Avenger Assembled Posted August 21, 2018 Posted August 21, 2018 Fall 2018 The morning after Things were...tense in the steel mill, or maybe it was Anna's imagination. She certainly felt tense - which wasn't the usual way she felt the morning after. She was in the Christmas fuzzy pajamas that she'd brought with her, a gift from her grandkids at the end of the last year. They were full-length and covered her from neck to ankle, but she'd already shown Nicola how quickly she could be out of them if so inclined. She curled her hands around her morning tea and commented quietly, "So...I suppose yer wonderin' who Bryant is." Bryant's name had come up the night before - in a context when if she'd been saying anyone's name, it really should have been Nicola's. "
Avenger Assembled Posted November 3, 2018 Author Posted November 3, 2018 Anna sipped her tea and, when Nicola didn't seem inclined to talk, talked herself. "Bryant was the first man I ever really loved." She smiled fondly. "He was handsome, and generous, and kind - he'd cross a street to put money in a bum's pocket, or give a nickel to a kid just to make 'em smile. He had a lot of nickels too, which was also nice." She grinned. "And he was in the same line of work as me. Back, oh, sixty years ago now, Calendar Girl and Doc Holiday used to tear up the town together. Once I helped him turn the Centurion into a super-baby, and another time he helped me get the girls from the reform school together into a Roller Derby of Crime. You couldn't do half that stuff nowadays, with the science and such, but it was a different time. I really...I really loved him. Most of my other old friends were in jail, my parents were dead, and nobody from my old block would even look at me anymore. He was something special." She waved her hand a little, then went on, "Then I found out I was gonna have a baby. I thought about getting rid of it," she admitted, "but y'know, when I thought about it, it seemed like a good thing, like luck had finally turned my way." Like we were a family. But she wasn't going to say that out loud and spoil the morning conversation. "You want the bishop's newspaper, honey?" she asked. It would be an easy jog to run over there and grab a copy of the Catholic Register for Nicola.
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