Dr. Stone Thinks Sue Should See This As A Test of Her Marriage

"And I guess I'm just conflicted," Sue Storm confessed, the heroine's hands wrapped around a cup of tea. "She was coming on so strong, and I know I should keep our relationship more professional, but I admit that I enjoyed the attention. It's the first time someone's shown that kind of interest in me since...well, since Namor."

Dr. Stone nodded slowly.

"You don't talk about Namor much," she said.

Sue frowned. "There's not much to say. Everyone made so much more of it than it was. I love my husband, I do, but Reed isn't great with communication. Especially desire. He's so rarely romantic, and—well, you've seen Namor. He walks around half-naked, body like a male underwear model, so confident, so passionate...it can go to a woman's head, a little. But I never let it get too far, even that time he kidnapped me."

"How does your husband respond to those rumors?" Dr. Stone said.

"Reed trusts me. Implicitly. Like I trust him. We've been together so long, the thought that either of us would betray the other is—even when I was taken over by my Malice personality, I never cheated on him. Even in most of the alternate timelines we've visited, it's just been the two of us. It's like we're fated to be together. Reed calls it a 'mass-narrative-chronotopological-complex-manifold,' but he's almost never jealous. He knows he's my one and only," Sue said.

Dr. Stone said nothing for a long moment. She took a sip of her tea as the silence went on.

"Okay, so he gets a little jealous of the whole Namor thing," Sue admitted. "Reed does have emotions, even if he doesn't express them very well. I think he was hurt, once or twice, when I was...being more flirty than I should have. But we got through it. I think our marriage is stronger for it."

The psychiatrist smiled.

"That's the thing about humans. Sometimes when we break a bone, it grows back stronger than before." The doctor's eyes dropped to consider her tea cup for a moment. Then she raised them to stare Sue Storm in the eyes. "Have there been other incidents that tested your marriage?"

Sue Storm sighed. She thought back to when she was Malice. When Reed appeared to be dead for a while. To how he had treated her as "the Invisible Girl." To how she had treated him when his face was injured, and after she found out about that whole Illuminati nonsense.

"We've had our challenges," she admitted.

"But you've grown stronger from those challenges," Dr. Stone said. "And your marriage, your relationship, is stronger as a result?"

"Yes," Sue said with confidence.

"Then perhaps you should look at this situation with Nairobi as another test. Not of your fidelity to each other, but to how comfortable you feel with relationships with women outside your marriage. You already have women doctors, friends—is what Nairobi offering really that different? Companionship, a healthy outlet for feelings you haven't been able to share with your husband?"

"I—I don't know," Sue said. "I'd have to think about that. I mean—I guess it's not...like Namor. Nairobi isn't trying to whisk me off my feet or anything. I'm paying her, after all."

Dr. Storm smiled. "That's right. You're in control, in the end. Isn't that different?"

"I suppose it is," Sue said, with only a touch of doubt in her voice.

"Well, think about it," Dr. Stone said. "And we'll talk about it more next week."

They said their goodbyes. It wasn't until Sue was down the hallway, had ridden the elevator to ground level, and was half a block away that she realized that for the first time in one of their sessions, Dr. Stone's glasses hadn't caught the light in that particular way they so often seemed to do.