“He would have joined us,” Velveteen whispered. She turned to the next mirror, where she was standing between Tag and a woman she didn’t recognize, a woman in a green and brown uniform, with a bi-color domino mask covering her eyes. “Who’s that?”
“Her? That’s Jory. Her sister’s the Governor of Oregon in our timeline. She took the position to keep The Super Patriots out of her state after they got Jory killed. She never forgave them. In a world where Jory didn’t die, Celia wouldn’t have been in a position to offer you sanctuary. You would have kept running, and eventually stopped in Vancouver. Jory wouldn’t have stayed with The Super Patriots after her eighteenth birthday. Her powers made her partially immune to their conditioning, and they hate that.”
“Jory,” said Velveteen, thoughtfully. “What happened to her?”
“What happens to any of the kids who die on Marketing’s watch? She was asked to do too much, too soon, and she didn’t dodge fast enough. She was twelve years old when she died. Her real name was Jennifer Morgan.”
“So I could be a supervillain or a casualty or a holiday or part of a team, and you had to bring me here to make me understand that?”
“No, silly,” said Hailey, from the mirror behind her. Velveteen turned. The Halloween Princess was grinning at her from behind the glass, her arm around an uncomfortable-looking version of Velveteen herself. “We had to bring you here to make you see that you didn’t have any good options. Most of them you’ve already cut yourself off from. You’re just treading water, waiting to give up and come to the seasons. We want you to come now, before you’re too tired to be much good.”
“Subtle, Hailey,” snapped Jackie.
“Stuff it, you frigid bitch,” replied Hailey.
“I am putting you both on the Naughty List if you don’t stop it right now,” said Santa. Velveteen looked toward his voice. He was standing in the hall next to her, not crowding a reflection. “Velveteen. We didn’t bring you here to make you choose us. I wouldn’t have been a party to that.”
“Then what?” she asked.
“We brought you here to make you choose something.” Hailey stepped out of her mirror, sliding out of it as easily as a knife sliding through a pumpkin’s skin. “You’re moving again, but you’re treading water. If we can’t have you, we want it to be because you’re doing something more important than sustaining the reality of our seasons.”
“What can I choose?” asked Vel bitterly. “Stay here, go to Halloween, or go home?”
“You can choose any of the reflections you’ve seen,” Santa said.
Velveteen paused. For a moment, everything was still. Then she asked, carefully, “Can you change the reflection you took me from? You’re Santa Claus. You’re magic. And you, you’re the Spirit of Halloween. If it’s a big enough trick…can you do it?”
“There would be a price,” said Santa, carefully.
“Yeah, I figured.” Velveteen took a deep breath. “Give me what I want, and give me a year to fix things with The Super Patriots. Then I’ll give you each a season, and give you my final decision at the end of that time. Willingly. I’ll come willingly, and I’ll let you show me why your time of the year should win.”
“And if you choose none of us?” asked Hailey warily.
“If I choose none of you, and you all agree that I didn’t give you a fair chance, you decide what to do with me.” Velveteen looked challengingly toward Santa. “Fair?”
“Fair,” he agreed, sounding almost reluctant. “What is it you want for Christmas, little girl?”
And Velveteen told them.
“Governor Morgan? Velveteen is here to see you. She says it’s urgent.”
Governor Celia Morgan of Oregon looked up from the report she’d been reading. “Send her in,” she snapped at the intercom.
She had barely started to look down again when the office door opened and Velveteen stepped inside. She was wearing her costume—of course she was, superheroes always wore their costumes when they went out on business—and she wasn’t alone. Another woman in spandex followed her, this one wearing a green and brown patterned leotard over brown tights, with green boots and a bicolored mask. Her hair was long and brown and loose, curling madly around her cheeks.
She looked familiar. Celia would have sworn that she’d never seen her before in her life.
“Velveteen.” Celia removed her glasses. “And…Velveteen’s friend. Hello, and welcome. Are you here to request authorization for a team-up? As long as you’re not with The Super Patriots, I’m happy to let our resident superheroine make her own tactical plans.”
“Cece…” The stranger reached up and carefully removed her mask, revealing wide hazel eyes. Celia’s heart seemed to seize up in her chest. Jennifer Morgan, now an adult, now alive, smiled uncertainly at her sister. “It’s me.”
“Merry Christmas,” said Velveteen, the words lost in the din of two sisters who had been lost—one in a world where a hero died too young, one in a world where a little sister fell victim to a fight that should never have followed a junior heroine home—fell into each other’s arms, shouting and crying and demanding answers, all at the same time. It might have been harder for them if they’d lived in a world where this sort of thing didn’t happen. Luckily for everyone, they lived in a world where this sort of thing happened all the time.
Once it was clear that she had been well and truly forgotten, Velveteen let herself out.
Velveteen made it all the way home before she broke down crying, collapsing onto her living room couch and clutching her stuffed bunny rabbit, the one she’d picked up in Isley, and sobbing into the plush. Eventually, even the tears dried up, and she had nothing left. That was when she pulled out her phone and dialed the one number she had for the person she most needed to speak to.
There was no answer on the other end. Just a beep as the voicemail picked up, no name, no message. If you needed those things, you didn’t need to be calling her.
“Blacklight? It’s Velveteen.” Vel sniffled, wiping her nose with her hand for the second time in a day. She was so tired. “I need you to come to Portland when you get the chance. I think it’s time for us to have another team-up.” She hesitated before adding, more quietly, “Please come. I need you.” Then she hung up and dropped the phone, sinking deeper into the couch.
She was still there when the sun went down. This time, she remained where she was all through the night, and while she didn’t sleep much, at least she slept in the same reality until dawn.
VELVETEEN
Presents
Victory Anna vs. All These Stupid Parallel Worlds
Another London, in another 1884
VICTORIA COGSWORTH WALKED DOWN THE stairs into her father’s underground laboratory, stepping carefully to avoid any untoward puddles of unidentified slime that might be waiting to adhere themselves to her boots. Biology was quite the least appealing of the sciences. Its tendency to create undifferentiated mess and muck and then leave it strewn about to trip up a poor girl trying to deliver the tea was entirely inappropriate.
“Papa?” she called. “I’ve brought the tea. Papa, are you down here?” Where else would he be? He went down the stairs; the stairs connect to the kitchen; I was in the kitchen; he did not come back up the stairs. As the teleporter was, at present, quite broken, all logic dictated that he was still in the laboratory. “Papa?”
An oddly-shaped pile of dusty rags near the large contraption her father insisted on calling the Eventually Effective Time Machine—on the theory that eventually, his tinkering would lead him to discover the solution, at which point he would promptly travel back in time and tell himself how to make it work more promptly, paradox and potentially unmaking reality be damned—caught her eye. The first chill of uncertainty slithered over her skin. “Papa?” she asked, stepping closer.
It was the tea service, or more specifically, the blackcurrant trifle, which saved her. Held in front of her as it was, it was the first thing to hit the time bubble that her
father’s careless tinkering had created. As it pierced the soap bubble film of causality that was keeping all reality from being swallowed by the void, it was sucked into a whirling paradox of infinite dessert possibilities. Trifles past, present, and future suddenly filled the lab, consuming and being consumed at an improbable pace. Victoria found herself awash in a sea of deadly deliciousness.
She had been raised a scientist, by a scientist, and for all that she was distraught—her father was almost certainly dead, and the tea was most definitely ruined—Victoria kept her head about her. Her father had always taught her to remain cool in a crisis, and he would have been proud of her that day, had he not already been lost to her. Moving quickly, she flung the tea service at the Eventually Effective Time Machine (now perhaps better referred to as the Unfortunately Effective Time Machine) and drew the light pistol from her belt in almost the same motion. It worked on the same principle of fusion which powered the sun, and fired, not bullets, but blasts of super-heated plasma too bright to look directly upon.
“I’m sorry, Papa,” she whispered, and fired, her plasma bolt tearing through tea service, blackcurrant paradox, and time machine all in the same second. Light exploded into the room, coming out of everything, like a supernova objecting to the petty laws of physics.
And as simply as that, the world ended.
Another San Diego, not very long ago at all
The temptation to “accidentally” pull the wrong gun from her belt and blast the bunny-eared bitch into a thin scrim of undifferentiated molecules was higher than Victory Anna wanted to admit, especially where Polychrome might hear her. She struggled to live up to Poly’s ideals, and one of those ideals was not shooting people simply because she felt like it. It was funny, really. They were the supervillains in this little pantomime, but it was the heroes of the piece who seemed far less concerned with the fact that innocent people might get hurt.
And Velveteen was the worst of a bad lot. Still. If this woman truly was the Velveteen from another timeline—one where she wasn’t such a raging bitch—then she didn’t deserve to be reduced to her component atoms, no matter how satisfying the idea might be. And if she wasn’t the Velveteen from another timeline, at least Victory Anna would have the rare pleasure of shooting her in the chest with a ray gun.
Velveteen closed her eyes, clearly bracing herself against the blast to come. The sheer determination on her face was enough to finally convince Victory Anna that maybe Poly’s instincts were right about this one; maybe this was the good version of the woman she’d come to see as just shy of an arch-nemesis.
Good luck, and may Epona’s white horses carry you safe, thought Victory Anna. Aloud, and with her usual manic good cheer, she said, “Say ‘trans-dimensional transit’!”
She pulled the trigger. And as simply as that, for the second time in her life, the world ended.
Worlds, it must be said, are in some respects like soap bubbles: a thousand of them pop every second, winking out of existence so abruptly that they might as well never have existed in the first place. And once they’re gone, they’re gone. Something close might exist—probably exists, in the vastness of the multiverse—but the original world is lost forever. Those few exiles who have somehow survived the destruction of their home realities have been known to say, with a deep and abiding sorrow, that a thousand country songs were right. You can never go home again.
It was bad luck, really, and nothing more than that, which caused the destruction of Victoria “Victory Anna” Cogsworth’s world to coincide with the creation of the Wonderful Life scenario intended for the Earth A version of Velma “Velveteen” Martinez. It was more bad luck that any parallel world, naturally occurring or artificially made, will need a past to justify its present. The fake world had stretched itself backward, uncurling like a flower, and the inadvertent time traveler had been brought to a sudden, unplanned stop inside a new reality.
If not for that accident of timing, Victoria’s trajectory would have hurled her into Earth A, where things would have gone very differently indeed. But while reality may be malleable, the past is harder to change, and for four long, wonderful years, Victoria believed that she had found herself a replacement home. It was hard, at times. This wasn’t her world. Their Victorian Era corresponded roughly with her own, but they followed some silly monotheistic church, not the good old C of E (although they had a C of E; it was just the Church of England instead of the Church of Epona). Their wars were different, their scientific accomplishments were different…and at the same time, so much was the same. Like love. Like people looking down on lovers, for loving.
Like lovers not caring if they’re looked down on, not once they have each other, not once they understand that love can live through hardship. Like friendship, and people caring for one another.
Having access to the internet, mail-order scientific supply catalogs, and ice cream year-round was really just the icing on the cake that was Yelena. For Lena, Victoria would have endured anything, any indignity, any insanity that the world wanted to throw at her. And then, in an instant, Yelena was gone, and the battlefield was gone, and everything was gone but Victory Anna herself, and she was falling down, down, down, into a blackness that never seemed to end, but that still somehow tasted like blackcurrant trifle. It was over.
…it was over, that was, right until she landed on her ass on the very rooftop she’d just been so rudely yanked away from. It was day. That was wrong. It had been night, deepest night, and there had been a battle raging all around her…
But it was daylight now, and there were no signs that there had ever been a battle here. There were no signs that there had ever been a person here, at least not since the building was constructed. Pigeons perched on the roof’s edge, watching her with brainless yellow eyes. Gravel and pigeon feces covered everything—including, she was sure, her own behind. Victory Anna clambered to her feet, keeping a firm grip on the ray gun she’d stolen from Dr. Darwin, and attempted to brush the mess off the back of her skirt. It wasn’t going easily. Pigeon shit was annoying like that.
“Poly?” she said, more out of reflex than because she actually expected to receive a reply. Dr. Darwin’s stupid gun had clearly come with some sort of unexpected recoil, one that knocked her forward a few hours or even days through time. Always a risk, when you were dealing with bloody morons who thought that neutrinos were Na - ture’s way of providing better evil Legos.
As expected, Polychrome didn’t answer her. Also as expected, Victory Anna’s flying machine was gone, cleared away with the rest of the detritus from the fight. The image of Poly trying to fly the contraption home was almost as amusing as the situation was irritating. Victory Anna sighed, slung the ray gun (she was already beginning to regard it as “hers”) over her shoulder, and started for the door that would let her access the stairs. Time to get home, before Poly started to worry about her.
She needn’t have been concerned.
“Pol? I’m home.” Victory Anna stopped at the doorway to the converted section of steam tunnel that housed their lair, squinting into the gloom. It was like all the lights had been turned off, even the digital read-out on the DVR. That wasn’t right. Victory Anna swallowed the first scrambling signs of panic and called, more loudly, “Lena? Stop playing silly buggers. Turn on the lights.”
Polychrome—Yelena—didn’t answer her.
“Lena, this isn’t funny.”
There was still no answer.
Keeping the panic at bay was no longer an option. Victory Anna inched slowly forward into the dark, waiting for the ground to change texture as she stepped onto the carpet, or for a couch to block her progress. Neither of these things happened. All she felt underfoot was stone, and the air smelled like heat, stale urine, and the clamminess of the underground. It was like no one had lived here in years, if ever. “Lena?” she whispered.
Her questing hands finally met resistance: a pipe, covered with rust and traceries of moisture. She remembered that pipe. It had been situa
ted right in the middle of their lair, up until the day when she removed it, first working for hours to re-route the water it had been carrying back into the municipal supply. There was no way that pipe could be there. Not unless—unless—
Victory Anna left their lair at a dead run, making her way rapidly back to street level. She didn’t even look around for hero patrols when she emerged from the tunnels. She just sprinted down the street toward the nearest coffee shop with a “Free WiFi” sign.
If she’d been paying attention, she might have seen all the other subtle changes in the neighborhood she thought of as her own; all the other things that were warped or out of place. She wasn’t paying atten tion. All her attention was on running.
The barista looked up when Victory Anna came bursting into the room, and blinked. “Whoa,” he said. “Is there some sort of comic book convention in town?”
She stared at him. It took several seconds before she finally found her voice and asked, as sweetly as she could muster, “Is there a public- access terminal I can use?”
“Sure,” he said. “In the corner. You’re in luck, it just freed up.”
“Yes,” said Victory Anna weakly. “In luck.” She walked over to the machine, signed in, and began to type.
Finding what she needed was surprisingly easy; all she had to do was run a search for “San Diego Superheroes.” What came up was an endless list of articles about comic books, about everyday people who had managed to rise to meet supposedly impossible odds, about firefighters and policemen and politicians. Not a single superhuman. She tried the websites of the superhumans she knew were online. They all came up missing. There was only one answer that made sense:
Somehow, the recoil from Dr. Darwin’s ray gun had been enough to blast her right out of her own reality and into this one. Well. That was a thing she knew how to handle easily enough. “May I use your restroom?” she asked, standing.
“It’s in the back,” said the barista.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” said Victory Anna solemnly, and walked into the back of the coffee shop, where she joined the line of people waiting for the bathroom. As it inched slowly toward her goal, she struggled to slow her heartbeat and calm her breathing. It would reduce the trauma of what she had to do.