Free Velveteen vs. the Junior Super Patriots by Seanan McGuire

to wonder whether Sparkle Bright had been right after all—she was just a worthless waste of oxygen whose only purpose in life was to fight evil or die trying. Now she was remembering who she was, what she was good for, and most importantly of all, why she’d felt so compelled to get out of the hero business while she still had the chance. Fight a little evil and more evil was bound to seek you out, out of some weird, misguided need for revenge.
    Evil was fucked-up times five billion , as near as she could tell.
    For all that she was trying very hard to leave all that behind her, she’d entered her training with The Super Patriots, Inc. when she was barely twelve years old, and they had remained her sole legal guardians until she turned eighteen and demanded her walking papers. That much time working and training with the world’s premiere hero team taught you a few tricks. How to spot a supervillain’s tells. What kind of names went with what kind of powers. How to spot the sidekick in a crowd of identically dressed minions.
    How to tell when someone who possessed the power of selfguided flight was landing in the parking lot behind you.
    Abandoning the search for her keys, Velma heaved a sigh that seemed to originate at the base of her toes, squared her shoulders, and turned around. It felt like the world was holding its breath, but she knew, deep down, that she was the only one.
    “Hello, Aaron,” she said.
    *
    Like most people, superheroes prefer the company of like minds: a community of fellows. Tales of superhero/civilian romance are all well and good for the comic books, but the fact of the matter is pretty simple, if one is willing to set romantic notions aside and really consider the situation. A man who can fly isn’t going to marry an investment banker. A woman who can talk to plants isn’t going to settle down with a bus driver. Maybe one relationship in a thousand between a powered and a non-powered individual will work out happily. Relationships between superheroes, on the other hand, may be fraught with evil twins, crossover events, worlds in need of saving, and the occasional archenemy at the wedding, but they are, on the whole, permanent things. Psychiatrists theorize that this is due to the difficulty in finding someone whose powers are not only compatible, but tolerable. The human mind is a complicated thing, and the whole truth may never be known.
    Hero or civilian, bus driver or savior of universes, one truth does hold constant: your first love is the one that haunts you, the one that you can never quite recover from. Some people believe that Jolly Roger’s ongoing absence stems from the loss of his first true love, although no one can quite agree on whether that person was Majesty or Supermodel. Others believe that superheroes only really fall in love once, their brain chemistry permanently altered by the accidents or mutations which granted them their powers. The tabloids beg to differ with this story, boasting tales of superhero love, marriage, estrangement, and divorce, but the myth lives on. People want to believe in happily ever after, even when they’re never going to have it.
    The average life expectancy of most heroes is just short of thirty-five years. The fact that this may have some impact on the supposed “success” of superhero marriages—which are, after all, still considered to have been perfectly successful if they end with the death of one partner, rather than in divorce—has been consistently and conveniently overlooked by all groups with a stake in the matter. Apex Diamonds, a fully owned subsidiary of The Super Patriots, Inc., has been the most vocal detractor of the argument. After all, they say, their diamonds are cruelty free and made with love by their employee heroes. How could souls not destined for true and lasting romance of their own ever craft anything so perfect?
    Regardless of the truth of the matter, Velma knew that it didn’t really matter, because she knew