Disclaimers: As much as I'd love to, I don't own the F4 characters, I'm not that lucky…

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Chapter 20

"Maria! Wake up!" Maria's eyes snapped open, and she was staring into Johnny's blue eyes, he'd been shaking her for the past minute or so to wake her. Maria sat up and threw her arms around him, burying her head deep into his shoulder. "Hey, it was just a dream," he said, putting his arms around her, rubbing the back of her neck.

"Why don't you hurt me?" she asked, her voice small, and frightened, tinged with tears.

Had she been able to see Johnny's face, she would have seen it was etched with confusion, "What?" he asked.

"I want you to hurt me, then this wouldn't be happening…" she was referring to when his touch used to burn her, but Johnny couldn't understand why, so he asked her to explain.

"I want things to be like they were before, I want you to hurt me," she said pulling away from him. "If we were still in those times, we wouldn't be in this one, and then this wouldn't be happening…" Johnny still couldn't understand, but he let her babble on anyway. "If we hadn't gone up into space, this would never have happened, everything would still be alright…" she said.

Johnny broke his silence, "No, Maria…" he said. "This still would be happening. This Dooms Day project had got nothing to do with the cosmic storm…" he explained.

Maria shook her head, "You don't get it," she said. She was right, he didn't get, he really had no idea where she was going with this. "If we weren't who we are, if we weren't the Fantastic Five, we wouldn't know about this… we would e like everyone else, and wouldn't know. It wouldn't be happening, because we don't know about it!" she said reinstating her point over and over.

The Human Torch nodded, he could see her views now. What you didn't know, couldn't hurt you. Had they not know about the plans to bring on the Apocalypse, they would just be care free and happy like everyone else.

The two were silent for a while, until Johnny asked, "Is that what your dream was about? You dreamt about what's going to happen?" he asked.

Maria nodded, but chose not to go into any details. Only things were just like they were in her dream, this was the day it was all going down.

"I should get dressed," she replied, hinting for Johnny to leave the room. He nodded, catching her hints.

Maria was left alone in her room, undressing out of the pj's and re-dressing in her blue uniform, pulling on joggers and a sweatshirt over the top.

She stared at her reflection sadly, it wasn't raining outside as she'd hoped. She wandered how the day was going to end, would there be another day? She knew this was only going to be a meeting between Jack's dad and the rest of his team, but then again that's what it was supposed to be in her dream, and it went bad.

But it was only a dream, right?

She shook all the bad thoughts from her head, and grabbed her hairbrush. After puling on her boots, she headed for the kitchen for breakfast.

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End of chapter

A/n if you have no idea what she's babbling about, have no fear because it's not meant to make sense anyway... it's a philosophical thing, you either get it, or you don't. It's based on the saying what you don't know, can't hurt you.