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If, in the depths of the five years of hell following Thanos’ snap, Tony Stark had been tasked with brainstorming a list of all the possible positive outcomes, he would not in his wildest blue-sky dreams have included the granddaughters of Howard Stark and Hank Pym becoming BFFs. Yet, here he was in his garage workshop by the lake, watching Cassie Lang and Morgan being, frankly, science sisters.
Once Tony and Scott had mended fences and gotten on the same page, they had come to be good pals, and now every time any of what Tony kiddingly termed the Ant Fam were nearby, they made a point of visiting. Hope Van Dyne seemed to relish tweaking her grumpy old dad by coming along, and had bonded with Pepper, finding they had many common interests. Right now, they were probably having tea and talking about some foreign film or obscure impressionist artist. Scott, surprisingly enough for a city guy and ex-con, liked to just get out and hike around the lake when he came over.
For his part, Tony was enjoying riding herd on the girls in the workshop. Cassie was the big sister, at least in years, though Morgan’s mind was so sharp she kept up with her older friend on many counts. Besides that, Morgan looked up to Cassie just like an older sibling, wanting to do everything she did, and try every new interest she had, from the crazy tiktok boy band du jour, to carnivorous plants. (Thankfully, Cassie had apparently not tried to talk her dad into blowing a Venus flytrap up to Little Shop of Horrors size…yet.)
Cassie was almost ready for college, and was scoping out schools on the east coast, hence in a position to lobby for a visit to ,i>chez Stark; she loved Tony’s garage workshop, grunge and all. At this particular moment, Tony was chilling with some granola and watching the science sisters argue good-naturedly over how to position the visual input modules of a little robot Morgan had cobbled together from a bucket of scraps Pepper had brought home from work for her.
“Farther front!” Morgan insisted. “She needs binocular vision, to judge distances and not run into stuff.”
“But more to the sides,” Cassie countered, “gives her a wider field of vision—if you want hers to be able to track she needs to be able to see more of her surroundings.”
Tony let them debate the pros and cons for a few more minutes, feeling like he had wandered into an R&D team throwdown in a conference room at SI (and feeling weirdly conflicted about seeing his baby girl in that kind of scenario). Finally, he glanced at the time display on his phone and stood, clapping his flesh and prosthetic hands to get their attention. “Okay, young geniuses, I hate to interrupt the flow of greatness, but I do have an impending appointment and I’m going to need my shed back. Mr. Barnes is coming over for a maintenance review.”
“Yay, Uncle Bucky!” Morgan cheered. Tony strove not to roll his eyes while his daughter babbled to Cassie about how much fun she had when the formerly-Winter Soldier came to visit. Honestly, Tony had been hesitant about letting Barnes hang around much, but Pepper had an inexplicable soft spot for him, and the guy insisted on giving Tony’s sketchy matchmaking skills all the credit for getting him and his man Wilson together. It had been an unexpected bonus that Morgan had taken to him and his vibranium arm instantly—or maybe not so unexpected. Considering that Morgan had grown up around heroes and demigods and assorted aliens, she treated Barnes just like she did anybody else, and he reacted with an almost tangible sense of ease. Taken as a whole, Tony, amazingly, trusted him with her.
Morgan carefully cleared her workspace and put everything back in its place (that was one trait she had definitely inherited from her mother, not her father) and Tony escorted them back to the house covered in grease and glory. His earlier surmisal was half right; Hope and Pepper were discussing art, but doing it over sangria. “You’re all welcome to stay around for dinner,” Pepper offered. “Tony probably won’t need all afternoon to tweak Bucky’s arm. I can raid the freezer and we can cook out. You won’t believe how Tony’s upgraded our grill.”
“Knowing him, I imagine I would believe it,” Hope laughed. “But no, we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Afraid your old man’ll disown you for fraternizing with Starks?” Tony teased, and Hope clearly repressed the impulse to give him a joking middle finger in response.
“He’s past that, I swear. We may even coax him to come along the next time we visit, although if you let him in your shed out there I may never be able to dislodge him. No, we have a fair drive back to the city, and a flight out first thing in the morning. Scott’s got some kind of thing he and dad are working on, and heaven forbid anything interfere with that.” She glanced past Tony’s shoulder toward the door out onto the porch. “Was Scott right behind you? It’s not surprising if he got distracted by something.”
Tony frowned. “He hasn’t been with us. I figured he was either with you two, or getting his ramble on.”
Pep shook her head. “The three of us walked around the house and chatted a little—I showed them the robotic dish sprayer you built—”
“Which impressed Scott to no end,” Hope deadpanned.
“And then I got out glasses and asked him if he wanted some sangria, but he politely declined—”
“Dad’s trying to cut back on alcohol,” Cassie put in. “He thinks he’s getting a paunch.”
“He just wandered around looking at things for a minute, books on the shelves, Morgan’s plants, then he slipped outside, so we figured he was coming out to join the robotics symposium in the garage,” Pepper finished with a worried look overtaking her face.
“Nope.” Tony turned back toward the door. “Bet he’s out by the lake pumping the local insect life for gossip, or what the hell ever it was he does with his rig. If he brought it with him, that is.”
“He brings it anywhere he and Cassie go.” Hope got to her feet. “Let me go check the trunk and see if he got it out.”
Cassie rolled her eyes. “He’s waaaaay too protective,” she groaned. ‘It’s like he thinks he may have to rescue me from aliens at any moment.”
“Girl-dads are like that,” Tony assured her. “Well, I guess dads period are, but being a girl-dad, that’s all I can speak personally to. Hey, FRIDAY, anything to add to the search for Lang?”
“Sorry, Boss, but not much. He did go to the trunk of his and Miss van Dyne’s rental car and remove a small case, which he then carried into the barn.”
“The barn?” Morgan gulped. “I guess he was going to put on his suit, but what if Gerald swallowed him? We need to call Dr. Abadi to come X-ray—”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions, Morgoona,” Tony cautioned. “And let’s not call the vet to make a house call and irradiate an alpaca to look for an errant superhero, just yet, okay?”
“I’m not picking up any human-sized or larger heat signatures or electromagnetic fields that can’t be accounted for,” FRIDAY added, “so I would surmise Mr. Lang did shrink, rather than enlarge.”
Hope returned and Pepper directed her to the downstairs bathroom to change into her Wasp gear. “Let’s suit up and take a turn over the lake and scan, honey,” Tony said to Pepper.
“I’ll get into nooks and crannies in here,” Hope said as she emerged. “Cassie, I’ll have my comms on, so let’s stay in touch so you don’t step on me.”
“We can check upstairs,” Morgan chimed in. “That way no risk of stepping on anybody. Then we can rappel down from the window and go search the barn.”
“No rappelling!” Pepper ordered on her way out the door behind Tony, who was on the porch activating Iron Man Mark 86.
“If you guys didn’t want me to learn, you shouldn’t have let Peter set up the rig!” Morgan retorted, already halfway up the stairs with Cassie hot on her heels.
The search parties reconvened on the porch some time later, with no results all around. Even Hope and Cassie were beginning to look alarmed. “He’s not out around the lake,” Tony reported, “but then again, at ant size, Fri might not be able to pick him up or distinguish him from all the actual bugs and other life.”
Hope threw up her hands. “I’m completely at a loss. If he thought there was a real threat suddenly turning up, he…” She let out an angry huff. “I was going to say he should have come to me, but no, he would definitely have tried to handle it himself.”
“So that line of thought isn’t leaving the station,” Tony agreed.
“Scott is easily distracted, though, like you said,” Pepper tried to reassure Hope, “so maybe he just lost track of time, and he’ll turn up with that embarrassed look he’s so good at, around dark.” She put all her CEO skill into a practiced, optimistic smile that Tony knew so well, the one she could break out at the drop of a hat no matter how dire the circumstances actually were. “Go on in and change while I defrost the patties. Looks like you’ll be staying for dinner after all, and maybe overnight. We’ve got room for the crew of a spaceship, so we can definitely put you three up.”
“C’mon,” Morgan said and took Cassie’s hand. “I can show you my new plants while daddy burns the burgers. Oops, did I say that out loud?” Tony arched an eyebrow and Cassie giggled despite the gravity of the circumstance. “Mom says taking care of living things will teach me responsibility. Guess I have to prove I won’t kill Venus flytraps and sundews before I graduate to a kitten.”
“You’re ahead of me already, you brat,” Cassie joked as they went inside. “I have to keep assuring dad I’ve got the terrarium they’re in sealed so his ant buddies can’t wander in and get eaten. All I’ve got right now are a couple of pitcher plants and a pinguicula.”
“Oh, I want one of those so bad. I love the name. it sounds like it ought to be a vampire plant. Pingui-cula,” Morgan finished with an exaggerated Bela Lugosi voice.
Alone on the porch, Tony located the remote for the grill and summoned it from their storage shed. While it rolled along the gravel path across the yard, parked, and fired up, he racked his brain for places they had not yet looked or possible explanations for Lang’s absence. Yes, he was retired, but the sense of responsibility for others was never going to fade away. In a few moments, Hope re-emerged and leaned against the porch railing beside him, staring out at the lake. “I think I understand a little of how dad felt, when mom went missing,” she said quietly. Tony nodded; while they had worked together to undo the snap, Scott had shared the story of Janet van Dyne becoming lost in the quantum realm, and a brief precis of how she had been found and rescued after being thought dead for years. “It’s overreaction, I’m certain, but…”
“Doesn’t make your feelings any less valid.”
“Since when did Tony Stark become so good at emotional support and confirmation?”
“Since he went to therapy and had to actually pay attention in order to continue a decent life,” he snarked back, just as the sound of tires coming up the driveway heralded the appearance of a familiar old sedan. “Pep!” he called back into the house. “Barnes is here. We got a dozen extra burgers?”
Pepper nudged the screen door open with her foot, both hands occupied with two trays of food. “Half a dozen,” she returned, with a smile of thanks for Hope who took the platter of skewered kabobs. “He can eat a vegetable or two.”
Tony snorted. Only his Pep could be equally bold in the face of a bunch of rich old white men on a board of directors, a mad Titan at the head of an alien armada, and the man who once was the most feared assassin on earth. “Barn Door!” he greeted the big guy getting out of the car. “As usual, you’ve managed to land feet first in the middle of, shall we say, interesting times.” He started to add watch where you step, you might squash an Avenger, but that seemed inappropriate on multiple levels. Ha, see there Pep, I do have some self-control in my old age, he thought.
“Oh dam—darn,” Bucky amended when he spied Morgan popping out the door, and put out one arm to give her a hug. “Interesting times that involve a barbecue? Oh, and hi, Miss Van Dyne.”
“I told you to call me Hope,” she said with a lightness that belied the concern that still showed on her face. “We seem to have misplaced Scott. Or he’s misplaced himself, maybe.”
“Huh. Not that I know him that well, but from what Sam's said about him, the misplacing-himself part sounds valid.” Bucky greeted Pepper and was introduced to Cassie, before he and Tony headed off to the workshed. While he tinkered with the arm and got it back to flawless functionality, Tony explained what little they had pieced together about Scott’s disappearance. Bucky chewed his lower lip in thought. “Think you said if he shrank too far he could get lost in that other dimension thing, right? Any chance that coulda happened, by accident or on purpose?”
Tony shrugged and closed up the last access plate, sealing it securely. “No idea. That’s the problem. Anyway, everybody thinks better on a full stomach, hence the grill, and yes, you’re welcome to stay and eat, though Pep is going to go mom-mode and nag you to eat veggies.”
Bucky laughed. “I haven’t gotten mom'ed for a long time, although I do get a little of it from Sam’s sister now and then. Small price to pay for a good meal. Thanks.”
“You and Wilson copacetic?” Tony asked casually as he wiped his hands and they locked up the shed.
“Oh yeah.” The Winter Soldier’s stony glare was nowhere to be seen in the soft little smile that overtook Barnes’ face. “Yeah, we’re good. I won’t ever stop thanking you for your help on that score.” He chuckled at Tony’s usual protests, and they went inside to wash their hands.
When Tony stepped out of the bathroom, Bucky was standing still at the doorway into the living room. “Kids leave the TV set on?” he asked. “I hear something weird. Sounds like—Sam and I were watching a bunch of black and white horror movies from the fifties the other night, and you know the one where the guy turns into a fly and winds up stuck in the spiderweb?”
“Classic of the genre,” Tony agreed and reached for his best high pitch. “Help me, help meeee!”
“Yeah, that. That’s what it sounds like, that teeny high voice, except…” Bucky cocked his head, as if kicking super-soldier senses into high gear. ”Those words it’s saying are definitely not from any old movie. Cussin' a blue streak, more like.” He began to walk slowly forward, pausing every couple of steps to listen again. Pepper stepped in and started to say dinner was ready, but Tony shushed her.
Both followed Bucky as he moved silently across the living room to the window that currently housed Morgan’s latest passion. Half a dozen little pots sat in the fading evening glow, each in a saucer of pebbles to maintain their moisture. Two were Venus flytraps, the other four various types of sundews. The last beams of daylight made the droplets of sticky sap on the tiny hairs that adorned the sundews’ leaves sparkle like diamonds, their beauty belying their deadly nature, deadly at least to insects— Tony’s brain stuttered to a stop when he noticed one sundew had a long leaf curled tightly around something, something that was struggling hard enough to make the slender stem sway as though it sat outdoors in a stiff wind. Pepper spotted it the next moment. “Morgan!” she called. “Get my sharp little garden shears, and hurry!”
A minute later, Morgan hurried in with Cassie and Hope hot on her heels. “Mom! What are you—” Without a word, Pepper pointed to the leaf, already moving less dramatically than before. Hope gasped, and Morgan’s eyes widened; then she dove for the plant herself.
She put one hand under the leaf and with the other snipped the stem at dirt level. Her small fingers moved deftly to peel back some of the tendrils, before she yelped and dropped the whole thing, and as if appearing by magic, Scott lay sprawled on the floor in full Ant-Man suit. His helmet was closed, but as they all watched the face shield retracted to reveal his face red and panting. “Note to self, still not into breathplay,” he panted.
Cassie winced. “Really, dad, did you have to go there? Gross.”
Hope knelt beside him and helped him remove his helmet. Unnervingly, the sturdy material of the suit showed several burned-looking patches. “Guess I provided the gathering’s entertainment?” he asked and scrambled to his feet with her support. “Sorry about that. Hi, Barnes.”
“Hey yourself, buddy,” Bucky returned. “Exactly what the hell did you think you were doin’ there?”
“Hey! I’d been promising Cassie I’d shrink down and take some video, give her a bugs-eye view from inside a Venus flytrap, so she’d be careful with those nasty things—”
“They aren’t nasty!” Cassie retorted.
“How’d you like to be squashed and suffocated then, huh punkin? Anyway, I promised, but I keep forgetting, so when I saw Morgan’s little garden here, I thought Hey, I’ll do it now, while the ladies chat and Stark enlists my kid in his plot of world domination.”
The grin and wink he shot Tony’s way conveyed his sarcasm, and Tony openly snickered in response. “She’s vital! I need her hands on this project.”
“I had a plan! I did the research, even. Shouldn’t have taken any time. I was going to shrink down, hop into the flytrap, shoot a couple of minutes of it closing, which, creepy, and then bounce.” He pointed to the Venus flytrap’s lovely lethal pinkish-red blooms, right beside the sundew from which he had just been rescued. “I miscalculated the jump trajectory, though, and landed on the sundew. No big deal, right? Except that shit is sticky.”
“Language, Mr. Lang,” Pepper put in, though the quirk of her lips told Tony she was snarking right along with everyone else.
“Yeah, that’s mom’s word in this house, only,” Morgan concurred, and Pepper turned to her open-mouthed.
“Sticky,” Scott repeated. “Touch one, eeuugh, sticky. Pull away, but then I hit more, and more sticky, and just, ick. If I’d jumped right back out, I probably would’ve been fine. The strength in the suit is more than enough for one small plant. Except like a bug, I made the mistake of moving around too much and I got stuck in an, um, awkward position, where I couldn’t get the leverage to take off, and couldn’t reach the controls to enlarge. Then the leaf started rolling me up. The digestive enzymes started secreting and that sh-, ah, stuff burns, so I had to close my helmet to keep it off my face and out of my eyes, which didn’t make breathing any easier, because it was squeezing me like a freaking boa constrictor. How’d you guys find me?”
“Super-soldier hearing,” Tony said with an appreciative tilt of his head toward Bucky, who shrugged.
“Just saw The Fly,” he explained.
“Ohhhh, gotcha.” Scott brightened. “Well, thanks, and do I smell food?”
Hope let out a sigh Tony had heard from Pepper many, many times over the years, a bit exasperated but mostly fond. “Go get out of that suit and wash up first. Dad’s not going to enjoy fixing it after he hears what a dumb stunt you pulled.”
“I’ll fix it myself, thank you!” Scott protested as she and Cassie steered him toward the bathroom.
The rest of the group exchanged looks. Bucky finally broke the silence by chuckling, “Day in the life of heroes, huh?”
“Absolutely,” Pepper agreed. “Rescue a miniscule Avenger from the jaws of mother nature, then proceed to dinner without breaking stride. In other words, come on, everybody, let’s eat.”
The group gathered on the porch to eat and enjoy the fresh air and sunset. Bucky and Cassie got acquainted while Morgan chattered away at them both between bites of her burger. Pepper and Hope were back onto their art discourse. “I really am sorry for worrying everybody,” Scott said quietly to Tony. “It’s just…I’ve let Cassie down so many times, that when I can do something right for her, even if it’s something small, I feel-- driven to do it, kind of. It’s not as if I’m like you Stark, who can save the universe—”
Tony cut him off. “Don’t go there, Lang. Don’t make me out to be something I’m not. I’m computer literate, I spend time online, and I know what people say about me; that I’m a spoiled rich guy who had to learn to be self-sacrificing.” As Scott tried to protest, Tony rolled on. “Appearances to the contrary, that’s bullshit. I had that ’throw yourself on the grenade, Mildred’ mindset down pat, quite a while back. I didn’t need to learn how to die for something. I needed to learn how to live for something. As far as the purple asshole goes: I did the only thing I could see to do in the moment, but that doesn’t mean I was happy about it, or eager to do it. If not for Pepper, I wouldn’t be here to enjoy the fruits of it. She got me one more second chance. You got one too, and a very wise man once told me not to waste those. So don’t push yourself to be perfect. Just be there for your kid. You’ve helped me out a lot, learning how to be a dad as Morgan’s gotten older, so let me throw a crumb of advice your way, for what it’s worth.”
Scott nodded thoughtfully. “Point taken. Thanks, Tony. It’s good having you as a pal.”
Tony laughed. “Haven’t heard that particular thing very often in my life.”
“You ought to,” Scott insisted. “You sell yourself short, buddy, you really do.” After a long moment of quiet, he added. “So, what’re you living for now?”
Tony’s reply was interrupted when the girls decided they wanted to make s’mores. He pulled out the remote to turn the grill temperature up to perfect marshmallow-toasting levels, and Bucky volunteered to help them find the best sticks, since his keen super-soldier eyes could find them even in the gathering dark. Both men watched the three walk into the night, Morgan dancing along holding the metal hand that had dealt more death than anyone could probably imagine; then Tony nodded toward her, and Pepper, and the lake, and simply said, “This.”