She could feel it.

Everything, bending and breaking around her, the very foundations of reality snapping like a thin twig as she went further and further subatomic.

Her particles were now shrinking down, the space between them already crushed away and lost to the void. But even then the segments of reality tried to grab her and hold her captive, wanting to clutch her in their incorporeal hands. If she had to describe it, it was like being trapped in a cave-in, rocks and boulders pressing against her body and slowly pushing in, making the miniscule area of air smaller and smaller as gravity forced them to tumble down and draw closer together, unknowing and uncaring of the human being stuck between them.

But nevertheless, she struggled against the weight, slowly moving to try and fix her regulator, to let her grow back to normal size, to let her see her husband and daughter. How she wanted to tightly hug both of them, to cover both with kisses and tell them that she loved them, that she and Hank would never go on another last minute business trip and just stay with them forever and ever in their home of victorian brick and oak wood.

But that wish was quickly lost as her body once again broke through a singular piece of dust, the sound of tearing cloth roaring in the unknown dimension, pounding against her already broken ears.

She was still spinning, far too fast for her mind and balance to comprehend. It left her sick as all she could see were black and red strings and mirror-like atoms whizzing past and around her, colliding against and wrapping around her body. Sometimes they would simply faze through with a buzz she could hardly hear, the sharp sound of her plastic and vibranium wings slicing through the thickened components of oxygen and nitrogen all-encompassing.

And the pressure slowly grew worse and worse and worse as she shrunk and spun and broke once again through the fabric of reality, still meagerly attempting to fix and mend around the foreign appearance that was Janet Van Dyne.

Only then did she realized how it crushed her lungs, how she couldn't breathe anymore. She began to spasm in pain, trying to get what little air she could get between the thin moments her body would adapt to the sudden pressure, her muscle, bone and sinew now strong enough grow. But then the intensity would spike once again, and she would be left to choke and suffer.

She doesn't know when, but she swore she could hear her bones cracking and breaking before forming back once again. But she felt no pain, not even the slightest prick against her skin. Has she really... moved that far? Far enough to pass the realm of touch, of space and reality itself? She wondered as she felt her vision slowly darken and as her body grew weaker and weaker with what little blood that could travel through the shrunken vessels, if eventually the pressure would crush her heart instead. Would she feel it, or would she just suddenly cease to exist, unknowing that she had indeed died traveling between the mesh of all matter?

But the question would never be answered, as bright shifting colors and crushing sound burst around her, as she suddenly stopped spinning, as she lay still on an unexpected floor that rolled around her, like sound waves slowly rolling over the light and gravity.

She gasped, and felt nothing, as she unhappily expected. She could not feel the pulsating and shifting ground beneath her as she sat up, could not feel her own body as she once again tried to turn her regulator back on. She ignored the sparks that singed through the gloves of her suit and burned her fingers red, for there was no feeling to draw her away in pain from her desperate task.

It was after the eight spark, after the skin had charred away to reveal raw muscle and fresh blood that she finally gave up, falling into a fetal position as she cried. She couldn't wipe away the tears, for she couldn't feel where they fell, or where her hands were as she clutched and pulled at her hair, screaming and wailing.

She hoped something could hear her, one of the many monsters that hid in the quantum realm, the dustmites, the bacteria, the viruses. She hoped they would come and devour her, absorb her, end her sensationless suffering. For death would be better than remembering her daughter's smile, her husband's cologne, and never being able to experience them again as they slowly faded away from her mind.

But... what was this sensation? It crawled across her body, soaking into every minuscule particle and made her breath fluctuate, her muscles twitch and her consciousness flow. It was a pressure, but one that was gentle and forgiving, much unlike the many sensations she had experienced in such a short amount of time.

She gasped.

That was it.

It was... it was time. Time, sinking into her shrunken molecules and forcing them to decay, to age, to move.

She smiled, she laughed, she cried then laughed again. This was a miracle.

Yes, she was beyond. The realm of reality, the realm of space, the realm of touch were all out of her reach. But there was still time.

And if there was still time, then that means she was still somehow within the human reality. She may just be clinging to the edges of the thin fabric, but all that mattered was that she was somehow close enough for at least one dimension to affect her.

Maybe close enough for her to escape.

So for now, she held onto the memories, grasped as tightly as she could. She was unwilling to let her husband's goofy laughter, one that their daughter had inherited, pass through her fingertips, knowing that one day she will experience it once again.

One day she'll get out. Only time would tell.

Time, the one thing that still kept her human, the one thing that kept her alive... she swore she could feel something other than the singular reality. It fluttered in her chest, joyfully spreading throughout her body before dissipating back into the apathetic emptiness.

She smiled. It was promise, ambition.

It was hope.

She could still feel it.

Her body was still rebelling against the quantum particles that infested her, forcing every molecule in every DNA strand that created her very being to suddenly rip apart, hastily sew back together then rip apart again in a vicious cycle. But she didn't care, not anymore.

She remembered how she used to scream at the intense pain, unable to even eat or sleep for days at a time. Not that she could even do those two simple tasks, at least not at first. Even without the pain, the food and utensils would phase through her head, she would fall through the bed and even the floor sometimes. The only solace she could find was outside on the ground, the atoms that made up the earth too thickly woven together for her to fall through.

And it was there she lay, watching as the wind gently brushed through the leaves, branches and grass, making them gently rustle. The wind moved straight through her body too, although instead of creating the calm whisper, it generated this horrid buzzing sound, electric and rumbling.

She was used to it by now.

And yet, as if it was some cruel joke, she could see every single detail all too clearly, everything she heard pounded against her ears with a deafening roar. Every day she would awaken with a crushing headache as she was suddenly thrust into a world of bright burning light and deep buzzing. Her vision and hearing had enhanced, something that the men at S.H.I.E.L.D. said was another result of the quantum exposure. She could see every scratched nick in the tree bark, every shifting and spinning cell that created the blades of grass that brushed against and through her cheeks. She tried to pluck one of the thin strands of verdure. Her fingers phased right through it, unsurprising. Sometimes she wondered if she truly was dead, just a ghost. She could do everything they could, even instill fear into others like one.

The former assassin was broken from her thoughts by a shout, a call of her name. She recognized the voice belonging to Bill, her one companion after The Fall, after Hydra had destroyed the one thing that defended superheroes from the scrutiny of the public and the law. The one thing that defended the vast list of dead names that still followed her to this day, that would mumble a name every now and then, be it from a computer, lost agents or even her own dreams.

She remembers telling Bill about this list that was forever etched into her mind, and he merely shrugged it off, saying that everyone these days has a skeleton hiding in their closet.

It made her wonder if he had a child, once. A daughter just like her, one who didn't survive. She wonders if he saw her as retribution for something he couldn't control, but blamed himself for it anyway.

After all, no one could just be that kind. S.H.I.E.L.D. had taught her that.

She was brought back to reality by the same man she was thinking about, asking if she was willing to try once more. It was about another attempt of his, she could tell. The hopeful glow in his eyes, the small comforting smile on his lips, she's seen it before in the past few weeks.

And they always disappeared with a frown and tears as each endeavor ended in excruciating failure.

But nevertheless she nodded yes, and followed him to the makeshift lab they had created, to the abandoned house that they now both called home.

At least, she did. She had nothing else to call home.

Everything else became a blur by then, a step-by-step process that she had become so familiar with. Needles were stuck into her arm, metal bands of radiation were strapped to her limbs, black suction cups clung to her head and neck as she focused on making her body physical, forcing each molecule to stay together with as much willpower as she could muster. It was an agonizing sensation she had grown used to during the weeks she has stayed with Bill and his constant experiments to make her whole and physical once again. Her eyes no longer closed in concentration, instead in resignation as she expected it to fail for the hundredth time.

But, once the operation began, she could feel her very being relax in relief as her body came into contact with the few quantum particles they had left. The sensation of the chaos within her body finally calming down in stilling in order. Everything she could see, everything she could hear finally dulled away, so much that for a split second she thought she had gone deaf, that the world had darkened into blackness.

She breathed in, a long, solid breath, and almost cried at the feeling.

But it didn't last for long, as she felt it all go wrong. She didn't know what happened, what was going on behind the scenes with Bill and his homemade technology, but she could feel it all go horribly, predictably wrong as the warm and relaxing sensation suddenly burst.

It burned. Not like fire, no, fire had texture, no matter how thin it was. This pain was beyond reality, beyond the physical touch of humans she no longer felt. And yet it clung to every cell in her body, tearing them apart more and more and more before piecing them together with random pieces that rejected each other.

But nothing hurt worse than the inside, organs and acid burning and healing. If she focused just enough on the pain, she could feel her very soul split away in shards or strands, floating around inside her as each shred was ripped further and further until it disappeared into nothingness.

It never stitched back together, forever lost.

She doesn't know when it all stopped, when Bill had shut down the machine, but soon she felt the pain dull back down to the standard everyday torment she knew so well. But it was now accompanied by a deep throbbing, as the aftereffects of the operation began to appear. The pain forced her to cry. Cry as she felt her body rip apart and form once again in sporadic fashion, the pulsation causing her entire being to spasm in shock. She ignored Bill as he attempted once again to hug her and comfort her.

He could still remember it.

The bright flashing and psychedelic colors, the red, silver and black strings of reality that twisted, formed, crystallized and broke apart at the slightest touch, the smallest glance, the most fleeting memory. He remembered the rigid, yet flowing shapes of these mirror-like molecules that reflected everything back at him, from the deepest stitch of his red-gray suit to the thin green strings of muscle that made up his irises. He remembered the feeling as if with every second that passed, his body pressed further into himself as he watched the quantum realm tear him apart molecule by molecule, before placing them back together again.

He remembered it all, but only in bits and pieces. When he tried to remember the journey all at once, it became a bright, neverending hallucination that blinded him with color and white and gray and even hues that he never thought to have existed.

It was all a nightmare that just ate away at his mind, taking away his sanity piece by piece.

And he didn't dare tell anyone else about it. Not Hank, whenever he tried to squeeze the information out of him in hopes of learning more about his life's work. He would just tell him that he didn't remember, that his mind had probably wiped it from memory. Not Hope, when she tried to understand his sudden and unexpected reluctance to shrink down, even though he has done it many times before. His explanation was that after his battle with Cross, he just needed a bit of a break, although he knew full well she could see past his half-assed explanation.

But what hurt worse was not telling Cassie, when she asked for the fourth time why her father always kept the lamp on in his bedroom at night. He would tell her, lie to her that it was to help the ants see, because they didn't quite know his new apartment yet and still needed to figure it out before they could do it in the dark. It broke his heart when she would smile at the explanation, agreeing and saying that it helps her see them too so she doesn't step on them, and tore it even more when he realized that this explanation wouldn't last forever, that he would need the story to age along with her.

But it was better than telling her the truth, that he can't handle the night that leaked through the windows and seeped through the floorboards, that whispered back old memories into his ear and forced them to overtake his mind.

He couldn't tell her that he was the one now afraid of the dark.

He was afraid of the pitch black shadows that came every night, slowly swallowing everything in its dark and endless color before it would reach him, absorbing all color from his body until he was just a gray corpse floating in a sea. It reminded him too much of the final realm, the one of gray reflections and black pools of infinity look back at him and steal his mind, his sanity, his whole being.

But... he's not supposed to be afraid of the dark, not him, a father. He was supposed to be the one that fought it back, that comforted his child when she woke from the nightmare, or if her nightlight wasn't working, or if the monster under her bed was being extra mischievous at 1 am in the morning.

He wasn't supposed to be the one comforted when the electricity went out at night, leaving him in a pitch black sludge that clung to his body, siphoning on every molecule and cell. It crushed his chest, clawed at every bone and organ as it sunk into him, ate within him, became him.

Nevertheless, it was inevitable. One would find out eventually.

And it was in the middle of the night, as he and Hope lay together on his couch after a long day of work and experimentation. They were holding hands, hers resting atop as he brushed his thumb across her skin, both smooth yet calloused at the same time. The last thing he remembered was falling asleep on her shoulder, the smell of perfume and rosemary shampoo the last thing he remembered as his mind drifted into sleep, before he woke up to the cold, lonely darkness surrounding him.

No.

No.

Dear God no.

He was back in the quantum realm, back in the void that was already crushing his body deep within himself. It broke every bone in his body, forced every muscle to stretch and snap as it drew closer and closer. He could feel it both stretch and compressing his lungs at the same time, forcing out whatever air he had to scream. His own spit was choking him as he tried to grow, tried the same escape tactic that he was sure worked last time, hoping that maybe it was just a faulty wiring, the wrong disc or anything other than what he feared. That it didn't work, that it was a failure, that he was stuck here until the realm either shattered his very being or inevitably compressed into nothing but dust like all universes eventually will.

Please don't let it fail.

Please.

Please.

Please.

Scott doesn't exactly know what happened next. He felt a grip on his shoulder, one that burned the skin and singed the tissue, and he grabbed at it as he tried to stop the pain. He dug his fingers in as harshly as he could, desperately trying to pull out the roots of flame before they grew any deeper. But they only burrowed further and further, until the burn became sparks of electricity that jolted his mind and blinded his eyes, electrocuting his mind into a deadly numbness that that only made his heart pump faster and faster.

Suddenly he felt air burst into his lungs, a flaring ache that he welcomed with relief. The emptiness beneath him turn into wood and the void behind him softened into cushion, and the pain in his shoulder faded away. But the grip still remained, and his relief quickly turned into dread when he saw that it was Hope's hand on his shoulder, her nails digging in as she tried to get his attention. Her hazel eyes were wide and brimming with surprise and desperation, a look that tore into him even more than the illusions did. He could barely make out her words as she threw question after question, a buzz overtaking his senses as not just his mind, but his body began to numb completely. He ran his hands through his hair, pulling at the strands as he tried to stop the humming that ran through his head, whispering his failures back to him and urging him to return to the darkness, to let it draw away the last remaining piece of color and sanity that he held onto. It begged for him to finally let go, and for a second he entertained the thought, thinking of moving his palms to his eyes to shut out any light, or even just closing them in surrender.

But again he felt the grip on his shoulder tighten before it released, the feeling of cold and soft marble gently moving up to rest against his chin. He looked up to see Hope once again staring down at him, a thin layer of tears glistening in her eyes. But her look has changed, from the despair he feared to see, to one of understanding. To one that told him that he will be okay, that he has nothing to fear, that she will be here and wait for him, that the humming and the fear is something he could fight back.

She smiled, and he smiled back as she leant down and slowly wrapped her arms around him, her embrace growing stronger as he accepted it, letting her help him force away the humming as he repeated it over and over in his head.

He'll be alright.

He'll be alright.

He'll be alright.