THE DEATH SEASON ▹ final avengers ✓

22 | five years later

"Please not Laurie and Cassie, no, please not my girls!" His stomach feels queasy as he turns around one last monument, one that is filled with names starting with 'L', "Please, please, please no-!"

And then Scott finds something he doesn't expect to see.

Among the wall of the fallen, an all too familiar name is listed before his eyes,

S C O T T L A N G

His eyes scrunch in horror, "What?"

Scott sprints across the suburban streets of San Francisco as fast as he can, hands shaking, head hurting, palms sweating, heart beating wildly in his chest.

He races up the grassy incline that is the lawn to the Paxton-Lang house, trying to ignore the fact that Laurie's ever-present blue bicycle is missing and Cassie's favorite flowers aren't blooming in the windowsills. Scott slams his fists against the screened front door, banging repeatedly in hopes that his girls - his beautiful daughters - are still here, still alive, not hurt, that the monument didn't get it wrong.

Scott stands back from the screen door nervously, watching with narrowed eyes when a silhouette becomes clear. A girl with long brown hair cautiously approaches the banging door, remembering all the warnings about looters and other dangers. But then her big doe eyes think her mind must be playing tricks on her when she sees who stands on the other side.

A fifteen year old Cassie Lang throws the screen door open and walks right up to her father, dropping her hands onto his cheeks. She just stares at him for a long moment, her chest beginning to shake with soft happy sobs.

"Cassie..." Scott breathes out in disbelief at the sight of his ten year old daughter... now a teenager.

"Daddy?" Cassie chokes out a laugh, those no longer babyish cheeks stretching to give a wide beautiful grin.

Scott pulls her in tight and close, unable to believe that this could be happening, that this could be happening to him again. How could he have lost so much time? How could this happen?

"Little Mama!" A clear matured voice calls from deeper inside the house, making Scott's eyes widen and Cassie beam, "Who the hecko was at the door?"

A twenty-three year old girl with pale blue hair and icy blue eyes is wiping her hands on a dish towel as she strides around the corner, head down, eyes unfocused. But when she glances up, her legs freeze and her feet skid to an abrupt halt. Laurie Lang's hands draw in and her mouth falls slack at the sight before her.

"Laurie." Cassie hiccups, still smiling and holding tight onto Scott's hand, "It-it's-,"

"Dad?" It comes out like a rush of wind, sharp and cold and scared and uncertain.

Laurie has to be dreaming. She has to be. Scott died. He was gone. For good, this time. Not because he chose to. Not because he didn't love them. Death touched every little piece of her life, and it took the people that her cold frightened heart learned to love most in the world. Her dad can't be here, he can't be back. She went to that monument every day and she broke for him and she mourned for him.

She hurt too much for it all to be for nothing.

Mouth still hanging partly open, Scott takes a slow step towards his oldest daughter who suddenly looks so much darker than the bright grinned girl with the quick wit and sharp tongue that he used to know.

"Nah..." Laurie steps back quickly, slamming hard into the screen door of the old worn house, "Nah, this is... this isn't real."

Scott is just as shocked, perhaps even more so as he stares at his two daughters who have grown so much without him. If he thought he lost years with them when he was in prison, it's like he's lost a lifetime with them now.