V is for Vagenda (Part 17 - Snap)

V is for Vagenda (Part 17 - Snap) 

 

I always like coming home to the Watchtower lately. I got a boss that made me feel like I really mattered here, even though I was just another healer. I know I'm not extraordinary, but that is my goal and I work toward it very hard every day. This is the first time I've been surrounded by people that appreciate how long it takes me to get dressed and prep, or notice that I design some of my own clothes, or pick up on my style and use of color. Based on many factors, including skin tone, hair color, eye color, the kind of light I'm under most often, and the theme I'm going for, I spent over 3 hours perfecting a palette of pinks that truly work in a complimentary way together.

No one notice until I met these guys, and that meant a lot to me. They made me feel like a fashion rock star and a symbol or poster child for the league. Being who I am, all that positive energy just made me more determined and more committed to doing everything I could for each and everyone in the league every single day - unless Mistycal needed me for anything. A girl has to know her true friends. I love being flattered, but real friends are forever and always come first. Superman has been my mentor all this time, but I feel I look up to her as a mentor more-so than the man of steel, now.

Today, like every other day, I proudly scan my Justice Girls badge to gain entry to our ... what is the right word here? I mean, I almost said our hideout, but it is not hidden. Building isn't the right word - I mean everything built in watchtower is integrated. We're on a spaceship. We don't have a base of operations so large that the word Wing applies. "Diggs" sounds too informal. Why do I let my mind wander on trying to perfect such silly thoughts... Ah Ha! Lair! Yes! That is the right word, I think. Ok, let me start over - so satisfied now - that's why I let my mind wander...

I proudly scan my Justice Girls badge to gain entry to our lair, and walk in past the atrium to reception, then right to the recreation area where people are usually hanging out. I can never not smile coming in here because the room is coincidentally almost perfectly color matched to me, only in some of the more delicate aspects of the decor, the room has more sparkle. True to tradition, I enter and quickly bow out of respect. "Hey everybody! Anyone need a healer?" I say enthusiastically.

Immediately, with super speed, I'm suddenly nose-to-nose with Evitria. "We don't need a healer and we don't need you. I'm a healer and if something comes up, I'll be the one taking care of it, so why don't you get out of here." She chides arrogantly.

Evitria was rather new to the league. She's been extremely confrontational from the start, and I've always backed down and tried to get her calm, in a dialog, hoping to get a glimpse of what is wrong and help her through it and with any luck - get her to like me. This has been going on for a few weeks now, and I know better than to take it personal. I have seen her do this to every healer that walks in lately. Even on the comm, this is what we have come to expect from her. But staring into the cold, unforgiving, hateful eyes, and smelling the hint of alcohol on her breath as we face off yet again, I see her expecting me to back down yet again and take it. I see the disrespect has evolved from a reaction of something else in her life to a genuine complete lack of respect for me in every level. I stare harder into her eyes - this can't really be what I'm reading, can it? She glares harder, herself, signaling me to back down as always. I know it's that time, but I can't do it. Something inside my brain starts to fire off synaptically - something deep in my mind - it just... I just... I

SNAP

"I don't need you getting in my face, like you ARE someone, telling me every single day how irrelevant, unnecessary, unneeded, and redundant I am!" I shout back at her looking up her slanted nose into her beady little eyes. So sick of her stupid face, even if it is currently showing how shocked she is that someone finally stood up to her constant bullying. "Who are you anyway? Nothing but a propped up mouth-piece that I could out heal in my sleep anyway." I add seeing her hesitate, stunned.

"Oh ya, well if you are so good, then this league doesn't need me anyway!" she screams, scanning her badge and quickly registering her resignation from the league, storming out of the lair.

"Sounds good to me princess, maybe without you, we'll stop losing so many healers" I add, referencing how we have had others leave over Evitria's bullying recently.

Some of the girls give chase to Evitria, begging her not to leave, while a few others timidly approach me as I stand there fuming. I feel like I am holding a grenade with no pin in it - I'm so incensed. Weeks of bullying, and I'm making sure it ends today, one way or the other.

"You know, she really isn't a bad healer. She can do pretty good damage for a healer, too, which is useful" says someone with a small timid voice in the room among those standing around me - I don't look to see who spoke up. I'm still watching the door Evitria left through ready to strike.

I start putting my hair into a pony-tail anticipating a physical encounter - hoping for one - and with a sly, uncharacteristically cool, brazen tone I reply, with a hair elastic in my mouth, teeth clenched "Really? Look at the damage I did as a healer. Didn't even pull my rifle yet." Then I take my elastic to tie my hair back.

Suddenly the comm is flooded with the girls outside telling everyone that Evitria has agreed to come back provided I resign and leave the league.

I snicker to myself and add over the comm "well then, what does everyone want? The bully making the league bleed healers, or me and everyone that hasn't left yet".

I feel so confident in the answer I'm about to hear, until the voices start talking and my illusion that I am somewhere I can call home shatters and comes crumbling down around me. Only 7 or 8 voices speak up, but they are all saying the same thing. They are all asking me to please leave so Evitria will come back. I can't believe what I'm hearing. It literally takes me a few minutes to process that this is what is really happening. They league wants the bully. The league is asking me to add my name to the list of all the other healers that have left the league. One even stopped participating in any efforts to be a hero at all, moving off of Watchtower and living her life as a civilian, her powers now forever going unused - retired.

Once it sinks in I realize and accept that I'm not among friends at all. Maybe I'm just a joke to them. One worth less than an abusive bully. One not worth having around when I'm no longer a pushover. A joke that is no longer funny.

Not one single person stands with me against this bully or their track record in the league, so that is it. They can have the bully and their Barbie dream house. I resign and leave Justice Girls.

I need to find and be in the company of a real friend right now. I can't find Mistycal, or Raiden, so I leave the Watchtower, and head to San Francisco to my friend Brandy's house. She was a friend since University, and if anyone would understand what I was feeling, it was her. She was more emotional, turbulent, aggressive, forward, outspoken, and blunt than anyone I knew - but she had a good heart, meant well, and stuck to the truth. One might not like what one heard, but she never left you wondering what she thought or was feeling.

I don't want to go in when I get to her apartment door. I can hear her with her boyfriend inside and it is not a good time to interrupt. I wait sitting on the stairs thinking to myself that if I wait an hour or so, I'll go listen at the door to see if they are done. I'm only there for 10 minutes, though. Suddenly Brandy takes the corner of the staircase. I don't see her at first, but she screams out my name dropping her groceries and jumping on me with a hug! I'm literally bowled over laying on the hallway floor, legs still on the stairs, as she is laying on me so excited to see me!

I start laughing telling her she is crazy! "Ohh baby, you want to make this get crazy, huh?" she smiles swiveling her hips over me once, teasingly, then gets off me and picks her groceries back up putting them back into the grocery bags. I help her as she asks why I'm sitting out here.

"I'm sorry, I thought you guys were in there already, and.. you know..." I say laughing at my mistake.

"What?!" she screams, and drops everything again racing for her door, fumbling with the keys unlocking the door, and bursting in just in time to see some girl hopping out the window escaping down the fire escape as her boyfriend spins around shocked - guilty and caught. Without hesitation, Brandy grabs a knife off of the kitchen counter and lunges out the window attempting to go after the other girl. Her boyfriend grabs her waist to stop Brandy from getting out the window though, begging her not to do it - convinced he is saving that girls life!

"I'll find out where you live and kill you if I ever see you again you skanky little bitch!" she screams, red hair exploding all around her as she struggles waving the knife! Then she pulls herself fully back inside and spins to her boyfriend, who, recognizing she's armed, suddenly lets go, hands up defensively backing away pleading for himself now.

"Look, you don’t want to do this! I'm sorry! It's my fault! I made a mistake! I'm so sorry! I love you! Baby, please, I'm so sorry. It was a mistake!" he pleads to her.

She turns her back to him and calmly puts the knife down on the counter, leaves the apartment composed, gathers her groceries, meticulously putting things away from the bags in the kitchen, then gives the bags to the boyfriend.

"You may need these. You pack what you need for tonight and get the hell out of my apartment. If you are still here in 20 minutes, you are going to be sorry. We are done. You are not welcome here. You don't even need to pretend to know me. Get out!" she says definitively.

Her ex-boyfriend falls to his knees in tears torn apart. A crying mess, begging for forgiveness, he can barely form words. This mess of a man suddenly becomes a symbol for everything pathetic in the world to Brandy, in her mind, and this judgment just makes her hate him even more, making her tolerance for his very presence drop drastically.

She snaps!

"Oh? Why are you crying? Did I hurt your feelings? Your STUPID FUCKING FEELINGS! Time’s up! Get out!" she screams, picking the knife back up as he intelligently makes a run for it.

I feel so immune to Brandy's outbursts though. While all this was going on, I had prepared Chamomile Tea, and it was now ready to serve. As soon as he is out of the room, she turns to see me offering it to her.

She suddenly smiles cooling herself fast. "Are you fucking serious? You made... Of course you did." she finally lets out a short laugh, and a long loud sigh holding her forehead. "Thank you."

We take a seat on the couch and sip tea. I notice, for the first time, that Brandy gets that same look sipping the tea as Black Canary gets with coffee. I wonder if I get that look - when I am in the moments I love so much as I find that look on the faces of other people?

We spend the rest of the night catching up with what's been going on in our lives - at least in my non-hero life - and making fun of ex-boyfriends. She shows me a lot of new art she's made lately.

It was just a good normal relaxed night after that. We needed it. We both found ourselves with new freedom tonight.