repeatedly during the lives of the parties involved, going from platonic friendships to romantic entanglements to sworn enemies without visibly affecting the status quo. Superhumans do not, for better or for worse, “move on.”

  It has been suggested that this tendency is exacerbated by the policies of The Super Patriots, Inc. regarding interpersonal communication and interaction. Rather than offering peer counseling and support, The Super Patriots, Inc. isolates groups of young heroes to “forge teams out of lone wolves and individualists.” The official documentation on this policy claims that it is the only way to give superhumans any concept of teamwork, which does not come naturally to people who can juggle cars. The world’s few solo heroes say that this is not just bullshit, but dangerous bullshit; superhumans are just people, and they will develop their personal stances on teamwork and friendship without having a corporate model thrust upon them. The Super Patriots, Inc. naturally claims that this is exactly what the dangerously unstable elements within the solo hero community would like everyone to believe, since a world without teams would be a world more open to manipulation by those same dangerous elements.

  Whatever the truth may be, these things are certain: superhumans don’t forge bonds easily…and once those bonds are formed, they rarely, if ever, let go.

  Blacklight darted and weaved in the air like a monochromatic lightning bolt, leaving trails of black glitter behind her. They sparkled for only an instant against the night. The light pouring from her hands was equally black, visible because it was so much darker than the darkness around it. Seeing light that black coming from the other heroine’s hands made Vel’s heart hurt a little. Yelena’s powers weren’t emotion-based, exactly, but the spectrum of her blasts was affected by her emotional state. Most of her colors didn’t match up to any normal color wheel—she blushed blue when she was embarrassed, and she shot out beams of bright yellow when she was angry. But depression and heartbreak and sadness had always been darker than her other colors, trending finally into absolute black. The whip she’d used on Velveteen during their first, and last, real confrontation had been made of black light.

  “Velveteen! Check your twenty!” shouted Blacklight. She blasted another mechanical bank robber with a solid bolt of blackness. He went down hard, stuttering and spitting sparks.

  Velveteen didn’t even turn. She just waved a hand, and Breyer horses swarmed the robot that had been able to slam into her, knocking the thing over and allowing the G.I. Joe dolls—sorry, action figures—that had been riding them to begin the process of hog-tying the struggling automaton. Another robot charged straight at her. This one, Velveteen grabbed by the head and flipped over her shoulder. It landed hard, and stopped moving.

  In satisfyingly short order, nothing was moving but the two heroines and Velveteen’s army of animated toys. Blacklight turned her head toward the other woman. “Are you hurt?”

  “No. You?”

  “No.” Blacklight landed, prodding a robot with her foot. “New villain?”

  “Oh, probably. I was about due fo
r one.” Especially now that Tag was in Portland practically full-time, and Jory was still getting accustomed to the idea that her sister was alive, well, and Governor. Adding Victory Anna to the mix had made a resident supervillain practically inevitable. “Looks like whoever it is does the robot thing. I like the robot thing. If they have anything I can call a face, they belong to me.”

  Blacklight did a double-take. If her face had been visible, she would have been blinking. Then she said, “I always forget how versatile your powers really are.”

  “That’s me. The most versatile support heroine on the West Coast.” Velveteen wasn’t going to get a better chance than this; she knew it, and she still hesitated, waiting for the sick feeling in her stomach to go away. It didn’t go. Finally, she took a breath and forced herself past it, saying, “Look, we don’t have to wait around here for the cleanup crew. I can call this in and say that we were in pursuit of another incident. The paperwork can wait until tomorrow.”

  “What’s the other incident?” asked Blacklight.

  “There’s something I want to show you.”

  Blacklight went still, apparently considering the statement. Velveteen held her breath, wondering if it was obvious just how nervous she was; wondering if there was anything she could have said or done differently, anything that would have guaranteed the other woman would come with her. She was just starting to believe that she’d failed, this wasn’t going to work after all, when Blacklight shrugged.

  “Sure,” she said. “I don’t have anywhere else to be tonight.”

  Velveteen grinned in relief. “Come on. Follow me.”

  Like all major cities that wanted to maintain a good relationship with its superhero population, Portland had established regular maintenance on selected rooftops around town, making them safe places for conversation and the occasional stakeout. The superhuman community repaid the city by avoiding those locations when they were planning to have a full-blown battle. Even a supervillain can respect the convenience of a rooftop where you don’t step on broken glass every time you forget to look where you’re putting your feet. Of course, the media usually kept a close eye on those rooftops, hoping to catch a few candid pictures of a hero—or villain—that could be used as filler. And that was why, when she needed a place to talk privately, Velveteen steered as far away from those superhero roach motels as she possibly could.

  Sadly, Blacklight didn’t seem to understand the logic behind Velveteen’s choice of locations. “I realize this is your city, and that you’re the one with all the local knowledge and everything,” she said, slowly, “but why are we hiding behind a giant doughnut the color of Pepto-Bismol? Did I miss something? Is Easybake on the loose again?”

  “As far as I know, the Baker still has Easybake under wraps,” said Velveteen. Then she paused. “There is something wrong with my life that I can say those words and they make sense and are not a sign that I have hit my head.”

  “There’s something wrong with my life right now,” said Blacklight. “What’s wrong with my life is that I’m standing in the shadow of a giant pink doughnut. Please explain the giant pink doughnut. I’m having a really hard time with it.”

  “Voodoo Doughnut is a Portland landmark,” said Velveteen. “No supervillain will attack the place, because it’s where they get their four a.m. bacon maple bars. No superhero will come near the place, because everything contains carbs. It’s the perfect spot to have a private conversation.”

  “Why are we having a private conversation?” asked Blacklight warily.

  Velveteen took a deep breath before reaching up and removing her domino mask. It was a small thing, and could never have concealed her identity from someone who knew who she really was; like most heroes, she wore it out of tradition, and to maintain the polite social fiction that she could live a normal life if she wanted one. Taking it off was still one of the hardest things she had ever done. Blacklight stiffened, every line of her body screaming confusion and surprise. Velma lowered the mask.

  “Yelena, I’m so sorry,” she said.

  Blacklight recoiled. “What are you talking about?” she demanded. “Did you hit your head while we were fighting those robots? Did one of the robots hit your head? You’re clearly delusional. Put your damn mask back on before somebody sees you.”

  “I’m not going to put my mask back on,” said Velma. “And if I’m delusional for taking it off, you’re delusional for thinking that you could fool me like this forever. I know you, Lena. I’ve known you for most of my life. You’re the only sister I’ve ever had. Did you honestly think you could fight beside me and never have me figure out who you were?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” snarled Blacklight. She gave a little skip, ending with her hovering a foot in the air. “You need to seek psychological help.”

  It would only take a few seconds for Blacklight to launch herself from the roof and disappear, and once that happened, Velma knew that she was never going to get another shot at this apology. She took a deep breath, and blurted, “Marketing lied to you.”

  Blacklight froze.

  Seeing her chance—maybe her only chance—Velma continued: “They told you I was going to go to the tabloids. They said I’d been demanding money in exchange for silence. But I never did, Lena. I never did that. I didn’t even know what they told you I was threatening to tell.”

  “And what is it that they told…Lena…you were threatening to tell?” asked Blacklight, in a low, dangerous voice.

  “If you’re not her, I can’t tell you,” said Velma. “It’s not my secret now, and it wasn’t my secret then. I don’t tell other people’s secrets. I’m a better friend than that.”

  “If you’re such a good friend, why did you leave?” For the first time since they arrived on the roof, Blacklight didn’t sound confused, or angry: she sounded almost hurt. “Shouldn’t you have stayed and tried to fix things?”

  “I left because Marketing lied to me, too. They told me that you and Aaron had been having a relationship in secret, because you didn’t want your parents to find out. They said you’d been using me as a distraction. They even had copies of an interview the two of you had supposedly done together.” Velma’s mouth twisted in a small, bitter smile. “They wanted me to understand that I was a second string hero at best, and that the two of you, you were going to be stars. Stars shine brightest when they shine together.”

  Blacklight’s heels hit the rooftop with a soft but audible thump. “What?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  “I was hurt. I was confused. I believed them. I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry, Lena, I’m so, so sorry. I was a terrible friend. I should have trusted you. I should have talked to you. But I didn’t. I let them drive me away, because…” Velma took a breath. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I was jealous, you know? Everyone knew you were going to be first string, that you were probably going to lead the team one day, and I was always just going to be the girl who brought toys to life. Part of me wanted to believe them, because if you were a bad person, I wasn’t being a bad friend by being jealous of you. I’m sorry.”

  For a long moment, Blacklight said nothing.

  “Please say something,” said Velma. “Please. Tell me I’m crazy again. Tell me you’re not who I think you are. But please say something.”

  “You weren’t a bad friend,” said Blacklight.

  Velma blinked. “What?”

  “I said you weren’t a bad friend.” Blacklight slowly reached up and pulled off the hood that concealed her face. Her hair, freed from its confinement, tumbled down her back. She wasn’t wearing any makeup. She looked tired. “I’m the one who kicked the crap out of you in the locker room. If someone’s getting the ‘bad friend’ trophy here, I think it’s going to be me.”

  Even though she’d been sure she was right—well, almost sure; sure enough to confront the other heroine, anyway, and that could have gone really badly—Velma froze, mouth working silently. Finally, she said the first thi
ng that came into her head: “How do you fit all your hair under that mask? You should look like a conehead.”

  A small smile tugged at the corners of Yelena’s mouth. “Imagineer made it for me. It’s supposed to be a trans-dimensional shower cap.”

  “And it covers your face because…?”

  “See, the nice thing about Imagineer is that she’s so busy thinking about what she’s going to do next that she doesn’t ask very many questions. I told her I didn’t want to smudge my eyeliner, and she bought it without a second thought.”

  Velma shook her head slowly. “Wow. And she’s supposed to be defending truth, justice, and the merchandising revenue?”

  “We just keep her away from open flames and things pretty much sort themselves out.”

  Silence fell after that. Velma and Yelena just looked at each other for a long while, two former friends turned bitter enemies turned…something else. Maybe. If they could find their way across the rooftop, and across all the things it represented.

  Finally, Velma spoke. “You’re the reason I got to Oregon, aren’t you? You zapped me across the state line.”

  “I don’t think of it as zapping, exactly, but…yeah.” Yelena shrugged. “I thought you deserved a chance. You never really had one.”

  “Neither did you, you know.”

  “You know who I am now,” said Yelena. “What did Marketing use to make me hate you?”

  Velma took a deep breath. “They told you that I was going to tell the tabloids that you were gay.”

  Yelena didn’t say anything.

  There didn’t seem to be any good way out of the conversation, and so Velma kept barreling forward, saying, “I never said any such thing. I didn’t even know that you liked girls like that until a couple of weeks ago.”