Heart and Soul Games (March - Present Day)
The first night Jan stayed in Stark Tower was an accident. She’d been at a gala with her best arm candy and hadn’t wanted to make the trip back to New Jersey so late at night. She’d thought nothing of texting Hank that she’d be back in the morning, and crashing, absolutely trashed, into a borrowed suite. She woke feeling terrible, both from how much she’d drank the night before and that she’d made the decision to stay out all night. She checked her phone, terrified that Hank might have blown up her texts with demands to know where she was and why she’d stayed out all night when she’d promised to come home, but she found nothing. Somehow, that worried her even more.
Jan called her car, dread beginning to fill, visions beginning to play at her mind of what she’d find when she got home. Would Hank be waiting for her, offering her stern disapproval of her behavior? Would he yell? Would he get so angry he’d give her the silent treatment? Jan didn’t look for Tony on her way out, and instead gave Friday her goodbyes to forward on. Jan had an inkling that if she were to see Tony that morning, it would only serve to consummate her behavior further. Good mothers and good wives weren’t supposed to do things like this.
When Jan got home, however, the place was calm. As she went upstairs to check on Henry Jr, she could hear Sr. in the lab. She knew he could hear her walking by, but he said nothing. He didn’t call out to her, and she sensed no tension or anger. When she peeked into the nursery, Henry smiled at her. “Mama!” He was so excited to see her, Jan’s heart melted, and she wished she’d been home the night before, if only so he’d have been this excited then. How big he’d gotten. She picked him up from his crib and kissed his head. He smelled slightly of vomit. She carried him with her to the bathtub in the master suite and drew a bath for them to share.
--
From the first moment Hank saw Nadia, he knew she was special. He stood some ways away from customs, savoring the moment before she knew he was watching her. She stood a few feet from Maria, as if she didn’t want anyone to think she was still young enough to need a parent’s guidance. She looked remarkably like Maria, but unfortunately, she had taken after him as well. She looked around the room again and again, following Maria as her mother went to the baggage claim. She seemed to be searching, and finally Hank stepped forward. She saw him, their eyes met, and he wanted to give her a hug, but of course she was too shy. When she spoke, her voice was heavily accented, like she’d never had to speak English before. “Dr. Henry Pym?” She sounded skeptical, and so proud. She turned to Maria and asked, “Is this him, is this Dad?”
“Hello, Nadia.” He smiled to her, his little girl. “You can call me Hank, or Dad, if you want.”
--
Nadia had gone to bed. Jet lag and a long day of travel had caught up with her, and she was taking a nap before dinner. Downstairs in the living room, Hank and Maria chatted over a cup of coffee. It had been so long since she’d been taken from him, so long that she’d been forced to work for the Hungarian government, that Hank hadn’t any idea what to ask her. He would have listened to anything she had to share, whether it was a new marriage or a grocery list. But all she had to say, it turned out, was about Nadia. Nadia had inherited his talent and interest in science. Nadia had won a high school competition in engineering, Nadia wanted to do work in space, Nadia was looking into some of the top programs in the US to study.
After listening to Nadia’s CV, Hank felt himself anxious over smaller details. When she was little, her room had been blue. She loved to sing Disney songs, especially from Mulan. She was popular at school, and had enough friends Maria complained about the cost of all those birthday presents. She had loved horses as a little girl, but when she saw how big they were had been too scared to take lessons.
When Jan arrived home, she was delighted to meet Maria. She was much younger, Hank realized, much closer to Nadia’s age. She suggested dinner at China Blue, and when Nadia woke, she was excited to go. She looked out of place in one of Jan’s restaurants, with her converse and her sweater, but Hank wouldn’t have had her any other way. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she read the menu and mumbled to Maria for help with the half-English, half-pin-yin menu and as she answered his questions about school and her interests.
--
Jan took an immediate liking to Nadia. The girl was funny and friendly, and after a few days, she insisted to both Hank and Maria that no girl had seen New York until she’d gone boutiqueing. Hank waivered, as if he had almost asked to come with. Jan told Nadia in the car that it was the closest he’d ever come to tagging along, and just how special Nadia should know she was to him.
As per Maria’s request, Jan took pictures of every outfit Nadia tried on and posed in. As per Nadia’s request, she neglected to mention a few items they’d bought that afternoon.
--
Maria stood by the window until the car was out of sight. The light illuminated her hair so that the faint red glowed, and her face, though full of care for the daughter who had just gone into the city without her, looked radiant. Hank had only meant to go and comfort her, to tell her that Nadia was with the greatest Avenger of them all, to wipe the worry from her features. When he took her hand, which was warm, and small, and soft in a way ladies’ hands only become once they reach a certain age, he felt compelled to kiss it. Maria didn’t step away. She smiled, and suddenly they were caught up in a mutual fantasy, as if the years between them had never passed, as if their daughter had grown up with two parents, as if things were so different from the life they had lived.
Hank had found, again, the woman he’d loved since they were both in graduate school. He rejoiced in saying her name again and again, hearing her, feeling her, making her real. This was no replacement; this was no second-best. A different sort of weariness suited her face much better.
--
Since Nadia and Maria had arrived in the States, Jan found all her home time occupied by hosting them. It was a rare moment, more and more so, that she had alone with neither one to entertain not her own son to mother. It was on one such afternoon, as Hank brought Nadia to see Columbia University and Maria had occupied herself that Jan gratefully took the spare time to herself in her sewing room to play with silks and taffetas.
It wasn’t long before Tabby arrived and lay down right in the middle of her pile of slippery fabrics. She smiled to him and reached down to pet him. He purred and looked up at her, making her smile. “Hey Tabby Tabs.” She was half way through a shift dress when she reached down to pet him again. He’d fallen asleep, and had stopped purring. She dug her nails into his pelt and scratched him the way he liked, trying to wake him just enough so he’d purr again for her.
The purr didn’t come, and when she tried to wake him up by tickling his whiskers, Jan realized why. “No….No, no, no…” She was on the floor that very second, stroking his cool fur and placing her hand on his muzzle to feel breath. Her own breath came quickly, as she scooped him up in layers of fabric and clutched him close, not willing to touch him and not willing to let go. “No, no, no, you were supposed to see me through.” She held him tightly, though he didn’t shift in her arms to the best positions to be held by her. She sobbed into the fabric, every second knowing with more certainty what had happened. “I love you!” she said, in a voice so loud it surprised her. “I loved you,” she said, more quietly.
Panic began to set in. What did one do with a dead body? Did one put it in the freezer until it could be cremated? Did one burry it in the yard? Did one need a death certificate for a cat? All the while, she couldn’t imagine letting go of Tabby.
--
Tabby had died in the sun, but both he and Jan were in the shade between the windows by the time she had made up her mind. She wrapped him in silk until he couldn’t be seen, and downstairs she put him in the sub-0. Then, she had herself driven to Stark Tower.
Tony was out. Jan was glad of that. She saw herself to the one floor Friday would permit her, and lay down on the bed, and reveled in being alone. It was the one place in the world she didn’t have to share.
--
It was late when she had a visitor—or rather, when she was met by the man she was visiting. She’d cried herself into a doze of sorts, where her mind stayed between grief and weariness, when he arrived. “Jan?” he woke her, calling from the living room. She met him out there, even as she rubbed the sleep from her clothes and eyes. He looked worse for wear. It was dark out, of the sort of late that hung between late and early, a time without time. “When did we make plans?”
Jan sank into a chair. All the naps in the world couldn’t have given her the energy to justify herself now. “I’m sorry to show up unannounced.” She wished the misery could just step aside, but her lips twitched into an ugly smile and a tear rolled down her cheek. “I’m so sorry.” There was one place she didn’t have to share, and it wasn’t her own—it wasn’t hers to keep for herself.
That clearly hadn’t been what Tony had been expecting of her, and Jan would later wish she’d said nothing was the matter, or wish she hadn’t come at all. In the moment, however, Tony was the first person she’d seen since she left Tabby in the freezer and insisted her driver leave her alone to her thoughts. It felt silly, at first, to tell him why she’d arrived red-eyed with no forewarning. After all, she explained, “He was just a little cat. Haven’t we done enough that something this small…?” Jan didn’t know how she had meant to finish that sentence, but the question lingered on the air.
But even little cats can bring hope and love when those things were needed. For years now, Tabby had helped to dull the pain of a poorly matched marriage and of a neglected child. Now, who or what could dull the pain of losing Tabby?
--
It was easy, with Jan away so often lately, for Hank and Maria to keep the affair alive. Even with two children in the house and the staff around most of the time, they found themselves able to dodge open ears and avoid inquiring minds.
Whole evenings would pass, as if Hank, Maria, and Nadia were normal, and as if it had always only ever been the three of them. They could spend the day together, take day drips to the mountains or to the beach or to the City, then have dinner together, and relax in the living room together or take a walk to the park, practically without risk of interruption. Hank made good on that as often as he could, and never once did Jan come home at an inopportune time, shattering the feeling of family they’d managed to piece together after all these years.
When she did come home, Hank recognized disapprovingly, she came home drunk or late in the night. She never wanted to talk, and she was always too tired and grumpy.
This suited Hank perfectly fine. Jan didn’t fit into the new fantasy he’d created with Maria, and as long as Jan was mopey and grumpy and wanted nothing to do with him, he didn’t have to acknowledge her as his wife.
--
The days grew longer and warmer and Jan spent more time at Stark Tower, “to be closer to work,” she’d tell Hank, “to be closer to the Avengers,” she’d tell the press. Her eyes started to show deep shadows, despite how Jan slept more than ever.
She found herself in a limbo of sorts. Every day she spent at Stark Tower was a day closer to what felt like the inevitable day when she should just buy or rent somewhere in the City of her own to call her own. Yet every time she considered this, she was held back by the vows she’d made years ago with Hank at the courthouse. Some little part of her didn’t want to say she’d given up.
--
It was obvious Hank was cheating. She found Maria’s underwear mixed in with hers in the laundry basket, and Hank had completely lost interest in her. He was never happy she was home, never even tried to kiss her anymore. There were never flowers or gifts or some scientific achievement in her name. He didn’t talk to her about their son, or about work, or even about Nadia.
And one of the guest rooms smelled like sex. He must have thought she wouldn’t have noticed, but she did.
Again, Janet cried by herself as she mourned the loss of whatever she thought might have still been there between the both of them and what might have been rekindled once Maria and Nadia went home. She wept until the tears were gone, and sadness had washed away into some feeling a little more resolute than the last, some meaningful acceptance of her relationship with Hank.
In a way, after that, it was easier to come home than it had been in a long time. She became, in a way, a part of the fantasy that Hank and Maria had been playing for a long time. They seemed to know that she knew, and while none of them said it, then they could all pretend that none of it was real—neither Hank’s first marriage, nor his second. Each went wordlessly about their business, each keeping out of one another’s way, with Nadia none the wiser.
--
Finding the Soul Gem was an accident.
Using it wasn’t.
By late summer, Jan had finally had enough with her and Hank’s charade of maintaining one another in their lives. Words were said which couldn’t be unsaid, and it was with mutual satisfaction and mutual grief that they arrived at the same courthouse as in which they had married just two years ago. The documents were signed quickly enough. Neither had tried to sue for anything; Hank had no claim over what had been Jan’s and Jan had no interest in what was Hank’s. She just wanted things over.
The ink was still wet on the page and Jan must have had some dampness about her eye. When Hank reached out to touch her arm in a gesture of consolation, she pulled away. “Did you think we’d be friends after this?” she asked. She pulled out the green gem she’d brought along for one single purpose. “Let’s forget we ever did this,” she pleaded.
And then he was gone, back to her house where he would continue hosting his wife and daughter.
For the first time in months, years maybe, Jan felt light and carefree. The Cold War was drawing to a satisfactory close, and Ant Man had just officially retired from the team. That was a weight off her chest—one less person to worry about. It was with a carefree cheer she hadn’t felt in ages that she invited her friends out that night for the first time in far too long.
