Is Love Forever? [1]

"Please stay with me..."

 ~~~Seconds before Hope came back~~~

From the moment Hope went subatomic, Scott was worried. No one knew how she would be affected by it. 

"How long until we bring her back?" Natasha asked Bruce. "Well, it will be about five minutes for her, but we'll bring her back in fifteen seconds." 

It was the longest fifteen seconds of Scott's life. He held his breath as Bruce counted down the seconds till re-entry. "3...2...1," Bruce counted down, and then he flipped the switch on the control board. 

Hope appeared on the platform, and Scott breathed a sigh of relief. But his relief was short-lived as he saw her start to collapse. He ran to her, but it was as if he was running in slow motion. He couldn't get to her fast enough. She collapsed on the platform, but before her head could touch the floor, Scott was kneeling next to her. 

"Hope, can you hear me?" No response. She was out cold. Tony ran up next to him and took the GPS off her. 

The rest was a blur to Scott. He saw someone wheel a stretcher towards them and Hope being placed on it. Someone wheeled her to another room. All he knew was that he wasn't going to leave her side until he knew she was safe. 

He followed Tony to the med-bay, walking next to the stretcher. They walked through a door and entered a room that looked suspiciously like a hospital room. Tony walked over to the other side of the room and started to look at something on a computer. The room was strange. Half of it looked like a traditional hospital room, while the other half looked like what Scott imagined the lab at Stark Tower to look like.

Scott lifted Hope off the stretcher and placed her gently on the hospital bed. Tony walked over to him and asked him. "Do you know what happened?" 

"No, I have no idea." He answered honestly. "Friday, do a med scan."

"Of course," Friday replied. A blue light swept across Hope twice and then disappeared. "Read off the results," Tony said. "Heart rate and pulse faster than normal, and brain waves show that she is in some form of shock," Friday informed them. 

"But what could have triggered the shock?" Tony asked himself. Scott was about to say something but decided against it. Was it possible that she had an attack while she was in the quantum realm? He didn't want to tell Tony about the attacks, but what if he needed to? Hope told him that she didn't want anyone else to know, but if it was for her safety, shouldn't he say something? 

Tony went back to his computer and plugged something into it. It was Hope's quantum GPS. Tony took the opportunity to explain why he had it. "I installed a camera into it. We can see everything she saw from her perspective. The only problem is that the computer isn't compatible with it, and I don't have the program downloaded yet." For the next ten to fifteen minutes, both Tony and Scott worked on some way to watch the footage. 

A few minutes in, Scott asked, "Random question, why is the room split in half?" "When I designed the room, I wanted the patient to feel like they were in a normal environment so they wouldn't be stressed," Tony explained. 

"That wouldn't be Hope's case..." Scott thought, recalling that day from so long ago. Eventually, they pulled up the video. And they were about to watch it, but then Natasha came in. "Stark, something's wrong with the quantum GPS program." 

He groaned, muttered something under his breath, and started to follow her. He turned around and told Scott, "Watch the video, see if you can find anything useful." And then walked out the door with Natasha. 

Scott played the video and started to watch. The footage began when the suit formed around Hope. Scott guessed that the camera only worked when she had the suit on. He continued watching and was confused to see where she had ended up. But it didn't take him long to recognize the place. It was the parking lot that he had been in when he entered the quantum realm. 

He watched as Hope looked down at her GPS, and couldn't believe the date he saw. October 22, 2018. Why would she go back to that day? Here he had thought she might have been sent back in time to some awful event. Like the sinking of the Titanic or the Hindenburg disaster. 

But it was something much worse. The day her whole life had fallen apart. The day that he had abandoned her. Abandoned her while she went through heartbreak and pain. He watched as Hope ran to the van, yelling for them to stop, but no one could hear her. She stopped and watched as her dad dusted away. 

Scott paused the video. He couldn't keep seeing her in so much pain. "Thanks for stopping it." Scott turned and saw Hope attempting to pull herself into a sitting position. He walked over to her. It was a relief to see her awake. 

"Hey, don't strain yourself." He said, helping her lay back on the bed. "How do you feel?" 

"Not the best, but better than before." The last thing she remembered was collapsing. She didn't even know where she was. Scott watched as she looked around the room and her panic start to rise. And he knew why. 

"It's okay. You're not in a hospital." He assured her. "Where am I?" She asked him, obviously not satisfied. Scott could have been lying to her to make her feel safe. "You are still at the compound, in the med-bay." 

She seemed to calm down, but even the thought of being in the hospital had taken a toll on her. The last time she had been in a hospital, Micheal had attacked, and she didn't see Scott for another two years. 

"How long was I out for?" She asked. "Maybe forty-five minutes." Hope could see a question in his eyes, and she knew it. "I don't think I had an attack, and even if I did, I don't remember."  

"I don't think so either, but you were upset about something when you came back." 

He could see that she didn't want to talk about it, so he dropped the subject. Without warning, she started to get up and tried to stand. But as she did, her knees buckled, and Scott caught her. He laid her back on the bed, getting more concerned about her. 

"Hope, please try to rest." Hope could see how concerned he was about her and decided to lay back on the pillow. "Scott, stay with me?" She asked him. "Of course." He smiled.    

                                                                           Author's Note

Thanks for reading another chapter! And shoutout to one of my best friends, Kylie, for reading this story!