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Lisa groaned, turning on the couch and tossing her report to the side, staring across the disgustingly-normal living room to glare at Victoria, who’d dared to stay up late reading reports with her. “I would literally kill someone for ice cream right now.”
“You mean metaphorically,” Victoria replied, gently picking up one paper and placing it to the side.
Exhausted, bumping into limits. Pushing limits because Lisa-self appears incapable. Lisa-self appears incapable due to her broken arm and concussion. Broken arm and concussion cause fear in Victoria, feeding into--
Shut up, you, Lisa thought, pushing her power to the side. No one could predict triggers, let alone broken ones, and no one should carry guilt over one they were in simple proximity to. The freshly-minted cape had, all things considered, taken to their new status with grace, and had apologized to Lisa while she was in the hospital getting her leg set.
(Lisa had been high enough on pain meds to respond with a simple thumbs-up instead of deciding to verbally eviscerate the pre-teen, which Victoria had mistaken as goodness while waiting at her bedside.)
“Ice. Cream,” Lisa repeated, glaring at Victoria.
Victoria raised an eyebrow. “Do you have the trading dollars for ice cream?”
Lisa thought about the bales of hard currency and highly-liquid goods in her safehouse across the City, which also stored a number of very illegal drugs and even more illegal weapons. “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a pint of pre-Scion Ben & Jerries today?”
“Ben & Jerries went extinct after less than a year of rebuilding,” Victoria stated, turning back to her paperwork. “And even if it wasn’t, I don’t have that sort of cash lying around.”
Finances are fragile. Currently has less than two hundred trading dollars in account. This month’s rent is four hundred. Hesitant to ask for a raise. Afraid asking for money will endanger others. Planning to skip--
God save Lisa from self-sacrificing assholes.
“I have a safehouse near here with some petty cash lying around,” Lisa said, rolling her eyes. “It’s even clean. I earned it with plain-old, legal, power-assisted arbitrage. No crime involved.”
“What about tariffs and duties?” Victoria said, scribbling something into her notebook.
Lisa snorted. “Okay, so do you want ice cream on my dime or not?”
For a second, it looked like Victoria was going to say no and mean it.
Then she sighed, leaning back in her chair and staring at the ceiling. “If you pay the equivalent of the tariffs and duties to the dairy farm at the edge of town, I will consent to go out and bring back ice cream.”
“Nah, it’d be melty by the time I got to it,” Lisa said, waving her good hand dismissively. “Plus, I don’t trust you with everything else in the safehouse.”
She smirked, emerald eyes locking onto blue irises, a barely-otherworldly hue that had the trauma of a dream imposed forever echoing inside of them. “I guess you’ll just have to princess-carry me. You know, if you want ice cream.”
Victoria held Lisa’s gaze, and for all that the siren song of her power called out, Lisa waited for Victoria to explain her thoughts.
“I’ll give you one day to clear out the safehouse before I report it,” Victoria said, sighing and pushing away from the table, walking towards Lisa with short, deliberate strides.
Thinks you’re beautiful. Afraid to say it, afraid to ruin friendship, afraid that the attraction is lingering effect of--
“How gracious of you,” Lisa said, staring down her nose magnanimously as Victoria hefted her up into her arms. “Next date, you’re paying through.”
“In that case I hope you like ramen and eggs,” Victoria said, stepping towards the balcony. The door slid open, a function of whatever Victoria was calling her forcefield these days, and they slipped out into the night.
I wonder if Taylor would mind if I kissed her, Lisa thought, staring at Victoria’s lips, pursed in focus as she guided their flight towards the creamery.
Taylor was in love with Lisa-self. Would die for Lisa-self. Had low value on own life, suicidal, pushed others away in attempt to--
Lisa shoved the thoughts away, dropping her head to the warm crook of Victoria’s neck, and blinked away the wetness at the corner of her eyes. Stupid mover powers, not extending their protections against the elements to passengers.
To take her mind off old flames, Lisa looked down at the new ones down below.
For all that she’d traveled to Brockton Bay consciously, it had never been home. Home had been something that Sarah Livsy found in tiny moments of youth, back when a bowl of candy masquerading as cereal and a cartoon could make Saturday something other than a day of the week. There’d been points of light in that broken, hellish city, individual people and events where Tattletale had felt like maybe, just maybe, she could find firmament below her, a patch of consistency upon which she could rest, and those points had passed before she could properly appreciate them.
Perpetuity, however, felt close to the gentle give of a couch next to her, of the gentle scent of floral conditioner mixing with green tea, and an adaptation of an Austen novel playing in the background.
Urban sprawl sparkled below them, a rapidly-passing rush of cookie-cutter buildings frosted with rooftop gardens and sprinkled with slowly-propogating street lamps, flickers of parahuman movement flavoring the night with promises of intrigue and change. Even now the sounds of construction echoed lightly from the outskirts, growth now kept conscious and deliberate with the aid of parahuman planning abilities, reluctantly trusted by the unpowered humans working through the notion that Thinkers might be smarter than them, actually. The nearest portals stood almost hidden, obscured by the towering apartment buildings surrounding them and hinted at by bright, yellow warning lights, a little bonfire reminding everyone that they lived in a fractal metropolis.
“Where’s your safehouse?” Victoria asked, snapping Lisa out of the slurry emotional mess of memory and potential.
Lisa jerked her chin towards a warehouse block, once a supply dump for construction crews with jobs at the distant periphery of the city, soon to be a commercial zone. “Lot H12, building three.”
Victoria descended, descending more than fifty meters in two breaths, yet still alighting on the ground with barely a whisper of additional pressure.
“Stay here and watch the car?” Lisa said, daintily slipping out of Victoria’s arms and fixing her with a saccharine smile.
Victoria took out her Warden-issued phone and began tapping the screen. “Your twenty-four hours starts now.”
Once safely away from blue eyes that brooked no bullshit, secured behind a two-factor authenticated door, Lisa let her mask fall away, sighing as she strode over to the decoy stash to relieve it of the hard currency. “You can’t make it easy on yourself, Lise, can you?”
Obsession with at-risk women a function of Lisa-self’s own trauma. Lisa-self desires to fix the conditions that led to Reggie’s death. Reggie--
“Yes, yes, thank you Freud,” Lisa muttered, snagging some oxy and a pair of jackets on her way through the safe house, shoving the most critical documents into hidden pockets and hammering out a coded text to a nearby dealer to clear out the rest within the hour. “Now tell me how to stop hitching my metaphorical horse to carts with metaphorically broken wheels that happen to have more integrity than sense?”
Lisa’s power remained silent, just like the last ten times she had asked it that.
“Let’s blow over to this popsicle stand!” Lisa said, pushing open the safe house door after a few minutes, now clad in a knee-length coat, with a second hanging in the crook of her arm. She seemed a lot happier too, and Victoria decided to believe it was because ice cream had become imminent.
Victoria started at Lisa, expression set and arms crossed. “Popsicles are much easier than ice cream. That, I could’ve gotten without dirty money.”
Lisa pouted, the scar across her cheek twisting even a form of disappointment into something flavored with nearly predatory amusement. “That would’ve killed with the kids, you know.”
“The phrase is ‘let’s blow this popsicle stand,’” Victoria said, arching one eyebrow and jerking her chin towards the sky. “It’s a two minute flight or a twenty minute walk. We can do the latter if you’re getting too cold up in the air.”
“That’s why I have these,” Lisa said, slapping the lapel of her overcoat with her cast, her good hand extending towards Victoria. “I’ll be expecting this back, by the way.”
Victoria rolled her eyes, accepting the garment and shrugging it on. The scent of disinfectant and mothballs curled around her, oddly pleasant for its familiarity. “Where is my knitted scarf, by the way? I saw Aiden sporting one that looked very, very similar to it on his way to school, but surely someone with as much attention to detail as you wouldn’t accidentally give a child a clearly-oversized piece of winter gear in spring.”
“He was supposed to give it to Kenzie, and she was supposed to give it to you,” Lisa said, walking into Victoria’s space and slinging her arms around Victoria’s neck.
“You and I both know Aiden skips school whenever Kenzie attends. He’s scared of and for her.” A thought, and they were in the air again. “Should I consider this a trade, then?”
“A coat and ice cream for a scarf is hardly fair,” Lisa protested. “Sweeten the deal a little, at least.”
Against her will, Victoria smiled. “You’re not funny, you know.”
“You’re right, I’m hilarious,” Lisa crowed, preening as they accelerated towards the creamery.
The second chance after Gold Morning had been rushed, borne of necessity and desperation. Neighbor helped neighbor, yes, but for every ninety-nine good samaritans there’d been one bandit, and for every ten bandits there’d be one genuine monster. The chaos of rebuilding had let too much slip through the cracks, need developing into violence calcifying into habit, with good intentions crashing into one another like so many mismanaged beasts in a stampede.
This time, however, Perpetuity had the benefit of experience, of hard-won knowledge from the dark years after the end of Bet. Broken portals and Sleeper’s annihilation of vast swathes of chaotic, mis-managed and poorly-conceived urban sprawl had paved the way for a more conscious reconstruction, driven both by the need to get people indoors and by civil engineering that’d been too ambitious and costly to enact when supposedly-serviceable infrastructure already existed. That foreknowledge had already paid dividends, establishing an agricultural base in one month instead of six, stable livestock populations before the first snowfall, and access to electricity for non-critical utilities before a year had passed.
It may not have seemed like much, but seeing the recovery of her home made Victoria feel warm every time she took off.
“So, where is this mysterious reservoir of hidden frozen delight?” Lisa asked, turning to the side and scanning the city below. Victoria found herself gazing at the curve of Lisa’s jaw, fixating on the way her hair fluttered in tarnished gold wisps even when shielded by the extended force field, flyaway hairs so many different frayed threads of an infuriatingly complex person. Lisa at once embodied a perversion of everything Victoria wanted to be true, reckless self-aggrandizing hubris given a black and purple catsuit, but also a powerful, direct friendship that began building from the moment she almost apologized and their social groups found themselves growing together like trees planted too close.
Victoria clenched a little tighter at the thought. Not too close. Lisa never pushed us, and neither did I. I don’t have to be afraid of this.
“The Mackerson family made a bid to start producing luxury dairy products,” Victoria said, guiding them into a gentle descent over a large green field, surrounded on all sides by living quarters, with shelters for the cows lining one side. “It was a little early, but reducing the milk ration proved acceptable enough with local councilors to experiment. So far, people prefer a pint of ice cream and a stick of butter every week to a chance at a second gallon of milk.”
Lisa snorted. “Yeah, because they’re not from fucking A Clockwork Orange. Seriously, who goes through a whole gallon of milk a week?”
“Anyone with a lot of kids?” Victoria said, scanning for the Mackerson’s storefront. The open sign was on, which wasn’t much of a surprise. Though the official store hours were nine to five, Old Man Jed tended to work late and wake early. He had a soft spot for capes, and knew how many of them kept ‘unique’ sleep schedules. “The council established the extra milk lottery so families who did go through multiple gallons of milk could get something close to what they needed. That number ended up being a lot lower than they expected, and so they instituted a new system where families could simply apply for additional dairy rations based on their family size. We confirmed that there was an excess before pushing further, and because of that no one needed to go hungry for us to have ice cream.”
Lisa sighed, stepping out of Victoria’s arms as soon as they touched down. “You sure know how to suck the fun out of bitching and moaning, don’t you?”
Victoria shrugged, deciding to take the disengagement for what it was, and knocked twice on the door. “Jed, you up? It’s Vicky.”
Slow, heavy steps preceded the door opening, revealing a short, heavy-set man, dressed in a parka and boots with a shaved brown crown shining in the light of the neon ‘Open’ sign. “Vicky! Good to see you.” He glanced around her. “And who’s this?”
Victoria glanced back at Lisa, giving her a chance to give an alias.
Instead, Lisa stepped forward, extending her good hand with a smile. “Lisa Wilbourne. I heard you had ice cream?”
“Rude,” Victoria said, pressing her elbow gently into Lisa’s ribs, even as Jed laughed. “At least start with a hello.”
“No, no, I know you two have places to be,” Jed said, taking Lisa’s hand into his gloved fingers and giving it one quick pump. “Now, come in and make your selection. I can only spare one pint for each of you, but I have flavors now!”
“Like chocolate?” Lisa asked eagerly, stepping into the building and scanning the room, her eyes vaguely unfocused in the way Victoria knew meant her power was going full-throttle.
Jed sighed. “I wish, but that’s likely a few months out. No one wants to import cacao when folk are still missing coffee.”
Then he brightened, striding towards his ‘creation station,’ a table with two gallons of raw ice cream and an assortment of jars and bottles next to it. “There’s more to flavor than that, though! I’m limited to whatever I can grow and barter, but there are a few promising options. Mint and basil have proven more than palatable, as has a peanut butter mix. My personal favorite is a honey and lavender blend, though I couldn’t convince the beekeeper to part with the honeycombs.”
Something flickered across Lisa’s face, a flash of pain and longing, and Victoria did her best to not think about it. “How about the mint-basil combo and the peanut butter mix?”
After Lisa presented Jed with a stack of Trading Dollars (receiving two spoons as a bonus and a thank you for payment in cash), Victoria floated the two of them to the roof of the building, where a few empty boxes stood as seats and the roaches of half a dozen joints and a lot more cigarillos littered the ground.
Victoria wanted to ask about the tender moment during their initial ascent, where the nascent starscape of the city below them backlit green eyes seemingly fascinated by Victoria’s mouth and neck. She wanted to ask about the reason for Lisa’s near-flinching at the mention of lavender and honey, theories already spinning out in her mind, connecting now to then and back again. She wanted to push through the silence between them, to find a connection in between her springtime of sugar and herbs and Lisa’s salty-savory and see if they mixed without being horrible.
Victoria wanted that, but she also knew wanting something and needing it were two different things, and so instead she ate ice cream in silence with her friend, who was nursing a long-broken heart and a freshly-broken arm, and used her forcefield to hold the pint of peanut butter ice cream still while Lisa attacked it with the dogged fury of a woman running away from ghosts and pain in unequal measure.