Chapter Text
"Call now and we'll throw in with your order, absolutely FREE, this amazing, one-of-a-kind, multifunctional ..."
(She's three months pregnant. It scares her a little bit.)
Click.
"... plus shipping and handling. Not available in all areas. Offer void where prohibited by law. Restrited to the continental United States ..."
Click. Whirrr. The celing fan is spinning lazily, the stand mixer is turning sugar and butter and vanilla into frosting, somewhere outside a police siren is wailing.
(The cake needs to be out of the oven by 11:30. It's baking at four hundred degrees. At one o'clock she has to be at the dojo, she picks up her husband from work at six and and six-thirty they're having dinner with the Ortegas, neither of whom can make a decent red velvet cake. The temperature is thirty-three degrees Celcius outside her kitchen window. At nine she and her husband will watch the news together, and at midnight she and seven other people in spandex and kevlar will burst through the windows of the LA office of a Thailand-based human trafficing ring which has recently expanded its operations, waving guns.)
"... why, Marcie, my life has just been so much easier ever since I started using the ..."
The oven timer pings. Someone laughs loudly from next door, and there's a noise like a bicycle bell.
(Her child will grow up in a world where there's no such thing as a fallout shelter. Where cars run on electricity and electricity is almost as cheap as air, and they have never been at war with Russia. If the murmurs from Washington and Moscow are correct, her child will grow up in a world where the American army has gone the way of the passenger pigeon, and a force taking orders from an international coalition is the only duly authorized force. There will still be infomercials, though. Advertisements are inevitable. They're worse than kudzu.)
(And there will still be domestic violence and drug addiction and homophobia and people generally being jerks to each other, but there will be a bit less gang violence, a bit less large-scale drug smuggling, a bit less corruption in government. This is her gift to her child. To everyone's child. A small gift, but worthwhile.)
Frosting is done; it tastes right. The cake is too hot to touch without oven mitts. It will cool enough to frost in fifteen or twenty minutes. Click.
"Amazing new breakthroughs! Learn the truth about physics - the truth the government doesn't WANT you to know! You, too, can learn to manipulate matter with your mind, and take CONTROL of your life, with these twelve easy lessons on video from - "
Click.
(She has no intention of telling her child the truth.)
(Some secrets should be carried to the grave. This is one of them. If she looks more sad than angry when the name of Dr. Manhattan arises in coversation, it can be attributed to some unspecified loss, or a calm temprament. No. She won't even admit what she does at nights. Her child will have a clean slate. Make her own choices. They're going to do this right. Her husband agrees with her on this, although he won't promise anything regarding improbable gagetry as birthday presents. It has to be better than action figures, at least.)
(There don't seem to be so many Ozymandias action figures around these days. The whole concept is passe, and Veidt is too powerful and dignified and stuffy now to be a convincing hero, and so kids have moved on to dolls that were never real. As for the grown-ups, Silk Spectre pinups were never a big item - the first Silk Spectre ran her course as a lust object, and the second was known to threaten lawsuits - but they've vanished from even the shadier specialty stores and comic shops. Just as well, really. She hates the idea of masked heros being a way for someone to make money.)
(She's made her peace with the lust, thougt. Her husband loves her, loves her breasts and calves and lips and the mole under her eye. Other people's opinions are pretty much irrelevant. And of course, pretty soon she'll get stretch marks and gain a lot of weight.)
(Time off. At least six months, probably a year. She can just about teach judo with a baby bump, using some creativity. She can't go fight for real. But she can still lead, she can still inspire, she can still make sure the masks of LA are being the menace to evil they were meant to be. Strength in numbers. She's warmed a lot to the idea of strength in numbers.)
Someone's car alarm gives up and shuts off. Almost too faint to be heard, someone starts singing, in a language that might be Spanish.
The television plays soft classical music. The cake peacefully gives up its thermal energy.
Nothing much happens in the kitchen for the next five minutes.
"Thank you, and that was Beethoven's piano sonata number 14, performed by the Zephyrus Quintet. This commercial-free infomerical slot brought to you as a public service by Veidt Enterprises."
(A very subtle advertisement, but she can't bring herself to mind. The music was beautiful.)
(She should call Adrian. They havn't spoken since 1985. She's not sure if she hates him anymore, and once that would have felt like a betrayal, but she thinks sometimes of how her child will go to school and laugh with her friends and only have to hide under her desk for earthquake drills.)
(He once told her how lucky she was that her mother loved her so desperately, even if it made her into her mother's shadow. She doesn't know why he thought so.)
(He has no children.)
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