After the Fire

an F4 tag by Setcheti

 

 

Disclaimer:  Stan Lee owns the characters and someone else owns the movie – if I owned them, there would definitely be a sequel.  Several sequels, even. J

Author’s Note: Based on the 2005 live-action movie, not on the Marvel Comics version.  I LOVED THIS MOVIE!!!!  The special-edition DVD can’t be released soon enough!

 

In hindsight, Ben couldn’t believe he’d been so absolutely, positively, completely blind.  About everything.

 

He’d just been coming down off the adrenaline high from their fight – all right, fights – with Doom when the four of them had finished up talking to the police and made their way back to the Baxter Building.  Ben had been watching Sue lean on her brother as they made their way to the elevator, vaguely wondering if she was all right and wishing they’d gotten one of the elevators reinforced so he wouldn’t have to climb all those stairs, when he’d suddenly wondered why it was Johnny supporting Sue instead of Reed doing it.  So he’d looked over his shoulder to see where ‘Mr. Fantastic’ had gotten to…and had stopped dead in his tracks, staring in shock.

 

Reed Richards was a good ten feet behind the rest of them, sagging against one of the stone walls of the lobby – literally sagging, gravity dragging grotesquely at his rubberized body as he very obviously tried to force himself back upright.  But it wasn’t the sight of his oldest friend practically melting towards the marble floor that shook Ben, it was the look in that friend’s eyes.

 

It was a look of shame, so deep and mortifying that Ben Grimm, also known as ‘The Thing’, gasped out loud.  And then he was calling Reed’s name and thundering back down the lobby as those tormented brown eyes rolled back in the scientist’s misshapen head and gravity won the battle with a definitive splat of rubber against floor.  Ben dropped down to one knee beside his friend, heedless of the damage he was doing to the marble, and started carefully gathering Reed into his arms.  It wasn’t easy; the man’s torso was relatively solid, but his arms and legs weren’t regaining their cohesion as quickly and when his head fell back his neck stretched alarmingly.

 

It was Sue who lifted Reed’s head back up, settling it into a secure resting place on Ben’s rocky shoulder while he tried to arrange limp arms so they wouldn’t dangle.  It took him a minute to register that she was crying and saying something about ‘not again’.  “Not again?” Ben demanded.  “This has happened before?  Why didn’t someone tell me?”

 

Johnny was looking just as mystified – if not as angry – as he was, which relieved Ben somewhat that he hadn’t been the only one who didn’t know, but Sue just shook her head, becoming slightly translucent.  “It was after you…left.  After he came out of the machine.”

 

The rumble that erupted from Ben’s rocky chest as he stood up had everyone else in the lobby eying the exits; they had no way of knowing his anger was self-directed.  “He put himself in the machine to test it.  After I left.”  Sue nodded, fading even more, and Ben’s expression became as grim as his surname.  He shifted the limp burden in his arms.  “I think we should all get upstairs.  Meet you guys at the top.”

 

He didn’t, though.  By the time he’d finished climbing stairs no one was in sight, and he went straight to Reed’s room.  The sight of a blanket lying crumpled half on, half off the bed in a way that indicated the bed’s occupant making a mad dash out of the room froze him in the doorway for a moment, but then he came the rest of the way in and kicked it out of his way before putting Reed down and doing his best to straighten the seemingly boneless body out.  It was while he was doing that that he noticed the swollen damage to his friend’s right hand, and noticing that made him think of something else.  What other damage had Doom done to Reed?  For that matter, how much damage had he himself done before that?  After a bit of figuring Ben decided his friend’s suit had to come off if he was going to find out, and after a bit more figuring he decided on a way to do it without destroying it.  He was a little worried that he might hurt Reed in the process, but he was careful and the suit was accommodatingly stretchy and soon he had it off and had tossed it out of his way.

 

And then he just sat there on the side of the bed and stared some more.  Ben had been protecting this gentle, oblivious genius of a man for almost two decades, because Reed Richards was his best friend and just happened to be one of the rare good guys who really was and not just posing for it.  It sickened Ben that in a moment of personal weakness he’d let someone like Doom twist that around in his head until he’d actually lashed out at Reed both verbally and physically.  He traced bruise after bruise with his eyes, afraid to touch them with his hard, clumsy fingers for fear of causing pain or even more damage – there was enough damage already.  He did pick up Reed’s right hand, though, being as careful as he could, trying to see where the swelling started and what was causing it, and he finally determined that the index finger was broken.  That made Ben frown; how do you break rubber?  Rubber bends and stretches and sometimes it snaps, but it doesn’t break unless…

 

Unless it’s cold.  Frozen, even.  Ben cursed himself and Doom in the same low breath, viciously and without restraint.  He’d been stupid, wallowing in self-pity, and he’d given Doom the opportunity to capture Reed.  Torture had apparently ensued.

 

Ben had known for years that Viktor von Doom wanted to get his hands on Reed Richards, not just his mind but his body, and he’d blocked the man time and again until finally the threat of exposure had put a stop to it.  Reed had been oblivious to the whole situation, of course, and Ben had breathed a silent sigh of relief when Sue had come into the scientist’s life – an attached Reed was even safer than a blackmail and Ben-protected Reed.  Sue Storm was anything but oblivious, or so he’d thought, and Reed had been so in love that there was no mistaking it for anything else.

 

And then Sue had walked out.  Ben hadn’t been there when it happened, but when repeated efforts to contact his friend hadn’t been successful he’d gone straight over to see what was going on and found Reed doing his damnedest to work himself to death and drink himself to death at the same time.  Ben had never told anyone how close Reed had come to succeeding, on both counts.  Thinking back, he realized that he probably should have put his anger aside and contacted Sue to tell her what was going on; if he’d been able to get her over there, the sight of a despondent, exhausted Reed who was ten pounds lighter than he should have been and sick as a dog to boot might just have convinced her to give the man another chance.  Come to think of it, though, she’d made the same mistake afterward with Doom that Ben had; he’d have to remember that later, when Johnny Storm tried to throw tonight’s mistake back at him.  And he knew Johnny would, because that was just the way the hotheaded little bastard’s mind worked.

 

Come to think of it, Johnny had been on Doom’s payroll too, hadn’t he?  Ben smiled to himself.  No doubt it was his sister who’d gotten him the job…but it was one more thing to keep in mind for later use.

 

His smile just as quickly fell off as his eyes went back to Reed’s lax face, then to the damaged hand he was still cradling in his own.  This wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you could call a regular doctor for, which meant they were pretty much on their own when it came to medical care – something else he hadn’t thought about before now.  But how do you fix a broken rubber bone?  Do you stretch and pop it back into place, or do you apply heat and melt it back to normal?  And thinking of heat made Ben think of something else; Doom had all but frozen Reed solid, how had he thawed out enough to come rescue anyone?  All he’d been able to do when Ben had shown up in the penthouse was move his eyes, and barely even that.

 

Ben abruptly remembered that Reed hadn’t looked all too steady on his feet when he’d shown up there in the street earlier, just in the nick of time, to confront Doom.  What if he hadn’t been completely thawed out when he’d come charging down to the rescue?  What if every move, every stretch had been…Ben retrieved the blanket and covered his friend up, then went into Reed’s bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet, only just remembering to hold back so he didn’t rip it right off the wall.  There was an electronic thermometer on the top shelf, and he’d known that because he’d put it there himself – Reed didn’t think of things like that; if it even registered with Reed that he needed to take his own temperature he’d be most likely to go into the lab to find a thermometer, and then he’d most likely get distracted by something and forget all about what he’d come in there for in the first place.

 

Luckily, Ben wasn’t easily distracted – not normally, anyway.  He was starting to feel like he had been ever since the accident in space, though, and he wasn’t liking all the things he’d overlooked that he was now starting to notice.  He took the thermometer back into the bedroom and tried it in Reed’s ear, getting a slightly cooler than normal reading that made him frown.  What he really needed was the other man’s core temperature, but that would mean either moving him into the lab, which was currently a wreck, or using the thermometer in a place neither one of them would want it to go.  Unless…

 

Pulling back the blanket again, Ben contemplated the locations of the bruises and then felt around Reed’s abdomen as carefully as he could.  It felt pliable enough under his prodding fingers and the skin appeared to be stretching easily.  He fumbled with the thermometer until he got the last reading cleared, and then he inserted it in his friend’s navel and gently pushed down until he thought it was about in the center of Reed’s body.  When it beeped, he pulled it out, checked the readout, and swore; not even room temperature, much less anywhere near a nice normal 98.6.  He wondered again how Reed had thawed out enough to move earlier, and how much the intense heat of Johnny’s fire followed by the intense cold of the water he’d funneled onto Doom had hurt him on top of the damage that had already been done.  They just didn’t know anything about the parameters of Reed’s mutation…

 

Ben accidentally crushed the thermometer in his hand.  They didn’t know anything…but Reed had to, wouldn’t have put himself into the machine if he hadn’t.  Reed Richards was a very, very thorough scientist, he did not conduct experiments without lots and lots of exhaustively rechecked data to back up his findings.  Which meant Reed had tested himself at some point to get said data…which meant they had an even bigger problem on their hands than him just being hurt.

 

Ben might not have been a genius like his best friend, but he wasn’t stupid; they did not hire stupid people at NASA, or at least they hadn’t been when he’d started working there.  And now that he was starting to think again instead of wallowing, pieces were starting to connect in his mind.  Reed hadn’t shared the tests he’d done on himself with anyone, and he hadn’t talked about his mutation with any of them either although he’d questioned them all minutely about theirs.  None of them had asked him either, which made Ben doubly ashamed of himself; he knew Reed Richards, knew from experience that he didn’t talk about his own problems unless you dragged it out of him.  And Reed had swallowed this one whole and been choking himself on it, if that look in his eyes before he’d passed out in the lobby was anything to go by.  Being subjected to who knew how much bullshit by Doom probably hadn’t helped any either, especially since Doom had been out to get Reed in one way or another long before the accident in space.  Ben grimaced and brushed at the patch of silver-white hair that now graced his friend’s temple.  Doom could have done a lot of things to Reed before anyone else had gotten there, and they were going to have to figure out exactly what had happened if they were going to help him.

 

First, though, they were going to have to find out exactly what it was possible to do to their neglected Mr. Fantastic, and they were also going to have to get him stabilized enough to regain consciousness again so he could answer their questions.  Heat was needed.  Ben ruffled silver-tipped brown hair affectionately and stood up.  “You stay put, stupid,” he rumbled.  “I’ll be right back with somethin’ to warm you up.”

 

He found Johnny Storm sitting on the floor in the demolished lab, absently welding together broken glass and metal with one red-hot finger.  The Human Torch didn’t look up when Ben clomped up behind him.  “Sue’s wiped out, she’s in bed,” he said without being asked.  “And this place is a mess.  Drafty, too.”

 

“Hey, I didn’t do it, blame Doom,” was Ben’s reply.  “But we’ll worry about cleanup later, right now I need your help with Reed.”

 

Johnny snorted softly.  “Still can’t hold himself together?”  He looked more than a little surprised when Ben hauled him to his feet with one rocky hand wrapped around the back of his neck.  “Hey!  Lay off!”

 

Ben shook him once, not violently but just hard enough to get his attention.  “Doom hurt him,” he said, releasing his hold before the younger man could try to jerk away or activate his flame.  “I’m not sure how badly.  But I do know that he’s bruised all over and he’s still cold.”  That got him a confused look, and Ben remembered that Johnny was the only one who hadn’t been in Doom’s building and seen what had happened.  “When I got up to the penthouse over there, he had Reed hooked up to something that was keeping him frozen stiff,” he explained.  “I’m still not sure how he got thawed out enough to come after me.”

 

He saw Johnny process that.  “Ouch, that sounds painful.”  Hard blue eyes snapped up with a question in them.  “Hey wait a minute,  I didn’t even know you could hurt our fearless leader…so how did Dr. Doom know what would work?”

 

Ben hadn’t really thought about that yet, but before he could say so Sue’s voice came from behind them.  “He’s been spying on Reed.”  When both men turned to stare at her she emerged from the shadows and Ben easily read the shame in those blue eyes that were so much softer than her brother’s.  “I should have seen it sooner, I was…stupid.  Viktor was always coming up with these new ideas out of the clear blue sky, ideas that should have taken months of research we all knew he hadn’t put in.  But once I saw the monitors in his penthouse tonight…I knew.  All those ideas were Reed’s, and all the work was too.  Viktor has cameras hidden all over the lab, maybe even all over the building.”

 

“That would explain a lot.”  Did it ever; lost grants, stolen research, inopportune news leaks – Ben couldn’t believe he’d never connected those dots, even though he had started to suspect something when they’d had their meeting with Doom all those months ago and the egotistical man had mentioned their failed NASA bid.  But that wasn’t the most important thing they had to worry about right now and he said so.  “We’ll get the cops to hunt down the cameras,” he said decisively.  “Sue, go call them now and get someone over here right away – last time I checked, industrial espionage was a crime.”  Ben didn’t want to think about which crime cameras in Reed’s bedroom would constitute, if any were found there.  “Hot Stuff, you come with me, we need to get the boss taken care of.  And Susie?”  He did his best to soften his voice when she looked back at him.  “Do you think you can find the file Reed has on himself?  We’re going to need it.”

 

She bit her lip, going semi-translucent as she turned away again.  “I’ll find it.”

 

Ben led Johnny back to Reed’s bedroom.  The blanket was still pulled back, and Johnny gasped when he saw the bruises.  “Oh man, I thought…”

 

“I didn’t.”  Ben wasn’t going to spare himself.  “I can honestly say I never thought about what might be going on with Reed at all, until now.  I don’t think any of us did, and he’s not the type of guy who asks for attention.  But now it’s our turn to take care of him, and cold is something you can take care of real well.”  He captured Johnny’s hands at the wrists and held them up.  “How well can you control the heat you generate, kid?  Rubber burns, you burst into flames and you’re going to kill him the same way we killed Doom, kapish?  What’s needed here is just some steady, gentle warmth so we can raise his core temperature.  Can you do that?”

 

It was Johnny’s turn to bite his lip, eerily mirroring his sister’s earlier expression.  “I think so, yeah.  I’ve been practicing heating things up.”  He withdrew his hands from Ben’s grasp and went around to the opposite side of the bed, sitting down and adopting a look of serious concentration that wasn’t often seen on his mobile face.  He held his hands out, palms down about an inch above Reed’s collarbone and focused a little more; the faintest of red glows appeared, reminiscent of the glow of an activated burner on a stove, and heat began to emanate from his hands into the limp body on the bed.  He moved his hands a little at a time, working his way down Reed’s chest and abdomen, then moving over to manipulate the older man’s right arm and hand more directly at Ben’s suggestion.  “You’re hoping we can melt the bones back together, aren’t you?” he commented, frowning at the damage.  “Okay, turning up the heat – but you get ready to reshape things, big guy, I’m not a taffy-pull kind of person.”

 

Ben just rolled his eyes, but he admitted to himself that as analogies went it wasn’t too bad a one for what he was doing.  He stretched Reed’s heated arm out from the elbow, then elongated his wrist, his palm, and his fingers one by one.  It wasn’t a pleasant thing to do, and Ben was just glad that Reed wasn’t awake for it.  Finally he had everything the way he wanted it, though, and he was able to tell Johnny to shut off the heat.  “We need to check his temperature again, just to be sure,” he told the younger man.  “I had a thermometer in here someplace…”  Johnny held up the crushed remains of the item in question, and Ben grimaced.  “Okay, I’m sure there’s another one in one of the other bathrooms, or in the first aid kit, somewhere.”

 

Johnny took off to find one, and when he came back Sue was with him with a fat file in her arms.  “I found it,” she told Ben.  “And the police are on their way.  How is he?”

 

“I wish I knew, honey – but I think he’s better.”  Ben took the thermometer and repeated what he’d done earlier, and this time he was rewarded with a twitch and a small moan.  The stretched-out arm shrank back to its original size and shape, hand no longer swollen and not looking any the worse for wear.  “Okay, I’m pretty sure he’s better,” Ben amended.  “Reed?  Reed, are you in there, pal?”

 

Features that had been slack firmed, and dark eyelashes fluttered slightly…but Reed’s eyes didn’t open and after a moment his face relaxed again.  Sue pulled the blanket back up when Ben removed the thermometer.  “Well?”

 

“99.8,” the older man told her, carefully setting the small instrument aside so he wouldn’t forget and break it later.  “A little warm, but that’s better than cold.  Junior here does good work.”  He raised a rocky brow ridge at her, the blue eye beneath it questioning.  “So what else went on that I don’t know about, hmm?”  She looked away, but Ben reached out and turned her head back to him with a deliberately gentle finger.  “Susie, we all screwed up, okay?  But we can’t keep wallowing around in it, that’s what got us into this mess.  Now tell me what happened to Reed, please.”

 

So she told him, starting with her finding the scientist asleep on his keyboard and convincing him to come with her for a walk because she wasn’t sure he was thinking clearly.  “He’d already decided he needed to test the machine on himself,” she told Ben earnestly, putting one hand on a hard orange arm.  “It wasn’t because of the fight he had with you, his mind was already made up before that.”  She sniffed.  “I kept accusing him of not seeing me…but I wasn’t seeing him, either.  Not until it was almost too late.”

 

“Well, it wasn’t.”  Ben didn’t have much more comfort to offer than that, and he wanted more information.  “So how did he get thawed out enough to come down and rescue me?”

 

Sue winced.  “I made the same mistake twice – the same mistake I made with you, too.  I told him to stay put and I’d come back with help, and then I turned my back on him.  Then I heard him make this noise…and when I looked he was holding a broken power cable that had been laying on the floor.”  She shuddered.  “I kicked it away from him, but…it took a few minutes before he stopped twitching, and a couple more before he was able to…pull himself together enough to get up, but as soon as he could he headed straight for the stairs and started running for the street.”  She looked at her brother then, frowning.  “How did you get away from the missile, anyway?  We saw it explode.”

 

Johnny shrugged, not quite preening himself; she’d asked him the same question earlier, but he didn’t mind telling his story again.  “I set a garbage barge on fire and the missile hit that instead of me,” he explained.  “I took a header into the drink, though, and it was a while before I was able to get out of the water so I could flame on again and fly to the rescue.”  He grinned.  “Wish someone had gotten a picture of the look on Doom’s face when I showed up, it was priceless!”

 

“Well, we managed to capture the look he got when Reed squirted cold water on him,” Ben informed the younger man.  “And that one’s preserved for eternity, if it doesn’t rust off.  Maybe they’ll put him in the park so the pigeons can crap on him.”  A voice calling out startled them all, and Ben took the file from Sue and waved her toward the door.  “You go talk to them, honey, you’re the one who knows about the cameras.  You can bring them back to the room if they want to talk to me, okay?  I’m gonna stay with Mr. Fantastic here in case he decides to rejoin the land of the living.  Don’t want him to wake up alone.”

 

“No, we wouldn’t want that.”  Sue leaned over, turning translucent again as she brushed a kiss across Reed’s forehead, then patted Ben’s shoulder and left the room.

 

 

The police were there for quite some time, and in the end they found fifteen high-tech cameras scattered throughout the top floor of the Baxter Building and one in each of the elevators as well.  The search they’d already done at Doom’s penthouse had turned up the receiving ends, and Ben had already called Reed’s lawyer to get the ball rolling for a lawsuit that would make the scientist a very rich man.  The police had actually been the ones who’d suggested it; after they’d heard what had happened and then seen Reed for themselves, Ben had every member of the investigative team offering to help in any way they could.

 

They also hadn’t been any happier than Ben when no less than three of the cameras were found in Reed’s bedroom and bathroom, aimed in ways that left no doubt as to what the man on the other end had been hoping to see.  Ben was still trying to decide whether he should tell Reed about that.  He and Johnny hadn’t told Sue either; having the guy who’d been trying to marry you become a homicidal super-maniac was bad enough, but finding out he’d mainly wanted you because he couldn’t have your ex-boyfriend was beyond imagining.  She’d gotten upset enough when the police had asked to see Reed’s bruises, and because of that the investigators had waited until she was out of the room before asking Ben if he thought Doom might have left any…other evidence behind.  Since Reed’s suit had been intact – and on him – Ben was pretty sure Doom hadn’t, but he’d let the investigators go over both scientist and suit anyway, just in case.

 

And afterwards, once Sue had gone to bed, he and Johnny had discussed how they were going to go down to the scene later to urinate on Doom’s statue – pigeon crap suddenly wasn’t defiling enough.  By the time Johnny went to bed, Ben was deciding that he and the kid had more in common than he’d originally thought and that this whole superhero thing might end up being kind of fun.

 

But when his eyes fell back on the too-still Reed, he wasn’t sure about that last part – and he wasn’t going to be sure until he’d finished reading the file.  And so Ben read long into the night, and didn’t stop until his friend woke up at about three a.m.

 

By that time, Ben was half asleep and about three-quarters mad; among other things, he’d found out that Reed could soften beyond the ability to reform himself voluntarily if he got too hot, and that lowering the temperature to near freezing would result in his every move being equivalent to breaking a bone – two little facts Doom had apparently picked up on and been happy to make use of.  Reed had also made notes on exactly how much he could lift and how far he could stretch each part of his body, although too much twisting of his stretched limbs under the wrong conditions made his muscles cramp painfully afterward, and through very detailed experimentation he’d discovered that eating or drinking anything that was too hot temperature-wise had an effect on his digestive system which was best left undescribed.

 

In short, Ben had discovered that out of all of them, Reed was the only one whose mutation had left him physically fragile – super strong, super flexible, but fragile all the same.  Get him too cold and he bruised and then broke, too hot and he couldn’t even stand up.  He considered himself a liability, he was afraid to go out in public, and he was ashamed of not being completely able to control his body.  Hence the look in his eyes down in the lobby…the look Ben saw again when those same brown eyes finally opened and met his blue ones briefly before looking away.  Ben took his friend’s chin and forced his gaze back up.  “Oh no you don’t, pal,” he scolded.  “I didn’t carry your sorry ass up all those stairs and then sit here half the night just so you could look at the wall instead of me.  Unless of course you just can’t stand to look at this ugly mug, is that it?”  Reed’s mouth opened in automatic denial, although no words came out, and Ben smiled.  “I didn’t think so.  And if your problem is being embarrassed about the melting thing, I could kick your ass for that one too.”  His rocky fingers patted a faintly stubbled cheek gently.  “If you can’t show your weakness to a friend, he ain’t much of a friend now is he?  Although I for damn sure haven’t been one lately, I admit.”

 

Reed’s sigh seemed to deflate his entire body, and he shook his head against the pillow.  “You…had enough to deal with, Ben.”

 

Ben snorted.  “I was wallowing in it, not dealing with it,” he corrected, aiming a scolding finger at his friend.  “And you let me get away with it all this time, I should roll you up in a ball and use you for shootin’ hoops.”  That made Reed laugh, albeit weakly, and Ben smiled again.  “That’s better.  Now why don’t you tell me how you’re feeling.”  Reed closed his eyes, and Ben shook him until he opened them again.  “I said tell me how you’re feeling,” he ordered.  “You can’t bullshit me on this one, I’ve seen the bruises and I know at least part of what happened while Doom had you.  The kid and I fixed your hand, does it still hurt?”

 

Reed flexed the fingers of his right hand carefully, then lifted it up off the bed; he didn’t get very far before his arm started to droop, but he got it high enough so he could look at it.  “It’s…a little sore.  Heat?”

 

“I thought it might work.”  Ben shrugged.  “How about the rest of you?  We got you warmed back up, I guess I should take your temperature again to see if it stayed where it was supposed to.”  He picked up the thermometer off the bedside table and matter-of-factly pulled back the blanket; Reed shuddered, shutting his eyes, and Ben patted his solar plexus before letting one heavy hand rest there comfortingly.  “I’ll be done in a minute – but you let me know if it hurts, got it?  This was just the best way I could come up with other than the one your mama used to use when you were a baby.”

 

Reed twitched when the thermometer was pushed down, but he shook his head when Ben demanded again to know if it hurt.  “No, it’s just a little…uncomfortable,” the scientist told him, looking it as he said it.  He opened one eye.  “I definitely prefer this to…that other way, I promise you.”

 

Ben chuckled.  “I thought you might.”  He extracted the thermometer when it beeped and pulled the blanket back up with his free hand, shaking his head when he saw the readout.  “You’ve only dropped three-tenths of a degree, 99.5,” he said.  “You feel hot?”

 

“A little.”  Reed shifted, not managing to move much.  “But just…sore, mostly.”

 

“You got banged around quite a bit, you’re entitled to be sore,” Ben informed him.  “And you did a lot of twisting around out there earlier, any cramps yet?”

 

That got both eyes open, and a look of dismay crossed Reed’s face.  “You found…”

 

“The file you should have shared with the rest of us months ago, yeah,” Ben interrupted him.  “Actually Sue found it, but I’ve been reading it while I waited for you to wake up.  So have you had any cramps yet?”

 

Reed’s eyes closed again as he sighed.  “If I had…believe me, you’d know.”

 

“That bad, huh?”  Not that he hadn’t already known they were, of course.  Ben smoothed out the blanket.  “Would heat help?”

 

“I…don’t know.”  Another attempt at shifting.  “I wasn’t looking for…ways to solve the problem…only ways to avoid it.”

 

“Yeah, so I noticed.”  That was one of the reasons Ben had gotten as worked up as he had over the file.  Reed’s notes on one testing session showed that when the cramps had hit he’d actually passed out and not come to for nearly an hour; in another, he’d retained enough control to turn a lab camera on the affected leg to photograph what was happening for his records, not realizing that his pain-twisted face was clearly reflected in a nearby monitor.  Page after page, experiment after experiment, records of tests done on himself that were nowhere near as careful or as gentle as the ones he’d done on the three of them.  Ben let his feelings about that show on his face, had the satisfaction of seeing Reed’s brown eyes widen with sudden worry.  But the rocky hand he patted his friend’s chest with was gentle.  “You and me, we’re gonna have a long talk once you’re feeling better, got it?” he said seriously.  “But you’re not there now, so right now the only thing we’re gonna talk about is what I can do for you.  Let’s start with why you keep wiggling around.”

 

Reed sighed again, and to Ben’s surprise he blushed.  “I…um, I need to …I mean, I…”

 

“I think I get what you mean.”  Ben had to grin.  “I could get a bottle or something…”

 

“No…you don’t need to do that.”  The scientist’s blush deepened.  “I can…I mean, if you could just…um, turn your back for a few minutes, I could…you know.”

 

Ben’s brow ridges climbed up toward the top of his head.  He looked toward the partially open bathroom door, then back down at his friend.  “You can do that?  I mean…all the way over there?  Really?”

 

“I tested…everything.”  Reed couldn’t get any redder.  “And that was…well…could you just turn around, please?”

 

The grin came back, and Ben let him see it before turning his broad back.  “Well, it’s not like I want to watch, you know?  Let me know when you’re done.”

 

The blankets rustled and a moment later came the unmistakable sound of nature’s call being answered followed by a sigh of relief from Reed.  Then the toilet flushed, water came on in the sink, and a moment later the blankets rustled again.  Out of the corner of one eye Ben caught a glimpse of a stretched-out arm retracting from the bathroom and turned back around to catch it when it started to sag toward the floor.  He put the arm back where it belonged and Reed closed his eyes with another sigh.  “Thanks.”

 

“Believe me, if it had been the other one I’d have left it where it fell,” Ben told him.  He rubbed the arm he was still holding gently.  “Did that hurt, stretching your arm out like that?”

 

“Not too much.”  Reed didn’t open his eyes, and his face was starting to go slack again.  “Just…tired, Ben.”  But after a silent minute a flicker of brown appeared, narrow and concerned.  “Are you okay?”

 

“I’m tired, but I’m okay.”  He anticipated the next question.  “Sue and the kid are okay too.  So let’s go back to sleep, genius, ‘cause I need my beauty rest.”

 

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Reed told him, and then the narrow brown sliver disappeared and a moment later the soft, shallow rhythm of his breathing told Ben his friend was asleep again.  But he still sat there, absently massaging Reed’s arm, for quite some time.

 

 

Late the next morning, Johnny and Sue were sitting at the breakfast table when Ben appeared with a big grin on his face.  “Morning kids, look who’s up!”

 

Reed was leaning heavily on his friend’s supportive strength, dressed in a bathrobe and pajamas and looking more than a little wobbly, but he managed a half-smile of his own.  “Are both of you all right?”

 

“He wouldn’t believe me, had to see for himself.”  Ben jerked his head at Johnny, then at the straight-backed kitchen chair that Reed usually sat in.  “Johnny, get that recliner from the other room, would’ja?  He’s not gonna be able to stay sitting up in that thing.”

 

Reed colored, dropping his eyes, but he didn’t protest and Ben saw Sue’s eyes widen.  He shook his head at her warningly; they needed to play like everything was normal for a while if they could, for everyone’s sake.  Then Johnny was back with the recliner and the two of them fought good-naturedly over how best to position it at the table.  They managed to drag Reed into the verbal tussle with them, and by the time they were finished he was comfortably situated in the chair and had forgotten to be embarrassed.  Which had been Ben’s intention all along, of course – sometimes distraction worked better than reason.  He seated himself in his own specially-reinforced chair, gave as good as he got to Johnny’s ribbing about taking off a ton or two, and then dug in to his breakfast with gusto.

 

Conversation quickly turned to the half-destroyed lab and what was going to need to be done to fix it.  Sue got paper and started listing repairs in the order they’d need to be accomplished while Reed sipped lukewarm coffee and estimated how much each one would cost and Ben grumbled into his cereal about being nominated to clear the heavier debris away and wanting at least one elevator fixed so he could use it.  Then Johnny suggested that maybe he could fix the broken front window, or at least weld the frame back together, and it was just after he’d demonstrated how he’d been welding with his finger the night before that the illusion of normalcy came crashing down around them.

 

Reed had been admiring of the welds the younger man had done, but the scientist wasn’t sure that the whole floor-to-ceiling frame wasn’t too damaged to be repaired instead of replaced, and so Johnny had gone back to the broken window to look at the frame again, keeping up a running commentary about what he was seeing and whether or not he thought he could fix it.  Reed had tipped his head back, just listening and still sipping his coffee, but at one particularly enthusiastic exclamation he’d set the cup aside and craned his head around to look.

 

It was the sort of move he’d gotten used to making over the past few months and didn’t really think much about any more.  His neck stretched up over the back of the chair, twisting around so he could see what he was hearing about.  He looked, tilting his head from side to side to see from different angles and making a few comments of his own, then pulled back to normal and picked up his coffee again, speculating on how much money they might be able to save if Johnny’s idea would work.  It wasn’t until Ben saw him twitch and grimace that the older man realized something was wrong.  “Reed?” he questioned worriedly, putting down his spoon and getting up out of his own chair.  “Reed, are you…”

 

The coffee cup hit the floor, shattering, and Reed gasped as a muscle in his neck tensed and started to twist, forcing his head back.  Then another muscle bulged, rippling his skin as it twisted in the opposite direction, and he clenched his jaw against what Ben assumed would have been a cry of pure agony.  Ben was already by his side, yelling for Johnny and ignoring the wide-eyed Sue as he slipped unyielding hands around the sides of his friend’s face, cupping his jaw and exerting firm but gentle upward pressure to straighten the kinking, twisting muscles.  Reed’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut now, his hands clamped tightly enough around the recliner’s arms to leave his flattening fingers white and bloodless while his body tried to arch away from the pain and succeeded only in rippling in place.  Johnny dove in on the other side of the chair, hands already glowing, and carefully wrapped them around the other man’s neck.  “That’s it,” Ben approved.  “It’s all right, Reed.  Just relax, we’ll fix it.  Just relax.”

 

“I’m not sure he can.”  Johnny was biting his lip again, concentration warring with worry on his face.  “Look at his shoulders, Ben; it’s spreading.  I’ve seen this happen to guys on the circuit after an injury, it’s like a chain reaction.  Once one muscle group cramps up it tenses up the next one…”

 

“Then we’ll move the heat down once his neck is loosened up,” Ben instructed.  “The cramps will twist him up like a pretzel if we let them – and he’s been letting them, he’s been too damned stubborn to ask for help.  Well not this time, genius,” he scolded Reed, even though he wasn’t sure his friend was hearing him.  “No more curling up in a corner and just hoping it stops, you hear me?”

 

To his utter surprise, Reed’s eyes slitted open, and his jaw moved against Ben’s supporting hands.  “Sorry,” he whispered.

 

Ben made a face at him.  “You don’t have to apologize for being banged up, stupid.”

 

“Yeah, man, that’s idiotic,” Johnny agreed.  He was already moving his hands down, pushing aside bathrobe and pajamas so he wouldn’t singe the fabric or melt the buttons.  He vaguely caught his sister’s wince when Reed’s bruises came back into view, and he spared her a frown.  “Get used to it, Sis – heroes get hurt, you know.  Our resident superbrain Mr. Fantastic here just isn’t smart enough to know he’s supposed ask for help when it happens.”  He returned his attention to what he was doing.  “Ben, I’m going all the way down – he’s still rippling and I don’t like it.”

 

“Do it.”  Ben had released Reed’s head, straightening out his neck, and was now carefully wiping twin trails of pain and embarrassment away from the corner of each screwed-shut eye.  “He’s a smart kid, you know,” he told his unresponsive friend conversationally.  “It’s just too bad his sister got all the looks in the family.”

 

“Half, she got half,” Johnny shot back.  “And I don’t have to touch up my hair, so there.”

 

“You’re just lucky it doesn’t burn off when you flame up,” Ben informed him when Sue failed to respond to the jibe.  “I don’t think the sexy bald look would work for you the way it does for me.”

 

Johnny snorted.  “If you call that working, then I guess it wouldn’t.  Reed, talk to me; how does that feel so far?”

 

Reed’s eyelashes fluttered.  Once Johnny had started working on his torso the heat had quickly penetrated most of his body, leaving it limp, heavy and unresponsive.  He couldn’t even open his eyes.  “Sleepy,” he murmured.  “Thanks, guys.”

 

“Any time, man, any time.”  Johnny turned off his heat and sat back on his heels, looking up at Ben.  “Think we should move him?”

 

Another flutter.  “Please don’t.”

 

Ben smiled.  “Sure thing, pal.  We’ll just work around you – like we always do.”

 

That won him a drowsy snort and a smile.  Ben trotted back to the bedroom after  the thermometer and the file he’d been reading, and when he came back Johnny was eating his cereal and Sue had her arms around the now-sleeping Reed’s neck and her face buried in his shoulder.  She’d pulled his pajamas and robe back into order, and Ben disordered them again just enough to bare the insertion site for his thermometer.  Reed’s twitch when the instrument went in raised Sue’s head, and Ben shook his at her.  “I asked him last night when he woke up, honey, he said it didn’t hurt.”

 

She sniffed.  “And you believed him?”

 

“Yeah, pretty much.”  Ben extracted the thermometer when it beeped and frowned at it.  “103, no wonder he fell asleep.  We’d probably better not let him get any hotter if we can help it, though, it might do more harm than good.”

 

“I can back it off a little more the next time,” Johnny said around a mouthful of Ben’s cereal.  “He was hurting, I was in a hurry.  Those bruises look a lot better this morning, though, so maybe the heat helps him heal faster.”  He glanced up, raising an eyebrow.  “He twists up, huh?”

 

Ben shoved the file across the table at him.  “He took pictures – but finish eating first, it ain’t pretty.”

 

Johnny went back to shoveling down cereal.  “Gotcha.”

 

Ben rolled his eyes, then turned his attention back to Sue.  She looked tired to him.  “How are you doing, honey?  Want to talk about it?”

 

She looked up at him like she hadn’t even heard what he said.  “I wanted him to be a hero, you know – I wanted him to be my hero, to sweep me off my feet and stand up to the whole world for me.  And when he didn’t do it, I…I left.  And now…”

 

“Heroes get hurt, right.”  Ben quoted her brother, nodding.  “Heroes risk themselves to save their friends, and they won’t listen to reason.”  He caught and held her eyes.  “Heroes…get shafted by the bad guy, and then you have to see them weak and hurting and vulnerable.  And that’s when you realize that a hero is a guy who can die.”  She started to cry then, and he pulled her into his arms and held her carefully, letting Johnny know with a look that he would handle it.  “Honey, Reed was always a hero and you know it, he’s been tilting at windmills ever since I first met him – you just didn’t realize what it would mean if you got what you wanted and it came out in the open.  And now that it is…you’re scared, because you’re seeing what it’s going to cost him, and what it could end up costing you.”  He stroked her hair.  “Problem is, there’s no going back now.  All we can do is make sure he doesn’t shut us out and try to handle it all by himself.”

 

Sue lifted her head to look at him, fading almost completely from sight.  Her voice was a whisper.  “How?”

 

Ben smiled.  “That’s easy.  Love him back, honey, just love him back.”  He resisted the urge to tighten his hold when she became completely invisible, although her tears were still visible trickling down his stony chest.  “You didn’t tell me last night, did she get hurt?” he asked Johnny quietly.  “Doom wasn’t exactly pulling his punches when I showed up.”

 

“He knocked her around, but the shield kept her from getting more than some bruises – or at least that’s what she told me,” the younger man answered in kind.  “I think most of it was that big shield she put up to contain my fire, that really took it out of her.”

 

“We’re gonna have to find out how much is too much.”  Ben was nodding.  “How about you, Junior?  Water ain’t as soft as people think it is, not when you hit it going fast.”

 

Johnny shrugged.  “Same for me, I’m just a little sore – but it’s no worse than I’d be if I’d been out on my board all day, you know?  Snow’s not as soft as people think either.”  He drained the rest of the milk from the bowl and then pushed it aside.  “What about you, big guy?  Did Doom manage to get in any lucky shots?”

 

Ben mirrored his shrug.  “Nope.  I’m pretty hard to hurt, you know – and the one time Doom got the upper hand, Mr. Fantastic over here showed up and turned it around.”

 

“There’s definitely more to him than I thought there was.”  Johnny had opened the file and was flipping through it.  He made a face when he got to the pictures, and when Ben saw him squint he knew the younger man had seen the one with the monitor reflection.  “Man, would you look at that?”

 

“Once was enough, thanks.”  Sue was starting to become visible again in Ben’s arms as she calmed down, and he went back to stroking her hair.  “What’s really rotten is that he did all of that right under our noses and nobody noticed.”  His expression darkened.  “Of course, that wasn’t the only thing going on that we didn’t notice.”

 

Johnny shook his head.  “You can’t totally blame yourself for what happened with Doom, big guy.  You’re the one who got the rawest deal out of this, he just got to you while you were down and played on that.”

 

Ben snorted.  “You read the rest of that file, then you can tell me who got the raw deal,” he replied.  “And I’m not making any excuses for myself; I’ve known what Doom was since I first laid eyes on him, if he got to me it was because I let him.”

 

The younger man thought about that for a minute, and then he appeared to make up his mind about something; Ben was pretty sure he knew what it was, too, and the next words out of Johnny’s mouth confirmed it.  “You going to tell him about the cameras?”

 

Sue stirred in Ben’s arms, pulling back and wiping her eyes.  She looked confused.  “Why wouldn’t we?”

 

Ben very carefully set her aside.  He himself probably wouldn’t have said anything…but her brother did know her best.  He hoped.  “He means the cameras they found in Reed’s room, honey, not in the lab,” he told her.  “Two in his bedroom…one in his bathroom.”

 

Her eyes widened and she faded a little, a sickened look crossing her face.  “Viktor was…”  She swallowed.  “Watching us?”

 

Of all the times for her to go blonde on them.  Ben traded a look with Johnny, and shook his head.  “No, Susie, I don’t think he did it so he could watch you.  Just…just Reed.”  He saw that she didn’t want to believe that and switched to a less gentle voice.  “Doom had been after Reed that way since long before you were in the picture.  I thought I’d finally managed to make him back off, but I guess I was wrong.”  He answered her next question before she could ask it.  “Reed doesn’t know.”

 

“Mr. Fantastic is also apparently Mr. Oblivious,” Johnny added, not quite as flippantly as he might have.  He and Ben had talked about Doom’s…interest in Reed the night before, and he hadn’t been happy about it.  Johnny Storm considered himself a pretty open kind of guy, he didn’t really much care what floated someone else’s boat; not taking ‘no’ for an answer, though, was a long way from okay in his book.  “Not that you didn’t know that already, Sis,” he continued with a wink.  “That he was clueless, I mean.”

 

She didn’t buy into the attempt at distraction.  “But Viktor wasn’t…”

 

“Yes, he was,” Ben interrupted.  “Honey, I had to blackmail that bastard into letting it go.  He was starting to get well-known, I reminded him that people like to read about well-known guys in the paper – and I was sure they’d really have enjoyed hearing about how he’d been trying to trip a straight guy into his bed and exploit that guy’s research all at the same time.”  He snorted.  “He didn’t like it, but he backed off.  Or at least I thought he did.”

 

“That’s what you get for thinking,” Johnny quipped, and batted his eyelashes when Ben flipped him off.  “No thanks, big guy, I’m not into orange.”

 

“Thank God for small favors.”  Ben made a show of looking him up and down.  “Very small, apparently.  I thought it was only cold that made things shrink, Hot Stuff?  Or did you get too happy one night and accidentally roast it?”

 

Johnny stuck out his tongue, not having a good comeback for that one, and changed the subject.  “So what’s first on the agenda today?  I think I can fix that window enough to get by for a while.”

 

“I know I’m gonna get stuck hauling all the junk around,” Ben grumbled, getting up and refilling his cereal bowl again.  “Not until after I eat, though.”

 

 

Their repair work progressed steadily until the police showed back up early that afternoon, with more questions and more evidence – the investigators at Doom’s building had hit paydirt when they’d found the man’s cache of video taken from the monitors.  The fact that the saved videos went back almost five years and were carefully labeled by both date and content had been telling.

 

And the fact that the ones which didn’t show Reed working in his lab were of Reed getting ready for bed was just plain disturbing.  Only one of them featured Sue and Reed together, but that wasn’t the one the police had the most questions about; that honor was reserved for the raw footage from the night before.  And the one they wanted to ask about it, was Reed.

 

Ben didn’t like it, but he knew they didn’t have a choice.  Reed had been awake for an hour or so, still limp and feverish from Johnny’s heat treatment but lucid enough to answer questions, and the police needed to question him while everything was still fresh in his mind.  Especially his fight with Ben.

 

They’d moved the recliner into the main room earlier, positioning it where they could keep an eye on Reed while the work was being done and where he could watch them once he’d woken up.  Sue was at his side, fussing; she had a thermometer in his mouth, a cool washrag draped across his forehead, and a glass of cool water sitting nearby for him to drink once the thermometer had been dispensed with.  She also had a blanket covering the lower half of his body, which Ben knew was more for hiding the way his legs and feet were sagging down around the recliner’s incomplete support than anything else – whether she was hiding it from the police or from herself, though, he wasn’t able to say.  The two detectives who’d come seemed to think the scene was normal enough, had even asked if Dr. Richards had gotten sick from being frozen the night before.  Which in a way was what had happened, so Ben told them yes.

 

Ben and Johnny pulled up extra chairs, and Reed greeted the detectives with his usual politeness once Sue had taken her thermometer away, softly apologizing for not being able to shake hands; he assented to feeling up to answering a few questions with a nod and a quiet, ‘Of course.’  The line of questioning the detectives started off with, however, first took him by surprise and then made him angry.  “It sounds like you’re trying to blame something on Ben,” he finally snapped after one pointed question about how the two of them had been getting along recently.  “Or like you’re trying to get me to blame something on Ben.”

 

“We’re just trying to figure out who did what to who,” the younger detective, Collins, told him matter-of-factly.  “We have plenty of witnesses streetside and even in the von Doom building, but from the new evidence we’ve turned up it looks like the fighting actually started in here.” 

 

“Before von Doom showed up,” the older officer, a Detective Ballard, added.  “We have the footage showing what happened after he got here…but I have to say it looks like it could have all been connected, and we need your clarification as to what was actually going on.”  He cleared his throat.  “I know this is difficult for you, Dr. Richards, but we need to hear your version of the exact nature of the…confrontation you had with Mr. Grimm last night when you and Ms. Storm came home.”

 

Reed’s resigned sigh hissed through clenched teeth.  “The nature of our confrontation was Viktor von Doom,” he answered, the hand laying across the blanket curling into a fist.  “Ben has been very depressed because of what happened to him, and because my research into a solution hadn’t been progressing as quickly or as successfully as I’d hoped it would.  Going by what he said when I came back to the lab last night, I believe that Viktor had approached him and played on his understandable anger and frustration…especially as it applied to me, the person who’d made this happen to him and wasn’t doing anything to fix it.”

 

“You didn’t make it happen,” Ben contradicted immediately.  “And you’ve done nothing but try to fix it.  You’re right, that was what that bastard Doom said, but he was wrong.  And I was just plain stupid, so don’t make excuses for me. ”  He put a heavy hand on his friend’s shoulder, careful not to let the full weight of it fall and compress still-warm and therefore malleable flesh and bones.  “I picked a fight with you – hell, I flat out attacked you, Reed.  There’s no way to make that anything but what it was.”

 

“So this happened after you had a conversation with von Doom regarding Dr. Reed?” Collins wanted to know, and received a nod as his answer.  “When and where did this conversation take place, Mr. Grimm?”

 

“Sal’s Diner, down on Fourth,” Ben supplied at once.  He shrugged a rocky shoulder.  “I guess I should have thought something weird was up, the way he just sort of came out of nowhere wanting to talk to me like he did; it’s not like there was ever any love lost between us, you know.”  He very gently squeezed the shoulder his hand was still resting on.  “He kept coming back to Reed not having found a solution to my…problem, and then he started saying that maybe he wasn’t trying all that hard to begin with.  I really should have caught on right about when he suggested that maybe Reed was out running around the city, if I’d been thinking clearly, because there’s no way he should have known whether Reed was in the Baxter building or not.  But I didn’t catch on, and when Reed and Sue came back I…well, I think you saw what happened.”

 

“Yes, we did.”  Ballard shook his head.  “That was one hell of a fight.”

 

“A fight you all seem to be forgetting that I won,” Reed countered quietly, but with just a hint of a smile.  He turned his head so he could look up at his oldest friend, who was startled to see a sparkle in the tired depths of those brown eyes.  “Ben, you didn’t hurt me – not even one of the bruises I’ve got came from you.  And I stopped you before you could accidentally damage the machine.  You weren’t going anywhere until I let you go, remember?”

 

Ben’s mouth dropped open, as did Sue’s and those of the two detectives, but Johnny Storm started to laugh.  “Priceless!  Guys, I want a copy of that video.”  He slapped Reed on the shoulder Ben’s hand wasn’t on – gently.  “Way to go, I guess I gave you the right superhero name after all.”

 

Ballard recovered himself before Collins did.  “So you were in control of that fight the whole time, Dr. Reed?”

 

Reed nodded.  “He took me by surprise at first, and I was hampered by the fact that I didn’t want to hurt him or damage any of my equipment…but yes, I had the situation under control.  And since you’ve seen it yourselves, you know that once the initial explosion was over Ben left without further incident and went to cool off.  So now that that incident has been explained, can we move on to something else?”

 

There was an edge to his voice, and a bit more than that, and Ballard looked at him a moment before agreeing.  “Yeah, I guess we can.”  He nudged Collins when the younger man seemed ready to object.  “I’d have to assume you weren’t in control during the fight you had with Doom while the big guy here was in the machine, am I right?”  At Reed’s nod he continued.  “All right, so we know what happened in here because of the cameras, and we have witnesses who saw what took place outside the building before Doom carted you off.  So now I need you to tell me what happened in Doom’s penthouse last night, Dr. Richards.”

 

Ben felt his friend stiffen, but other than that Reed remained perfectly composed.  “I started coming around right about the time we arrived at the penthouse, I suppose,” he answered.  “I tried to get away, but I still didn’t have much physical control so it wasn’t hard for him to subdue me.  He put me in a chair in the center of the room and strapped me in, and I was thinking about how simple it would be for me to slide out from under the restraints when he attached the hoses to my suit.”  This time there was a tremor that ran through the shoulder under Ben’s hand, invisible but there.  “He told me not to worry about escaping, but that if there was any shape I’d like to be in for posterity I should probably try to get myself into it before he opened the valves – he was using a gaseous coolant solution in pressurized cylinders, he said liquid nitrogen would have made it too quick.  My death, that is.  Then he opened the valves and I started to stiffen up almost immediately.”

 

Ballard laced his fingers together, nodding noncommittally, his eyes never leaving the scientist.  “And when did he start in on you again?”

 

Another tremor, this one more pronounced – and more visible.  Reed appeared momentarily startled by the question, or maybe he was just surprised that the detective had known to ask it.  “Immediately after that.  But he got bored with hitting me fairly quickly and just started stalking around the room telling me all about the plans he had for…” he cut his eyes at Sue, then looked away again quickly, “…well, for everything.  Every once in a while he’d get close and do something to me; the last time, just before Sue showed up, he bent back my index finger until it cracked.”

 

Ben had a feeling this was going to get bad, and Ballard’s next question confirmed it.  “Before Ms. Storm showed up, did von Doom say what he had planned for you, Dr. Richards?”

 

“He planned to kill me.  Slowly.”  Reed’s voice was perfectly composed, as was his face.  He might have been discussing the repairs to the window, or the weather outside of it…except that his clenched fist had turned dead white and distorted under the pressure he was putting on it.  “He was waiting until I was cold enough…so he could start breaking parts off.”

 

Ballard’s tone was as flatly conversational as Reed’s.  “Any particular part he planned to start with?”

 

“Yes.”  But when the detective made a ‘go on’ motion, Reed flushed and shook his head.  “I’d…prefer not to say, Detective.”

 

Ballard nodded slowly.  “All right, I understand.  And I think we’ve got enough information about that for the time being, so why don’t we move on to something else.  Unless you need a break?”

 

“No, I’m fine.”  Reed made a very deliberate – and largely unsuccessful – attempt to relax.  “What…what else did you need to know?”

 

“I understand your current condition is due to your being frozen last night?”

 

The scientist shrugged.  “Partially.  More from being subjected to multiple extreme changes in temperature within a relatively short period of time – heat, then cold, then heat and cold again.”

 

Collins cocked his head.  “And from using your machine as well?”

 

Everyone froze, but after a moment Reed nodded stiffly.  “That too.  There wasn’t enough power to effect any lasting change, but it was…physically stressful.”

 

“Translation: It hurt like hell.”  Johnny had changed sides with Ben, wrapping his hands around Reed’s left forearm where it was visibly starting to distort in sympathy with his hand.  This time there was no glow, but the twisted, flattened fist slowly began to loosen.  “Don’t listen to him doing that downplay shit, man,” he told Ballard.  “We had to warm him up last night and then again this morning, he’s in a ton of pain and he’s about as weak as a kitten.  We just can’t seem to get it through his skull that getting the crap kicked out of him by the bad guy isn’t something he has to be ashamed of.”

 

Ballard chuckled, not unkindly, when Reed flushed red.  “Cops go through that too ,” he commiserated with the embarrassed scientist-turned-superhero.  “I’ve been there, Dr. Richards; trust me, I know how hard it is.  And you might not have been prepared for the position your condition – all of your conditions – have put you in, but I have to say I think you’re handling it pretty damn well so far.”

 

“Property damage aside, there were no civilian casualties last night once the four of you got on the scene,” Collins added.  “Doom left a trail of bodies behind him, some really brutal murders, and we’re sure there would have been more if you hadn’t stopped him.”

 

“We couldn’t have done it,” Ballard admitted.  “Two beat cops and three security guards who got in his way last night are down in the morgue right now, and five more officers are in the hospital.”  He winked at Ben.  “The only way the city could be more happy with all of you right now is if Mr. Grimm here could find it in his heart to wander down there and help them with the cleanup.”

 

Ben snorted, but he was smiling.  “I could probably go down there and lend a hand with the mess, sure thing.  Once we’re done here.”

 

If Ballard had a problem with the faint edge of warning on that last condition, he didn’t show it.  “Okay,” was his reply.  “We’ve just got a few more things to cover.  Most of the saved footage we found was self-explanatory, but the D.A. wanted some clarification on a couple of things.  You’ve got that list, Collins?”

 

His partner stepped back in, pulling a neatly stapled sheaf of folded printouts out of his jacket.  “The videos were all cross-indexed by date and subject,” he began, exchanging a look with the older detective.  “Von Doom obviously never expected anyone to find his secret stash, because they were all too clearly labeled to be mistaken for anything but what they were.  We understand that you didn’t know about the cameras planted in your building, Dr. Richards, but I need to know how much contact you had with Viktor von Doom over the past five years.  If you have any records of visits or phone calls, exact dates would be helpful.”

 

Reed frowned and slowly shook his head.  “The first time I’d had any direct contact with Viktor in six years or so was when Ben and I had our appointment with him to present our proposal for…for studying the phenomenon in space.”

 

Collins ticked off something on one of his lists, frowning.  “You’re sure?”

 

“Positive.”  The scientist shifted slightly in his chair.  “He used to hang around my old lab a lot, before I bought this building, but…well, he was getting to be very successful, and very busy.  He wanted me to come work for him, and when I kept refusing it…it eventually severed our friendship.”

 

“Why didn’t you want to work for him?” Ballard wanted to know.  “Was it personal, or something else?”

 

“I didn’t like his ethics,” was Reed’s answer.  “I believe science should first and foremost serve mankind, Viktor disagreed; he saw scientific achievement as a tool for attaining wealth and power, and he didn’t think that we had a moral responsibility to use our research for the greatest good.”

 

“No matter what the personal cost to yourself, right?” Ballard commented, and Ben stiffened; he’d wondered if this was coming, and here it came.  The detective’s voice was almost gentle as he continued, “Is that what happened with your antivenin research, Dr. Richards?”

 

Reed sighed.  “He recorded…that?”  He swallowed when the detective nodded back.  “I’d think that footage would be self-explanatory as well, Detective.”

 

“Part of it is.”  Collins had flipped to a different page on his list.  “But it’s also confusing, for a lot of reasons.  Von Doom had that footage expertly edited instead of just cut together like the others were, and instead of ending when the research does the saved recording encompasses several more days.”  He looked sympathetic when the scientist blanched.  “I’m sorry, Dr. Richards; that was apparently a very…difficult time for you, after Ms. Storm left.”

 

“What do you mean, after I left?”  Sue had been mostly quiet through the interview, but now she spoke up.  She looked to Reed, frowning when he wouldn’t meet her eyes.  “What happened after I left?”

 

“Reed…um, figured out a way to use mosquitoes to produce rattlesnake antivenin,” Ben told her when the scientist wasn’t able to find his voice to answer.  “He’d holed up here in the lab, and he hadn’t told anyone about his discovery.”  He cleared his throat.  “He also hadn’t told anyone you’d left.”

 

Her chin lifted as she denied that.  “Obviously he told you.”

 

“Nope, he didn’t.”  That surprised her, and Johnny as well.  One corner of Ben’s mouth twitched humorlessly; it was time for the truth to come out, apparently, and he released it with a silent squeeze of apology to his friend’s shoulder.  “I only found out because he stopped answering his phone, so I came around to see what he was up to.  And what he was up to was work – up to his eyeballs in it.  He’d been at it ever since you took off, I guess.”  His gruff voice took on a rumblingly sarcastic edge as he remembered the anger he’d felt that day.  “Of course, he’d also given up eating and sleeping in favor of drinking, and luckily I got here before he could shoot himself up with the venom and start letting his little bloodsucking friends go after him, but he still tried to go through with it a couple more times before he finally sobered up.”  His voice roughened even more, ugly and harsh.  He hadn’t been sparing himself, he wasn’t going to spare her either.  “About a month later Doom Industries announced that they’d found a way to have mosquitoes make antivenin for treating snakebite victims, it was big news.  Made them a lot of money too, from what I understand.”

 

Sue actually flinched, but Johnny just cocked his head speculatively at Ben.  “Why didn’t you tell someone?” he wanted to know.  “You knew whose idea that was, you had the research to prove it!”

 

Ben shrugged.  “I thought Reed might have called the bastard and given it to him before I showed up – I mean, it wasn’t like he was planning on being around to follow up on things himself.”  He squeezed the shoulder he was holding again, frowning as he felt the tension in it.  “It’s the kind of thing he’d do.  And he couldn’t remember afterwards if he had or hadn’t, so we both decided he had and let it go.”

 

“What was important was that the antivenin was being made, being used,” Reed managed.  His voice was still steady, but he was ghost-white and not quite meeting anyone’s eyes.  “That was all I wanted from it.”

 

“I’m sure your lawyer will want more than that – and the D.A., too,” Ballard responded evenly.  Too evenly, and Ben’s eyes narrowed; the detectives looked…satisfied?  Then the two officers shared another meaningful look with each other and he was sure of it.  Something was going on, something beyond just needing to clarify a few points for the D.A.

 

Ben’s stomach clenched.  If this really was what he suspected it was…they had one last point to clarify with Reed.  And he was going to have to sit here and let them do it.

 

Collins had gone back to his lists, making another note.  “That particular disk was apparently one of von Doom’s favorites, it was showing a lot of wear,” he mentioned in an offhand way.  “Our expert told us the glitches we saw during playback were the places where he’d paused the video repeatedly while viewing it.”  He glanced up, cocking one eyebrow questioningly.  “Any idea why he might have enjoyed watching Mr. Grimm wrestle you to the floor and pin you there when you tried to get to the venom that last time, Dr. Richards?”

 

They’d only thought Reed was white before, and Ben’s rocky brow ridges shot up in alarm when he felt the muscles under his hand tremble dangerously.  “I…I don’t know what you mean, Detective.”

 

“I think you do.”  There was a thread of implacability underlying Ballard’s still-gentle tone.  “I think this might have something to do with the part von Doom wanted to break off first once you were frozen, Doctor.  And I think you had no clue that he had some kind of sexual interest in you until that moment, am I right?”

 

The shudder that rippled through the scientist’s body was just short of convulsive, and his answer came out in a near whisper.  “You’re…right, yes.”  The next words spilled out in a sickened rush.  “I thought it was Sue he wanted.  And I thought he and Ben just didn’t get along.”  He swallowed, hard.  “He told me that Ben had been ‘getting in his way’ for a long time.  Viktor was going to send…it to him, afterwards.  So he’d know who won.”

 

Sue, who had been getting progressively more translucent, vanished with a gasp, and Ben could tell that Reed wished he could do the same.  His jaw clenched, the grating sound of rock on rock loud in the silence.  “Pigeon crap is waaay too good for him.”

 

Johnny had backed out of his spot at Reed’s side – with good reason, he was hot enough to melt rubber if not outright burn it, and little flames were starting to dance around him.  “I say we dump what’s left of the perverted bastard in the river – or maybe in the nearest nuclear waste dump.”  He glared at Reed.  “You should have told us.”

 

Reed just closed his eyes against the heated glare.  “Someone should have told me, don’t you think?”

 

Ben winced and Johnny did too, in sympathy.  “Ouch.  Ball’s in your court, big guy.”

 

“Isn’t it always.”  Ben sighed.  “Reed, I didn’t think you’d ever have to know.  I thought I’d shut him down, years ago – I made it pretty clear to the bastard that if he didn’t forget about it I’d make sure he was front page news for every tabloid on the rack.  That’s when he stopped coming around.”

 

“And probably when he had the cameras installed.”  Reed’s voice was tired, though, not accusing.  He opened one eye, then the other, and squinted up at his friend.  “Are you ever going to stop watching my back, Ben?”

 

There was a wealth of emotion behind that question, and most of it was guilt.  Ben smiled at him.  “Nope.  You can’t convince me I should, either, genius.”

 

Reed’s eyes closed again, and he rubbed at them with his hand, his arm sagging slightly.  “Is there anything else I should know?”

 

The question was almost plaintive, and before anyone else could say anything invisible arms wrapped around his neck and soft, unseen hair tickled his cheek.  “Some of the cameras were in your bedroom,” Sue’s voice told him softly.  “Oh Reed, I’m so sorry.  I should have seen…”

 

“I’m sure he didn’t let you see anything, Sue.”  Reed didn’t seem to need to see her to find and stroke her hair; he didn’t even open his eyes.  “Viktor was too smart for that.”

 

“Smart ain’t everything,” came from Ben, and Johnny snorted his agreement.  “He must’ve been planning last night for a while, and we still beat him.”

 

That was when Ballard chimed back in.  “Von Doom was overconfident,” the detective agreed, nodding.  “Past a certain point he didn’t even try to cover his tracks, he must have been sure no one would ever get that far.”  He inclined his head to Sue even though all he could see of her was her clothing.  “You wouldn’t have gotten that far, Ms. Storm, not unless he’d wanted you to.”

 

“And we wouldn’t have either if it hadn’t been for the fight he had with you and Mr. Grimm, that’s what got us in the front door, so to speak,” Collins added.  “I’m sorry if all of this has been upsetting to you, Ms. Storm, but…”

 

“But you needed my statement.  On tape.”  Ballard found himself pinned by a firm, knowing brown gaze.  “You left a camera.”

 

It wasn’t a question and there was no sense in denying it.  “I had them leave the one in this room hooked up, but we’ll take it with us when we leave today.”  Ballard looked slightly ashamed of himself.  “You have my apologies, Doctor.  Normally we don’t push an injured witness so hard, or so fast…but this time we just didn’t have any choice.  The D.A. doesn’t want Doom Industries to have a chance to wiggle out of anything, she insisted we needed unarguably clear evidence that you weren’t involved with Doom – enough evidence to clinch a court order for us freezing all the company’s assets by end of business today.”  He made a face.  “Your reactions to our questions were the key to that, I’m afraid.”

 

“That’s what I thought you were up to,” Ben rumbled.  He still wasn’t happy about it, even though he understood – and completely supported – their reasoning.  And he wasn’t going to be gracious about it, understanding or not, so he didn’t bother to hold back the sarcasm when he asked, “Did you get everything you needed?”

 

“Yes, Dr. Richards’ statement was the last one.”  Collins wasn’t being sarcastic, just stating a fact.  “We got the statements from the rest of you last night, and from what other outside witnesses still needed to be contacted this morning.”  He smoothed out his papers and held them out in Reed’s direction.  “You might want to look this list over, see if there’s anything else you can tell us.”

 

Reed took them, exerting visible effort to draw his arm back once the papers were in his grasp.  Sue reappeared and helped him hold them up, her head still resting on his shoulder as she silently read down the list with him.  After a few moments Reed said, “Some of these appear to be references to projects I was a consultant on, not projects I originated.  I should mark them for you, so you’ll know which are which.”

 

“We’d appreciate it if you did that for us.”  Ballard immediately produced a pen, holding it closer so the scientist wouldn’t have to stretch to reach it.  He frowned when he noticed the tremor in Reed’s hand.  “Are you sure you’re going to be all right, Dr. Richards?  You were pretty banged up last night, and if you don’t mind my saying it you still don’t look so good.”

 

“His temperature was 101 when you came in,” Sue answered before Reed or Ben could.  She brushed her fingers through the silver hair at one overwarm temple.  “It’s going down.”

 

 “He just needs to take it easy for a while,” Ben added.  “And it’s not like a regular doctor is going to be able to make heads or tails out of the four of us anyway, you know?”

 

“I remember you mentioning that last night when we offered to call EMS,” Ballard told him, nodding.  “You’re probably right, but I’ve got someone looking around for a medical doctor with the right qualifications, just in case we need some expert testimony to back yours up.  When we find someone we’ll let you know.”

 

“Viktor had a personal physician, have you talked to him?” Sue asked.  “I think his name was Dr. Rodriguez...”

 

“It was, yes.”  Ballard made a face.  “I’m afraid that was von Doom’s first murder – it looked like Rodriguez had just finished running a battery of tests to gauge the extent of the spreading mutation, and Doom didn’t like what he found.  Or maybe what he suggested they do about it, either way.”

 

Reed’s interest in that had him trying to sit up further in his chair, but Sue and Ben held him back.  He barely noticed.  “Is there any way I could get a copy of those records, Detective?” he wanted to know.  “The data in them could be very important, and it might explain why Viktor’s mutation didn’t parallel any of ours.”

 

“If you mean you can take that information and figure out why he went nuts when the four of you didn’t, I’m all for it.”  Ballard shook his head.  “It might take us a few days to pry a copy of the files loose for you, though.  We’ll have to clear it with the D.A. first, since the files are evidence.  She might even want to sit on them until the case is over, I can’t be sure.  But as soon as I can legally release them to you, I’ll bring them over myself.”

 

“I’d appreciate that.”  Reed’s gaze had gone distant; it was obvious that he was shifting tracks intellectually, leaving the room and everyone else in it behind.  “I’d pursued the problem thinking that the shielding had protected Viktor because he didn’t appear to be affected, but apparently it only delayed the effects of the radiation and the metal particles in the cut he received caused him to have a reaction similar to Ben’s…”

 

“And he’s off.”  Johnny was cooling down, and had settled back in his chair with a grin.  “I sure hope you guys were done.”

 

“Just about.”  Ballard grinned back.  “Dr. Richards, I’m sure your lawyer has already talked with you…”  His grin disappeared when Ben shook his head.  “You did call your lawyer last night, right?”

 

“I did,” Ben told him.  “But I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Reed about it.  You’re suing Doom Industries,” he informed his startled friend.  “Hell, once everything is said and done you might own Doom Industries.  They’ve been ripping you off for around six years – I could almost hear Bill drooling on the phone when I told him, he’s been waiting for this moment for a looong time.”

 

Reed sighed.  “Bill – my lawyer, Bill Andraki – has mentioned on several occasions that he thought someone might be stealing my ideas,” he explained to the two detectives.  “I just couldn’t see it, though; there was no opportunity for something like that to happen that I could think of.  I rarely leave the lab when I’m working on a project, and the doorman doesn’t let anyone access the top floor when I am out of the building.”

 

“You trust the doorman?” Collins wanted to know.

 

The scientist nodded and Ben did too, adding, “Stan’s been here forever.  Reed kept him on when he bought the building, and the guy’s about as loyal as they come.”

 

“So we noticed when we questioned him.”  Ballard was nodding.  “He wasn’t on duty when von Doom showed up here last night, but when the night men heard the commotion one of them went to get him.  The other one was dead when they got back.”

 

“How many…”  Reed cleared his throat.  “How many…murders did Viktor commit?”

 

Collins glanced to his partner for permission before answering.  “Seventeen, that we know of.  It’s possible there are more we just haven’t connected to him yet; he apparently got around a lot over the past forty-eight hours.”

 

“I see.”  Reed had paled again.  He turned his head to look back at Ben.  “I need to talk to Bill.  Some provision should be made for the victims’ families…”

 

Ben’s heavy hand squeezed his friend’s shoulder again, and he smiled down into worried brown eyes with affection.  “He’ll be here around six, his secretary called to confirm it a couple of hours ago.  She said he’s got a meeting with the D.A. at four, so he’ll be able to tell us more about what’s going on.”  He looked back up at the detectives and his smile disappeared.  “If you boys really are done, I think we’d better get that camera and get you out of here so Reed can rest.”

 

That brought an immediate and indignant protest.  “Ben, I’m…”

 

“If the word ‘fine’ comes out of your mouth, the three of us are gonna tie you in a knot,” Johnny warned.  Hard blue eyes fixed on Collins.  “Where’s the camera?”

 

Another glance for permission at Ballard, and the younger officer stood up.  “Do you have a ladder?”

 

“Several.”  Johnny waved him toward the back.  “Come show me what size we need, and I can show off the window I fixed at the same time.  It’s got a kind of baroque look to it now, what with the way the heat made the glass ripple…”

 

Ben rolled his eyes.  “I hate to do anything to inflate that ego any more than it already is,” he admitted.  “But he really did do a pretty neat job fixing that broken window.”

 

Ballard stood up.  “I guess I should go see it myself, then – there’s a lot of broken glass out on the street, maybe he could lend us a hand with some of the smaller places that can’t afford to get their windows fixed.  And I’d like to get another look at your lab before we leave, Dr. Richards, if that’s okay.”

 

“Certainly, Detective.”  Reed made another attempt to get up and was held back again.  Sue frowned at him and rose gracefully to her feet.  “I’ll go.  Ben…keep him here.”

 

“Sure thing, Susie.”  Ben waited until they were out of earshot to cock an amused eyebrow at his friend.  “What were you gonna do, slither in there?”

 

“I…wasn’t thinking.”  Reed had closed his eyes again, and once again he was blushing.  “Thanks, Ben.”

 

“Any time, pal.”  They both knew they weren’t just talking about holding back a man who forgets he’s momentarily unable to walk.  Ben sighed.  “I’m glad the bastard’s dead.”

 

Reed let his head fall back and closed his eyes.  “So am I.  But I’m going to need to test what’s…what’s left, just in case.  I don’t know anything about what happened to him, and under the wrong conditions – like Johnny’s dumping ideas – something very bad could happen.”

 

Ben straightened, stiffened.  “ ‘Very bad’ as in what, like he could come back to life?  You think that after all that he could still be…”

 

“I hate to think of it, but yes,” Reed interrupted too quickly, as though not wanting him to say the word out loud.  Ben, knowing his friend, thought that was most likely exactly what he didn’t want.  “I won’t know until I test him.  If they’ll let me test him, that is.”

 

Ben winced, knowing it was entirely possible they wouldn’t let him – at least not any time soon.  And if Latveria claimed Doom’s body, no time soon could easily become never – he doubted the backwards little country would even consider letting someone ‘experiment’ on the mortal remains of one of her favorite sons, and the ‘statue’ would end up standing in a park someplace being crapped on by Eastern European pigeons.  Ben didn’t know which was worse; thinking of someone, even his worst enemy, trapped and conscious inside an unmoving metal shell for all eternity…or thinking that someday, when no one expected it, that shell might just prove to be not so unmoving after all.