Bettie Confronts Verity

(Filed by Dale — Category: “I Am Not Paid Enough For This”)

Verity had barely finished her debrief — the one where she listed Barry’s “reckless mythic behavior” like she was reading charges at a cosmic arraignment — when Bettie moved.

Not fast. Not loud. Just… decisively.

Mist gathered around her feet, thickening, darkening, rising like a storm remembering its purpose.

“Verity,” Bettie said, voice low and steady, “we need to talk.”

Verity turned, expression unreadable. “If this is about my assessment—”

“It is,” Bettie said. “And it ain’t.”

The air tightened.

Even the cypress trees leaned in.

Verity folded her hands behind her back — her version of bracing. “Proceed.”

Bettie stepped closer, mist swirling around her like a living veil.

“You don’t get to talk to him like that.”

Verity blinked once. “I spoke the truth.”

“You spoke like he’s a problem to solve,” Bettie said. “He ain’t.”

Verity tilted her head. “He is a variable. A volatile one.”

Bettie’s eyes darkened. “He’s a man.”

“A man,” Verity replied, “who attracts mythic forces with the gravitational pull of a dying star.”

Bettie’s mist snapped like a whip. “He ain’t a star. He ain’t a variable. He ain’t a case file. He’s Barry.”

Verity didn’t flinch. “Barry is compromised.”

Bettie stepped closer — close enough that her mist brushed Verity’s coat.

“And you ain’t?”

For the first time, Verity hesitated.

Just a flicker. A glitch in her posture. A softening of the glow behind her eyes.

Bettie saw it.

And pressed.

“You think I don’t see how you look at him?” Bettie whispered. “Like he’s a puzzle you wanna solve and a story you wanna keep.”

Verity’s voice thinned. “My interest is analytical.”

“Liar,” Bettie said gently.

The word hit like a stone dropped into still water.

Verity’s jaw tightened. “I do not lie.”

“You lie to yourself,” Bettie said. “That’s worse.”

The mist around her rose higher, swirling like a protective storm.

“You think I don’t know what you are?” Bettie continued. “You’re truth. You’re clarity. You’re logic. But you ain’t cold. You ain’t empty. You feel things. You just don’t know what to do with ’em.”

Verity’s eyes flickered — a glitch of light, a crack in the façade.

“Barry needs stability,” Verity said. “Not sentiment.”

“He needs love,” Bettie said. “And he’s got it.”

Verity’s voice sharpened. “From you.”

“From me,” Bettie agreed. “And maybe from you too, if you’d stop pretendin’ you ain’t capable.”

The silence that followed was thick enough to wade through.

Verity looked away — not out of shame, but calculation. She was processing. Rewriting. Reframing.

“Bettie,” she said finally, “my concern is his safety.”

“And mine is his heart,” Bettie replied. “Ain’t gotta be enemies.”

Verity blinked. “We are not enemies.”

“Then stop talkin’ to him like he’s a child,” Bettie said. “Or a weapon. Or a mistake.”

Verity’s voice softened — barely. “He is none of those things.”

“Then treat him like it.”

Another long silence.

Then Verity nodded — once, sharply, like a soldier accepting new parameters.

“I will adjust,” she said.

Bettie smiled — small, tired, real. “Good.”

Verity added, “But he is still reckless.”

Bettie shrugged. “Ain’t that why we love him?”

Verity didn’t answer.

But the faintest, smallest, most impossible smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

And that was enough.