I think this is in the top three of longest chapters on this story. It's also by far the most dramatic.
It was no secret that Susan Richards liked to be on top of things, to know everything that was going on. It gave her a sort of cool comfort when she had everything under control. She liked information, she liked to know. Especially in her own household
Especially, especially, when that something she would like to know was why her brother was currently sharing a bed with Raven.
With his arms around her.
Both scantily clothed.
She just couldn't leave those two alone for more than four days, could she?
Judging by their current position, it didn't take a genius like Susan to figure out that something had happened while she and Reed were away.
And it didn't take a genius either to figure out what that something was. So apparently, her brother and the woman were either currently in a relationship or- something which seemed much more Johnny like to Susan- friends with benefits.
She really hoped for both their sakes that it wasn't the latter.
But judging by the way she was snuggled up to him and the way he, rather protectively, had his arms wrapped firmly around her, she thought it looked most like the first option.
Happiness welled in her for a moment: Johnny and Raven were such good friends, a relationship between them could only be positive. Perhaps Johnny would finally settle down.
Then she felt a bit annoyed with herself for not seeing the signs. She felt like she should have realized it sooner. She was usually pretty good at picking up on other people's feelings, so she should have noticed some form of attraction between them. A hint of flirting, a longing look, perhaps. But thinking back she couldn't remember any of those things; at least not any that made her sense any romance forming.
Unless..
Unless they only just became aware of their feelings themselves.
Which was very likely, because she knew both of them well enough to know that they weren't always particularly good with feelings.
Susan stood at the foot of the bed and contemplated waking the two up and asking what the heck was going on.
She decided that it probably wasn't the best moment to do so. She had morning sickness and was feeling more than cranky, and she didn't want to snap at them.
She'd rather not give them the wrong idea. If they were really in a relationship, she needed them to know that she fully supported it.
However, there were several questions she'd like to ask. Like why they hadn't said anything at all. Did they want to keep in a secret? Perhaps they actually were afraid that Susan would disapprove, so they decided to keep it a secret for now.
On that note she left the bedroom, probably to go puke in the bathroom.
A few moments after she had left Johnny woke up. His left arm was asleep and stiff, having been under Raven all night. Not that she weighed a lot, but it was still enough to partly cut off his blood circulation.
He didn't want to move it though, because it would wake her. He flexed his hand a few times to get feeling back into it and then relaxed his arm. He stared at the ceiling to distract himself from the pins and needles.
Some minutes later, Raven shifted and rolled off his arm. It hurt when the blood flowed back into his veins, but he did his best to ignore that also. She sighed in her sleep and then her eyes fluttered open.
She turned and gave him a tired smile, which he returned.
"You're wearing my shirt." He commented.
"It used to smell good." She said in defense. She sat up in the bed and crossed her legs. "I like sleeping in big t-shirts. I did that all the time with A-" She cut herself off. They shared a look and she smiled a bit sadly, shrugging one shoulder. "Adrian. I did that all the time with Adrian."
Johnny reached out and entwined his fingers with hers, nodding in understanding. "Do you miss him?" he asked after a while. Only then did he meet her eyes. He figured that Adrian shouldn't be something they didn't talk about. He wanted her to be completely honest with him in everything, just like he would like to be with her.
"Not as much as I used to." She shrugged a shoulder again. "I sometimes feel bad for replacing him."
"But then I remember that you're not a replacement at all, you're so incredibly different from him that you could never replace him, but you take up a new and more important spot in my life."
He brought their entwined hands up and kissed hers, smiling dashingly at her. "Yes, I am unique."
"Yes.. Unique, special.. Odd.."
"I'm not odd!" he replied indignantly.
"You are too! Who doesn't know how to make waffles?"
They shared a short bout of laughter.
"Now get out flame boy, I need to get dressed," She looked at his appearance, "and so do you."
Johnny got up and saluted her, before leaving the room.
He barely made it out of the door when he almost walked smack dab into Susan, who looked at him with a very satisfied look. He tensed up and knew that she had seen that.
"This isn't what it looks like?" He made an innocent motion with his hands. She only raised an eyebrow at him that very much showed that she knew that it was exactly what it looked like. He simply shrugged at her look and stepped around her to continue down the hall towards his own bedroom.
Susan stood leaning against his door while he picked out clothing from his closet.
"Do you love her?" she questioned after a moment.
He was in the middle of pulling out a t-shirt when Johnny froze mid reach.
"Excuse me?" He felt like Raven needed to be there and be part of the conversation.
"You heard me." She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned more heavily into the wall.
He frowned slightly at his closet, then turned around and dropped the clothes onto the bed. He put his hands on his hips and looked at her.
"Yeah," he let his arms drop by his sides again, "Yeah, I suppose I do."
For a moment Johnny was sure she'd start worrying if he was being sincere or if he was rushing into something he couldn't fully comprehend, but then she smiled gratefully at him. She could tell that he meant it.
They didn't get to say anything else, because at that moment, the door bell rang.
This in itself was strange enough, because they rarely got visitors, and the visitor they did get were so familiar with the place that they normally entered without knocking.
Susan sent him an odd look, signaling that she had thought something along the same lines.
"Maybe Reed ordered something over the internet." Susa said after the second ring. Johnny nodded and followed her as they headed for the door.
If Johnny had known just how much trouble he would be in once he opened the door, he would've probably locked it instead. But he didn't know that as he took hold of the handle and turned it.
Only to be met with a gun aimed at his forehead.
Susan let out a gasp at the same time as Johnny swallowed one down.
Teresa, of all people, stood in their doorway and they had just opened the door for her.
Johnny didn't have time to be amused by the fact that she had rung the doorbell, as he was very much preoccupied with the gun.
"I think we all know why I'm here." She coolly stated.
"To borrow a cup of sugar?" Johnny easily fell back into his cocky Superhero state of mind, which always had a comeback up his sleeve.
Out of the corner of her eye, Teresa could see Susan slowly turning invisible. "If you disappear, I'll blow his head off!" He really wanted to be afraid for his own life, but at that moment, Johnny could only think about Susan and the child growing in her womb, and Raven. As long as Raven stayed in her room, she would be safe, but he still had to find a way of getting Susan out of there.
He knew that telling her to turn invisible anyway was out of the question, since there was no way she'd do it.
And where the hell were Reed and Ben anyway?
Johnny could hear the door to Raven's room opening and he closed his eyes in defeat.
Please don't..
He opened his eyes again at the sound of Raven's gasp. "Teresa!" Raven sounded very panicked, "What are you doing!"
Wasn't that much obvious? Johnny fought to keep that thought to himself. She obviously didn't mean what Teresa was physically doing at that moment, she asked why Teresa had decided to show up on their doorstep, when that obviously was a terribly bad move, if she wanted to avoid getting caught.
Still, it was stressful for him to have a gun pointed at him, as was only natural. If he had been able to flame on and get the heat to rise accordingly, the gun wouldn't have done much harm to him, since his body heat would mostly melt the bullet.
Right now, however, she would shoot him before he could reach the necessary heat, or worse, point the gun at someone else.
"You two, walk backwards." Teresa ordered. Once they did, she stepped through the elevator door and into the room. "Continue until you reach the window. No funny business." She was no longer sassy or sophisticated; Teresa had entered business mode and had become as hard as rock.
"Teresa, please, your business is with me. Let them go." Raven wasn't screaming or sounding panicked at all; she seemed calm and collected as if she had already accepted this fate.
"No, they've become involved now." Teresa motioned for Raven to move towards the other, with her gun. "They asked for this the day they decided to take you under their wings."
Raven was now next to Johnny, reached out and grabbed her hand in his, for comfort.
"Which is why I'm going to kill them first: So that you can look at their bodies and know that it's your fault, before you die yourself."
Ravens grip on Johnny's hand tightened painfully and the water pipes began to ominously creak and groan.
Before Teresa, Johnny and Susan knew what was happening, the whole water system exploded, bricks wood and metal flying everywhere. Water erupted and streamed towards her as fast as a speeding racing car, and soon she was surrounded by swirling mists and rivers of water twirling around in mid air.
In the chaos, Teresa got hit by a nice sized piece of debris right in her stomach, which winded her, making her fall to the ground and drop her gun.
As it landed on the ground, a shot went off. In the panic, Johnny didn't see where it hit, but on instinct, he took Susan in his arms and shielded her from the rest of the room.
Raven looked absolutely terrifying: Her hair was floating around as if underwater and her eyes were an unnatural blue color. The water streamed around her body like snakes and it looked almost like it was alive. To his surprise, he could see that some of the water even passed through her. Her hands were raised so they came level with her jaw, her mouth set in an angry sneer. Her fingers twitched with the effort of holding up all that water.
"You will not touch them again!" When she spoke, her voice sounded loud and echoing, yet distant, as if they were hearing it under water.
Teresa looked like she had realized that this might've not been a very good idea. She looked absolutely shell-shocked to see Raven like this and Johnny could understand why: Teresa was used to seeing a weak little woman with a weak personality and no control over her powers.
Hell, even Johnny who knew how powerful she could be was shocked at this new development.
A particularly harsh burst of water knocked the gun far away from Teresa and Raven stepped closer.
"I should kill you now." Raven said in that strange voice. "Did you know that I can extract the water from your body so you die from dehydration? Or that I can cover you with water till you drown?"
Teresa still looked frightened from her spot on the floor, but a glimmer of her old spark returned at that statement. "You won't. You're not like me. You have limits." She sounded very sure of herself.
A dark chuckle escaped the new Raven's lips. "Everyone has their limits. You just forced me to cross mine, something you will pay dearly for."
Johnny had trouble hearing Teresa's side of the conversation, since her voice hadn't been eerily magnified and seemed to fill up the entirety of the room, so he asked Susan to turn invisible for her own safety, so he could go close without worrying about her.
"What about you?" She protested. Johnny shook his head. "I need to stop Raven. Something's wrong." Susan nodded in understanding and started to pull off her clothes, revealing her suit underneath and then went invisible.
"Contact Reed." Johnny ordered and then stepped closer towards the two women on the other side of the laboratory.
"Which will it be, Teresa?" Raven questioned.
"Dehydration?" at this she moved one of her hands so it was level with the kneeling woman's throat, pulling at least a liter of water from her mouth. Teresa started coughing from the sudden dryness in her mouth. "Or drowning?" The new Raven made a motion with her other hand and water enveloped Teresa completely.
Johnny panicked at what he saw. This wasn't his Raven. He needed to stop her.
"Raven, stop!" He shouted at her. It was difficult to reach her because of all the floating water, which had continued to carry debris around. The whole place had turned an eerie underwater blue. The water which was going in slow circles started going faster and faster, to the point where it looked like an underwater tornado.
With a frustrated roar, Johnny erupted in flames, burning away the clothes he was wearing, leaving him in his suit.
Now it was much easier to reach the two women. Teresa was still engulfed in water and the sense of urgency grew in him.
"RAVEN!" He shouted as loud as he could. He finally reached her and took hold of her raised arms. As he forced them down, Raven lost focus and all the water in the room fell to the floor, including the water around Teresa.
Teresa spluttered and coughed in the floor. Raven went limp in his arms. He quickly set her down and stepped towards Teresa. Susan appeared behind her. "I've called the cops." She informed him. "And Reed. He'll be here in a moment."
"Good." Johnny said. He had no idea what to do now. He was used to Reed taking care of the after battle.
Turning around, he looked at the unconscious body of Raven. Her hair wasn't floating around anymore and, if he could have seen them, he'd have known that her eyes had returned to their normal state.
"What happened?" Susan asked. It was obvious she was asking about Raven's sudden personality change.
"I'm not sure." Was all Johnny would answer. He took a tentative step towards her. It was clear that she was knocked out. Her body halfway on one side, one of her arms clutching her stomach. She was surrounded by water.
Johnny frowned at her form.
Surrounded by red water.
In a second, he was at her side. A horrid feeling told him that he already knew what had happened.
The gun shot that went off..
He gently moved her arm, revealing her shirt which was soaked with blood.
Well, I hope you liked this little plot mover. This story is actually over pretty soon.
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