Two Plus Two

Disclaimer: If you recognize it then I don't own it. I cherry-pick timelines and cannon as I see fit.

A/N: For Whumptober 2023 #9 "Learning everything ain't what it seems, that's the thing about these days." "You're a liar"

"Stop lying, Sue." The young, blond-haired teenager yelled, jumping up from his seat at the table tears already sliding down his cheeks. Johnny was barely fifteen and had already lost so much in his young life. His older sister had just dropped the latest life-altering bomb upon him as gently as she could yet her hot-headed brother still exploded into fiery anger. Sue quietly sighed as Johnny ignored her like she was invisible and continued ranting and raging at the injustice that was both their lives.

Sometimes the twenty-year-old felt like she was not really living her own life, just a shadow taking the hits and going through the motions, taking care of everyone else but herself. She wanted her own life. She was smart and worked hard. Took challenging classes and worked in a competitive field of science at a top-end company. She wasn't even of legal drinking age but she had already spent years working her butt off and climbing the ladder by her merit alone. Yet it never seemed to be enough, she was just seen as a young pretty face with nothing to offer by most of those she interacted with. She wanted to be seen for her own accomplishments not only what she could give other people. She loved her brother dearly but she was tired of being everything for him all the time. Mother, father, sister, and friend, now legal guardian. The face in the mirror didn't seem to be anyone special, just a holding place for the next role needing to be filled. Sometimes she didn't even know who she really was or what she wanted to become. The world could never see the real Suasn Storm when not even she knew who that really was.

The young woman stayed seated, tears gathered in her own blue eyes. At least she knew one thing she was not, "I'm not a liar."

"You have to be lying," The boy muttered and paced as he pulled at his spikey locks.

"No, I'm not. You know I wouldn't lie about something like this." She sighed beckoning him back to his seat, "Come here."

"No, this isn't happening. Dad is not going to jail. It's wrong, you have to be wrong. There has to be another explanation. It's a joke or he was framed or something. Dad didn't kill someone."

"I'm not wrong, this is really happening. You know I'm telling the truth." She stood and went over to him. Laying her hands on his skinny shoulders she stopped his agitated pacing. "You know after Mom died, Dad has been in a bad place for a long time. He made some bad choices and now he has to pay for them." Johnny had been so young when they lost their mother in a car accident. She watched their father turn to the bottle for comfort, trying to drown out his own guilt of surviving while his wife was killed. He had quickly lost his job and their home. He had quickly stopped being the father they desperately needed. The Storm family, or what remained of it, had fallen into dark days. Sue had tried to keep them afloat by doing odd jobs for neighbors. She eventually got a job as an intern at Von Doom Industries and tried to take care of her brother and father but she was still a kid herself, the same age as Johnny was now. She still felt like a kid. She didn't know what to do then or now.

"No!"

"Stop being a child," She finally snapped, "You can't hide from this, neither of us can. It's happening no matter how much we both wish it wasn't."

"Why?" He wailed out asking the very universe for an explanation for his grief and torment, "Haven't we lost enough already? Why does he have to leave us now, too?"

She hadn't realized how much he still needed a father in his life. She had written the man off years ago, she knew it was only a matter of time before he screwed up to big to escape from. She had hoped it would be after Johnny turned eighteen but it was clearly not meant to be. She had taken on her dad's load and responsibility along with his lost wife's with bitter determination. Sue hadn't realized that the man had still played any sort of meaningful role in her brother's life since she had long ago stopped needing a father. The man was barely home and drunk or hung over most of the time he was. Johnny had an older sister who loved him and tried her best to care for him but Johnny was a young man on the cusps of manhood with no real example to show him the way.

She pulled him into an embrace, "He left us years ago."

"What are we going to do now?" He mumbled into her shoulder emotionally drained.

"I don't know," She had been taking care of her younger brother for years already, but now it really was only her. She was barely an adult herself how was she supposed to raise her brother? "We still have each other. We aren't alone. We'll be okay."

"We aren't moving in with your boyfriend, are we?"

"I..." She hesitated, she didn't want to do this alone and she loved Reed Richards but was it really fair to spring raising her teenage brother full-time on him? They had only been dating for less than a year. She met him at work, she thought at first he was cute but a total egotistical know-it-all after he had corrected her work. It turned out to be his idea of flirting. He was a genius and older than her, but totally helpless with social interactions. He was brutally blunt and stretched so far between his many projects he barely acknowledged anyone on this planet. Her boyfriend lived with his long-time best friend, Ben Grimes, who was rough around the edges and as blunt as his roommate. Johnny had only met them a few times and it seemed the three of them mixed as well as fire and ice. Somebody's feelings always seemed to get hurt, with her trying and failing to play referee. The boys fought like brothers but she wasn't sure the four of them could ever live together and become something like a family. "I'm not sure."

Johnny mumbled something rude about not being able to live with eggheads and rock heads. Sue wisely ignored him, not wanting to start another heated fight again so soon. She loved the annoying little punk, no matter how crazy he drove her sometimes and she had no intention of ever abandoning him like everybody else in his life seemed to have done. Maybe one day there would be more than just the two of them in Johnny's life, more people he could count on and love.