The Fantastic Four Does Not Recover

"How is she?" Johnny Storm asked.

Reed Richard's face was haggard.

"She's resting. Physically healthy. The baby, too. She's almost due. Ready to give birth any time. Traces of temporal energy, they held her somewhere for the duration of the pregnancy. There are signs of...excessive sexual ****," he said, then sighed. "Mentally...the mutant pheromones have caused permanent changes to her biochemistry. And the trauma of her ordeal...she's not...the same Susan anymore."

His haunted eyes remembered her failure to recognize him. Her **** attempts to get Reed to fuck her.

"We gotta find who did this to her!" Ben Grimm smacked his fist into his palm.

"I need to stay with Sue," Reed said. "Her well-being is my priority now."

The birth came three days later. Reed Richards stared without emotion at the pig-faced little girl, with soft blue eyes. The birth had not been easy; none of Sue's pregnancies ever had been. It had been accompanied by bursts of energy and exotic particles. Yet Mr. Fantastic had learned from his own children's birth.

"What's her name?" Franklin asked.

"What do you think it should be?" Reed said, as his son looked down at his half-sister.

"Babe?" Valeria suggested.

"Babe Richards," Reed repeated, dully. His brain ran through the consequences of acknowledging the child. Yet he couldn't deny this was his wife's child.

In the weeks after birth, a steady flow of specialists came in and out of Sue Storm's room. Therapists, neurologists. She was placed on a steady regimen of antipsychotic medications, but the nymphomaniac urges were still there, and occasional emotional outbursts. Sue recognized Reed and the children, now, but the gulf between husband and wife, and even parents and children, was vast.

Alert signals for the Fantastic Four were answered by the Thing and Human Torch, assisted occasionally by friends and allies. The rift was already there, the contraction. Reed was focused on his wife, the baby, his children. Not science, not the time.

Sue attempted to heal. Nights were the worst. The urges were strongest when she was ****. The one thing she wanted, needed, was the one thing that he couldn't give her. His eyes lingered on her post-pregnancy body. The hips wider, the breasts heavier. She was carrying another ten or twenty pounds, and without a more intense regular workout, which her mind couldn't focus on right now, it looked like she might carry that permanently.

They slept in separate rooms. He couldn't bring himself to touch her. Not after what had happened. Guilt? Disgust? Reed didn't know. He could hear her at night, toys buzzing away in her pussy, or endlessly fisting herself with animal grunts of need. Like a bitch in heat.

The media, of course, noted both the original broadcast and the sudden disappearance of half of the Fantastic Four. Rumors of Babe got out. Reed Richards cuckolded. Sue Storm's mutant lovechild. Their private life became a lurid joke.

"The Avengers invited me to join 'em," Ben said during a dinner, six months later. It was one of Sue's good days. She was breastfeeding Babe at the table, the infant sucking hard at a nipple. "We've been teamin' up pretty regular. I think it might be a...good thing. But they asked if I'd move to Avengers Tower. Y'know, be more available."

His great stony shoulders hunched.

"Of course, Ben," Reed set, and stretched his arm to pat the Thing on the back. He offered his friend a sad smile. "Just know you'll always have a place here. You're family, after all."

Johnny re-enrolled in Empire State University with the new semester. He was still living in the Baxter Building, but was gone for much of the day, and still responding to various calls for heroes. A kind of lonely emptiness filled the space with just the five of them. Franklin and Valeria could feel it, even if they didn't understand what exactly was wrong with mommy and daddy and the baby.

At night, Franklin stirred in his sleep. Bad dreams assailed him. It wasn't like he wanted things to be exactly like they were. He loved his new little sister. Yet everything was wrong. Latent psychic powers stirred inside his brain. As if his subconscious mind sought some way to make things right.

In Doomstadt, Doctor Doom let automated arms fit his new, improved armor into place on his body. As the circuits locked and engaged, a sickly yellow tracery over the grey metal, he felt the surge of power run from the new defraudium power core.

"It is time," Doctor Doom said.