Archive of Our Own

Hank Pym sits secluded in his home office, surrounded by pieces of his own life and memories. Little pieces of papers and journals throughout the years.

His wife is dead, and his daughter looks at him with distrust in her eyes. She doesn’t blame Hank for Janet’s death. (Hank hopes she doesn’t blame him for Janet’s death.) But he feels as much on as island as his daughter about dealing with or talking about Janet and pities the girl for having such a terrible father that he’s scared to talk to her about his own failures.

In his exhausted, grief-addled brain, all Hank feels like he can do right now is to gather these documents and memories into a file or “manuscript” of sorts for his daughter, to help her understand the kind of woman her mother was, and why Hank feels like such a malfunction.

He picks up one of his grandmother, Angela Pym’s, diaries, choosing an entry closer to the middle of the book, where she recorded her reaction to his birth.

In leaving his daughter a recorded manuscript of who he is and why he is, a birth seems like a pretty good place to start.

Jan 16, 1950

Dear Warren, (After the death of Hank’s grandfather, Angela named all of her journals after him, to continue “talking” to him about events in her life, Hank thinks with a soft smile.)

Happy news! The baby’s been born with no complications. Healthy and loud, inquisitive and playful, even at the hospital!

Of course, Bradley and Doris are worried about him being too fun, fuddy-duddies that they are. They’re happy, and they love him, obviously. He’s their only child, after all. But those kids just don’t know how to have any fun with a baby.

They finally decided on a name, though.

Henry Jonathan Pym.

Isn’t that just marvelous, Warren? You’d be so proud of him if you could see him for yourself.

All my love,

Angela

--

Jan 26, 1950

Dear Warren,

Henry (Hank, as we’ve taken to calling him) should win the award for brightest baby in the universe! Just today, he looked right at me as I looked over into his crib. Now, to those who are ordinary like us, that may not seem like much. But I assure you, he was assessing me as he looked at me. Thinking. As if I were a museum exhibit! (And with my age, who knows? ;) )

And then he cooed and tried to sit up!

What do you make of that, Warren? 10 days old and already an explorer like his grandfather! We’ll make a Pym of him yet, despite Bradley’s no-nonsense ways.

All my love,

Angela

--

Mar 31, 1950

Dear Warren,

Well, Bradley found out about my constant doting on the baby and he didn’t let me see him for an entire month! He says he doesn’t want me to spoil Baby Hank, but I suspect conspiracy. He obviously doesn’t want me reading Asimov to Baby Hank while the baby lays down to sleep.

But Hank loves Asimov! He craves it! He wants fiction and adventure!

But you don’t just want to listen to the ramblings of an old woman, do you, Warren, you old dog? ;) You want to hear about what Baby Hank did today!

I was whispering Asimov’s stories to him, (I tried, I really tried to stop, but he wouldn’t even look at me until I picked Asimov up and started reading!) and his EYES. LIT. UP. as I spoke of robots and their rights and…. Sometimes, I wonder if Hank’s really Bradley’s son, the way Hank looks so happy to have creativity stimulating him, while our own son Bradley holds practicality in such high regard.

Happiness to whichever star you landed on, Warren.

All my love,

Angela

--

Apr 19, 1950

Dear Warren,

Short today! (Good thing too, as I always prattle, don’t I?)

Doris and I got into a bit of a squabble today. She accused me of “filling Hank’s head with fiction.” (Her actual words, Warren!) I told her that a baby needs some imagination growing up as their level of abstract thought can never be as high without it. Now, I know, Warren, that Bradley and Doris aren’t stupid or even extremely uncreative, but their seriousness dampens the house, Warren. It really does.

And upstairs, from his crib, you could barely just make out Baby Hank’s first word: “ ‘Mov!” after Asimov. I’m not one to gloat, Warren, but…

You should have seen her face!

All my love,

Angela

Hank carefully thumbs through Angela’s diaries, until he stops at another entry, where Angela talks about his early interest in scientific knowledge. Shocked that he barely remembers and curious as to the year, Hank looks at the date of the entry.

June 23, 1951

He was one-and-a-half when this was written.

Hank slumps backward in his desk chair for a moment. It’s funny how, when gathering documents and videos to explain who you are, you end up learning more about yourself in the process. He gently places a bookmark in Angela’s diary, keeping the page, and sets the diary down. He picks up Brad Pym’s journal, wondering if his father has recorded a similar incident around the same date as Angela’s entry.

29 September, 1951

Mom is right. Hank is the smartest kid in the world. (I won’t say universe. Until it’s proven, I refuse to believe in life out there.)

Regardless, four months ago, Hank started taking gadgets apart. The electronic (electronic!) Dictaphone twins, the old Hoover vacuum cleaner…. He even tried climbing into the new Frigidaire Mom bought until we found him. He babbled something like “wanting to find the coils.”

And yes, most kids take things apart. But do most kids put them back again in working order? Do most kids, when making a mistake of how they go back together, take it back apart, look more closely and then correct those mistakes while putting the gadgets together again?

I didn’t think so.

Hank even told me what I was doing wrong with my Simon computer, when I was having trouble with it. And his favorite books are Mom’s science fiction books (unfortunately) and science textbooks read to him. He’s already trying to sound out the words, too, teaching himself how to read it for himself.

The toys he prefers are mechanical or even robotic in nature, and he will play “Doctor” with them, nursing them back to health. We’ve even caught him trying to do the same with insects.

He’s definitely going into medicine or engineering. He’s not going into quack fields of “science”, where there’s more theories floating around than tangible results. I won’t let my son be called crazy like my parents always were.

He’ll be more than just a Pym. He’ll be a legacy.

Brad Pym

Hank sets Brad’s journal down, sliding a shocked hand down his face. He doesn’t remember being so young when he first got into science, but he supposes it makes sense. His earliest memory is his fascination at Angela’s use of actual scientific discoveries and projections when plotting out her next science fiction novel. Hank smiles fondly at the still-picture memories of sitting at the kitchen table as his grandmother explained all the wonderful yet at times foreboding things science could do, things she explored in her stories.

She was the one who got Hank his first personal computer for his twelfth birthday, from money she pooled from her publication royalties. It was the LINC computer, capable of mostly lab instrument interaction.

“For a growing scientist,” she said with a wink.

It didn’t take long for Hank to design a rudimentary keyboard out of the revived and reprogrammed circuits and transistors from Brad’s old 1950 Simon computer.

His parents and Angela were over the moon when they realized their child could do that, Hank remembers.

He looks through his old boxes with his old Junior High School documents. Finding an example of his typed inputs into his computer that he’d eventually been able to print, Hank adds the printed page to the file he’s giving to his daughter.

May 23, 1962: Hushed Kitchen Convo Between Mom and Grandma, Typed in the Living Room

Doris, please. He’s doing fine in school. His teachers just don’t know how to cultivate the mind of a prodigy. They’re used to kids who think like them.

That’s just it, though, Mom. He’s that way at home too!

He’s a normal kid, Dorrie.

(sounds exasperated) He’s energetic and hyperactive and goofy one minute, and then he’s trying to jump off the roof to test mechanical wings and he’s talking about destinies and self-aggrandizing…. And it doesn’t help that you’re the only one he’ll listen to most of the time.

(sounds irritated--new emotion from her) He wants to be creative. And why shouldn’t he? Imagination is the springboard of scientific progression. (like that—need to remember that) Most inventions today were thought of by artisans and creative types. It goes hand in hand, Dorrie. Now hush, he’s typing in the other room. That means he can likely hear us.

(sighs) Just…please tell him he needs to focus in school. No one will listen to even a genius if he doesn’t have education behind him.

(breath through her nose) Alright. Though, I still think school’s where you go to be stifled.

Mom!

Okay, okay. I’ll tell him. (walks into living room—squatting down in front of me) Hey, Hank.

Hey.

Your mom says the school wants you to be like other kids.

Yeah.

Do you want to be like other kids?

(I don’t know how to answer—I don’t)

(breath through her nose again) Hank, listen to me. I know you’re inspired in your science through our talks about what I should include in my science fiction novels…. Hank? Are you listening?

(nod)

Okay. Well…. (sighs) Remember this, Hank. And I want you to remember it well, even as I’m asking you to focus on doing your schoolwork as well as your own projects. You’re not supposed to be like other kids. Even if you were born thinking the same way as them. Individuality is what makes the world interesting. And you’re not like your parents—or even me.

(wince—she catches it—hand on my head—slides down to cup my cheek)

Hank, a brain like yours is destined to change the world. And that’s not like everybody else.

Hank was still twelve when Angela died, taking her inherent ability to bring his mood swings down to a minimum with her. So Hank retreated into his own mind as a result, becoming serious and practical as a way to prevent his wild swings without his grandmother there to understand him….

He manages to find another example of the typed dictation he’d perform as a type of comfort against his abnormal behavior throughout childhood. That, and it helped later with his memory problems, so he could remember the things he wanted to, and forget the things he didn’t.

This page, though, is from Hank’s time in university undergrad, while talking to one of his professors about his plans for his science.

Aug 9, 1969: Meeting with Professor Eisenberg, Typed in His University Office.

Alright, Pym, I called you in here for a reason.

Yes?

I understand how people like you…well, you seek out university as a means to avoid going to Southeast Asia and the whole Siancong conflict.

(not avoiding the war—childhood diagnosis/past erratic behavior in school might have kept me from admission to the military—hope to use uni to provide ways toward non-lethal conflict resolution through science)

Can you stop typing for a minute and actually engage in what I have to say, Pym?

I’m listening.

(sighs) Why did I have to be the one who…. All of your professors agree. Hank. Can I call you Hank?

(no) Sure.

Hank, all of us agree. Your majors…. You treat science as if it’s some foreign tapestry that only you can figure out. Like you alone will someday hold the answers to the universe.

(don’t know how to answer)

And then we find out you’re concurrently enrolled in another college, double majoring there as well. Biochemistry and Genetics, I believe?

Yes, sir.

And here, you’re majored in both Quantum Physics and Entomology?

Yes, sir.

What do you hope to gain from all of this? Genetically-engineered bugs who travel through time?

Can I speak candidly, sir?

This is a private meeting, Pym. You can speak as candidly as you like, even though you like hide behind your personal computer and keyboard.

“Genetically-engineered bugs who travel through time” is a ridiculously mediocre notion.

(frowns—takes exactly two minutes and thirty-four seconds to talk again) You know, your friend Richards is worried about you. He thinks you’re stretching yourself thin.

That’s something we both do, sir. Like a game of “who learned the most today?”

Well, he’s majoring in Astrophysics and Robotic Engineering.

(silence—realize he’s waiting for an answer) I don’t know what you’re getting at, sir.

What I’m getting at, is that he will have results for his majors. You won’t. You keep saying you’ll change the world. But it’s already unlikely you’ll change the world, statistically speaking. Add in your terrible choices for majors in that second college, on top of your terrible attitude toward education and authority…. Grandeur shouldn’t be the reason you pursed science as a career, is what I’m “getting at.” What is it you always say…? “Imagination is the springboard of scientific progression.” Well, it’s also the death of scientific realization.

(want to ask if that’s why he became a teacher—want to make Dad proud, though—decide to say nothing)

Pym? Are you listening?

(still can’t answer—too angry about Grandma’s words being twisted by someone who just learned to breathe though his mouth this morning—still working on the nose)

You’ve barely said two words, Hank.

Tesla.

What?

Einstein. Two words, Professor.

Hank, let’s not—

Kurie. There’s three words for you, sir.

You’re free to go, Pym. I can’t talk to someone who refuses to pay attention whenever someone talks to him. Who shuts down every time someone tells him he’s no more special than anyone else. Give Richards my regards when you leave.

Hank picks up one of his old lab journals, vaguely pleased to find it’s from when he first started his job at SHIELD and records his first meeting of his later friend Howard Stark, his discovery of the Pym Particles, and the research into the origin and benefits of ant cooperation. The organization holds sour memories for him, sure, but he’s achieved some great things during his time there as well, not the least of which being…but he’s getting ahead of himself.

He needs to remember to keep his thoughts slower. More organized.

So he focuses on placing the lab journal entries in the file with the other documents.

June 3, 1978: SHIELD Lab Journal #1

SHIELD’s lab is bigger—emptier—than when I was working with Reed, but I finally couldn’t stomach looking at Reed anymore. It hurt too much to remind myself of that time.

I can at least talk to him on the phone, though, so that part of our friendship is easy.

And at least I’ve met Howard Stark now. Face-to-face. And he’s better than Mitchell Carson. Bleh.

I trust Howard. It’s hard to pin down why exactly, but I think his practicality and his mind are a great grounding for me the way Reed’s was in college. But without the memories of actual college swirling around us and distracting me from my work.

Speaking of my work, my crazy ant farm, finally dubbed “The Mad House”, is giving me ideas about how to put my future Pym Particles to use….

Hank.

--

Jul 8, 1978: SHIELD Lab Journal #36

I finally did it! What I’ve been dreaming about since college. The Pym Particles are complete, I can shrink to as small as it takes to interact with my ants, and best of all, going back to college for Cybernetics helped me to create a helmet that “speaks” to my Mad House through impulses. Images and even some words that I think can communicate with my ants in ways not thought possible before.

This type of communication can help soldiers on the battlefield. It can help reach a person in a coma. It can….

But I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.

The next thing to do is to complete my actual suit, so that I don’t have to worry about my Particles in the hands of a SHIELD agent, where they can dissect my work and bastardize it into a weapon. Not to mention the fact that I need to work on a way to change the Particles from a gas form into a more controlled liquid form.

Wish me luck.

Hank.

Hank smiles fondly at his pictures of the original Ant-Man suit. Despite everything afterward, he regards this time with affection, because without Howard and SHIELD, he would’ve wallowed in his first wife’s death forever, with no path toward helping to take down the tyrants responsible.

His fingers find a journal entry of his, from back when he was eleven. It talks about some of his past directing him toward entomology and some of his relationship with his parents.

He decides its best placement is right after his first SHIELD entry.

Apr 3, 1961

Mom and Dad say I’m good at science. That it’s a gift.

I guess.

They want me to direct my mind toward engineering or medicine. I mean, I like the subjects alright. They have my passing interest. But why can’t I be like the other kids at school, at least sometimes? When they look at me like “There’s goes that Hank Pym again. The weird kid who plays with bugs.”

I just want to be normal.

Hank.

Hank lets out a shaky breath as his fingers skim over his lab entry from six months after he joined SHIELD.

He doesn’t read it—

Can’t read it—

Won’t read it—

He remembers to breathe in. Breathe Out. Slower thoughts. More organized.

Hands shaking, he places the journal entry where it needs to go and moves on.

Jan 7, 1979: SHEILD Lab Journal #219

New girl today. A “Miss Janet van Dyne.”

I don’t like her.

Not because she’s a woman. Because she’s awful.

She’s flippant, and too concerned with fashion and makeup, and she’s childish, and she’s in over her head in the professional sense. Fun-loving has no room to be serious, high-class children have no focus, and flippancy can never work in a career. She looks like my late wife, too. And I can’t handle that.

But Carson has assigned her to be my lab assistant.

I don’t need a lab assistant. I have a lab partner. Multiple, in fact. And, of course, they all love her.

It’s almost as if he assigned this new young and excitable SHIELD agent to be my babysitter. He doesn’t trust me to fully divulge my scientific findings. Well, I don’t trust her to fully divulge my scientific findings to, Carson. How about that?

Checkmate.

Besides, the girl finds my work boring and longs to be in the field. Ironically, she talks our ears off about the “mysteriously handsome and brooding” Ant-Man, the SHIELD agent/spy who “actually does something against the Communists, unlike Lab Rats locked in their lab mazes” as she looks at me every time she says it.

But…she does hate Communists. Like my wife did, before she was killed by the very regime she rallied her people against. Maybe…maybe Janet’s not so bad.

God, I hope she never finds this entry. I’d never hear the end of it.

Hank.

Hank finds his other journal entry—the one where he meets Bill Foster, along with photos of them and their early work. Hank slumps back into his chair.

How to describe Bill Foster?

Loyal, funny, handsome, charis—

Things Hank wanted to be. Things Hank tried to be.

He puts the journal entry into the folder for Hope…and hesitates.

Temperamental.

“Look, Hank,” (Hank can hear Bill’s excitement in his head so clearly, it’s as if the man is standing in the room with him) “Garrett and I think we might have found a means to help you find a way into the Quantum Realm!”

“…You looked at my notes while I was gone?”

“Well…I’m sorry, Hank. They were just on your lab table and I happened to notice—”

“How to snub me with Garrett, of all people?” The emphasis sounds harsh, even to Hank’s own ears. Garrett remains quiet, watching the other two scientists with an expression Hank sees as amused.

Bill sighs. “Hank, I should’ve remembered your paranoia. And I’m sorry. We were just trying to—”

“Get out. Get. OUT!”

Stubborn.

“I told you all that I’m not going to let anyone look at my Particles. They’re mine to study.”

“Hank, just let others in. What’s so wrong with trusting us?” Bill pleads.

Hank remembers (“There goes Hank Pym: Bug Boy.” “You’ll never change the world.” “I’m sorry, but we didn’t find her in time.”) and says, “They’re mine to study.”

Bill sighs.

Impatient.

“Bill, I need those reports!”

Bill looks up to see Hank pacing the lab. “Calm down, Hank, what’s wrong?”

Hank stops pacing, but he must still look somewhat caged, judging by Bill’s expression. “I. Need. Those. Reports.”

Bill smiles easily, and the image makes Hank both relax and more anxious. “And the reports will be done when I get them done, Hank. We’ve got a week still. Man, you’d think you were from LA, while I was born in Nebraska,” he teases.

Hank grits his teeth, thinking about how if the reports aren’t done, it’s his head that goes into Carson’s smasher. It’s his lab with Bill that goes up in smoke. “Just get them done.”

These are all things Bill’s called Hank before, as he left Hank’s lab years after they met, and Hank shouted after him that he was fired. And these are all descriptions that fit Hank more than they ever fit Bill.

But those aren’t the descriptions in Hank’s journal entries about Bill and their work on Giant-Man/Goliath together, so Hank leaves Bill out of the folder entirely.

‘It’s best that way,’ Hank thinks with a frown.

Aug 29, 1978: SHIELD Lab Journal #88

New guy today. Dr. William Foster.

Not much to say about him. I like him. He likes my ants, and I think he may like me.

I don’t want to get too close to him, though. Maintain a respectable distance. Keep things friendly, but professional.

Like with Howard.

Because closeness means just one more thing to lose.

Hank.

Hank takes another deep breath and decides that, instead of focusing on Bill’s role in his life, the next thing to go in the folder is when Janet found out about his double life.

After “introducing” Janet’s connection to SHIELD to their daughter, that just makes sense to him.

Mar 4, 1979: SHIELD Lab Journal #275

Careless today.

Careless and stupid.

Janet found out I was Ant-Man. She wants in. So I had to confess that I’d made a Wasp costume in secret for her. (Yes, I know wasps are bastards and they don’t get along with ants. I wanted to make a Wasp costume. Sue me.) She criticized the fashion of it, but she ended up taking it, saying she’ll fix it later.

Never said I was Christian Dior.

When we had our first mission together (infiltration and conversation-recording of a suspected pinko business), she insisted on bantering through the entire thing. Said it felt more like a spy movie that way.

I don’t watch spy movies. They don’t get the intrigue right.

She…she said she loved me at the end of the mission, though.

What do I do?

Hank.

Hank doesn’t have an entry (lab journal, or otherwise) for his next memory, as at the time, he didn’t want to write it down. In truth, it still makes him a bit anxious, but he does his best to tell the story as accurately as possible, from the snippets of the memory he can still recall.

At least he remembers the date still.

Apr 25, 1979

One of our earlier missions together was attempting to get a world-destroying missile away from the East German chapter of Leviathan, without anyone knowing that SHIELD was behind it.

“You know, Hank,” Janet quipped as we jumped from the plane, “when I asked for a vacation, East Berlin wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”

We shrunk down.

“Save the world from getting destroyed, and I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Now focus.”

She smiled. “I think we’re finally starting to banter like a real spy movie!”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Just like Charade.”

Janet frowned. “Charade is a game, Hank.”

I shook my head, willing down my anxious irritation. “I need you to take this seriously, Janet.”

“And I need you to lighten up, Hank. Not everything is as precise and final as chemistry is,” she scoffed.

Well, it wasn’t long before we realized the Russians gave the GDR temperature-reading security measures that SHIELD hadn’t been aware of. Janet, trying to race me into getting to the missile first, flew across one of the body temperature scanners, and ended up captured.

I couldn’t—

I couldn’t go through it again.

I—

I don’t really remember what happened next, but I remember that the GDR chapter of Leviathan fell, the missile was safely shrunken down and with us, but most importantly, I had Janet beside me again and we were on a plane taking us back to the States.

Janet was quiet. Frowning.

“What’s wrong, Jan?”

“I…I’m sorry, Hank. I went in there reckless, playing a game during a mission and I almost got us both killed. You were right. I should’ve been focused on what we were there to do. If you don’t want to work with me anymore, I…understand.” She was staring at the floor.

I pulled her into a tight hug. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”

I pulled back to see her shocked face turn into a smile again as she said, “Henry Pym, you sure know how to give a girl mixed signals!”

We laughed and that was the start of us trusting each other more during our missions afterward.

Dad.

Hank almost has a memory about—

Almost remembers a time during the last bits of his college education, but that hurts.

So Hank just barely manages to will that down. And he carefully tucks that memory back into its own special folder in his brain and he just as carefully places that folder into the only allegorical filing cabinet he has in his mind, amidst all the haphazard boxes and broken memory “files.”

He moves on, back to a personal journal entry talking about when he first wanted to ask Janet to marry him.

Jul 29, 1979

Haven’t written in here for a while. Guess Janet was right, huh? I really have been neglecting my personal life.

Well, I’ll tell you a secret anyway. And it has to be here, because otherwise, I risk Janet seeing it. But I…I’m thinking about asking her to marry me.

Too soon, maybe. But I love her. I realized that when I realized how I couldn’t lose her.

I even bought a ring. The diamond’s small, and whoever made the ring set the gemstone upside down, but…I think that gives it character? Maybe…?

I don’t know.

I’m not sure what kind of girl would want an older, sour-faced man with no money and a low-salary, government lab job. Especially when that girl is young and vibrant and funny and beautiful and a wealthy socialite and….

Today, she talked about a guy who’s a childhood friend of hers. Sterling Stuyvesant. He’s from the same social circle as her. She laughed as she talked about him, like maybe she really did like him during childhood, and still does now. They still talk after all these years, after all.

I…I think I just talked myself out of it.

Hank.

--

The Next Day…

“Wait, Janet,” Hank calls as Janet grabs for her coat.

She pauses. “What is it, Hank?”

Hank fingers the ring in his lab pocket. He tries to find the bravery he has as Ant-Man (and more recently, as Giant-Man). It’s now or never. He’ll never know how Janet truly feels about him unless he asks. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“Sterling invited me to a party,” Janet says casually. “So I made myself an appointment with my favorite hairdresser to get ready for it.”

Hank scowls, but not toward Janet. Sterling.

“And you know, Hank,” she teases over her shoulder. “He might ask me to marry him at that party. I might just say yes, since a certain temperamental dreamboat hasn’t yet.”

Janet turns long enough to wink before she walks out of the lab door.

She and Hank have gone on a few dates, sure, but nothing official. Certainly not enough to claim Janet over. If she wants to say yes to marrying Sterling, it’s she’s perfectly able to within the current dating culture, where dating is extremely casual until you start going together exclusively.

Hank throws the ring into a random drawer in his lab table. Someone as jaded and cynical as he is could never please someone like her. And does he even have the right to try?

And how could he ever think he’d even gain her notice beyond a bit of fun?

….Still, he’s happy for their brief time together, if that’s all it was. Especially after Janet reminded him of the happiness he had from years ago.

And she deserves her own happiness.

He sees the entry on Elihas “Egghead” Starr’s departure from the lab and rolls his eyes. A snakes oil salesman parading as a scientist Hank almost trusted, before realizing he was a traitor.

So, good riddance to that sonovabitch.

He hears Egghead now has a daughter like Hank does.

Hopefully she’s nothing like her old man.

Dec 16, 1984, 6:39 a.m.…..

Egghead—Elihas—is hanging up the phone as Hank enters the lab.

“Who were you talking to. Ramona?” Hank smiles easily because today is a good day, and he’d head that Elihas recently married a good woman.

Elihas smiles but Hank doesn’t see it reach his eyes. “Yeah. She, uh, was getting on to me about not picking up groceries last night. You know how pregnancies go.” He looks away, gathering things he needs for his experiments on changing molecular structures to whatever he designs.

Hank frowns. Elihas almost seems….

Nervous?

Paranoid?

Guilty…?

Hank’s never seen the man like that before. He’s always been so sure of everything he’s doing. Unless….

Hank looks behind where Elihas is standing and sees SHIELD notes open by the phone.

“What were you doing, Elihas?” Hank asks. His voice sounds strange to him, as if it’s just a conversation he’s hearing in his head, and not one he’s actively having.

“Just gathering my things,” Elihas says. “Keeping myself busy.”

Hank crosses to the open notes and looks down to see top-secret projects Hank knows he remembers locking away the night before…..

--

Dec 16, 1984

So I fired Egghead from my lab, as I have the authority to do so.

Bill Foster, a so-called friend of mine who thought I did NOT have the authority to do so, quit today in protest.

Fine. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

And Bill said horrible things about me and acted like I was the unreasonable one. Like I was the one giving away SHIELD secrets. Like I was the one with something to hide.

But I’m not the unreasonable one.

Good riddance to that sonovabitch, Starr. And if Bill wants to go with him, good riddance to him too.

Hank.

--

Dec 16, 1984: Phone Convo Between Myself and Stark, Typed in My Home Office

Stark.

Hello, Hank. Stark today, huh? No “Howard?”

(don’t say anything—want the reason he called)

I heard about the firing today. Anything you want to expand on?

I did what I had to do.

(soft chuckles) Well, Carson’s pissed. We lost two scientists today. He thinks you’ve grown too paranoid to… (stops himself—stays quiet for exactly 29 seconds before I respond)

What do you think?

(sighs) I think…you’re an honest man, Hank. If you feel you did what you had to, I trust you.

(have to push it—Stark won’t answer otherwise) Do you think I’m paranoid?

I…I think everyone at SHIELD is paranoid. It comes with the job.

(don’t know how to answer)

Hank?

Yes?

How are you holding up?

I’ll live.

I mean with Foster quitting. I know you two were quite close.

I’ll live. Anything else?

(rustling on the other end—several vocal starts and stops—seems he wants to say something) No. No, I don’t have anything else.

Goodnight then, Stark.

(hesitates) Goodnight, Hank.

Hank finds a couple of SHIELD memos, entries in one of Janet’s many bedazzled leather diaries, and even one of his “That Other Time” personal journal entries from a few years’ time where a mission went awry and everyone thought he was dead.

Hank frowns, but he puts the papers in the folder, in an order that makes sense to him.

He hopes it will make sense to his daughter.

SHIELD Memorandum: Desk of Agent Carson to Desk of Director Stark, Nov 27, 1979, 6:09 a.m.

Something went wrong with the Siancong mission. Ant-Man’s missing since late last night. Wasp concerned he’s dead. Sending Agent Shen to investigate Ant-Man’s whereabouts, as he has expertise in infiltrating a Southeast Asian nation, given his ethnic background.

--

SHIELD Memorandum: Desk of Director Stark to Desk of Agent Carson, Nov 27, 1979, 6:19 a.m.

What the hell happened out there? Get the Wasp to my office NOW. I want to know what she knows.

--

Tuesday, November 27, 1979: Personal Journal of Miss Janet van Dyne

Dear Diary,

Hank’s…

God, I can’t even write it down here.

Howard wanted me in his office this morning. He wanted to know everything that happened on the mission. I could tell he tried to be as comforting as possible, while trying to get as much information as possible for Hank’s sake.

Howard never was good at comforting people, despite being a good man.

I don’t

What am I supposed to do?

They don’t want me helping to find Hank’s…. I’m just sitting here in my house, trying not to make myself crazy.

Sincerely,

Janet van Dyne

--

Nov 30, 1979

Well, hello, hello, hello.

Been a while since we talked last, eh, Journal? I believe the last time we talked, I still wasn’t old enough for the beers I nicked, and wouldn’t be for another seven or eight years.

It’s been too long.

In any case, I’m back.

And I’m not going anywhere.

Henry~

--

Sunday, December 23, 1979: Personal Journal of Miss Janet van Dyne

Dear Diary,

It’s wonderful! Blue Eyes is back home and he’s back in my arms!

He still won’t tell us what happened in Siancong for those 56 hours, and he’s now dressed in some gaudy black-and-yellow ensemble. But he’s back! And I won’t ever let him go again. And you know I’m telling the truth, because he finally took me in his arms, and gave me a searing, toe-curling kiss he’s never given me before, and he finally asked me to marry him.

And. I. Said. YES!

It was everything I ever dreamed of with this man.

And yeah, his eyes seemed a little high maintenance when he asked. Like another man looking through his eyes. But that’s just Hank. It wouldn’t be a new day of the week if he wasn’t 5000 different people through the day, haha.

So we got married today. (I paid a little extra to make sure we got married by Christmas! Christmas wedding, can you believe it?) And it went off without a hitch. Well, except that Hank was so impatient, poor thing, haha. He just wanted to get married so quickly.

He gave me another toe-curler at the courthouse. (We’re unable to book an actual church until February, unfortunately, but I got us a Valentine’s Day booking!)

One thing was a little weird, though. I called him “Hank” during my vows. I mean, obviously, right? But he said he didn’t like “Hank” and didn’t like talking about “Hank,” so he wanted me to call him Henry. Whatever, I guess.

In any case, Henry will be back to our Honeymoon Suite in a few minutes. And if he can give me another of those passionate kisses….

It might be a week or two before we actually leave this suite. ;)

Sincerely,

Janet van Dyne

Hank pulls out a therapist note and some of his personal journal entries he’d written in response, from all the way back when he first met his pediatric therapist.

He never did like her much. Not as a professional, anyway.

Dr. Jillian Cauldwell, Licensed Pediatric Therapist: Notes on Henry Jonathan Pym, Oct 18, 1963

Henry Pym is a bright boy, if not a bit aloof at times.

One thing concerns me, though.

I diagnosed him with manic depression two weeks ago. And today, he told me that he refuses to take his Lithium prescription anymore, as it “messes with his memory.” I offered to lower the dosage and he gave me a strange look when he said he flushed them all down the toilet. He’s only thirteen, but his disease is quite set in it seems, at least in terms of his paranoia.

If he doesn’t cooperate soon, I’m sending out for him to be placed in an asylum. They’ll get him to take his meds there.

--

Jul 23, 1963

Dad says my behavior at school and at home has become “increasingly erratic,” so he took me to a therapist today.

I watched him rub at his temple with his right hand as his left continued driving toward our destination. He said that he and Mom think it’s because of Grandma’s death and that I can’t “get past it.”

I think it’s something else.

I didn’t say anything, though. I didn’t know how to explain the way I’ve felt for years in a way that he’d understand. Why I lose my temper at the drop of a hat, even while “Normal Hank” in my mind keeps telling me how I’m overreacting. Why I feel the need to talk about my destiny of changing the world with my peers, knowing they’ll never understand the words the way I do.

I think my therapist is a bit of a quack, to be honest. There were a lot of New Age books on the shelves about getting in touch with your emotions and seeking answers in “your pasts.”

That sounds a little like past lives, right? At least in my view.

But she was nice enough, I suppose. We talked about my relationship with Grandma, and my fears of failing Mom and Dad because I’m not AS interested in medicine or practical sciences nearly the same way I am with distant universes and planets and cultures that Grandma could create off the top of her head. And how I don’t feel normal at school, and that’s the reason behind my constant acting-out.

(And how I’ve been sneaking alcohol because the burn helps me feel something other than self-pity.)

Maybe I’ll finally get some answers on why I’m so different.

Worth a shot, right?

Hank.

--

Oct 7, 1963

I’ve been recently diagnosed with “manic depression.”

I don’t really understand the term, but I relate to how off-kilter and awkward the conflicting ideas are when said together.

Kind of like how I am.

I have noticed, though, that Dad and Mom have stopped talking about my destiny of doing great things in medicine or engineering since my diagnosis. But they don’t exactly discourage me from scientific pursuits either. Almost like they’ve given up on me becoming someone as influential as Alan Turing, but as long as I find something practical to do with myself, they’ll still be happy enough.

Maybe I’ve failed them already. I hope not.

Hank.

--

Oct 1, 1963

Hank. (Hank’s eyes widen so slightly as his eyes scan the journal page tucked into his own journal, that the reaction would be imperceptible to anyone else. As far as he ever knew, Brad Pym never addressed his journals at all. And he never realized that tearing a page out of his journal and placing into Hank’s was something his dad would do. Which means he likely wanted adult Hank himself to read this entry someday.)

What a way to start off the month, huh?

God, I’m sorry, son. This is all my fault.

I always wanted to join the military, and figured the Second World War was a noble enough cause to get involved in. So I went to be evaluated, and during the mental portion, they diagnosed me with manic depression.

I’m sure you know by now what that term means.

They gave me a choice: go home or go to an asylum.

Well, I “chose” to give up my dream of serving and went home. I never told Dorrie or Mom why I came back with my tail between my legs. And that’s how I’ve failed you, Hank, the person in this world I love the most.

I “escaped” that asylum and threw myself into a personal hell where my son talks about the great things he’ll do as an adult and SHOULD do as an adult because you’re the brightest man I’ll ever know. You deserve the world. But you CAN’T do those things anymore.

I know I’ve ruined you with my own sickness. And I pray to God every night that I wake up and it was a false diagnosis. That Dorrie was right about what I wanted to believe: that it was only because you couldn’t get over Mom’s death yet.

But I guess Mom got her wish after all: I did make a Pym of my son.

And I’m sorry for that, Hank. I’m sorry for everything.

Your dad.

Hank lets out a shaky breath through his nose. He wipes his eyes and resolves to call his parents later on tonight, needing to hear their voices.

He finds a lab journal entry and a SHIELD-approved-and-sanctioned therapist entry, talking about the eventual end of the “Yellowjacket Era” as Hank and Janet had called it.

It was a four-year period Hank spent in a delusion where his mania got so bad, he doesn’t remember anything of what happened during those years. But he and Janet had married, had a kid, the kid was named, took her first steps, spoke her first words….

Hank sighs.

He doesn’t remember any of it.

Dr. Ella Sterling, Licensed Therapist, Dec 9, 1983

Pym quit therapy today, just as his eyes changed to something I’ve never seen before.

But others who work here and who have known him longer than I have these four years, say that his eyes have returned to normal.

I suppose that’s fine, then, if he wants to discontinue treatment.

But I still think he should be on medication.

--

Dec 9, 1983

I had to quit therapy today. (Therapy! I haven’t been in therapy since I was a kid. Basically.) But I didn’t know that woman at all. She says I’ve been seeing her since four years ago, that SHIELD has been footing the medical bill and wants proof that I’m “better.”

I don’t know what “better” is, but I’m fine.

I’m…married to Janet now. With a kid. And of course she seems happy and carefree and “reminds” me that I “finally got the courage to ask [her] to marry [me].”

I don’t remember the courthouse, I don’t remember the ceremony, I don’t remember the honeymoon….

Oh god.

I have a daughter. I don’t have any memories of her birth, or her first steps, or Janet’s pregnancy, or the night she was conceived….

Janet thinks I’m kidding about my confusion over not remembering any of it, and I can let that go, for the most part. But maybe she has a few tapes or something, to help me see our daughter as a baby.

I’m so confused about everything.

Hank.

Hank struggles to keep his eyes open, still exhausted. His eyelids feel like he’s caught in molasses.

(Molasses. His grandmother used to make the best molasses recipes.)

(Janet was terrible in the kitchen. Really, she just—)

(Hank is too. To be fair. Unless he thinks of it as—)

(Chemistry. Chemistry? Yeah, chemistry.)

(Guys and Dolls is his mother’s favorite musical. She plays it…all….)

Hank breathes in. Breathes out.

This much grief isn’t good for someone

(like him.)

Anyone at all. Right?

But Hank remembers to compartmentalize it into one moment at a time. Things stuffed into a mental box can’t scare you.

Dr. Ella Sterling, Licensed Therapist, Aug 13, 1980

Janet van Dyne has become so unsettled by the changes in her husband that he has been sent to me to help with his combativeness with her and his past diagnosis of manic depression.

I have prescribed him Lithium, and he smiled oddly when he took the prescription slip.

I hope he takes his medicine, as otherwise, I’ll have no choice but to consider him a candidate for institutionalization.

--

Aug 13, 1980

Janet, once again, has decided that she knows best and has forced me to go to therapy or risk losing our daughter before she’s even born. I agreed, obviously. My daughter is the most important thing in my life to me. I couldn’t bear to lose her.

Dr. Sterling prescribed me Lithium. I smiled cordially and took the prescription and crumpled it and left it on the floorboard of my car.

I never agreed to that.

Janet’s frightened by me. She says she isn’t, but I can see it in her eyes. She’s frightened of the intelligence returning to my eyes. The memory loss I can get over on my own, without the help of the medicine causing my memory loss in the first place.

But Jan will come around. She just needs time to see I’m better without that stuff. She’s a strong girl, after all. She has to be to stay with me for so long, when everyone else has left.

That’s how you know it’s true love.

Henry~

If Bill or Janet or [Hank’s brain manages to REDACT the name in time] were here with him, they’d remind him about the life he’s built with SHIELD and how it will get him through this new grief, like it did the last two, with Bill and [redacted]…. Especially with the new promotion as department head.

But even crowns or anthills can bite into the flesh of someone’s head. Even crowns can become too heavy to bear the weight of someone’s soul. And maybe that’s what’s waiting for Hank on the other side of this.

His own arrogance.

His own cowardice.

His own weakness.

His own disease.

Because crowns and pretty cul-de-sacs can’t save you from a mind you can’t escape.

But that’s too easy isn’t?

“The darkest crevice on Earth is the human soul.”

The thought pops into Hank’s mind and surprises him. He’s so shocked by the unbidden thought he fails to realize he’s slumping forward onto his desk and closing his eyes.

Wasn’t that…wasn’t that what someone said to him once? Maybe Bill or Janos? Or Hank read it in a book before?

(Or, Yellowjacket told him—?)

But Hank stops that thought before it can stick in his throat.

Besides, it doesn’t matter where the thought comes from. Does it?

(Maybe what’s waiting is a monster.)

It’s a hard question to answer anyway. Who knows what’s waiting on the other side of anything? If people knew the answer to that—

(The truest monster of all: himself.)

—they wouldn’t call it “the other side.” It would be something like…“unfortunate knowledge.”

Hank soundlessly sheds tears as he drifts away into a silent dreamland, full of pain and regrets. But as he drifts away, he notices…

…an old janitor sits in the university quad, taking a break from his work. Something compels Hank to talk to the janitor, but—

(God. God, it HURTS.)

(Hank can’t BREATHE.)

—but the janitor is nice. The scene itself is completely silent (all of the scenes of “That Time” are silent, while Hank remembers the scenes well enough to read the lips of those involved), but the janitor discusses biochemistry and genetics and entomology with Hank, and Hank finds out that he’s a Hungarian refugee, escaping an oppressive Communist regime. And now the janitor (“Janos. Pleased to meet you!”) works jobs beneath his skills as a geneticist and entomologist because of that thick Hungarian accent.

Hank meets Janos’s daughter, Maria, who cut her hair short to adopt the made-up identity of Janos’s son when trying to escape punishment in Hungary for their anti-Communist pamphlets.

Hank and Maria don’t like each other, because—

(Maria is sunlight and happiness and beauty)

(Hank is apathy and mania and weariness)

—because Maria thinks Hank is always having a laugh about her and her father (“Or worse, you secretly pity our foreign optimism of the American Dream and the country’s reception of us.”). And Hank thinks Maria’s far too trusting of the world around her.

Hank tries to get Janos better jobs but fails.

Eventually Maria trusts him enough for her and Hank to become friends, and through their discussions of books and politics and music and things, they fall in love. Maria likes that Hank can see the details of things while also seeing the beauty of the grand design. Hank likes that Maria is passionate and adamant about the things she truly believes in, even if it’s as small as which American foods are obviously superior to the others America has to offer. They get married in a small ceremony, and Hank hates that he’s so poor and he wants to give Maria the world, but Maria considers her world Hank, her father, her friend Susan Storm, and Hank’s friend Reed Richards.

Maria finally convinces Hank to honeymoon in Hungary. (“They won’t recognize me after all these years, Hank. Please? It’s been so long.”) She’s kidnapped and Hank is knocked out by the people who took her, and as soon as he wakes up, he contacts the US embassy for help.

They find her within in the hour, but—

(“I’m sorry, but we didn’t find her in time.”)

—but she’s unrecognizable and—

(“They won’t recognize me after all these years, Hank. Please…?”)

—and there’s a note on her body. “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE WHO ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE FROM BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN.”

The embassy staff are creeped out by Hank’s calm typing of their conversations with him, but if Hank doesn’t do this, he might destroy the world to prevent darkness like this ever happening to someone else. And the embassy receives a message from the States that Janos was killed in a lab explosion. None of them have proof or evidence or confirmation—of course they don’t—but the embassy and Hank believe Soviet or Satellite agents found Janos as well.

Hank is devastated to lose two family members he loved and understood so completely, and vice versa. His parents try to call him often and comfort him, especially now that he’s back home in the States. But they just can’t understand why Hank would endanger himself and his status in the current McCarthyism of America by marrying into Communist refugees.

Hank knows they mean well, but the pain is great enough that he eventually stops calling them or picking up their calls for years. (Until 1988, when he’ll find a journal entry from Brad Pym, addressed to his son.)

After Maria and Janos’s death, Hank works with Reed for a while, but eventually finds himself working for SHIELD to avenge Maria and he becomes even more of a bastard and distrustful of the world and general happiness of everything surrounding him….

Hank pulls himself out of that silent world, where everything hurts and nothing is happy. He forces himself to sit upright and continue his earlier work. This isn’t the time to be focused on other things.

He finds a lab journal entry talking about Howard’s first conversation with him after Janet’s…last mission with him. Hank chooses not to dwell on that as he puts the lab entry where it needs to go in his daughter’s folder. He doesn’t have much time left before she leaves, and he wants her to take this folder with her.

Damn SHIELD’s “top-secret, classified information” bullshit.

His daughter deserves to know.

Nov 12, 1987

Janet’s gone.

I…I don’t think I can go home to see her eyes. I’ve only known the girl for four years, after all. She already hates me.

I would hate me, anyway.

I have to go home, though, right?

Maybe in a few hours.

Hank.

--

Nov 21, 1987: Phone Convo Between Myself and Stark, Typed in My SHIELD Lab

Stark.

(sighs) Hello, Hank. Back to Stark?

Where are you calling from?

My SHIELD office.

Couldn’t come to see me personally?

And risk you locking me out and just staring at me through the glass doors? No thanks. I have my dignity.

(can’t deny it—it’s exactly what I do to him every time—regardless of whether I’m fine or want to be left alone) What do you want?

(says lightly—trying for our joking convos from years ago) Heard about your impromptu “mission” in Siberia. You know, the one where we were gathering different agents to tackle it, since you’re supposed to be resting right now. Congratulations on making it back in one piece, by the way. I’ve heard how terrifying the Winter Soldier can be.

What do you really want, Stark?

…Hank, you’ve got to go home at some point.

(think ‘fat chance’)

I know you’re “hiding” from your daughter’s questions. Trust me, I know how difficult relating to children can be. How difficult relating to intelligent children can be. But she needs you right now, and you need her. More than you realize, I’m willing to bet.

(refuse to face her confused eyes as she wonders when I’m leaving home next—best this way)

(sighs) Hank…at least call home to check on her.

…Maybe.

Promise me, Hank.

Maybe.

(sighs) Alright, Hank. Goodnight.

…Goodnight, Howard.

Hank winces as he rediscovers one of the journal entries talking about yet another reckless mission he went on, just a few days after Janet.

A year ago now.

It squeezes his chest in a vice, but his daughter has to see that side of him too, to properly understand all his failures over his marriages.

And so he places it in the folder.

Nov 19, 1987

Typed into my baby boy, HOMER, because you know how to be as silent as the…

Well, you get the idea, HOMER.

He’s stalking me now. I can hear him just outside the thin door. I have some of Janet’s energy stingers, and the crude equipment in this abandoned hospital has allowed me to modify the electrical output of those stingers into something that will hopefully knock this guy into the New Year.

Though, I did manage to steal the things I need to make myself better, faster, stronger.

I refuse to let my daughter become an orphan.

Hank.

Hank’s startled out of his work by his office door suddenly creaking open. Looking up, he sees his eight-year-old daughter peeking through the cracked door.

He sighs. “What’s wrong, Hope?”

He means for the question to be approachable and reasonable and fatherly and friendly and all the things he struggles being for her.

It comes out weary and she recoils slightly.

Before he has a chance to try again, she says, “I’m off to boarding school. Again,” and shuts the door.

He puts his head in his hands, aggressively rubbing his temples until they hurt.

The last bit of the file he’d meant to give his daughter before she left with her nanny—won’t give his daughter until years later, after his protégé is placed under house arrest for stealing Hank’s Ant-Man suit and running off to Germany—lies forgotten on the one side of his desk, with the last bits of photos, journal entries, and one lone 8mm tape, all of his daughter, named after the hope he’s chased his entire life.

If Hank’s not careful, he’ll bury himself in the little pieces of papers and journals that shield him from (and yet constantly remind him of) his lifelong failures.

The baby’s in her mother’s arms in the hospital bed, while the 8mm camera looks down at the pair of women.

Janet smiles weakly. “You know, Henry, we never did decide on the name.”

A hum sounds from behind the camera. “I like Nadia.”

Janet’s nose wrinkles in confusion. “Nadia? What does that mean?”

“Hope.”

Janet’s smile widens. “Hope. I like that, too. But why Nadia?”

The camera shifts. “I don’t want to talk about it. But Hope is fine, if we don’t go with Nadia.”

Janet’s smile becomes strained. “Okay, then. Hope it is.” She looks down at the baby. “Hi, Hope.”

The baby gurgles.

“Say hello to your father, Hope.”

The baby actually looks over, to Henry’s surprise, and he smiles.

“Hello, hello, hello, yourself, Hope.”

--

Hope’s trying to take her first steps.

“Hold on! Hold on, Hope!” Janet cries as she sets up the camera to where it stands on its own.

“Okay, Hope!” She smiles, kneeling a distance away from Henry, while Hope sits between them. “Come to your Mama!”

Henry smiles softly, hopes it reaches his eyes, as he simply holds out his arms to his daughter.

She smiles widely and takes her tentative steps toward Henry, who laughs as Janet pouts.

--

Hope’s laying in her crib, gurgling happily up at the cameraman.

“There she is. There’s my little hopeful girl,” a male voice says.

She giggles in response.

“You know, you’re a Pym, right, Nadia? And that means something. Don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t.”

Hope coos. “Da!”

“There’s greatness in us, Nadia,” the cameraman says softly. Gently. “And a lot of people try to dampen that greatness. But once I change the world, Nadia?”

She looks at him, tilting her head. Listening.

“You’re going to perfect it.”