So, this chapter does have an OC in it, but don't worry. This is not a romance story. I'm mostly sticking to the Sue/Johnny bonding in this one.
Taking the advice of one of my reviewers of the last chapter, Silver Dog Demon, I did edit the first chapter somewhat. If you don't want to you don't have to reread it, I just fixed a mistake and wrote in a bit more from Sue's point of view on Johnny's disappearance.
When Cristian woke up in a hospital, he was worried. He had a broken arm and a knock to the head, but other than that he was fine. He had been hurt a hell of a lot worse before. The broken arm bothered him, but that was about it.
What he was worried about was the kid. He wondered if the kid would freak out if he woke up here, and knew that that was a big possibility. He wasn't totally sure about it, but he was sure enough to be worried about it.
When he asked after the kid and the doctor informed him that his family had taken him home, his worry grew and he asked if he could talk to them. They didn't know. He had been planning on taking that one slow. Hell, the kid had never even given any indication that he remembered them.
Sue couldn't let him go. She held tightly to his hand the whole way back to shore. The whole time that he was being checked out. The whole time Reed was convincing them to let him come back to the Baxter Building instead of going to the hospital.
He was different. Sue could tell he was thinner than he used to be. The growth on his face was more than a few days old, and his hair was a lot longer than he had ever had it. The clothes he was wearing had seen better days.
Sue had the thought more than once that maybe she had finally gone crazy, and this was just another one of her dreams, that Johnny wasn't really there. Her dreams were never like this, though. He was never dirty and unconscious in her dreams.
Her heart wouldn't stop beating wildly and there was the all consuming irrational fear that if she let go of his hand, he would disappear again. She couldn't let him go again; she wouldn't survive it, which was why she really hoped this wasn't a dream.
Reed and Ben's worried and elated faces lend weight to the theory that it wasn't a dream, though. Reed tried to talk to her, but she wasn't really hearing him, at least not at first. She couldn't take her eyes off her brother. He may have looked different, but it was still him, and she wished desperately that he would open his eyes so she could see the blue in them and be sure.
Reed was talking again as they made their way to the Baxter Building. Ben lifted Johnny off the stretcher they had used to get him inside the building and laid him down gently in his bed, in his room.
"What happened to him?" Sue asked, finally finding her voice and cutting off whatever it was that Reed had been saying.
"I don't know." Reed hesitated for a moment. "That boat did come from Europe." Sue squeezed Johnny's hand tighter at the words and turned back to him. She didn't want to even think about why Johnny had been in Europe.
"Do you think his powers are messed up?"
"I don't know. I'll have to run a few tests to find out." Sue nodded, and rested her chin on the bed beside Johnny's arm.
"Later."
"Yeah." She felt Reed squeeze her shoulder before he and Ben left the room but she didn't take her eyes off Johnny. She suddenly felt exhausted. She hadn't slept much in the last few days, it had been too close to the one year mark of his disappearance and she had been unable too.
She didn't want to sleep, though. What if she woke up next to Reed like usual and he told her that it was just a dream, that she was finally going crazy after all. Still, after a couple of hours, her eyes closed against her will and she did fall asleep, her hand still gripping Johnny's.
Sue woke up again at a tugging on her hand and for a moment she just shifted and then she remembered where she had fallen asleep. There was a moment of fear that it was a dream and then she sat up and found herself staring into her brothers blue eyes.
He had woken her up when he pulled his hand away and now he was sitting up against the headboard, knees pulled up and watching her with a wary look in his eyes.
"Johnny." She couldn't keep the relief and disbelief out of her voice and for a moment she didn't know what else to say. His eyes roamed the room for a minute before meeting hers again and she could see the confusion in them. He seemed wary more than afraid.
"Hey." She blinked, trying to banish tears. She wanted to lean forward and hug him, but he the way he was looking at her held her back. "It's good to see you." She sort of felt like an idiot, that wasn't good enough, but she was sort of at a loss.
"Are you okay?" Again, not the smartest question. Obviously, he wasn't, and he didn't answer the question. Reaching out hesitantly, she took his hand again and stood to sit on the bed beside him. He stared at their hands. He didn't return the grip but at least he didn't pull away this time.
"You know we looked everywhere for you," she continued, "I could never fully give up hope, you know?" Despite her resolve not to cry, she couldn't help it when her eyes filled with tears. He was there. She was holding his hand and looking into his eyes, and it was confirmation that her worst fear hadn't come to life.
"You know, if you want, you can take a shower. Maybe get cleaned up a little bit?" Sue looked around the room. She had forced herself to box up Johnny's things around nine months after he had disappeared but she had never gotten rid of them. Still, he would need clothes that hadn't been sitting for a year.
"I'll have to get you something of Reed's to wear until we can get you some new things." Standing up, Sue waited for a moment to see if he would follow her. He was still looking at her like he wasn't sure if he could trust her but after a moment, he did unfold his legs and get up. She smiled at him and led him out of the room and across the hall to the bathroom.
"Here's the towels." She said, pulling out one and handing it to him. He held onto it, still watching her. There was still confusion in his eyes and Sue wondered for a moment if she should introduce herself, if he even remembered who she was.
The storm of emotions that welled up in her at that thought had her stepping forward before she knew what she was doing and wrapping her arms around him in a hug. He was stiff in her arms, though, and she stepped back almost immediately.
"Sorry." She said, not looking him in the eye because hers were once again filled with tears. "I'll just leave you alone so you can get cleaned up, huh? I'll go find you some clothes."
As soon as Sue was on the other side of the closed door and she heard the shower start, she felt her legs give out on her. The tears that she had fought so hard against ran freely down her cheeks.
She had tried desperately to be strong while he was watching her. She trembled in relief that he was alive and in one piece, and sobbed in worry that he while he was alive, he wasn't himself, and didn't even seem to recognize her.
There was more to it, too. He hadn't said a word since he had woken up. It was unnatural. Johnny was a talker. Johnny could never seem to sit still for any length of time. He was the one who made inappropriate jokes about, well, everything. He was the one who only liked sports that had the high risk of ending with him paralyzed. Johnny was always, always full of energy, of life. He was boundless enthusiasm no matter what the circumstances.
Thinking about this, Sue felt another emotion well up in her: Rage. It burned through her and she let it. The tears dried, and she clenched her fists, barely feeling it when her nails dug into her skin.
For the first time in her entire life, Sue felt the desire to hurt someone. She wanted the person who had taken that fire away from her brother to pay. She wanted them in pain, and she wanted to be the cause of it.
Reed stopped short in the doorway of the room he and Sue shared. Sue was there, pulling out a pair of his pajama bottoms and a tee-shirt. What caught his attention, though, was the way Sue was fading in and out of sight.
"Sue?" Her eyes snapped to his and he almost took a step back at the anger in radiating from her eyes. Sue was seething. Luckily, she didn't throw any power his way.
"I have to get Johnny something to wear." She said, her voice quiet. She stalked past Reed and he reluctantly followed. When Sue knocked on the bathroom door and then went inside to find it empty, for a moment the anger was replaced by an all to familiar panic he had seen in her eyes way to many times, and then she went across the hall and it faded as well.
Johnny was in his bed, covers pulled up. Sue's eyes softened as she watched him sleep, and she went over to place the clothes on the table by the bed. Reed waited until she walked back to the door to say anything.
"Sue, we need to talk."
"What?" She still hadn't taken her eyes off her brother.
"There's someone here who claims that he knows Johnny." That got Sue's attention, and she looked over at Reed.
"Knows him?" Reed nodded.
"He says he found him. He wants to talk to you." The anger came back momentarily to Sue's eyes.
"Does he know what happened to him?"
"I don't know." Sue nodded and with one last look at Johnny, she started down the hall.
"Then let's find out."
Johnny waited until he was sure they were gone before sitting up in bed. He watched the door, waiting for her to come back. She was confusing.
When he had woken up, he was sure that it was a trick. She had been so nice, but they were always nice at first. Even he had been nice at first. Cristian was the only one who ever stayed nice, but Cristian was different.
She had nice things like them. She let him get clean like them. There was something different about her, though, and that was what was confusing.
Johnny had never seen any of them cry. She had, though, and he had the feeling that it was because of him. He wondered what he had done to make her cry. He had never even seen Cristian cry before.
There was something about her. Something that made him want to trust her, even though he knew that that was bad. There was something that was telling him he should know her.
He wished Cristian was there. He wished he could just sleep. If she was good, though, where was Cristian? He couldn't trust that she was good on just a feeling.
If she was one of them, he knew from experience that he wouldn't be able to get away. He had been lucky before. All that he could do was wait.
Sue watched the man across from her. He was an older guy with graying hair. He looked tired, and he had a cast on one arm.
"How do you know Johnny?" She asked finally. Her nerves were seriously on edge and she wasn't sure what she would do if this man answered wrong. He seemed to sense this, because he watched her warily.
"I found the kid on the streets a couple of months ago. He looked like he had gotten into some bad stuff," he had a heavy accent, "he was wearing what looked like hospital scrubs."
"You don't know what happened to him?" Sue asked, watching him, and trying to guess whether or not he was telling the truth.
"No. He ended up on the streets. He would not tell me what happened to him. I do not know if he has woken up here, but he does not talk at all."
"So, wait. You're saying you took care of him?" The man grimaced slightly.
The man shrugged and didn't really explain, looking like he couldn't really find the right way. Sue thought she could understand. Johnny seemed to get that reaction out of some people. There was a reason that people were drawn to Johnny, and it wasn't just because he was famous.
"A little while ago, I did see an article in a discarded newspaper. The way that I live, I do not usually catch up on the news, you understand? It was not the first I had heard of you, but it was the first picture I had seen. Johnny was in it."
"So, you just decided to get him here?" The man shrugged again.
"We do not stay in one place anyways. We would have left Romania for another place soon. I have seen a lot of places. America was a good as any, and Johnny had a reason to come here."
"Where did you find him? I mean, at first? It wasn't in Romania, was it?"
"No," the man shook his head, "it was in Latveria." For the second time that day, Sue's vision blurred in rage and she stood up. Her fists clenched again. She didn't notice that all three men were watching her warily now. Her voice came out in a growl.
"Victor."