Chapter Text
She’s living a nightmare.
Daphne’s convinced that the universe is doing it on purpose now—it has to know by now that she truly, truly does not do well with unrequited crushes. And more often than not she finds that it’s not love that treats her the kindest, but jealousy—the kind that lingers in every breath of air, burning as it seeps further and further into her like a deadly toxin. Time and time it digs its claws into her, its grip only tightening its hold on her every time she tries to move on with her life—and shit, what is it that Velma even sees in Marcie anyway?
Daphne couldn’t even have prepared for it even if she wanted—Velma offhandedly mentioned a week ago that she had some project she was working on with Marcie and the envy flared excruciatingly in her stomach without warning. Daphne hadn’t even realized why at first—only that she was growing more and more upset at Marcie with every passing minute despite barely even knowing her. And even when she did eventually figure it out, it… really didn’t get any better, because there’s something almost offensive about this entire situation and seriously, how did she fall for Marcie when I’ve been by her side the whole time? What is it that Marcie has that’s so admirable that—
“Y’know Daphne, staring at Velma isn’t, like, going to help your chances with her. Just saying.”
She jolts and whips her head around to catch Shaggy tossing a chip into his mouth.
“Where did you just come from?”
He stops chewing. “Uh, like, the kitchen?”
Yeah, that much was obvious and very much not what Daphne meant.
“But yeah,” he continues, “you probably shouldn’t keep st—”
“I’m not staring at her!” she hisses, because why is he suddenly a hundred times louder than before? “And keep your voice down, she’s literally right there!”
They both turn to see Velma buried in a book on the same couch she’d been sitting in ever since she and Shaggy finished unloading the groceries they’d bought earlier. Daphne sags in relief when Velma doesn’t look up at them.
Shaggy shrugs. “Look man, you’ve been here for the past hour and I’m worried. Would it really be that hard to just, like, tell her? You two already live together like a married couple.”
“You don’t get it,” Daphne sighs—because really, how could Shaggy get it when she, the people-person, doesn’t even get it? “We’ve been friends for as long as both of us can remember. I don’t want to make things awkward.”
“I’ve heard that maybe, what, like a million times from Velma now?”
Daphne blinks, the familiar tingle of jealousy surging through her again. “Who else could possibly have been her friend for that long?”
Shaggy gives her a decidedly unimpressed look. “Like, if it’s so hard for you to figure it out, I’ll tell her my—”
Daphne slaps a hand over Shaggy’s mouth, glancing over at Velma again who—thankfully—is still not paying them any attention.
“You will do no such thing,” Daphne says furiously, while still trying to keep her tone quiet. “I’ll give you a lifetime supply of Scooby Snacks to keep your mouth shut.”
He perks up at this, and if Daphne’s sanity (or lack of) wasn’t on the verge of a nervous breakdown, she would’ve found it comical (and also maybe a little insane, because she doesn’t even know if she could achieve such a thing). Instead, she finds herself gripping the edges of her chair until her knuckles are a pale white because this sucks. Why do emotions have to exist and how did she, the confident and social one of the group, fall into this whole cliche to begin with?
Off in the distance—or rather the kitchen, because where else could Shaggy have possibly gone—she hears him yell “Hey Scoob! I just secured us a lifetime supply of Scooby Snacks!”
And as Scooby responds, out of the corner of her eye, Velma finally glances up from her book and squints at Daphne suspiciously.
Daphne pretends not to notice.
Daphne dreamt that the world was ending once.
When she’d told Velma about it, the brunette only shrugged and dismissed it as the Mandela Effect. Daphne knew, though, that this is far from the case—the memories were far more vivid than any dream could ever even hope to be, from the sweat lining her palms as she took one step after another towards certain doom and the chilling fear caught in her throat as gunshots echoed far behind them. But then Velma turned away from her, and in that brief moment Daphne didn’t miss the way the pain flickered across the other girl’s face—and it was then that she knew not to push any further.
They’d all called Marcie ‘Hotdog Water’ as a sick insult in that parallel reality—except for Velma, or at least not after Daphne had returned to the gang. Daphne doesn’t know what happened between them in her absence, but she could tell the way it’d been fondness which held Velma’s gaze so intently in its hands, which carried her words with such grace whenever she spoke of Marcie. And it had been there, in that universe, that Marcie had stepped up—eyes blazing and stance resolute as she’d sacrificed all that she ever was and ever would be for the girl she loved.
It’s times like these that Daphne really wishes she could be a little more like Velma. Velma’s never been a particularly romantic person, but Daphne is—and as such she’d subjected herself to the thought that certain connections, if strong enough, could maybe transcend the barriers of space and time. The gang’s friendship certainly had and so did the love for mystery-solving that brought them all together in the first place.
Would it stand to reason, then, that perhaps the ghost of the chemistry between Marcie and Velma could have done the same?
3:47AM. Great.
She’s about to roll over and try to force herself back to sleep when the fluorescent light from the hallway blinds her for a brief moment, and—
—wait, light? She squints. The bedroom door is just ever so slightly ajar, the gap so slim that Daphne almost missed it. She glances over at Velma’s vacant bed, confirming her suspicions that the other woman is… elsewhere.
Yet another thing about Velma that Marcie doesn’t know, Daphne muses, and that I’ve known about for years. It’d been two decades ago to be precise—a time when they were still Daphne and Velma, two polar opposites who’d become completely inseparable against all odds—when a bleary-eyed Daphne awoke to Velma perched precariously on her windowsill, looking contemplatively outwards into the murky night. “I can’t fall asleep most nights,” Velma had told her later that evening, “so I try to find something else to do instead. It relaxes me.” It wasn’t until years later in another late-night conversation of theirs that Velma explained she suspects it had something to do with her mind constantly running—a hefty stream of consciousness with no dam to curb its ever-flowing waters. And in the brief periods of time when she is unconscious, her rest is often tainted with psychological torment of which Velma has never shared the details to.
Daphne finds Velma slumped over in her lab chair, having obviously worked herself to the point of exhaustion again. It happens a concerning amount—enough times, even, that Daphne has tried thinking of ways to keep Velma confined to her bed without it being considered false imprisonment. She wishes that one day Velma would wake up and suddenly decide to take better care of herself, but years upon years of experience has only told her it’s nothing but a futile cause. It’s… surprisingly okay, actually—Daphne really doesn’t mind doing it for the both of them, and she’ll do it as long as Velma wants her here.
It’s not until she’s nudging the door open with her leg that the other woman stirs in Daphne’s arms with a small gasp and visible tears in her eyes.
“Hey, hey,” Daphne murmurs gently. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Velma squints up at her. “Daph?” She rubs her eyes, wiping the tears away. “What time is it?”
“Almost four in the morning.”
Velma opens her mouth to protest.
“It’ll still be there when you wake,” Daphne reassures her. “You need sleep.”
Velma still hesitates, craning over to look back towards her lab for a brief moment before snuggling her face into Daphne’s robe.
“M’kay,” says a very muffled Velma eventually, and Daphne can’t help but think about just how small she really looks. It… makes her want to cry a little, knowing just how much Velma carries, burden and knowledge alike, for the gang.
You don’t have to suffer in such silence, Daphne thinks, holding Velma a little closer to herself.
By the time she reaches Velma’s bed, she’s fairly convinced that Velma’s unconscious—until Velma mumbles something incoherent and tugs ever so slightly on her arm.
“Can you stay?” The question is barely audible. Then, quickly— “Until I fall asleep, at least? I—I just—”
She cuts off, and Daphne is more than aware of the way Velma is likely spiraling down into an endless pit. But Daphne’s there to catch her—she always has been, and she thinks that Velma understands but there are so many things that have been left unspoken between them recently that her whole world is wavering before her.
“Of course I will,” Daphne tells her. “You don’t have to explain yourself if you’re not ready to.”
‘You know I would do anything for you’ lingers in her heart—an ache left so thoroughly neglected, but she knows far better than to indulge in the devilish inner workings of her unfiltered thoughts.
She’d fallen asleep in Velma’s bed.
Worse, she’d fallen asleep in Velma’s bed with Velma still in it.
Shit. That wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to happen.
She’s slowly untangling herself when the blankets shift. Daphne freezes like a deer in headlights, heartbeat pounding abnormally loud.
“Don’t leave,” Velma mumbles drowsily and Daphne feels a hand gently pull her back down. “Please don’t leave, Daph.”
If Daphne were awake enough, she thinks she’d be mortified—mortified enough to spring out of bed, apologizing profusely, and draw up the documents required to move out immediately. But she’s not awake enough, and while she’s almost certain that she’ll have a heart attack when she wakes again in a few hours from now it’s most definitely a problem for future Daphne. And besides, there was clearly a tinge of poorly-masked vulnerability in Velma’s voice and Daphne could never ever find it within herself to go against Velma in such a state.
“Okay,” Daphne whispers, laying her head back down and slipping an arm around Velma, “okay.”
She thinks she hears a fleeting ‘thank you’ as she drifts away once again.
Later that morning, Velma wakes to find a cup of steaming hot coffee and a note beside her glasses.
I hope you slept well. Taking what should be a quick trip to get groceries but you know me—I’ll probably end up at the mall again with more clothes than I know what to do with, the note reads. Pancakes should be on the kitchen table unless Shaggy and Scooby break into our house for food again. Call me if you need anything. Love, Daphne.
Instead of going straight to the grocery store, Daphne finds herself stopping by Shaggy and Scooby’s house.
“Are Marcie and Velma dating?” Daphne blurts the moment Shaggy appears behind the front door. “Velma keeps hanging out with her saying they have some project to do and then being really vague about what it actually is. I need to figure out what it is they’re doing. Please tell me I’m not going crazy, Shaggy.”
To his credit, Shaggy is… completely unfazed.
“Like good morning to you too, Daph,” Shaggy says, squinting at her. He’s holding a plate of breakfast that looks far too normal for him to have made himself. “And no thank you. It's like, far too early for anything that resembles a mystery.”
Daphne glances down at him. Shaggy is, in fact, still in his pajamas and slippers. She sighs. “Shaggy, it's past 11 in the morning.”
“So?” He shrugs. “Scoob and I only got up to eat breakfast. Once we're done we're like, going straight back to bed.”
“Yeah,” Scooby chimes in, poking out from behind Shaggy. “Straight back to bed.”
“But you said you'd help me with the Mystery Machine!” a voice—Fred, clearly—protests from further inside the house.
“...I did?”
“That was our deal. I make you breakfast and you help me with the van.” Fred replies, peeking over from the kitchen with a pan in one hand—and okay, that certainly explains why he’s over here when there’s seemingly no mystery to solve.
“Okay,” Daphne interjects, impatient. “Forget all of that for a second—can you just answer my question?”
Shaggy rubs his eyes with his free hand. “Man, like, give me a few hours to wake up.”
Daphne just glares at him. Shaggy stares back for a moment before throwing his free hand up in defeat.
“Okay okay, fine,” he relents, exasperation clear. “What was the question again?”
“Are Marcie and Velma dating?”
Shaggy furrows his eyebrows at her for a moment before laughing—like full-on, uncontrollable guffaws—while still managing to balance the concerningly large stack of food on his plate. Daphne’s just left standing there, watching him as the flames burn her face and the pit in her stomach grows ever larger. The jealousy surges back up once again, now traveling through her veins and into her chest without any resistance and lining her vision with crimson and seriously Shaggy, Daphne thinks faintly, read the room for once in your life.
Fred, thankfully, comes to her rescue before she can grab Shaggy’s shirt and shake some sense into him. “They’re not,” Fred tells her as he walks over. “Not dating, that is.”
Daphne blinks. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Why are you asking, anyway? Couldn’t you have just asked Velma yourself? You live together.”
Daphne sighs, long-suffering. She glances behind her onto the empty street, at a still-laughing Shaggy and at a very confused Scooby. “Okay, and don’t tell Velma I said this,” she says, leaning closer to Fred and dropping the volume of her voice, “but I… like her.”
“Of course,” Fred replies, nodding seriously. “She’s your best friend.”
“I meant romantically, Fred.”
“Oh.”
“You’d… tell me if she said anything, right? Especially since Rogers over there is, well…” They both look pointedly at Shaggy, who’s still wheezing with laughter and wiping the tears from his eyes. “Seriously, does he know something? All I did was ask if Marcie and Velma were dating.”
Fred refuses to make eye contact with her.
“Fred. ”
He’s still avoiding eye contact when she puts both hands on his shoulders, and that tells her exactly what she needs to know. Daphne inhales sharply, mind swirling once again right back down into the sink of her insecurities, and it’s all she can do in the moment to stop herself from turning around and screaming at the sky for all to hear her woe.
“She might’ve talked about you a few weeks ago, actually,” Fred exclaims abruptly, jolting her back into reality. He clears his throat, then lowers his voice. “To, uh, us.”
“What exactly? ”
“Something about being way out of your league?” Fred says thoughtfully, stroking his nonexistent beard. “Then something about not deserving to even be your friend, I think.”
“Like dude,” Shaggy interjects suddenly, nearly giving Daphne a heart attack. Beside her, Fred jumps, too. “We weren’t supposed to say that!”
“Shaggy, your laughter wasn’t exactly subtle,” Daphne points out. “And it’s too late now, anyway. Thanks, Fred.”
She’s backing away when Fred gently puts a hand on her arm.
“Wait,” Fred cuts in. Then, in a whisper: “Velma told us that if you asked to see the stars, she’d build a whole rocket just to get you there. I know it’s not really my place to say, but I think she likes you too, Daphne.”
If she hadn’t retreated right into her mind as she turned to leave, maybe she would’ve heard Shaggy and Fred bickering over the spilled secrets they’d been tasked with keeping until the front door closes.
Daphne believes Fred but in the worst way possible—and deep down, in a very real sense, the thought terrifies her to her core. She knows, if the roles were reversed, that she would do the same—even if her feelings for Velma were purely platonic, because that’s just how much Daphne has always cared for the other woman.
And yet, it’s not her who sacrificed herself for Velma in the caves of another reality. Daphne had been there, knowing fully who stalked them from the shadows and the evil that hid before them—and yet it’d been Marcie who’d been braver than Daphne in the end, taking the stand that she never could have.
Those past glimpses of herself in that world have never been kind to Daphne. The flashes play one after another, each more scathing than the last—aggressively stumbling over her own two feet at every turn, trapped inside a locked closet with no insight to free herself, bound and dragged with only the night to bear witness. It’s not exactly news to her—this feeling of uselessness, after all, is how she used to be as a kid. It’d happened enough to her that it all eventually boiled over into frustration and Daphne found herself determined to learn any and all skills for the art of mystery solving. Facing it all again… hurts, for a lack of a better word, especially as her friends struggle all around her over and over. Daphne’s not an expert, but getting used to the sensation of the air wrangled from her lungs can’t exactly be good for her.
She wishes subtly that it’d been her who’d become the knight in shining armor she’d always wanted to be—her who’d loved so much she’d stayed behind, her who’d locked gazes with death in those final moments, her who’d fallen in Velma’s name. Instead, the Daphne in her memories watches as Velma grapples with an impossible decision, staying silent even as the guilt seemingly tears the other girl asunder.
“If you ever need me to stay with you again,” Daphne says to Velma the moment she steps back in their house with grocery bags in hand, “or if you just need an outlet, let me know. I’d be happy to do that for you.”
Velma nods, solemn, and Daphne pulls her into a hug.
Velma takes her up on her former offer a few times.
It happens the same way every time—with Velma initially asking Daphne in a voice so timid it sets all of Daphne’s protective instincts on fire. Velma wakes in her arms every morning, teary-eyed, but never takes Daphne’s offer to be her outlet. Daphne does find, however, that after these kinds of nights Velma then spends that day with Marcie—and if jealousy is a stab wound to the chest, this revelation can only be the belligerent twisting of the knife.
Daphne doesn’t mean to lash out—not towards Velma, never towards Velma—but it just all slips out one morning when the other woman announces, like clockwork, that she’ll be heading over to Marcie’s once again.
“Don’t,” Daphne blurts. “Please don’t go.”
Velma gives her a strange look. “I have to, Daph. We’re so close to a breakthrough—”
“Just forget the project for a second,” Daphne pleads, the blade cutting ever deeper with every second. “You keep doing this to me and disregarding my feelings—”
“What are you talking about? How am I ‘disregarding your feelings’—”
“You keep leaving me for her and it hurts—”
“For Marcie? It’s literally just a project—”
“What project, Velma? What could you possibly be working on with her?!”
“I don’t—it really doesn’t even matter! Why are you acting this way?”
“It’s because I love you! ” Velma freezes, and the movement makes Daphne falter—her mind grasping feebly at the implication of her own words. “And you’re with Marcie all the time so I guess I just…” she trails off.
Velma’s eyes are wide—swirling with emotions that Daphne’s panicked thoughts can’t quite comprehend, and it only adds to the sick feeling spreading through her stomach and her chest and—
“Daphne—”
Daphne doesn’t listen, doesn’t speak, doesn’t think. With only her instincts to guide her, she takes a page out of Scooby and Shaggy’s book and flees out the front door.
velms 🧡: please come back
velms 🧡: or at least tell me where you are so I can come get you?
velms 🧡: I’m worried about you
velms 🧡: I promise I’ll explain everything
“That’s… four texts in a row,” Fred points out unhelpfully from over Daphne’s shoulder. “I’ve never seen Velma send so many messages in my life. Maybe you should actually respond.”
Daphne only stares blankly at the screen, the false hope so overwhelmingly strong it begins tasting like bile.
“Like yeah,” Shaggy agrees. “I don’t think leaving her on read is a good idea.”
Daphne leans her head back against the couch, exhaling dramatically. “Another bad idea in a day full of them. What’s it to you guys, anyway?”
“It’ll be okay,” Scooby reassures, hugging her arm.
“Thanks Scooby,” Daphne says quietly, patting his head a few times. At least, I hope so. She doesn’t really know how she’ll ever face Velma ever again, let alone if it’ll be ‘okay’.
Her phone buzzes again.
Daphne glances down—then whips her head around at Shaggy, who’s now suspiciously across the room from her wearing a nervous smile.
“Seriously, Shaggy?!”
“I’m sorry but dude, Velma’s awfully persuasive!”
Fred cranes his head forward. “What did she say?”
velms 🧡: Shaggy told me. I’ll be over in a few.
The walk back home is eerily silent, but Daphne can almost hear the river’s waves crashing against the faulty dam with every step. When they’re finally inside, Daphne’s expecting an angry lecture or a heart-wrenching rejection or some combination of the two—and by the time the door shuts behind her, she’s fully accepted her fate.
What she doesn’t expect is for Velma to immediately sink to her knees, tears streaming down her face.
“She doesn’t know,” Velma wails, hugging herself. Daphne drops down on instinct but then she’s stock-still, completely unsure, heart pounding in her throat as she tries and fails to reach a conclusion.
“Who?”
“Marcie,” Velma hiccups, gripping her own arms tighter. “Daphne, she—the gate—I heard it—” Velma cuts off, breaking into another fit of sobs.
That’s when the realization finally sinks in. “I know,” Daphne soothes her, her brain finally kicking into gear. I heard it, too.
“She died for me.”
“She did it because she loved you.” She loves you now too, I think.
“I didn’t want her to!”
“She wasn’t about to ask for permission to save your life,” Daphne murmurs. And if it came down to it, I myself would do the same.
Velma sucks in a shaky breath. “There are other ways to love me without ripping my heart from my chest.”
There are other ways in this world maybe, Daphne wants to say, and if you let me, I’ll do my best to show it all to you.
Instead, she gathers Velma into her arms and lets her weep freely into her shoulder.
The night is restless—with already elusive sleep lurking behind the shadowy horrors of worlds unknown. Daphne has had these nightmares before—but now, with Velma’s anguish echoing in her soul, they’re even more vivid than before. The terror still latches onto Daphne with its tendrils as she remembers— Fred’s hand in hers as they’re surrounded by gun barrels and eldritch horrors alike, their voices straining to reach each other through the chaos and death, hope shattering in real time like their only way of destroying all that wickedness forever—
It’s not the first time she wakes with tears on her face as a result—and judging by Velma’s sorrowful expression it certainly isn’t hers, either.
“How long?” Daphne asks.
“Hm?”
“How long have you had these dreams?”
There’s a beat of silence. “I… don’t really know. Since forever ago.”
Daphne doesn’t respond verbally, only snuggling closer to Velma. She can’t really remember when she’d started having those dreams either—they’d just appeared one day and continued ever on. Over and over again it coats her with heavy layers of melancholy she can’t quite rinse off, even without the extent of the loss she knows Velma must’ve faced.
“I can feel it still,” Velma whispers, voice cracking. “The way I still mourn her even when I’m sitting beside her.”
Daphne turns to look at the other woman—brushes a few stray hairs from her face, places a hand on hers softly. Green eyes stare back at her in the morning light peeking through the curtains.
“The project I’d been doing,” Velma continues on, now barely audible. “We were studying the multiverse, finding ways to look into different timelines. I wondered if Marcie knew what she'd done for me, but she—I don’t think she remembers any of it. That I let her stay behind and die for our sins in another universe. It festers in my chest, Daphne, and it won’t go away.”
“That’s hardly a fair assumption, Velms.”
Velma sits up then, clenching their shared blanket. “Maybe not,” she says through gritted teeth, “but it’s obvious that the universe wants me to atone all the same.”
“This burden isn’t yours alone to carry,” Daphne tells her, sitting up as well. “You’re not the only one having to deal with this. Marcie might not know, but I do.”
Velma stares at Daphne for a long time before she’s rustling out of bed and shuffling away from Daphne.
“You’d know, then, that you were in love with Fred,” Velma says, pausing to lock gazes with Daphne, “because you could have never loved me in that reality.”
Then Velma’s out of their room, leaving Daphne to drown in her wake.