Page 61 of Fanning the Flames

Perry released a deep breath. “Her name is Augusta Abernathy. She goes by Gus. She came into the art gallery where I was working. We struck up a friendship.”

“A friendship, or afriendship?” Mark asked. “She’s like,somuch older than you.”

“Colleagues. I appreciated her intelligence and wit. She’s a talented artist in her own right. I didn’t know she’d been sent by the other Supers to see if I had powers. Eventually Gus told me the truth. The other Supers ambushed me before my first big show opened. They caught me off guard, and I reacted with my powers. The gallery was destroyed. I had to leave my dream job. Gus retired shortly afterward.”

“She retired after that Big Quake battle,” Joan said. “Did you have anything to do with?—”

“No. Though people’s fear of him was a lot of why I hid my powers. Gus later told me she was distracted and disillusioned by what her cohorts made her do. It affected her performance.”

“Hang on. She told you later?” Mark’s eyebrows met in the middle. “Have you spoken to her since then?”

“I didn’t for a long time. Not when I became Breeze. One day, she reached out to apologize. We talked, and slowly became friends again. We…” Perry avoided eye contact. “We see each other now and again.”

“What?” Joan said, and Mark echoed her.

“We’ve been friends for a while.”

“Friends with benefits, or…” He cringed. “Oh Jesus, she’s a hundred years old. That’s likeage gap.”

“She still looks like she’s my age.”

“Yeah, but…”

Joan shook her head at whatever inappropriate thing Mark was about to say about Amazing Woman’s “antique plumbing.” “Do you know where she lives?”

“I’ve been to her house many times,” Perry said.

Mark smacked Joan’s arm. “Is that where you’re going when you duck out of town?”

“Sometimes.”

Joan smacked her brother back. “Do you talk about us? Does she know about us?”

“We talk about you often.”

“For real?”

“She’s given me a lot of advice on what to do with you two.”

“But she was a Superhero,” Mark said. “You just gloss over the fact that you were a Villain who raised two young Villains? That wasn’t… How did that work?”

Perry shrugged one shoulder. “We made peace with our past and don’t talk about that part of our lives.”

“What the actual,actualfuck?” Mark giggled.

“Have we ever met her?” Joan wondered. “Like has she come back to Vector City?”

“No,” Perry said. “She lives off the grid in the middle of nowhere.”

“Now we know why you hate the Supers,” Joan said. “Well, all of them but Amazing Woman.”What the actual fuck indeed.

“They outed you,” Mark said. Sympathetic pain flashed in his blue eyes. “I know what that feels like.”

“It’s why I took you in.” Perry shook his head slightly. “I didn’t know you two were gay. I just knew you had powers and were scared. I didn’t want what happened to me to happen to you.”

“Thanks, Per.” Joan lightly punched his bicep.

“Dude, I told you I was gay,” Mark said. “Remember how I was all, ‘You better not try anything, you old creep.’”

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