The Invisible Woman

by Indigo

*ring*

*ring*

*ring* -- *klik* "H-Hello?"

"Henry...?"

"No, this is Scott Lang. Hank's in the lab. Who's this?" Scott Lang reached up and brushed back his sleep-tousled auburn hair and blinked away the vestiges of sleep trying to tug him back into his nap. ~Voice sounds familiar...~

"It's Reed."

~Reed. Reed.~ Scott muffled a yawn with the back of his hand -- then snapped awake. "Reed...RICHARDS?"

"Yes, Scott. Good to speak with you."

Scott frowned. "Reed, man, you sound terrible. Something wrong?"

"Unfortunately, Scott, your assesment is correct. I ... do not feel comfortable discussing it. I'm at a payphone." Reed sounded -- taut. Like it was an effort to phrase himself.

~Jeez-louise, I hope he's not fighting off mind control or the Crucible or something,~ Scott thought as he listened with concern to his friend.

"I promise I'll be as unobtrusive as possible," Reed added with an almost pathetically hopeful note to his voice. "Might I visit you and Hank in the laboratory that I may discuss it in person?"

"Yeah, of course. I'll tell Hank you're coming, Reed." Scott let the phone receiver drop into its cradle, then spun around in the office chair he'd been dozing in. Scott blinked his eyes into focus and found the digital face of the clock. 3:45 am. ~Whoa. We better suit up. No telling what has Reed wound up enough to call Hank and me at this hour!"

He shrugged out of his shirt, and unbuckled his belt, heading for the door. By the time he reached Hank Pym's laboratory, he was stripped down to his Ant-Man togs, except for his helmet. "Hank! Hank!"

"Eh? Scott, what is it?" Hank smiled down at his lab assistant. Lang's insect knowledge and scientific expertise had been invaluable to Pym's research. ~Not quite valuable enough to brook a panicked interruption,~ he mused.

"The phone."

Hank looked blank.

Scott rolled his eyes. "Okay, you didn't hear it ring. But it did. It was Reed. He's on his way over."

"Reed *Richards*?" Pym asked, widening his blue eyes. Oddly, despite the late hour, they were not bloodshot. He was as fresh as a daisy. He glanced at the clock, doing a quick double-take in surprise. "Those micro-naps must really be helping. I had no idea it was that late. Did Reed say what he needed?" ~At this hour it must be life-and-death urgent. But why not call the Avengers?~

Pym leapt down from the carapace of the insectoid, landing on the floor with a grace he hadn't lost since his Avengers days. He thumbed a button on his belt, and the satellite feed activated. Frowning, Pym flipped channels, looking to see if there was any crisis that might disturb Reed at this hour -- or that might preclude his going to the Avengers for help instead. But the news channels were quiet.

Scott handed Hank a mug of coffee. "He said he wasn't comfortable discussing it on the phone." He too seemed perplexed with what could possibly get Reed over to their lab in the middle of the night.

In twenty short minutes, they had their answer. Scott flipped on the cameras at the front entrance, and confirmed Reed's identity. "Come on in, Reed." He thumbed a switch, and the door irised open to let him step through -- duffel bag, trenchcoat and all.

Hank frowned, watching Reed approach. ~He's moving like a normal man. A normal man with a tremendous weight on his shoulders. No stretching. Perhaps he's lost his elastic properties.~

*****

Jim Hammond awakened with a start. Or, more precisely to say, his awareness came online and focused. The android who once had been CEO of the now-defunct Heroes For Hire maintained his penthouse office, having stayed on with the company even after the organization had disbanded. But the floor that had once housed offices for Jennifer Walters, Attorney at Law, Luke Cage, Daniel Rand, and Scott Lang -- or, as the world knew them: She-Hulk, Power Man, Iron Fist, and Ant-Man.

None of them would stop by after business hours without clearing it with him first. Logic dictated that it was either a mistake or an intruder. Given the hour, Hammond tended to believe it was the latter. So he rose, silent in stealth mode, to check the office.

"Namor?"

The Prince sat with one hip tilted onto the corner of Hammond's own oak desk. Beside him was an uncorked decanter of 300 year old scotch. When he looked up, Hammond's eyes detected a glimmer of moisture on his old friend's cheeks. ~Tears?~

"Hammond," Namor said softly, and Hammond wondered if his artificial heart should be racing. He knew that Namor's voice did not quiver like this. "I have done -- either a very good thing...or a truly terrible thing."

He lifted the glass to his lips and took another sip, closing his oceanic green eyes in a silent expression of grief and pain. "I never meant..."

Hammond moved to his friend's side. Namor was not customarily given to extreme, showy displays of emotion.

*****

"You keep the weirdest hours, I swear, girl," Kay Sera scolded the woman posing on the hassock above her.

"Yeah, well, considering I'm a lawyer by day and I deal with superheroes, and superhuman insurance claims and all sorts of other fun red tape like that," replied Jennifer Walters, "and you'd want to have a fitting for your custom made suit in private too. I'm just glad you were able to handle such an insane hour."

Kay laughed, tossing her mop of black hair out of her face. Plucking a pin out of her mouth to secure the hem of Jennifer's smart dress, she said, "Jet lag from Paris, darling. I don't do this all the time - what do you think I am, cuckoo?"

A knock at the door interrupted the cheerful revelry of the green amazon and her seamstress. Jen hopped down from the hassock and lifted the fabric of the dress, moving immediately toward the door with her customary poise and self-possession.

"Jen, aren't you worried who it is at this hour?" Kay called, frowning, but taking a more combative stance of her own.

"Not hardly," Jen smirked, and leaned through the peephole. The figure standing in the fish-eye lens' purview was wearing a floor-length blue hooded cloak -- and trembling. Jen didn't recognize the figure, and it wouldn't lift its head to give a clear view. "Who is it?"

"Jennifer, it's me. Sue." The voice was definitely that of her old friend. But the carriage, the demeanor -- this was some crushed soul! Jen had to take a breath before she opened the door lest she tear it off the hinges.

"Sue, what are you doing out at this hour of the night?" Jen demanded. "Where's Franklin? Is he okay? What about Reed, Johnny - is everyone okay?"

"Franklin's with Alysande," Susan answered, voice shaky. "He's fine. He doesn't know what's happened. Reed....Reed..." she couldn't continue and collapsed into sobs.

"Sue?" Jen reached into the hood and tilted her friend's face up so she could get a better look -- she caught her breath.

The blue eyes that looked back at her were full of tears -- in a face that was no longer human except in the vaguest sense. A crown of blonde hair was all that remained of Susan's original coiff. Hanging from the rest of her head were spiny tenticular growths reminiscent of a Predator's "dreadlocks". "Oh, Jen, I've made the most terrible mistake...!"

"Wait, wait, what the hell caused this?" Jen bristled, green hair rippling as the anger flooded adrenaline through her.

"For crying out loud, Jen, be macho later," Kay interrupted. "Can't you see she's upset? Come in, Susan, dear, and tell us what's wrong."

"It's Reed," Sue sobbed. "He's left me."

*****

"What could possibly have possessed you to leave Sue?" Scott asked, dropping into a chair in shock. "You two have been through everything together. You've got a son! You have saved the world together, and faced life and death together!"

Reed, unaccustomed to being in such mental, emotional disarray, absently ran his fingers through his disheveled hair. "She would have left me," he whispered at length. "Certain I had left her. Which, I suppose, in a way, I had. Night after night in the lab...falling exhausted into bed. Too exhausted to show her I still love her as my wife. Too dedicated to finding a cure to realize the emotional toll it was taking on Susan."

Reed bowed his head -- proud Mr. Fantastic simply a man of rubber. "Ben and Johnny tried to tell me, but I foolishly insisted that I knew my wife best. That Susan was strong enough to bear up. That she was the Invisible Woman, and that if she could triumph over Malice and the Psycho Man's ministrations...if she could endure believing me dead and gone -- then this too would pass, and all would be well."

"We're listening, Reed," Hank said softly, frowning. "I'm glad you came to us."

"Yes," Scott agreed. "We've both endured this sort of thing before -- losing a wife. If there's anything we can do..."

******

"...Do?" Namor asked, voice breaking in a sound that was equal parts laughter and sob. "Do? I wanted to storm down to the laboratory, tear the door from the hinges, and take Richards by the throat. I wanted to shout until I woke every surface dweller in the house that the man was a *fool* for neglecting his wife!"

Hammond nodded thoughtfully. "But was he truly neglecting her, since his hours in the lab were spent searching for a cure to this thing that had befallen her?"

Namor nodded. "Indeed he was. But that did not matter in the heat of the moment. All that mattered was that his wife -- Susan -- the woman I love --suffered echoing loneliness without him. That she called me in tears, begging me to tell her she was still beautiful enough to love. That Richards hadn't touched her, not so much as even casually, in the year since they'd returned from their adventure on the moon with Ronin!"

A sharp crack indicated Namor's rage had expressed itself in his fingers. Shards of glass rained from his fingers onto the carpet, and tiny fragments stuck in his palm, drawing tiny droplets of Atlantean blood.

Hammond pulled the dustbuster from his desk drawer and cleaned up the wreckage. "I can see how this might be distressing to Mrs. Richards," he allowed. "But clearly, you are here -- missing only your suit jacked and your necktie. It does not appear that you gave in to your desire to make your point clear to Mr. Fantastic."

"This is true," Namor admitted. "Less important than venting my wrath upon Richards was comforting Susan."

******

"...He took me in his arms," Susan whispered, bulbous alien eyes streaming perfectly human tears down her face, "He told me that I was beautiful. Even like this." She held up hands that ended in fingers bearing far too many joints to be human. "I looked into his eyes and he was sincere. Telling me the truth. I needed it. Needed to hear it." She hung her head. "I needed to be held."

Jen sat with an arm curled around Susan. In body, she wore the same figure Jen remembered -- if a bit more muscular. Except for the wings. From her back depended a pair of gossamer-cellophane wings, reminiscent of a dragonfly.

"Every woman does, hon," Jen whispered comfortingly. "But it couldn't have been that Reed stopped loving you. I've *seen* him. No man in the world loves his wife as much as Reed loves you."

"Th-that's true," Susan whispered brokenly. "But not as true as it was. Curing me of the Mannequin's effects became one more project for Reed. One more obstacle for his intellect to triumph over. None of us had realized that although he enjoyed the passions of an ordinary man, that having lost his intellect had scared him .... scarred him. We were just glad he had it back. And so was he."

The Invisible Woman wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. "I still have my powers. Even Franklin isn't scared of me, because he knows I'm his mommy. But somehow -- to Reed -- I went from his wife to just 'a subject.' A rather repulsive subject! I became Susan, afflicted with this strange carapace where my skin once was. And Mrs. Richards actually became the invisible woman. He still loved her, but he could not connect her with the woman I am now.

"Namor...Namor could."

Kay nodded, handing Sue a tissue and a cup of tea. "You needed comfort, Namor offered it?"

******

"...and that was what I found when I came up from the lab," Reed explained, unable to meet the eyes of his friends. "There was this -- buzzing sound. My first concern was whether we were under attack. But none of the security systems were active. Johnny, Ben, and Alysande were all fine. And Franklin was not calling for his parents, as he most often does in time of crisis.

"I chalked it up to my imagination and sleep deprivation," Reed sighed, rubbing absently at the grey and brown stubble on his chin. "I opened the door to my bedroom, and discovered the source of the buzzing."

Hank furrowed his brows. "Susan's insectoid transformation had progressed to another stage, then."

Scott gave Hank a look that indicated he thought Hank was far less clever than the world gave him credit for.

*****

"...Even in this alien shape, there was no disguising the beauty of Susan Richards -- the delicateness, the strength. The unshakable will, and the tender heart that I have long and ever found irresistable," Namor shrugged. "An embrace became a kiss. One kiss became two. She protested - in a whisper, before her lips found mine."

Hammond paced, watching Namor do likewise at the opposite end of the room, looking down at the view of the Hudson River. "I have never -- would never -- force myself on Susan against her wishes!" His fist came down on the desk, accompanied by the loud cracking of 250-year-old oak. "She held me --as though I would keep breath in her body. As though parting from me would mean her death."

"And damn me, knowing she was the wife of another man, I could not tell her no when she asked me if she was still a woman -- if she was still worthy of a man's love. Of a man's touch."

*****

"It had been so *long*," Sue wept, clutching the mug in her distended fingers. "It felt so good. I needed it. I needed him. I needed to know I would not spend the rest of my days in this -- this monstrosity of a body and never know what it felt like to make love again!"

*****

"I should have realized it," Reed sighed. "It never even occurred to me that she would have wanted to touch me ... sexually." Reed stammered over the word. "She has changed in so many ways. In so many ways she is no longer human. Not completely. In so many ways, things that once were ordinary and mundane to her were now foreign, strange, frightening. I did not want to be one of those things. And so I distanced myself.

"Damn me, I never thought she would think I didn't want her! She was inhuman, but she was still Susan at heart. Susan, my wife. And I treated her like she was invisible to all but my scientific curiosity as I worked to find her a cure.

"Walking into my -- our bedroom -- to find her engaged in sex with Namor? Intellectually I know I should not have been surprised."

Reed hung his head again. "But I was. Shocked and horrified. My wife was cheating on me in my own bed. I couldn't even bring myself to speak. I must have gasped in surprise. Namor heard me, and turned to look. Susan leaned up and those eyes -- those beautiful, alien eyes that still carry all her emotions if you *only look* were full of shame and grief, anger and sorrow, and need.

"Need I hadn't seen fit to fulfill. Need I hadn't realized she felt until I recognized it now."

*****

"Namor, bless him, realized what we'd done, and rather than pressing the moment, went silent, dressed, and left," Susan explained, hands shaking. "He kissed me once, on the forehead -- gave Reed a look that would have wilted a lesser man -- then walked out to let us be alone."

"Oh, honey," Jen whispered. "Can't you two work it out?"

*****

"If it is Susan's desire and her wish to remain with Richards, I shall abide by that, Jim," Namor said, drinking directly from the decanter. "I do not know at this moment. I should love to be privy to Richards' thoughts now. To know if he regrets his loss, his foibles..."

*****

"...my failure."

"Reed," Scott protested, "How do you know you've failed...? You can't have tried everything yet! What about Tony Stark? Dr. Doom? The Inhumans? Someone somewhere must have something to try that you haven't tried to resture Sue."

Reed looked up, hazel eyes bloodshot and puffy from tears. "It isn't just that I have failed her that way, Scott. I have failed her as a husband should never fail a wife. I broke our vows. In sickness and in health, for better, for worse. If you could call this sickness, Dr. Richards stood by his patient. In a time that could be nothing other than the worst for Susan, her husband Reed was not beside her. She is better off with Namor, who loves her no less now for her appearance than any other, than with me, who is so afraid of losing his intellect that I allowed myself to shut my emotions away in the process of making my mind escape proof."

"Time may change things," Hank said, clapping Reed on the shoulder. "But for now, you will stay with us. And what happens, happens."

*****

THREE MONTHS LATER:

"Hi, Billie!"

"Hiya, Franklin!" the pretty mail carrier greeted the small boy by crouching and bracing for his enthuiastic tackle-hug. "Where's your mommy?"

"She's inna kitchen," Franklin replied brightly, then turned toward the kitchen and bellowed, "MOOOOOOO-OOOOOOMMMMM! MAAAAIIIIIILLLL!"

Susan Richards came out of the kitchen, wings fluttering and buzzing slightly behind her. "Hi, Billie," she said softly. "Something for me?"

Billie's smile lasted until little Franklin's attention span drove him out of the kitchen and back to find his Uncle Johnny. Then it was gone. "Registered letter."

Susan took the letter and the proffered pen, signing, and slicing it open with a clawed finger.

She squeezed closed her dark, soulful eyes, and bowed her head. "He is granting me a divorce," she whispered. "He won't try to cure me anymore, and he only comes to see Franklin if I am not here."

She pressed her hands to her face and began to cry, unmindful of Billie's observation. The mail-carrier, for her part, left in silence so Susan could grieve the death of her marriage in private.

Falling from her nerveless fingers, along with the paperwork granting the divorce...

...were documents granting sole custody of Franklin...

...documents legally changing ownership of Pier 4 solely to Susan Storm-Richards (soon to be Susan Storm)...

...and changing the legal name of their organization to Fantastic Three until such time as Namor, or someone else of Susan's choosing could take the fourth spot.

~Not only has he killed our marriage,~ Sue thought miserably through her tears, ~He's killed the Fantastic Four.~

--fin

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