Chapter Text
He was bleeding.
Which – in retrospect, shouldn’t have been surprising. Expected even, given the events of the day.
(or days really….weeks, months …)
It hurt.
Johnny couldn’t even pinpoint where the pain was exactly, just – well, everywhere. The dull thud at the base of his skull was drowned out by a sharp stabbing sensation in his chest that made breathing a challenge at best. His legs felt like liquid and he was pretty sure there was some sort of sprained appendage that made walking more difficult than it needed to be. It wasn’t fair, really – they’d won, right? The world was saved and Franklin was safe and his sister was alive and -
There was blood in his teeth.
He spends a good ten minutes or so just staring at himself in the mirror, then tries wiping it off with the back of his hand. Except it just spreads the stuff around further and he has to dig around for water bottle to rinse his mouth out. This would be the type of thing his sister would have noticed, if not for –
Well.
She and Reed had other things on their mind right now.
He’s fine.
It’s been about nine hours since the fight with Galactus, and he’s still bleeding.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep, or even changing out of his clothes. He brushes his fingers against the fabric of his uniform – dirty still, covered in dust and other particles he wouldn’t be able to put a name to. She’d thrown him into a building, Shalla-Bal. She saved his life. She slammed him with her board and his body became friends with the concrete infrastructure below.
There’s blood on his sheets.
He rises to his feet – slowly, this type of thing takes a bit of effort now, and attempts to peel the uniform from his saturated skin. His movements were stiff. Uncoordinated. He grinds his teeth as he forces the fabric over his head, and flings it onto the floor.
Johnny might not be a genius in the same way that his brother-in-law was, but even he could surmise that the dark purple bruises across his ribcage were probably a bad sign for the state of his health. The stabbing sensation was back, or maybe it never really went away. Maybe it had been going on for so long that his brain started to block it out for the sake of his sanity.
Lucky him.
Still – it doesn’t help the fact that it is now becoming increasingly difficult to breathe. Johnny does consider the possibility of a broken rib – several, even. He runs his fingers gently over his mottled skin and even the slight pressure causes the pain to radiate downwards. Also not a great sign.
Fine then. So what now?
He eyes the door to his room, opened just a crack, and thinks about going down to Reed’s lab. His brother-in-law would run one of his funky scanners over him and pinpoint the source of the problem. Maybe give him some pills and a stern talking to about not getting distracted by pretty aliens and then send him off to bed like a disobedient child.
(It sucks being the baby of the group).
Well, not anymore with Franklin crawling around. A new little human to soak up all the parental affection that had been inflicted on him for well over a decade. Johnny winces as he traverses down the stairs, leaning heavily against the railing for support. Speaking of his nephew – maybe he could spare some of his magic healing voodoo for his aching ribcage? It couldn’t possibly be that difficult a task after the whole ‘bringing Sue back to life’ thing, right?
He lets out a cough, and it almost brings him to his knees. He draws his hand away from his mouth and his fingers come back coated in red.
Damn.
Reed’s lab was empty. Dark. Quiet. It probably should have been, since it was like four in the morning. Normal people usually slept at this time. Of course, Reed was never normal, not since the day they met, and it wasn’t uncommon to see him putzing around down here at all hours of the night.
Except for now apparently, when Johnny was actively dying. Still, the old man deserved some sleep after all that had gone down, him and Sue and Franklin, and who was he to spoil that? Going up the staircase took even longer than going down, and Johnny only makes it a few steps into the hallway before the pain forces him to stop. He slides down the wall until his butts hits the ground, and rests his head against the drywall with his eyes squeezed shut to stop the room from spinning.
He once fell out of a tree when he was five, and his medical doctor father had wrapped his ankle with tape and gave him some weird tasting medication until the pain went away and he could walk in a straight line.
This was nothing like that. It was worse. Probably. Johnny opens his eyes, and everything was just a bit too blurry to make out what was in front of him. Using the floor as leverage, he forces himself to his feet and grapples around for a bit in the dark, trying not to bump into anything and exacerbate the pain. He’s breathing hard by the time he makes it back to his room, or as hard as his lungs will allow. It didn’t feel like he was able to draw in enough oxygen, every lungful of air felt half empty. It was not helping with the dizziness.
It takes him a few minutes to find a position on the bed that didn’t hurt – it was one at an angle, practically sitting up. For some asinine reason, lying down seemed to make everything worse. Still, he hopes he has reached the level of tiredness that would allow him to sleep through any ailments. And he was tired, no doubt about that. Exhaustion clung to him, soaking into his bones, refusing the release its grip. But sleep itself was not forthcoming, and it never failed to amaze him how long the night would stretch when one was awake through most of it.
Ten hours now, and he was still bleeding.
He sighs.
Sunlight streams through the window shade, and he angles his head to catch a glimpse. The sight nearly blinds him, and he rubs the spots from his eyes with an enclosed fist.
Everything ached.
It was supposed to go away by now – the pain. That’s what normally happened when he was injured before, he’d just sleep it off and everything would be sunshine and rainbows. Of course, he hasn’t actually slept a wink and it was getting harder and harder for him to put a coherent thought together. Johnny stifles a yawn with the crook of his elbow and works himself up to a sitting position, then standing, using the nightstand as support to prevent his legs from folding under the weight.
There was something wrong with him this time. Actually wrong. He lifts his shirt up with trembling fingers, and the bruising seems even more vivid now against his rapidly paling skin. That wasn’t good. He rolls his shirt back down, taking in a few slow breaths. The pain wasn’t sharp anymore on the inhale. Just – dull. Ever prevalent.
Inhale.
Hold.
Exhale.
Hold.
Hold -
Nope.
He sinks back down to the floor. The fibers of the carpet rub against his skin, but he doesn’t have the energy to scratch the itch away. The ceiling was mocking him, he thinks, all popcorn-y and pristine. Everything was mocking him. It was a joke, a cosmic goddamn joke - his sister died yesterday and he watched it happen and watched her push that thing, that god - Galactus, into the void and he couldn’t even stand up for more than two seconds without keeling over.
Useless. You’re useless.
He bites his bottom lip with enough force to draw blood, and grabs for the edge of the vanity. It takes a few attempts, but he manages to haul himself up again, elbows resting against the polished wood, face inches away from the mirror.
And -
God, he looks terrible.
Maybe it was the result of not sleeping, or the blood loss, or his sister’s lifeless face embedded into his skull. Maybe he’s not handling any of this as well as he should be. And he should be better at this. Almost five years now, they’ve been doing this superhero thing. He’s not a child anymore – a boy. He rakes his fingers through his hair, trying to flatten it a bit. His ribs protest the movement, and another measured breath turns into a cough. A burning pain blossoms in his chest, and a few droplets of blood soak into the carpet below him.
Now was probably a good time to tell Reed.
There seemed to be a disconnect between his feet and his brain, every step he took felt like slogging through concrete. Someone tied weights to his socks and it was causing him to sink into the floor. There was noise coming from the kitchen – Johnny could make out something that sounded like talking, the clattering of dishes, just loud enough to puncture a hole through the persistent buzzing around his ears.
Breakfast time, then. Maybe if he tried eating it would somehow fix everything.
“You’re up early,” Sue remarks. She has a little spoon in her hand, waving it around Franklin’s face to try and make the flavored goop more enticing. The baby giggles at the airplane noises, but the smile sours once said goop actually makes contact with his tongue. He spits it out onto the tray table and starts spreading stuff around with his hands.
Sue sighs at this, reaching for a napkin. “So much for this brand.”
“Where’s Reed?” Johnny asks. He hates how thready his voice sounds. Sue turns to look at him, brows furrowing once she gets a good look at his face. “In his lab,” she says. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t really know what the word ‘okay’ meant anymore. It was the word people used when they wanted other people to leave them alone. “Sure,” he responds, digging through the cabinets to find his half-eaten box of cereal.
“Johnny - ” she starts, but is interrupted by the clatter of a baby food can that Franklin knocked onto the floor. He squeals, apparently pleased with himself.
“Brilliant,” she mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose. She grabs for more napkins and starts wiping the orange-ish gunk off of the kitchen floor. The entire area smelled sickly sweet - apples, maybe? Apricot? Johnny bites a lip and tries to stifle the nausea curdling in his stomach. He dumps some cereal into a bowl, but it tasted like cardboard and stuck to the back of his throat.
It turns out that breakfast does not, in fact, fix everything.
He closes his eyes - just briefly, trying to orient himself. He’d been thrown into a wall, some office building of some sort. Multiple walls, actually. Multiple, very hard walls. How did he not notice the ringing sound before? Or the way the world moved just a bit too slow, like his brain was struggling to catch up with his eyes. Adrenaline, probably. The whole ‘saving the world’ thing served as a pretty decent distraction.
“Hey.” There was a blurry mesh of colors in front of him that was probably his sister. She was touching him. Familiar fingers were pushing the hair away from his eyes. He blinks - once, then once more, and the clarity sets in. She had that look on her face, the ‘mom’ look. It was one that he was far too familiar with.
“Where does it hurt?” she asks.
Her fingers were warm against his skin. Real. Warm. Alive. He feels an acute loss when she draws them away.
“I don’t know,” he says. It wasn’t a lie, really. The hurt was everywhere. He was just a walking, talking mass of not feeling very well, and his brain was too slow at this point to differentiate the different sources of discomfort.
Sue doesn’t answer immediately, but there was something in her eyes that resembled concern, or fear maybe, and she lifts his chin up with her hand, and frowns. “Your teeth are red,” she says.
“Bit my tongue.”
“Johnny.”
“Kool-Aid?”
“Johnny,” she says again, firmer now. The mom-voice. He wonders if their mother talked like that too, if that’s where she got it from. “C’mon,” she says, tugging gently at his elbow. “We’re going to see Reed.”
I tried that already, he wants to say, but he can’t force the words from his throat. She goes to grab Franklin from his high chair, and Johnny makes a valiant effort in trying to stand upright.
(Mistake.)
The entire world titled - just slightly, but enough to completely disrupt his equilibrium. The spots in his vision returned, bright and dark and big and small and blurry and - well, he couldn’t see all too well. Or hear. Sue was talking to him, he realized. Or at least trying to. Her mouth was moving, but the only thing he could hear was static. Buzzing. Loud, shrill -
He takes a step forward, some last ditch effort to stabilize himself.
(Mistake, Mistake…)
The dark spots in his vision expand, all encompassing. His knees buckle under the strain of supporting his own weight, and his last fleeting thought was relief that his sister managed to produce a force field beneath him before he hit the floor.