Disclaimer: The Fantastic Four belong to Marvel, not yours truly. I make no money from writing fic about them.

Rating: PG

Continuity: Set at some indeterminate point in the future.

Author's Note Written for the Yuletide 2004 challenge.

Damsel In Distress

By Andraste

"Seen any good movies lately?"

So far, Sue can't get any reaction at all - Victor's body language doesn't even register that he heard her. It's starting to get on her nerves. Not that she cared much what he thought of her even when he was sane, but she got tired of being treated like pliable, disposable bait several abductions ago.

She's done her share of rescuing the guys in between times, but Sue still notices that all the supervillains have read the 'kidnap the hero's girlfriend' chapter in the handbook. It probably doesn't help that her powers are the least offensive in the group, either.

"As kidnappers go, Victor, I'm going to have to rate you below Namor. You haven't even offered to make me your queen yet. I do appreciate the lack of genetically engineered mold creatures, though, so at least you score better than Dr. Molevic."

That provokes the slightest twitch of irritation, probably at the noise more than anything else. He's got a device Sue can't even begin to identify spread out in pieces in front of him on the table. It's probably some kind of death trap he's preparing for when her knights in shining spandex charge to the rescue, although if that's the case he's cutting things fine. She's unlucky that he's too smart to leave here alone, or have her watched over by the same robot minions that grabbed her in the first place. Sue's getting pretty good at getting out of situations like this when she's unsupervised.

"I guess you don't want to tell me your plan, huh?"

Victor hunches further over his work, but doesn't reply. Sue saw him like this plenty of times before the accident, so absorbed in whatever he was doing that not even Reed could get a word out of him. Still, she was surprised at first by how quiet he's been. Every time she's seen him recently, Victor van Damme been in ranting maniac mode. After some thought, Sue decided out that his subdued mood probably had a lot to do with Reed not being here yet - maybe Victor only puts on a real show for his chosen nemesis. On some level, Sue is offended by that.

Short of talking about the weather or declaring 'Reed will come for me soon!' she's now all out of opening lines. Sue runs her hands over the smooth, glowing surface of her prison, and then, impulsively, kicks it hard. The surface is solid, but her boots protect her feet, and it feels satisfying. So she does it again, and again, starting to get into a rhythm.

"The forcefield is impermeable."

Finally! "I'm not an idiot, Victor - what is it made of, anyhow?" She's not really expecting him to tell her, but distracting him is the most heroic thing she's capable of from in here.

Sue tries not to look even a tiny bit victorious as he turns around in his chair and actually deigns to look at her. "You do not even comprehend your own abilities, let alone mine. The technology is far beyond your understanding."

He's right - advanced engineering isn't her strong suit, and trying to understand Reed's inventions usually gives her migraines - but that doesn't make her stupid. There's no point saying that to him, though, so Sue smiles in what she hopes is an irritatingly cheerful way.

"Just give me the Cliff Notes version."

"I have no interest in childish simplifications," Victor snarls. "No wonder Richards fails to achieve even the little his feeble mind makes him capable of, when he is forced to listen to such distractions."

"Hey, Reed happens to like distractions. I should know."

Victor stands up and walks toward her. "I do not. You are my prisoner, girl - I may need you alive, but things do not have to be comfortable for you."

If he really wants to torture her, he'll have to take the forcefield down, and he's probably not going to. That reduces the intimidation factor - if she can't get out, he can't get to her either.

"Fine - if you don't want to talk about your field of expertise, how about mine? Are you still making poison gas out of your leftover organs? What are you made of, Victor? Do you even know?"

His surface is just as shiny and mysterious as her prison, and it glows weirdly in the red light she's seeing him through. He's the only one affected by the accident she hasn't been able to run through a scanner to her heart's content, and she can't help but be curious.

After a moment's hesitation, he tilts his head thoughtfully. "I no longer feel pain."

It's more information than she expected him to reveal, and she's instantly intrigued - even Ben, almost invulnerable and with his senses dulled as a result, can still feel pain if the stimulus is sufficiently intense. "Can you sense pressure at all? How about pleasure? Do you even have nerve endings in your skin anymore?"

The questions are out before she can really consider them, and she flinches as his metallic fist slams into the shield in front of her. Sue can almost see him drag himself back under control as he turns away from her and flings himself down into his chair.

"I guess that's a no, huh? You suffer from a kind of sensory deprivation?"

That might explain a few things, if it's true, like why the rest of them haven't had their brains scrambled. Victor was obsessive before the accident, but Sue can't recall any evidence that he was any crazier than most of the kids at the Baxter Building. She's read the classic studies on what depriving monkeys of physical contact does to them. God knows what messing around with a person's sense of touch would do when they were fragile to begin with.

They both stay quiet for a while, although Sue notices that Victor is staring at his invention and fiddling with his tools rather than working. "You know," she says at last, "if you give Reed the numbers, he could put you back the way you were."

"Richards is my enemy." His voice is flat, as if he's reporting a universally understood fact.

"No kidding - I can't imagine why, between the killer insects, the mind control zombies, the robots and kidnapping me."

"It is our destiny. We have each been given abilities appropriate to our station."

Sue has been wondering about that. Nobody involved in the Negative Zone incident or studying the fallout is a psychology major, but ... Sue wonders. They kid around enough about how Johnny was a hothead already, and Ben was a big dumb rock. Between that and Reed experiencing a physical manifestation of his desire to flow in all directions at once ...

Victor's theory that the universe gave them what they deserve doesn't feel quite right to her, but it is possible that the Zone somehow responded to their own self-image.

"So what does it say about you, Victor, that you spray poison and needles at people, and feel nothing?" Maybe Victor was crazy before, if this was what his subconscious turned him into.

She's pinned for a moment by his cool, empty eyes. "I was referring to the fact that you were obviously meant to be neither seen, nor heard."

He picks up a tiny screwdriver and a tiny screw, and goes back to constructing his latest weapon.

"Seems to me that I was meant to protect people," Sue says, shrugging. "I've been wondering if I should thank you for screwing up the calculations, actually. But if you don't like the way it turned out - he'd do it, Victor. He'd do it because he's a good person, because he was your friend before you lost it. You just have to ask for what you want."

Victor keeps his back to her, and Sue isn't surprised. That was something he never understood about Reed.

The End

Author's Note: I don't know if what Victor says about not feeling pain any more in #7 is meant to be taken seriously or not, since he did scream when Johnny set him on fire in #13. Of course, that may just have been shock - I know I'd be startled if the Human Torch set me alight. I decided to run with it anyway.