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If Johnny was being brutally honest he hated how he looked ever since he came back from being in the negative zone, more specifically; he hated how his body looked. In the Negative zone he had been torn apart and put back together so many different times that he lost count. He could still remember the fear as he came too in the operating room.
His stomach disgustingly stitched shut with disgusting worm like stitches that seemed to squirm around in his body. He had spent so many nights laying on the floor gently tracing his hand across them as he thought of his family.
What they might be doing at that moment. He can still remember the horrified look on Ben's face clear as day as Johnny got ready to sacrifice himself. He could almost feel the weight of his hand pressed against the door. They had been so close to touching. So close for Ben to pull him out. So close yet so far.Johnny wouldn’t have let him anyway even if he had wanted too.
Johnny loved his life dont get him wrong, he loved being a superhero, being adored by thousands of people who would all scream his name. Loved the way if he walked into a room everyone would turn to look at him. It was a feeling that he didn’t even know how to describe. Like the whole world was in his hands.
Despite all this though, he didn't have kids like Reed or Sue, he didn't have a girlfriend waiting for him like Ben (At least not one that actually cared about him). He certainly wasn’t putting his life over the kids.
So when that portal had to be closed from the other side?
When he learnt that one of them would have had to be left behind Johnny knew that there had been an obvious choice. He didn’t regret keeping his family safe, not in the absolute slightest. However there was one thing that had been regretted. It was the fact that Ben and the kids had to watch, the door while closing had been doing so slowly.
He caught glimpses of them screaming and crying as he turned around to face the horde charging his way. If he could go back and change one thing it wouldn’t have been that he had been the one to die. That he had zero regrets about. What he would have changed was to make sure that Ben and the kids didn’t have to see it. He knew that Ben saw him as a little brother, he wasn’t stupid.
Even if they weren’t blood related Ben was family in every good sense of the word. Johnny could still hear the screams and pounding against the portal as he tried to get Johnny to turn back. That wasn’t even mentioning the kids. The hollow terrified looks on their faces as ben held them back. Johnny had flashed them a wink but he wasn’t sure that they even saw it.
He had felt like the world, he should have thought up a way of shielding them, making a wall of fire in front of the portal so they couldn’t see how he had been ripped apart. God how that had hurt, hundreds of hands on his body yanking and clawing at him. It had been dizzying and a massive blur. Whether it had only gone on for a few seconds or a few years he had no idea.
Still he would have taken twice as much time being ripped apart if it meant he hadn’t woken up on that operating table, watching as things he couldn't even describe sewed his mangled corpse back together. He had only been awake a second before he had been put back to sleep but still he couldn’t get it out of his mind.
Briefly Johnny wondered how Sue and Reed had reacted to the news, Reed he could imagine. He would be devastated but he would just combat this by throwing himself desperately into a project as some way to distract himself.
Usually this would leave Sue to have to drag him out of his lab by his ear however… Sue was the one he had worried about. For most of their life they had been all each other had, Sue had raised him even when no one had been around to raise her. She spent her life working away so that the people she loved were safe and happy. And as much as he loved her, his sister's fatal flaw was blaming herself for absolutely everything.
Even stuff that she could have absolutely no say in somehow became all her fault in her mind. Realistically Johnny knew it was because of how their dad raised her but still. He had worried about how she reacted to the news, if she was doing okay. If Ben and Reed had been looking after her. Turns out from what he had been filled in about, Sue hadn’t done well. But Reed and Ben had taken care of her. So that's all that matters
Johnny slowly made his way out of the shower, something he had badly missed with his time in the negative zone. He loved showers, they relaxed him and let him think about something other than his death. However they had a downside and a pretty big one at that. He had to take his shirt off for them.
It was silly,
He knew it was silly.
He was Johnny Storm, literally his whole shtick was taking his shirt off to show people his chest but after the hundreds of surgeries he'd had in the negative zone he couldn’t even look at himself anymore without feeling reported shame. There were big scars growing around his body. They were nasty, pink and raised. He didn’t even have any chance of praying they’d go away because of how prominent they were.
Some of the other people in the Negative zone had the same scars, only they had more since they had been there for longer. Their faces were torn and deformed. Their limbs bent at weird angles from badly healed breaks. In all honesty he had gotten off fairly lucky. All his scars were places that he could hide from the public, but he couldn’t hide them from himself. Johnny faced the mirror, his face contorted in disgust as he felt at the scars. At the way they didn’t feel right on his body.
He wanted them off. He wanted free of them and to go back to the way that things had always been before any of this had happened. But deep down he knew it never could
“Oh my god..” a voice whispered from behind him, wide eyed Johnny instantly turned around letting his hand flame on only to see Reed standing there. He was staring with a shellshocked look on his face, his eyes were wide and almost tear filled but Johnny didn’t process that.
He quickly put the fire on his hand out as he blinked at him, he hadn’t even heard Reed come in. Out of everyone Johnny would have assumed he at least would be the most likely to knock before entering a room “Fuck Reed dont you knock?” Johnny asked exasperated
Reed didn’t say anything at first instead he continued to just stare unblinkingly at Johnny. Thats when the younger realised that reeds eyes were locked on the Scars on his chest. He hadn’t shown the others yet. In all honesty he hadn’t known how. He hadn’t wanted to upset them with it. No doubt they each would have blamed themselves.
Slowly Reed stepped forward, not saying anything until he was standing right in front of him. He put his hand out as if to almost touch the raised scars before pulling away. For the first time he actually looked Johnny in the eyes. “What have you done to yourself…why haven’t you shown us these.. I need to check them over, they look bad” Reed's voice trembled as he spoke, clearly shaken.
“No, no it's fine i didnt do this! its just from the surgery” Johnny was regretting not showing them sooner, he really had been trying to find out the best way to tell them, except there really is no good way of saying. ‘Hey guys i died and got stitched back together so now i have these nasty scars so please dont freak out or anything’
“The surgery?” Reed asked clearly, trying to keep his voice calm and to not freak out. However, he wasn’t doing all that well. Johnny could still see the fear behind the guy's eyes.
“Yeah, Yeah” He really wasn’t meaning to come off a dismissive but he did not want to freak Reed out any more than he already way “ after i you know died i woke up to some of Annihilus freaks operating on me” He tried to explain as he gently traced his hands across the one that went horizontally across his stomach. It was big and nasty. The bumpy texture still made bile pile up in his throat but he tried his hardest to ignore it.
“It's okay though it doesn' t hurt’ Johnny tried to assure Reed but he could tell it was too late. The man was already going through every equation in his head.
The mention of ‘hurting’ however seemed to instantly snap the other out of his trance though. Instantly Reeds hands were on his shoulders, the grim was firm but gentle. “Are you sure? There's no pain? Not even a little irritation” The negative zone had who knows how many different kinds of diseases. Hell, for all Reed knew they might not even have gotten around to sterilizing surgical tools yet.
If there was any pain he needed to know
“Nope none at all” Johnny replied with a smile, Reed's hands were still on his shoulders so Johnny met him halfway by gently resting his hands on the man's forearms. His thumb stroking back and forth, god when had Johnny gotten so soft all of a sudden? He didn't know but being stripped away from his family only to come back and find them totally rebranded because the grief was probably a big factor in it
“Christ Johnny.. I'm so sorry” Reed whispered, shaking his head, he took his hand from Johnny's shoulder and put it to his cheek. Reed looked utterly defeated after learning the news. He was clearly trying to look everywhere but the scars.
“Woah! Why are you apologising? It's not like its your fault” He asked genuinely, there had been nothing that Reed could have done. Him and Sue weren’t even in the same building. They didn’t know what had been happening, hell it wasn’t bens fault either and he was in the building. There had just been too many of them and someone had to stay behind. It was no one's fault.
“It is my fault i should have been there or had more safety procedures in place” He whispered to himself scrubbing his hands across his face trying and failing to hide the fact that he was on the verge of tears.
“You couldn’t have predicted this” Johnny reminded him, there had been quite literally no way for Reed to have predicted this.
That didn't make the muscles in the other man's jaw unclench though, instead it made them get even tighter as he covered his eyes with his hand. “I should have Johnny, you’re my little brother and I should have had something in place so you didn't have to sacrifice yourself” Johnny's face softened when Reed said that.
“I'm not mad at you or anything Reed hell i dont blame you in the slightest” He admitted. There really was no one in this situation to blame, it had been no one's fault, it was just a really bad situation which could have only had bad results come out of it. Except Annihiulus, fuck Annihilus for starting all of this shit.
“You don't?" He asked his voice genuinely surprised, like he was expecting all of the blame to be put onto him which honestly was classic Reed.
Johnny just laughed and shook his head with a smile “Not at all”
“Sure this sucks, I'll admit it it sucks really bad but you know what?” He gestured to his scarred torso as he talked, he wasn’t going to sit and pretend that this situation didn’t suck but he also wasn’t going to allow the blame to be put onto Reed when he hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Reed had made mistakes before, a lot of mistakes. But so has Johnny, so has Ben and so has Sue. No matter the mistake, they stuck by each other.
“What?” Reed asked, taking his hands away from his eyes.
The second he did that Johnny softly grabbed them. Holding on tightly as he looked Reed in the eyes “I’d do it all over again, for any of you. I would do it as many times as I needed to so that I knew you guys were safe” Ben and Sue would kill him if they ever heard him say that, but he could tell Reed, because he was the same. He understood.
“I know you would, I know” Reed whispered, he didn’t let go of Johnny's hands in the slightest and instead held on tighter, like he was scared the other would disappear if he let go for even a second “I should have kept you safe, like how I should have kept you safe all those years ago”
“Reed no-” Johnny tried to interrupt but Reed wouldn’t let him
“Johnny, look at me.” Reed said firmly waiting until Johnny made eye contact with him “I want to promise you that nothing like this will ever happen again.” While it was true that Reed and Johnny would both willingly do it again there was always the added factor that there was no way in hell that Reed would allow Johnny to pull this shit again.
None of them could take it, after all the fantastic four were a universal truth. Without one the others fell apart
“No matter the project, no matter how safe I think it is i will put as many safety procedures on my work as i need if it means you never have to pay the price for it again” He knew if given the situation Johnny would do it again, no matter the warning or the pleading if it ever came down to his life or his family's he would pick them every time. That was why Reed was going to make sure this never happened again.
Johnny wasn’t even going to be allowed to even think about the choice let alone make it.
Reed wouldn’t let him
Reed's grip on Johnny's hands tightened before he slowly pulled him forward and into a hug, His arms tightening as hard he could around the younger “You’re a really good kid, we don't tell you enough but you are.” Johnny had been his little brother from the day that Reed had met him. He couldn’t take losing him again. Johnny still had so much more potential he was yet to explore and Reed was not going to let anyone dim his light before it happened
“I am going to do everything in my power to make sure you never have to be hurt again okay?” Reed's voice may have been gentle but there was a fire behind it. It was a promise.
Johnny returned the hug, his fingers tightening into Reed's shirt as he softly said “Okay..”