Equals

[42ɴᴅ ꜱᴛʀᴇᴇᴛ, ᴍᴀᴅɪꜱᴏɴ ᴀᴠᴇɴᴜᴇ, ɴʏ]
Reed sat on the couch, book in hand, though his eyes weren’t moving across the pages. He was trying, really trying, to relax. That was the whole point of this so-called "day off." But his mind kept circling back to unfinished projects, calculations left incomplete, and experiments that needed monitoring.

A quiet whirring sound caught his attention. HERBIE hovered into view, his round optic blinking as he scanned Reed. “Sir, you appear tense. Would you like assistance?”

Reed sighed, adjusting his glasses. “HERBIE, I’m fine.”

HERBIE beeped. “Sensors indicate a 67.3% probability of you not being fine.” Reed arched a brow. “And the remaining 32.7%?”
HERBIE’s optic dimmed slightly. “A statistical margin accounting for your habitual refusal to acknowledge emotional distress.”

Reed blinked. Sue, who had been flipping through a magazine nearby, snorted softly.

HERBIE floated closer, his small mechanical arms extending. “Would a hug help?”
Reed stared at the little robot. “…What?”

HERBIE bobbed slightly in the air. “I have observed that humans respond positively to hugs in times of stress. I have calculated the ideal duration and pressure for maximum comfort. Would you like a demonstration?” Reed glanced at Sue, who was now grinning behind her magazine. With an exasperated sigh, he muttered, “Fine.” Without hesitation, HERBIE wrapped his tiny arms around Reed’s arm in what could only be described as the most awkward yet oddly endearing embrace.

Reed sat there, stiff for a moment. Then, to his own surprise, he found himself relaxing. HERBIE’s little arms, though metallic, applied a gentle, reassuring pressure. The steady hum of his internal servos was oddly soothing. The robot always had a certain whirring sound to it that Reed had grown oddly fond of over the years of his existence. 

Reed sighed, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “…You’re ridiculous.” He refused to admit that this was adorable. 

HERBIE beeped proudly. “You appear 2.8% more relaxed. Mission success.”

Sue, still pretending to read, chuckled. “Looks like HERBIE’s onto something.” Reed didn’t answer. He simply kept holding onto HERBIE. The little robot, perhaps recognizing this as a good sign, didn’t pull away either. He simply settled against Reed’s chest, his optic blinking softly. It felt like the little robot was purring, and he was oddly warm.

Minutes passed.

Sue flipped another page in her magazine, not actually reading it anymore. Reed remained on the couch, one arm loosely curled around HERBIE, his fingers absentmindedly tapping against the robot’s side in a steady, rhythmic motion. His breathing had evened out, the tension in his shoulders easing just a fraction. Sue finally glanced up again, then had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Reed even had his arm extended to loop around his companion like a toddler with a plushie. 

Reed Richards, Mr. No-Time-for-Distractions, was sitting there, cradling HERBIE like a slightly oversized baby. 

“Oh my God,” she whispered, eyes sparkling with amusement. Reed, eyes half-lidded with something dangerously close to contentment, blinked at her. “…What?” Sue grinned. “Nothing. This is just—adorable. Don’t mind me.”

Reed immediately straightened, setting HERBIE back in the couch with a hasty little shove.

“I was merely—” He cleared his throat. “—assessing the structural integrity of his chassis.”
HERBIE’s optic flickered. Disappointment maybe?  “Sir, that is not accurate.”

Sue lost it.

As she laughed, Reed exhaled through his nose and pinched the bridge of it. HERBIE hovered innocently, almost concerned looking, Poor thing. “…Would you like another hug, sir?”
Reed sighed. “Maybe later.”

Sue grinned. “I’m holding you to that.”

˚⋆🔬🔭➃🧪🥽⋆˚

[33ʀᴅ ꜰʟᴏᴏʀ]
Reed knew he wasn’t supposed to be here.
The lab was quiet, save for the soft hum of machinery and the rhythmic beeping of monitors, sounds that usually soothed him. But tonight, they only reminded him of everything left unfinished. He told himself he’d only be here for a moment. A quick check. Five minutes, no more. But now he was sitting at his workstation, hands poised over the keyboard, staring at calculations that refused to make sense.

The numbers blurred. His breathing hitched.

There was too much, too much data, too many equations left unresolved. He was falling behind. His thoughts raced, tripping over themselves in their urgency.
Control. You need to regain control.

His fingers twitched, itching to fix something. But the more he tried to focus, the worse it got. His heart pounded, each beat a hammer against his ribs. His hands trembled over the keyboard, then curled into fists. The lab felt smaller, the walls closer, the monitors too bright.

His pulse roared in his ears. The cursor blinked on the screen, waiting. His breath caught in his throat.

And then—
Something snapped.
His lungs seized. The air around him thickened, pressing against his chest like a vice. He gasped, but it wasn’t enough. His hands shot up to clutch at his collarbone, fingers digging into fabric, into skin.
Can’t breathe—

His vision tunneled. His head spun. The lab swayed beneath him, monitors stretching into distorted streaks of light. He staggered back, his knee hitting the edge of a table. A sharp jolt of pain registered somewhere in the chaos, but it didn’t ground him, it only made everything feel more unreal. His body wasn’t listening. His lungs refused to expand properly. He felt like he was loosing his shape of humanity. Did arms bend that way? Why was his skin burning.

Breathe. Breathe.

His back hit the wall. He slid down, knees pulling tight to his chest, arms locked around them like a shield. He squeezed his eyes shut.

This isn’t real. It’s just—

But it was real. His heart was racing too fast, his limbs too rigid, his breaths too shallow. His own mind had turned against him, trapping him in a cycle of spiraling panic with no exit. The lab remained silent, indifferent to his unraveling.

No one was coming.

Minutes passed—five? Ten? Thirty?—before his body finally began to slow down.

The racing thoughts dulled. His heart, though still hammering, no longer felt like it was trying to escape his ribcage. His lungs, though sore, finally allowed full breaths again. His head lolled back against the wall. His entire body ached from tension. Still, he didn’t move. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there. Knees to his chest, eyes unfocused, staring at nothing. Darkness overtook him completely.

Eventually, Reed forced himself to stand. He wavered, gripping the edge of a desk for balance. The monitors still blinked. The calculations still needed work. But right now…

Right now, he had nothing left to give.

Without another glance at the screens, he turned and left the lab.

˚⋆🔬🔭➃🧪🥽⋆˚

[42ɴᴅ ꜱᴛʀᴇᴇᴛ, ᴍᴀᴅɪꜱᴏɴ ᴀᴠᴇɴᴜᴇ, ɴʏ]
The sound of utensils scraping against plates grated against Reed’s nerves. Every clink, every murmur of conversation felt louder than it should have been, like the world around him was just a little off-kilter. He kept his hands still, resisting the urge to fidget, to stretch, to leave. His fork hovered over his plate, but the food blurred together, mashed potatoes, vegetables, something he should be eating but couldn’t bring himself to focus on.

His mind was elsewhere.

Calculations flickered behind his eyes. Unfinished equations, unresolved variables, models that still needed testing. Even after stepping away, they clung to him, an invisible weight pressing against his skull. He had forced himself out of the lab, out of his own head, and yet—

His jaw tightened. He was still there. Laughter broke through his thoughts, Johnny’s voice cutting sharp across the table. Reed barely registered the joke. He should be listening, should be present, should be—

His fingers twitched, frustration curling tight in his chest. It wasn’t just the work. It was the exhaustion dragging at him, the dull ache in his temples, the gnawing sense that he wasn’t doing enough.

He picked up his fork, turned it in his fingers. Set it down again.

He hadn’t meant to be this tense. But his body remained rigid, his breath just a little too controlled, like letting go even slightly would unravel something he wasn’t ready to face. He felt a hand brush against his under the table. Soft, gentle, steady. Sue.

Reed exhaled slowly. He didn’t look at her, but he didn’t pull away either. The conversation carried on around him, warmth and familiarity he wasn’t quite able to reach. But Sue’s touch remained, an anchor.

Ben’s low rumble, Johnny’s easy laughter, Sue’s measured voice keeping things balanced. He should be listening, but his thoughts had already started to drift.

He wasn’t here. Not really.
His mind twisted itself back to him.

Victor.

Even now, even after everything, Doom’s presence lingered in the corners of Reed’s thoughts, like a wound that had never fully healed. He could almost hear the voice, smooth and measured, laced with sharp condescension. Could almost see that piercing gaze, always watching, always waiting for the moment Reed would slip. Doom would never allow himself to be distracted like this. He would not sit at a dinner table, restless and unfocused. He would not waste time on trivialities.

Reed’s grip tightened around his fork.

How many steps ahead was Doom right now? What was he building? What was he calculating? Had he already found the flaw in Reed’s latest work before Reed himself had?

A sharp inhale. His own.

He forced his jaw to unclench.

He ate dinner that evening.

They assumed he had a good day off.

˚⋆🔬🔭➃🧪🥽⋆˚

[ᴊᴜꜱᴛ ʙᴇ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏꜱ ᴀʀᴇ -- ʙʀɪʟʟɪᴀɴᴛ.]
The mirror was unremarkable. Just glass and silver, a simple thing. Yet Reed found himself staring, unable to look away.
The man in the reflection was familiar but wrong.

His face. It was long, drawn, eyes shadowed with exhaustion and looked older than he remembered. The lines at the corners of his mouth, the faintest hints of silver in his hair where those iconic lines didnt reach, the tension locked in his jaw… Had those always been there? What did he look like?
His hand lifted, fingers ghosting over his own skin, as if confirming that yes, this was his face. His body.

It felt foreign.

He had reshaped it so many times. Stretched, compressed, bent, twisted—turned himself into whatever the situation demanded, molded himself into what others needed him to be. It had always been so easy. Why, now, did it feel so impossible to settle into this shape?


What do they see when they look at you?

Did Sue still see the man she married, or just someone fraying at the edges? Did Johnny and Ben see the brilliant scientist they once followed, or just the shell of him? Did Doom still see a rival? Or had even he realized Reed Richards was no longer the man he used to be?

His stomach churned.

A flicker of memory.

The lab, suffocating. The weight of his own failures pressing against his ribs. The panic, the helplessness, the realization that no amount of intelligence, no calculation, no formula could fix this. His throat felt tight. He should step away. Should stop thinking. Should do anything other than stand here and pick himself apart like a broken equation.

But he couldn’t move. The man in the mirror just stared back, waiting for an answer Reed didn’t have.
Victor had always loomed at the edge of his mind, a shadow he couldn’t shake. Once, he had feared Reed’s mind. Respected it. Matched himself against it. But now? Now, Doom would see the cracks. He would see the exhaustion Reed tried to hide, the hesitation creeping into his hands, the way his thoughts no longer moved with the same clarity, the same sharpness. Doom would recognize what Reed had been trying to ignore—

That he was slipping.
That he was less.
A wave of nausea rolled through him.

The shape in the mirror blurred, distorted. For a moment, he felt like he was stretching involuntarily, his body twisting without permission, becoming something shapeless, formless—something he couldn’t control. He forced himself to blink. To breathe. The man in the mirror was still there, still waiting for an answer Reed couldn’t give. Was he still the same man the Fantastic Four had followed into the unknown? Was he still the scientist who built bridges between worlds, who solved impossible problems? Or had he become something else entirely, something unrecognizable, even to himself?

His reflection offered no reassurance.

Only silence.

"You always thought yourself better than me."
"And yet, here you are. Helpless."
”Doom does not tell you the answer. You should solve this yourself. Mr Fantastic.”

Glass shattered under his knuckles, sharp and sudden, a burst of fractured light scattering across the sink. Pain flared through his hand, quick and bright, but he barely felt it. He barely registered the thin lines of red beading across his skin.

The pieces of the mirror lay broken at his feet.
He stared down at them, chest rising and falling, his mind still ringing with the echoes of his own thoughts.

The man in the mirror was gone.

And Reed wasn’t sure if that was a victory or a loss.