verb.
To come or go back to a place or person.
noun.
The firing of a weapon to counter a shooter's shot.
•
They recoiled from their pasts, and in doing so found each other.
But the universe isn't kind enough to let a moment of peace last.
It took se...
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The skin around her thumb nail was bitten raw within the minutes it took for them to gather Scott into the control room. It was taking all of Kat's willpower to keep her feet planted in one position, to not join Scott in his frantic pacing as she watched him mutter softly to himself, flexing his hands with a franticly restrained energy as he tried to gather his thoughts – almost as if he'd forgotten there were three other people in the room watching him. Waiting.
Waiting to hear how, after five years, he had come back.
"Scott." Steve was the first to break the pattern of mumbled words and rhythmic footsteps, drawing the other man up short as he lifted his head. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah." The response came too quickly, and was accompanied by Scott's hands scrubbing down his face, and a sharp inhale. "Have any of you guys ever studied quantum physics?"
They weren't the first coherent words Kat had expected to hear from him, but then again, she wasn't sure what she'd been expecting to begin with.
"Only to make conversation." Natasha offered from where she stood beside Kat, her posture considerably more relaxed as she stood with her hands in the pockets of her sweatpants. Though Kat imagined that aura of calm only came with her friend's years of training. She wasn't able to put on as much of a front, she was sure the anxious energy rolling off her in waves was apparent to everyone else in the room.
Which was only heightened by the fact that she didn't know shit about quantum physics.
Pointing hopefully at Natasha, Scott moved a step towards them; "Alright, so, five years ago, right before... Thanos." He almost struggled to say the name, as if he was unfamiliar with it. Of course, he hadn't had the five years of practice of hating and fearing that name in equal measure. "I was in a place called the Quantum Realm."
Kat had almost forgotten what it was like to have to suspend her belief in reality. Once, the idea of superheroes, space travel and aliens had been unbelievable, and now it was just such a mundane part of her reality. Alternative realms though, that was somewhat new.
"The Quantum Realm is like its own microscopic universe. To get in there you have to be incredibly small." Scott continued explaining rapidly; "Hope, she's my, uhm... " His voice caught suddenly, the words not as forthcoming, "She was my..."
His hesitance spoke volumes. Screamed a familiar message. Someone he loved was gone now, and he didn't know how to process it any more than the rest of the world did. It was jarring to watch someone attempting to reconcile that fact now, so many years after everyone else had first faced it.
"She was supposed to pull me out." He managed to explain, "And then Thanos happened and I got stuck in there."
Ah. Some frantic, almost hopeful part of Kat's mind quietened at that explanation. Scott hadn't vanished with the others. He had simply been somewhere else. He hadn't come back in the way that would have changed things.
