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The cold drip of the IV was a constant in the background as Johnny laid there staring at the ceiling with a numb look on his face, he thought about the day of the Excelsior launch a lot, it was practically all that he thought about as he was bedbound from it. The events of the day whirled around in his mind, never letting him properly rest as he tried to piece what was now a scattered puzzle back together. He didn’t even remember most of the day; it would just come back in quick horrific flashes of different points leading up to the crash.
It truly had been the best day of his life, but it had also been the worst.
Nothing beat it in both regards.
Johnny had a tv in the med-bay room that Reed had set up for him, they all got one each all dedicated to the set of abilities each of them had gotten from their time in space. Johnny knew that the others got up and walked around, that they on occasion would stretch their legs. He knew this because each of them would encourage him to do it. Johnny could walk fine. His legs hadn’t been injured and yet he found himself unable to get out of the bed. No matter how hard he tried.
The TV didn't interest him, neither did the books or the magazines.
Any time he tried to consume any of them something would bring him back to the events of that day and once again he would find himself circling it over and over in the same self-destructive cycle that he knew damn well that he was trapped in and yet Johnny could find no reason as to why he should even attempt to try and leave it. And so his days were simple,
He would stare at the ceilings and once again start that day over in his mind.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Johnny woke up in a cold freezing sweat, his hair sticking disgustingly to his forehead as he looked around fumbling to turn off his alarm which was currently blaring as loud as it possibly could. He had made sure to put it on the highest volume the night before to prepare him for the day ahead. To prepare him for the best moment of his life. They were going to be the first in space, They were going in the most advanced spaceship ever made, built by his okay brother-in-law. Who had basically built the entire thing by himself in an extremely short period of time. It was a marvel of science and he would be one of the four people to fly it
It was a small manned crew, an extremely small manned crew. It would be him, the most amazing, brilliant and accomplished nineteen year old co-pilot the world had ever seen.
His older sister, the incredible Susan Storm who was possibly the only person on this earth who could even come scratching the surface of how cool he was. First and only woman in space and she had damn-well earned that title.
Her husband Reed Richards, the world's most okay brother-in-law and scientist, no one was good enough for his older sister but the guy made her happy and he also had amazing taste in picking co-piolets to go to space with so Johnny was warming up to him.
Lastly and not least Ben Grimm, possibly the only person who could be a Pilot better than him mainly because Ben had trained him. Ben might be Reed's best friend but he was also family. They all were, even if they were a bunch of losers. At least they were a bunch of losers he could trust on a space mission.
The hot sun beat down on New York, it was the middle of summer and today just had to be the start of a heatwave. He wiped his brow with a damp cloth as he walked up to a giant window that looked out onto the city. You could see anything from their penthouse in the Baxter building. It was the best view of the city, but all Johnny could stare at was the Excelsior as it pointed straight up into the sky. It was breathtaking in a way, completely breathtaking.
Crowds had already started to form at the base of the ship, not that he could blame them. It was exciting, it was all so damn exciting. Even as the Heat beamed down on them all he could think about was that he was going into space;
In a couple hours he would be on that rocket and breaking records that he never thought that he could break. Here he was some dumb kid who lost his parents too young and was now going to be the most accomplished pilot and a world record breaker at only nineteen. This was a feat no one would beat, this was something truly life changing.
All those nights he had spent staring up at the glow in the dark star stickers Sue had painstakingly stuck to his ceiling wishing to be among them were all going to come to a head today. Everything was lined up to go perfectly.
Johnny softly put his hand on the glass as he stared at the rocket.
It was going to be the best day of his life.
He just needed to get past the Heat
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Sue never left his bedside, literally. She had also needed some TLC after the crash, she broke both of her legs and a lot of bones in her face, while their helmets had been able to substandard the crash hers hadn’t.
She had smashed her face against the glass, he can still remember the way that her face had been smeared in blood as they were being pulled from the Excelsior. One leg looked fine, it had been a hairline fracture thankfully but the other had been twisted back like something had smashed into it. They never did find out what it was, the doctors said it would have been impossible for something to get into the small space of her legs in the angle to break it like that.
Impossible,
Such a meaningless word now.
It seemed like nothing seemed like it could be impossible anymore.
Maybe that should be a good thing.
It wasn't
Some nights she would crawl into his bed with him, her head on his shoulder and her hand in his hair as she softly sung him lullabies. The same ones she used to sing when he was little like this whole thing could just be brushed away with soft words and a gentle song. Not that meant that he didn't get any enjoyment out of the softness he really did. He loved the fleeting moments where he felt like the kid that he kept forgetting that he was. It's just, those memories were sacred, he didn’t want them being touched and soiled by this.
And yet everytime it worked, everytime she climbed next to him and ran her hands gently through his hair he found himself asleep in minutes, if not sooner.
Sue just had a way of making him feel safe.
Even though safety felt a little hard right now.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
“Coms Check?” Sue’s voice rang out for the last time as they sat strapped to their chairs pointing upwards to the sky, it wasn’t just the world ahead of them now it was the sky, the universe. So many infinite possibilities and they would be taking the first steps to figure those possibilities out.
“Check” Reed's voice rang out as he did scans on the screens in front of him. Doing final checks on air locks and making sure that their cockpit was successfully sealed up. Making sure that they were safe, he had done it a hundred times before but this was his final chance and knowing Reed he would rather die than skip it.
“Check” It took a few seconds before Ben replied, his hand gripping and unwrapping the lever to launch tightly in his hand, it was a two person job. Johnny looked back to his own leaver, he could barely feel it through the spacesuit. He tensed his hand around it so tightly that his knuckles were probably going to be going white. It was finally starting to dawn on him that he was going into space.
They were actually here, for years they had watched the space race on TV, for years they watched as both parties got closer and closer to the stars. Then it had happened, then they had reached out to Reed to be the one who would build them the rocket. He was the smartest man in the world, he did it easy, he picked crew even more easily. They were doing this together as a family. As a united front.
It was sappy but there really was no other person that he would want to do this with. All his life he didn’t trust anyone completely. Their mother had died before he could ever really know her, their father fell into alcoholism. He got cruel, he tried to be kind but there was no denying how cruel he got. Then he disappeared. Killed a man on one of his benders and they never saw him again. They had tried so hard for a visit to the prison but he didn't want to see them. Johnny hadn’t trusted anyone after that. Not friends, not girlfriends. If he couldn't trust his parents, who else could he trust?
The Answer to that question was Sue, always had, always will be. The Storm siblings always had each other's back. For years growing up she had protected him, held him close at their mothers funerals. Stepped up as the parent when their dad went on his stupers, stood in the way of the occasional slaps which were always met with hollow apologies. When dad got arrested, when she was old enough to leave and let Johnny go into the system like he was supposed to, she fought for custody and won.
Like she protected him, he had protected her. From creepy guys at her job and from her long list of shitty boyfriends that had seemed to grow by the day. However that stopped when Reed arrived, he was kind and gentle and saw her for how smart she was. He hadn’t liked Reed at the start, he had seen the pattern with Sue’s other boyfriends. But when he stayed the same guy he had been when they met Johnny warmed up to him. And the day Reed asked him permission to marry sue it had been set in his head that Reed was his brother, (Even if he was anointing sometimes)
And then with Reed came Ben, Ben was the brother he had always wanted, the protector that Sue and Him had always needed. Ben had a way of making you feel safe, he was a rock when you needed a line of defence. Johnny hadn’t been sure about him at first but when one of the other students at the college brought up his and Sue’s parents Ben had been on them and fast. An hour later he had bought Johnny an Ice-cream and was helping him with homework.
They were his family, he never could have done this without them
It was just then he realised they had been calling on him
“Johnny? Do you check?” He heard Reed say with a twinge of nervousness that their comms had failed on them last minute, but he just took a deep nervous breath.
“Sorry! Yes Check!’ The shake in his voice was obvious but all of them had it. It was a feat never completed before and they would be the first to do it. For once he found no shame in his nervousness. Then again, he never found shame around them.
He could hear Ben's loud laugh echo through the coms “Well then guys! Excelsior is ready for launch!!”
Johnny's grip on the handle tightened as he stared up into the endless abyss.
Sweat dripped down the back of his neck but this wasn't from the summer outside
Even though it should have caused discomfort? Compared to the freezing suits he couldn't help but find comfort in the heat.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Johnny didn't get to see much of Ben. It had only been once when he had come too, the room had been dark for once. All the lights switched off, something That johnny had found himself thankful for, The lights had always hurt his eyes whenever he had woken up so now the lack of them was comforting Thats when he had spotted the giant hulking figure standing nervously in the corner of the room as if it was too scared to come any closer. As Johnny stared at its dark outline he didn’t need to ask who it was, even if it didn't look remotely like him anymore Johnny could recognise Ben from a mile away.
“Ive changed.” Ben whispered as he took a step back like he was so sure that he could scare Johnny, Johnny had seen himself light on fire. He wasn’t going to be scared of Ben because of whatever he looked like now. Frankly? Johnny didn't care.
“I know…” Johnny rasped out, it hurt to talk. It hurt to do most things right now
“You scared?” Ben asked, Johnny could tell he wanted to come closer but he was scared, Johnny could understand that. He lived in fear of lighting the people he loved on fire. So while those fears still plagued their minds maybe they could help each other with the distance.
“You scared of me?” Johnny asked, throwing the question back at him, raising an eyebrow. He would have attempted his usual grin but they would have both known it wasn't genuine so what would be the point.
“Nah” One word make Johnny melt,
He didn’t believe it.
Hell, Johnny was scared of himself so there was no way that ben wasn't a little afraid.
It was nice to believe though, even for a second.
“Then I'm not scared of you” It was a simple statement, an honest one. Johnny wouldn't see ben for a while after that, he hadn’t even fully seen what ben had looked like. But he didn't need to. It was still ben and that's all that mattered in Johnny's book.
It was such a simple exchange. So small and so fleeting that anyone who would have seen it would have thought that it meant nothing but for them it was a reminder, a reminder that they were still human, that no one could take that humanity away from them even if they tried.
And with what Johnny could do?
That meant more than Ben could even imagine.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
It had all been going well, It had all been going so unbelievably well, the feeling of being among the stars had been incredible, breathtaking, lifechanging. The sheer feeling of knowing he was up there had brought tears to his eyes, tears that he had to desperately choke back so that he could continue to keep up with commands and doing his job so that it could continue to keep going right. Maybe he would have tried to hide it more if he couldn’t hear the same emotion in the other three's voices. It had all just been so beautiful, it truly had been the greatest moment in his entire life.
He just hadn’t expected it to change so fast
Suddenly the ship began to shake rapidly. Too rapid than it ever should. The entire rocket shook his hand grabbing onto the lever as Ben yelled instructions at him that he desperately tried to keep up with. The ship was being pushed back by something that he couldn't see and suddenly bright green lights started to shine through the main windshield in a mesmerising way. As they tried to correct the course, whatever was hitting off them was just pushing them more and more rapidly off course. This wasn’t meant to be happening they had planned perfectly, they had gone over every single possibility of what could happen and none of them had pointed at anything like this
Johnny looked over to his brother-in-law, eyes wide and terrified as he screamed “What is that?!” The bright green lights shimmered as they battered off the rocket, each time it hit Johnny could feel his head reverberate with the force, he could feel his eyes shake in his skull as his entire body was rocked.
But instead of seeing the calm, unsurprised and collected Reed he expected, what he saw made him panic worse.
“I dont know, i dont know” Those words from Reed were terrifying, mainly because he had never heard them from him before and certainly not with the terror that he had uttered them in. Reed was the smartest man on the planet. Not even in a joking way or in an exaggeration, it was a fact. Johnny couldn’t process those words more than he couldn’t process what was happening to the ship. Those words from Reed felt impossible, the fucking government had come to him specifically to build a ship to end the space race because they knew he could. Reed was always who he could look too with answers and now he couldn’t
Johnny could feel his world shattering around him
“It must be the cosmic rays!” Reed yelled as he took his hands off his controls in frustration, a kind of anger he had never seen in his brother in law. They weren’t even supposed to be near the cosmic rays. It wasn't possible they had been ages away from it. They hadn’t even needed to think much about what would happen if they got close because of the fact they didn't think they physically could.
This shouldn’t be possible.
It shouldn’t be possible.
Johnny desperately tried to help Ben to keep the rocket steady but as he did so he couldn’t help but look at the radiation counter they kept in the corner. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything, they weren't even meant to be getting close enough to the cosmic rays that the ship would even feel it let alone them. But his heart sank as his eyes locked on it as it reached nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine. The highest that it could possibly reach. Johnny tried to rack his mind that if anyone had ever been exposed to anything like that not even on a cosmic level.
No one could survive that, what had once been excitement and awe now culminated in bile in his throat.
There was no getting out of this, even if they made it back to land they were dead.
They were dead
‘Ben? Ben!” He heard Reed and Sue calling out, and Johnny would have called out as well if it wasn’t for how terrified he was, all he could do was stare to his side in horror. Hand clamped around the lever as he finally looked at why they were calling to Ben. Something was wrong with his suit, it was expanding from the inside, getting larger and larger. His face.. Well. it just started to look wrong.
He must have hit his head too hard. He reasoned as he looked away from Ben.
He could feel his breathing start to quicken as he started to hyperventilate.
His suit felt hot, really hot.
This wasn’t normal, this couldn’t be normal he wasn’t meant to feel this bad it felt like his skin was on fire.
The last thing he remembered was them pulling the emergency landing and the ship starting to plummet down back to earth.
The G-force should have been enough to knock him out but for a few agonising seconds all Johnny could feel was Heat.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Reed was his main doctor, something that Johnny would forever be grateful for.
This whole experience had been horrendous enough especially since press had been there while they exited the plane. The public knew what they were, their faces were being plastered all over no matter how bad all of them looked. He couldn’t have dealt with a new fake poking and prodding him like this.
Only for a photo of it to suddenly be being spread around the tabloids. For once all Johnny wanted was for people to not be looking at him. He just wanted to be left alone so that he could sleep. He just wanted to sleep
Reed gave him that and Johnny couldn't be more thankful, he did his tests when he could. Made sure that Johnny was eating and that he was feeling well enough.
Reed was a constant, hell the man knew when Johnny was having a worse spike before he did. The first time Johnny set himself on fire after the accident Reed had been right there holding him and coaching him through it.
He didn't even say anything when Johnny had vomited on him from the sheer fear that came with being on fire. Reed had just focused on cleaning him up and setting him back down,
Ben was assurance and Sue was familiar but Reed? Reed had been the comfort that he has so sorely needed, he had been the light in the dark. He sat there through it all not moving, He saw the worst of it, the worst parts that he didn't let the other two see and never once looked down on Johnny for it and instead would just let the moment happen.
When Johnny hyperventilated he was there, when Johnny threw up or had night terrors he was there. When Johnny set more medical equipment on fire he was there. And never once did he bat a single eye. And god had Johnny needed that even if it was for a moment Reed made him believe that what was happening was normal.
That's all Johnny had wanted, Normal.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Johnny didn’t remember much from after the crash if he was honest, that's when his memories started to blur. At first it wasn’t like he was fully conscious he could still feel and hear but he wasn’t truly there. He could feel the restraints keeping him in the chair, he was still attached, still in the ship and from what it felt he wasn’t upside down which was a good sign, that was fine. What he heard concerned him more, he heart the sound of screaming, crying and yelling.
He could hear the distinct voices of the other three which sent a wave of calm through Johnny they had made it down.
They had made it back.
However, he wasn’t dumb he had seen the radiation scale, he had seen it go to its limit as they were exposed to who knows how much. They’d be dead within the day. It may have been a morbid thought but in that moment all that went through his mind was ‘at least their bodies would be collected for graves.’
He didn't like the idea of having an empty grave, at least with this he could be assured that when he noticed something underneath the screaming and panicked noises he could hear the faint crackling of fire. It should have been expected they had crash landed after all it would be odd without fire. The only problem was he didn’t feel the heat coming off the fire.
A little cruel.
Him being deprived of what could be a little comfort to himself. But it sounded so close, so terribly close. Even from the sound of it, Johnny could realistically figure that he should be able to feel at least even the semblance of heat and yet nothing. He just felt neutral. Not warm, not cold, just neutral.
Johnny let himself sit in that state for a while, the quiet limbo of knowing that there was something terribly wrong but yet not opening his eyes to confront it for a moment. He could just stay ike this in a world where he and the people he loved were probably being fastly killed by radiation poisoning. Where they weren't crashed in a rocket and probably all injured. That he was probably seconds away from feeling broken legs as whatever adrenaline he was feeling ears off leaving him in desperate pain.
After those few seconds were up he finally found the courage to open his eyes, only for his vision to be swimming in flames, he looked down too see his body was entirely alight, his helmet filled with smoke.
He should be choking right now, his skin should be burning off with an intensity that no adrenaline should be able to prevent him from feeling There were still voices yelling in his ears. He could hear the tones of his family and was able to pick out the comfort of their voices but not the words. Johnny didn’t know what was happening to him and frankly he never wanted to find out.
All Johnny could see was flames, roaring angry flames that stretched higher and higher, his vision getting more and more dark by the second as he tried to process the fact that the fire wasn’t just around him. He was on fire and yet he felt nothing. He wanted to tilt his head and look at his family around him but he couldn't. He was completely and utterly stuck, not even being able to cry as the heat tried out his tear ducts.
Maybe he could accept this, he reasoned with himself desperately.
He may be being burned alive.
But at least he didn't feel the Heat.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
As the cycle of the day ended once again he knew that it was only a matter of time before he fell into the same trap yet again he couldn’t stop it. No one could, he would search and search that day desperately trying to find a meaning as to what would happen and once again he would find none. It was a freak of nature, unexplainable
It was a factor of love and he would have to live with it even if he so desperately didn't want to. He felt like Reed needed this to make sense for his own sake. He needed to know why this happened to them.
But that question had no answer.
And as Johnny looked to the side, seeing the other three fast asleep on the couch at the corner of the room, their heads rested on each other as they slept soundly. They had likely waited for him to snap out of his daze.
for him to stop staring at the ceiling like he wasn't even alive and finally come out of the room that he had locked himself in. To go for a walk or even just come to a different room. It was time for him to finally leave the daze he had trapped himself in. Despite the comfort it gave him
Johnny took a deep breath and smiled.
Maybe he could live without the answer,
If they were by his side he didn't need to know.
He just needed them.
He just needed his family.