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Ben stared at the dinner table.
The two readied plates seemed so remarkably lonely as they sat there on opposite sides. The wooden table suddenly looked too big for just the two of them, even with the baby chair crowning at the end of it.
Only two plates to sharing a meal. Not four.
It felt wrong. It was so very, very wrong and it was almost enough to make Ben crumple right there on the kitchen floor. The table should be set for four people, and a baby, with cutlery, pots and pans strewn all over and a half-eaten box of Fantastic Four-cereal on the kitchen counter.
This was too pristine.
Too empty.
Ben had to turn away from the sight before it drowned him.
It had been his own idea for the family dinner. He had to do something. Reed had barely come out of his lab for three weeks now, except for the barest of necessities. He made sure Franklin wasn’t left alone and handled his needs, but Ben found he had to intervene more and more, especially when the boy cried for his mother who wouldn’t come. It was difficult to blame Reed too much for that. Franklin bore the blond hair and striking blue eyes, like a true Storm. He was a very visual and constant reminder of what they had lost barely a month ago. It hurt to look at him for too long.
Ben glanced down at the open square below. People were still gathered there, hundreds of them despite how dark and cold it had already gotten. They were holding vigilance, offering their condolences and support. The warm lights of their candles flickered like small, flittering fireflies from this high up. Every day for the past three weeks someone new came to hang another scrap of paper with stories, sympathies, or drawings or to place flowers by the ground. Sue and Johnny’s statues in particular were littered with heartfelt messages and vast, blooming flower arrangements. It was a beautiful gesture. It also broke Ben’s heart again every time he looked down.
He didn’t know why he continued to check. Maybe he feared that one day he would look down and no one would be there. No one would come. All of the messages would have been washed away by the rain and the flowers would have rotted and that would be the sign that the world had moved on.
Ben didn’t think he could handle that. He didn’t think he could move on – that they could. He looked up at the sky then, his mind still expecting to see a familiar streak of orange flame.
There had only been one body to bury. Sue had looked so lifeless on the pavement. Her still frame continued to haunt his dreams as well as the vivid imagery of Reed sobbing over her body while he desperately tried to bring her back to life while Franklin cried for his mother. Johnny was just gone. Ben didn’t know which was worse. One minute Johnny had been there, and the next his flaming body rammed into Galactus and then they both just blinked out of existence in an explosion of fire. Sue had been irrevocably gone, but Johnny just wasn’t there anymore. And Ben thought that was almost crueler. The truly not knowing part. Logically, he knew there was no way, Johnny could have survived wherever he ended up. There wasn’t a spacesuit to protect him. If the freezing temperature of space didn’t kill him then the lack of oxygen would. But there was still some voice in the back of his mind that clung onto the hope that somehow, Johnny could have made it. It was that small flicker of hope Ben feared would destroy him. It was what was destroying Reed now. It was why he was currently locked away in his lab on that tiny fraction of a chance that Johnny could still be saved.
Ben wanted so badly to believe that there was a way. The first week he had helped launch a probe into space to gather intel and interpret all of the readings and data it sent back. But there wasn’t even the tiniest flicker of life or power. Just the same nothingness of space that had been there before. It would swallow the both of them whole if this was the path they went down on.
They were in this together, and if they were to have any chance to recover from this, Ben knew they couldn’t do it alone. Sue had always been good at bringing Reed out of his self-imposed isolations. Johnny always knew just how to make Ben feel better on bad days. None of them were here any longer to do that. It was just the two of them now.
Ben needed his best friend, as much as his best friend needed him.
Ben walked over to Franklin’s crib. The small boy was awake, his blue eyes instantly landing on the looming man of stone hovering over him. He garbled cheerily as Ben made to pick him up.
“Come on, little man,” he muttered. “Let’s go find your dad.”
He knew exactly where to find him.
The lab was even messier than the last time, Ben had been there.
As the elevator door whooshed open and he stepped out, several more scribbled pieces of paper had been taped to the walls, laid out on tables and simply strewn carelessly on the floor. Small mockups and prototypes of probes, spacesuits or -shuttles and other machines were scattered in between the notes.
Reed was by the chalkboard. His hair was uncharacteristically messy, while his shirt was rumbled and untucked. His tie was discarded on a chair and his shoes was tossed onto the ground. He was muttering to himself, a piece of chalk in his hand as he scribbled away on the board. He didn’t seem to notice another presence in the room.
“… If we carry the variable to the third, and assume a stand burn-rate of approximately 700 degrees Fahrenheit…”
“Reed,” Ben tried tentatively as he came closer. He froze as he caught sight of what was on the chalkboard. It was a drawn outline of Johnny’s flaming body with hastily written words and numbers around, each detailing various data on his powers. Equations of varying degrees of complexity filled the board too, some fully calculated and others only half filled out.
Reed carried on, like he hadn’t heard Ben at all, his arm stretching as he continued to fill out the current equation.
“… Theoretically, body heat can be converted into actual fire, so if we account for temperature conversions and his core temperature, which was last measured at…”
“Reed!”
Reed startled violently. He dropped the chalk in surprise and almost tripped over his own feet. Under normal circumstances, the reaction would have been hilarious. Ben didn’t find it funny one bit. Especially as Reed looked at him with wide, red-rimmed eyes that probably hadn’t slept properly since Galactus invaded. Ben certainly hadn’t.
“Dinner’s almost ready.” It felt hollow to say such a mundane thing, but he had no idea what else to say.
“I’m not hungry, thank you,” Reed replied, his voice monotone. He bent down to pick of the piece of chalk. Then he turned back to the board.
“Reed,” Ben sternly said.
Reed froze where he was, the end of the chalk firmly planted into the board, his eyes locked onto the thick white dot the chalk had produced. They remained there, in some odd locked stalemate for a while, until Ben finally dared break the silence.
“Your son needs you.”
“I’m getting closer. I just need to,” Reed stuttered. “… find the right equation.”
“Reed, look at me,” Ben waited until Reed locked onto him. Desperation and heartbreak shone clearly on his face. “This ain’t right. You know, it ain’t. You can’t find the right equation because there ain’t one. You can’t solve this one. You have to stop.”
“…I don’t think I can,” Reed’s voice cracked at the admission.
“I know it doesn’t feel like it. And I wish I could say something that would make it okay to stop but…” Ben felt his throat constrict, like a piece of the rock that made up his body had lodged itself in there. “I have nothing, Reed. I’m drowning too, and I wish someone would throw me a lifeline and pull me back in. But there’s no one there. It’s just the three of us, right here.”
He stepped closer and firmly put Franklin into Reed’s arms. Reed first held him like he was an alien object that would shatter. But as Franklin began to fuss at the awkward way of being held, Reed slowly melted around him, his shoulders sagging as he embraced his child tighter. He slumped to his knees.
“I miss them,” Ben confessed as he too knelt down. He could feel tears pooling at the corner of his eyes. Reed was focused entirely on him, clinging to every shuddered word.
“It feels like it’s getting worse with every day that passes. I constantly miss Sue’s smile. Johnny’s jokes. I miss having them by my side and hearing their voices. I miss everything about them. I’m alone in a room, and I keep expecting her to suddenly appear with a cheeky smile on her face, Johnny just behind her wearing that same stupid smirk because he was finally on the other side of that joke. It hurts whenever I’m reminded that they ain’t here no more, and that there’s nothing I can do to change that. I miss them so much, Reed. And I can’t do this alone anymore. None of us can.”
A single tear ran down from the corner of Reed’ eye down his cheek. He opened his mouth to speak and then it was like something snapped inside of him. Instead of words, it was only a gut-wrenching sob that escaped his lips. He cradled Franklin tightly to his chest. Tears poured out of him as he finally allowed himself to feel the sorrow of what he had lost. Of what they had lost.
Reed wept and Ben embraced his friend while he silently cried with him, as the two of them grieved the loss of a wife, a sister and a brother.
It was almost cathartic, letting the walls crumble so resolutely and openly. To share it with the only family he had left, who was struggling just as much as he was.
They stayed on the floor for quite some time. Eventually, Reed’s tears ebbed out. Ben felt his own emotions settle, leaving him tired and empty. Silence enveloped the darkened lab. Even Franklin didn’t break it.
“Do you remember the lecture you gave on parallel universes a few years back?” Ben suddenly asked out loud.
Reed shook himself out of his thoughts and regarded Ben with a frown, uncertain where this was headed. “I do.”
“Do you think there’s a universe where they are alive? Where we are all sitting together, at this very moment, having dinner, the five of us?”
Reed turned quiet as he considered the theory. Then, a timid smile stretched over his lips. As he looked back up at Ben, the tiniest spark of life returned to his eyes. “Yes. I believe there is.”
Ben nodded. Somehow, it made his heart just a little less heavy at the thought that on some other planet, so much resembling their own, the Fantastic Four was still whole and together.
“Come on. Dinner’s getting cold.”
He helped Reed rise from the floor and together, they made their way to the kitchen. HERBIE reheated the simple pasta dish and Ben served it up on the two plates while Reed fixed Franklin’s simpler food of mashed carrots.
As they settled down to eat, the marked absence of who was missing was still abundantly clear, like an open, bleeding wound. Ben had no idea what he could do to even make it feel just a tiny bit better.
Then Franklin slammed a fistful of mashed carrot into his cheek and against his chair, smearing it everywhere with a gleeful babble.
Ben couldn’t help the delicate smile from forming at the scene of Franklin laughing at his own mess and Reed very factually explaining to his son that that wasn’t the effective way to eat his dinner. For the briefest of moments, things felt so incredibly normal. For the briefest of moments, he could exist with his best friend and his son without the all-consuming feeling of grief over those who weren’t present smothering him instantly.
“Just like his uncle,” Ben commented without even thinking about it, and found that for the first time the mention of Johnny didn’t send him completely reeling.
“Let’s just hope he doesn’t catch on fire,” Reed agreed absentmindedly while he wiped away carrot from Franklin’s forehead.
The sorrow didn’t fade magically overnight.
There were still days where Reed vanished into the lab, with or without Franklin, where he attempted to silence his grief with logic and science. There were nights, where Ben would wake from nightmares of Sue’s quiet, broken body, or the image of Johnny floating in the darkness of space, alone and lifeless. Some little thing would constantly remind them that the two of them were still permanently gone. All of Franklin’s firsts also brought up the heartache of the loss, right back into the forefront of their minds.
But with every conversation, and every memory shared, it got just a little easier to bear. Eventually, the memory of Sue and Johnny Storm didn’t hurt quite as much.
Instead, it would live on as a reminder of love, dedication and selflessness. It would flow through everything Ben and Reed did, and would continue to do, to protect the world they lived in and the people they shared it with.
To make sure the Earth was protected and that their sacrifices would never be in vain.
For them.