A/N: A grateful, giant-sized apology goes out to everyone who helped Crash/Burn reach the 200 mark and had to wait so long for an update!! I honestly don't know what to say, other than life (and SATs, dance, college apps) getting in the way. Lucky news, F4 was on FX the other night and it re-inspired me :)

I think this is my favorite chapter to date - a little bit more from the guys' perspective and their reactions to Sue's and Kassie's comatose conditions following the return to Earth. Enjoy & don't forget to review!

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"If people were meant to pop out of bed,
we'd all sleep in toasters." -Jim Davis

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Crash and Burn

Chapter Ten: How A Resurrection Really Feels

Recap:
It would be impossible to describe it as anything else but an electric burn that she felt down to her bones. She felt the nerves in her fingers and toes flare, a thousand needles spiking into her skin. It knocked her off her feet and she could have sworn she felt her stomach do one hundred thousand somersaults as she fought to maintain consciousness. Her thoughts scattered, shattering into a million shards. It was a burning, such a fierce burn that was contained just beneath her skin, traveling from her core into her four limbs, building up inside her head. She felt as if she would burst from the pressure, but she didn't. She heard her spine disjoint, her shoulders roll out of their sockets - but her skin never broke.

It was the most painful, electrifying, horrifying, disjointed feeling she had ever had course through her body.

And then all she saw was black.

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The first thing he felt was pain.

In his head. Up his back. Threaded through his arms - it was everywhere, and it made him feel like he'd been hit by a big rig. A big rig that was on fire and covered in spikes.

In short, he felt like shit.

"Johnny?"

It was a familiar voice, barely uttered. He knew the person it belonged to, had heard it a zillion times before, but he just - couldn't - place it...

"Johnny."

He opened his eyes, and this time, he knew where he had heard that voice before. It had scolded him for breaking curfew, praised him for graduating high school in one piece, ordered him to clean the stupid dishes and load them into the dishwasher. It was his sister's voice. Thank God she was alive.

"Sue," Johnny got out, his throat extremely dry and crackly. "Sue, what--"

His brain was having trouble forming thoughts, but one thing he knew was that something had gone wrong, so horribly wrong and now he felt like he had just survived the apocalypse.

He was on the ground, that much he was sure of. On the ground, and there was a sharp pain in his shoulder. He was lying on his arm, and at the current angle, his elbow was bent inward, cutting off circulation to his forearm, hand and fingertips. Slowly, because that was the speed at which his brain was choosing to function, he stretched out his arm, lifted his other to his face, gently massaging the side of his head in lopsided circles.

He had a splitting headache.

"Johnny, can you get up?"

That wasn't his sister's voice, but he recognized it, too. That voice had told him a dozen oddball facts and given him countless clueless requests. Reed's voice.

Johnny nodded, because it hurt too much to use his throat at the moment, he discovered. He felt like his vocal chords had been rubbed raw with sandpaper. He rolled onto his stomach - slowly again - otherwise his head threatened to explode. He pulled himself back on his haunches, his hands stabilizing himself as his legs tucked underneath him until he was in a sitting position.

That was fun, he thought dryly. Humor always made a bleak situation look pathetically laughable. And now he probably had a concussion.

Johnny looked around. His sister was lying on the floor near the doorway, eyes closed. Her chest steadily rose and fell with shallow breaths. His first thought was to help her, but when he tried to stand he just fell over onto the ground again as his balance loped from side to side, equilibrium completely thrown off.

"The storm," Reed said. Johnny turned his eyes to look at Reed. "We need...assistance."

That we do, Johnny thought. He rolled onto his back again, wincing when the pain in his shoulder spiked momentarily. He looked around from his position on the ground. There was Ben, slumped up against the glass in his astronaut suit. Johnny wanted to rush to him, take his vitals, but he just couldn't move. It hurt too much. He was assured a little when he saw the bulky suit move slightly, up and down. Ben was breathing, even though his eyes were closed. He didn't see any blood, but that didn't mean Ben wasn't wounded internally. They needed help, Johnny knew, fighting through the fog in his brain as he continued to assess the situation.

He turned his head, looking for Kassie and Reed. He saw the former, struggling to stand.

Not gonna work, buddy, Johnny thought, still slightly groggy. He craned his neck more to the side, and saw Kassie's red hair first, splayed against the grey floor. His eyes glanced over her body next, several feet away from the airlock door. One leg was tossed across the other to the right, her torso twisted to the left. She looked like a ragdoll, a blue ragdoll in the Armani space suit Victor had had made especially for this little expedition in space. He almost laughed, until he saw something else that was red that wasn't her hair.

There was broken glass on the floor on either side of her where her arms rested, and a small pool of blood gathered near her thigh. She was slouched up against the wall, and Johnny's eyes traveled to the emergency alarm, it's broken case, in the down position.

Huh, Johnny thought.­

It took him a while to realize that she had pulled the alarm...but the blood was what forced him into action.

"Help!" He yelled, his voice cracking with urgency. "We need help here!"

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The evacuation team was on their way, but Reed had ordered fluids for Sue, Ben and Kassie the moment the space station crew had re-docked. As soon as the alarms had gone off (and the crew had Kassie to thank for that) with the storm's unexpected approach, the twenty-man crew had filed into the twin emergency shuttles and ejected before the storm had hit. No one on the Doom Space Station was paid enough to risk their lives by staying on in an emergency. Reed had found that out the hard way as soon as Johnny had started calling for help.

Victor had been the only one to answer, and he had been the only other one on board when the storm had hit besides them, but he had been protected by the shields.

Lucky guy, Reed thought bleakly.

At the moment, Reed was pacing back and forth, waving off a medic as he racked his brain for a logical explanation of what happened. He glanced nervously between his three team members who lay on cots in the sick bay. Ben was breathing, but unconscious. Sue's heartbeat was erratic, her breathing shallow. And Kassie had a laceration that had barely missed a kidney from the accident; she hadn't woken up yet, either. Across the room, Johnny sat on the edge of the counter, arms crossed, his expression uncharacteristically buried in worry.

"She's gonna be OK, right?"

Reed turned at the sound of Johnny's voice. His tone was low, rough. Unsure.

"Her vitals are steady," Reed began, "And the team to fly us back will be here within the--"

"Don't." Johnny cut him off, looking up from where his gaze had been glued on Sue's still form. Johnny uncrossed his arms and just shook his head. "Don't talk to me like you're a doctor, Reed. Come on. I need to know if my sister - the unrequited love of your life - is going to be OK."

"I--" Reed paused for a moment, at a loss for what to say. He hadn't seen that coming. He didn't fully understand Johnny's choice of words, but he could see the frustrated, pained look in his eyes. "I don't know," Reed finally said. He didn't like how much the words truly scared him when he looked down at Sue, Ben and Kassie lying in cots on either side of her.

Johnny went back to glaring at the floor, but Reed was saved from the silence when Victor entered the room. It didn't take a rocket scientist to sense the tension in the room.

"Am I interrupting something?" Victor asked, but not in his usual smooth tone. He looked rather frazzled from the storm, though his tone was calm.

"Is the shuttle here?" Johnny asked, ignoring Victor's question. The two emergency shuttles had been booked for a one-way trip, and with the team's back track, fuel was low. As for the shuttle Johnny had piloted. . .he wasn't sure what the storm had done to the systems. He wouldn't risk flying it back.

"On approach," Victor replied, glancing between Johnny and Reed. "We should get these three prepped for transportation. Harry!" Victor called, leaning outside of the door to sick bay, "Get some stretchers."

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Johnny was watching Sue, Ben and Kassie get wheeled out of sick bay when he spotted a cluster of the space crew a few meters down the hall towards the shuttle airlock. When they saw him looking at them, all conversation broke off. One of them shook their head, another chuckled and crossed his arms.

Something inside Johnny snapped, the tension had been mounting since he'd had to watch Kassie bleed from her abdomen and his sister and Ben lie unconscious for twenty minutes before the team had re-docked with the station after the storm had passed.

"You have something to say?" Johnny called to the one who'd laughed.

All the smiles were gone from the personnel's faces, except for the one Johnny had called out. Now, he was glaring. And Johnny was glaring back.

"Johnny, this isn't the time--" Reed cut in, but it was useless.

Johnny walked towards the errant crewman, "I said: do you have something to say?"

The crewman glared again, but said nothing. The silence almost satisfied Johnny.

"That's what I thought," Johnny said. "Because I know you weren't talking shit about any one of us." Johnny indicated himself, Reed, and nodded towards where Ben, Kassie and Sue were being wheeled off towards the shuttle airlock. "Especially not crew mate Rivers, seeing as how if she hadn't pulled the alarm, all your asses would've still been on board when the storm hit."

Johnny didn't wait to see the guilt etch itself on the crewman's face, or the other members of the space team for that matter. He was finished with him. Now all he wanted to do was get home, and forget anyone of this had ever happened.

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When Ben opened his eyes, he would have given his pension plan, his apartment and Debbie's engagement ring to not have Johnny's smug face be the first thing he saw when he woke up.

...As it was, he didn't know if the banks were open (or if it was Sunday). His landlord would kill him if he leased the apartment to a hothead like Johnny Storm and Debbie would probably kill him, too, if he ever touched her ring.

And so he was stuck with Johnny. Perpetually smug-faced, I know something you don't know Johnny, though he wasn't looking very smug at the moment.

"Hey big boy," Johnny said in an oddly cautious tone. "How you feelin'?"

"Where am I?" Ben asked, still groggy. First he wanted answers, then he wanted to call Debbie. And then maybe get something to eat...his stomach was killing him! How long had he been out, anyway?

"Back on Earth," Johnny replied, shrugging his shoulders. "Victor's medical facility. We're in quarantine."

Ben had to swallow a few times before speaking again. His throat felt unbelievably dry. "How are the others? Reed, Sue and Kassie, they all right?" ­

"Oh, they're fine." Johnny looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable. "Everyone else is...fine."

Ben was relieved to hear that the team had made it back to Earth in, more or less, the same condition in which they left, but...there was something about the way Johnny spoke that made him think something with him was wrong, and so he asked.

"I swear to you, Ben," Johnny vowed with in an overly concerned tone, "They've done everything humanly possible. The best plastic surgeons in the world - Ben, you had the best!"

It was never a good sign when Johnny looked remotely concerned about something.

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Johnny Storm just couldn't help but laugh. He promised himself to try and get a laugh out of Ben about the whole plastic surgery gambit later on, when he wasn't so angry and in a mirror-pelting kind of mood. He'd barely made it out of Ben's room without snapping a rib from laughing so hard, let alone escaping with his life. It had been the icing on the cake to run into Reed and his new hairdo on the way out.

So who's next? Johnny thought as he turned another corner which led to another hall, identical to the one before. If it weren't for the conveniently located signs at every turn, he would have lost his way hours ago.

He had been the first one to wake up after the storm had accosted the space station, the first to pass out as soon as he, Sue, Reed, Ben and Kassie had all been rushed into quarantine and finally, the first one to rise after they'd been holed up for a little over a day. That was two days ago, and now, despite the doc's reservations, he felt fit as ever - and ready to tackle the monster slopes just outside of his hospital room. He had to give Victor props where props were due - the man knew how to scout a location.

The facility seemed oddly quiet as Johnny continued down the winding hallways back to his room. Hopefully his grandmother had replied to his voice mail with an appropriately equipped care package by now. She never could resist to spoil her favorite grand kids. Now that he knew his sister's vitals were stable, Reed was up and about, and Ben was in his usual disgruntled mood, he just had one more person to visit before heading out--

The sound of a door clicking shut drew him from his thoughts as he saw the same doctor that had spoken with him earlier walk out into the hall.

"Hey--" Johnny paused as he approached the man, decked out in a white lab coat, "--Dr. Lincott. What's the verdict?" Johnny glanced through glass window of the door, quickly spotting red hair against the pale color scheme of the room.

Dr. Lincott cast Johnny a suspicious look before glancing down at the clipboard in his hands. "Ms. Rivers is stable, for now. Her surgeries the night before repaired most of the damage--"

"Damage?" Johnny interrupted. He didn't like it when people were described having damage, especially when it concerned someone so important to his sister.

"Internal bleeding," Dr. Lincott elaborated. "If you'll excuse me, I need to check in with Ms. Storm..."

"'Course," Johnny said, moving aside as the doctor passed him. He stared through the glass for a few minutes before entering; a male nurse was changing the banana bag as he walked into the room. ­

Kassie's hair was cast to one side, a few bangs swept across her forehead, while her head lent to one side. The only sign she'd been in an accident was the cut above her right eyebrow - now held together with three stitches - and the IV needle leading fluids into the crook of her elbow. Her arms were at her side, blanket pulled up to under her arms. The sterile, white colors in the room made her skin look sickly pale in comparison, but now he noticed that she had a few freckles - across her nose and cheeks, and a few fine dustings up and down her arms. Her face looked unnervingly calm...serene, an odd contrast to the sudden panic he felt in his chest.

He had never liked hospitals, not since he'd lost his parents.

Johnny unconsciously walked up to stand next to Kassie's bed, his arms fidgeting at his sides. This was what he'd promised back at the station - ensure that his crew was in the green, and then he could relax. Seeing Sue unconscious had thoroughly freaked him out, and the picture of Kassie before him was having much the same effect on him.

"Your girl's gonna pull through," the nurse said, unhooking the empty banana bag and tossing it in a waste basket near Kassie's bed.

Johnny's head snapped up, utterly confused and caught off guard. "'Scuse me?"

"We wouldn't be switching out pain medication for more antibiotics if she weren't on the mend," the nurse explained. He gave Johnny a brief, understanding smile. "She's soaking up these fluids like a sponge. I'm sure she'll wake up soon."

That's comforting, Johnny thought as he watched the nurse leave the room. He turned his attention back to Kassie, cocking his head to one side.

Your girl... Johnny sighed, running a head over his buzzed hair.

Hearing his sister's voice in his head, he just shook his head: Don't put her on my couch.

"I'll catch ya on the flip side, Kassie," Johnny said quietly, resting his hand on her shoulder for a brief moment, before turning and leaving the girl to her morphine-induced dreaming.

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Reed Richards had spent exactly three hours and twenty-four minutes of his time, since waking up in quarantine, going over every possible conversation starter that wouldn't inevitably end in placing the catastrophic storm and resulting blame on his shoulders.

He had spent only three minutes assessing that there was no possible outcome in his favor.

He was currently standing outside of Sue's room - Room 102, two left turns and eight doors down from his own room, shuffling from side to side, trying to work up the nerve to enter the room without immediately turning on his heel and bolting in the opposite direction. He had spent eight minutes attempting to muster up the courage.

You're being ridiculous, Reed told himself. Just go in there, drop off the flowers and leave. She's probably not even awake yet. She never was an early riser on weekends, and it is Sunday...but she may not know that--

Reed's rather jaunty thought process was cut off when he heard the elevator ting! from behind him somewhere down the hall.

Just get in there, already! Reed scolded himself.

After he'd entered the room, though, he wished he hadn't; flowers of every shape, size, color and species were arranged artfully on virtually every flat surface in the room except for the floor. The view was overwhelming, as well as the smell of fresh cut flowers. The TV was on in the background, Victor's face plastered all over some mid-morning talk show.

Reed looked down at the measly sunflower in his hands, and felt himself shrink.

Turning his attention to the doctor standing at Sue's bedside, Reed said, "How's she doing?"

The doctor - Dr. Lincott, from what his ID badge read - spoke, indicating the clipboard in his hands, "Stable. Vitals are strong--"

He stopped when Reed took the clipboard, eyes scanning the test results. "Blood panels show no irradiation, that's good...and you'll step up this protocol every--"

"--Four hours," Dr. Lincott finished for him, giving Reed a slightly annoyed look as he took the clipboard back from him. "We know what we're doing, Dr. Richards."

Reed nodded to himself as the doctor left the room, but without the distraction of studying Sue's current medical condition, his attention returned to the ridiculous display of flora in her room. He couldn't deny that there was a perfectly logical reason as to why Sue's room would be thus decorated. It had been made clear the day Reed had signed the deal with Victor that the two were more than just co-workers, and Reed had left it that. The weeks of preparation before the flight, and actually being up in space with Sue had made him think back to their days together in college, but he wouldn't allow himself to do anything more than think. It wouldn't be right.

Sue was with Victor now. His Sue, blond hair, dark blue eyes, her two matching dimples on either side of her face when she smiled...she was with Victor now. Even if she didn't prefer half of the flowers in the room to the one in his hand.

"Excuse me," came the quiet interruption from behind him. A petite woman pushing a flower cart pulled into the room.

When Reed saw her reaching for an exotic orchid arrangement, he spoke up.

"She's allergic to orchids," Reed explained, gesturing to the flowers. He nodded towards the yellow arrangement next to the purple plants. "Put the sunflowers by her bed. . .they're her favorites."

He cast one glance over his shoulder, smiling at the brief nostalgic moment - Reed Richards, don't you dare touch those tulips! I'm a sunflower kind of girl - before turning and leaving Sue to sleep through the rest of the morning.

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"What do you mean, I can't see her right now?"

Normally - if you caught him on a good day, and he did have quite a few of those - the only reason Matt Hedge would raise his voice above speaking level would be during a musical audition, his most recent foray into the delightfully twisted world of Wicked included. He wasn't the kind of person to yell and scream and throw a fit to get what he wanted, mainly because it was his odd, boyish charm that won most people over - even the occasional nightclub bouncer.

The receptionist at the Doom Medical Compound, however, seemed to be immune to all forms of communication, including the aforementioned raise of the voice, and sign language. (Matt had taken a few courses over the summer after graduating from NYU.)

"Ms. Rivers, along with the rest of Mr. von Doom's team are currently in quarantine," the receptionist repeated rather tersely. "They are due to be released in twelve hours. Only then may you visit her."

"Look," Matt placed both hands on the receptionist's desk. She crinkled her nose in disgust at the gesture. "I've been here twice already, asking to see my cousin. You guys called me three days ago, saying she was in some sort of freak accident and needed consent for surgery - but oh, no, don't worry, we're taking care of her - and now you won't let me in to see her. I'm freaking family, her father's out of town, and as far as I can tell, if she and the team had brought back some sort of alien virus, it would have spread through the whole place by now!"

Matt was breathing rather heavily by the end of his tirade; he nodded his head once, sharply, satisfied that he had gotten his point across. He hadn't gotten this worked up since his audition for Rent, trying to convince Mimi that, though he was a struggling, street-performing thespian, he was the better choice over a cold man in a three-piece who would never show her real love. (He didn't get the part.)

"Is that a threat, Mr. Hedge?" The receptionists bristled, her hand going for the telephone in front of her. "Because security is only one phone call away..."

Matt grit his teeth and rolled his eyes. He ran a hand down his face and just sighed. "We're obviously facing a gap in evolution here," he muttered, then said more clearly, "Just let me see Kassie."

"Matt Hedge, right?"

Matt turned at the sound of his name to see a man he vaguely recognized in winter gear with a snowboard tucked under one arm, a helmet in the other. He cocked his head to one side, pointing at the guy as his memory worked to drag up a name from the depths of his sleep-deprived mind.

"You're that guy – Johnny... " Matt began.

"Storm," Johnny finished for him. He looked to be on his way out, but after glancing once at the glass entrance doors, he walked over to stand in front of Matt.

"Right," Matt said. He tossed over his shoulder at the receptionist, "Some quarantine."

"Mr. Storm!" The receptionist stood, waving back hair out of her face. "You shouldn't have been cleared from quarantine yet. The tests--"

"Been dodging 'em since junior high," Johnny grinned. He turned his attention back to Matt, giving him a quick, calculating look. "Are you here to see...?"

"Kassie, yeah," Matt finished for him. "I got a call, but they won't tell me anything. Is everyone all right? The news said--"

"Yeah, we're fine," Johnny replied. He glanced at the receptionist, bit his lip for a second and then began to rummage around in his jacket for something. After a moment, he pulled out what looked like a security pass and held it out for Matt to take.

"Nicked it off one of the nurses." Johnny winked. "It should get you in to see Kassie."­

"Thanks..." Matt said, taking the pass with confused gratitude. He nodded to the snowboard in Johnny's hands. "Everyone else as recovered as you?"

Johnny shrugged. "My sister and your--" He paused, then seemed to correct himself, mid-sentence; Matt wasn't sure why. "Sue and Kassie are still asleep, but you should be able to go see them."

Matt nodded, glancing down at the pass in his hands and then back up at Johnny.

"Well...the door's just through there," Johnny pointed to an offshoot of the main entrance. He added belatedly - almost awkwardly, "Tell Kassie hi from me if she's up." Mock saluting Matt, Johnny turned on his heel and headed out the door without another word.

"OK..." Matt said to himself, staring after Johnny for a few moments before heading towards the door Johnny had indicated.

As Matt entered a sterile-looking hallway, he swore to himself this would be the last time he let his cousin go up into space.

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A/N: All right, so it's a suuuuuper long chapter for you guys. I hope it somewhat forms the apology of me waiting to update in so frickin' long. It is a bit of a slow chapter, but I promise everything picks up starting with the next one - Johnny's snowboard adventure, Kassie discovering one aspect of her new powers and plenty of sibling banter between the Storms.

Stay tuned, and please tell me how you liked this chapter - if it flowed well, if the characters seemed like themselves, that kind of thing : )