He used to be Ben Grimm.
He used to be human.
He used to be a man.
Now … now he's none of those things. He's not even sure he can still refer to himself as a he. He has no gender now … he's just a walking orange rock pile. He's just a thing ….
His eyes are the only thing that can lay claim to any humanity when he looks in a mirror. Those blue eyes that had been his pride and joy. He was never good-looking, never handsome (not like Reed) but more than one girl had told him he had the kind of eyes they could get lost in …
Now he can't remember the last time a woman was willing to look him in the face. (Though to be fair there aren't many men who'll do so either.) They flinch when he talks to them- they look away. He can almost smell the fear off them.
He doesn't blame them.
He feels almost nothing now. He can walk through the desert or the arctic with the same indifference to heat as he shows to cold. Gunfire- even artillery shells- bounce off his body without so much as a scratch. He's not sure anything can kill him now.
He's afraid nothing can kill him. That he will go on this way forever … that age will have no affect on him than man's weapons and that he will be shuffling across this planet long after everyone and everything else has died.
He's done what they asked him to do. He's fought the enemies of his country. He's taken lives- over 43 of them now- all in the name of a promise that someday - somehow- someone finds a way to bring back Ben Grimm.
He knows it's a lie.
He's known from the start they were lying to him. He's no genius- no big brain like Reed- but he's smart enough to know that no human scientist will ever find a way to turn orange rock back into flesh and blood.
What's happened to him is impossible. Fantastic. A dark miracle.
He didn't do what they asked him to do because he expected them to cure him.
He did it because he hoped that somehow- someone- would find a way to kill the monster that he's become.
It didn't work.
All that he's done- all that he's accomplished- is become an even bigger monster.
There's blood on his hands.
So much blood...
He tells himself that the men he's killed- and he can't delude himself that he hasn't killed just because he's never actually attacked a human directly with his bare hands- deserved to die. That they were monsters too.
But he knows that doesn't make what he did right.
He's not Ben Grimm any longer.
Ben Grimm was a lot of things, but he wasn't a killer.
But he is.
He's a killer.
He's a murderous monster with no claim to humanity.
He's not a man.
He's a thing.
Nothing but a Thing …