The stupid thing was relaxing.

It's never safe. Pym knows that. He always knew that, growing up in the perimeter of the world's most dangerous place. They invite danger by birth and usually dive into it headtilt. So why did Pym ever get confident? Is he just stupid? That's what Francis calls it, stupidity. Pym called it optimism, but no. It was stupidity.

Watching Bucky get shot is the second worst thing that's ever happened to him.

The Skrulls want Earth, again. Pym doesn't get why. Even he sometimes thinks they should get the remnants of humanity into a ship and migrate. Start somewhere new and clean. He has schematics of world ships in his head and sketched on concrete floors. But they don't become models, because Pym is stupid and still believes. So they're here fighting the Skrulls, and he is flitting up to take a better look at the battlefield, and Bucky gets shot.

Pym dreams of watching Tony's head come apart a lot. The way his brain, his amazing, awesome brain that contained every memory of them working together and the best stories in the world and the fact that Pym liked fruit smoothies with strawberries and never with bananas and the way he couldn't sleep with a window open for no reason he understood and Pym's favourite molecular structure (buckyballs) and all of that, all of Tony, splattered on the ground and would never be put back together. He dreams of watching the only parent he ever knew die, and he wakes up silent and shaking in a ball. He doesn't scream at night anymore. He learned to be quiet. Sometimes now he doesn't talk for days, holed up in his workshop and ignoring whatever Azari or Bucky said to piss him off. He gets why James was like this at his age now. Except Pym got twelve years and James only got four and Pym, selfishly, thinks he has it worse. When Torunn visits Asgard and comes back breathless with stories Pym says the worst things he can think of. People say the Wasp has three stings: two hands and his tongue.

He says, Dad never made you wait to be good enough.

Now that he's gone Tony is always dad, and he makes everyone remember that. He wears red and gold, his suit looks like armor, everyone has to look at him and think of Tony. He doesn't know what he wants from them, though, because when Torunn softly apologizes and says she has two fathers later in his workshop he throws a wrench at her and tells her to get the hell out.

When Bucky finds him drunk in the kitchen, fumbling with making a grilled cheese sandwich and he is a fucking genius, why can't he get two pieces of bread and slices of cheese to cook--Bucky says yeah, you're definitely his kid, and that is how Pym ends up crying as Bucky turns on the stove and telling him that he can't ever go, he can't, Pym will literally not to able to handle it if he loses one more person.

"If you promise me not to drink like this anymore, I promise to stick around, pal."

And Pym is so stupid, because he believed him. And he doesn't get really drunk anymore, and he relaxes a little bit, and for the first time in a long time (they killed Kang, Pym dreams about that too, that was when this started--Tony would have never let them but Tony was dead and after that Pym stopped feeling like he deserved to be happy) Pym starts feeling like the world might end if he stops frantically holding it together.

Bucky gets shot in the neck and Pym scorches the Skrull who did it into so much ash. Killing things has gotten much easier since Kang. He can act as cool about it as Francis, even. (The rest of the team doesn't see them spar after, hurting each other in silence because this is what they deserve but someone has to be the collected ones--Francis, because his control cannot slip or the world will end for him, and Pym, who will do anything to keep what's left to him. They don't know about the quiet pact they have formed that says they will never let the rest of them get like this. James and Azari and Torunn don't deserve this, no matter how much blood is on their hands too. Pym never pictured this when he was little, that being a hero meant this. Maybe they're not heroes.)

"Dad!" He is tumbling over wreckage and finds James frantically staunching Bucky's blood, and he doesn't even know what he yelled. His hearing comes back in the middle of a rant.

"--you promised me, you promised me, you fucking liar--"

Azari must be in shock, because as he brushes by Pym he says: "Language."

Pym starts laughing and doesn't stop, laughing until he cries, laughing until every Skrull is studded with arrows or cleaved apart or burned out empty.

Bucky doesn't die. Pym still hates him.

When Bucky first came they were scared and alone. Even Francis seemed shaken. He lost what should have been his chance to breathe again, to stop holding up the world alone. Pym was inconsolable. They hid out in the desert and tried to get themselves back together.

Bucky found them and said: "Your perimeter is sloppy."

James and Pym took to him the easiest. James, because it was his dad's friend, and Pym, because he was so desperately needy. He built Bucky's new arm and babbled at him for hours, frantic with worry--because what if Bucky left? What if he died? What if any of a million things happened and--

"Kid, I don't need you to be smiling all the time," Bucky had said, and ruffled his hair, and that was the first time he cried in front of him. Bucky hugged him close and rubbed his back, soothing, as Pym apologized for ever saying a bad thing about him.

Bucky taught Pym about baseball. About girls. About how to start breathing again. At first they'd been so close, but as Pym got older he got--the problem was getting close, feeling safer, thst felt like betrayal. And Pym had enough guilt cold and murky in his gut like stagnant water. So he started snapping, he started sulking. He built more bombs than computers. He stopped letting Bucky ruffle his hair.

Bucky is in medbay and Pym is in his workshop, and this bomb is an arc reactor. Pym feels like a little self-mutilation is allowed, under the circumstances. He's also drinking, which is stupid dangerous, but Pym built this place like a bank vault. If he screws up the only one who dies is him.

"Pym."

"Get out, Azari." Pym doesn't even look up.

"You missed three meals and you didn't sleep in your bed." Azari got tall when he was sixteen, tall and lithe and incredibly gorgeous. People fall all over themselves hitting on him. It only matters because right now it reminds him of Bucky promising that he'd get a spurt too and, well, Bucky promises a lot of things and Pym is only half a foot taller than James. So fuck you, Bucky. (Bucky taught them to swear--not on purpose, it just happened.)

"Slept in here. Not hungry. Get out."

"I'm worried about you. We're all," he emphasizes, "Worried about you."

"Tell everyone I'm fine and get out." Pym stays hunched over the reactor, that glows blue and crackles at his touch and could run forever and why does it do that when the heart under its brother stopped? (Pym has the first one. He took it before they buried Tony. It's his nightlight, he says. He never takes it out of the black box he put it in, just opens it and looks sometimes.)

"I'm not lying," Azari says, simply, and then softly, "He wants to see you. And for you to read this."

He sets the letter down with a powerbar and a quart of water. Pym takes those and ignores the letter. Screw Bucky. He should probably just burn it. Like he cares what that stupid bastard has to say. He really hates Bucky right now.

His resolve lasts half an hour. He was never good at patience.

I'm sorry I lied to you, but I'm still here.

I know what you've been doing. Your dad would be doing the same thing. Whenever Steve got hurt or, hell, any of the team, he'd disappear and work for days. Couldn't take it.


I know you know he never wanted me near you guys. I did some things that I'm not telling you now, but I will later. I spent enough of my life lying. The point is he would hate that I'm here, and maybe he'd be right. I don't know if I'm doing this well enough. You deserve better. Especially you, Pym. I know I'm letting you down the most.

One thing I do know is that Tony will literally find a way to kill me from the grave if I let you grow up to be like him.

Howard Stark was an mean son of a bitch. Tony never told you that, I bet. I barely know anything about his childhood, but Steve let stuff slip. He could lie as well as James. Maybe worse. What I know for sure is that I never would have trusted Tony Stark with kids.

Steve was always better at reading people than me. See, I meet you, and I expect the most fucked up kids in the world. And you are screwed up. But not because of your dad, who did an amazing job. I will never live up to that. I know it, you know it. But I remember the little kid in the ladybug hoodie who built me an arm and cut the crusts off the sandwiches he made me.

I miss that kid. We all do. And so would Tony. I'm not saying you screwed anything up. You're not the one who should be trying harder. I should be making you feel safe enough to stop acting like if you stop being scared we all die.

You gave me a second chance, you all did. I guess this would be the third, if you can trust me again.

I didn't die and it's not your fault. So stop drinking my vodka and get down here, Stark.

The letter has barely touched the floor when Pym zips from the room to throw himself, recklessly, in the embrace of Bucky's flesh and blood arm.