Velveteen vs. The Seasons Page 31

  “Is it true?” asked Action Dude. “Is Vel back already?”

  The Princess unfolded her arms in order to study her nails. “Night Shift, you can come in. Just follow the bird butlers back to the recovery room, an’ you can get started. If you need anything, tell a critter. Squirrel, raccoon, it doesn’t matter. They’ll get it for you. As for you…” She focused her gaze on Action Dude. “You want to tell me how The Super Patriots already know about this, if y’all don’t have me under surveillance? Consider your answer real carefully. It’s going to have consequences.”

  “The Night Shift was on a date with the American Dream when you called and said you needed her to come in,” said Action Dude. “Please don’t be mad at her. She didn’t mean to tell.”

  “And I didn’t tell her it was a secret big enough to keep from a lover,” allowed the Princess. “I don’t think I want you here.”

  “I know,” said Action Dude. “Can I come in?”

  The Princess sighed and stepped to the side. Action Dude stepped over the threshold into the castle, offering a genial nod to Jack. “Hi,” he said. “How’s things?”

  “Things are okay, I guess,” said Jack. She searched his face for some sign that he didn’t know her, that he thought she was a servant or something. She didn’t find it. Instead, she found recognition born of a shared history that had never really existed.

  This world was like treacle. It was pulling her deeper with every minute that passed, and it wouldn’t be long before she was sunk so deep that she would never get out.

  “Cool.” Action Dude waited for the Princess to close the door before he turned to her and said, “I am not here as a representative of The Super Patriots, Inc. I’m not here to get in the way, either. I’m here because I’m as worried about Vel as you are, and I wanted to know how she was doing. That’s it. That’s all.”

  “And where was all this concern when she was running for her life and fighting for her sanity, huh?” The Princess crossed her arms again. Jack found herself profoundly glad that the Night Shift had already gone to look after Velveteen. Getting sucked into the middle of a superpowered throw-down wasn’t going to encourage better medical care.

  “I fucked up, okay?” Action Dude shook his head, looking frustrated. “You really want to stand there and tell me that you’ve never made a mistake, Cara? That you’re the only person in the world who’s always been perfect? Because I don’t buy it.”

  “At least when I fucked up, I didn’t break anybody’s heart but my own,” the Princess shot back. “You damn near killed her. Maybe you never raised a hand against her, but you damn near killed her all the same. You think you can just walk back in here and have me forgive you for that?”

  “No,” said Action Dude.

  The Princess, who had been gearing up to yell at him some more, stopped. “Well, all right then,” she finally said. “I suppose you can’t hurt anything by seeing her. But if she wakes up and doesn’t want you here, you’re gone. You got that? Gone.”

  “If she doesn’t want me here, I’ll never come back,” said Action Dude.

  “Good,” snapped the Princess, and swept off down the hall, moving with the sort of elegant grandeur that only came with having a ball gown and a castle to wear it in.

  Action Dude and Jack followed at a more normal, less regal pace. Action Dude glanced at her several times, apparently steeling up the nerve to speak.

  He’s going to do it, she thought giddily. He was just waiting for us to be alone so he wouldn’t have to worry about upsetting me. He’s going to do it.

  “So, uh, how’ve you been?” Action Dude reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. “I haven’t really seen you since, you know. Everything got weird.”

  “You mean since Papa had you put on the Naughty List for breaking Vel’s heart,” she said, with automatic primness. He didn’t know that she wasn’t supposed to be here. He didn’t remember Jackie. That felt weirdly like a betrayal. “I’ve been good, I guess. How’ve you been?”

  “Awful,” he said. “But I guess that’s what I deserve.”

  They walked on in silence for a little bit. Jack wanted to tell him it hadn’t been his fault; that he’d been a child, listening to people he should have been able to trust, people who should have had his best interests at heart. She wanted to tell him that he’d done a lot of good and saved a lot of lives. She couldn’t. She was a good liar, but she was a good friend, too, and she remembered Velveteen’s face when she had walked away from her entire life because of him.

  “Is it still ‘Jack,’ or do you prefer ‘Jacqueline’ these days?” he asked finally.

  “Jack is fine,” she said.

  “All the press calls you ‘Jacqueline.’”

  “That’s because I’m Santa’s daughter, and they don’t want to print anything that might offend him.” But oh, how they skirted the line. If she’d had half the romantic assignations they’d penned for her, she’d be just about the most popular girl in the world. Instead, she spent her weekends home alone with the penguins and Lucy, or helping the elves build toys, or playing video games with the Princess. Normal things. Nice things.

  She just wished they didn’t all feel like they’d been stolen from someone else. This life wasn’t hers. And she didn’t know how to give it back.

  When they reached the recovery room, the pumpkin was gone. Instead, Velveteen was lying on the bed, sheet pulled up her collarbone, still wearing her mask. It was a small piece of professional courtesy: officially, the Night Shift didn’t know her secret identity. As for the Night Shift herself (herselves?), she was everywhere, hanging IV bags, checking vitals, feeding data into a laptop computer while also picking up printouts and mixing medications. Jack and Action Dude stopped in the doorway, taking it all in.

  Velveteen, who had been healthy and strong a week before, if injured from the battle with Supermodel, was suddenly thirty pounds underweight, too pale, with circles under her eyes deep enough to have spread beyond the margins of her mask, like bruises. Her hair was brittle from malnutrition, and at least six inches longer than it had been. For all of that, she didn’t appear to have aged: not as they measured aging in the Calendar Country.

  Action Dude made a small, choked sound of protest. “What did you do to her?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what Spring or Autumn did,” said Jack. “I can’t tell you what Winter did. I’m not allowed, and I don’t know all of it. I wasn’t there for all of it.”

  “Because you’re her friend. They knew you’d try to protect her if you saw what they were doing.”

  That wasn’t true at all. Jack nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Exactly.”

  The Princess walked back over to them. “The Night Shift says she’s malnourished, dehydrated, and exhausted,” she said, without preamble. “Our girl hasn’t been sleeping. For years, apparently, which isn’t possible. She hasn’t been gone that long.”

  “Yes, she has,” said Jack. “We don’t do time the way you do, remember?”

  “Jack…” The Princess frowned. “I love you like a sister. You know that. But if there’s anything you know that could help us help her, and you don’t tell me right now, so help me Grimm, there are going to be consequences.”

  “There are always consequences, Cara.” Jack looked at the taller woman calmly, and shook her head. “All of this is consequences. Velveteen asked the holidays for a favor, because she wanted to keep the Governor of Oregon on her side. They gave her a dead woman as a gift for a broken-hearted sister, and she agreed to serve them for a year. Not to choose one, necessarily, but to serve them. If they knew they weren’t going to get to keep her, why should they play nicely with her? I don’t endorse what they did—she was my friend before she was yours—but this is already consequences. I’m sorry the holidays hurt her. I didn’t do it. And I can’t do anything to help, so I’m going to get out of the way and let you work.”

  Jack turned and walked away, leaving the Princess staring after her, leaving Velvetee
n insensate on her bed, leaving the Night Shift to her work. Action Dude turned to watch her go, grimacing before he looked back to the Princess and said, “I’m just going to…I’m going to see if she’s all right. Okay?”

  “Okay,” said the Princess.

  “Thanks,” he said, and kicked off from the ground, rising into that odd half-jump that almost all fliers used. He quickly straightened out into a more traditional flying position and soared after her.

  The Princess waited until he was gone before putting her hands over her face. “And here I was hoping this was going to be one of the good days,” she said, to no one in particular.

  Velveteen slept on.

  *

  Jack walked until she was out of sight of the recovery room. Then she broke into a run, heading for the nearest set of tower stairs and plunging straight up them. Her dress didn’t slow her down. Ridiculous finery was something she had long since gotten used to, in her role as Santa’s daugh—

  No. No. She wasn’t, she wasn’t, because this wasn’t her life, this wasn’t her world, this wasn’t her. She was supposed to be…she was supposed to…

  She was sitting on the edge of the battlements, crying silently into her hands, when Action Dude found her. Her tears glittered silver and gold, like the dusting on a Christmas cake. He landed cautiously a few feet away, clearing his throat to let her know that he was there.

  “Bad day?” he asked. He winced. “Um, okay. That didn’t…okay, that didn’t quite come out right. Are you okay?”

  “I’ve been asking myself over and over again whether they changed the world and me, or just changed the world and got me from a mirror that no one was using.” She lowered her hands, looking at him miserably. “They changed us both. I remember being me and I remember being her, and I was supposed to be her, not me. I know it in my bones. This is my punishment. This is how they make me understand that I broke the rules. And it isn’t fair.”

  She started crying again. Action Dude looked alarmed.

  “I, uh, don’t know what to do with that,” he said. “Yelena never cried.” Not around him, anyway. He was sure she’d done her share of crying behind closed doors, where no one would see her, or judge her, for being a real person. “Vel did, but I’d usually kiss her tears away, and I think you’d punch me if I tried that. Justifiably so.”

  Jack laughed in surprise, still crying. “You’d be getting coal in your stocking every Christmas for the rest of your life.”

  “I’m Jewish.”

  “Every Hanukkah, then.”

  “That would be a lot of coal. I could probably heat the whole headquarters.”

  Jack laughed again. Her tears had virtually stopped. “Papa doesn’t like anyone to go completely empty handed.”

  “Well, he’s a pretty cool dude.” Action Dude looked at her sympathetically. “I don’t know what any of that stuff you were saying before was about, but I’ll listen, if you want me to.”

  “No, that’s—” Jack stopped. She’d been talking to Jackie’s friends since she’d woken up tucked into a bed that shouldn’t exist, in a world that shouldn’t have been hers. She’d been trying to cope with the internal clash between two sets of memories, one that felt lived and one that felt like a story about a woman she wished she could have been. She knew she should have been. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “What do you mean, you broke the rules?”

  Jack looked down at her hands. “The Seasons…we’re not as nice to the people who work for us as we are to guests, and when Vel came to Winter, Papa wasn’t in charge of her trials.” But he hadn’t been Papa then, had he? He had still been Santa, the Big Man, blessedly distant from the frozen home she’d shared with her parents. The dissonance between memory and what she felt she should remember burned. “The person who was, she wanted to be absolutely sure that Vel was strong enough to do what Winter needed. She didn’t pull any punches. She didn’t take her time. Vel was going to die. She was going to freeze to death and die, and it was going to be Winter’s fault, and…”

  And there would have been no more visits to the Calendar Country for Jackie, not until enough time had passed to put all Velveteen’s friends and allies in the ground, because they would never have forgiven her for letting Vel freeze. That was a selfish motivation. Maybe if that had been what moved her, she would have been okay. Maybe if she’d thought to cling to that, her hands would still have been cold, her heart would still have been frozen, and she would have still moved in a comforting spray of snow.

  But Vel had been Jackie’s friend. Vel had been important to her. In the end, she had acted selflessly, against the wishes of Winter, to save her friend, and it had killed her.

  Jack sighed. “It doesn’t matter, I guess,” she said. “I live here now.”

  Action Dude frowned. “I have, like, no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure you just told me that you saved Vel’s life. Did you save her life?”

  “I guess.”

  “Okay.” He shrugged. “Whatever you need from me, ever, you’ve got. For the rest of our lives.”

  “What?” Jack stared at him. “I didn’t do it because I wanted a reward.”

  “I have two ex-girlfriends. They’ll both tell you that having me offer to be your errand boy is less a reward and more a cosmic punishment of some kind. But I’m still offering. Thank you. For saving her. Even if I don’t quite get how.”

  “Jack?”

  They both turned toward the sound of the Princess’s voice. She was standing at the top of the tower stairs, a solemn expression on her face.

  “Vel’s awake, and she’s asking for you,” she said.

  *

  The Night Shift was good at her job—all her jobs. She could have run a hospital emergency room without anyone’s help, and had, under extreme circumstances. When Jack and Action Dude followed the Princess back into the recovery room, Velveteen was sitting up in her bed, the sheet still wrapped firmly around her, exhaustion in her eyes.

  She blinked at the sight of Action Dude, looking nonplussed. Then her attention moved to Jack, who tensed, waiting for the yelling to begin.

  Instead, Velveteen smiled. “Jack,” she said. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” said Jack, stepping around the Princess and starting for the bed. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I just lived three years in less than a week, and did most of it without a pulse.” Velveteen’s smile turned wry. “I think I scared the Night Shift.”

  “Sometimes nurses need a good scare,” said Jack.

  Velveteen nodded. “I guess so,” she said. “Jack…”

  Here it comes, thought Jack, tensing.

  “You saved me,” said Vel. “I wouldn’t have made it out of Winter without you. Come here.”

  Jack went to her, and if the people watching assumed that her tears were joy and relief, well, that wasn’t her fault. Telling them that they were wrong wouldn’t have changed anything, and so she didn’t say anything at all.

  *

  It was three days before Velveteen was strong enough for mirror travel. Jack wasn’t the only one who accompanied her to the North Pole. The Princess was there as well, and three instances of the Night Shift, and Polychrome, Victory Anna, and Action Dude, all of whom glared at anyone who suggested that they might be unnecessary. The Seasons had stolen Vel away from them once. They weren’t going to let it happen again.

  Velveteen leaned heavily on Jack and the Princess as she walked, with the Night Shift following close behind, clucking about how she shouldn’t be out of bed. Together, the group walked to the Hall of Mirrors. The doors were closed. The steps were full. Santa Claus and the Snow Queen; Hailey Ween and Scaredy Cat; the Persephone and Lady Moon. All of them looked to Velveteen, waiting to hear what she would say.

  “None of you,” she said, in a voice as worn-out and weary as the rest of her. “I choose none of you. I’m going home.”

  Santa Claus smiled. Persephone nodded. Hailey Ween scowled
.

  “Then you’re free to go,” said Santa Claus. “The Seasons thank you for your service.”

  “Fuck you all,” said Velveteen. She turned to go, and Jacqueline Claus, daughter of Santa, heir to the North Pole, was there to help her home.

  At least one of them was going home.

  APPENDIX A:

  VELVETEEN AND ALLIES

  VELMA “VELVETEEN” MARTINEZ

  Assessed power level 4

  Age: Twenty-five.

  Age at time of power discovery: Unclear; presumed twelve.

  Appearance: Velveteen is a Hispanic female of average height and weight, with shoulder-length dark brown hair, brown eyes, and pleasant features. She does not display any visible deviation from the human norm.

  Power set: Semi-autonomous animation of totemic representations of persons and animals, most specifically cloth figures, including minor transformation to grant access to species-appropriate weaponry. Capable of short-term resurrection, although this will eventually prove fatal to both Velveteen and the resurrected if it continues too long.

  Profile: Velveteen was acquired as a corporate asset by The Super Patriots, Inc. at the age of twelve, and was one of two animus recruited despite the standard injunction on individuals within that family of powers. She remained with the company for six years, departing on her eighteenth birthday after a conflict with her teammate, Sparkle Bright. This conflict was orchestrated by the Marketing Department, under the orders of the CEO.

  Following her departure from The Super Patriots, Inc., Velveteen spent several years living paycheck to paycheck in the California Bay Area before moving to Portland, Oregon to pursue a possible employment opportunity. She was accosted at the Oregon border by The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division, but managed to enter Oregon before she could be apprehended. She was granted a superhero license by the governor, and became the official hero of Portland.