The Fantastic Four Makes Her Part of the Family

"Mommy's having a baby?" Valeria asked.

"Sortof," Sue Storm told her daughter. "Aunt Karla is mommy's surrogate. She's going to carry mommy's baby."

"Mommy and daddy's baby," Franklin said, and Sue had smiled and not corrected him.

"Aunt Karla" had been the thought of a moment, but it stuck with Franklin and Valeria. Karla had moved into the Baxter Building even before the embryo was transferred. Reed Richards, after Sue had convinced him about the whole peace through pregnancy plan, had insisted. He had to monitor her health closely, make sure her hormone levels were correct, and finally the big day arrived.

Sue Storm held Karla's hand as the psychiatrist had her knees up on the stirups, Reed Richards in surgical mask as he fed the tube to penetrate her cervix. The embryo had been formed from one of Sue Storm's eggs and Doctor Doom's sperm. A child of such parents had almost impossible potential.

Then it was done. Karla could hardly believe it. She was pregnant.

The Fantatic Four adjusted to accept her presence. Aunt Karla joined them at meals. She watched in the mirorr, day by day, as her stomach swelled. Joined them at movie nights. Watched the children when the heroes went off to save the world.

It wasn't safe, in the Baxter Building, to contact Doctor Doom directly. Yet as the days turned into weeks, and the villain's midsection thickened, she began to feel something unexpected.

Acceptance.

"Aunt Karla, tell me a story?" Valeria asked one night, when the Fantastic Four were out fighting a Vibranium Elemental raised by the alchemist Diablo.

So the woman who had been Moonstone had sat by the bed and told her a story. Not one that Sue Storm would have approved of, because Karla was not used to dealing with chidren. Her hands held her little pot-belly, and felt the too-full feeling that came from eating too much, her appetite growing by the day, body softening by the day. A story of the Thunderbolts, how the Masters of Evil had played at being at heroes to fool the world, and to their surprise had discovered that some of them liked being heroes, liked leaving the villainous life behind.

By the time Valeria was asleep, Karla had felt something shift inside of her. Not a loyalty, for she was first and ever loyal to herself. Yet as her hand traced little spirals off her stomach, and she thought of the child there—how Ben Grimm and Alicia had been talking about a baby shower, and Johnny Storm had massaged her sore ankles and talked about how he had done this when Sue was pregnant; when she thought about the nursery that Reed was designing, and how Sue made sure to take her shopping so she had clothes to fit and flatter her changing body, and when they made love could hardly keep her hands off of it—Karla was aware of something she had now that she hadn't had before.

A family.

And that was when the fear started. What would they do, when they found out that Aunt Karla wasn't who she said she was? How would she live once the baby was born, and the next part of Doom's plan to destroy the Fantastic Four came into play?

The pregnant woman decided, as she slipped out of the child's room, that she needed to do something about that.