Disclaimers: Same old, same old… I don't own the F4 characters, if I did then I wouldn't be working in a supermarket for peanuts, would I?
A/n Here's a technique I tried unsuccessfully once upon a time, so I'm giving it another go…
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888 Six Month's Earlier 888
Maria sat up in her bed, she felt the pain searing through her skull distorting her vision completely, and making way for images only her mind could conceive. She reached gripping her heard with her hands as if to keep it together in case it exploded. She wandered if this is what a stroke felt like, she thought she was dying, and the images she was seeing was her life flashing before her eyes.
But what she saw was her Reed, he had never been a big part of her life, but he was to her father. Why was she seeing him? Or Sue for that matter? She was with Victor Von Doom, a face she also saw, but she'd only met him a few times. Her father, Ben, made sense, but she couldn't understand why she saw him, and not her real father, or her mother. She was dying, surely she should be seeing them also? Johnny made sense, he was her best friend, but still this wasn't a part of her life.
The images she saw was of an orange cloud enveloping the five of them, causing them and immense amount of pain, pain she was feeling searing through her skull. They were in a rocket, only they weren't, she had enough control over reality and knew what she was seeing wasn't true. Yes, her father was going into space, he had done it in the past, but he hadn't left yet.
She felt a sudden immense pain and lost the consciousness she was fighting to hold on to.
She later woke up in cold sweat on the floor, the pain was gone. She began to wander if it was real after all, or just an extremely bad, realistic nightmare.
She thought and spoke nothing of it. But she'd never forget the feeling in the pit of her stomach when she sat in front of the monitor safely on Earth watching the horror unfold as the cloud accelerated. She felt like Liv Tyler in 'Armageddon' watching on a screen as her own father sacrificed himself to save the human race. Totally helpless, and silent, with tears making tracks.
She kept it all inside, fearing the unknown and whether or not it would happen again, and if she was going to tell anyone. The other four thought she felt out of place, and disturbed, but the truth was she felt ashamed.
It did happen again, a little over a month later. She felt pain and saw flames in the town centre. She said nothing, and when no occurrence happened within a week, she forgot about it. But then it happened, it was something that could have been avoided, but then could it have been? She didn't know the time, or the place? Neither did she know when the flooding happened in an electrical store was going to happen. Then the boat crashing into the harbour because of high tides. She put it all behind her that it was just coincidence, but then she couldn't just do that, could she?
8888888 Present 88888888
Maria rested her head against the window and stared out of it. She found herself doing this a lot lately, wishing she was out there, and not where she was. Where she was, she had no idea, somewhere in between New York and New Orleans, that much she knew. She glanced at her watch, she'd caught the 11pm train, and she'd heard the clock strike at 10.45 just after she'd stormed out of the club where she was with Johnny. She'd been travelling for half an hour.
Her vision was still slightly blurry with the anger and tears she felt when she'd heard him say those words, "Her dad told me to bring her," he'd said, leading to another guy who had joined them to ask "Did he threaten to clobber you?" Johnny had laughed, and said "Yeah." She could still see the look of blatant shock on his face when he turned and saw her standing behind him with drinks she had bought the two of them. The shock deepened when she poured the drinks over him.
She didn't know what he looked like after that, she'd turned on her heel, and stormed out of the club. She broke into a run soon after she exited, she'd escaped from view by the time Johnny had made it into the slightly smoggy night air.
She didn't know where he was no, and quite frankly she didn't care. She was angry with him, the past two days he'd been like the old Johnny, the way he was before fame changed him. Now she wandered what had changed, was he just acting like he cared, or was he just playing up for his groupies? Either way what he'd said was wrong, what he'd said sent knives into her, what he said made her cry the way she was crying now. Why was it that it was only Johnny that could make her cry like this?
