One minute Hope Van Dyne is standing next to Luis's old brown van with the terrible horn, counting down the seconds before she can bring Scott Lang back from the Quantum Realm.

The next minute, she feels faint, with goosebumps and a wave of nausea like she's going to immediately be sick.

Just as quickly, she feels fine, but everything else around her is not fine: the van is gone, the equipment is gone, and she's standing there with her parents Hank and Janet, totally confused. They all look around the building roof, oddly weather damaged for a building that's usually kept shrunken and out of sight using Pym particles.

"Scott?"

They're all yelling his name. There's no answer. The nausea is back but this time, it stays.

She's about to suggest that somebody call Scott's phone or that she, Hank and Janet go right now to Scott's house to try and find him, because something obviously went wrong with the portal. Hank starts talking, most likely about to say the same thing, but he stops, gawking at what was once thin air.

The sky opens up in a neat little circle and what she believes is some kind of monk drops in out of nowhere, wielding an orange light portal. The monk demands that she go with her to upstate New York.

Naturally, Hope tells the monk to go fuck herself.

"Language," Janet admonishes, because Janet sometimes cannot reconcile her seven year old with her thirty-eight year old.

The monk, taken aback, informs her that Scott Lang is there and needs her help.

Hank is already cursing and peeling off hundred dollar bills, shoving them at Hope. "Bail him out if you need to," he instructs, "if the portal went that haywire, we don't know what state he'll be in when you get there. If he's in jail, get him out."

Janet and Hope both ask the monk if Scott is ok, what's going on, but time is apparently of the essence and Hope needs to go now if she's going to go at all. Of course she's going to go; Scott is in trouble.

The adrenaline wipes out the terror, mostly, until she is unceremoniously dumped into a very crowded battle. With superheroes, Wakandans, and very creepy aliens.

She looks around for Scott, sees him as Giant-Man, and while she is reassured by the sight of him, she has this immediate need to touch him to make sure he's real. She can hear Scott volunteering to fix the portal, so she flies over to him and grabs his arm, just in time for her to reassure Cap that they'll get it done.

Scott gives her the dopiest, most besotted grin, and she realizes that she just called Captain America "Cap" exactly like he does. She smiles back; yeah okay, she did do that, and if it makes him this happy she probably won't stop.

They shrink and she pulls him to fix the portal in the brown van. He's still looking so punch drunk at the sight of her that she's taken aback. Scott has always looked at her fondly, but this, this is intense. She intuitively knows that something big happened, but it feels like the remnants of a nightmare that she just can't quite remember, and it's scaring her.

Hope crawls into the backseat to reconnect the portal to the van's transmission because at some point it shook loose. The backseat, which is full of candy bar wrappers, coffee cups, Red Bull cans and mostly empty bottles of Mountain Dew, also surprises her. None of these things were in the back with the portal earlier that morning, so her alarm bells are definitely ringing.

She connects the portal, but the car won't start, causing her to panic. Hopping back into the front seat, she's just in time to watch Scott hotwire the van. Hope is not a woman who lets herself fall victim to flights of fancy, but the way he moves his hands over the wiring is fascinating and more than a little hot. Maybe she's lost her mind, she seems to lose her mind a lot when it comes to Scott Lang, but he's really attractive when he so competently hotwires the van.

"You shouldn't encourage me like this," Scott warns, lightly. His tone of voice is definitely something that she wants to think about later. "That look in your eyes says you don't want a respectable man at all."

All she can do is smile at him, because this is not the time for a heart to heart, or anything else, but God does his voice promise something else.

Back to battle they go.

***

There's a teenager on the battlefield, and despite her nonexistent biological clock and general lack of knowledge about children, the fact that there's even a kid out here fighting makes Hope feel insanely protective of him. The battle rages, both before she sees the teenager and afterwards because of the sheer magnitude of the alien army. Hope loses track of Scott, and then finds him again because he's Giant-Man, and this repeats several times. She just keeps fighting, past the point of exhaustion.

Without a whimper or a bang, the alien army suddenly vanishes into ash, which blows away as calmly and peacefully as the army was angry and raw. Hope can see both joyous and tearful reunions starting all around her, the stark relief on the faces of so many, and she can't help but wonder what happened to get her here.

She spots Scott, kneeling in the dirt, sweaty hair plastered to his head as he catches his breath. Even from far away, Hope can see the gray-green of his eyes, and she knows without a doubt that he's worried and looking for her. So she beelines (no pun intended) to his side.

She kneels in the dirt next to him, retracts her mask and smiles, one of her rare toothy grins, because they won and she isn't sure exactly what they won, but she's alive and he's alive and they're there together. He can't speak at first, and just throws his arms around her, burying his face into her hair.

"Oh God, I thought you were dead," he chokes, and she can feel it more than hear it because his mouth is on her head. "Dusted. Whatever."

Hope pulls back enough to look him in the face, and kisses him square on the mouth. "Not dead."

Scott rests his forehead against hers, holds her hands. "You have no idea what happened, do you. Those aliens that turned to dust just now, that was you. You were gone, Hope. Just gone."

Hope closes her eyes, leaning into him. "We're both here now."

"God I'm glad this worked," he sighs, voice shaking, "I don't know what I would have done if it didn't."

"I don't know what worked," Hope admits, trying to look him in the eyes again to reassure herself that they're both alive. Her voice sounds a little shaky too, and she tries not to let the terror of finding him gone on that rooftop overwhelm her. "One second I felt faint and then the next I was back on top of that parking garage and the van was gone."

She swallows thickly, making a valiant effort not to cry, because crying is not a thing she does, she's too tough for that. "We yelled for you. But you were gone."

Suddenly, the tears come and she has to look away so she won't break down right there in front of him. Hope wipes at her eyes, impatient. Crying is messy and inefficient and they are not in private.

"Oh Hope," he says, and holy fuck, she is certain that nobody has ever said her name like that or looked at her like that in her entire life. Not her girlfriend in boarding school, not her boyfriend in college, not Darren Cross. Hope swallows audibly. She has never been so certain of another person's feelings for her before, and she really is going to cry if she's not careful because it's beautiful and entirely overwhelming.

"Don't look at me like that, or I can't finish my story." Hope sniffles, trying to laugh it off a little, turn the intensity down to protect her terrified heart. Scott loves her, she's sure of it, even though he's never said it. She bats at his hands, which are absolutely reaching for hers again.

Scott quirks an eyebrow, grabs her hands anyway, and lets her finish.

"The orange portal opened and a sorcerer came out, told me I needed to go with her to fight a battle in New York. Naturally, I told her to fuck herself."

"Naturally," he agrees, laughing.

"But then she said you were here and needed my help, so I went with her."

"Thank you, I always need your help." His sincerity makes the tears well up in her eyes again, because that's just it, she's waited a long time for somebody to need her.

Hope pushes her entire face against his chest, nose into his sternum, because she's so embarrassed by her show of feeling. Scott rubs her back and if it were up to her, she would like to either crawl into a hole or cut to the chase and have this conversation, in bed, preferably after a drink or seven.

She asks him what happened, and the answer is so crazy that it can't possibly be false: Scott was pulled out of the Quantum Realm into a storage facility full of rats. She wasn't there, so he panicked, escaped, ran to Cassie, who told him what happened with Thanos. Cassie is now fifteen, somehow, and she doesn't know what to do with that fact but her brain forces her to just roll with it. Quantum physics is highly theoretical and there's probably some theory that allows for such a time jump but she doesn't know it off the top of her head, so no, not right now.

Scott is now telling her that he drove across the country to find the Avengers and figure out how to time travel to save her. Then they did it; they traveled time and saved everybody.

Hope pulls back again to look at him, and she wants to combust under the weight of her own feelings. They're rolling up like a tidal wave and threatening to pull her under. Hope is pretty fucking sure that this is love, that she's in love with him, and this realization feels a little like needing to vomit.

So again, she blinks, and laughs just a little bit, trying to get herself under control. Hope feels that she needs to clarify the events one more time.

"Scott. You drove the oldest brown van across America and then traveled time to save me?"

"Well, yeah," Scott answers, like it's the most obvious thing in the world, "of course. If I have to flash forward five years in the future, I want to do it with you."

This ridiculous man, this good hearted, honest, patient man, time traveled because he didn't want a future without her. Hope's feelings threaten again to come up and well, she's just going to have to let them.

"I love you," she blurts suddenly, and stares at him in shock. That really came out of her mouth, and god dammit, the tears are back.

Scott's eyes flash for a half second in surprise, and then he grabs her shoulders at the same time she grabs his elbows. He kisses her so deeply she starts to believe that starry-eyes romance novel kisses might be real. They're standing in the middle of rubble and she's being kissed within an inch of her life.

The shock of it all wears off, and Hope leans into the kiss, giving him all she has right back. The kiss is incendiary, a blur of their lips and tongues and hands, and Hope stops caring about being in the middle of a large crowd. She wants nothing more than to get him alone and feel him shake beneath her, and if there's not a plan to make this happen soon, she's going to...

A talking raccoon interrupts the kiss to give Scott some shit about "sucking face", and Hope is ready to serve raccoon for dinner because of the interruption. A talking tree branch joins them, because sure, why not, and that finally appears to be too weird for Scott.

His attention is back on her, and his eyes are soft as they meets hers again. "I love you," he says, smiling. The fact that he knew that she needed to hear him say it is almost as good as him saying it.

After their unceremonious dump in front of the Golden Gate Bridge by a harried sorcerer, Hope and Scott had gone to a hotel to sleep, because Scott really was dead on his feet. Scott wasn't too dead for a back from the dead reunion, thank god. He's been griping ever since about his knees after their bathtub adventure, but Hope is pretty sure he'll recover.

When she went to drop Scott off at home after the night at the hotel, he had asked her to come in instead of leaving, and now, Hope has all but moved into Scott's place. They're going to have to figure out their living situation with Luis, but overall moving in with Scott has been a lot less scary than she had thought it would have been before the snap.

For one, all of her assets have been unfrozen after she was taken off the FBI's most wanted list, so now she has access to her bank accounts. She can be seen outside, which means that they've been doing some normal couple stuff: grocery shopping, going to the movies, going to Cassie's soccer game, running together in the morning. For two, she trusts him now in a much more concrete way because he time traveled pretty much just for her.

It's early morning, a few days before they're set to fly back to New York for Tony Stark's funeral. Hope is drinking her coffee and pretending to read the newspaper, which of course is focused on Tony's death. Tony Stark died to save everyone, and that's a bitter pill for Hope to swallow.

Hope has known Tony since she was an infant, back when Hank and Janet worked for SHIELD and were friendly enough with Howard and Maria to be at the same work functions together. Tony was at least eight years older than Hope, so they weren't peers, but she had interned at Stark Industries as a fuck you to Hank while she was in college. She and Tony had remained friendly enough that they'd had some conversations while she was at Pym, generally about business, but not entirely.

The last conversation she had with Tony was back in 2013 or 2014, when Tony had met Darren Cross and told her that she could do so much better than being Cross's assistant. But at the time, Hope was riding high on ousting Hank from his own company, and also riding low, sleeping with Darren when convenient. Tony had figured that part out too. Hope should have listened on both fronts.

Hope knows Scott has mixed feelings about Tony Stark. A few nights ago, Scott had confessed to her that he felt a little stupid in front of the rest of the Avengers, like a regular person in a room full of galaxy brained geniuses.

Hope had been surprised by his admission, mostly because she has never had any doubt that Scott was smart. He could learn anything under the sun if he would let himself focus, including particle physics and quantum theory. His VistaCorp heist was some of the finest tactical planning she's ever seen and she genuinely believes that the Avengers grossly underutilized his skill set if they didn't realize how good he was. So what, she's totally biased, but she's not wrong.

"You could absolutely learn Quantum physics, Scott," she had joked, trying to make him feel better without inflating his ego, "in fact, if you'd have applied yourself to it during your house arrest instead of all of those YA novels, you'd be more than halfway to another Masters."

Scott had laughed and tossed his paperback copy of Twilight at her, shaking his head. "Not on your life, Van Dyne. I'm fully immersed in the worst vampire novel ever written and you'll pry this book from my cold dead hands."

Hope smiles absently into her coffee, feeling pleasantly overwhelmed by everything, even knowing she has to go buy something black for the funeral and probably find Scott a suit, too. Suit shopping sounds so horribly domestic to her but she can't find it in herself anymore to get mad about it.

She hears footsteps on the stairs, and she looks up to the doorway as Scott comes into the kitchen, rumply from sleep, hair sticking up in odd angles. "It got cold up there without you," he explains, yawning, "so I figured you'd be down here already with your death coffee."

Hope smiles fondly up at him. "Dairy doesn't agree with me when we run, you know that," she says. It's such a normal thing for somebody as extraordinary as Hope to say. He plods over to her, looking the tiniest bit predatory as he steals her coffee cup and takes a swallow.

"Yeuck," he grimaces, makes a face at the bitterness, and puts the cup back down. He picks up Hope's bare feet from the chair she's resting them on instead, sits down, and then puts her feet back down on his lap. "What were you thinking about over there, smiling like that? Was it me? I bet it was me."

"No, it was Tony Stark," she snips, blushing at getting caught daydreaming.

Scott runs his finger up the arch of her foot, so she yelps, and he laughs. "Scott! No! Fine! It was you."

"It's so cute when you're all distracted, thinking about me like that," he teases, still holding her foot.

"It'll never happen again," she vows, drinking her coffee and peering up at him over the rim of the mug.

Scott squeezes the ball of her foot, using his thumb to work out the perpetual knot there. Hope squirms, stifles an obscene groan, and puts down the coffee cup. She eyes him, thoughtfully, warming up to the challenge.

"Never? Are you sure?" His voice has definitely darkened.

"I won't ever think of you while I'm all by myself again," she taunts him, wiggling her toes in his lap.

"Hmm," he answers, pressing the ball of her foot again, but a little harder, for a little longer this time. "That's super unfortunate."

She can't help it, he's really good at foot massages, so an obscene groan escapes.

"Oh boy," Scott chokes, red starting to stain his cheeks. "This morning just got a whole lot more interesting than I had planned."

Hope slides her foot slightly higher in his lap. Poker faced, she hums noncommittally. "I suppose we can try to handle your situation upstairs," she suggests, primly.

"You caused my situation," he points out, with very false calm, "so I think that's an appropriate solution."

Hope carefully removes her feet from his lap, because he does have a situation, and she springs up from the table. "Race you," she teases over her shoulder, getting a head start, even though she absolutely lets him catch her on the stairs.

It's a good thing Cassie is at her mother's during the week.

***

They do end up shopping for appropriate funeral clothes, mostly because Hope's business wardrobe is in storage and she has no idea now that five years have gone by what she'll find when she looks. She doesn't think her "athleisure" wardrobe from before the snap is quite the thing either. Hope luckily finds something black that she likes quickly, but Scott is stuck trying on black suits.

Scott stands in a three way mirror with a salesman pinning him, looking morose but in Hope's totally biased opinion, hot as hell. He shoots her a baleful look, frowning. "I haven't worn one of these things since the aughts," he grumbles.

"But you look good," she tells him, smiling a little.

Scott preens a little, he can't help it. "Respectable even?"

Hope hums to herself. "Mostly," she allows. "You look maybe, mostly respectable."

"Poetry," Scott says, shaking his head.

Hope walks up to him and leans closer to his ear. "You can't look totally respectable with a bite mark on your neck," she informs him in a whisper, holding back her laughter.

He eyeballs her again, a grin quirking up the side of his mouth. "That's your fault, Van Dyne, you can't hold that against me."

The salesman hightails it out of the way, giving them both a dark look.

"What's his problem," Scott jokes.

"I have no idea," Hope says, playing along, "how rude."

Scott looks at her again and shrugs carefully out of the pinned jacket, and Hope is impressed because he gingerly puts it back on the hanger without getting stuck by a pin. "Is the shirt ok?"

Hope cocks her head, critically. "Yes, actually."

"Don't look so surprised," Scott says, smiling a little at her again, probably because she's such a nitpicker, "but, fun fact, did you know that Cap and I wear the same size workout shirts?"

Her one eyebrow raises directly into her hairline as she considers his statement. "Do I want to know why you think that's possible or true?"

He chuckles, "it is totally true, but you probably don't want to know how I know."

Hope actually, definitely wants to know how he knows, but she feels like this is a story best told outside of a dressing room at a men's shop, so she ushers Scott out and up to pay for the suit.