_reedrichards (_reedrichards) wrote in themarvelverse, @ 2012-05-22 19:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | benjamin grimm, namor, reed richards, susan storm |
The Odyssey
Who: Reed Richards, Open to the Fantastic Four
What: Reed returns from far away to find his house no longer in order.
Where: The Baxter Building, NY, NY
Rating: PG-13
Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
-Homer, The Odyessy
The dilapidated Skrull ship that Reed had escaped with was nearly the end of her voyage. There wasn't much else that Reed could have done to keep the ship in the sky, let alone intact upon reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. But he would be damned before he gave up now. There was just the matter of surviving the reentry and landing-- and then he would be home.
Not just home but home, back on Earth, in the good old U.S.A., New York, New York, the Baxter Building. He would be able to see Johnny and Ben and Susan again.
Susan. Though he knew it was perhaps a little unfair to Johnny and Ben, Reed had missed Susan most of all. In his weakest, darkest hours on the Skrull ship, Reed's mind had drifted to Susan and it was only through the memory of the times they spent together that he was able to keep his sanity. It was only because of the promise he had made, to spend their entire futures, the rest of their lives together that Reed had managed to keep breath in his body. He knew that, biologically, there was nothing wrong with him that would have resulted in his death. He knew that his heart was strong enough to keep beating, lungs inflated and deflating, nervous system operating-- the Skrulls had needed his brain in working order, of course. But he had never before imagined that there was something more that kept a body living and thriving-- something more than flowing blood and electrical impulses leaping from synapse to synapse.
With the heat from reentry dispersing, Reed piloted the ship down to New York... to the Baxter Building, home of the Fantastic Four. His home. His home with Sue and Johnny and Ben... And Reed wasn't sure he had ever seen a more beautiful sight.
The landing didn't go quite as smoothly as the reentry, and the entire ship skipped along the roof of the Baxter Building like a stone across water. Both the ship and its pilot nearly careened straight off of the roof again, but --it seemed by sheer force of will-- Reed managed to right the blasted thing.
Before it had even fully stopped moving, he was opening the hatch and throwing himself out of the ship; limp, noodley, his stretched out limbs puddling from a combination of lack of use and sheer exhaustion- physical, mental and emotional.
"Ben! BEN! Johnny! Susan!" He called, trying to get to his feet but failing as his knees buckled and melted under him, dropping him to the roof again. Exhausted beyond the point of of comprehension, Reed managed to roll onto his back and stared up at the sky. For the first time in nearly a year, he smiled and nearly began to laugh.
He'd never noticed how blue the sky was.