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Violet looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, as she had every morning since she'd woken up in the DevTech Bio Lab.
She slowly turned left and right. The differences were there. Subtle, but there. A thinning of her cheeks. No more pimples, thank goodness. Her weight had been redistributed a little, in her belly and her hips and... other areas. A tiny bit broader in her shoulders.
Other than that, there weren't any other noticeable physical changes. Oh, the doctors and the specialists had gone on about hormonal fluctuations and cellular regeneration and brainwave patterns until Violet had nearly gone cross-eyed trying to understand them, but nothing had changed about her, physically. Not really.
She'd spoken to psychologists and psychiatrists and even a psychic super that Winston Deavor had called in. They'd all agreed, she hadn't suffered any undue or long-lasting mental effects, beyond being "surprisingly mature" for a sixteen-year old. The psychic had insisted there was no way Violet was "merely" a teenager, that everything they knew about the mind indicated she was a young woman.
In that, Violet agreed. Whenever asked, by doctors or nurses, by specialists, by family or friends or... or Karen, she would tell them she felt fine. And she did. But she also felt... different.
She hadn't even noticed it at first. It was subtle, like losing the 'baby fat' in her cheeks, but... emotionally, she felt calmer. Less intense. Her feelings weren't blazing bonfires exploding out of control, they were more like a warm fireplace, flames dancing and yes, flaring, but never so all-consuming as they had been six weeks before.
Six weeks. She'd missed so much school that her parents had to arrange for her final grades to be based on the work she'd done. Luckily there was plenty of precedent - apparently now that Supers were public again, plenty of kids had missed classes for Supers-related reasons.
Violet had done well enough in almost all her classes, and hadn't failed anything, so she'd be moving up after the summer. If she wanted to, that was - she was an adult now, after all, not a minor, and no one could legally force her to go. The Supreme Court had established that in the case of Nelson "Timeslide" McKean v. Idaho Board of Education. At least, that's what the DevTech lawyer had explained to Violet and her parents.
Violet didn't quite know how she felt about that - not having to go to school any more would be swell, but she'd miss her friends and besides, what could she do otherwise? She didn't have a high school diploma, so she couldn't go to college. She didn't even know if she wanted to go to college. She was supposed to have another two years to sort it all out and make decisions that would affect the rest of her life, not have four years robbed from her with no way to reverse the process.
That's what had kept her coming back to the lab for weeks, the fact that the doctors and specialists and biologists and theoretical physicists couldn't figure out why Timekeeper's attack had apparently permanently aged her by four years, when the police and other innocent bystanders had reverted to normal after a couple of hours. There had been a lot of grown-ups... adults, fellow adults, talking about her as though Violet hadn't been sitting right there, giving blood samples and hair samples and skin samples and... and every kind of sample available, poked and prodded and given pills and injections and IVs and and and...
The doctors and specialist and scientists used words like "morphogenic resonance" and "temporal horizon collapse" and "Kirlian field spectrographic recursion" and Violet didn't understand any of it. What's more, she didn't really care. Did it matter? Would knowing how it happened really change anything?
Eventually they decided there wasn’t anything more they could test, and she’d been allowed to stop coming. Of course, there was always visiting Karen to keep her coming back to DevTech. Which at least got her out of the house, which had become… less welcoming.
Her room felt familiar, and there was a comfort in that, but it also felt strange. Like it wasn't her room any more. Or that the 'her' she was now didn't fit the room. The posters had come down, replaced more often that not by fresh flowers. The music collection had been tidied up, and there were more books piled up on her bedside table.
Dash and Jack-Jack had been thrilled to see her. So thrilled, Dash had been nice to her for an entire week before he made a snarky comment about her being lucky she got to skip ahead to the end of high school. That's when it hit her, that she wouldn't go to prom, wouldn't get to walk across the stage and receive her diploma from Principal Bird, wouldn't throw her cap in the air with the rest of her friends, signing their yearbooks, laughing and crying and hugging...
She'd spent the rest of the day in her room, alternating between crying and napping. But since then, she'd tried to make the best of her situation, and absolutely the best part of every day became her daily visit to see Karen.
Violet finished applying her makeup and put her hair in a ponytail. She checked herself in the mirror and added a pair of dangly earrings she'd gotten as a birthday gift, and her ever-present V necklace. Then she slipped into a pale lavender sleeveless shirt and short navy skirt – not her new mini-skirt, she wasn’t quite brave enough to try to get that past her mother, but a skirt that definitely stopped above her knees. She grabbed her modest two-inch heels, the blue ones with the ankle straps, grabbed her purse, then went to find her mother.
"Ready to go?" she asked, standing at the front door, raising one foot then the other to pull on her shoes.
Helen looked up and stared for just a second, took a sip of her coffee and nodded. "You look great."
She gave her mom a grin. “Thanks.”
The stares and glances from her parents had gradually subsided, to Violet's great relief, but sometimes she'd catch one of them off guard and they'd look at her in wonder, or sadness, or some other complicated emotion that Violet didn't understand, all of which made her feel like going invisible. But they'd shake it off and she'd stay visible, and they all could get along with their lives.
On the way into DevTech, they stopped at a corner florist and Violet got her... well, it would have been lovely to call Karen her girlfriend, to make everything as clear as one of Karen's portals, but Violet was determined she wouldn't bring it up and stress Karen out. But it had been weeks now, and the uncertainty was unhealthy.
But… Karen had nearly died. To save Violet. And part of Violet was furious with her, and part of Violet was protective of her, and another part was grateful, so grateful. And all around it, weaving in and out, was love, so much love, so strong and clear and solid it sometimes amazed Violet that it wasn't visible to everyone, a solid construct, a beam of energy from Violet to Karen. And back, she hoped.
Violet picked up some violets, of course, and sprigs of lavender. As they neared the DevTech building, Helen turned to her daughter and said, "You go see Karen. I'll catch up. You two need some alone time, I think. Plus I have to go talk to Winston about my new Elasti-cycle."
"Oh," Violet said, disappointed and excited at the same time. Mostly excited. "Okay."
She knocked on Karen's open door as she peered around the doorframe to see... "Karen, you're walking!"
Karen gave her a pain-filled gritted-teeth smile. "Yep!"
She wasn't steady on her feet at all, gripping onto whatever was handy to help her along, but she was walking. Her progress had been lingering, and some of the doctors were getting concerned. Helen had told Violet that privately, at home, with a promise not to tell Karen for fear of setting her back even more.
"And..." Karen said, pointing to Violet and squinting at her. A shimmering green-blue-white portal the size of a quarter opened in front of her finger, and Karen reached through to tap Violet on the nose. "My powers still work!"
Violet rushed to her, wanting to throw her arms around Karen in a huge, tight embrace, but slowing at the last second and gently hugging her instead. "I'm so happy for you!"
Karen grinned, and the pain in her eyes was much less than it had been before. "Me too." Still, she winced and Violet moved to help her back to the bed.
“Please not the bed," Karen complained. "I spend too many hours there as it is. Can we sit in those chairs like a normal couple?"
Violet helped Karen to the chair and lowered her gently to the seat, savoring the word 'couple' as if it were the sweetest chocolate, the finest feeling in the word. A part of her wanted to stay right there, happy with that much, not daring to press for more... but another part of her, a reasonable, rational part of her, a mature part of her, knew that letting the current situation continue much longer would be terrible for them both.
"Thank you for the flowers," Karen said, as she did every time Violet brought her flowers. "Not sure where I'm going to put these."
They looked around the room at the many, many vases filled to overflowing with blooms of every shape, size and colour. Violet was nothing if not enthusiastic about bringing Karen flowers.
"We'll figure something out," Violet said. "But can we talk first?"
"Of course," Karen said, setting the flowers on the small table between them. She sat back and took a deep breath, closing her eyes against the pain.
Violet looked at her, saw her pale skin and the dark circles under her eyes, her hair flat and lank, held out of her face with a yellow hairclip, and thought, She's so beautiful.
Violet reached out and took Karen's hand. It was cold and clammy, but Violet didn't care. Just touching Karen's hand made her feel so much better. Like nothing, no matter what, would ever be so great they couldn't overcome it.
"I thought we should talk about... us," Violet began.
Karen nodded. "It's okay. I know what you're going to say."
"You do?"
"And I want you to know, it's okay."
Violet raised an eyebrow, but Karen was looking at their intertwined fingers. "What is?"
Karen glanced up. "That you... you know. Now that you're basically twenty, and... and beautiful, and probably getting lots of attention from... Anyway, you realized that your crush on me was just a crush and you want to tell me you're happy it happened but we weren't going to work out."
"Wow," Violet said, managing to insert a paragraph of sarcasm into a single syllable. "You figured all that out yourself? Any other aspects of my life you'd care to decide for me?"
Karen looked surprised and a little worried. Violet almost never used that tone with her. "What - I mean, I'm not trying to-"
Violet raised an eyebrow at her. "It's pretty clear I'm not spending enough time with you."
"You're here every day!"
"Not long enough, if I'm leaving you with enough time on your hands to let your worries invent scenarios like 'oh Violet wants to date… anyone else'," Violet said, but gently, so Karen would know she wasn't really upset. Hardly at all.
Violet got off her chair and knelt in front of Karen. "I love you, Karen. I will always love you. Even if you don't want to be my girlfriend, if you... don't love me any more, that won't ever change."
Karen's eyes widened. "Me? No, of course I love you!"
Violet took both her hands. "Do you want to be my girlfriend?"
From the grin on Karen's face, Violet knew that the sudden tears spilling down her cheeks were happy ones.
"Yes!" Karen said, nodding enthusiastically. "Yes, yes, yes!"
"Then, yay us!" Violet grinned, and happy tears of her own dampened her cheeks.
Violet leaned in and kissed Karen. At first Karen expected just a quick kiss, but it was obvious that Violet intended to well-and-thoroughly kiss her, and Karen was in no mood to even try and stop her. When Violet let go of her hands, Karen thought the kiss would end, but once again she underestimated Violet's intention to remove all possible doubt. Violet placed one hand along Karen's neck, just behind her ear, to hold Karen in place, and continued kissing, sweet kissing, nibble-kissing, even hot and demanding open-mouth kissing that left them both panting for air when Violet's mom walked in.
"Okay you two," Helen said from the doorway, "you have to pause to breathe once in a while."
"Sorry Helen."
"Sorry Mom."
From the look on her face, it was clear she understood exactly how sorry they weren't, and honestly didn't mind in the least. Helen took the new flowers Violet had brought and grabbed one of the dozens of vases full of older, wilting flowers, carrying them both into the adjacent bathroom to fill it.
“Have the doctors said when we can take you home?” Helen asked as she ran the water to rinse out the vase.
“Not yet,” Karen answered, louder than Violet had heard her speak in days. “They’re concerned at how long it’s taking, but then, they said they’d never seen a person who’d had hundreds of micro-portals open and shut inside their body before, so they don’t really know how long it might take to heal completely.”
“Karen’s powers are back,” Violet added, pulling her chair closer to Karen’s and sitting. Gently but firmly, she pulled Karen toward her until they were snuggling, even with the armrests between them. “That’s got to be a good sign, right?”
“I’m sure it is,” Helen agreed, putting the flowers in the vase and the vase on the bedside table. She dropped her purse on Karen’s bed and said, “This is getting ridiculous. It’s been weeks.”
“There was a lot of damage, Helen,” Karen said. “Ruptured organs, internal hemorrhaging, even… there’s no real word for having your bones sliced on a molecular level. Not broken or fractured, just… separated.”
“When we get you home, we are going to have a long talk about you never, ever doing anything like this ever again,” Violet said seriously.
Karen nodded, uncertain if she should be worried, or secretly thrilled that someone felt so protective of her. She leaned her head on Violet’s shoulder and sighed.
“Well, I’ve had enough,” Helen said, storming out of the room. “Who do I have to talk to, exactly?”
Karen and Violet heard Helen question the nurse, then the doctor, then the Head Doctor, then the Head of BioTech, and finally Winston Deavor himself, and when she was done, she calmly walked back into Karen’s room to find Violet reading a paperback novel and Karen asleep on her shoulder.
“Let’s pack her things,” Helen said quietly. “She’s coming with us.”
Violet grinned, then kissed Karen’s forehead. “Wake up, baby. We’re going home.”