 Sue had spent the morning trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. Google hadn't helped. Her phone - no names she recognized, no names that were helpful, absolutely nothing at all. She'd tried to get her powers to work, nothing. She felt wrong. Wrong. Everything was wrong.
She had to find Reed but didn't know where to start. There was only one Reed in her phone - not her phone, but someone's phone — and it was a Reed Van Allen, not Richards. But Johnny, he was there. She knew he was, somehow. She threw on a robe and finally left her room, going through the house until she found a door that was closed, knocking on it. "Johnny?" |
 Liam, having spent his early 20s out until the wee hours of the morning drinking ungodly combinations of lukewarm liquor out of cups he wasn’t sure were his, was no stranger to a hangover headache. But this, the throbbing between his temples, the sharp pangs every time he moved, was like no hangover he’d ever experienced before, and if the culprit was the three White Claws he had unenthusiastically choked down the night before, he was getting old faster than he thought. He was content resigning himself to his bed until whatever was going on his head – hangover, migraine, aneurysm – calmed down, drawn tightly in the blankets and cursing any speck of light that filtered through the blinds.
Until the knock at the door. The soft rap of knuckles against hardwood brought the heels of his palms over his eyes, applying gentle counter pressure as he blinked against the pain. And then, the name. Johnny. Before he knew what he was doing (and very much not of his own accord), he was drawing himself from the bed, dragging his hands through dark, mussed curls that screamed ‘I haven’t slept since grade school’, and pulling the door open with a furrowed brow, squinting against the bright light in the hallway. Once his eyes adjusted, he leaned himself lazily against the doorframe, arms falling into place over his chest as his head tipped questioningly toward his shoulder. “The one and only. You rang?” A quick peek at their surroundings from over her shoulder showed... absolutely nothing recognizable, and he brought a hand up to scratch at the side of his neck as he tried to sus out how he’d gotten into this mess. It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up in an unfamiliar house, with an unfamiliar woman, but this felt different somehow. As foreign as the woman standing in front of him was, she also seemed familiar, and he chewed lightly on the corner of his lip as he tried to work out how. |
| The face was wrong. Everything about him was wrong, but she was wrong too. That way he was leaning, his body language, everything about him was her brother. She frowned, looking him over as if there was something that would explain what was happening. Everything being wrong, that seemed like something that Johnny might cause — but he was there, didn't seem to know what was happening either. At least they were both there. That was better than being alone.
"Johnny. It's Sue." She gave a little shove to his shoulder, like she was annoyed he didn't recognize her or know who she was. Which she kind of was, honestly. She recognized him, obviously. |
| The severity of the situation hadn’t clicked with him until her tone shifted into very “Sue” tone. Disappointment tinged with a hint of annoyance. “Oh.” One word, one syllable. A warm flush rose into his cheeks as he swallowed hard to rid himself of the lump that had settled into the back of his throat. This had taken a turn. “You look... different.” One eyebrow arched curiously over the other as he pulled his weight from the doorframe, taking a tentative step forward to match her shove against his shoulder with a poke of his finger against her collarbone. “But you’re definitely here. Like, physically here. And very much Sue.” The longer he looked at her, the more he berated himself for not catching it sooner, and the spark of irritation in her eyes told him she felt the same.
Johnny pressed his palm against his brow bone, staring down at unfamiliar hands with a small groan of exasperation. At least they were together, and as far as he could tell, they weren’t in any immediate danger. Outside of the fact that they were totally different versions of themselves, it wasn’t the stickiest situation he’d found himself in. Not by a long shot. After a short, resigned sigh, he plucked a picture frame from a nearby shelf and turned it over in his hands. “Well, I mean, all things considered? Guess it could be worse. What’d we get ourselves into this time? You and Reed actively doing the science-ing? Can you get us back for dinner?” |
| "Yeah. Oh." It was difficult to grasp the severity of the situation when she didn't know what it was. There was the immediate, how they were clearly not themselves — physically. So far she seemed to be there mentally, aware, sure of herself, intelligent. Everything she was before radiation turned her into something more in the first place. If her powers weren't working, she had to guess Johnny's weren't either. Otherwise, how unfair. Not that it would shock her if that was the case. She didn't move when he poked her, other than the slight shift of her body back from the pressure of it.
"Yes, I'm physically here, very much Sue." At his groan, she reached for his hands and gave them both a squeeze. His unfamiliar hands in her unfamiliar ones. She let them go easily enough, gaze dropping down to the picture he found, brow furrowing at his questions. Reed. She bit her lip, arms folding across her stomach. "I don't know where Reed is, if he's here. Do you have a phone? Can you check it, see if he's in it? Mine, I don't recognize any of the names." |
| Johnny took pause at the mention of his phone, eyes darting back over his shoulder into the room that was undeniably not his as he mentally checked through the obvious places in his mind. Not on the dresser. Not on the bed. Not, as far as he could tell, in one of the (no less than) 4 piles of clothes that had somehow managed to avoid the hamper. A gentle voice prodded at the back of his mind — not a comfortable sensation, by any means — and he was instantly directed to the top drawer of the nightstand, where Liam threw his phone after any number of White Claws to prevent himself from sending glance-worthy texts at 4am. With the weight of the phone in his palm, he turned back to Sue, still trying to blink away the feeling of a voice (other than his conscience) in his head. Even though she was the smart one, he knew that voices in your head were very rarely beneficial.
He typed in the pin that he inherently knew, ignored the fact that he inherently knew it, and opened up his contacts. “No, no, nuh-uh,” Johnny’s head shook dejectedly with every name he scrolled by, pausing at a Reed, but not the Reed. “Looks like it’s just you and me, Susie. Shocker.” A wrinkle formed at the bridge of his nose, and he shoved the phone into the back pocket of his sweats for safe keeping. “If we don’t have Reed, and we don’t have science, are we… stuck? Here?” Johnny, not even sure where here was, was rapidly working himself toward panic-mode. He was often the person who got the team into trouble, not out of it. |
| Sue stepped into the doorway of the room to watch him as he found his phone, wondering if he was experiencing the same things she had. Knowing the pin, knowing the password for the laptop she'd found, which drawers contained what even though it wasn't her dresser or her things. It was all so curious, on top of concerning, questionable, upsetting. She watched him carefully as he went through his contacts, hopeful he'd find a familiar name where she hadn't. Any help, a lifeline, would be helpful, no matter how small. But no, they didn't get a single one.
"Calm down." Even if he didn't look like her brother, Sue knew Johnny. She could feel that panic starting to build. "I'm here, you're here, we're physically fine, we have a roof over our heads." Things could be much, much worse. "There's no immediate threat, not that I've seen - I've been up a couple hours. Can you flame on? My powers aren't working." |
| There was that continual ray of optimistic energy. Before he had the opportunity to scoff at her innate ability to pick up on the most subtle cues that he was about to tip head first into the deep end of the anxiety pool, she mentioned being powerless. Powerless. Here. Wherever here was. He had been living with his powers for such a long time that he rarely checked to see if they were still there. Johnny spread his fingers at his sides, inhaling over the course of several seconds as he waited for that familiar rush of warmth to spread through his veins. Nothing. He tried counting backward from five like he was the flight controller at a NASA launch. No more than a spark.
“Ah, shit.” This was no good. Being sucked into some alternate universe was one thing. Being sucked into an alternate universe and being stripped of his powers, which he was very much realizing he had taken for granted, was a different beast entirely. With a quiet huff of indignation, he turned to the mirror mounted on the wall, a hand running the length of his jaw before settling at the back of his neck. “I mean, I can work with this. And you —“ Johnny’s gaze broke from his own reflection to the photographs on the wall, tapping a finger against a diploma in a heavy oak frame. “ — Stella Sawyer, MD. Go figure, you get the brains even in a weirdo world.” After a brief sigh of resignation, he nodded along with her previous sentiment, despite the time that had lapsed. “Well, it’s you and me, sis. Where do we start?” |
| Well, at least it wasn't just her. It would have been easier to navigate wherever they were if they did have their powers, but hey had to work with what they had. Which was nothing. Almost nothing - they had a roof over their heads and were together, so that was certainly something. Sue watched her brother examine himself. She'd looked in the mirror earlier, just long enough to get weirded out by seeing someone else looking back.
"OB/GYN apparently, and I hope no one goes into labor because I am not equipped to deliver a baby." That was something for future-Sue to deal with, but it seemed Stella was overly organized and had a detailed planner that would make it easy to go through and cancel whatever she could manage. "Coffee, food, then we can go from there. Let's see what's in the fridge, okay? Put a shirt on." |
| A shirt. That would be a first good step. Johnny was fairly certain that he would have gotten picked off trying to cross a busy street early on in life if he didn’t have Sue to remind him to look both ways. “Shirt. Got it. And you know I’m good at coffee and food. And moral support.” If Sue and Reed were the brains of the Fantastic Four, and Ben was the obvious brawn, that left Johnny to shoulder the beauty mantle – one that he wore proudly. That being said, things started to devolve into a constant stream of white noise whenever Sue and Reed started talking about equations and theorems in front of him. Everyone had a niche, and outside of mechanics, science wasn’t his.
Johnny disappeared back into the bedroom that wasn’t (but was, kind of) his, pulling the least wrinkled t-shirt he could find from the top of an unkempt pile and tugging it over his head. As usual, he paused for another beat in front of the mirror before turning back to his waiting sister, adjusting pieces of his hair to achieve the “this mess is intentional” look. “Guess we’re going to find out if blondes really do have more fun today,” he commented, looping a brown curl around his finger with a frown. “Alright, Susie-Q. Point me in the right direction and I’m ready with all the positivity you can handle. After coffee. You can’t trust someone who’s positive before caffeine.” |
| It may not have sounded as important as being good at science, or the brawn of the team, but Sue always appreciated what Johnny brought to the squad. Maybe it was because she'd been around him his whole life, but she felt like his contributions were great even when on the surface they may seem small. Not everyone needed to be the brains or the brawn, and if Johnny wanted to take the beauty and run with it — well, he'd been doing a good job of that since day one.
"We do," she assured him, though her tone was dry. There was a pause, then she stepped in to give him a tight hug. Strange bodies or no, she was glad he was there with her and she just needed to hug her brother. It lasted a moment longer than necessary, but when she pulled back she squeezed his bicep lightly, like an extra reminder to herself that he was right there. "I think the kitchen's downstairs. Let me grab the laptop from my room and I'll meet you down there, okay? Start the coffee if you beat me." |
| Sue’s arms wrapped around his torso in a hug that forced the wind from his lungs, and after a less-than-manly startled yelp, he settled into the embrace, a small, half smile tugging at his lips. “Aw, sis,” he muttered into the air over her shoulder, “This is a moment.” As much as he enjoyed teasing her, he had needed the hug as much as she had. It was another corporeal reminder that she was who she was, despite outward appearances. The panic-level anxiety he had been feeling no less than five minutes earlier had ebbed back into a steady unease, which while not ideal, was much more manageable. What better first step than to offer-caffeinate himself and send his thoughts cascading in a thousand different directions?
“On it,” he clipped back, offering up a twin set of finger guns pointed in her direction as he skipped backward toward the stairs. Coffee was in the left cupboard, three shelves up. Unnerving knowledge, but helpful nevertheless. Once he’d descended halfway down the staircase, he took pause with his hand wrapped around the banister, his head turning over his shoulder to catch her gaze before she set off on the quest to find her laptop. “ – Hey, Sue?” There was a plaintive scratch at the back of his neck, paired with a barely audible clear of his throat before he spoke again. “I’m glad you’re here. We make a good team. Y’know, historically speaking.” |
| Even his teasing wasn't enough to bother her, not when she had that solid reminder she wasn't alone in whatever this was. Things could have been worse, much worse, and they would find a way to get through it. First coffee and food, then they'd be in a better place to truly get to work brainstorming what was going on. Honestly, Sue was surprised she'd made it so long being awake without sustenance so far. Adrenaline was a great help, she supposed. Each little reminder that the stranger in front of her was actually her brother made her feel better, like those stupid finger guns.
What he said brought a smile to her features, a sincere smile with a warmth that spread inside her, like she knew everything was going to be fine. Genuine emotion from Johnny Storm, not edged or masked in sarcasm or flippancy? A rarity she didn't take lightly. "I'm glad you're here too, Johnny. Nothing we can't get through together." She gave him a little salute before disappearing down the hall, certain to join him in the kitchen briefly but not before she had her hands on more technology. |