Page 80 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

The woman took it cautiously, watching the various plush toys for signs that they were about to attack. “Um,” she said. “Thank you?”

“It was my pleasure,” said Velveteen. She hesitated. “Look, I don’t mean to be a rescue-and-request girl, but I’m sort of not licensed for Kansas City. Can you do me a huge favor and not, you know, mention exactly who saved you?”

The woman’s eyes widened. “You’re Velveteen,” she said. “I thought you might be, but then I thought no, no way. No one’s seen you in weeks.”

“I got hurt,” said Velveteen. It wasn’t quite a lie: the hollows of her cheeks and the bruises under her eyes made it endlessly believable. “I’m supposed to be resting, but I was getting cabin fever, so they let me out for a little bit. Please, can you keep this secret? For me?”

“Absolutely,” said the woman. Before Velveteen could react, she grabbed her and pulled her into a tight hug. “Thank you,” said the woman again, voice slightly muffled by the tangle of Velveteen’s hair. “What you did…my nephew is an elementalist. He’s going to get training and stay with our family, and it’s because you made them change their rules. We owe you so much. Of course I’ll keep your secret.”

“Thank you,” whispered Velveteen, and pulled away.

The woman stood there watching silently as Velveteen walked across the street and vanished into the shadows. If she saw the flicker of motion from the nearby rooftop, she didn’t say anything. She just waited until she was sure Velveteen was gone before turning and heading, finally, to her car.

* * *

They stepped through the mirror together, Velveteen laughing a little as she leaned on Action Dude’s arm, her face flushed with exertion and her army of toys sticking to her heels. Not for the first time, Action Dude wondered how she could ever fit them all on her belt; there had to be a small amount of matter manipulation built into her power set, tucked off to one side, where almost no one noticed it.

The Princess, who had been curled in an overstuffed chair reading through a stack of romance novels, looked up at the sound of their footsteps and smiled, rising gracefully as she set her book aside. “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she said. “How was your night of freedom, sweetheart?”

“Amazing,” said Velveteen. If the hand she had braced on Action Dude’s arm shook slightly, he was too polite to mention it. “Thank you both so much.”

“Just keep getting better,” said the Princess. Night Shift—one iteration of her, anyway—stepped out of the hallway, and Velveteen found herself summarily bundled away, back to bed, back to her recovery.

The Princess turned to Action Dude. “Thank you for keeping an eye on her tonight. Everything go all right?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Action Dude, thinking of a smile bright enough to light the sky, of laughter ringing out over the unforgettable sounds of plastic hitting flesh. “Everything was great.”

“Good,” said the Princess. “Now get out.” She turned on her heel and walked away, leaving Action Dude behind. He waited until he was sure he was alone before he groaned and put his hands over his face.

“Fuck,” he said. “I am so screwed.”

Nothing in the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle saw fit to argue.

VELVETEEN vs. Temptation

“No comment.” The person on the other end of the phone kept talking. The Princess listened with increasingly visible irritation, her lip curling upward until she was actively sneering. Finally, she snorted hard, and snapped, “I told you once, I told you twice, and now I’m telling you for a third time, if you want an interview, you go through my publicist. You certainly do not call me up in the middle of the damn night to ask questions you haven’t earned the answers to. Lose my number, and have a magical night.”

Cellphones lacked the heft for satisfying slamming down—not unless she wanted to risk cracking the screen—but since the other option was using the magic mirror, she had to settle for viciously swiping her thumb across the screen, as if to punish the person on the other end. They would be punished, she knew: people who were told to lose her number generally did, and they had an awfully hard time finding it again, assuming they ever managed. Even if somebody felt bad enough for them to give them a reminder, it would just get lost as soon as they took their eyes off of it. It would take a sincere apology, delivered in person, to get this caller back into her good graces.

Somehow, that didn’t make her feel any better. The Princess rose, her comfortable sweat pants and slogan tee (“Not Looking For A Prince, Just Here For the Shoes”) melting into a gold and rose ball gown much more suitable for sweeping along the castle halls. The weight was a reassurance as much as it was a burden. This was who she was, who she had to be any time she wanted to walk in the world. It wasn’t going to change. Not for her, and not for any of them.

That was really the crux of the problem. Who she was inside could change, and did, all the time, because that was being human. Something she’d said or done or believed a decade ago might be as false now as the lashes on a theme park dancer, molded by experience and opinion. Trouble was, people didn’t like to let things go. They’d dig out an interview she’d given when she first started speaking to the public (still a child, all crinoline and curls and wide-eyed, earnest determination to never disappoint anyone, to never let anyone down, because if she did, the magic might go away and leave her back as she’d been, back in the wrong life), and say “But Princess, we thought you believed…”

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It ignored the human capacity to change, and more, it ignored the fact that language shaped opinion, and many of those interviews and articles had been written by folks working from their own set of biases. There were more than a few nasty, snippy little articles about her, ones that claimed she was a liberal conspiracy to corrupt the children of the world. As if fairy tale magic and wonder gave a damn about what small-minded people believed? As long as the magic stayed with her, she knew she was doing right by those kids. But Vel…

Sometimes the Princess wished they weren’t the same age, because if there had ever been a little girl who needed a fairy godmother, it was Velma Martinez, better known to the world as “Velveteen.” If there had ever been a child who could have benefitted from having an adult mentor who actually gave a damn, who would actually teach, and not just endlessly train, it was her. But that ship had sailed, much like Jolly Roger’s Phantom Doll, and it was never coming back.

Velveteen had never done anything really wrong; had never had the opportunity. She’d been snatched up by The Super Patriots, Inc. when she was too young to have started down the road to supervillainy, and even though she’d walked away as soon as it was legal for her to do so, the habits of heroism they had beaten into her thick little skull had stuck more than anyone could have hoped. She’d hung up her mask and headband, sure, and she hadn’t been doing anything to protect the cities where she’d lived, trying to eke out an existence on her own terms, but she hadn’t gone the other way. She’d never robbed banks or taken hostages or played the black hat in the endless superhuman game of capture the flag.

But as far as the Marketing Department of The Super Patriots, Inc. had been concerned, Velveteen had committed the ultimate act of villainy when she had chosen to tear up her contract and walk away. She had stolen an irreplaceable corporate asset: herself. And so they had, with cruel indifference, done everything they could to destroy her without violating the terms of their interactions with legally retired superhumans.

They had made calls to employers, implying her separation from the team had been less voluntary than she would like to admit. They had contacted landlords, and when that hadn’t worked, they had purchased buildings through shell companies, evicting her for any offense the law would allow. They had pushed the boundaries of legality until they broke, and all the while, they had been delicately massaging the past, changing the documentation, updating the old films, until she was clearly painted as the team fuck-up and an inevitable villain in training.

They had been planning to make her a villain, and they might well have succeeded, if Velveteen hadn’t been smart about who her friends were, and lucky about where she’d landed when she finally took the risk and ran. Now…

Velveteen had changed the world when she had gone up against her former employers and won. That sort of thing didn’t just blow over. Most of the story as it had been written so far painted her as the bad guy. Now, with the press sniffing around, their window for changing the narrative was closing.

The Princess just hoped she could make Velveteen understand that sometimes, the true superpower was in knowing how hard to spin.