Ten Weeks Later

"Dammit."

The waistband of the jeans cut into Sue Storm's buttocks. She regretted eating so well—perhaps too well—at dinner tonight. After the flu or whatever had been bothering her for the last couple of months, Sue had been happy to go an entire week without nausea. Now that she could eat again, she felt her energy coming back. Weeks of unusual tiredness and lethargy finally giving way to a sense of feeling, well, like her old self.

Now her jeans didn't fit. Sue Storm sighed in the middle of her bedroom, standing there in only her bra and panties, with her jeans stuck half-way up her ass. She stared down at her body. Years of exercise and dieting, and yet one extended bout of illness and she was already getting a bit of a pot belly.

Sue blinked as a sudden thought crossed her mind. She pulled the jeans off and went over to the full-body mirror on the back of the closet door. The Invisible Woman turned and stuck out her stomach. It didn't look like fat. There was a definite swell, but when her fingers probed it, it wasn't soft and jiggly. In fact it was hard, like a water balloon beneath the surface.

Goosebumps rose over Sue Storm's flesh. She had only felt that a couple times before in her life. Yet it wasn't possible...

She swallowed hard as she stared into the mirror. Layers of skin, muscle, fat, and integument vanished beneath her gaze as she used her powers. Sue saw the blood that flowed through her veins and arteries. Saw her vaginal canal, like a pink sock, half folded onto itself, convulse as she squeezed her muscles. She saw the small white orbs of her ovaries...and her womb.

The uterus was normally smaller than the size of her palm. Yet now it was swollen—the size of an orange. Just beginning to be enough to distend the abdomen, to push out the skin and muscle above it. Sue's mouth went dry as she slowly made the layers of the thick uterus invisible. She saw the small thing, no bigger than an apricot. Recognized the shape of the head with the developing brain, the dark spots for eyes, the little proto-limbs...

"About ten weeks along," her gynecologist pronounced. "No sign of abnormalities. Yet. Have you been experiencing any—unusual symptoms? Like last time?"

Sue Storm shook her head, dumbly. The math wasn't right. None of this was right. She sat in the examination office, wearing a blue skirt with her blouse because it was the only thing beside her costume that fit.

"I didn't think you and Reed were looking to have another child—" The silver-haired woman said. Her name was Genevieve. She had been Sue's gynecologist for years. Through both pregnancies—and her miscarriage.

"We weren't," Sue said. "This is—a surprise. I didn't even recognize the signs."

Genevieve raised an eyebrow. Brown eyes behind those thick glasses. Calm. Steady. Utterly unlike the tumult of emotions that went through the Invisible Woman at the moment.

"Not even a missing period?"

"I've always been irregular," Sue said. "All the diet, exercise. And after last time, I didn't—I didn't think...I could get pregnant again."

There. She'd said the word.

"Well, we never did a hysterectomy. You're healthy enough. Barring the...difficulties that come with your cosmic ray-enhanced physiology, you and the fetus seem to be in the pink of health. I suppose we'll need to schedule you some more appointments, get you some prenatal vitamins..."

The doctor met Sue Storm's gaze. She had seen a lot of women in this exact position. An unexpected pregnancy. Previous difficulties.

"Reed doesn't know yet, does he?" she asked quietly.

"No," Sue said.

"There are options," Genevieve said. "You're too far along for pharmacological intervention under current laws, but surgical intervention is still possible. Not pleasant, but discreet. I promise you that."

Sue Storm's fists were balled up into a white-knuckle grasp on her knees as she recognized the choice being offered to her.

For the first time since she had found out about the surprise pregnancy, Sue Storm had to think hard about whether or not she wanted to keep it.