Page 111 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

* * *

For a hero other than the Princess, sending her friends away while one of their own was potentially in danger, all for the sake of her beauty sleep, would have been the height of vanity. For her, it was a simple matter of survival.

It can be easy, in this age of super science and explainable mutations, to forget or dismiss the sometimes quixotic nature of magical heroes.

Empowered by the universe as opposed to any controllable force, magical heroes channel and control concepts as much if not more than anything else. They are the sprits of seasons and the living manifestations of stories, ideas, and ideals. They walk the world as avatars of the concepts they represent, and we call them superheroes, because the alternative is unthinkable. For the Princess, living embodiment of every child’s fairy tale dreams, beauty must never be tarnished, or she might be unmade. Squirrels and foxes come to her call, but she can never have a bad hair day. She is uplifted and empowered by her position; she is also limited by it.

The Princess’s powers made her the perfect living ideal of the fairy tale princess, distinct from her sister heroes, the Fairy Tale Girls, because she represented a genre rather than any specific story. They were all magically infused by their tales; none of them, when asked, have ever shown a willingness to trade places with the woman who is narratively their ruler. Their powers may be less; their limitations are equally reduced.

Only the Princess must be beautiful on a level beyond even Snow Wight, who remains the fairest of them all so long as the Princess is judged on a separate scale, held apart from her peers. Only the Princess keeps control of the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle, a space which bridges the “real” world and the fairy tale realms where her kin and kind reside.

Only the Princess can preside over true love’s kiss, whether given or held in abeyance. Her duties are many, and their import is greater than most will ever know.

But still, she is limited.

* * *

Velveteen walked the rooftops of Portland, Oregon, accompanied by a small squadron of plastic helicopters in bright primary colors. Their rotors, which had never been intended to keep them aloft under their own power, turned almost silently. They were children’s toys before they were a superheroine’s spy network, and no parent wanted a toy helicopter to make too many realistic sounds. A few of them had been battery-operated in a former life, but their vocabulary was limited to cartoonish beeps and sirens. No engines.

Velveteen’s helicopters caused Victory Anna no end of frustration, since the majority of them didn’t have any internal machinery beyond a battery and a small speaker. There was no possible way they could be flying, and the fact that they did made the gadgeteer genius want to scream. Pointing out that her own often spring-powered creations were equally impossible only made things worse. So Vel just smiled and gathered her toy armadas and kept them as far away from her roommate as she could.

Tonight, she was patrolling alone. The Princess was still sequestered in her castle. Polychrome and Victory Anna were patrolling on the other side of the city, where Victory Anna wouldn’t have to look at Vel’s helicopters, and Vel wouldn’t have to watch the two of them breaking for rooftop make-outs. They tried to be considerate of her feelings, but sometimes their hormones overwhelmed them. They didn’t have any problems with true love’s kiss.

Literally. During the big fight with The Super Patriots, Imagineer had managed to land a lucky shot on Victory Anna, and the gadgeteer had looked like a casualty until Polychrome—fighting under the name “Sparkle Bright”—dropped out of the sky and kissed her back to life. They’d only been on one date when that happened. One. Of course, Victory Anna had been in a relationship with an alternate version of Yelena for years before the honeypot dimension where they’d been together was deemed past its usefulness and folded back into the timeline by Santa Claus and the other Spirits of the Season, which may have influenced things, but still. If they could qualify for true love after one date, why couldn’t Vel be sure of doing the same for Tag?

Frustrated, she kicked a chimney housing, sending the metal ringing and her toe throbbing. Tag had been dead longer than she wanted to admit to herself. He’d been dead, and then he’d been alive for three precious months, because she’d been feeding power and strength and life into him as hard as she could, so desperately in denial that she couldn’t let him go.

And now she still couldn’t let him go.

One kiss—just one kiss. One kiss and she’d know. One kiss and he’d come home, or he’d be gone. It was so simple. Her answer was right there, and yet every time she thought she might be ready to find out whether her love for the man was strong enough to count as “true,” it was like she ran face-first into a wall. She couldn’t. She couldn’t. She couldn’t stand the thought that if she failed, he’d be gone forever. Not Tag. Tag was sweet and funny and so damn alive. He was the first man she’d kissed since Action Dude, and the only man she’d gone “all the way” with. She couldn’t be the reason he didn’t wake up. She couldn’t.

One of her helicopters began wailing, the cheery preschool song that served as its siren echoing oddly over the rooftops. Velveteen froze, then swiveled to see which direction the copter in question was pointing, looking down to the city street below.

A man in black was walking close to the wall, hunched over to make himself seem smaller, a mask covering his face so only a narrow strip of pale skin around his eyes was visible. Velveteen exhaled, visibly relieved. “Oh, good,” she said. “A robbery about to happen. Let’s get to work.”

She dropped from the roof like a falling stone, and for a time, everything was silent. Then the sound of breaking glass and alarm bells split the night, almost drowning out the smaller sounds of fists hitting flesh and Barbie dolls tying shoelaces together.

The silence resumed. The night went on.

* * *

Velma—Velveteen—Velma stood in front of the bathroom mirror, dressed in civilian clothes, fingernails digging into her palms as she stared at her own reflection. It felt wrong to be doing this without the rabbit ears and leotard. It felt like she was trying to shove herself into the middle of someone else’s story. But maybe…

Maybe this was a way to cheat the story. More and more, it was almost impossible for her to remember that she was Velma first, Velma who ate cereal and shopped with coupons and lived an ordinary life. Velveteen had managed to seep into every aspect of her existence since she put the ears back on, and most of the time she felt like two entirely different people. And maybe that was the trick.

Maybe if she kissed him as Velma and he didn’t wake up, she could try a second time as Velveteen. And if she kissed him as Velma and he did wake up, maybe that would prove she still existed after all.

Gingerly, she reached out and tapped the corner of the mirror. “Mirror mirror, on the wall, won’t the Princess take my call?” she muttered, sounding almost ashamed of the words even as she spoke them.

Nothing happened.

This was the normal reaction of most mirrors when confronted with bad poetry, or good poetry, or really anything at all. They reflected; that was all they were designed to do. Normally, however, “normal” was in short supply around the house, which was occupied by three superheroes, one from another dimension, one with a tendency to get sucked into other dimensions. Vel waited several seconds before tapping the mirror again.

“Mirror, mirror, polished clean, won’t you let her face be seen?”

Again, nothing happened. Vel sighed. All the brave decisions in the world weren’t going to be any good if she couldn’t get the Princess to talk to her. Dropping her hand, she spun on her heel and marched out into the hall. Her movements were stiff and jerky, tense enough to almost hurt. Deciding to do this had been exhausting. Being blocked from getting it done was somehow worse, and she knew if she waited too long, she’d go back to the start, hemming and hawing and unable to move forward with what she’d already decided she was going to do.

Which meant finding another way in. She continued down the hall to the living room, where Torrey was sitting on the couch with Yelena’s head in her lap. The blonde woman’s eyes were closed, but Vel could tell by the way her breath slowed that she had heard Velma’s arrival.