Author: Dark-Angels-Tears

Title: Darkfire

Rating: T for Violence, Language, Graphic content... All that good stuff.

Genre: Angst/Action/Adventure. In that order.

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it isn't ours. If you don't, total legal-glomp.

Summary: AU. To go back in time and change the past, in order to save the future. This is the mission of one Johnny Storm. However, his family doesn't understand this new, ruthless, darker Johnny. None have them have ever seen this side before... except Sue.

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Jackie: Amazed as I am that there is another update before the apocalypse, this idea has been flitting around for too long.

Sarah: I know. Stupid dreams, stupid inspiration. Good story, freaky dream.

Jackie: Don't ask. So anyways, welcome to the start of an incredibly angsty and probably better reflective of our current writing style... fic.

Sarah: Wow. Dramatic.

Jackie: You, shut up. Readers, enjoy.

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Chapter One

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I am a world before I am a man,
I was a creature before I could stand.
I will remember before I forget;
BEFORE I FORGET THAT!!

-Slipknot, Before I Forget

It was just the way he remembered it.

A man dressed in a ragged black turtleneck, loose-fitting dark pants that seemed to absorb rather than reflect light, looked about the hollowed out shell with despair in his vacant cerulean eyes.

Yes, just the way he remembered it. A mere husk of what it had once been.

Johnny took a shallow breath, moving slowly through the rubble and debris of what once had been the Baxter Building. The room was coated with years of accumulated dust, hanging in the air, choking him. Light streamed in through the gaping holes in the roof, which Johnny was amazed was still standing. As he gingerly stepped over and past jagged hunks of metal, masses of plastic warped by flame, charred pieces of wood and broken glass, he slowly moved to the far end of the room.

It was generally the least damaged part of the building, owing to its reinforced walls and strengthened surfaces, but the roof had mostly collapsed around it. Johnny had to move the rubble out of the way with agonizing slowness in order to get to the door behind it. Grunting with effort, he pushed a large chunk of cracked concrete out of the way and cleared off the lengths of broken wiring, only to discover one last obstacle in his way. A fallen girder had crashed to the ground, but one end of it refused to be parted with the roof. The result was a very large, very heavy steel beam leaning across the doorway and making passing through it impossible.

He let out a groan; chest already heaving and pain lancing down his side from the exertion. Nonetheless, he moved down to the end of the girder and set his feet on both sides, rough hands reaching down and grabbing both sides. He sucked in a deep breath and pulled with all his might.

It did not move.

Johnny blinked. Grabbing it more firmly, he set his shoulders and lifted, muscles straining, sweat running down his face, letting out a strained noise.

The girder budged maybe an inch.

Heart pounding in his chest, face set in a frown; Johnny gripped the cold steel, gritted blood-stained teeth and heaved with every ounce of his strength. Sweat poured down his skin, his muscles screamed at him, and he let out an agonized bellow from the pain. But slowly, slowly the beam was moving.

The man hauled it backwards, inch by shrieking inch, and finally with a crash that shook him to his very core, the girder fell to the ground.

Johnny collapsed backwards, heart racing a mile a minute, chest rising and falling abnormally. His eyes slid closed, but after a moment passed he shifted, rolled over, spat out a mouthful of blood and pushed himself to his feet.

Staggering slightly, the man made his way up to the door and wedged it open. He stepped into the musty room with one arm wrapped around his midsection, snapping the fingers of his other hand. With that, a small black fireball ignited in midair and cast ghostly gray light into corners of the room.

It was Reed's old lab.

Of course, after the man's death and shortly before the bombing of New York, it had been utterly ransacked. Every good or halfway decent invention had been stolen; everything else had been completely destroyed.

And yet, Johnny was still able to give a flicker of a smile as he walked through the center of the disaster zone. He remembered better days; the long repressed memories jumping to light eagerly at the chance. Over there was where Reed had once nearly worked himself to death building the machine that had briefly turned Ben back to normal. Over there was where Sue had had her invisibility tested and discovered her emotions were the trigger to her powers. Over there was where Ben had once sat, worried and confused, explaining to his concerned friends that he used to smoke.

In that corner, Frankie and Valeria used to sit in fervent whispers, plotting ways to pull their father away from his inventions.

In that doorway, Johnny used to stand and watch it all.

He swallowed heavily and brushed away the memories, moving to the opposite side of the room where a part of the wall stood, shadowed by an overhanging catwalk, completely innocent except to those who knew its secret.

Johnny extinguished the flame and by memory punched the twelve digit entry code into what appeared to be the panel of a simple security system. But suddenly, the panel slid back to reveal a hand-sized slot. Johnny pressed his hand to this and a laser ran over it twice, then chirped brightly. This slot also slid away, and a robotic arm held out a small machine which raised itself to eye level.

Johnny stared unblinking into this scanner, which also beeped before retreating into the wall. Finally, a small microphone slid out into the open. Johnny cleared his throat and said in the steadiest voice he could manage, "Johnny Storm."

The microphone fell back with a happy 'bree-deep!" And suddenly, the entire section of wall slid back to reveal a completely different room.

This... this was Reed's private lab.

In here he had held his most dangerous, most experimental, and most important projects.

Then again, he had also used it to house his pet projects - fun things he toyed with in his spare time or when he was stumped for inspiration on another project.

Projects like these often dealt with abstract and undefinable subjects, like other dimensions, magic, universal forces, and time.

And it was the time project that Johnny was most interested in.

He turned on the lights, grateful that the man had indeed set up a separate power source for his secret room, and headed to the very hidden back.

It was here that he saw Cree, and of course the CRD.

--

More than eight years ago Reed had started tinkering with the concepts of a time machine. Not a traveling back and forth magic box, but an honest to goodness go-back-and-change-things time machine.

The Chrono Reversion Device (CRD) had started just as a vague concept, but after significant research he discovered an actual way to reverse time. However, after some thought he had realized that just in case anything terrible were to happen, the CRD would actually need to be used. So Reed invented a separate, user-friendly program that would guide one who was not technologically literate through the process, as well as give them any assistance needed in the 'new world.'

He put his own, Sue's, Ben's, and Johnny's DNA into the system and programmed the machine to self-destruct with the force of a fifteen megaton bomb if anyone the program did not approve tried to use it or the CRD, permanently destroying the anyone and anything trying to hijack the time traveling technology.

In order for everything to fit, however, he brought the rest of his team into his private lab and introduced them to Cree.

CREE. The Chrono Reversion Enhancement Element.

--

Johnny walked up to the machines and gently touched a finger to the freezing cold sapphire diamond-shaped apparent gemstone. But as his skin came into contact with the stone, it began to glow from within. The cool, emotionless voice of his sister came floating towards him, and he nearly choked up at hearing what he had not for years.

"Hello, Johnny Storm."

Forcing down a sob, he replied shakily, "Hello, Cree."

"I'm sorry, Johnny. To proceed, a DNA match is required." Sue's voice came again, causing his shoulders to shake with the emotion.

Slowly the arm wrapped around his middle reached out, drifting above Cree's surface before dripping his tainted black life blood onto the gem.

Cree flashed a brilliant blue, and suddenly his sister was standing before him.

Well, not quite his sister. A hologram of a dark-haired, gray-eyed Sue in blue pants and a comfortable white shirt smiled at him and spoke. "DNA match confirmed. Hey, Johnny! How are things?"

The vision of his long deceased sibling was too much. Seeing her smile at him, so simply, so sweetly, as if the past thirteen years had not happened, as if he… he'd never… Johnny fell to his knees, sobbing her name over and over. "Oh, Susie-" He attempted, before again dissolving into tears.

Cree's artificial intelligence detected the Storm's distress and the hologram also moved to her knees, saying in a comforting voice, "Hush, Johnny. Calm down. Whatever's wrong, we can fix it."

This seemed to comfort the man and his harsh cries began to weaken. Finally he wiped at his face and cleared his throat, in control again.

The hologram smiled and relaxed, then said in a lighter voice, "There, now. What brought you to me?"

Staring blankly into space, Johnny replied in a hollow, broken voice, "Cree, everyone's gone. He won. We lost. The world is his now, and I'm the only free one left." As if in horror, he repeated, "I am the only free man left on Earth."

Cree blanched, but silently urged him to continue.

"I failed, Cree... and the entire world is paying for it. There isn't a man, woman, or child who isn't under his control. He's enslaved all of humanity, save me, and slaughtered everyone who might think of helping me. I didn't have anything - anywhere to go, until I thought of you." Johnny said miserably, staring at the ground.

Cree gave him a comforting smile. "That's all over now. So, what is your plan of action?" The hologram asked, watching as he stood up and walked over to the table on which her components were held.

"I'm going to go back in time and change things so that this nightmare never happens again. This is my only option; the only option I can allow myself to take." Johnny gently picked up the glowing sapphire that was Cree's matrix and inset it into the silver collar-like object that was the Portable Control Device, let the restraints snap into place, and placed it around his neck. In a few moments, the sensors inside detected a user and sent out tiny microtubules that would bond the PCD to Johnny's skin and link into his spine, allowing him to control the entire device with a thought.

"I can't kill myself now, knowing that the rest of humanity is Doomed. I have to change things, to make the past right so the future isn't this wrong." He said finally, as Cree's system aligned itself so only he saw her.

He walked over to the control panel for the CRD and according to her instruction, set the date, time, coordinates, and everything to be the day after he himself had been infected –his altered genome and Cree's DNA recognition processors would not allow for any further back. Checking and double checking everything repeatedly, Johnny took a deep breath and cried, "Let's do it!"

That said, he entered the final code and with a great lurch, his surroundings were obscured by a series of blinding flashes of light.

Johnny was spiraling, spiral backwards through time. He felt a great weight pressing down on his shoulders that momentarily felt as though it were going to crush him, but finally relaxed. However, the next thing he knew, the pressure was inside his body. He could feel things changing, shifting, falling back.

Johnny felt healed fractures re-break and move back into their proper positions, newer scars torn open and replaced with new - rather, old – tissue, wounds healing, damage being repaired, poison receding. But at the same time, his oldest scars were tearing open afresh and only healing halfway. There was a burning sensation on his right inner elbow that had nothing to do with flame.

It would have been an extremely painful process, had it not taken place in the span of several milliseconds.

All of a sudden, he was standing in his old room. It smelled fresh and clean, without a hint of dust or ash. The rubble was gone, ruins (hopefully) never to be seen again. The man, now physically young again, allowed his muscles to fully relax for the first time in years. Johnny would have jumped or shouted in excitement, but he was all of a sudden completely drained.

Exhausted, he took a few tottering steps forwards and collapsed on the bed.

His bed. In a room in a building that was completely whole. This was his last conscious though before he fell deep into the grasp of the black.

Johnny awoke several hours later the way he always did. His eyes snapped open and stared directly forwards. He took a moment to gauge his surroundings and discovered that he was in a large bedroom with a great window that overlooked the New York skyline. It took him a moment to realize that this was the undamaged New York, and with that, everything came rushing back.

The plan. The journey. The collapse.

He was back.

Something akin to a smile flitted about his lips for a moment, but Johnny had not truly smiled for years. He allowed himself the indulgence of a self-satisfied nod, then, nearly trembling with anticipation, walked over to the door and pulled it open.

It was just the way he remembered it. The comfortable hallways, hardwood floors, plain wallpaper, everything. It was all there, with nothing out of place.

But what about the occupants? Johnny looked up and down the way, but he could see no one. Fearing the worst, he padded silently down the hall in his bare feet (his outer clothing, despite their shabby appearances, had been recently acquired and with the reversion had been lost to time) and into the main room.

And there she was.

Talking to another in a low voice, she looked every bit as perfect as she had all those years ago. It was as if he had stepped into a photo album of his beloved sister in her former glory. Sensing his presence, Sue Richards turned and gave him a radiant smile.

"Hey, Johnny! It's about time you got up!"

Johnny's mouth opened and his throat worked, but he could make no sound.

Next to her, Ben Grimm lifted his great orange head and raised an eyebrow teasingly. "What kept you up so late, Matchstick - Karaoke Night again?"

Again, he tried to say something, but there were no words.

An extremely rare occasion, Reed Richards stepped into the room from his lab. He looked as though he were about to address Sue, but turned to the room's other occupants first. "Morning Ben, Johnny. Sleep well?"

This was the last straw. He nodded his head wordlessly in response, then turned and left the room, feet leading him to the bathroom where he locked the door behind himself. Johnny slid down to the floor, pressed his back against the side of the tub and covered his face in his hands, weeping silent tears of joy.

He had done it.

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Sarah: The dreaded bold italics! Yes, this is the end of the first chapter.

Jackie: So what do y'all think of it so far? Good? Bad? Confusing? Reviews are the lifeblood of any writer!

Sarah: Dramatic once again.

Jackie: Don't make me put you in the closet again!

Sarah: -whimpers-

Jackie: As I was saying, please review. Next chapter should be up fairly soon-

Sarah: Because this fic is all I really work on at school! Angst equals heart!