Natasha sighed as the remaining Avengers across the universe slowly started to drop out of the video call. Earthquakes, garbage dumps and killing sprees weren't exactly the hopeful things that she had been praying for.

"How's the kid?" Carol Danver's asked, her and Rhodey being the only ones remaining on the call. Natasha almost jumped, unaware that the blonde had not hung up yet. 

Carol had taken quite a liking to Scottie after meeting the girl. Even Steve had made the comparison that the two of them had slightly similar powers, but Carol was like a more extreme and powerful version of what Scottie had once been. It wasn't unusual for Carol to ask the same question at the end of every monthly meeting, and it also wasn't unusual for Natasha to give her the same reply.

"She's still praying for her powers to reappear. She seems to think still that if they come back she'll somehow be able to change it and bring everyone back," Natasha informed Carol and Rhodey, both who sighed and dropped their heads slightly at the delusion.

Natasha was right, though. Behind closed doors Scottie was obsessed with getting her powers back and despite her attempts to hide it from Natasha, Steve, Tony and Pepper, they all could see how it was destroying the girl from the inside. Steve had tried to get her to come along to his support group in the city in the hopes that it would help her, but she only lasted two sessions before chucking that in. Natasha had given her various tasks with keeping an eye on the planet but none of them ever seemed important enough for the girl to stop thinking about everything and everyone that they had lost.

There was even a brief period of 6 months where they had gotten a dog for the compound, mainly in the hops that Scottie would form some sort of companionship with the animal. Sadly, it just seemed like nothing worked and a few months later the dog would find its forever home with the now teenage daughter of Scott Lang, Cassie. The girl had visited the compound once or twice over the past five years despite her dad not really having known them all that well. Scottie had spoke to her briefly but it was apparent pretty quickly that they were handling their grief much differently.

There was a moment of pause in the room before Carol turned her head to look at Rhodey, wishing his holographic figure luck before vanishing from the room too. Natasha let out a deep sigh, watching as Scottie entered the small that joined on to the study from the corner of her eye. 

Looking up, she noticed that Rhodey was still on the line, patiently waiting for her to continue their conversation. Scottie slowly moved into the room, clutching leftovers from a chinese that Steve had taken her out for the night before. She perched on the edge of the armchair a few metres away from Nat, nodding quietly at Rhodey.

"Where are you?" Natasha asked the man, not knowing if she was about to like what he would say. 

"Mexico. The Federales found a room full of bodies. Looks like a bunch of cartel guys. Never even had the chance to get their guns off."

"It's probably a rival gang," Scottie interrupted, knowing that she was just humouring herself. The three of them all knew exactly who this was that was committing all of these slaughterings.

"Except it isn't. It's definitely Barton. What he's done here, what he's been doing for the last few years... I mean, the scene that he left..." Rhodey said, trailing off before noticing that Natasha had tears forming in her eyes from the state her best friend had reached. "I gotta tell you, there's a part of me that doesn't even want to find him."

"Will you find out where he's going next?" Natasha interrupted, taking a bite of the sandwich that she had quickly made before their meeting had started earlier. Scottie looked between Natasha and Rhodey as she dug into her leftovers, aware that this was only going to end with Natasha confronting the man.

"Nat..."

"Please."

Rhodey nodded, a soft sigh falling from his lips as he too ended the call. Natasha let a few tears fall from her eyes, knowing that Scottie wasn't going to hold it against her. They had grown incredibly close over the past five years, with Scottie even telling Natasha about the dreams she had been having in the past year.

Scottie lost her romantic soulmate in Wanda, but she gained a platonic soulmate in the form of Natasha - and while that wouldn't heal the hurt and the pain that she felt every day, it was certainly numbing it.

"You know I'd offer to cook you dinner but you seem pretty miserable already."

Scottie jumped slightly as Steve appeared in the room, surprised that she hadn't heard the man entered since her nano tech hearing aids had now actually been giving her better hearing than the average human since Tony had finished their latest upgrade. Sure, she was now fluent in sign language from the help of Natasha but it was comforting to know her dad was always going to be looking out for her even if he had retired from the inventing superhero lifestyle five years before.

"You here to do your laundry?" Natasha teased, referring to the fact that the man had moved out of the compound a year prior and into a humble apartment in Brooklyn.

"And to see some friends," Steve noted, looking pointedly between the two partial blonde women in the room. Scottie smiled softly as she stood up and pulled the man into a tight hug. The world might have moved on, but the three of them knew that they were never going to be content with this life.

"Clearly, your friends are fine," Natasha joked, wiping a tear away from her eyes with a humourless chuckle. The three of them all shared a sad laugh for a moment before Steve moved to sit down on the armchair across the room from the duo.

"You know I saw a pod of whales when I was coming up the bridge."

" In the Hudson?" Natasha teased him, knowing that he was telling the women this for an ulterior purpose than just letting them know how his whale watching hobby was developing. Scottie didn't seem too impressed but then again she never truly had been impressed by anything since Wanda had destroyed the stone.

"There's fewer ships, cleaner water."

"You know, if you're about to tell me to look on the bright side. Um... I'm about you to hit you in the head with a peanut butter sandwich," Natasha joked back, raising her half eaten sandwich with an almost as sad half-smile. Steve moved his jacket to the side of the chair before settling down again.

"Sorry. Force of habit. You know, I keep telling everybody they should move on and... grow. Some do. But not us."

Scottie remained quiet, afraid that if she spoke up about why she couldn't grow that she was going to get another one of their 'Wanda wouldn't want you to mope forever' speeches that she had became pretty accustomed to over the past five years. They had became more frequent in the past few months especially as everyone had really started to almost move on.

"If I move on, who does this?" Natasha asked him, the deep underlying despair present in her voice. This was all she had left.

"Maybe it doesn't need to be done," Steve softly told her, seeing that the woman had been having this exact crisis in her mind for a while now. They all knew that there was little reason left to keep the compound open other than Scottie and Natasha's unwillingness to stop trying to find some way to reverse everything and bring it all back.

"I used to have nothing. And then I got this. This job... this family. And I was... I was better because of it. And even though... they're gone... I'm still trying to be better."

There was a soft pause before Scottie spoke.

"Maybe Steve is right." Both of them spun around to look at the girl in shock. She was the last person they expected to say that moving on was maybe something they should start doing. "I think we all might need to get a life."

"You first," Natasha joked, trying to make sense of what Scottie was telling her. Just before she could go to say anything on the situation, the screen at the table flashed up in front of them, an image of a man frantically waving at yelling at the camera appearing.

"Oh! Hi. Hi! Is anyone home? This is Scott Lang. We met a few years ago, at the airport? In Germany? I got really big, and I had my mask on. You wouldn't recognize me!"

Scottie squinted at the screen, confusion spread out across her face as the trio all started at it in amazement.

"Is this an old message?" Steve asked, the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly standing on edge. Scott Lang was dead. Five years ago when the snap had happened, he had been claimed as one of the casualties as poor Cassie Lang had been left without her dad.

Scottie felt something stir from inside her, that small ounce of hope that she had forgot she had was sparking up again as Natasha pointed out the time stamp on the video to the rest of them.

"It's the front gate."

Scottie blinked for a second, realising that maybe if he was back then others could be too.

"Holy shit."

___________

"Have you ever studied Quantum Physics?"

Scottie leaned against the table, her hand running over her face as she tried to figure out what the hell was happening. Scott seemed completely unaware that they were very confused and continued to yapper on in their ears.

"Only to make conversation," Natasha said, very flyaway. Scottie and Steve shared amused looks at the woman's comment knowing that it was perfectly in line with Natasha's personality to have done so.

"That's hot," Scottie joked, causing Natasha to send her a playful wink before turning their attention back to Scott. Scottie wasn't sure if it was because their names were similar - and she hated it when people had similar names as hers - but she had never really been particularly keen on the man before the snap and the fact he wasn't just getting to the point was making her ridiculously agitated.

"Alright. So... five years ago, right before Thanos, I was in a place called the Quantum Realm. The Quantum Realm is like its own microscopic universe. To get in there, you have to be incredibly small. Hope, she's my... She was my... She was supposed to pull me out. And then Thanos happened, and I got stuck in there."

Scottie felt her shoulders slump. Sure, she was glad that Scott had finally gotten out of what she assumed was a rough few years but it had just demolished her hope that the man had somehow been reversed from the effects of the snap. It hit her with the sad truth: someone who hadn't been taken in the snap wouldn't be the one to reverse it.

"I'm sorry. That must've been a very long five years," Natasha sympathised with the man, amazed that he had survived that and not gone insane. They might have only met the man for a few minutes but she had already known that he found it hard to sit still as it was. They had heard the stories about how hard adhering to his house arrest had been.

"Yeah, but that's just it. It wasn't. For me, it was five hours."

There was a long pause of silence as the trio all shared bewildered looks before turning back around to look at Scott in surprise. Five hours? Scottie wished that it had only been five hours for her, but every minute had felt like it lasted for longer than five hours to her.

"See, the rules of the Quantum Realm aren't like they are up here. Everything is unpredictable. Is that anybody's sandwich? I'm starving." He picked up Natasha's half eaten sandwich before ramming it into his mouth and turning back around. His eyes landed on the plate of Scottie's leftovers, which the girl quickly snatched to her chest. She wasn't about to let him eat her food, even if he had been stuck in a wormhole for five years... or hours?

"Scott, what are you talking about?" Steve almost snapped, answering Scottie's prayers of getting the Lang to finally get to the point of his story. He had been in the room for almost ten minutes and had successfully explained nothing to them.

"What I'm saying is, time works differently in the Quantum Realm. The only problem is right now, we don't have a way to navigate it. But what if we did? I can't stop thinking about it. What if, we could somehow control the chaos, and we could navigate it? What if there was a way to enter the Quantum Realm at a certain point in time but then exit at another point in time? Like... Like before Thanos."

Scottie looked at him for a moment before her eyes narrowed as she stared at the man in front of them, waiting on him to say he was just kidding or that he was being dramatic. When it didn't come, she couldn't help but let out an amazed chuckle.

"You can't be suggesting what I think you are..."

"Wait, are you talking about a time machine?" Steve interrupted her, his eyes wide at the concept that Scott was trying to pit across to them. Natasha straightened out as she looked towards Scottie to see that the girl was thinking exactly what she was thinking. If they could pull that off then... well, maybe they wouldn't be standing here in pain.

"No. No, of course not. No, not a time machine. It's more like a... Yeah, a time machine. I know it's crazy. But I can't stop thinking about it. There's gotta be some way... There's gotta be...some w... it's crazy."

"Scott, I get e-mails from a raccoon, so nothing sounds crazy anymore."

"So who do we talk to about this?"

_______

"Are you seriously telling me that your plan to save the universe is based on Back To The Future?"

Scottie was leaning against the outside wall of the log cabin that she had helped Tony and Pepper to build years prior. She had been unnaturally quiet in this conversation, her mind still running at 500 miles per hour as she tried to fully understand the argument that the men in front of her were having.

When Scott had suggested the idea of a time machine, she had originally thought that Tony would jump straight into the concept and get to work immediately like he had always done for any of her problems that she had encountered. It was on the car ride over that she realised the crucial difference in pre-snap Tony and post-snap Tony that was going to make this idea not happen; her little sister Morgan Stark.

Scottie wanted to be annoyed at Tony as soon as he started their current argument with Scott, but she knew exactly why the man wasn't exactly willing to run straight into just going back and changing the timeline they lived in. As much as she thought that she would hate him for not doing everything in his power to bring back her lover, she couldn't hate him. 

Scottie knew fine well that if she was in his position and time-travel meant losing Wanda, then it was a no-brainer for her either, just the way it was for Tony.

"No."

"Good. You had me worried there. 'Cause that'd be horse shit. That's not how quantum physics works," Tony told the man, knowing fine well that his plan was based around the stuff that he had seen in time travel movies in the past.

"Tony... We have to take a stand." Natasha finally interrupted, trying to get the man to think about things from their point of few. He might have moved on, but they all certainly hadn't.

"We did stand," Tony pointed out, a hint of bitterness still in his voice as he thought about how Thor had killed Thanos yet still couldn't bring everyone back. "And yet, here we are."

"I know you got a lot on the line. You got a wife, a daughter. But I lost someone very important to me. A lot of people did. And now, now we have a chance to bring her back. To bring everyone back. And you're telling me that won't even..."

"That's right, Scott, I won't even," Tony interrupted, his voice calm but loud over Scott's frantic yells of anger at the man. "I got a kid."

"Scottie's your kid too," Scott continued, trying to make the man sway to their point of view. Scottie raised her eyebrows as everyone turned to look at her for her input, even though nothing she said was going to change anyone's minds on the matter.

"I would do almost anything to bring Wanda back, but the one thing I can't do is risk losing my sister," Scottie softly told them all, not knowing until that moment that the small human running towards her was the reason that she might finally be moving on.

"Mommy told me to come and save you," Morgan told Tony as the man scooped her into his arms, propping her up on his hip before passing her over to Scottie so that she could say hi.

"Good job. I'm saved. I wish you'd come here to ask me something else. Anything else. Honestly, I... I missed you guys, it was... Oh, and table's set for six," Tony trailed off at the end, giving them a chance to rekindle the friendship that they all once had. But he knew that they wouldn't be able to look at him the same way after this.

"Tony, I get it. And I'm happy for you, I really am. But this is a second chance," Steve told Tony, still not really getting it despite his claims.

"I got my second chance right here, Cap. I can't roll the dice again. If you don't talk shop, you can stay for lunch."

As the three superheroes began to turn away, Morgan tugged on Scottie's sleeve with a small childish grin on her face - fully oblivious to the context of the argument that had just happened in front of her.

"Mommy says you don't get a choice about staying for lunch, Otter!"

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," Scottie told her, but there was a hesitation in her voice that Tony also noticed. Scottie hated that he wouldn't try to help, but she hated that she almost was glad he didn't even more.

Maybe Cap had been right, maybe it was time they moved on.