Driven Mad (Book 1 in the MAD Series)(An Avengers Fan Fiction)

Hank Pym

Hank stared out onto the lake, Jan asleep in his arms as the stars began to peek from the sky. The stars and the moon began to shine against the lake, their reflections absolutely beautiful. The two of them had been sitting there for hours, just talking until Jan fell asleep. They’d talked until Jan fell asleep, which was something that they’d not done in years. But he was falling in love with the feeling all over again, and he was planning on many more of these to come.

The two of them had tried to avoid the topic of this entire war, but eventually it had ended up going back to that fateful war. It had ended up returning to her time as the Mad Thinker’s captive, the time of her beatings. She’d gotten a bit shaken up about it, so eventually the topics drifted back toward some lighter subjects. She’d fallen asleep when they’d started talking about several random things, the randomness of life. After awhile, when he’d started rambling about something, she’d dozed off.

Hank stared up into the sky, staring up at the full moon as it shone brightly in the night sky. The air was turning bitterly cold and, not wanting Jan to get cold, he wrapped his arms tighter around her. He was desperate to keep her warm, to keep her safe. He knew that the two of them should probably be going back to StarkTower, but he wanted to do something first.

Ever since he’d told Jan that she could never mother his children, he found himself feeling guilty. He knew that it was better telling her then than later, but he still felt guilty. Seeing her cry when she’d learned was unbearable. He knew that she’d always wanted children, and he couldn’t help but feel guilty for not being able to give her that life that she’d so desperately longed for. He knew that it wasn’t his fault that he’d gotten cancer, but he still felt guilty for not telling her sooner. He felt guilty for hiding everything from her.

Hank really had wanted to tell her while it was happening. He really did. But he knew that he just couldn’t. He couldn’t tell her something like that. He didn’t want to worry her, didn’t want to think that he wasn’t alright. He wanted her to think that everything was alright. And even after he was cured, he knew that he was going to disappoint her in every way possible. He just didn’t want to face that. So after that happened, he’d really closed up to her, shut up, shut down and went into overdrive mode. He didn’t want her to know all that he’d done without her. He just wanted to pretend that it was all alright, when it most certainly wasn’t.

But he knew what he did was wrong. After seeing the pain and shock and disappointment on her face, he knew that he shouldn’t have hidden it. It would’ve been easier for her to hear while it was happening, would’ve been easier for her to know when he was going through it. She would’ve been a good help too, a good support system for him while he wasn’t sure whether he was going to live or die. Now he just felt bad about not telling her.

Hank knew that what had hurt her most had been his inability to ever give her kids. The cancer, the mutation, she could get over that easily. He knew that she could. But never being able to give her kids was what had obviously stricken her hardest of all. There had been nights at the beginning of their relationship when she would talk for hours about the future she longed for. And cancer had taken that future from the two of them. His heart ached for her and he knew that there had to be some way to give her back the hope he’d taken away. There had to be a way.

Hank knew that he had to make a way to give that back to her. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Hank wanted to be a father just as much as she wanted to be a mother. He needed to give that to her, if that was the one thing that he did to make everything up to her. He knew that giving her the children that she so desperately yearned for would make up for all the pain that he’d put her through. It was his fault, after all. Had he been more attentive, she wouldn’t have even met the Mad Thinker before, and he’d not gone crazy about her, and she wouldn’t have gotten hurt so badly.