far from home

Scott doesn't know how long he's been down here. All he knows is that it's been long enough for the overwhelming panic to seize and for his mind to wander. So he thinks, and thinks, and thinks.


He thinks about Agent Woo. Sure, Woo's a pain in the ass, but Scott knows he's a good guy. He likes him, despite everything. In fact, he thinks, if he had met the guy in a different life, one where the FBI agent's job wasn't to keep tabs on him, they probably would have been friends.


He thinks about Jim and how much they disliked each other when they first met. Jim, a cop, and Scott, an ex-convict. Now, though, he considers Jim a good friend. Somewhere along the line, their relationship had shifted. Jim had stopped being so hard on Scott and Scott had made an effort to actually get to know him. The two of them were supposed to go watch a UFC event live in a few weeks' time. He's going to miss it, he knows he is. Because no one is coming to get him. The people who know where he is stopped talking on the communications device, as if they had just evaporated into thin air.


He thinks about Maggie and feels his heart clench. He remembers what it was like being in love with her. A part of him misses it, but, for the most part, he likes where they are now. They're friends now and he thinks it's probably better that way. They get along great. There's no more constant arguing and yelling, just smiles, hugs, and warmth. He still loves her, but he's not in love with her.


He thinks about Ava and Bill and how much he's enjoyed working alongside them over the last few weeks. He's taken a particular liking to Ava. She's very troubled, but he knows that beneath all of the hardship, tragedy, and pain, there's a genuinely good person. Her sense of humor needs work though, and he would like to help with that, except he's stuck in the Quantum Realm and she's probably with Bill, waiting for healing particles that she's never going to get. The only people besides himself who know where the van is are Hank, Janet, and Hope. And they're gone now. Somehow, they're gone.


He thinks about Dave, Kurt, and Luis. He misses his best friends. He misses his constant banter with Dave about film and television. Taxi Driver is the best Robert De Niro movie, Scott knows for a fact. But Dave would tell anybody who listened that its Cape Fear . He misses Kurt's horror stories of Baba Yaga and his many conspiracy theories. His favorite is the theory that Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, Godzilla and King Kong are all real, captured in a secret base in the Bermuda Triangle. He misses the way Luis recounts events in hyper-speed, to the point where the details become a blur. He misses a lot of other things about them too, like working alongside them at X-Con Security, but those are what he misses most.


He thinks about Hank, Janet, and Hope, and how much the three have come to mean to him. Hank's dysfunctional, like really dysfunctional, but he's a father figure in a way that Scott's father never really was. He hasn't quite figured Janet out yet, but she reminds him of himself in the way she cares about her daughter. She's also every bit the genius Hank is. He respects her immensely for it. He thinks about Hope, and how in love with her he is. When he screwed up in Germany, his heart was crushed when faced with the probability that she would never want to speak with him again. Now that they're dating again, it feels as if he's whole. He has to get out of here so he can see her again. They still have two years of lost time to make up for.


He thinks about Cassie...and cries.

Comment