Their first mission as a married couple is completely unexpected, a midnight call from Paxton, his tone hushed but panicked, stolen alien tech someplace downtown. It's been taken, he guesses, from the battle at the Avengers compound, fragments of magic not taken out in Tony's snap, his last act saving the universe but missing charred remains of alien species, half buried in the dirt. Scott points out, bolt upright in bed, that the battle was well over a year ago, a memory Scott keeps stored in the dark corners of his mind. Paxton thinks it's probably taken that long to get the technology up and running. Scott guesses that it doesn't matter anyway, that now is not the time to be questioning where it come from. Leave that for after. Right now , it's being used to rob a museum. There are five criminals, twelve hostages, and entire units of San Francisco's finest police officers unable to stop them.

So, Scott pushes the sleep from his eyes and shakes Hope awake, stirring beside him but still peaceful. He considers, for a half second, that he could leave her here, hair forming a halo on the pillow, warm and safe. But they're a team. They do things together or not at all. So he wakes her gently, and then moves to rifle through his closet in the pitch darkness to find the ant-man suit. It's been a while, is buried behind the overly loud shirts he'd worn on their trip to Hawaii, specks of sand covering the red and black. He tugs it on with muscle memory, skin adapting to the rough texture, pausing when he gets to the gloves.

"Hope?"

"Yeah?" She's tugging her hair up into a ponytail, bobby pins between her lips.

"What should I do with my ring?" It's still new to him, the feeling of heavy metal around his finger, the glint of the metal when it catches the light. It's strange to adapt to it again, when the last time he'd worn one of these it had ended in fights and tears and heartbreak, divorce papers delivered to him in prison.

It's strange, the idea of wearing the ring under the ant-man suit, but stranger still to imagine taking it off. He hasn't taken it off once yet, not even to shower.

"I've been taking my engagement ring off. I guess I'll take my wedding band off too," Hope says, speaking through the pins.

"Really?"

"I don't wanna lose them," she explains, and Scott has flashes of himself getting seriously injured, abducted and having to take the suit off, having the ring ripped from his finger. No thank you. He wiggles it off, immediately feeling its loss, placing it on the bedside table and pulling his gloves on, flexing his fingers inside. His left hand feels too light without it, different and wrong.

"Are you ready to go?" Hope asks, a minute later, whilst Scott is still staring at the ring, metal on wood.

"Sure."

He pulls his mask on, Hope does the same, and seconds later they're tiny, a brand new ant being summoned to take Scott to the scene of the crime, Hope flying beside him.

There's no other feeling like it, steering an ant through the skies over the city, Scott so small that he may as well be invisible. The air is cool tonight, the lights of the city illuminating their path, beautiful and terrible all at once, shimmering on the bay, light pollution robbing the sky of its stars. There's the anticipation of the fight ahead, the heart stopping fear that the situation may have escalated by the time they reach the museum, the knowledge that there are lives at stake. Scott's all adrenaline and sharp-edged focus, mind juggling steering the ant, thoughts of strategies to use at the museum. Mostly, it's taken up with thoughts of Hope, flying at his side, her presence more reassuring than anything else on this earth or in any distant corner of space. His partner. His wife. And he's still finding any excuse to use those words. In introductions and good mornings and passing comments. He's pretty sure it's too good to be true, so he's going to get as much use out of the term as possible.

The museum roof is below them in minutes, the two of them navigating closer and closer until it's beneath their feet, the streets below coloured in flashing red and blue.

"Ok," Scott catches Hope's hand as he dismounts the ant, both staying small. He's a little nervous, amped up the way he always feels before a mission. She calms him instantly. "What are we doing?"

"Paxton said the hostages are in the auditorium?" Hope checks, and Scott nods. "So I'll take the east wing. You take west. We'll meet at the main auditorium doors once we've cleared the floors."

"Oh. You really didn't need to think about that at all ," Scott points out, a little amazed, a little ashamed of himself.

"I had the whole journey over to think," Hope replies, "what were you thinking about?"

Mostly you . "Uh, the weather."

"Scott!" She punches him lightly with her free hand. He shrugs, smiling at her mock annoyance.

"Hey, Hope?" He pulls her back in as she's about to pull her hand free. "I love you." It feels more important to say, now than ever. Hope melts a little when he says it, like she does every time, pretending she's not. But Scott knows her better than he knows most people, can see the way she's biting back a smile, the way her cheeks turn a little pinker.

"I love you too," she tells him, and they hold each other on the roof, one, two, three seconds, before stepping apart. There's no more time. "Let's go," Hope claps her hands together, pulls her mask back up over her ponytail. They run to opposite ends of the roof. Neither of them look back.

Scott's pretty sure this is the biggest damned museum on the west coast. Either that, or he's getting too old for this, because the amount of time it takes him to clear his sectors is frankly, ridiculous. There's nobody on the top floor, but running from room to room takes its toll, and he's berating his past self for every morning he elected to get an extra thirty minutes of sleep rather than getting up to workout with Hope.

There's one guy on the next floor, wearing the creepiest clown mask Scott's ever seen, and carrying a glowing green gun which he fires at Scott five times in quick succession, narrowly missing his ribs. Scott feels the heat radiating off of the blasts, shrinking back down to tiny in the nick of time. One brief tussle later, and the guy's down, the gun shrunk down so that Scott can examine it in between thumb and forefinger.

He finds another of the criminals on the floor below, his final floor to clear, only this time he isn't so lucky, a ray of bright green meeting his shoulder before he can react.

The pain is white hot, sticking into Scott's muscles, poisoning his blood. There's no mistaking this for any earth weapon. Nothing Scott's ever encountered before has hurt like this, like splinters in his blood. And the pain is all consuming, eating away at his thoughts and his composure until there's screaming ringing in his ears he's pretty sure is his own, his own hand clasped down on his hit shoulder. But...but Hope needs him. She needs him, those twelve hostages need him, and if he gives into this pain now, the guy with the gun is absolutely going to shoot him again. This time, Scott thinks, it won't be in the shoulder.

So he shrinks, breathes through his teeth, convinces himself that the pain is fading and that his suit isn't becoming sticky with blood, clenches his fists and wins his fight.

Somehow, after all of that, Scott summons his most recent ant (ant name) and manages to hold on long enough to get to the auditorium doors, stars swimming in front of his eyes. Hope's there already, small and perched on the edge of one of the thin, high up windows, staring through intently.

"Hope," Scott lands beside her, instantly feeling calmer, gripping her arm.

"Scott? What is it, are you hurt?" He's said one word, and already she knows. No hiding anything from her.

"It's- it's ok. Just a little, uh, blaster wound. It's fine, it doesn't even hurt that bad, really," Scott tells Hope, trying to keep his voice measured. Hope loses her mask, Scott following suit, and she's gently running her hands over his bad shoulder a second later.

" Scott . What the hell did this? How bad does it hurt, really ?"

"Some kind of- I don't know. Like an alien blaster thing. It was green. It looked like something from Star Wars I guess? And it hurts...it's fine. It's manageable, for right now."

"Manageable for right now. That sounds super convincing, Scott."

"It's ok, Hope. Let's just do this, ok? How many guys do we have left?"

She frowns at him, one hand still touching his shoulder, the other on her hip, looking like she wants to send him far away from the battle on the other side of that door.

But this is what do they best. They're ant-man and the wasp, and they know how to win a fight, injury or no injury. If there are people's lives at stake, then they're going to fight for as long as they possibly can. Scott knows that about Hope. Hope knows that about Scott. So, reluctantly, she turns towards the window again and explains the outline of a plan.

There are just two guys left in the room with the hostages, and Scott and Hope make short work of them, with Hope taking out the first one before they've even realised anything is up. Scott's task is the second guy, with the smaller weapon, but every movement of the right side of his body is agony, making him feel a little like he's going to throw up.

In the end, Hope saves him, one solid punch square into the guy's masked face. The room is still, the hostages unable to believe they're actually free. This room of security guards and janitors and other night staff, just trying to earn a living, undeserving of any of this. Scott starts towards them, losing his mask, about to start helping cut people free of the binds around their wrists, but the stars in his vision are back, popping larger than before, a ringing sound in his ears, his head suddenly feeling like it weighs nothing at all. He's sure the ground wasn't this close before.

Hope is pacing. She's pretty sure she's going to make a hole in the floor if she keeps going, the worn boots Paxton and Cassie had bought for her an hour ago after flying Scott here in the wasp suit.

The problem with being a superhero is that it's best it remains a secret. So she'd had to borrow spare clothes from Paxton for Scott, have him bring him in to the hospital and make up some random excuse about fireworks whilst Hope stayed wasp-sized overhead, guarding Scott's soul to make sure it stayed intact. Like if he even thought of dying, if some ghostly form of him started to separate from his body like in the movies, she'd be there to push him back down, keep him complete.

Hope calls Cassie from the hospital, where she's staying the night at Scott and Hope's with Amy, feels terrible about it but knows that, at almost seventeen, Cassie would definitely be angry if she'd been forced to wait until morning to find out about this. So, Cassie had prepared a go-bag and waited for Paxton to pick her up.

But now that that's all done with, and Hope is Hope sized again, she's forced to wait outside. And the waiting is killing her. She's scientifically minded, prides herself on it, and would usually be cataloguing Scott's injuries and logically working out the damage to his body, chances of permanent damage or death. But this is alien technology. All earth science goes out of the window. To cut a long story short, Hope's got no idea what's going on, and it's driving her crazy.

"Hope. You need to sit down," it's Cassie, on one of the chairs lining the hallway Hope's pacing down. Amy is asleep with her head in Cassie's lap, red hair covering her face, feet on Maggie, who is also sleeping, on Paxton's shoulder. Paxton himself is snoring loudly, head tipped back, with the remaining chairs occupied by Luis, head falling off the end, eyes shut, mouth open. Hopes not even sure how he found out about this, and isn't about to ask. And she doesn't blame any of them for being asleep, it's been an hour since the last piece of news and it's coming up on three-thirty in the morning. The lights in this hallway are dim, the soft beeping of machines the only sound to be heard. But she can't, for a single second, imagine herself falling asleep until this is over. Until she knows. Until, she corrects herself, she can lay eyes on an alive and well Scott. The alternative is unimaginable. The alternative is never sleeping again.

"I can't do that," Hope tells Cassie, turning on her heel at the end of the hall to start another line of pacing.

"Hope!" Cassie snaps a little, sounding older than her sixteen years. "Hope, he'll be ok."

"You can't know that."

"I can!" Cassie insists.

Hope slows a little. Her calf muscles are beginning to protest. "How, Cassie?" Hope humours her step daughter, simultaneously looking younger and older than she is in a bright pink pajama top with birds nest hair. It's her expression that makes her look older, like she's seen this all before a thousand times and knows the outcome.

"He's my dad. He's been my dad for nearly seventeen years, give or take a few. He's got a one-hundred percent survival rate," Cassie shrugs.

Hope studies her as she paces past, Maggie's eyes set against the exact hue of Scott's hair, the curve of her nose mirroring her mother's, the crinkle between her eyebrows mirroring her father. She's clever and caring, and maybe her expression is telling the truth because she has seen this kind of thing many times before. And every time, as she says, Scott has come out the other side. Logic, Hope knows, doesn't lie.

"I...I guess you're right," Hope says, unsure whether she's just trying to be nice to Cassie or whether she actually believes it.

"Besides, he wouldn't leave us alone. He loves us too much." Us. Despite everything, that makes Hope warm up inside, a cozy sort of feeling. They're his family. All of them, really, but especially Hope and Cassie. The kind of love-soaked family Hope's always wanted to be a part of.

"Uh, family of Scott Lang?" There's a Doctor in Hope's pacing line, seemingly appeared out of thin air, a messenger sent to break them or fix them, just another part of his day.

"Yes?" Hope's in front of him like a shot, fixating on the slight downturn of his mouth, the way one of his knees is a little bent. She doesn't know what any of it means for sure. Could be that he twisted a muscle on a run this morning and it's causing him pain. Could be an old injury from high school football, or that he's been on his feet too long and can't face standing completely still any more. Maybe it's subconscious. Maybe the downturn of his mouth is just how his face rests between words. Or maybe Scott's gone.

Cassie's at Hope's side, the squeaking of shoes preceding Luis on her other side, and all three of them crowd the doctor in the dimly lit hallway at three-thirty on the start of a beautiful day.

"Mr. Lang is stable. The wound is clean and dressed, but we had a little trouble with his blood pressure, his body's response to the pain. We've got it under control now. I'm confident he'll make a full recovery."

Hope's knees weaken beneath her, tears stinging the backs of her eyes, and it's all she can do to stay on her feet and thank the doctor. Cassie's crying, Luis is whooping, waking up the entire hallway, but all Hope wants to do is see him. She nods through the doctor telling them about his treatment plan and telling them that only one person can go in and see him right now, is immensely grateful when Cassie pushes her forward, and barely pays attention when the doctor tells her that Scott's waking up, but is on some very strong pain medication.

It doesn't matter. None of it does. He's going to be ok.

Scott's blinking up at the ceiling when Hope enters the room, unable to stop tears marking her cheeks at seeing he's ok. He's really still breathing. She walks to him, careful of the wires snaking into his arms, throwing her arms around him and burying her face into his neck. He kind of smells like hospital, like antiseptic and plastic and iron, but beneath all of that is the distinct undercurrent of Scott . The way their home smells and the hoodie of his she's wearing right now, guessing Cassie mistook it for Hope's when she was finding clothes. It's the most calming smell she knows. She thinks that she could be surrounded by it at the end of the world and still feel like everything was going to be ok.

"Is this a new...a new treatment?" Scott's asking, almost giggling, into her hair.

"Very funny," Hope sniffs. "You terrified us!"

"Oh. I'm sorry. Isn't this the kind of thing you, like...see every day? Oh, are you new here?" He's slurring his words, speaking slowly and deliberately. Hope pulls away, frowning at him.

"Scott, it's me. Stop it," she wraps her fingers around the metal side of the bed.

"Are you my new doctor?"

" What ?" Hope's blood runs cold. The alien tech. Hope knew there was no use applying science to it. It's done something horrible to him, it's wiped his memory, it's- it's-

"Ma'am, are you ok?" Scott's doctor is in the doorway, ticking something on a clipboard.

" No !" She hisses. "He doesn't remember me !"

"Oh," the doctor is almost laughing, and Hope wonders whether anyone has ever taught this man about facial cues before. "It's the pain medication. It's very strong, really muddles up some folks' brains. He'll be fine as it wears off."

Hope frowns. "You're sure?"

"Positive. I've been doing this for a long time."

Hope stares at him a second longer before turning her attention back to Scott, who is watching her with a dopey smile on his face.

"Are you...are you mad at me?" He asks, still smiling.

"What? Scott, no. No, of course not," she brushes his hair away from his forehead, sniffing again.

"Can I tell you something?" He asks, trying and failing to whisper. The doctor leaves. Hope nods, breathing a deep sigh of relief. "You're like...the prettiest person I've ever seen?"

"Oh! I...What?" Hope can't stop a smile from breaking out on her face, despite the fact that she should absolutely not find this amusing in any way. It's been her worst day in a long, long time. And all she can do is fall into the chair at Scott's bedside and watch him grinning at her.

"You're beautiful ," he says, and her hand finds his. She watches him for a second, her husband, knowing that he's telling her this with no ulterior motive or hidden agenda. Just because he thinks it's true, and wants her to know. And she's not shallow, neither of them are, they both know beauty runs much deeper than the skin. But she can't help the way her heart skips a little bit every time he tells her that.

"Well, do you want to know a secret?" She humours him, half wishing she was filming this for future blackmail. But she's too relieved to have him safe to do that.

"Yes."

"I'm your wife ," she mock-whispers, watching as Scott's eyes widen dramatically.

"What? I thought you were my doctor?"

"No," she laughs, "I'm your wife. I'm Hope, you remember? We got married in Hawaii?" She fumbles in her pocket for her phone, almost dead, flashing him the background image of the two of them on the beach, beaming at the camera. Hope in a white sundress, flowers in her hair, Scott in a button down and patterned tie Cassie had bought for him. The weirdest and happiest day of Hope's life, all rolled into one.

"That's me! And that's you!" Scott's eyes are, somehow, even wider. "You married me?"

"I did," she laughs, squeezing his hand.

"Wow. I-I made a really good decision there."

"I sure hope you did," Hope smiles, reaching across to kiss Scott's temple. His eyes are starting to drop a little now, speech getting slower and slower. Hope's pretty sure he needs to sleep this off.

"How did it happen? Did I ask you? Was it good?"

"Uh," Hope snickers, "I guess you asked me. It took you long enough."

"Oh," Scott laughs again, quieter this time. "I'm glad I figured it out in the end."

"Yeah," Hope smiles, "so am I."

There's seconds of silence, of synchronising their breaths. Then, "have I told you how pretty you are before?" He checks.

"Yes," she nods, remembering the last time he'd told her, the night before, when she'd been exhausted and somehow got glue from Cassie and Amy's science project stuck in her hair. He'd hugged her told some awful joke about her being clingy, making her laugh in spite of herself, and then he'd kissed her forehead and told her she still looked pretty. She'd rolled her eyes at him at the time, but though she won't admit it out loud, it matters, that stuff. The calling each other pretty and making each other laugh, the low whistles Scott does whenever Hope wears something new, the way she doesn't like to go to sleep unless she's told him she loves him. These little, happy moments that make up their marriage. That scatter in specks of gold amongst any colour of day, whether it be grey and sad or yellow and joyful.

"Good. I hope I tell you every day. God I'm so lucky. I'm...in the luckiest," he squeezes her hand, eyes finally closing.

Hope waits, listening for the evening out of his breathing. "No," she whispers. "That's me."

When the doctor returns twenty minutes later, he finds them both asleep, Hope's head next to Scott's on the pillow, slumped over in the uncomfortable hospital chair, hands tangled together. Tomorrow, Cassie will remember the wedding bands she'd pocketed for them whilst picking up their clothes, will press them into Hope's palm after a much needed hug. Tomorrow, Scott will wake up with a clear head, will remember Hope and this wonderful, terrifying life they've built together, will forget that he ever forgot as Hope pushes his wedding ring onto his finger like they're back in Hawaii again. He'll sit and eat a vanilla pudding cup, smiling that same dopey smile at his family, and will listen to the first of many retellings of The Time Scott Forgot He Was Married To Hope.