scott x hope oneshots

rising from ashes

Hope wasn't totally sure of what was going on around her. All that she knew, all that she could remember, was that one minute she, her dad and her mom had been preparing to pull Scott out of the Quantum Realm, and the next –

The next, her arm had started to turn to ash. She knew that much.

But there again - she also knew that it hadn't.

Hope could remember her own flesh, her own parents, even, seemingly disintegrating before her eyes, and yet she could also remember that not happening at all. It was almost as if there were two alternate realities playing out in her head and dancing around behind her eye sockets, weaving threads of confusion and doubt and uncertainty.

It was, to say the least, headache inducing.

But, fuck, there were bigger problems at hand. Like the fact that Luis' van, the one containing their Quantum Tunnel and therefore her boyfriend, had disappeared without a trace from the rooftop they were currently standing on.

Because apparently it was now possible for very large, very not-automated vehicles to vanish on their own from plain sight faster than the laws of physics would allow.

None of them were buying it.

Duh.

Because something wasn't right. Hope could feel it. There had been a shift in the atmosphere, a change in the very particles that surrounded her, and it didn't make sense.

Hope – and, well, Hank and Janet, too – relied on facts and science, and they were kind of hard to obtain when her brain wouldn't stop flickering back and forth between images of the molecular disintegration she either had or hadn't gone through.

Because, she supposed, what if that –

What if that had actually happened?

Maybe Hope wasn't losing her grip on reality after all.

Maybe the molecular stability of the universe had - for one tiny second – crumbled and collapsed in on itself, causing everyone's cells to momentarily dissipate into nothingness. Maybe.

Although, as Hank had pointed out to her, that shouldn't have been possible in the first place.

"Hope. That's not how atoms – that's not how the universe behaves, Hope.

"If for one, just one, nanosecond the atomic structure of our universe had become jeopardised, we wouldn't be standing here now. The universe would have ceased to exist, Hope, because mass molecular redistribution on that scale would have resulted in time, reality and the physicality of everything you see now imploding."

"I know that, Dad."

And she did know all that. She was an expert in Quantum Mechanics, for god's sake, and Hank's condescension was most definitely not helping her in figuring out what the hell had gone on.

Still, Hope wasn't one to allow herself to be phased by the doubt of others (something she had already proven to Hank upon graduating from MIT early, with no input or support from him whatsoever, thank you very much). Which is how she found herself pacing the length of the roof, gazing out over the San Francisco skyline while verbally sparring with her parents.

"Okay, so we've come to the conclusion that something weird definitely happened, right?" It was like Scott said – if you want to do something right, you make a list. And right now, the first thing that Hope could think of was the fact that all three of them knew that something was amiss; whether that something was scientific or not they weren't so sure, but, hey, it was a start.

"Right."

"So the next thing we know is that both Scott and the Quantum Tunnel have disappeared. Any ideas?"