<strong>Name:</strong>Susan Storm<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Manhattan - Stark Tower<br/><strong>Wherabouts:</strong>Lounge.<br/><strong>Wearing:</strong>Leather jacket, tank top, leggings, tall leather boots.<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Everyone.<br/><br/><div class="floatleft">(http://i1203.photobucket.com/albums/bb396/rubixon/suta_zps502081ba.jpg)</div><br/><em>Doom.</em><br/><br/>"Excuse me," two words spoken so softly only those immediately around her, Rogers and Banner, would have even heard them. Two words spoken in a tone typically reserved for those who'd seen a ghost. It was hard to go unnoticed in the cavernous, over luxuriated, space that they all occupied currently. Susan didn't seem to care; beelining with urgency past the glass door out to the balcony, and without a heartbeat's hesitation, into the air and away from the building. Sudden and unexplained was unlike Susan, but anyone that'd known of the Baroness Von Doom incident of the last year knew some idea as to just how twisted and darkened Doom had left Susan Storm's soul.<br/><br/>Few 'experts' of the Fantastic Four doubted it was that very incident that led directly to the dissolution of not just Fanatastic Four, but Reed and Susan.<br/><br/>Though she rarely thought of it as such, Sue found herself eternally glad in that very second that Manhattan was an island. She was a very short, fast, flight from Stark Tower to water. She waited until she was far enough away from land to get a little privacy before she stopped, and waited. All Susan had to do was get CLOSE to the surface of the water, hoving just slightly above it, and she knew it would happen.<br/><br/>Why? Because right now she needed him. And he had always been there for her before. So long as she was close enough to water for him to sense her.<br/><br/>"You're intoxicated."<br/><br/>Namor's voice sounded royal; void of emotion and concern, only command and declaration. Susan knew he was teasing her, and it only took her blue eyes a few moments stare to crack that hard shell of his. They stood, one just above the water, one just touching it, in silence for all of half a minute before Susan found herself shrugging. And chuckling. "Maybe a little."<br/><br/>"Good. Tis an evening of celebration for the surface world...yet you are here."<br/><br/>"Would you rather I not be here?"<br/><br/>Namor simply smiled, tiny and smug, not taking the bait. "I'd rather you be in Atlantis with me. Would that you were, but you are not--and have made your intentions on that clear. You are here to talk."<br/><br/>"Am I that obvious?" She chuckled at it, but some smaller part inside her felt...embarrassed?<br/><br/>"A man's heart can always see storm clouds over the woman he loves."<br/><br/>For a prolonged beat of her heart, Susan and the Prince of Atlantis shared a long, hard, stare. Volumes could have been produced transcribing what went unsaid in that single stretched beat of her heart into written words. Luckily for Susan, the woman who wanted nothing more than to move on from the recent past, all of those things remained where they currently belonged--unsaid.<br/><br/>"It's stupid." Before Namor could dismiss the idea of her feelings being stupid, as she knew he would, Sue simply kept talking, "Asgardian troubles in the Stark Tower." When Namor's upper lip curled in revulsion at the mere mention of the gaudy, phallic, Stark symbol of self adoration...Sue could only snicker. "It's not that bad. Except the trouble brought a name up, and...it just threw me. You know; one of those things you're TOTALLY sure that you're over and past and done with, and then it comes out of nowhere to crash back into your life, and you're just unable to process."<br/><br/>For once, Namor sounded less than absolutely certain: "I...know?"<br/><br/>"Sorry," though it actually made her smile; the culture clash of this underwater Prince and the playfully animated surface woman, "figure of speech."<br/><br/>That, at least, Namor understood. "Reed?"<br/><br/>"Victor."<br/><br/>"...oh."<br/><br/>Namor's jaw tightened in quiet anger. It was a sore subject between them; the Baroness Von Doom incident. To Namor, it was simply final evidence that Susan needed to be down in Atlantis. There he could protect her, and ensure not even Victor Von Doom could reach her. But that made Susan sound like a fragile crystal that Namor found too beautiful to let someone sratch or scar. Neverminding the absurb amount of possessiveness and over-bearing protectivism, it just wasn't that practical: it didn't feel like where she belonged.<br/><br/>There was no amount of 'evidence and fact', no logic, no nightmare, that could convince her heart otherwise. Even a nightmare like Victor.<br/><br/>"I believe you stronger than Doom, Susan Storm. The man broke you, re-made you so that he could fulfill his twisted little fantasy of having you instead of Richards. But in the end, it was you that saved the Fantastic Four...and not the other way around." Susan wanted to argue, but she couldn't. She had broken Doom's bondage over her just in time to save Reed, Ben, and Johnny. The Prince continued, growing in certainty with each syllable of each word, so it seemed to Sue. "You will not falter against this monster again, for you are stronger than the young woman broken before. And should you feel as if you might fall again...your new team will be there." Then Namor's mouth twisted into the most arrogant smirk Sue had seen in quite some time. Or since she'd seen Stark earlier. "And if they are not, I will be there."<br/><br/>Her sigh was melodramatic, theatrical. Like she was fawning. "My hero!"<br/><br/>Namor looked at her as if she'd lost her senses. "You are as cruel as you are beautiful."<br/><br/>"I tried to warn you about surface girls."<br/><br/>The Prince snorted. "There ARE no surface girls like you--only you."<br/><br/>A quick, sudden, hug left Susan damp and smelling faintly of salt water. Namor did not hug her back, he never did. The Prince of Atlantis did not...hug, he was fond of saying. But one of these days, she'd get him. She knew it, sure as she'd known he'd show up tonight. But he was left smiling. "Now go, Susan. So I can watch you fly away."<br/><br/>Sue left with laughter, her mind and heart and soul feeling infinitely lighter than they had before his appearance. She'd been gone only a good fifteen minutes before her high heeled boots touched back down upon the expansive balcony of Stark Tower's high rise lounge. Despite mummering something about how cold it was outside, Susan came in mostly quiet.<br/><br/>Until a certain thought hit her: "Anybody use a drink?"<br/>