Sue's Plastic Surrender

I remember the needle going in. That’s the part they don’t tell you about transformation. Not the pain, not the blood, not the strange little pop when metal breaks through skin. They tell you about the result. The after. The person you’ll become.

But the needle. That’s what stays.

The piercer’s name was Jade. She had blue hair and a face full of silver jewelry that caught the light like a chandelier. She leaned over me, and I could smell her perfume, something sharp and floral, like gardenias left too long in the sun.

“You sure about this, honey?” she asked.

I wasn’t. But I said yes anyway.

Reed would have had a theory about this moment. He would have explained it in terms of tensile strength and skin regeneration rates, the way my body’s molecular structure had been fundamentally altered by that accident in space. He would have told me that my skin was more durable than steel, that the needle would probably break before it ever pierced me.

He would have been wrong.

Jade pushed the needle through my navel, and I felt it. A small, perfect point of pain. Real. Mine.

“There,” she said. “First one done.”

I looked down at the silver ring glinting against my stomach. It looked alien. Wrong. Like a star that had fallen and decided to stay.

Reed was in the lab when I got home. He was always in the lab. Sometimes I wondered if he remembered there were other rooms in the Baxter Building, other floors, other people. Other wives.

“You’re back,” he said without looking up from his holographic display. “The molecular stabilizer is showing promising results. I think I’ve isolated the variable that was causing the phase variance in the fourth iteration.”

“That’s great, Reed.”

I stood in the doorway. The light from his display cast blue shadows across his face. He still hadn’t looked at me.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No.”

“Good. I’ll be up in a few hours.”

He said that every night. A few hours. Sometimes he meant it. Sometimes morning came and I found him still hunched over his work, coffee cold, eyes red, the world outside his equations forgotten.

I left him there.

The tattoo artist was named Marcus. He had hands like a butcher and the patience of a saint. I sat in his chair for six hours while he worked on my arm. Flowers. Vines. Something that looked like it was growing.

“You’re tense,” he said.

“I’m always tense.”

“That’s not good for the ink. Relax your shoulder.”

I tried. I really tried. But my body had been a weapon for so long that it had forgotten how to be anything else. Every muscle braced for impact. Every nerve waiting for the signal to fight.

“Tell me about your husband,” Marcus said.

“What about him?”

“The tall one. The stretchy one.”

“He’s smart.”

Marcus laughed. “That’s all you got? He’s smart?”

“He’s very smart.”

“Smart enough to see what you’re doing?”

I didn’t answer. The needle kept moving, tracing patterns into my skin that I hadn’t decided on yet. That was the thing about transformation. You never really knew where it would take you until you were already there.

Ben called me that night. His voice was rough, like always, like rocks grinding together.

“Sue, you okay?”

“I’m fine, Ben.”

“You sure? You sound weird.”

“I’m getting a tattoo.”

Silence. Then: “A what?”

“A tattoo. Flowers. On my arm.”

“Why?”

I thought about it. Why was a good question. Why now, after all these years. Why after the battles and the monsters and the dimensions I couldn’t even name. Why after standing invisible next to a man who could only see what was in front of his face when it was made of numbers.

“I want to look like someone else,” I said.

“You look fine the way you are.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. Not one that made sense. Not one that didn’t sound like a confession.

The hair stylist was named Elena. She had scissors and she knew how to use them. My hair fell in golden waves around my shoulders, and she cut it all off.

“You sure?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s beautiful hair.”

“I know.”

She cut it anyway. It fell to the floor in soft piles, and I watched it go. Each strand was a memory. Each lock was a version of me I was leaving behind.

“What’s the occasion?” Elena asked.

“No occasion.”

“People don’t change their whole look for no reason.”

“Maybe I’m tired of being invisible.”

She laughed. “You’re Sue Storm. You’re the most visible woman on the planet.”

“I’m not talking about that kind of invisible.”

She stopped cutting. Her scissors hung in the air. “What kind are you talking about?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. The words were there, but they felt too big for my mouth. Too heavy.

The clothing stylist was named Tony. He had a measuring tape around his neck and an eye for lines I couldn’t see.

“You’ve got the body,” he said. “You just need the clothes.”

“I have clothes.”

“You have uniforms. There’s a difference.”

He showed me things I would never have picked. Leather. Vinyl. Cutouts in places that felt dangerous. Heels that made me taller than I already was.

“You’ll get looks,” he said.

“I get looks already.”

“Not like these.”

He was right. The first time I walked out in one of his creations, people stared. Not because I was a hero. Not because I was a scientist. Because I was a woman they wanted to look at.

It felt strange. It felt powerful. It felt like I was finally choosing something for myself.

Johnny found me in my room. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.

“What are you doing, Sue?”

“Getting dressed.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then say what you mean, Johnny.”

He pushed off the doorframe and walked toward me. His footsteps were light, like he was always ready to catch fire. “You’re changing. Everything. Why?”

“Because I want to.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.”

He stopped in front of me. We were the same height now, with the heels. He looked at me like he was trying to see through a mask.

“Reed doesn’t notice,” he said. “But I do.”

“Good for you.”

“This isn’t you.”

“How do you know who I am?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. Neither did I.

I stood in front of the mirror and looked at the woman I had become. The piercings. The tattoos. The short hair. The clothes that showed more than they hid.

She was a stranger. But she was my stranger.

Reed came home that night. He looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time in months.

“You’ve changed,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Is this permanent?”

“Some of it.”

He nodded. I could see him processing it, filing it away in that massive brain of his. He would analyze it later. Break it down into variables and constants. Try to understand it through the lens of logic.

But some things can’t be understood. Some things have to be felt.

“I have work to do,” he said.

“You always have work to do.”

He paused at the door. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

I looked at my reflection. The stranger looked back. She had silver in her skin and flowers on her arm and a future she couldn’t see.

“No,” I said. “Nothing you’d understand.”

He left. The door closed behind him.

I touched the ring in my navel. It was warm from my body. Real. Mine.

Tomorrow I would get another piercing. Another tattoo. Another piece of a self I was building from scratch.

Tonight, I would sit in the dark and wonder if the woman in the mirror was someone I could learn to love.

The needle was waiting. And for the first time in years, so was I.