When it really came down to it, Hope has never seen herself as much of a team player.
Her school reports - which she's certain her father has tucked away somewhere for blackmail purposes - can attest to this. As can the newly fired board of Pym Tech.
There have been exceptions here and there, of course. There was Darren most notably but they'd always been drawn together more by their shared hatred of Hank Pym than any real concern about each other's well being. (Or so Hope tells herself these days.)
Now there's Scott who, at this point, is definitely more of a partner than a boyfriend or fling or any of those other words Hope dislikes using.
This is why, when Maria Hill - whom Hope has met previously as Pepper Pott's second in command - strolls in to Hope's office with Natasha Romanov in tow, Hope is ready to politely tell them to shove it.
You see contrary to popular belief, Hope is not stupid. She is not some spoilt brat who only got to where she is today because of her daddy. She has several degrees, in fact, and a doctorate. She's proficient in multiple languages and martial arts and a fairly decent shot should the need arise.
She knows full well that Maria Hill is not merely a part of Stark Industries and, if anyone had bothered to look at all, they too would find it very odd that she attained such a high position after SHIELD fell having worked at fake corporations for near a decade.
Natasha Romanov is a whole other game, though.
Hope was too busy to read up on Natasha's eventful life in any real depth, she knows the highlights, the good and the bad. In the aftermath of the SHIELD info dump there were people calling for her arrest, there were protests, kickstarters, politicians built their campaigns on it. Her status as an Avenger had protected her, but as of a few weeks ago that's defunct.
It's interesting that she came down on the side of the equation that could come with jail time for her.
Of course, as of the airport battle that clued her in to Scott not being 'out of town with Luis' Natasha Romanov is missing. Wanted, Hope supposes.
It's only glancing down at the photo on her desk that makes her pause.
Scott must have put it there or else, her assistant, desperate for something to mellow Hope out here and there (she must throw a few extra holiday days her way sometime).
Scott and Cassie on the beach. He'd dragged Hope along by guilting her into it with puppy dog eyes and there'd been sand in Hope's shoes and hair and car for about a week afterwards.
But it hadn't been awful.
She'd had worse trips to the beach. And certainly better ones but still.
"A mutual friend of a friend has been in touch with us," Hill says, primly. "They wondered if you might be inclined to lend a hand in some recent unpleasantness."
Hope looks down at the photo, thinks about the shaky footage of Scott being led off in handcuffs, shoved into an unmarked black van.
"I'm listening," she says.
---
"Just let me recalibrate your weapons systems," Her father says gruffly.
It's his way of saying be careful so Hope lets him. Sits patiently while he tinkers with the blasters, sures them up, unscrews and re-screws components.
Hope has accidently moved back home. She came to stay in the aftermath of Darren's spectacular breakdown to help out when her Dad was discharged from the hospital and never really left.
It's working for both of them though neither of them are acknowledging it.
Captain America and Natasha Romanov sit quietly and watch. They turned up around noon in hoodies and skinny jeans and Hope knows they aren't a couple but by the way they seem to communicate mostly through raised eyebrows and mouth twitches they may as well be.
Hank was less than impressed. Personally, Hope thinks her father is more on the side of the Accords but since Tony Stark is their chosen champion, he's going to do his damndest to ruin it for him. Someday, she'll have to get her father and Stark in the same room together and make them bury the hatchet. Or at least, she can film it and use it as contradictory evidence every time her father tries to assert that he is, in fact, the adult here.
There is part of her that thinks she should be a little more excited that Captain freaking America is sitting in her father's secret basement workshop but honestly, Hope was always more enamoured with Peggy Carter.
For his part, Cap manages to be everything and at the same time nothing like Hope expected. He is well-mannered, he is respectful and he is tired. Exhausted. She read an interview with him after the Battle of New York, it's one of the only ones he's done since he's been back that's longer than a few paragraphs. The tiredness is something Hope remembers from that, oozing through his words, stark in black and white.
At the same time he is rough, battle-worn and Hope should have expected it but she didn't. He's always portrayed as stoic, unflappable. Everything this great nation wants out of its heroes.
It's kind of funny, Hope thinks. There are probably a great deal of American politician who wish Cap had stayed frozen forever so they could keep holding him up as a paradigm of the ignorance they preach.
There's a rumour that that's to blame for his low media profile, that Cap's views on basic rights like abortion and marriage equality and not starving to death or dying of easily curable diseases in one of the richest countries in the world has lead to people paying to keep him quiet. God forbid he stand up for the little guy. God forbid he be a decent human being.
As for the Accords, Hope's on the fence. She's only involving herself at all for her dumbass partner.
"Bring my suits back intact, Hope," Hank says when he's done. "Both of them," he adds.
It's as good of a be careful or get home safe as she's going to get and honestly, it's the only kind she wants from him. He clasps her shoulder, she touches his arm.
"Ready?" Captain America asks.
Hope nods, "Just let me suit up."
---
She tells Steve firmly that he is not her Captain. Not solely on the basis of his reputation, anyway. He will have to earn that honour.
Steve laughs in a polite, surprised way and instead of bragging or quietly accepting the challenge he says, "I see why Hill finds you intimidating."
Which is definitely the right response.
---
Maggie ends up being an afterthought and Hope hates herself for it.
It's not fair, Hope thinks, that Scott has done this to Cassie again but in a way, it's even less fair on Maggie who has to tell her. Maggie who has to endure Cassie asking over and over again where her daddy is, when he's coming back. There is part of her that hates Scott for it because she knows what that's like. Waiting for your dad to come back.
She hates him more because she knows Maggie was an afterthought for him too.
She picks a Thursday evening, after work for Maggie, Paxton working nights. Cassie should already be in bed.
It's awkward. She's never really met Maggie, only seen her briefly in five minute windows of picking Cassie up and dropping Cassie off and never without Scott. (Except technically that one time in the grocery store where Hope hid in the canned goods aisle until it was safe to come out.)
But someone has to tell Maggie and Hope would rather it come from someone she vaguely knows.
Maggie must know why she's here because she's smiling but her eyes are wide and terrified, imploring Hope to give her good news, begging, praying.
"He's not dead," Hope opens with and Maggie slumps against the doorframe.
"Oh, thank god," she mutters. She lets herself be limp and glad for a moment before she straightens up with anger in her jaw, "And just where the hell is he?"
Hope is not going to lie for Scott. Hope is not going to be condescending and tell Maggie that Scott is doing something noble, that Scott was thinking of bigger, wider reaching sentiments than oh my god, Captain America wants me on his team! If she did, Maggie wouldn't believe her anyway. She's known Scott for way longer than Hope has.
Hope tells her everything she knows, starting with the airport, finishing with Wakanda.
"He's safe," she ends with.
Maggie has invited her in by this point, made coffee. She sighs, runs a hand through her hair. Her gaze is fixed slightly to the left of Hope to a photo Cassie tacked up on the fridge.
"And when will he be back?"
"We don't know," Hope admits. Nat and Hill are working on it but it won't be anytime soon. "The heat should die down soon."
Maggie sighs. "Great. That's just - Great." She stands up, takes the still full mugs to the sink and empties them. "I'm sorry, Hope. It's not your fault, I know that, it's just..."
"I understand," Hope says quietly. She should leave probably so she stands, "If it means anything, Scott wanted me to ask you to tell Cassie he loves her."
Maggie is quiet, back rigid, hands clenched on the sink.
She doesn't say, if he loved her, he wouldn't leave. It's more complicated than that, they both know it but at the same time it's not. It's really not. Scott is an adult and Hope shouldn't have to be here explaining why he's not.
He's doing the right thing, Hope could say but doesn't. He's doing it for the right reasons.
"I'll let you know if I hear anything," Hope starts. She's bowing out, she's outstayed her welcome.
Maggie turns, her mouth is a thin line and her eyes are a little red. Hope is expecting her to say, thank you for letting me know or something but instead Maggie steps towards her, "Oh, you don't have to leave, Hope."
This floors Hope, kind of. She hovers, half wanting to be anywhere but this kitchen, half really not wanting to come across as impolite. Scott's been on at her about that, about how she'd have more positive relationships if she stuck around for more than just the essentials and yeah, Scott's maybe not her favourite person right now but he has a point. Hope spends most of her time outside of work with her elderly shut in father and her idiot boyfriend who's just become part of a very exclusive 'Most Wanted' list. It couldn't hurt to try.
"I mean," Maggie says, "Pax is working tonight so it'd be nice to have some company over dinner and anyway, it's not just Cassie Scott's leaving." She says this with a sad little smile of camaraderie about which Hope is very unsure how she feels.
On the one hand yes, Scott will no longer be a regular feature of her life. On the other, she got along just fine without him for most of it.
She brushes it off though, swallows her pride and puts on her best smile, "That would be lovely."
---
"I want to come home," Scott says quietly. He's somewhere in Norway, he thinks.
Hope has to keep these conversations brief, General Ross has been sniffing around a little too often for her liking. They've talked about this before, Scott coming up with ways he could sneak back into the country, I could stay tiny, Hope. Go in your suitcase, no one would ever find out. C'mon, who'd look? Really?
Hope doesn't bother pointing out that airport scanning equipment would definitely pick up an ant sized human in her luggage and yes, technically, they could get Scott back stateside via other methods but that's never been the problem.
The problem is keeping Scott out of trouble once he's there and really, Hope doesn't have the time for that.
"I know," Hope says. "We're working on it."
---
Pepper Potts is, in Hope's opinion, the best thing that could have possibly happened to Stark Industries.
She has Hope's customary fizzy water with one slice of lime and three ice cubes waiting on the table for her. (Hope doesn't actually have a preference for water with only one lime slice and three ice cubes. Really, two would do, or four or one or lemon, even but having a drink is something her father used to use as a power play so Hope's followed suit.)
Pepper greets her with a handshake and a surprisingly warm smile. They're supposed to be discussing a potential partnership on Pepper's arc reactor project, clean energy for the world if they can get around the sanctions and shady dealings of the energy companies. Not today though.
Hank has already made his objections clear but Hope's the CEO here and from what Hope's heard, Pepper has even less to do with Tony Stark these days than the rest of them. That's one of their rules, no super hero talk. No mentioning the worldwide man hunt for Captain America or the televised debates about whether Nat should be tried and executed for treason and murder and a hundred other crimes.
Things were so much simpler before the Winter Soldier.
The first few times Hope met with Pepper her skin was pale. Her mouth was taut, there were dark circles under her eyes, smudgy and bleeding through her makeup. Tony Stark and the Accords were on every TV screen, every front page. In her email, her olive branch, she'd been quick to note that Stark Industries had no association with Iron Man anymore and that she hoped bygones could be bygones.
Hope's not sure if Pepper knows about her and Scott. It's never really come up.
"So, General Ross has been sniffing around you," Pepper says, as Hope sips her water. "Heads up from Nat," she clarifies when Hope frowns.
"Let him sniff," Hope decides. "He won't find anything."
Ross has already turned her father's house upside down looking for Scott. Hope had to talk Hank out of inventing a very specific type of killing robot for that one. (You don't want to end up like Stark, do you? she'd said and Hank had contended himself to seethe quietly.)
Speaking of Stark, even he made an attempt at getting Hope to talk. 'Invited' her to the Avengers Tower in New York and sat looking very tired and very pathetic and damn near begged her to talk Scott into signing the Accords. Well, actually, her exact words were:
"Look, Cap made his decisions but don't let your pint size boy toy pay the price."
Hope had recommended Tony retire before he accidentally broke the world again and it had been a lot less satisfying than she thought it would be. The thing about Tony Stark, she thinks, is that she's pretty sure with a little less self control and a little more encouragement, her Dad would have ended up similarly.
She hasn't said any of this to Pepper. She won't, probably. Pepper looks too happy these days.
It's too bad about Tony, she thinks.
Maria Hill arrives next, Nat in tow.
"I hereby declare this meeting of apparently the only rational adults in the super hero business begun," Hill says, when they're all settled.
So yeah, this what Hope does now.
She's the Wasp some nights, fighting off the big bads on the home front Stark's fractured Avengers are too bound up in red tape to deal with. She's Hope Van Dyne others, throwing money and resources in Cap's general direction. Hope Van Dyne: CEO, long-suffering daughter, who has secret meetings with two super spies and the only woman in America who could out-business her.
She has dinner with Maggie and Cassie once a week. She calls Scott and tells him about in a quiet voice she's never really used before and all the while she's cursing herself because he chose to leave.
But she'll clean up his mess for him, get him home because Scott might have fucked up but he's not a bad guy and Hope doesn't want Cassie to grow up like she did. Hope doesn't want Cassie thinking her dad is anything less than what he is: a fucking idiot who made poor life choices because he's human.
And that, Hope thinks, is the problem here.
Give people power and they'll only fuck it up. They're fragile, like glass, all it takes is one good tap and father's shut themselves away, geniuses drive themselves mad, sweet dopes march off to fight in wars that aren't theirs.
She looks around at Pepper and Maria and Nat and she can see the cracks.
She's kind of just hoping one of them thought to bring along super glue too.