Archive of Our Own

Above them glowed a horrific scene – death and blood and destruction, bathed in the glowing, violent orange-red flames of their future, fallen world. It was Rip’s coup de grace, his nail in the coffin, and as he looked up to it he could almost feel the heat of a burning world that needed saving – could almost smell the blood of his family on his clothing, the way it would never, never wash out from beneath his fingernails, his multiple failures colliding like dominoes, endlessly, inevitably, for all of time –

Unless these men and women could be utilised effectively.

Individually they might not be much, but together they might be able to help him defeat Savage. Their effects on the timeline were minimal, so there was a good chance that the Time Masters wouldn’t catch on to what he was doing until it was too late – for them. This motley bunch of barely-trained heroes and anti-heroes were his last hope – he could only pray that they would do exactly as he said, otherwise time was doomed, and so were his wife and child.

“I trust this makes things abundantly clear,” he said, abruptly switching off the gruesome, evocative image. They didn’t need to know that it was from a slightly different time period than the one he actually needed, above all others, to deviate from. “As you can see, that is why I’ve gathered you all here. It is imperative –”

Rip had studied time mastery for decades longer than would otherwise be allowed by the normal human lifespan. He could detect patterns in the blink of an eye, deduce correlating and knock-on scenarios as easily as breathing.

None of this training was of any use to him. Even hindsight had no benefit to offer.

He still didn’t see the punch coming.

~~~~~

Possibly hours later, he woke to find himself gently swinging upside down in a dark, echoing warehouse, his chains clinking faintly. All right, this was fine. He’d been in worse situations than this. Although, of course, there had been decidedly better.

“Hello,” said the Arrow.

“Ah,” said Rip.

~~~~~

“I can’t believe you just punched him,” said Kendra, slightly awed and with no small sense of glee. Sara just smirked, the roll of her shoulders the only remaining sign of her initial unease. Jax shook his head, smiling a little despite the unsettled sensation swirling between his shoulder-blades; it’d been a while since he was taken off-guard like that. He didn’t like it – and neither, apparently, did Sara.

He definitely liked that girl. She kicked ass.

It had taken the Arrow about twelve seconds to get onto the rooftop after Sara had landed the punch to end all punches right between Rip Hunter’s eyes. Five seconds to disarm him entirely – including the removal of everything barring his shirt and pants, and another three to confirm the location of the rooftop with, apparently, Barry Allen. The others had milled about, still slightly shocked and confused, and Jax could only watch, awe-struck, as within the minute, a blur of lightning landed on the rooftop, and lo, it was the Flash. He hadn’t stopped for conversation, just nodded grimly at the miscellaneous group – blinking hard at the presence of two of his supervillains – and solemnly conversed with the Arrow and Sara. Somehow, as one, they all decided to go to a nearby warehouse, where not even the Flash put up a protest at the Arrow’s techniques.

Cold and Heatwave decided to beat it, once it became clear that Barry wasn’t about to try and arrest them or anything. He’d even shaken his head warningly at the Arrow, which made Cold, of all people, lower his defensive shoulders. Jax didn’t mind eavesdropping; Barry leaned into both of them and promised, apologetically almost, that he’d figure out what the hell was going on with this Rip Hunter guy.

“I like sci-fi just as much as the next guy,” Cold had drawled. “But an explanation wouldn’t be unwelcome. For now, I think we’ll keep ourselves out of pincushion range, if it’s all the same to you.”

Barry had only nodded, glancing back at the ominous and unforgiving form of Arrow. “I understand. Look, if you want an explanation, meet us back here. Tomorrow morning, before work.”

“Setting us up for an ambush, Red?”

Barry only shook his head ruefully, beginning to pull away and head towards Arrow.

“You know I’m not,” he said, quietly. “Think about it.”

Then he’d disappeared inside, and after an minute Cold had thrown a smirk at the group and walked in the opposite direction, Heatwave in tow.

That had been a couple of hours ago. Now they were waiting for Barry and the Arrow to…well, finish their questioning. Jax obviously wasn’t a fan of torture, but his mom – and life – had long-since drilled in the dangers of strange white men abducting young women and black kids at gunpoint. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised that some others still needed convincing but…that was life, he guessed.

“I still don’t think it was entirely necessary to punch him. Was it?” Ray was saying, trying to disarm his opinion with a friendly smile. Sara rolled her eyes, and so did Jax.

“Call me a pessimist, Palmer,” she replied, casually crossing her arms. “But I don’t see why I should hold back against a guy who shot me, rendered me unconscious, kidnapped me and dragged me to a rooftop to try a conscript me for his ‘totally legitimate’ plan.”

“Yeah,” said Kendra. “I’m with Sara on this one. Kidnapping is not cool.”

“Ah, nothing bad happened, c’mon!” said Ray, still smiling brightly, and the girls shared a Look. Jax snorted, clearly uncomfortable. He sat away from Grey, who – like Ray – had brightly extolled Rip’s apparently numerous virtues while totally ignoring the fact that the guy had used force and kidnapping to try and establish his point. Jax knew a power play when he saw one, and he respected Ray and Grey, but they lived in a very rose-tinted bubble if they thought that Rip was everything he said he was.

“I agree with Mr Palmer,” said Grey, albeit reluctantly, and Ray preened a little. After an initial disappointing (for Ray) moment of non-recollection, Grey had pettily acquiesced to using Ray’s surname. Jax hadn’t been too impressed, since he knew exactly what Grey was feeling thanks to their bond: he was threatened by not being the only smart guy in the room. Apparently Martin had reached the ripe-old age of…whatever, and had never had his intelligence threatened.

…that was tenure for you, Jax guessed, and crossed his arms.

“Mr Hunter’s quest seems remarkable,” Grey was continuing. “And I would hardly consider it ‘conscription’, really.”

“Believe me, Professor,” said Sara, drawling. “I know conscription when I see it.”

“Still, though – time travel!” exclaimed Ray. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Yeah, pretty cool,” said Jax, because it was. “But my main question is, why do we believe him?”

“We don’t,” said Carter.

“We don’t?” said Ray, confused. “Why not?”

Carter levelled a decidedly unimpressed look at him – Jax decided he wasn’t too sure if he actually liked this guy or not, even if he was agreeing with Jax.

“Obviously you’ve had the luxury of being coddled your whole life, Palmer,” said Carter, which Jax thought was a bit rich considering that fact that Cisco had once offhandedly mentioned to Jax that the guy was a reincarnated prince. “But most of us here are used to people only wanting our help when they’re desperate for backup – any backup.”

“Hey, yeah,” said Sara. “Not that I agree, because I’m pretty kickass –”

“Agreed,” said Jax, involuntarily, and she shot him a sly little smile before continuing.

“- but if we’re Legends in the future, and the guy has a time ship, then why didn’t he just grab our future selves?”

“Why didn’t he grab the Flash?” added Kendra. “Can’t he time travel? I’m pretty sure Cisco said he could time travel.”

“I get why he could have wanted us,” said Carter, clearly only meaning him and Kendra. “But you haven’t fully awoken yet, so it’s not like your memories would even be useful.”

Kendra frowned. Jax frowned too – maybe that was true, but it seemed like there could have been a better way to phrase that.

“We all only barely know one another,” said Kendra, clearly choosing to ignore Carter’s phrasing. From the way Sara was side-eyeing the two, apparently it had been noticed by more than just Jax. “Why choose us from when we’d be least effective as a team?”

“Because we’re the most malleable at this point,” said Jax, almost unbidden, the idea gradually getting shape in his head. But Grey scoffed, shaking his head.

“I daresay I am more than capable of discerning –” he started, all puffed up, and Jax cut him off by slicing his hand through the air.

“Grey, out of everybody here, I’m the only one with a concept of group-based teamwork,” he snapped. “Football scholarship, remember? You don’t get that by being bad at working with others, because it’s not the same thing as just being able to take orders. So listen to me. Right at the start, a team isn’t a team. It’s just a bunch of people who maybe want the same thing from each other. It takes a good coach to pull them all together, and that means pushing through the personalities of the players so that they can trust and coordinate with each other. And a good coach is more than just a regular person – they know everything, they always have the answer, they’re someone you can trust above everybody else, especially when a team is at the starting point and they don’t know who anybody else is, or how they’re gonna get from point a to point b.”

“Rip was trying to be our Captain,” concluded Kendra. “Not just because he’s already a Captain, but because he wanted us to do what he said without thinking.”

“And he was relying on his powerpoint and shock factor to do so,” added Sara, now nodding thoughtfully at Jax.

“I still think we should be giving Rip the benefit of the doubt,” said Ray, because of course his opinion was waaay more convincing to him than some very pointed and reasonable doubts. Jax rolled his eyes – and then thought, screw it. He didn’t have to baby anybody’s feelings.

“Yeah, ‘cause believing in everything a total stranger feeds you gives you exactly what you want,” he snapped, and Ray looked startled. Grey started to come to the guy’s defence, but Jax talked through him too, confident in the assumption that the others, at least, would have his back, even if they didn’t know each other very well.

“I’m serious,” he continued. “This guy shows up with a ready-made adventure and you guys are gagging at the bit for it. But he’s shady as hell, and his techniques are manipulative. You only wanna do what he says because it’s time travel. Grey, you don’t even know if he can time travel! Maybe he can, but you’re literally just believing him because he waved something shiny in your face!”

“Haven’t either of you guys heard of ‘stranger danger’?” interjected Sara. “Rip’s holding out time/space-cookies and trying to get us to go with him to the back of his white van.”

“Oh my god, he’s even got a brown trench coat…” said Kendra, with dawning comprehension, and Jax snorted out a laugh.

“I think I’ve got a pretty good judge of character,” said Ray, somewhat stiffly, and Sara turned the full force of her eyebrow on him.

“Oh really?” she purred. “Because Felicity and I had a drinking session one night and she said that your first instinct to the crime problem in Star City was to build a super-suit and kill the Arrow.”

Ray hesitated, and Grey stepped in – but Jax cut him off again.

“You think I forgot that I was Plan B?” he said. “You took one look at me – my injury, my lost scholarship, my mechanic apprenticeship – and thought: this guy isn’t good enough for me. You saw what you wanted to see, never mind the reality. And look how that turned out.”

“I think it turned out well,” said Grey, stiffly, and Jax snorted.

“Yeah, for you,” said Jax. “I like being Firestorm, okay? And I like you. But my initial reasons for bonding with you weren’t because I have some deep desire to be a super hero and go saving the world. I did it because you were dying, and because peoples’ lives were in danger. You think every idea you have is the best idea because you’re the one that has it. Well, I’m not just here for the ride, Grey. Your decisions affect me and my life, and I get a say too. And you know what I say?”

“…what’s that?” said Grey, quietly. Jax put his hands on his hips, standing his ground in the face of psychic waves of offense rolling off the other man. Geez, that guy could be such a baby sometimes.

“I say that in the face of reasonable doubt, there’s no reason to give him benefit of the doubt,” said Jax, kinda secretly pleased with his wordplay. Carter, surprisingly, picked up on it.

“All that glitters,” he said, grimly, eyes far away. Probably thinking on some depressing past life. Kendra folded her arms, shifting uncomfortably.

“I think it’d be crazy to trust a guy who needs to kidnap people to make a point,” she said. “I mean, I’ve had stalkers before. There’s nothing a guy won’t do when he thinks he’s in the right.”

Sara nudged elbows with her. “I know exactly what you mean. It doesn’t matter how much he hurts you, because he’s so right, and you’ll eventually come around to his way of thinking. Kinda reminds me of somebody, actually.” And she had the guts to raise her eyebrows at the three white privileged dudes in the room, making them flush, albeit for individual reasons. Ray was embarrassed, Grey was offended, and Carter just frowned, hard. But the steely expression in her eyes pre-empted any protests, instead provoking introspection. Jax hoped it would work; even Clarissa couldn’t get through Grey’s pig-headedness sometimes, and that lady was formidable.

“Anyway, it’s moot point,” Sara continued. “Our fearless leaders decide what’s going to happen with Rip. All we’ve gotta do is sit back and wait.”

“…leaders…” said Ray, faintly frowning. “None of us are team leaders. None of us have ever led a team. He…chose people that were used to taking orders. Used to following…”

“…and he handed…me the card with the coordinates…” added Grey, stunned. “He knew I’d be amongst the easiest to persuade!”

Jax shook his head and left the poor guys to their thoughts. He didn’t doubt that Ray and Grey were good guys, but they needed some serious perspective on more than a few things. Still, it’d do them more good than harm, at least.

As the warehouse began to echo with the indeterminate noise of shouting, Jax found that he couldn’t quite say the same thing for Rip.

~~~~~

“Time travel, huh?” said Len, eventually, flopping the magazine on his chest. They’d made it to a makeshift hidey-hole somewhere hidden in Star City’s Glades; it was chilly, and slightly damp from lack of use, but it would do as a place to tide over the night. Mick had instantly gone, first to the boiler, to get some heating and hot water in the place, and then to his box of bits, where forgotten projects lay awaiting inspection. He was messing around with some chunk of engine, melting and soldering with his fine-tuned gun, a bottle of beer balanced on the absolute edge of the table. Len usually got uncomfortable at the sight of such a breakage risk, but long experience with Mick told him the likelihood of him being unaware of the positioning of the bottle was nearly nil, and so there was a correlating lack of likelihood that Mick would ever, ever knock the bottle over.

Case and point. Mick stopped messing with the engine, hooking his gun in its holster and swiping the beer. He hadn’t replied to Len’s statement, and after a long swig, went back to work.

“Seems like he’s offering us a pretty good deal,” Len tried, if only as an attempt to get some feedback from the other man. Len wanted to bounce ideas, to talk things over, because as it was his brain buzzed with the thought of actually travelling through time. It was heady, exciting, unknown, challenging.

And it was never going to happen without Mick on board. Thankfully, Mick finally responded.

“Yeah,” he grunted, eyes still on his project. “Just one problem, Snart.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

Mick actually paused in his tinkering, pulling off his protective goggles and glancing over at Len, almost…worriedly. “Really?”

Len sat up. “Yeah, Mick. Really. What’s going on in that head of yours?”

Mick put down his project and stared at him.

“Snart…you serious?” he said. “That guy’s just telling us what we wanna hear. All that – glory, and saving the world shit. He’s got your number. He’s got all your numbers.”

“But apparently not yours, Mick,” said Len, leaning back against the sofa. Mick grunted.

“Well, no,” he replied, nonplussed. “He doesn’t need mine. He just needs yours.”

Len froze, that little sentence turning around and around in his head. But it wasn’t feeding into any conclusion, not one that he could grasp, only spinning around and around in shapeless strings of rising suspicion.

“Mick…” he said, slowly. “Why don’t you explain that?”

So Mick sat back on his bench, heavily, and entirely pulled off the goggles from around his neck.

“We’re partners, you and I,” he began.

“Goes without saying,” Len agreed, and Mick fixed him with an unusually sharp look.

“Now and then I think it does need to be said,” Mick told him, crossing his arms. “Because this ain’t the first time somebody has seen our team and tried to use one of us to get at the other.”

Len didn’t answer, just waited for Mick’s thoughts to get themselves together. Len might’ve been the planner, the expert in calling the shots, but Mick had a gut instinct that was often overlooked by people who couldn’t see farther than the pyromania and their own assumptions.

Including, he thought. Rip Hunter. Most likely.

But Len knew better, didn’t he? He should, anyway, by now. So he waited, and Mick, eventually, began to speak again.

“He said exactly what we wanted to hear,” said Mick, but then he struggled internally and frowned, heavily. “No, not what we wanted – what we expected. I thought I was watching a damn movie or something. Lots of fancy words, lots of big concepts, and suddenly there were stars in everybody’s eyes.”

“Even mine?” drawled Len, but stopped up short when Mick fixed him with a stern look.

“Yeah, Cold, even yours,” Mick drawled back. “You’ve gotten caught up in this superhero-supervillain bull, it’s all a game now. Don’t get me wrong, it’s got it’s perks, but there’s one significant drawback.”

“…and what’s that, Mick?”

Mick leaned forward, that dark, stern look still in his eyes.

“Tunnel vision,” he replied, seriously, and Len could only listen because that punched somewhere hard beneath his sternum, ringing with truth he didn’t know existed. “See, the problem is, we all grew up with superheroes, yeah? So we all know how it goes? The world needs saving, and we need you.”

“Help me Obi Wan Kenobi,” said Len, tonelessly. “You’re my only hope.”

Mick nodded, grinning a little and gaining momentum now he knew that Len wasn’t dismissing his theory out of hand. They both knew that that usually meant Mick was right in some way, and that Len was overlooking something. It was concept that had saved their hides more than once, and played heavily into their successful partnership.

“So this guy gives a lot of flash and bang to some people that are used to the crazy world of superheroes,” he continued. “So nobody tries to look too hard at possible holes in his story. Because it fits a dialogue.”

“A dialogue, Mick?” asked Len – not to be sarcastic, he was genuinely curious as to where Mick was getting his vocab. Mick just shrugged.

“Yeah, you know – like how, eh…if there’s a princess in a tower, you know you gotta save her. If there’re people dressed in black, you know they’re the bad guys. Kill the dragons. Dialogue. Coding. It feeds into what people expect when they see different things. Near twenty years of psych, Snart,” he added, seeing Len’s expression. “I had a surprising number of people tell me I wasn’t a nutjob just cause I get caught up with fire.”

“You’re not a nutjob, Mick,” said Len. “You’re a smart guy, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”

Mick just grinned, widely. “Hell, I already know that. ‘Sides, if anybody ever talks crap about me when I’m not around, I know you’ve got my back. Same as I’ve got yours.”

“Damn right,” said Len, because it was true. May their opponents underestimate the power distribution in Len and Mick’s partnership to their – most likely fatal – detriment. He tilted his head. Actually, the more he looked back on Rip’s attempt to convince them to sign on, the more it showed signs of exactly that kind of mentality. All of Rip’s big talking, none of it held anything that could possibly appeal to Mick. As far as he could tell, he and Mick were the only criminals in that crowd, and the idea that Len was the sole leader was a convenient misdirection that both of them cultivated, because it tended to trip up their potential opponents. Rip wasn’t trying to hire the team. He was trying to hire Len. Because Mick was the muscle, and apparently useless to Rip otherwise.

Nobody ever expected Mick to think. Never mind that’s really all he did. The fire was the only thing that ever shut Mick’s brain up – it captivated him, enraptured him, turned him calm in a way people with media-twisted expectations of pyromania never understood or expected. Fire didn’t make him wild, it made him calm. The problem was, it made him too calm. He’d get distracted, and then –

Then the jobs went bad. Very bad.

That gun had been a peace offering in more ways than one. But, unexpectedly, it had brought animation to Mick instead of enabling a mind-numbing obsession. The fire was controllable; it could be turned on and off more efficiently that a normal flamethrower. It had enough variations in its output – stream, wave, high and low powered – that it could never distract him indefinitely. The possibility of experimentation, coupled with controlled output – finally, Mick had a means of stability, of focus.

People thought that lighting fires was easy, so those who lit them must be simple-minded. They had no blessed clue.

“So, what’s the verdict, Mick?” said Len. His partner was right; Rip was feeding them exactly what they expected to hear, and riding on bravado to get him through potential gaps in his story – and Len didn’t like being played like a puppet. Mick chewed his thoughts for a couple of minutes before shrugging.

“That kid’s all right,” he said, referring to the Flash. “If he says he’ll get to the bottom of it, he will. He’s not one for breaking promises.”

“So we should head for that rendezvous?” asked Len. Mick shrugged.

“If anything, we’ll get to see that blonde kick the stuffing out of the time traveller again,” he said, grinning, and that was that.

~~~~~

“I can do this all night,” said Oliver, calmly, letting Hunter swing gently upside-down. The other man glared balefully at him, clearly certain that Oliver was making some kind of terrible mistake. But they’d stripped him of all technology, and, barring potential sub-derminal implants, he was clean. And even if he wasn’t, Barry had his back; the younger hero wasn’t much of a fan of manipulative time travellers, after all.

“You’re making a huge mistake,” said Rip, as expected, and Oliver didn’t like the tone of voice the other man was using. Like Oliver was a stupid child.

“I’m not the one upside-down,” replied Oliver, still calm, but he shifted the grip in his bow, drawing Rip’s attention to it. Meanwhile, Barry stood just to Oliver’s left, ever-watchful and unusually stern.

“You don’t understand,” Rip tried.

“Enlighten us,” said Barry, flatly, and Oliver toyed with the idea that the roles of bad-cop-good-cop might just be reversed this time around. “Because from where I’m standing, you’ve just attacked and kidnapped a lot of our friends.”

“If you’d just let me down –”

“Not gonna happen,” said Oliver.

“My position is not exactly conducive to –”

“You’re talking a whole lotta hot air for a man with a very short rope, Rip,” Oliver gritted out, trying not to be amazed at the man’s sense of self-importance.

“Vandal Savage conquers the world!” burst out Rip. “I need the help of your fellows to stop –”

“Things have gotten so desperate in your future that you need to kidnap strangers from over a hundred years in your past to save you?” said Oliver. “People with no knowledge of the technology, social or political climate, or territory? Yeah, I don’t buy it.”

“Billions die!” exclaimed Rip, now swinging a little with the weight of his convictions. “I don’t have time for this!”

“You’re a time traveller,” said Barry. “Believe me, you’ve got plenty of time.”

But there was something about the way Rip’s face froze – just a split second, just a bare hint of something shifting beneath his skin, a flicker of something behind his eyes – that raised the hairs on the back of Oliver’s neck.

“Unless you don’t have time,” he said, softly, watching Rip carefully. The way the other man shut down was enough of an answer. “You don’t, do you? Who’s after you, Rip?”

“Is it Savage?” asked Barry. “Is he tracking you?”

Rip shook his head, sharply. “No – no. He can’t travel through time. Only those with time ships can do so.”

“And who else has a time ship, Rip?” prompted Oliver. “Who is it that has you ‘running out of time’?”

“Changing time isn’t easy,” said Barry, eyeing Rip carefully. “I’ve only changed the past so far, and that was…it never turns out like you think it’s going to. You’re planning on taking people out of the past so that they can go fight someone in the future…I don’t even know how that would work.”

“You have to understand the stakes,” said Rip, quietly. His face was growing flushed; possibly agitation, but more likely his upside-down state was starting to have a tangible effect on him. Oliver leaned in.

“Explain them to me,” said Oliver. “One more time. With feeling, this time, Rip.”

“Who dies, Hunter?” asked Barry, also stepping forward. Rip’s body twitched. Oliver caught Barry’s eye and Barry nodded quickly; Oliver immediately strung an arrow and shot the binding that was holding Rip up. The other man fell in a graceless tangle of limbs, face heavily flushed and eyes shining.

“I should have known you’d understand,” said Rip after a moment, almost bitterly. “We all learned how you turned away from splintering the timeline by allowing your mother to be murdered. Well, Mr Allen, I’m afraid not all of us are so very sacrificing. You want to know the truth? Fine. In 2146, Vandal Savage has already conquered most of the world. He also kills my wife and child. Brutally. And I need to save them.”

It wasn’t as if Oliver couldn’t understand Rip’s perspective – he knows that, in his heart of hearts, there were things he wanted to change more than anything, things he would change if he found himself back in those moments. Shado, Slade, the boat, Sara, his mother. But living with those tragedies also gave him a sort of perspective; the mistakes he’d made meant people had been hurt, beyond recovery. Sometimes terrible things happened. Sometimes they couldn’t be made right. Life had to be about the good you could do, instead of the wrongs that lay in the past.

Rip was desperate – far past desperate. But he was also arrogant, and used to getting his own way; Oliver knew the type. The man had assaulted, kidnapped, and lied to people Oliver considered his friends. So sympathy, unfortunately, was not fully forthcoming.

Barry, therefore, had to pick up the slack. It seemed as though he was playing good cop after all.

“Tell them the full truth,” said Barry after a moment. “All of it. About who you are, about what happened. Hold nothing back. I can’t tell them what to do with their lives; I can’t dictate their choices. If you want to ask them for their help, and they want to help you – well, I can’t stop them, and I won’t. But no lies, Rip. There’s a right and a wrong way of doing things, and you’ve done them wrong.”

Barry’s gentle words actually made Rip seem chagrined; the man looked away, closing his eyes briefly with a pained expression. Oliver knew some consummate liars in his time; Rip was one of them. But there was nothing proud about the dark circles beneath the man’s eyes, or the slump in his shoulders; no hidden scorn in the downturned mouth and no glimmer of machination in his eyes. He was a man wild with grief, suppressing it.

Oliver knew the look. So he stepped back, and nodded.

“You can get some rest in a nearby hideout,” he said. “In the morning, the others will come back, and you’ll plead your case. If they say no, they say no. And you leave this city and never return. Understand?”

Rip nodded, wordlessly. Oliver shared a glance with Barry, who also nodded, and Oliver withheld a sigh.

He’d thought his present was crazy. Apparently the future didn’t get any better, if the sad, hollow man in front of him was any indication. In any case, it looked like morning would decide.

Heroes of 2016…or Legends of Tomorrow?

~~~~~

The dark early hours of the morning had seen Ollie and Barry slip out the entrance of the warehouse and update the gathering; Sara had politely declined their offer of a place to stay for the night – Ollie was hooking everyone up with nice hotel rooms, but she knew it would be wasted on her; she wouldn’t sleep. She patrolled instead, taking in the smells and sounds of her familiar city – her feet taking her far away from her father’s place, even though her heart sang out to see his face again; she wasn’t ready, she wasn’t ready yet – and when the dawn slipped over to the city she returned to the appointed spot, lingering in the shadows until the others began to appear. Now, instead of unease, curiosity stirred; a welcome little flutter of warmth she hadn’t felt in too long. Time travel…that was new. She might still like new.

Rip was clearly caught out, like truculent child, shoulders stiff beneath the watchful eye of Ollie and Barry, looking all the more intimidating decked out in their Christmas colours. They had obviously spent the night interrogating him, because the only paranoid insomniac worse than Sara herself was Oliver “What a Drama” Queen. Sara didn’t bother suppressing her smirk as she sauntered up in front of them, crossing her arms and letting the others mill about. Cold and Heatwave, naturally, lingered near the exit, while the Hawks kept to themselves.

Actually, all of the others seemed to be giving Rip a cautious berth; understandable enough in the circumstances.

“According to Rip here,” began Ollie, barely bothering to let them settle before he started talking. “He’s a Time Master. They guard time, travelling through it to make sure it happens like it should, protecting it against aberrations and time pirates.”

“Pirates?” piped up Heatwave. “Awesome.”

Ollie almost seemed like he was going to say something, but caught sight of Barry suppressing a grin. He ploughed on, ignoring the blatant attempt to disrupt his authority.

“So, he wanted to gather you up for a mission to stop Vandal Savage from taking over the world,” continued Ollie. “Except that that’s not the whole story. Is it, Rip?”

“…no,” said Rip, grudgingly. He obviously didn’t like not being in control of a situation, or having his authority undermined. “The mission is not sanctioned. I, technically, am no longer a Time Master, although I do retained captaincy over the Waverider, as Gideon is loyal to me.”

“Gideon is the A.I. that runs the Waverider,” supplied Barry, side-eyeing Rip. “Apparently she does a lot of the calculations during the actual time travelling.”

“And why is that important, Rip?” asked Ollie, pleasantly.

Grudgingly, Rip answered. “Because Gideon is the one that found you. I required people who wouldn’t make a noticeable difference to the timeline if they disappeared. I lied about you being Legends. You’re not important.”

Sara started to laugh, even while more than a few people looked extremely offended. Barry, bless him, had gone back to frowning. It held all the intimidation factor of a bunny that had just been pushed over, but the guilt it was clearly invoking in Rip was obviously significant.

“Please don’t tell me that at some point in the future I’m the one who makes the Time Masters,” said Barry, distastefully. “Because what you just said there? It’s just…wrong. Like not just morally – factually, too.”

“Like it or not, Flash, some people are more important to the timeline than others,” snapped Rip, but this was the wrong move, because Barry’s face tightened.

“Just because history remembers certain people over others, it doesn’t mean some are less important,” he said. “That’s a sickening mentality, and your Time Masters are obviously a bunch of jerks.”

Rip bristled, but surprisingly, it was Ray who beat them all to the punch.

“They disagreed with you wanting to stop Vandal Savage, and you’re still defending them?” he asked. “That sounds pretty messed up to me.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” said Rip, mouth twisting downwards. “Time Mastery is a noble calling and a vitally important task. The world as we know it would never have survived if it were not for the efforts of numerous generations of Time Masters keeping the timeline safe.”

“You know you can’t have it both ways, right?” said Jax, shaking his head. “You can’t be their biggest fan, and want to go against everything they’ve ever taught you. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Wanting to stop Savage from taking over the world is an ancillary goal,” cut in Ollie. “What he really wants is to save his wife and child from Savage murdering them. So, while I understand that, he’s lied on almost every single point he’s presented to you. It’s an unsanctioned mission, likely to attract violent attention from the Time Masters, and it’s to save his family, not the world.”

“The world will be saved,” Rip insisted.

“There’s no saving the world from itself,” said Ollie. “Dictators don’t rise in isolation. You want to stop Savage, you need to do more than kill him. Take it from me – death just complicates things.”

“Simplifies it in others,” said Sara, observing the dark, drawn-in look Rip was giving the ground, the quietly furious air of a man, used to easily getting his way, now denied at every turn. She wasn’t a huge fan of giving people like that what they wanted – more often than not, the more you gave that type of person, the less they tended to respect you; they just asked for more and gave less and less in return.

Ollie inclined his head towards her, but didn’t directly reply. Jax spoke up again.

“You had a time ship, man,” he said. “Why didn’t you just use that to save your wife and kid?”

“I did,” said Rip, quietly. “Over and over and over again – I watched them die, I watched them suffer, and I was completely helpless to prevent it. I’m sorry for lying. But I’m here because you’re my last hope. I don’t know what else to do. Please…I won’t force you, obviously. But Savage isn’t just my problem – it’s a problem for the world. If we can save my wife and child, countless other lives will also be saved.”

It wasn’t that his words didn’t hit someplace inside of Sara – it was more the fact that they did. His story made her feel sorry for him, and she was a little worried that his need for manipulation and lying from the get-go meant that ‘feeling sorry for him’ was exactly what he was going for. Ivo had taught her more than just medicine, for all that she tried to forget her lessons.

But still…time travel.

Glancing around, she saw that she wasn’t the only one who still had misgivings; Cold was watching with narrowed eyes, his background in criminality probably letting him read Rip like an open book, likely even better than she could. Ray had an odd expression on his face; like he was worried about something. The others – barring Barry and Ollie – were all looking suitably sad for Rip. Sara was sad too, if in a distant sort of way; her distrust couldn’t quite let her warm up to Rip, for all that she was sure he was, at least this time, telling the truth.

The silence dragged on. In true hangdog fashion, Rip hung his head and turned his face away.

“I won’t force you to come with me, obviously,” he said, quietly. “But please – just – consider it. I need your help. You’re the only ones who can help me, at this point.”

“Not the Flash or Arrow?” asked Jax, raising his eyebrow. Rip shook his head, glancing at Barry before looking away from the speedsters stern glare and crossed arms.

“No,” replied Rip. “The Flash is too integral to the timeline. I couldn’t possibly risk disrupting it by taking him out of his current path.”

“But you want to change the timeline,” said Sara. “So why not ask? If we’re not all that important, then how are we supposed to help you defeat somebody as big and bad as Savage?”

Okay, she was prodding him a little. But Rip was still thinking like his former Masters, when all he said he wanted to do was break from them. He needed a bit of guidance in how to think in loops instead of straight lines – logic was a surprisingly hard thing for a brain to recognise.

But Rip just shook his head.

“When I say that some individuals are more important to the timeline than others, I don’t mean it as a personal analysis of someone’s worth,” he explained, regaining a bit of his animation as he switched from poor downtrodden time-space hopper to a time ship captain, used to giving orders. “I simply mean to describe the situation as it is. Some individuals are adhered to time; people that time can simply not exist without. The Speed Force is tightly wound with the ethereal energy that is Time – therefore to remove the Flash, a speedster and a time traveller, from his current path and surroundings, would inevitably doom the surrounding time lines.”

“And what about Arrow?” said Sara, smirking at Ollie, ever-stone-faced Ollie. Rip shook his head again.

“The same principle applies,” he replied. “The Arrow might not be a speedster, but through the actions in his life, he has cemented his place in the timeline. His existence, you see, inspires others uniquely; for instance, Ms Lance, you yet live as you do because of the way his timeline has progressed. I am not trying to say that the minutiae of your lives has already been decided upon –” He added hastily as several people began to narrow their eyes, Ollie included – “But it is irrefutable that the actions of the Arrow inspired the actions of the Flash, and that these actions effected a huge portion of the population, both present and future. For example, I doubt Mr Snart and Mr Rory would have gained their pseudonyms without the existence of the Flash. And I doubt that without the Arrow, Mr Palmer would not have created the Atom Suit as quickly as he had. This is what I mean about certain people being more important to the timeline than others. I certainly don’t mean that you – any of you – are not important at all.”

“Well, that’s good,” drawled Snart, suddenly speaking. The sarcasm was strong with that one; Sara liked him already. “And for a second there I thought my feelings were about to get hurt.”

“There’s a helluva lot of talking,” grunted Rory, crossing his arms. “Who gives a damn if I’m remembered in a hundred years? I’m bored now.”

“My partner has a point, gentlemen, ladies.” Snart smirked, shifting his weight forward so that all eyes were inevitably drawn to his leg holster, where the thick silver length of his famous cold gun was secured. “I’m hearing a whole lot of sentimental chatter but no specifics. What’s the plan, Rip?”

“We get to Savage,” said Rip immediately. “We stop him in the past, thus stopping him in the future. We save the future – we save my family.”

“Now I know I’m just the muscle,” said Rory abruptly, staring down his nose at the other man. “But it seems to me that plan’s got more holes than a bowl of Cheerios.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself, Mick,” said Snart smoothly.

“Look, I can’t go through the details of my plan here – not without my ship and my computers,” said Rip, a little snappishly. Sara smirked, inwardly. She bet he’d really thought they’d fall hook line and sinker for his sob story.

Only problem was, she sort of had; the more Rip talked and the more the idea percolated around in the back of her brain. And she wasn’t the only one; she glanced at Jax, at Stein – at Ray and the Hawks. They all had these thoughtful, concerned expressions on their faces. And Sara knew what was going through their brains; Savage did need to be stopped. Rip’s family did need to be saved. She couldn’t hear about a murdered mother and child and be able to walk away from it, not without letting the tenuous grasp she had on the remaining pieces of her soul slip through her fingers, forever.

There was no clear plan. A room full of people who were basically strangers. A time traveller who was clearly a pathological liar and capable manipulator. A mission that was probably going to end in death and tears.

And the beat of her heat, hot inside her. She was gonna do it. Yeah, she was totally gonna do it. Time travel.

But first, some rules.

“Let’s say we did go,” she said, suddenly, and had to hide the stab of pity she felt when Rip turned to her, eyes wide and naked with hope.

“If,” she emphasised. “If we did go, there can’t be any lying. Lying will get us killed.”

“Of course.” Rip was nodding his head emphatically, so she carried on.

“You’re not a time master anymore,” she said. “And we’re all used to working on our own. You’re asking us to be a team for a very specific, special mission. Now, I’m sure I’m not the only one in this room who doesn’t like taking orders. I get the need to have a captain – somebody’s gotta give orders, or else there’s chaos – but if we come along for the trip, I need a guarantee from you that you’re gonna treat us as exactly what we are.”

“And that is?” Rip swallowed as Sara moved closer, keeping her eyes trained on him, letting the bloodlust rise, drip by drip, until he was as transfixed as a mouse, suffocating beneath the heavy aura of a tiger.

“An assassin,” she replied, softly. “A couple of immortals. Some superheroes, and some criminals. You’ve picked yourself a mixed bag here, Rip, and it’s not going to be easy. I have to wonder if you really thought this through. Because we’re not the kind of people you can just boss around, you know.”

Rip swallowed again, thickly. “I assure you –”

“Your first instinct was to attack, kidnap, and lie,” she said, gentle and deadly as a silk noose. “I’m not impressed. But I am intrigued. And time travel seems pretty cool. So if you can respect me, I’ll respect you. I’ll follow your orders, so long as you never expect me act like an acolyte – you know my past, you know I’ve had my fill of doctrines and blind trust. Trust, respect – give me those, Rip, and I’ll help you save your wife and child. Sound good?”

Rip stared at her, wordlessly, until he blinked furiously and nodded. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Hawks break from a conversation and she stepped back to give them the floor.

“We’ll come too,” said Carter. Kendra didn’t look all that comfortable – more resigned, really. “Savage has been killing every incarnation we’ve had in every lifetime. It’s time we took the fight to him.”

“I’ll help too,” said Ray, quickly. “This opportunity – I mean – of course I’ll help. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Yeah…” drawled Snart. “About that. The ‘right thing to do’? Not exactly what I’m about.”

“You’re missing out on the chance to steal through history?” Sara laughed. “Who knows – maybe you’re the source of unsolved disappearances of ancient artefacts!”

Snart just smiled tightly; the fingers rubbing the edge of his gun gave him away, although Sara doubted anyone – besides maybe Ollie – picked up on his agitation. He wanted to go, she realised. He just couldn’t convince himself to take the risk. He couldn’t convince himself that it was a good idea, that it was worth it.

The guy was a planner. Sara smirked. Guys like that really needed to learn how to live a little.

“C’mon…” she said, coaxingly. “A heck of a lot of crown jewels go missing throughout time. And how about all those Da Vinci sketches he leaves just lying around? Easy pickings. And think of the resale value.”

“Sara,” said Ollie sharply, but she’d never once been intimidated by his little growls, and she wasn’t intimidated now. They were on the cusp of an adventure! Unknown territory! Unseen lands! Places where she wouldn’t be looking over her shoulder, seeing ghosts of her past, the remnants of her responsibilities lurking around every corner.

“Let’s have some fun,” she said, mostly to herself. Rory grunted, taking her statement as being aimed towards him and Snart.

“Count me out,” he said. “History’s got nothing to interest me. All a buncha dead guys, who cares. Boring.”

“Even the fire of London?” asked Barry, suddenly, clearly trying to supress a grin. “Or the siege of Alexandria?”

“Don’t encourage him, kid,” said Snart sharply, but Rory was already looking pensive. Snart glanced at him and they shared a non-verbal, extremely short conversation with only their eyes conveying information. Sara was impressed; they must have been working with each other for a long time. Finally Snart gave out a very put-upon sigh and shrugged.

“Well,” he said. “Far be it from me to deny my partner a little fun. I guess it could be fun to see if there’s anything good in those ancient Egyptian tombs – long before the grave robbers get there, of course.”

Barry just rolled his eyes.

“I’m out,” said Jax, authoritatively. Stein made disappointed noises of protest, but the kid was firm.

“I’m sorry, Grey,” he continued, shaking his head. “And I’m sorry to you too, Rip. But I’ve got a life here – I can’t just up and leave my mom for some wild goose chase.”

“Jefferson –” Stein started, almost admonishingly, but to the kid’s credit he didn’t back down. Jax shook his head sharply and put his hand up, cutting off the other man.

“Look, these powers are cool and everything,” he said. “But they’re not my whole life. My family is. I’m all my mom has. My job – that garage you don’t think much of? That’s how I help her pay for her house, for her car loan. And my medical bills, you know? The insurance refused to cover because that particle accelerator explosion wasn’t technically an act of god. That job is the only way we’re staying afloat, and you want me to give it up for science?”

“It’s not just science, Jefferson,” said Stein, hands going out like all those lecturers Sara had seen in high school, and for the twelve seconds she attended college. “What Mr Hunter is proposing –”

“I get it,” interrupted Jax. “I really do. I’m not stupid, Grey, I get that it’s the chance of a lifetime and it’s a good cause, a worthy one. But my life doesn’t just belong to me, and I’ve got responsibilities. See, that’s the problem with garages, Grey – they don’t have tenure. It’s not like your job at the university. You think my boss is gonna be impressed if I just up and disappear for months on end? I’ve nearly used up all my annual leave and sick days with just Pittsburgh. I’m sorry. I really am. But it’s not happening.”

“I understand your difficulties, Jefferson,” said Stein stiffly. “But there are greater things at play here. Surely saving the world takes precedence over personal needs?”

Jax just snorted, shaking his head ruefully; Sara picked up on disappointment, but not surprise.

“Figures,” he said, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets, and with a final shake of his head, began to walk out of the warehouse. Stein started after him, but came up short, fists clenching and unclenching.

“Jefferson!” he called. “Jefferson! Jax! You can’t just walk away from this! It’s not always about you – you’re being unreasonable! Can’t we at least talk? Jefferson –!”

But the kid let the door swing shut after him, hard and final. Awkward silence fell amongst the group while Stein tried to smooth his ruffled feathers. Eventually he just nodded stiffly to Oliver and Rip and stalked out the door after his younger partner. Sara caught Snart’s eye as they both subtly turned to watch him leave; she widened her eyes in mock scandal, and received a solitary raised eyebrow in return.

“Wow,” said Ray, voicing what they were all thinking. “I feel like I just witnessed a domestic.”

Rip looked a little put out at the sudden exit of Jax and Stein, but he rallied himself and moved on without comment.

“If you all are willing to help me, then I welcome you most sincerely,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and straightening. “Of course, I won’t make you drop everything to come with me – you will have twenty-four hours to settle your affairs here, and I can give you an address to meet me later.”

“Why twenty-four hours?” asked Rory suddenly. “If it’s a time ship then we could just hop on now?”

Rip looked like he wanted to sigh. “I was simply being courteous, Mr Rory. I assume you will want to pack a bag?”

Rory just looked the other man up and down before sharing a narrow-eyed look with Snart.

“What’s that address?” said Snart by way of reply. Rip rattled off a location – close by, in an open space next to some infrequently used warehouses.

“Well!” exclaimed Sara, slapping him on the back. “Looks like we’re going on another adventure. If I’m late, don’t leave without me!”

Just to be extra annoying, she waggled her eyebrows at the man, who was starting to look very much put-upon by the time the others started to filter out of the building, murmuring plans to each other about what to pack and where to go. Palmer practically waltzed out, stars in his eyes, although the pause right before he left, with a glance back at Rip, was pretty interesting. Rory and Snart slipped away between one blink and the next; a master infiltration and extraction specialist team making short work of their exit. Oliver nodded seriously at her, and she granted him an equally serious nod in return.

She couldn’t guarantee that she knew what she was doing. But hell, this had to be better than trying to shoehorn herself into an old life, or piece together something new, something that didn’t make her feel jaded and more alone than ever.

Time travel. Looks like life still had something to give.

~~~~~

Jax got back to the hotel room, fuming, and spent an indeterminable chunk of time staring at the ceiling, having angry conversations with an imaginary Grey, in which Jax thought through just about every nasty thing he’d ever been holding back. It didn’t help – eventually it just made him more and more upset, until his whole body grew too hot, his head began to hurt, and tears began to spill over. He rolled on his side, pulling out his phone and trying to focus on something that would distract him, something that would stop all this anger –

Grey never listened, he said Jax’s mom should be less important –

Saving the world, sure, but the way he’d said it, the way he’d trivialised everything Jax worked so hard to get, everything he’d worked so hard to protect –

His thumb hit contacts, and almost on autopilot, he pressed the icon for his mom’s number. He put the phone to his ear and covered his eyes, pressing the wetness between his fingertips and eyelashes. His mom picked up on the fourth dial tone.

“My baby,” said his mom affectionately, her voice as smooth and sweet as it ever was, even with the tinniness of the phone’s speaker. “How’s my little Jax?”

Jax rolled his eyes, but he was already smiling. “Yeah, yeah…hi, mom.”

His mom made a concerned noise. “What’s that in your voice, sweetheart? You troubled?”

Jax almost said no. Almost. But…sometimes he really needed his mom.

“Something happened today,” he started, and paused. His mom waited patiently on the other end of the line, and suddenly Jax couldn’t hold any of it back. He’d gotten so used to trying to tamp down on his feelings because Grey was affected too, but now he just – he just couldn’t. It all rose up – the frustration, the fear, the anger, the upset.

Grey wasn’t listening to him again. Jax was being steamrolled, again – time after time this happened and it didn’t seem like there was anything Jax could do or say that would just make Grey understand. Jax wasn’t there to make Grey’s life easier – he wasn’t an assistant, or an intern! He was supposed to be a partner –

“Baby?” said his mom, worriedly. “What’s going on?”

“A time traveller’s showed up,” said Jax, choked up. He didn’t even know how to sort through all these feelings. He didn’t know how –

But his mom seemed to have an idea.

“Mr Stein wants to go,” she surmised. “And you don’t want to. And he’s not respecting that?”

Jax nodded; it was a phone conversation, but he couldn’t help himself. His mom knew what he meant though; ever since he was a little kid and things got so tough all his emotions crammed together and he couldn’t articulate a single one. When that happened, his mom soothed him with simple questions, pulling the whole story from him without him ever having said a word; just nodding or shaking his head. She didn’t even need to see to know what was upsetting him.

“You need to take a breath,” she said, and Jax did. “Okay, baby. Now. Think back on the conversation. Did you speak as best you could?”

“Yes,” Jax croaked, once he’d thought back. He’d said everything as clearly as he could – Grey just didn’t want to listen.

“That’s good. And he didn’t respond to that?”

“No. He didn’t wanna hear. He said it was all about ‘saving the world’, but he just – he just wanted to do what he wanted. What I said didn’t matter at all.”

“He’ll come around,” said his mom. “Just keep breathing, baby. If you’ve got logic on your side, he’ll eventually come around. He’s stubborn, not irredeemable, right?”

Jax just exhaled roughly.

“I dunno, mom,” he said. “It’s not like I don’t – it’s not like I don’t wanna go. I mean – time travel! That’s cool! But I’ve got obligations, and Grey just doesn’t seem to care about them at all.”

“Obligations like what, baby?” asked his mom, and Jax frowned.

“Well…like you, mom,” he said. “I gotta help you out. I can’t just leave.”

“Jax, honey – if this is something you want to do, you can’t just cross it out just like that. Sometimes the things you need have to be compromised with the things you want.”

Jax blinked. “Wait…do you…think I should go?”

His mom paused, for just long enough that Jax got seriously confused.

“Jax, baby, I’m not gonna tell you what to do…” she began, oh-so-carefully, and he exhaled.

“So you don’t want me to go,” he concluded.

“That’s not what’s important,” his mom countered, and he frowned.

“Yes, it is,” he said. “Mom, I can’t leave you your own! You can’t tell me to go off adventuring when you’re the one that gets left behind.”

“Baby, living your life means leaving me behind,” she said.

“But I don’t want that!”

“I don’t mean that you drop me, and forget I exist! I know you’ll always love me, and that I’ll always have a special place in your heart. But sweetie, you’ve got a life to live –”

“I don’t wanna leave you behind,” interrupted Jax, gripping his phone. “I won’t. We’re a family.”

There was an even longer pause on the other end, and finally, his mom sighed, long and hard.

“Honey…” she said. “Jax…is this about your dad?”

Jax froze. “What –”

“Sweetheart. I don’t need looking after. Of course I’ll be worried about you, gallivanting off through time. But baby, your face after you’ve been superheroing is something to see. It makes my heart swell up, it gives me joy to see you so fierce and devoted. You’ve found a calling, Jax. I couldn’t be more proud of you.”

Jax’s chest started to hurt, and his eyes began to sting.

“Mom…” he said, throat thick.

“And baby, of course I’m scared for you. I’m terrified, sometimes! But when that happens I know to trust in your strength, in your heart, in your honour, and in the trust you place in those around you – that they’ll watch your back as you watch theirs. I couldn’t be more proud of you, Jax. And I know your father would too.”

Tears finally pushed their way out of his eyes; Jax covered his mouth with his hand, trying hard to keep his breathing even. His mother kept speaking, hushed and gentle, and utterly, painfully sincere.

“This world is already unsafe,” she said. “And I know you know the history of our family, of our people, of the wrongs that were done to us throughout time that continue today. I know you know that there will be things that will terrify you, hurt you, things you can’t undo or change, things you’ll carry with you no matter how hard I work to keep you safe. I trust your strength, Jax, as much as I fear the things you’ll see, the things you’ll undergo. At least my baby has superpowers. At least my baby has a team at his back, to watch over him. Lord bless you, Jax. Your father would be so proud.”

Jax’s legs gave out. He sat down heavily on the bed, pressing the heel of his hand into one of his eyes, shoulders shaking.

“I can’t just leave –” he tried, choking through his tears.

“Jax,” interrupted his mom. “You’ve always been looking out for me. You’re the most devoted, caring, honest son a mom could hope for. You’re every bit the man your poppa and I were hoping you’d be. But you’re my child, not the other way around! You keep taking the world on your shoulders, and you don’t have to do that anymore!”

“That’s not –”

“Baby, sometimes you act like that accident the night of the explosion was your fault, like it was your fault the ground exploded and you hurt your leg. I love that you work hard to help me out, but you are not obliged to do so! I do not consider caring and providing for you to be a hardship. It is my responsibility, my privilege, and my honour as a mother to give you an education, and a home, and clothes on your back and food in your belly – I am your mother. I look after you.”

“I want to help, mom –”

“I know – I know, sweetie. Those early years, they were tough. But we came through, we always do. And we’re in a good place now – my new promotion, and your Aunt Debbie and Georgia – you remember Georgia, my old friend from high school? They’ve moved back to Central City now. So I have a good job, with more pay, lower bills since I switched over providers, and a bigger support network. I know things got tough, sweetheart, but they’ve turned a corner now. You don’t have to keep looking over your shoulder.”

Jax was bent over himself, phone pressed hard against his ear. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he breathed through his nose while he tried to manage the pain in his throat the tears were causing him.

“Those medical bills,” he said finally, voice scratchy. “Those are my fault.”

His mom tsked down the line at him.

“It was that or college bills, Jax!” she exclaimed. “Lord above, boy – it’s like you think your existence is supposed to be free, or something! Like kids aren’t meant to cost their parents a single dollar! Just how do you think being a parent works, baby?! Damn!”

Jax barked out a laugh despite himself, sniffing loudly and rubbing at his face. His mom sighed, static rushing through the speaker.

“Aw, honey,” she said. “Look. You can’t make decisions about your life based on what I need. ‘Cause if I had my way you’d never leave home! Marry a nice girl, move in, give me grandbabies.”

“Mom!”

“Yeah, yeah – I don’t mean for a few years. But you see? Already you’re disagreeing with me. Baby. What do you want?”

Jax tried to think – he really did. What did he want? To be a superhero? To be a time-travelling superhero? To save the world? He swallowed, and dug deep.

“I wanna see your mortgage paid off,” he said. “I wanna see those medical bills gone. I wanna see you with a fresh coat of paint on the house, and that leaky pipe in the kitchen fixed, and proper air-con installed instead of that hunk of junk. I wanna see you retired and living it up somewhere abroad – France, or somewhere. I wanna see you happy, mom. That’s what I want.”

It took him a little bit to realised that the silence on the other end of the phone wasn’t his mom thinking – it was his mom crying. A sob at the other end, after several minutes, finally gave it away.

“Oh, Jax,” she said, tearfully. “Oh, my baby. How’d a mom ever get so lucky?”

She sniffed loudly, and Jax gave her a couple of moments, smiling down the phone at her, tears threatening him again.

“Okay,” she said, clearing her throat. “Let’s address those things, shall we?”

“Hm?” Jax raised his eyebrow; as his mom began to speak, his heart began to beat harder, and his hands reflexively began to clench – around his phone, his knee, the bedsheets, anything within distance.

“The mortgage will be paid off when I’m sixty-five,” she said. “The medical bills will be paid off at sixty-two. That’s more than enough time for a peaceful retirement, right? I even have a pension I’ve been building up – and I’ve been saving up the widow’s allowance ever since your father passed. Plenty. Now. About that paint job, and the pipe? Haul ass next time you’re around and that’ll get done fairly sharpish, and at no cost to me! Air-con gives me a headache; I don’t like the idea of recycled air. And France? Baby. You know I hate French food. So obnoxious; too many ingredients, too much going on for my guts to handle. So…”

A sigh shuddered its way out of Jax, and bit by bit his mind started to clear as his mother gave him a few moments to gather himself.

“So…” repeated his mom. “Now that you don’t have the weight of minding your own mother…what do you want to do, Jax?”

And he had an answer.

“I wanna have an adventure,” he said, honestly. He’d never realised how heavily he bore his responsibility, even as he’d always known how seriously he’d taken it. His mom was always, always there for him, sacrificing the best years of her life so that he could have a childhood that some kids – even on his block – didn’t get to have. He’d always understood from an early age how difficult his mom must have had it – so everything he did was with an aim of making it easier for her, better for her. Going to class religiously, studying hard, taking up sports for the scholarship he’d known would get him into a good college, which he’d loved, he’d loved –

He hadn’t expected he’d love it so much. That rush, that power, that freedom. And he’d been trying to avoid the revelation, but being Firestorm gave him that back. He’d tried not to see it as such, because being Firestorm – being a superhero – meant he couldn’t help his mom out in the same capacity. The mechanic’s apprenticeship did that – and damn, he actually really loved cars, loved figuring them out, making them work again, making them shiny –

There were so many things he loved doing that he’d avoided looking at too closely. Because enjoying stuff meant he might get distracted, and smiles didn’t pay the medical bills or take away that pinched look deep inside his mom’s eyes he’d seen so much growing up.

But if he was…allowed to like things…no, not allowed – except yes, allowed, he’d been so goal-orientated, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d stopped to smell the roses –

“An adventure,” repeated his mom warmly. “Yeah. That sounds about right. You wanna have an adventure, my Jax?”

Jax laughed down the phone, even as he was crying – his shoulders, his chest, his heart, felt a hundred times lighter. His mom was okay. She was okay. She didn’t depend on him to survive. He could do stuff without secretly being worried it was only going to hurt her in the end.

“Yeah, mom,” he said. “I wanna go. If it’s okay.”

“It’s okay, baby,” said his mom, because sometimes you needed to push through and realise things for yourself, and other times you really just needed somebody to lay it out solid and clear for you. His mom always seemed to know which one he needed. Jax scrubbed his face again, smiling down the phone – and then he jumped, a little, as a click in the door told him that Grey had come back.

“Oh – mom – hold on a sec –” he said, standing up, and Grey came through the door. Jax had been so caught up in talking to his mom that he hadn’t paid any attention to the bond. Grey, however, looked like he had – his face was filled with concern that only increased when he saw Jax on the phone, with a tear-streaked face. Jax smiled faintly, waving his hand to let the older man know everything was okay.

“Grey’s here, mom,” he said. “I…I have some stuff to talk about. Okay?”

“Yeah, Jax, that’s okay,” said his mom. “I love you, okay honey?”

“I love you too , mom,” said Jax, blinking when she interrupted before he could hang up.

“Just real quick, sweetie – put Mr Stein on the phone, would you?”

“Uh…” Jax waved at Grey, pointing at the phone. “Sure, no problem. Love you, mom.”

“Love you too, sweetie. Have fun!”

Grey took the phone from his hand with a querying look, gingerly putting it to his ear as though he thought it would reach out and bite him. Jax rolled his eyes; Grey had always been slightly intimidated by his mom. She was firm with him in a way Clarissa never was – after all, she wasn’t there to support and comfort Grey like a wife. She was Jax’s mom, and she made sure Grey knew that.

…Jax suddenly realised why his mom wanted to talk to Grey. His hunch proved correct when his mom started speaking, her voice still easily audible giving Grey’s close proximity and the volume his phone was automatically set to.

“Martin, you’re not a father, I know,” she started. “Except now you are. That’s my boy. That’s my only son. Whenever things got tough I only had to look at him and know that a beautiful future was waiting for us. He is strong, he is just, and he is loyal. And now, he is your responsibility. Do you understand that, Martin?”

Grey didn’t protest. If anything, he grew more serious. “Yes.”

“You will respect him,” continued his mom. “You will love him like the son you never had. You will honour him; you will watch his back and you will be the first line of defence if something comes after him. I am entrusting my only child to you, Martin – and you will not let me down.”

“I swear it,” said Grey, focussed and grim. “I swear on my life, on everything I hold dear – I will keep your son safe.”

“Being a superhero is dangerous,” said his mom. “I accept that danger, as much as I dread it, as much as I hate it. It might not be possible to keep my son safe, Martin, but swear to me that if he comes into danger you will not rest until he is safe. You will do everything in your power and then some to save him.”

“I swear it,” said Grey.

“You will respect my boy,” she said. “He’s not been to college like you, but he’s sharp as a tack, so don’t underestimate him. He’s good and honest. You will respect him.”

“I will,” said Grey, glancing up at Jax, who honestly didn’t know how to react to this conversation – it was like Grey and his mom were making some kind of blood pact or something. “I promise, I will respect him.”

“You will honour him.”

“I will honour him.”

“You will respond to his goodness with your own.”

“I will.”

“Martin?”

“Yes?”

There was a long pause on the other end, and then, a cut-off sob.

“Look after my baby,” she said, shakily.

“I will, Mrs Jefferson,” said Grey quietly. “I swear it.”

He took the phone away from his ear, Jax’s mom having hung up after that last promise. Jax kinda felt like crying again after the solemnity of the moment, and he silently took his phone back as Grey passed it to him. Even as the other man sat on the bed next to him, Jax couldn’t find the strength to speak.

“I was wandering a little,” began Grey, still quiet, as though his voice couldn’t pierce the atmosphere. “I felt your anger, you anxiety – your pain. As much as I was angry myself – I couldn’t stay away. I thought at first that something might have – happened. And then I realised that…the only thing that could have happened to you…was me. What I…said. How I acted towards you earlier.”

“Sorry,” said Jax, just on reflex. They both knew that neither of them could help the bond, or really effectively hide their true feelings from one another. Grey just shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Don’t apologise. I was the cause of your anger, your anxiety. It is I who should apologise, Jax. And I am. Apologising, that is. I’m sorry.”

Jax just shrugged his shoulders. He couldn’t seem to find it in him to talk; his throat was sore from crying, and he felt so tired all of a sudden.

“Thanks for the apology,” he said, finally. “I just wish it hadn’t taken my mom chewing you out to get it from you.”

Martin’s mouth pinched; not from annoyance at Jax’s words, but from the chagrin they caused – towards himself. He inclined his head.

“I should not have dismissed your reasons out of hand,” he said. “It is true I…tend to get ahead of myself, and forget that my needs are not the most important there are, simply because they are mine. I understand completely why you don’t wish to go, and while I must confess to more than a little disappointment, I will not force you, or further press the issue.”

Jax was quiet for a little bit, taking in Grey’s words, the open, honest look on his face, the sheer sincerity in his tone.

“Did you mean all that stuff?” he asked, swallowing hard. “I mean…all that stuff you promised my mom?”

“Absolutely, Jefferson,” replied Grey quietly, folding his fingers together. “I forget, sometimes – I underestimate all you’ve done for me. What you’ve sacrificed, in order that I might live. Everything you do speaks of a great, unending kindness in you that comes naturally and effortlessly –”

“I wouldn’t say effortlessly,” interjected Jax dryly, and Grey smiled a little, titling his head in acknowledgement.

“We’re a partnership, you and I,” said Grey. “That makes us equals. That means your opinion, your life, what you want, is just as important as my own needs. I’m sorry for not appreciating that earlier.”

Jax just rubbed at his face, a little embarrassed now at Grey’s sincerity.

“Geez, Grey,” he said, trying for lightness. “I didn’t know you had so many apologies in you.”

Grey smiled again, looking down at his hands.

“Yes, well…” he said. “I suppose it was a number of things…”

“Like what?” asked Jax, curious to hear what had made the other man so serious and thoughtful all of a sudden. Grey tilted his head; Jax could almost see him itemising his mental list of contributory factors.

“Well,” said Grey, slowly. “I suppose there was the look on everyone’s faces when you first left. Everything from amusement to impatience. But Mr Allen looked…disappointed, I suppose. And I realised that his gaze was directed at me.”

“Really?” said Jax. “Huh. How’d you know?”

Grey pinched his mouth, a little embarrassed.

“I didn’t realise it straight away,” he said. “Once I had cooled off a little, and was going over things in my mind…I realised that my upset, my unease – it was from you. And then I realised that Mr Allen’s expression was for me, not you, not the situation generally. At some point later your emotions escalated; I – I had caused that. It was unavoidable. I had stepped all over your feelings for a pipe dream, a fantasy. I ignored your just cause and tried to force the issue. I feel terrible, Jax.”

“Yeah,” said Jax, quietly. “I know.”

They sat together, both silent, absorbing their own feelings and each other’s. Jax closed his eyes; after another moment, Grey sighed.

“I’ll ring Clarissa,” he said, making to stand up. “She should be able to book us a train back to Pittsburgh by the time we get to the station.”

Jax put his hand out, stopping Grey from standing. “Wait.”

Grey blinked, and sat back on the bed.

“I’m going,” said Jax. “I wanna have an adventure.”

Grey blinked again. Then again, harder.

“But…” he said, hesitating. “I – your mother –”

Jax just looked at the other man. “She gave you the full mama bear routine and you somehow missed the fact that she was giving us her permission?”

Grey’s mouth dropped open.

“I –” he shook his head. “I merely thought she was admonishing me for not taking proper care of you. Of accepting our life and to treat you better in the future because of how upset I had made you.”

Jax laughed, harder and harder when the dawning comprehension blew over Grey’s face, and the man became more and more animated.

“Wait –” said Grey. “Does this mean – I mean, does it – are you –”

“We’re going time travelling, Grey,” said Jax, grinning widely.

Grey looked over joyed – and then the clouds came across his sun, and his face fell.

“Are you sure?” he asked, seriously. “Because I meant it, I will not –”

Jax just laughed again, lightly knocking the other man’s arm with his knuckles, sitting back and grinning at him.

“Relax, man,” he said, still half-laughing. “I asked my mom. She said I could sleep over.”

Grey lit up like a spotlight, practically ready to clap his hands with excitement.

“Time travelling!” he exclaimed, gleefully. Then he abruptly raised a palm up high, spreading his fingers out. “Firestorm!”

Jax laughed and high-fived him.

“Firestorm!” he agreed, and his shoulders felt ten times lighter.

He was gonna be a time traveller!

~~~~~

The sun was warm across the rendezvous point, the district empty of any civilians or potential ‘Legends’. Oliver, of course, was already there, safely hidden from sight, and had spent his extra hour and a half setting up perimeter cameras for Felicity to keep an eye on things. Barry, of course, was nearly twenty minutes late, and he pulled up short in a burst of dust and lightning sparks, stopping just short of hitting Oliver. The younger man didn’t look in the least bit perturbed by Oliver’s long stare, so that was business as usual, at least.

“Time travel?” Oliver said. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

Barry snorted. “Uh, no? It’s crazy complicated and shouldn’t be done. Not that that’s ever stopped me.” He paused. “I mean, I shouldn’t be doing it. I don’t even know how I do it, not really – I mean, technically I know how to do it, Cisco did the science, but –”

“But it’s not exactly fool-proof,” concluded Oliver, stressing his words so that Barry would know he was digging at him. Barry picked up on it and grinned.

“Yeah, yeah, very funny, Barry’s accidentally altered time, I know,” said the speedster, crossing his arms. “But we can’t very well tell them what to do. We got as many facts as we could. It’s up to them.”

“And what if they screw up the timeline as they do it?” asked Oliver calmly. Barry shrugged.

“Then there still won’t be anything to sweat, because we won’t know,” he replied. “Timelines, Ollie.”

Oliver made sure to project his silent disapproval as hard as he could. Barry, the brat, just rolled his eyes again.

“All right, all right,” he said, nudging Oliver. “C’mon. Look, they’re coming.”

Everyone had returned, which honestly surprised Oliver – and Barry, apparently, if the quiet interested noise he’d made was any indication. Oliver was sure that neither of them had really expected Snart or Rory to show again, and Oliver was equally surprised to see Jax and Stein returned. He’d expected Ray, Kendra, and Carter, of course.

Sara went without saying. Where there was trouble, she’d be there.

A ship de-cloaked, like something straight out of Star Trek – not that he’d ever let on that he knew remotely anything about the series, of course, since Felicity and Barry already had enough reasons to make his life unbearable. Rip made a little speech, fooling (Oliver hoped) exactly no-one, and then they all got on the ship.

…which then took off, hovered, shot into the sky, and disappeared.

He turned to Barry, who was watching the sky with raised eyebrows. Barry caught his eye and grinned.

“That was new,” he said. Oliver just frowned at the sky, and Barry slapped his shoulder.

“They’ll be fine, Oliver,” he said. “Need a lift?”

Now Oliver was glaring at him, Barry was unrepentedly grinning, and most – not all, but most – was right with the world.

He couldn’t help but give one last glance to the sky as the left, however. The thought he sent after them wasn’t quite a prayer – he was very, very past prayers – but it was something like it.

“Good luck,” he said, quietly, and then he turned, and soon the warehouse district was empty, with no visible sign that anyone at all had ever been there.

Too bad for the Legends – a Hunter’s ship picked up on invisible signs just as easily as visible ones…

~~~~~

The ship was awesome. It reminded Sara of all the tech from Star Wars; so far off and advanced, but kinda beat up too, and well-worn. Still, it was clear that Rip had pride in his ship; the place was clean, the modules worn but polished, and what looked like a library liberally and carefully decked out in historical memorabilia, obviously from missions past (pun intended). It struck her then; they weren’t just walking onto his ship. They were walking onto his home; his space, the only thing he had left, begrudgingly shared in desperate times and through desperate measures.

Sara wandered around, taking in everything from the speckled windscreens and worn-down bolts in the floor, to the matte seats and shiny centre console. How could something so high tech look so…kinda low tech as well? But the upkeep in the place spoke volumes about Rip’s personality; behind each polished panel was a need for control, for order, probably born from whatever training his old masters put him through. But also, a dedication to his craft, his life, his mission. Rip Hunter took pride in what he owned, what he earned. Despite that, however, a little voice still told her – be careful. The man was a man and a captain besides; Sara knew what those were like. A movement caught her eye; Snart, and Rory, clearly casing the place. She smirked. Looks like she wasn’t the only one who was forming an opinion.

The others milled in, not quite standing together, when finally Rip swashed in, his coat bustling behind him dramatically. Sara’s smirk widened; aaand it looked like somebody was trying to reinstate their authority. Good luck to that. She caught Snart’s eye and he raised his eyebrow, his own smirk lurking behind his eyes; that was nice. There might be a – figurative? Literal? – partner in crime in those guys, if things went well. It was always good to have someone to drink with. And now that she’d decided she liked them, she was going to (hopefully) irritate the hell out of them by using their first names only.

Leonard was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

“Nice digs, Hunter,” she called out, timing her words for the exact moment Rip puffed up, about to exhale a grand speech (probably). He barely restrained himself from glaring at her – but it was restrained, so at least there was that.

“Thank you,” he said, and there wasn’t as much sarcasm as she expected, so she let him have another point in his favour. “…And thank you all, for coming. I know that I didn’t exactly make the best first impression, but I really do believe in the mission, and it’s importance.”

“So we kill this Savage guy,” piped up Rory. “Then what? We all go home?”

Rip gave him a look. “Ideally, yes, Mr Rory. But it won’t be so easy to get a hold of Savage. He’s a master at remaining hidden.”

“Well, lucky for you, Rip, you’ve got a few people who are real used to solving problems,” drawled Leonard, smirking as he did so.

“You said your wife and child were killed by him,” said Ray. Sara glanced at him; he’d been staring inside Rip’s library, frowning slightly. Rip’s shoulders slumped, but he rallied after a moment, drawing himself up like he was bending steel to his spine.

“Yes – but Vandal Savage shouldn’t just be stopped because of…my personal reasons for doing so,” said Rip, swiping his hand across Gideon’s interface to bring up stats and an image of their quarry. “The danger he presents to our world –”

“Wait,” said Ray. “That’s Vandal Savage?!”

They all turned to stare at him questioningly, and he flushed, stammering out an explanation.

“It’s – it’s just – I’ve seen that guy before,” he said. “I know I have. He’s got a distinctive face.”

Rip vaulted out of his seat, face draining of colour.

“Mr Palmer,” he said, fighting for calm. “Are you absolutely sure you’ve seen this man before?”

Ray nodded, firmly, his mouth set in a grim line. “Yes. One hundred per cent. I mean, he didn’t call himself Vandal Savage, of course, it was – oh, some Norwegian name, unpronounceable –”

“His alias matters little to his location,” interrupted Rip. “Mr Palmer, do you have such a location?”

Ray nodded again. “The Silversnow Mountain Hotel, in Are, Sweden – 2013.”

The date got a sharp glance from Sara, but Rip bounded away to his chair, already shouting at Gideon to arrange the coordinates.

“Everyone get strapped in!” he snapped. “We have an unprecedented chance here – a moment in history where even the Time Masters have no information regarding Savage. It’ll be our best chance yet, and all thanks to the serendipity of Mr Palmer’s liking for expensive vacations!”

Sara glanced over at Ray as they quickly took their seats, but aside from a tight nod he didn’t respond to her questioning look. His mouth was still a stiff line, and his usual milky-pale skin – hours in the laboratory having leeched all potential tan long ago – seemed grey around the edges. Rip’s backhanded compliment didn’t so much as make him blink, and glancing around she saw that she wasn’t the only one who had noticed; Leonard quirked his eyebrows at her, and Mick was looking contemplatively at the other man.

Rip, of course, hadn’t noticed, and then there was no time to notice anything - timestream took them, and an unpleasant lurch overcame Sara's stomach. The Waverider launched out of the green horizon and into another time and place – covered in snow, with blue, blue skies overhead.

“Are, Sweden, 2013,” concluded Rip. “All right, Mr Palmer. Let’s hope your memory is as good as you think it is.”

“Believe me, Rip,” said Ray, quietly. “It is.”

~~~~~

The replicator was awesome, even if Rip protested it being called that. They bundled up appropriately for the weather – thankfully the clothes were pretty similar – and made a concerted bee-line for the resort. Sara was grateful it wasn’t the early 2000s. Those had not been forgiving years, fashion-wise.

“All right, Mr Palmer,” said Rip, once they were in the lobby, successfully hidden within a convenient nook. A beautifully warm log fire complemented the view of arching, endless banks of snow, with tiny moving figures of skiers below. A waiter had passed once by, offering free mugs of mulled apple tea, and now they were all nursing a hand-carved mug of delicious citrusy-cinnamon-y hot goodness.

“Ray, this place is the shit,” interrupted Sara happily, putting her feet up. Rip glowered at her, but Ray cut him off.

“Uh, Rip, if I may,” he said, a little more timidly than usual, and looked openly relieved at Rip’s sigh and permission-giving handwave. Sara narrowed her eyes; Ray was hamming it up, big time. For whatever reason, she didn’t know – but she had more of a reason to trust Ray than to trust Rip, considering the opinions Felicity and Oliver had of him, so if Ray had a plan going…

“I remember this day clearly,” he said. “We were on the balcony café, and he saw me reading a New Science magazine – I was on the cover. A…heated discussion followed, and I…well, left. He was being a jerk. Anyway, it’s just past the time when I left, and I know that he won’t leave for another few hours because when I came back I heard the waitresses complaining that they couldn’t close yet because he was still hanging around.”

“Your point, Mr Palmer?” asked Rip, frowning.

“My point, is that this balcony is accessible by another side room!” exclaimed Ray. “I know, because I was exploring the first day and I got lost. It’s how I found the café in the first place. So, if I may suggest – Rip, you and I head up to the side room. The others can split up and circle the area, make sure none of his security can get through. We knock him out sharpish, get the Waverider to swing around, and Bob’s your uncle!”

“Huh, that’s a good plan, Ray,” threw in Sara, and the surprised relief on his face was enough to let her know that he definitely had something up his sleeve. Men do not good liars make, but luckily just enough men were obsessed with themselves that they never realised that.

“I’m surprised at you, Palmer,” chipped in Leonard, raising his eyebrows. “Covering your angles and exits – not bad.”

Rip, sensing the loss of imitative, hurriedly re-took command of the conversation – as expected, given the eyebrows Leonard was giving her behind the other man’s back.

“Very well,” said Rip, patting his holster. “Mr Palmer and I will proceed. The rest of you, cover our exits.”

They all nodded very seriously, waiting until Ray and Rip disappeared through the large double doors at the other end of the room. Then Sara grinned and chugged her apple tea.

“Uh…” said Jax. “Aren’t we supposed to be, y’know – mobilising?”

“Nah, kid,” said Leonard, sitting neatly opposite Sara, his own mug pressed against his smiling face. “Our Ray’s got himself a little plan, so we’ll keep our comms ready and our position stable in case he needs backup.”

“A plan?” said Stein, confused. “Isn’t that why we should be moving?”

“Nope,” said Sara. “Because Savage isn’t here.”

Kendra stared at her, but the look Carter gave her was filled with suspicion, so Sara added a casual shrug, too, just to piss him off.

“That’s my best guess, anyway,” she said. “Ray’s got his own plan, and frankly, with the way Rip’s been thus far, I don’t mind waiting out to see what it is.”

“I don’t know if we should just be waiting around though…” said Kendra, glancing worriedly at the far door. “What if they run into trouble?”

“It’s a ski-resort,” said Sara, waving her mug at the other woman. “What could possibly go wrong?”

And the group collectively grimaced.

“…sorry.”

~~~~~

Ray walked casually down the hall, and Rip followed with slightly more tension in his body.

“Put your shoulders down,” murmured Ray, eyeing the other man out of the corner of his eye. “If we pass a maid or something they’ll notice. This is a ski-resort, people are meant to be relaxed.”

He ignored his own rolling nerves. He was about to try something ballsy and likely dangerous, but he knew deep down that being a hero meant more than just putting on a super-suit. Sometimes it took a regular suit too. Rip had presented himself with all the trappings of a glamorous hero, sailing from a desperate future to beg for help from an unlikely group of individuals. Now Ray was faced with the idea that maybe his gut instinct wasn’t so much an instinct but more a set of pre-conceived subconscious expectations that conformed to a series of external set circumstances, which was…apparently a big glaringly obvious thing that he needed to work on. Let it never be said Ray Palmer was afraid of some self-improvement, though!

To that end, he’d mulled on what it really meant to be a hero. Blowing stuff up, saving the day, getting the girl…these all seemed a little childish when it became apparent how easily Rip had manipulated these ideals to get Ray on board. Ray was starting to think, then, that all those factors were just…side results, things that came about as a result of being a hero, instead of being the reasons a hero exists. It was a fine line, the edge of a coin. Being a hero wasn’t just being what he thought a hero needed to be. It wasn’t just being what he thought other people expected of him. It took introspection, and dedication, and sacrifice. The good of others wasn’t just what Ray thought the good should be. If he’d realised that, he maybe wouldn’t have tried to build a super suit solely to fight Oliver, ignoring the trust he should have had in Felicity.

His brain wasn’t enough. It was only the first step. He needed his empathy as well.

Which is why he really, really hoped this worked.

“I think…yes!” he whispered, slipping next to a door, one he had memorised, after months and months of attendance. Rip immediately took the opposite side, nodding seriously to Ray.

“On my mark, Mr Palmer,” he replied in an undertone, and Ray hurriedly put his hands up.

“The doors aren’t locked here,” he said, hastily. “Just open them quietly.”

Rip nodded, putting one hand on the door. He shared a nod with Ray, and quickly opened the door. Ray slipped in behind him, and while Rip was distracted with the fact that the room was occupied, Ray quickly locked the door. The turning of the key in the lock prompted Rip to panic, but quick reflexes allowed Ray to knock the pistol out of Rip’s hand and pocket it for himself.

“I’m sorry about this, Rip,” he said, and he really was. “But I wouldn’t be doing this unless I really thought you needed it.”

“Mr Palmer –” exclaimed Rip, astonished and more than a little betrayed. “What –?”

“Ray?” The sole occupant of the room – a neat study, nice and spacious, with wide arch windows gloriously displaying the incredible view – stood up from behind her desk. She was staring at him with open – but not displeased – surprise. “I thought I discharged you? You look…”

Ray smiled, bashfully rubbing the back of his head. “Hi, Doctor Chatterjee. Sorry about this – are you free?”

Perturbed, but quickly displaying her easy-going nature that had helped Ray through countless months of therapy under her care, Doctor Chatterjee smiled and nodded towards the two seats in front of her table. Rip just glared at both of them, but eventually bowed to social niceties and sat.

“You might care to explain what’s going on, Mr Palmer,” he sniped, and Doctor Chatterjee raised both her eyebrows, folding her hands neatly on the table.

“That might be appreciated,” she said, smiling encouragingly at Ray. He returned the smile – man, it was good to see her again.

“Okay, you know how I told you about all those crazy things in Star City?” he said. She titled her head.

“Star City? You mean Starling?”

“Uh, yeah. Well, anyway…the thing is…those crazy things? Well…they got, um. Crazier.”

Despite Doctor Chatterjee’s smile not flickering, Ray knew he was going to have his work cut out for him. But if she could help Rip, then he knew it’d be worth it. Nobody deserved to suffer the way he did.

“Okay,” he began, leaning forward. “What do you know about time travel?”

~~~~~

Sara sat up from her half-doze through watching the fire flicker – there really was something distractingly beautiful about it, Mick must know something they didn’t – and waved over at Ray, who had pushed his way through the double doors and was now walking tiredly back to them. He had been gone about an hour, and despite the restlessness of a couple of the others, Sara knew he’d be back. Felicity had extensively – albeit while drunk – detailed all the reasons as to why Ray Palmer was no quitter.

“Where were you, man?” said Jax, leaning forward. Ray sat heavily on an empty section of the sofa and readily accepted the mug of apple tea Kendra passed him. “What happened to Rip? Where’d you take him?”

“Oh,” said Ray, casually taking a sip of the tea and staring into the fire. “Grief counselling.”

Everyone stared.

“You got Rip…into grief counselling..?” said Sara, almost awed. Hell, not almost – she was awed. Everyone she knew was in definite need of serious counselling, but you’d sooner catch them walking backwards into hell with their middle fingers in the air than actually taking part in something so healthy and sensible.

“Yeah,” said Ray, like he hadn’t just done something unbelievable. “I mean, he wasn’t very receptive at first, but Doctor Chatterjee is a very experience and capable professional.”

“Did he cry?” asked Sara eagerly, but felt a lurching stab of guilt when Ray turned a very puppy-dog expression on her.

“I came here after my fiance was murdered right in front of me,” he said. “It’s one of the top facilities in the world. If anyone can give Rip a sense of closure, it’ll be Doctor Chatterjee. This is the best place for him.”

“…right,” said Carter, narrowing his eyes at the surroundings. “And…what are we supposed to do in the meantime?”

Ray blinked. “It’s also a ski and sauna resort. I have a standing account and about two million dollars’ worth of shares with this facility, so everything’s free of charge.”

“Holy shit,” said Kendra, immediately standing up. Sara followed. “Do they have a hot rock sauna? I’ve always wanted to try a hot rock sauna.”

“What the hell’s a hot rock sauna?” asked Mick, frowning. His expression cleared when Sara hurriedly explained.

“Well, I’m sure this is all well and good –” began Stein, but Ray interrupted him.

“They also have an observatory and a particularly good library,” he said. “Of course, I should know. I donated it. Oh, and the steakhouse is a-maz-ing. And did I mention the bowling alley?”

There didn’t seem to be any further objections after that.

“Team bonding session is a-go!” crowed Jax, and Sara insisted on high-fiving everyone.

~~~~~

They all split up fairly quickly, despite Jax’s declaration, and Kendra found herself taking a scenic walk around the peripheral hallways with Carter, enjoying the amazing views. There were wide window seats every few metres, and the windows must have been incredibly expensive, because Kendra couldn’t feel any cold emanating from them, even though the snow had built up around the edges of the windowsills, and the temperature must have been below freezing. She nudged Carter, smiling up at him.

“Come on,” she coaxed, trying to tamp down on her irritation at his near-constant bout of tetchiness. Ever since Rip flew in – no, before that; ever since he found that she wasn’t automatically absorbing the memories of her past lives and had yet to display her ‘warrior priestess’ personality, he was acting like she’d failed some kind of special test. As though she was an underling instead of the love of his multiple lives. This behaviour, coupled with almost exclusively sexual visions, was really, really starting to bug her. She nudged him again, trying to get him to unlock his arms.

“The views are beautiful,” she tried. “We should try to see if we can go skiing later. Have we ever been skiing?”

He didn’t rise to the bait of describing how awesome their past lives were in comparison to this one, just huffed and frowned harder.

“You’d know that if only you could access your memories properly,” he said. The offhanded way he said it made her bristle despite trying to keep her cool. He didn’t seem to notice. “We should really be focussing on training –”

“Oh for goodness sake, Carter!” said Kendra exasperatedly. “Did you forget how to be a person? Relax a little!”

Carter frowned. “I’m just saying –”

“Isn’t it better for us if we get properly acquainted with the rest of the team?” she interrupted. “The more we relax around them, the more of a bond we’ll develop, and the better we’ll work together and defeat Savage.”

“We work better together –”

“Just us on our own hasn’t worked so far!” she exclaimed. “We’ve got a good chance here, why can’t you see that?”

He sighed. “Chay-Ara –”

“It’s Kendra!” she snapped, and folded her arms. Why couldn’t he just call her by her name? “My name is Kendra!”

His smile turned her stomach; placating, patronising. “In your first life, the one where we fell in love –”

“This isn’t our first life, Carter!” she snapped. “This is our – who knows! We’ve been murdered in all the others! And we’ve had names in every single one, and in this one my name is Kendra! Kendra Saunders! How do you not get that? Why do you keep expecting me to be the first version I ever was, when I’ve had so many past experiences, and I’m – I’m different. I’m different now! We’re not in Ancient Egypt, I don’t call you Khufu, and I don’t find it endearing when you call me Chay-Ara! I’ve asked you to call me Kendra and you refuse! How can I expect you to respect me if you don’t even see me for who I am?”

Her eyes were filling up, so she turned away from him and stalked down the hall. She needed space, and ever since Carter showed up…it really felt like space was one thing that she wouldn’t be having much of anymore.

~~~~~

Mick hated getting in the middle of a domestic. But he also liked pulling the rug out from beneath obnoxious idiots, so…it was a Catch-22, really.

“Wow,” he said, slipping out from behind a door. Carter Hall nearly jumped a foot, and he turned to Mick, glowering. “You really screwed that up.”

“What the hell do you mean?” snapped Hall, reddening from being eavesdropped on just as much as being called out.

“Just seems to me, that when you have something good, you shouldn’t take it for granted,” Mick said. “Common sense, really. Nobody likes to feel that they’re being taken for granted. And far as I can tell, that’s all you’ve been doing this whole time.”

Hall bristled. “You wouldn’t understand. What we have –”

“Started about four thousand years ago, or something, right? Didn’t she say Ancient Egypt?” Mick scratched his chin. “Just ‘cause your souls are bound together or whatever doesn’t mean the relationship’s gonna stay fresh and peachy keen for as long as the bond lasts. It takes work.”

“And you’d know about relationships?” snapped Hall, derisively.

“I know about partnerships,” replied Mick. “And I know they take work. They grow as people do. Snart and I, we’ve worked together nearly thirty years. You think that’s stayed the same the whole time? It takes work. And we’ve fucked up. In big ways, in ways that’ve hurt. Just ‘cause you love the girl it doesn’t mean everything’s gonna just fall into place. You’re tryna’ glue a memory of a relationship onto a real live woman. That ain’t gonna work.”

“Well, aren’t you very introspective,” said Hall, crossing his arms. Mick just stared back, calmly.

“Yeah,” he replied, simply. “Ain’t I?”

He let the punk growl at him for a few moments before smirking and sauntering away, his mischief mostly done for the day. Ah, the posturing of youth, what memories. A lot of shit memories, granted, but some of them were okay.

Now. Where in the hell was that steakhouse Haircut had been going on about earlier?

~~~~~

Len was idly exploring the lodgings – it looked like they were the only people resident, for now – when his well-trained ears caught the faint sound of hushed, stubborn crying. He cautiously peered around the corner, and saw the girl-Hawk, Kendra, curled up in a lavish window seat, bowed in on herself.

Ah, crap.

But he wouldn’t be the man he was, with memories of a tiny sister hiding bruises and tears, if he just let a woman cry alone, so painfully. So eventually he swung himself around the corner and folded his arms, drawling: “Man trouble?”

She jumped, turning in her seat and sniffing loudly. He tried to keep the edge off his smirk.

“Ah. Not man troubles, then,” he amended smoothly, moving closer. “Boy troubles.”

He got a little laugh out of her, but it was weak and quickly smothered by her frustrated tears.

“Sorry,” she sniffed. “It’s just – Carter is so – ugh!”

“I have picked up on a little tension,” Len offered, not quite standing close to her – across the other side of the wide window seat, leaning against the wall. Plenty of breathing room, for both of them. She shook her head, pretty curls swinging around her ears.

“It’s just…I was a whole other person before he came along,” she said. “And I get that I had past lives, but…those were…those were other me lives. And this is me, now. I have a different childhood, parents, name. But he doesn’t – I feel like who he was first is all he considers himself to be. And I…don’t feel that way.” She flushed, suddenly aware that she didn’t actually know the person opposite to her. “…sorry, that’s…sorry.”

Len just inclined his head. “Bet it doesn’t feel good when someone just…decides who you are, does it?”

She shook her head again, wiping her eyes.

“No,” she said, looking out the window. Outside was Len’s favourite possible weather; endless white snow, gloriously fresh and clean, deceptively innocent and totally deadly. “I keep telling him I’m me, but he doesn’t seem to get it. Sometimes, I swear – I feel like I can’t breathe. Like…all of a sudden – boom! Relationship! Commitment! And I know that my past selves have had feelings for Carter, it’s just…he’s such a jerk, you know? I can’t help but feel that the way I am now, and the way he is now…I would never have dated him, if – if –”

“If you had a choice about it,” supplied Len, and Kendra fell silent, her shoulders slumping over the heavy weight of those words. “Do you have a choice, Kendra?” he added, after a minute. “Do you have a choice about who you end up with?”

“I know I love him,” she began hesitantly.

“You can’t choose who you fall in love with,” said Len. “But you can dictate the course of your own life. And sometimes what you love…isn’t what you need. Sometimes it’s not good for you.”

She turned wide, innocent, pained eyes to him, tears forming again.

“I think about leaving him, and it tears me up inside,” she admits quietly. “But I think about staying and I just…I get so…desperate. Like I’m signing my life away? We haven’t even dated and we’ve moved in together! It doesn’t feel – it doesn’t feel fair! He just shows up one day and that’s that? It’s not Ancient Egypt, it’s 2016! I had a life!”

She pauses, breathing heavily, and her tears renew herself.

“Why can’t he just treat me like a person?” she said, putting her head in her hands. “I know we’re meant to be together – I’ve chosen him in every lifetime – but it just feels so…so…painful!”

Len paused as the young woman struggled to get herself together, and he tightened his folded arms, chewing over his words. Finally, once her breathing got back to normal and she sat up again, he said: "If there's one thing I've learned in life, Kendra, it's that it's very possible to make the same mistake a million times, and still not know how to change."

Kendra nodded slowly, regarding him thoughtfully as she wiped away the fresh tears from her cheeks. After a minute of deep thought, she replied. "Thank you...Leonard. And…um. Sorry. For all…this."

Len titled his head by way of acknowledgment, and left the girl to her thoughts.

Yikes. And he thought he was bad at relationships.

~~~~~

Jax rubbed his hands excitedly, knocking shoulders with Grey.

“Yo, I didn’t think we’d start off our adventure with a ski resort,” he said gleefully. “Wanna hit the bowling alley?”

Grey gave him a little half-smile, obviously amused at his excitement.

“I think I’ll take a look at the library Mr Palmer mentioned earlier,” he said. “You never know what I might find, after all. Knowledge is everywhere!”

“Yeah, yeah…” Jax rolled his eyes at Grey’s own brand of enthusiasm. “I doubt you’re going to find anything about time travel in there, though.”

“Never say never, Jefferson,” replied Grey, tilting his head. The hallway they were walking down split off; the corner had useful arrows, one pointing towards the library and the other – in the opposite direction – pointing towards the bowling alley. Jax gave him a little salute and they parted ways with a smile.

He got about four steps before Sara stuck her head out from a random door, waggling her eyebrows at him. He couldn’t help but snort.

“Well, you look like trouble,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets and walking up to her. She smirked back at him.

“Is that any way to talk to a lady?” she said, leaning out the door and cocking an eyebrow at him. He snorted again.

“If I see a lady, I’ll let you know,” he replied, and she grinned.

“Much obliged,” she said, and then, “Wanna come with me and eavesdrop on Rip?”

Jax paused. His gut was telling him no – it didn’t do to interrupt another person’s grief like that. But something else was pushing at him too…

…Rip seemed to know a lot about them. It’d be nice, maybe, to even the playing field a little.

“Okay…” he said eventually, adding, when Sara’s face lit up: “But if that guy starts talking about something really personal, we get outta there. It’s not nice.”

Sara nodded in agreement, swinging open the door for him.

“That’s cool,” she said. “I just figured it might be a good idea to get a feel for who he is when he thinks no-one is watching. Didn’t it seem like he had a lot of bravado going on, even when Arrow and Flash were giving him the stink eye?”

Jax hummed, thinking it over. “Yeah…I guess. I mean, we all thought about our decision, right? And he agree to not lie to us.”

“It’s hard to break a habit, believe me,” said Sara, now leading him through a couple of sets of inter-joined common rooms. Everything was both lush and understated, with log fires and bowls of apples or dried flowers. Books – tomes, leather-bound and edged with gold – gleamed from countless rows along the walls. “I’m looking forward to time travelling, and saving the world. I just wanna get a feel for the guy, you know?”

“I guess,” said Jax. They slipped out into a hallway, and he was struck for a moment by the sheer white outside the window, endless and gleaming. He gaped for a second, then realised that Sara was looking at him, a faint smile on her face. It didn’t seem mocking; it reminded him of his Grandma Jenny’s face when he’d been a kid, opening up his presents at the birthday table. So instead of flushing, Jax smiled back at her.

“It’s really beautiful,” he said. “The snow, the mountains…never even occurred to me that I’d see something like this in my life. Even with all the crazy superhero stuff.”

Sara gave a soft laugh, turning her head to the window.

“I’ve seen some pretty crazy things too,” she said, and Jax felt her words loaded with meaning he couldn’t begin to understand. “When I was your age, I couldn’t even imagine…well. Me being here. Being what I am.”

“…what do you mean?” asked Jax, hesitantly. He could tell, even though he barely knew her, that Sara must have had some crazy stuff happen to her. You got a feel for that kind of thing, being both a superhero and a dude who burst into fire and flew around. And for all he complained about Grey being in his head, he knew he appreciated always having a friend to talk things out with.

Sara just shook her head.

“I never really liked the snow, growing up,” she said. “Now, though, after everything – I can really appreciate it. Especially from a view like this. It’s serene, clean, beautiful. But also freezing, so cold it burns, and deadly. It’s kind of comforting.”

“Comforting?”

She turned to smile at him, shrugging.

“It’s just nice to have a reminder sometimes that I might be an assassin, but I’m Sara Lance, too,” she said. “Those kinds of reminders are hard to hold on to, most days. I’m kinda glad we made a pitstop here, before jumping straight into the adventuring.”

Jax, on impulse, reached out an grasped her shoulder lightly in solidarity.

“I hear you,” he said. ‘Assassin’ was kind of a big reveal thing, but hey – she was obviously okay, or Barry and the Arrow would have kicked up a bigger fuss. Plus, his gut was saying she was a good person, and Jax trusted his gut. Sara looked down, away, clearly a little embarrassed by revealing emotion so soon to someone relatively new. Jax let go of her shoulder and withdrew his hand, but not before he made a fist and bumped it lightly against her arm.

“Wanna go bowling after this?”

“Definitely,” she said, and smiled. “Now, let’s…get…nosy.”

~~~~~

By the time they managed to get to a room with a vent they could eavesdrop through, Rip’s therapy session was already in full swing. Sara had somehow managed some very questionable acrobatics to get on top of a bookshelf, and Jax had contented himself with quietly dragging over a desk and putting a chair on top of it. They silently opened the grate, leaned in, and listened.

“ – it wasn’t like that,” Rip was saying, stiffly.

“It sounds a lot like kidnapping orphans, Mr Hunter,” Dr Chaterjee was saying gently. “There’s no shame in realising that people should have treated you better.”

“They did treat me better,” said Rip. “They took me out of poverty, gave me an education, a purpose –”

“They gave you their purpose, Mr Hunter,” said Dr Chatterjee. “Don’t be confused between those two things.”

“I would have starved to death.”

“They stole you from your home, got rid of your accent and culture, and trained you until you were fit for their purposes.”

“That is a gross misinterpretation –”

“Saving children is one thing. Saving them so that they can become soldiers is another. At what point was your free will and opinion involved in this series of events?”

There was a sullen silence. Jax and Sara stared at each other, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

Damn. Jax had not been expecting this. Dr Chatterjee sighed.

“It’s all right, Mr Hunter,” she said. “I understand that childhood is a difficult topic for most people.”

“I shouldn’t even be speaking with you at all,” said Rip. There was a movement – crossing his arms, his legs, just moving about in his seat? “All of this is highly classified.”

“Ah, yes, your employers –”

“They are not employers, it is a calling –”

“How lucky for them, then, that every single child they picked up just so happened to share their calling, eh?”

Rip was silent. There was a sound of paper flipping, and the wheels of an office chair squeaking.

“You won’t talk to me about your family,” said Dr Chatterjee. “You won’t speak to me about your work. You won’t speak to me about your childhood, or any bit of your past. How do you expect me to help you, if you won’t meet me halfway?”

“I don’t need your help!” snapped Rip. “What I need is to be on my way –”

“Ray made it clear in as many words that if you didn’t address your underlying issues, you wouldn’t have a team to perform any mission with.”

Another long bite of silence, followed by another sigh from Dr Chatterjee.

“You need help, Rip,” she said. “You wouldn’t have gathered a team together if you didn’t need help. Let me be a part of that team. Let me help you get to where you need to be.”

Jax nudged Sara.

“We shouldn’t be listening to this,” he whispered, low as he could, but Sara just shook her head and leaned in more. Jax hesitated, but…then he leaned in too. If felt like a violation of privacy, but dammit, he wanted to know where this conversation went.

“Let’s start from when you began your training,” continued Dr Chatterjee, when no disagreement immediately appeared. “Tell me something happy. Did you have friends? Activities you liked?”

There was a pause, as Rip was clearly considering his next move. Finally – begrudgingly – he began to speak.

“I had colleagues,” he said. “There were no friends…not truly. But colleagues – a crew – a team I could trust with my life…yes. That was good. That was – good.”

“I imagine that training to be a Time Master is a very stressful task.”

“It was. It is. Time displacement can trigger breakdowns amongst new recruits. But the training provided to us by the Time Masters was exemplary, and most were strong enough to pull through.”

“What about those who were not strong enough?”

There was another pause. The words that Rip spoke next seemed to be slowly pulled from him, like a fish on the other end of a line, struggling to get away from the surface of the water.

“There were…treatment facilities,” he said.

“Such as..?”

“Places where a person could be…reconditioned.”

Jax’s mouth dropped open; he glanced at Sara, who’d gone waxen and wide-eyed.

“Reconditioned,” said Dr Chatterjee, and all the professionalism in the world couldn’t keep the flatness out of her voice. It was probably what had Rip rushing to explain.

“One cannot simply stop being a Time Master,” he said, quickly. “Such stresses on the mind were natural, everyone had them – the reconditioning process made us stronger, more resilient –”

“Mr Hunter, are you saying that you yourself underwent a system of brainwashing?”

“It was reconditioning!” disagreed Rip. “It was training. It was necessary.”

Dr Chatterjee didn’t answer for a few moments, shuffling paper together and rolling her chair, if the sounds were any indication.

“I asked you for a happy memory,” she said. “Apologies, I seemed to have gone off track a little. So, you had colleagues? No friends?”

There was a pause, and then – quietly – Rip said: “Well – not a friend –”

Dr Chatterjee said, warmly: “Ah. Your wife, correct?”

And, amazingly, Rip chuckled a little.

“Miranda,” he said, and Jax stared at the grate in wonder at the change in his voice – filled with emotion and – and love.

“That’s a lovely name,” said Dr Chatterjee.

“Yes, she chose it herself,” said Rip. “We couldn’t keep our real names, of course –” Dr Chatterjee was obviously picking her battles, because she didn’t comment –“So we got to pick our own. She’d chosen Miranda. Such a lovely name, and it suited her so well.”

“When did you realise you loved her?”

“Oh, the very moment – I didn’t realise what it was of course, love is so hard to identify sometimes – but, I suppose…it was during a flight simulation. I’d done it a hundred times before, nothing to blink at. I hardly glanced over when she introduced herself, but my heart – it caught in my chest. It was the most – inexplicable thing. Suddenly I couldn’t hear anything except my own heartbeat. She was leaning over a console, concentrating and – I can’t explain to you how clever she was. Cleverer than me by half. And suddenly, I knew.”

Rip paused, then laughed gently.

“And do you know,” he said. “I do believe she felt the same way about me. It was in her eyes – her eyes, they’re the most beautiful eyes, so filled with wit and intelligence, bright as stars –”

His words cut off abruptly. And then, very gently, Dr Chatterjee said:

“It’s all right, Rip. It’s all right.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Rip, and Jax’s chest constricted at the pain in the man’s voice. “This is why they forbid us relationships. This is why. Because in our line of work, we lose the ones we love. Our enemies find us. When the Time Masters discovered our affair – I never should have – I should have been the one to leave, she was destined for greatness, not a grave!”

“She gave up her career so you could have yours?”

“She gave up her calling so that we could have something besides what the Time Masters gave us,” he corrected, sniffing hard, his voice choked up. “I never really, really understood what it was she meant. I was so stupid, trying to have my cake and eat it too – but Miranda, I told you, Miranda was cleverer than me. I expect she thought that one day I would catch up with her, understand like she did, what we were building together. And I do. But now it’s too late. It’s too –”

And then there was the ugly sound of a man ashamed to cry, trying against all odds to keep it in when really, the only thing to do was let it out. Rip approached emotion like an injured cat, cornered by a human who only wanted to help; spitting with anger, hackles up, and really, just terrified beneath it all at the enormity of his pain.

“I never should have given in,” Rip managed, gasping through the tears. “This – traitorous emotion – if I hadn’t –”

“If you hadn’t loved, you never would have lost,” said Dr Chatterjee, softly. Rip broke anew, his sobs stuttering out from his chest, utterly unbound.

Jax felt like crying himself. A glance at Sara showed her glassy-eyed and blank expression.

“I should have done what they said!” cried Rip. “I should have done what the Time Masters wanted! I should have stayed in line, obeyed their orders, never flinched from duty! And she would still be alive –”

Jax pulled at Sara, and quietly closed the grate, carefully getting down from first his chair and then the desk. After a moment Sara blinked and seemed to come back to herself, and by the time Jax carried all the furniture back to where it was supposed to be, Sara had vaulted herself back down to the floor. They stared at each other, totally unsure of what to say. Jax swallowed.

“That dude has suffered a lot,” he said, finally. His throat felt like he hadn’t spoken in months, instead of the ten or so minutes they’d spent eavesdropping. Sara nodded, pushing her hair back and suddenly looking tired.

“I know what messed up looks like,” she said. “And Rip has no idea just how badly he needs that therapy Ray set up for him.”

“Man…” said Jax, and there didn’t seem to be much else to say. Just…man. That guy had problems that made Jax’s head spin. Sara sighed.

“We need to tell the rest of the team what we heard,” she said, holding up a hand when Jax automatically began to protest. “I know. We heard some really personal stuff that…honestly, I wasn’t expecting. It looks like Rip is more willing to try the truth than I previously thought –”

“I don’t think it’s so much that he even meant to say any of that stuff,” Jax pointed out. “It’s that it couldn’t help coming out. There’s only so much stuff you can keep a lid on before it all comes out. Believe me.”

Sara nodded. “I know. But…considering what we heard…I hate to ask the tough question…”

“What?”

“Should he be doing a mission, the way he is now?” she asked. “The man is severely compromised. He’s going through a lot. Should we go on a mission with him, while he’s so vulnerable? I think it’ll only make things worse.”

Jax opened his mouth…and closed it, thinking on the emotional agony Rip was experiencing, right at that very moment.

“Okay,” he said, slowly. “We get the team. You’re right…they need to weigh in.”

They shared a nod, and, with one last glance at the vent, went to find their team.

~~~~~

It was a little easier than Sara expected – apparently there weren’t many guests and it was easy enough to describe their team members to the staff and find their way to them, one by one. Ray and Stein had been in the library, Leonard and Mick were in the steakhouse, Kendra was in one of the observing towers, taking in the view, and Carter was brooding in the dining room. She’d smiled at Jax as he passed by the bowling alley with a longing look, patting his shoulder in commiseration.

There’d be time for bowling later. Probably.

They managed to gather everybody up in one of the common rooms, blankets strewn about and fire roaring, filling the air with warmth and some kind of comforting herbal smell. Sara sniffed it appreciatively; it seemed like the staff here burned sandalwood or something in the fires to add to the relaxing atmosphere. It was working like a charm; everybody was slouched in the extremely comfy sofas and chairs, sipping from mugs or snacking from little crystal bowls. The only person who didn’t seem completely at ease was Leonard, who was perched at one end of a sofa, watching everyone. Sara didn’t miss that he was occupying the best vantage point in the room, but aside from raising her eyebrows (and getting a ghost of a smirk in return) she didn’t pass comment. His partner seemed far more relaxed, feet stretched out by the fire; a little too close, she would’ve thought, but again, she didn’t make any comment.

Jax caught her eye and she nodded. He stepped forward and began.

“There’s something you guys should probably know…” he said, and, with input from Sara, relayed the whole sorry tale; the kidnapping at a young age, that Rip had sworn was a rescue – the brainwashing, that Rip had called training – the outlawing of personal relationships, which Rip had called necessary – the joy and shame he had felt at falling in love, which Rip had called ‘traitorous emotion’ – and so on.

“In summary,” said Sara. “The man’s been screwed over so royally he doesn’t know which way is up.”

“And this is our fearless leader,” drawled Leonard. Mick just shrugged.

“The guy has a few screws loose, who doesn’t?” he said, and Sara didn’t miss the way Leonard’s eyes darted sharply to his partner’s, or the question they held. But Mick just crossed his feet in front of the fire and made himself even more comfortable. “He’s gettin’ therapy, right? So what’s the problem?”

“You’re asking if he’s emotionally capable of being our Captain,” said Ray, quietly, and Sara, sharing a glance with Jax, just shrugged.

“Is he?” she asked. “The man has suffered a lot, and he hasn’t even worked out yet that he has suffered. Deep down, he thinks he deserves it. And speaking from experience, that’s gonna lead to a whole lot of self-sabotage.”

“Self-sabotage?” asked Kendra, elbowing her way up the back of her sofa until she was sitting properly. “What do you mean?”

“The man kidnapped us on our home turf,” said Sara. “And he chose kidnapping in the first place. I mean, he’s got access to all of history, and he couldn’t check up on the kind of people we were? He could have approached us normally and asked for help.”

“I get how thinking that making a big show was supposed to help convince us,” added Jax. “But how was that supposed to work beyond first impressions?”

“It nearly did,” said Stein.

“But he kidnapped us as a group,” countered Jax. “Too many personalities. It would have taken a lot of luck for us to sign up willingly, even if he hadn’t kidnapped us on familiar ground.”

“There was something else he said,” said Carter suddenly, leaning in. “He already tried to save his wife and child. He tried – over and over –”

Kendra put a hand over her mouth, suddenly looking wan.

“I didn’t think about that,” she murmured. “What that must have done to him – to see them die –”

She glanced back at Carter, and his mouth tightened, confirming without speaking what must have been going through her mind – about their past lives, about being murdered, again and again. Sara had survived by the skin of her teeth more many, many times – but she had died, once. And when she thought about it (she rarely thought about it, she couldn’t) she knew that it wasn’t the dying that had affected her – it was the coming back.

There was a moment of silence as everyone watched, but pretended not to was, as Kendra slowly look away from Carter, down to the ground, and he put an arm around her, squeezing her gently in comfort.

“It must be terrible,” said Ray. “I know I’d – I – I don’t know if I could survive that. Watching my fiancé die, and never being able to stop it. Never being able to do anything about it. I barely got through losing her once. I – I’m still not really over that. I don’t know if I’ll ever be. For Rip to just…keep fighting…it’s incredibly brave.”

Unexpectedly, Mick grunted, drawing their attention.

“It’s stupid,” he said, and levelled a flat look at Ray, who was half-way into puffing himself up in Rip’s defence. “That guy has his worst nightmare happen – and then he has to watch it happen again and again. It ain’t bravery, what he’s doin’ now. It’s a deathwish.”

“…a deathwish?” asked Kendra, worriedly. “He’s…trying to…to…”

“Not in so many words,” said Leonard, looking sideways at his partner – and not at anyone else, Sara noted. He was pressing his fingers together, rubbing them one by one against his thumb. “I think what my partner’s getting at is that Rip is running on empty. He’s failed so many times he doesn’t know how to just quit.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Carter, but Mick just snorted.

“’Course it does,” he said. “He’s had the need to work pummelled in’ta him from so young he doesn’t know how to stop, even when he should. He’s got no friends to put some sense in him, but he knows one thing for sure.”

“And what’s that?” asked Carter, narrowing his eyes.

“Complete the mission, or die doing it,” said Leonard, enunciating every syllable. Now he looked up, boring a gaze into Carter’s face. “Our Rip here is on a suicide run. Turns out he doesn’t want to save to world, he just wants to die doing it.”

“We can’t say that for certain –” protested Stein, but honestly, Sara thought Leonard had a point. Everything they’d heard certainly painted a rather despondent picture of the so-called Captain – his biting remarks, his slumped shoulders, his compulsive lying, his defensiveness…viewed through a lens of a traumatic, abusive childhood followed by a strict and controlled adulthood, then followed by the horrible, repetitive deaths of his family, the only people he’d ever really cared about his whole life…

…it all started to make a terrible amount of sense. It didn’t excuse his behaviour, of course, because kidnapping and belittling people wasn’t good, but yeesh. The guy needed more therapy than there was time in the universe.

“He’s gone through all that, and now he’s going to have to do it again,” said Ray, quietly horrified. “I can’t imagine how triggering this must be for him. And he doesn’t even realise he’s being triggered, by his own mission parameters. Nobody should have to go through this.”

There was a collective moment of silence for what Rip had to be going through, even if he himself was, at that very moment with Dr Chatterjee, only scraping the tip of the iceberg of it all.

“No-one…” said Stein faintly. “No-one should have to go through this.”

Everyone nodded, and Ray shook his head.

“If only there was a way to defeat Savage for him,” he said. “Like, if we could look through time and just choose a moment where he’s vulnerable, or, or, like we go into the future where we’ve already defeated him –”

“Wait, that’s it!” exclaimed Kendra suddenly, and the everyone looked at her. She sat forward excitedly, gesticulating. “Guys, we’ve already defeated Savage, remember? In that team up!”

“Wait – what?” said Jax, staring. He and Sara shared a wide-eyed gaze. “Repeat that?”

Kendra opened her mouth to explain, but was interrupted by Carter.

“He managed to resurrect himself in the end, remember?” he said, crossing his arms, but Kendra just shrugged.

“Yeah, sure, but we have a time ship, right? So all we have to do is go to the moment after we all leave, and before he manages to regenerate. I doubt it’s a quick process.”

Kendra finished her sentence with a beaming, proud smile. Sara whistled, low.

“Wow,” she said. “You know, I was looking forward to all the time-mission shenanigans, but, uh…that could actually work.”

“So, wait,” said Ray, holding his hand up. “Where did you leave Savage’s body?”

Both Kendra and Carter opened their mouths, paused, looked and each other…and quickly looked away. Ray sighed.

“Guys,” he said. “Come on. Bad guys 101.”

“But we saw the corpse!” protested Kendra. “He was just dust!”

“Unless you shot that dust into the centre of the sun, he’s not gonna stay dead!” exclaimed Ray. “I get that sometimes I can get carried away by superhero logic, but we need to be sharper than that!”

Kendra sighed, but didn’t disagree. Carter just grumbled.

“We were just glad to be rid of that guy,” he said, under his breath. “You don’t understand what it’s like. Being hunted. Always. And when he killed us, it was always…my fault…”

Kendra pressed a hand against his arm, and he just sighed.

“All right,” he said. “We messed up. Got ahead of ourselves. But this time, we won’t.”

“Damn right!” exclaimed Ray, slapping him on the shoulder. “Because this time, your team has your back! Right guys?”

Sara let her eyebrows twitch as Mick and Leonard rolled their eyes, heavily – but Stein and Jax took up the slack with surprisingly serious enthusiasm.

“Damn right,” repeated Jax, nodding seriously. “That pyscho’s going down.”

“Firestorm has your backs,” confirmed Stein, smiling slightly.

“Okay!” said Sara brightly, rubbing her hands together. “Looks like we’re heading back to Star City.”

This was gonna be good.

~~~~~

Ray confirmed that Rip was still in counselling – an unusually long period for a single session, sure, but the man clearly had a lot of stuff to work through – and then they all snuck out to the disguised Waverider, which was still safely hidden inside some nearby forestry.

“Does anybody actually have a clue how to fly this thing?” asked Jax, after it took about fifteen minutes for them to figure out how to open the hangar door.

“We’ll wing it,” replied Sara, winking at him as she passed by to get inside. He rolled his eyes and followed with the rest, eventually ending up in the control area. Gideon’s interface was dimmed, but her voice suddenly piped up from everywhere and nowhere.

“Good afternoon, Legends,” she said cheerfully. “I take it the mission has gone well?”

“Sort of,” said Ray. “Um, Gideon, well –”

“Would you help us?” asked Kendra.

“I can make no promises without further clarification,” Gideon replied. “But if your request falls within my parameters, I can certainly try. What do you need?”

“We want to defeat Savage,” began Kendra.

“Yes, so we thought we’d go back to Star City, at that night where we did defeat him,” interjected Carter.

“And then we could just…vacuum him up, I guess?” Kendra glanced at Carter, and then at the others. “Uh, Gideon, do you have a vacuum cleaner?”

“The ship is self-cleaning,” said Gideon. “But I’m sure Mr Palmer can assemble something useful from the technology available.”

“Or we could just go out and buy one,” pointed out Jax. “That’s gotta be easier than building a vacuum from scratch.”

“Wait – are we really going with the vacuum idea?” asked Grey suddenly. “It just seems a little…inelegant.”

“So is being stabbed to death in every lifetime,” interrupted Carter. “We’re going with the vacuum.”

There wasn’t much to argue against that.

“I don’t understand,” said Gideon. “Surely this is the same mission as before, yes?”

Everyone hesitated, glancing at each other.

“Ye-es…” hazarded Ray. “It’s just…we were kind of hoping to do it…without Rip.”

“Without the Captain?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “It’s just…he’s been through a lot. We figured it was, well, cruel to make him go through facing Savage all over again. He’s in therapy right now, and, uh – we thought that this would be a good idea?”

“We just want to help,” added Kendra. “Gideon, please? Will you take us to Star City?”

There was a long pause, until, finally:

“These parameters are acceptable. If you would input the date, I will be happy to take you there.”

Jax broke out into a grin, Ray let out a little whoop, and Kendra just smiled gently in thanks.

“That’s great, Gideon,” said Sara warmly. “All right, guys – let’s strap in. We get in, we get out – and we’ll be back before Rip even realises we’re gone. Easy.”

Right?

~~~~~

Actually…things were going ridiculously well. They managed to time their arrival perfectly so that they avoided running into anybody from the past. The concrete that had been blasted with the concentrated power was even still warm, and if they listened very carefully…they could almost still hear Savage’s ashes still hissing as they cooled.

“Nasty,” said Sara, smirking down at the sad, grey little pile. Kendra looked seriously discomfited; not everyone was used to the idea of, well, corpses. Or former corpses, really.

“Let’s just get this done,” said Carter, stepping forward with the little handheld vacuum Ray and Stein had cobbled together in about twelve minutes. Apparently Ray had built a vacuum when he was six and it was, quote, ‘super easy to make’, unquote.

Just Sara, Carter, and Kendra had snuck into the warehouse; the others were watching and waiting on the ship, ready to jump in, just in case something unexpected happened. Sara blinked and listened hard –

Nope. Nothing was jinxing them so far. Huh.

Carter finished vacuuming up Savage’s ashes and they headed back to the Waverider, where they placed the ignominious grave into a suspension field, safely guarded by Gideon. They then went back to the command centre, where Sara crashed into a chair and stretched her legs out.

“Man!” she exclaimed. “That was –”

Something powerful hit the side of the ship, hard enough to throw Sara out of her seat and more than a few of the others down to the ground. Sirens began to shriek and the lights dimmed.

“Gideon!” snapped Leonard, gripping the back of a chair to steady himself.

“We’re sustaining heavy damage,” said Gideon.

“From what?!”

“It would appear that we are under fire from an enemy ship,” replied the A.I. “Given the difficulty I’m having in locating its precise location, I would estimate that the technology being used is similar to our own.”

“Wait, similar?” said Jax, arms wrapped around a chair. “Does that mean it’s a time ship?”

“Well it’s obviously not a friend!” said Sara, lunging for the Captain’s chair. “Gideon, take evasive manoeuvres!”

“Well, yes,” said Gideon, the ship beginning to move. “Preparing time jump. Please strap in.”

There was a collective shriek from the team, and then – everything blipped. There was now only empty air where the Waverider had been, and after a moment, another ship revealed itself, hovering over the spot for a few moments…

Before it, too, turned – and disappeared.

~~~~~

Rip’s head was in his hands. His entire body ached, his face itched with the tears he’d shed over the course of hours.

“Thank you,” said Dr Chaterjee, and he scoffed, turned a red-rimmed glare at her.

“You weren’t satisfied until I gave you every little piece of me, were you?” he snapped.

“I wasn’t looking for your secrets, Mr Hunter,” she replied. “I needed you to face up to them. There are things I don’t think you’ve ever looked too closely at; things that are hurting you and that are in turn hurting the people around you.”

“So I’m cured then, am I?” he said, rubbing his sleeve across his face. “Am I free to go?”

Dr Chatterjee just looked at him sadly. “For today, yes. I want to see you here at 9am tomorrow, though. There’s a lot to work through.”

Rip didn’t even bother responding. Like his legs were made of jelly, he nearly stumbled out of the chair, barely managing to make it out of the door. His body was beyond drained, as though he’d lugged suitcases of wet sand through a marathon, uphill. He rested, just for a moment, trying to will sensation back into his arms, his legs, his back, his hands, his mind –

Then there was the horribly familiar noise of a badly executed time-slip landing, and the shrill hum of the Waverider’s engines somewhere in the distance. Rip’s eyes snapped open. Anger gave his feet wings, his fingers the strength to clench.

That bloody team had stolen his ship!

~~~~~

“YOU STOLE MY SHIP!”

Sara chewed on the inside of her mouth for a moment, sneaking a glance at the rest of the team. None of them were looking directly at each other or Rip, their expressions ranging from heavily chagrined to blasé. Stein, either through a misguided attempt to take one for the team or an need to assert his own authority, spoke next.

“Mr Hunter,” he said primly. “We can explain –”

Whatever his motivations, Stein’s attempt failed; Rip rounded on him instead of pacing the floor angrily, jabbing a finger in the professor’s direction.

“Do not waste my time with some cock-and-bull story to try and disguise your need to take the Waverider for a joyride –” he began hotly, when Kendra interrupted him.

“We defeated Savage for you!” she burst out.

“For us, too, of course,” said Carter, frowning at her. In a surprise move, Kendra just rolled her eyes. Sara observed Carter’s subsequent confusion with much pleasure. Rip, meanwhile, was staring at them, utterly confused.

“What – what on earth do you -?” he tried, and Kendra rushed into an explanation.

“We went back in time to a moment where we – and some of the other heroes from Star City and Central – defeated Savage,” she said quickly. “So we went back to that moment –”

“You’ll disrupt the time –” started Rip, before abruptly stopping and closing his mouth with a click. Jax laughed – he wasn’t the only one. Mick and Leonard did, too, and Ray let out a little confused noise.

“Isn’t that our mission?” said Ray. “I mean, we were going to do the exact same thing –”

“Yes – no – yes, all right,” Rip interrupted, pinching his eyes shut. “Point taken.”

“Force of habit, Rip?” said Leonard, very friendly, and Sara hid her grin in her shoulder.

“If you’re waiting for an apology,” said Mick, crossing his arms. “I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“I mean, we are sorry,” Ray adds immediately, ruining the moment. Mick rolled his eyes. Rip just pressed both hands against his eyes, breathing in deeply. Sara had a brief pang of regret; it was probably unfair of them to kinda gang up on Rip when he was fresh out of painful therapy.

“Hey, look – all’s well that ends well, right?” she tried, holding her hands up in a placating manner. All this got her was his glare fixed on her.

“All is not well, Ms Lance!” he snapped. “You attracted the attention of a Time Master bounty hunter! I recognise the damage from the outside of the Waverider – and if he attacked you in the past that means there’s only a matter of time before –”

B A N G

Everyone cried out and fell against seats or walls when a massive shockwave rocked through the Waverider. The high-pitched sound of another ship whizzed ahead, before a second shot hit the Waverider’s hull.

“Gideon!” shouted Rip.

“Extremely heavy damage to left engine, Captain!” she said quickly. “The Waverider’s flight capabilities have been damaged!”

“Can we fix it?!” said Rip, dashing over to the control desk. Sara looked through the main windows – there was nothing but blue sky. The enemy was outside.

“How about weapons?” she asked, righting herself and tugging out her weapons. Rip glanced at her as Gideon answered.

“Weapons are at maximum efficiency,” Gideon replied. Sara held Rip’s gaze.

“Shoot him down,” she said. “We’re already dressed for the occasion – might as well invite him to dance.”

There was only a split-second hesitation in Rip’s face; but the others had heard her, and they stood ready and willing. So he nodded, placing both his hands on the console.

“Gideon – shoot the bounty hunter out of the air,” he said. “We’ll deal with whoever it is once they’re on the ground.”

Gideon, ever-faithful, replied in the form of great bursts of destructive energy blasting out towards the attacking ship. Within moments, contact was made; Sara held Rip’s gaze once more, and then he nodded.

“Beware of these bounty hunters,” he said, quickly, pulling out his pistol. “They are highly armed, highly trained, and highly dangerous. Whoever it is, is likely to have been ordered to neutralise us.”

“Y’mean kill,” grunts Mick. Both he and his partner pulled out and primed their guns, giving nasty little grins. “Good thing for us, we ain’t afraid of doing things the hard way.”

~~~~~

Outside, the smoking wreckage of the bounty hunter ship could just about be seen a distance away, collapsed against a large pine tree. The impact had knocked all the snow out of the branches, and now the green pine needles hung gently over the remains like a blanket. The air was filled with the hissing sound of hot metal and fire losing a battle against the snow.

The Legends approached with caution, taking the perimeter of the ship in a slow pincher move until they were only a few metres away.

“Be careful,” said Rip, trying to increase his already white-knuckled grip on his pistol. “Whoever they were probably abandoned ship. They could have left behind a trap –”

Abruptly there was an almighty screech of metal – a broken panel of the ship shot, aimed at the group. Ray, full size in his suit, luckily managed to dart forward and grab it, ensuring that Kendra and Carter weren’t hit. They could barely manage a nod in thanks before a great roar emanated from the wreckage and a bounty hunter came bursting from their hiding place, shooting wildly and aiming straight for Rip.

“Chronos!” shouted Rip, shooting wildly.  There was no mistaking the fear on his face. “It’s Chronos! Fall back!”

Naturally, of course, everyone immediately fell into battle-mode – Firestorm derailing the hunter with a few bursts of flame, with Sara then engaging in close-hand combat until she gracefully led the battle towards Len and Mick, who took turns shooting. Ice encased one of Chronos’ legs and they – probably a man, judging by the sound – roared in anger. He managed to fire off a couple of shots that had Len flying backwards, cold gun tumbling from his hands. Mick’s previously amused expression instantly shut down. Instead of letting loose with his heat gun, he picked up a metal bar from the wreckage and, while Chronos was struggling to free his leg, Mick took aim.

In a swift, violent movement, Mick swung the metal bar, connecting it solidly with Chronos’ head. The bounty hunter’s head was bashed back, and the helmet dented, the strap holding it together audibly snapping. With another mighty swing, Mick knocked Chronos’ head again, and this time the bounty hunter fell onto his back, ice around his leg shattering and the helmet entirely detaching and flying away, revealing the face beneath –

Mick stopped. Everyone stopped. Grey-faced and shocked, they could only stare at the figure on the ground, who was writhing a little in pain, scrambling to his knees. Blood dripped from his face and he spat out a glob, snarling at the wide-eyed onlookers.

“Well?” snapped Chronos. “Is that all you’ve got? I’m more pathetic than I remember.”

“Rip…” said Sara, her baton gradually lowering. “That’s…”

“I – I don’t understand,” said Rip, slowly approaching the figure. Mick just glanced between them, metal bar still gripped in his hands, and he took a few steps back, giving Rip and Chronos a bit of room. It was easy to understand Rip’s confusion, after all –

The man in the bounty hunter uniform, who called himself Chronos…was Rip himself.

“Why?” Rip choked out. “Why would you – Miranda, Jonas –”

“I am the result of the realisation you have come to, Rip,” snarled Chronos. The familiar British accent, so laden with poisonous hatred, was a shock to everyone’s ears. They could hardly reconcile the hollowed face and vicious eyes with the Captain of the Waverider, who may have been duplicitous and untrustworthy, but never so violently angry.

“Realisation?” repeated Rip weakly, and Chronos’ lip curled with mocking humour.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “The realisation that everything you do is doomed to failure. You are an absolute waste of oxygen. You deserve nothing good. You destroy everything you touch. Miranda and Jonas do not deserve the hell you brought upon them.”

“They will die unless I do something!” burst out Rip, and Chronos just shook his head, mouth twisting.

“Wrong,” he said. “They will die because you do this. The only way forward is the will of the Time Master Authority. I accepted this from the moment they dragged me from the gutter I called home. You’re the one who forgot their supremacy. And because of that, Miranda and Jonas have suffered needlessly, over and over.”

“If you care about your family that much,” interrupted Ray. “Then why are you working for the Time Masters?”

Chronos fixed Ray with a disparaging glare, as though he could hardly be bothered wasting the energy and air it would take to reply to him.

“Because I was offered an alternative,” he said. “The way things pan out, you and the rest of your so-called Legends gallivant across the timeline, wrecking the careful structure the Time Masters have fought so hard to maintain. I’ve seen it – they’ve shown me. Vandal Savage may be a despot, but he’s our best shot at avoiding complete annihilation at the hands of the Thanagarians – your cousins, Hawks.”

The last bit was directed at Kendra and Carter, who glanced at each other, confused and concerned. Sara stepped forward, decisively stamping her baton on the ground and directing Chronos’ attention to her.

“You still haven’t explained what’s in it for you,” she said, and Chronos sardonically tipped his head, his smile as welcoming as a knife between the ribs.

“I remember trying so hard to save them,” he said. “But I failed, utterly, over and over. Finally, they captured me – this is from a future where it never occurred to you to get help. I don’t know what changed, or why you capitulated, but it put in danger the past as well as the future. You had finally gone too far, Rip. 2014 onwards is a far too tumultuous time in history to risk meddling.”

“I thought that we were chosen because we had no discernible lasting effect on the timeline..?” said Stein, and Chronos barked out a sharp, horrible laugh.

“That’s the best part!” he said. “We had it all backwards, you see. The only ones who are truly unimportant to the timeline…are the ones who remove themselves utterly from time. As Time Masters, we are the least important people in the time line! We will not be missed. Which is part of the bargain I struck with the Time Masters.”

“What do you mean?” said Rip, voice barely controlled. His face was still pasty white with shock, and Chronos sneered at him.

“You took account of timelines, but you never stopped to consider dimensions,” said Chronos. “I agree to capture you and the other Legends, and the Time Masters save Miranda and Jonas, and deposit them safely on another world.”

“What about you?” asked Jax quietly, and Chronos gave another horrible smile.

“That’s part of the deal,” he said. “I kill Rip. The rest of you will be delivered for reconditioning – you won’t remember a thing.”

“Doesn’t make much sense to me,” drawled Snart. “You’ll be killing a past version of yourself. Now, I’m no expert in time travelling – but won’t that just end up with you dead?”

Chronos’ face, for all its earlier vitriol, became suddenly – and eerily – blank.

“I don’t deserve to live,” he said. “For all that I’ve done. For all my arrogance. For all that I’ve suffered. You feel it now, don’t you –” This he directed at Rip, who blanched even further, jolting back –“The need to not be alive anymore. The hopelessness of it all – the pointlessness of it. There is no action you can make that will not be dictated and controlled by the Time Masters. It is much better to succumb. It is much better to give in.”

“No!” snapped Kendra. Even Carter seemed surprised at her energy, as she strode forward and pulled Rip to the side. “Don’t listen to him –”

“But he’s right –” said Rip thickly, and Kendra shook her head sharply.

“Rip, no –”

“The Time Masters, they have means –”

“Listen to me,” she insisted, taking both his arms in her hands, forcing him to look at her. “Rip, believe me – I know a thing or two about predestination. I know about – about feeling helpless, that there’s no move you can make that someone hasn’t already made, about people dictating your whole life according to their expectations. I know about control –”

“You don’t understand – there’s a place, a place called the Vanishing Point –”

“Shut up!” snarled Chronos, trying to get to his feet, only stopping when Mick thrust the metal bar warningly under his chin. He threw a filthy look around at the group, stopping again on Rip. “You are far too free with sacred secrets –”

“Mind your manners,” said Mick mildly. “I’ve been aching to punch trenchcoat over there in his shiny teeth. Don’t think I need an excuse to make do with you.”

“Rip, listen to me, not him,” coaxed Kendra, and Rip eventually turned his face back to her – just barely, shame rippling over him, hunching his shoulders. She relaxed her grip a bit, but didn’t let go.

“I’m still trying to figure out my middle ground,” she said. “I don’t have all the answers. But I do know that you’ll never be happy accepting what other people dictate about you. And it’s hard to throw off those expectations, but you have a life to live, and you need to live it, according to what you want and need.”

“Miranda and Jonah get murdered because we lived our life the way we wanted!” snapped Chronos, uncaringly pressing his neck into the metal bar, eyes wild with hate. Kendra shook her head sharply.

“No,” she said. “No. I don’t mean living life without caring about consequences. I mean that there are some seriously messed up things in your life that are trying to tell you that you don’t deserve to make your own choices, that you don’t deserve to be happy on your own terms, and you have to know that these things are wrong.”

Rip shook his own head. “No – no, you’re wrong – I strayed – I strayed from the path – if I hadn’t –”

“They didn’t need to play this messed up game of cat and mouse with you, man,” interjected Jax. “Sending your future self to commit suicide by murdering you? That’s beyond unnecessary.”

“You don’t understand,” said Rip, desperately. “This is my fault, this is all my fault –”

“You’re a dick and I don’t entirely like you,” said Sara bluntly. “But ho my god, there are some messed up extenuating circumstances. And you’re not irredeemable. Kendra knows about fate – well, I know all about redemption.”

“Can we just skip all this emotional crap and get to the part where we kick this guy’s ass?” said Mick, leering down at Chronos, who threw him a filthy glare.

“Miranda and Jonah will live,” he said, low, darkly. “And you Legends – your lives will come – to nothing.”

He sharply flicked his wrist, and before the team could react, there was a massive explosion, strong enough that everyone was knocked off their feet. In the resulting chaos, Rip’s desperate howl could be heard –

“The Waverider! No-!!”

Sara struggled to her feet, debris raining down around her. The others were in varying states of consciousness, all slowly rolling to their sides or sitting up, shaking their heads or brushing off bits of – bits of –

Metal –

Slowly Sara looked up, the sound of Rip’s horror cascading into her ears. Beyond them, uncloaked, lay the Waverider, smoke and fire pouring from every angle. Chronos began to laugh, wildly, as the magnificent ship groaned and creaked, eventually collapsing with an almighty screech.

“Heads up!” yelled Jax, and Sara looked up in time to see blips of light in the sky, slowly but surely resolving themselves into ships – at least a dozen of them. She scrambled for her staff.

“Get ready!” she bellowed, but what were they supposed to do? The ships lit up in ominous pinpricks of light before abruptly sending volley after volley of strikes down upon them, tearing up the ground, the people around her disappearing in the resulting chaos of torn up ground and smoke –

Truth be told, there wasn’t even time to be frightened. Between one moment and the next, Sara went from daylight…to utter nothing.

~~~~~

Waking up was not pleasant, but Sara could definitely say that there had been worse moments of consciousness in her life. All in all, cracking her eyes open to a bland, dark-ish holding cell didn’t even make rank in the top fifty. Things seemed blurry around the edges – whatever hit her, must have hit hard.

She grunted a little, rolling her shoulders for a few moments before pushing herself off the floor and giving the place a proper examination –

“Sara!”

She blinked, looking around. Slowly she realised that it wasn’t her vision that was blurry – it was the walls. In fact, they weren’t really walls at all – they were force fields, dim and hazy, the images beyond them blurred like Sara was trying to see through frosted glass. Behind one of the walls, a figure was hovering. It was impossible to tell if the form was male or female, but the voice was a handy identifier.

“Kendra?” said Sara, getting to her feet and carefully approaching the barrier.

“Oh, thank god you’re awake!” replied Kendra fervently. “I have no idea if the others are around – I only knew you were there because I heard you groaning!”

“Have you tried making some noise?” asked Sara.

“Oh – sure,” said Kendra, and her blurry shoulders shrugged. “Nobody’s come running. And the walls are safe to touch – thankfully. I may have accidentally called on my wings when I woke up.”

Sara winced. “Yeah, that could have ended badly.”

“I don’t suppose you have any idea how to get out of here..?”

Sara looked around again; up, down, every side…and she had to wince. It was impenetrable; smooth lines everywhere, no cracks, no panels or scratches. The silence drew out, and eventually became her answer. Wavering, Kendra spoke again.

“We…we can’t just wait here…can we?”

“I don’t know if we have much choice,” said Sara, honestly. She looked around again. “Hey – there’s no telling where the others are. And if anyone comes in? Just kick their asses and make a run for it.”

“Waiting,” said Kendra, glumly. Her blurry figure slumped and slid down to the ground, and she sighed loudly. “I hate waiting. Waiting to be rescued.”

Sara sighed as well, putting her back to the blur and joining her on the ground.

“We’re not waiting to be rescued,” she said.

“Oh?” said Kendra, voice filled with doubt. Sara smiled, even though Kendra couldn’t see her.

“We’re waiting for an opening,” said Sara confidently. As Kendra chuckled, Sara hoped that faking it ‘til they made it counted as a viable plan.

Because as far as impenetrable prisons went…this looked pretty damn impenetrable.

~~~~~

Mick woke as he usually did - suddenly. There was pain, but this wasn’t necessarily unusual, so he didn’t make a noise – just kept his eyes closed, ears pricked, listening for any clues as to what had happened, where he was –

Someone groaned, deeply. It was a familiar groan, filled with pain, and it came from a man Mick knew would rather bite his own tongue off than show weakness in front of anyone.

Mick’s eyes flew open. It only took a split-second to assess the surroundings – medical ward, docs in plain coats, high-tech set-up – before his attention landed on the most important thing in the room, the thing he’d been searching for. It was Snart, strapped to a table the same as Mick was strapped up, and all the docs were looking down at him, frowning, tapping at their special space-tablets.

“He’s resisting recalibration,” said one doc.

“If we can’t recalibrate his brain functions, then the reprogramming won’t sink in,” said another doc, frustrated. He reached out a hand, ready to press a luminescent dial on a screen. “I’ll increase the intensity –”

Mick had watched enough sci-fi (unwillingly, of course – Snart was the nerd) to know what was going on. They were trying to reprogramme Snart, turn him into a nice little servant.

Like hell. Snart and him didn’t bow their heads for anyone.

With a roar, Mick ripped out of his restraints – easily, in fact; Time Master shackles didn’t have anything on the Iron Heights medical wing – and went for the docs before they had a chance to properly react. Two went down like stones with one punch each, and the last Mick forced to unhook Snart properly before he, too, was knocked unconscious. Then Mick hovered, waiting for Snart’s face to crinkle in the familiar way, and for the other man to wake up.

“Snart,” he said, shaking his shoulder. “C’mon, we gotta go. Wake up.”

Snart frowned, but blearily opened his eyes. He must have been really out of it, because he let Mick help him sit up.

“Why does it feel like my head’s been run through a blender?” he asked, only partially sarcastic. Mick caught sight of their guns, laying on a far table for examination, and he retrieved them quickly, giving Snart his cold gun. Snart gripped it with both hands; too tight, Mick could tell. White-knuckled, to stop his shaking hands. One thumb was stroking the metal, a dead-giveaway showing that Snart was very unnerved. Mick primed his heat gun, and at the high-pitched whine, Snart blinked hard – then his usual cool demeanour returned, and all traces of his nervousness vanished.

“They were try’na reprogramme you,” said Mick, nodding at the screens. “Me too, probably.”

Snart’s eyes narrowed at the display, taking in the tables with straps, the unconscious doctors, and the wide screens with futuristic read-outs.

“Brainwashing?” he said, coldly. “Now I know I’m Captain Cold, but that’s really got me heated up.”

Mick rolled his eyes. If Snart was back making puns, everything was gonna be fine.

“We blow it up and leave,” he said. “Like the Fourth of July. But first, I think we’re gonna need that dumbass team of ours.”

Snart smirked, slipping off the table.

“Mick, old friend,” he said, priming his gun. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

~~~~~

"It's hopeless!" moaned Stein, and Jax didn't bother resisting the urge to roll his eyes. Ray, ever the optimist, was still searching every nook and cranny for any opening the might give them access to any kind of electronics. He was running into a small problem, of course - in that there were no openings - but this didn't seem to deter his determination. Jax found it both impressive and slightly worrying, and overall Ray's enthusiasm gave him the impression of a puppy looking for the ball that was never thrown.

Of course, Firestorm could have stood a chance at breaking through the walls. The only problem was, Firestorm ate up oxygen just by existing, and there was no telling where their air was coming from. Even with that in mind, though, Jax was getting seriously tempted; when he hopped along for the ride, he didn't think there'd be so much damn waiting around.

"Do you think the others are close by?" asked Carter, arms crossed and shoulders up. Jax could only shrug.

"Your guess as good as my, man," he replied. "You and Kendra don't have like, a soulmate connection thing or something?"

"No," bit out Carter, and Jax frowned. All right, so he was stressed - it was a stressful situation. Didn't need to be snippy about it, though. But after a second, Carter's shoulders slumped and he continued: "Kendra's in danger, and I'm stuck in here. She doesn't have her memories - she can barely fight. What's she supposed to do without me?"

Jax grimaced and was suddenly glad that for whatever bizarre reason, the Time Masters had divided them up by gender. Because if Kendra had been there to hear that, Carter would have been in a whole hell of fresh trouble.

"Kendra seems like she can hold her own in a fight, dude," he said instead. "I mean, she can fly."

Carter just shook his head. "You don't understand what it's like, being us," he said, and Jax realised he was just about done with the guy. Grey scoffed, and Jax felt a moment of relief - his partner must have been picking up on his tiredness.

"Oh, honestly," said Grey. "As old-fashioned as I am, even I know what century we live in. You need to have a little more trust in your partners, Mr Hall. It will get you very far, I promise you."

Jax just smiled at Grey, touched, and Ray piped up from where he'd been lying facedown on the floor, examining the ground.

"And anyway," he said. "Sara's probably with her. Even if Kendra was overwhelmed, Sara could probably take on a whole castle by herself."

"True," said Grey. "No to mention - wait." He frowned.

"What is it?" asked Jax.

"I just... He paused. "I don't know why I didn't realise this before but...where are Mr Snart and Mr Rory..?"

Everyone paused. Then Jax grinned.

"Well, that settles it," said, and the others looked at him curiously. "According to Cisco, there isn't a prison that exists that can keep those two for long. Odds are they've already broken out."

"You really think so?" asked Ray brightly, and Jax nodded confidently.

"So we're just supposed to wait for a rescue?" asked Carter distastefully, as though that wasn't exactly what they were already doing.

"Not a rescue," corrected Jax, grinning even wider. His confidence inspired Grey and Ray, who were both beginning to smile back. "We're waiting for an opening."

~~~~~

Two heads, each belonging to a super villain, poked around the corner of a hallway. They saw an approaching group of long-robed Time Masters and quickly withdrew, long years of practice making their moves silent and swift. Before trouble walked around their corner they darted down another hallway and managed to force open an innocuous door, hiding inside just in time to avoid another patrol. Listening closely to the door, it appeared as though they were in the clear for the moment, and they turned to view the rest of the room –

They stopped. Stared.

“What in the –” started Len, with all the force of a swearword.

Rows and rows of glass chambers lined the seemingly endless room. Each one had a sleeping person inside, and they were clearly from all different of eras in time. But it was the first row that really caught their attention – garishly-coloured costumes, on men and women, took pride of place in the centre of the room. Right in the middle of this row, slightly raised on a platform to show that this person, for some reason, was more important in some way than the others, there was a glass chamber with a sleeping man inside. Whatever else about how the others were dressed, this guy really took the cake; he wore a bright blue and gold jumpsuit, with a matching blue jacket and bright gold goggles. Lisa’d probably love it.

Since life was basically a comic book now, it didn’t take long for them to figure out what had happened – the brightly-clothed goofball-looking people in the glass chambers were undoubtedly superheroes, and the Time Masters had captured and imprisoned them for nefarious purposes unknown. There was no way sleeping people inside glass tubes could be anything other than sinister.

Len and Mick turned to each other, eyebrows raised – and then Len’s face cracked into one of his familiar, devious grins. Mick found himself grinning back, even before Len spoke.

“Well, whaddaya say, partner?” Len drawled, hoisting his cold gun. “Feel like a jailbreak?”

~~~~~

Kendra, trying to take heart in Sara’s words, was attempting to meditate – opening, not a rescue – when the explosion happened. The floor beneath her rocked and dust streamed from the ceiling, a large crack streaking down the middle. Kendra’s eyes widened and she scrambled to her feet, backing up to the wall. Dust trickled down from the crack, ominously, and Kendra peered up at it nervously. Then a sharp buzzing noise rang out and her head darted over to where the hazy walls separated her from the outside world – and Sara.

Her eyes narrowed. Her wings came out.

“Sara!” she bellowed. “I’m coming through!”

“What?!” came Sara’s shriek, and then Kendra was barrelling forward, leaping and kicking as hard as she could against one of the cracks in the corner. She put every ounce of Hawk-strength into the movement - and although her tendons shrieked and her eyes saw literal red for a second just from the sheer effort, her attack worked. The frame cracked, and the force-field shattered on all sides. She collapsed on the other side, nearly knocking into Sara, who caught her mid-ungracious collapse.

"Heck yeah, girl!" crowed Sara. "Now there's some girl power I can really get behind!"

Kendra gulped for breath. "I think maybe I need to take up weight training," she said, letting her body drop to a dead weight in Sara's arms. The other woman just laughed.

"I am so taking you sparring," she said, hoisting Kendra up. They went to the edge of the cell, looking out onto a room - bare, almost, but filled with white cells, walls obscured, just like theirs had been. There was a panel on on wall that displayed who was being kept inside the cells and where - and the only occupants consisted of a list of very familiar names. They looked at one another...and grinned.

"Opportunity," agreed Kendra to an unspoken question, and they started forward.

~~~~~

"Did you hear that?!" snapped Carter. "Who knows what that explosion was?! We need to get out of here, Kendra needs saving -"

Jax was very grateful when the wall exploded, even though it scared the crap out of him. When the dust cleared they were greeted with the welcome sight of Kendra - looking quite coolly at Carter - and Sara, who was grinning.

"Looks like you found that warrior part of warrior-priestess," said Sara cheerfully. "Now, who's up for kicking some Time Mater heiny? And saving our errant Captain?"

"What about Snart and Rory?" asked Ray. "We can't just leave them."

"Ray, I am one hundred percent certain they're the ones who set off the explosion that freed us," said Sara. "Plus, Rip is currently the one who's being threatened with suicide-execution. Leonard and Mick are grown men and experienced professionals - I'm positive they can look after themselves."

~~~~~

“Mick!” snapped Snart.

“I know, I know!” snapped Mick in return, annoyed at both the unplanned size of the explosion and at not being able to hang around and watch it all burn. “Kinda hard to calibrate future-tech, Snart!”

“I want solutions, not problems, Mick!”

Mick just growled under his breath, trying to work out the stupid wiring in the control panel. Since they didn’t have any of the commands to release the frozen heroes, they had decided to go the tried and tested route of good ol’ direct hacking.

I.e. setting it on fire.

In Mick’s defence, fire usually worked. Except he’d somehow forgotten to take account of the Time Masters’ screwy systems.

Not his fault, exactly. Decades of movies had prepared him for tech he'd be able to access however he liked, even though, thinking about it, it was always really convenient that the main character was always able to understand the system just in time to save the day.

This was why Mick preferred being a bad guy - well, one of the reasons. Less pressure to save the day. And when things caught on fire, it was because that was kinda the point.

He swore, and just thrust his hand in the middle of the burning (possible) CPU. In and out, too quick to get scorched, but just enough that he could grab the slip of technology and rip it out. There was a faint powering down sound, and scratching noise –

And the tubes began to open with hissing noises, each of them streaming with dramatic steam. Snart and Mick advanced cautiously as the inhabitants began to moan and stretch, slowly making their way back into consciousness. The main guy, in blue and gold, tried to take a step out but collapsed, falling directly into Mick’s arm. He blearily looked up at the two of them, until the blinked quickened and he startled backwards.

“Heatwave?!” he exclaimed. “And Captain Cold?! What –”

“Booster!” exclaimed one of the other heroes, and the guy looked around. His mouth dropped as he took in sight of the rows and rows of tubes, and the open chambers behind him, where his fellow superheroes were acclimatising themselves again. His face hardened.

“Skeets,” he snapped, and a long gold cylinder drunkenly popped up from the main chamber and sluggishly made its way towards him.

“Ugh, I feel like I’ve been on power saving mode since forever,” it complained, and Mick glanced at Snart just in time to see the other man’s eyebrows shoot up. A floating A.I., with a helluva lot more attitude than Gideon – and that was saying something.

“Skeets, how long were we out?” asked the man in blue and gold, and the little A.I. made a humming noise.

“Well, let’s just see – uh.” The A.I. paused. “Oh. Uh. That can’t be right.”

“I was afraid you’d say something like that,” said the guy grimly, and he glanced back at Snart and Mick, giving them his attention. “I’m guessing I have you two to thank for the rescue. Booster Gold.”

“What is that, a brand of smokes?” said Mick, totally unimpressed and not shy about showing it. But the guy just chuckled.

“Well, I know how I ended up here,” he said. “But what about you?”

“Long story,” drawled Snart. “To cut things short, we’ve got a little beef with these Time Masters – they’ve got our crew, we want them back and off this hunk of rock, wherever it is. Wouldn’t say no to a little assistance, however.”

“Done,” said Booster Gold grimly. He turned his head, addressing the others. “Hey, guys! I know things are pretty confusing right now, but we could really use your help.”

“I don’t understand,” said a woman, dressed in green and with green hair. “I – I was at the particle accelerator – there was a flash and I was fire –”

“I got all stretched out,” said another man, dressed in what looked like a purple jumpsuit. “You, I know you – Booster Gold. Ted introduced us! Are you telling me you’re some kind of time traveler? Did Teddy know?”

“Yeah,” said Booster quietly. “He knew. And I’ll have a helluva time explaining what the heck happened to me that made me drop off the grid, but suffice to say – you’re all heroes.”

“It’s like I was dreaming,” said the woman with green hair. “Are you telling me I really am fire?”

“Now that I’d like to see,” said Mick, and the woman shot him a quick Look – less expected, however, was the second look, which was far more appraising and included a wicked smile at the end of it. Nice.

“You’re Fire, all right,” said Booster, blissfully unaware of the exchange. “But you’re also a scientist – all of you are – and we need to retake Vanishing Point.”

“We get to kick the butts of the people that obviously kidnapped us, right?” asked the man in purple, and when Booster nodded, everyone started murmuring in agreement. “Lead the way, Booster. I might have Doctor in front of my name, but sure as hell I have nothing against causing harm.”

Snart and Mick glanced at each other as the heroes mobilised and started to stream out the door. They raised their eyebrows, shrugged – and followed.

All in all, things were heating up to be some kinda party, and Mick really wanted a slice of that action…

~~~~~

Meanwhile the rest of the Legends were successfully sneaking down a hallway. Their efforts to locate Rip, however, were far less successful.

“We should grab someone,” hissed Carter.

“Great idea,” snapped Sara, under her breath. “Except we haven’t actually run into anybody yet!”

“Don’t you think that’s suspicious?” said Ray. After all, it was pretty easy to be sneaky when everywhere was empty. “I mean, where is everyone? I thought this was Time Master HQ!”

“Shh!” said Kendra. “Do you hear that?”

Everyone paused. There were definite footsteps coming urgently around the corner, and as one the Legends stuck to the wall, ready to ambush whoever was coming around the other side –

Ray, and another unidentified man dressed in purple, let out high-pitched shrieks of surprise when two groups of definitely-not-Time-Masters turned the corner and stopped short.

“Uh…” said Sara, lowering her baton. Kendra and Carter put away their wings, and Jax and Stein slowly pulled their hands away from where they’d been about to transform. “You guys aren’t Time Masters.”

“Got it in one, Lance,” drawled a familiar voice, and Leonard and Mick strolled out from behind the group, smirking at them. “Not just a pretty face, huh?”

“I could say the same for you,” grinned Sara, lifting her chin at the assembled brightly-dressed group the two villains were clearly herding. “Nicely done.”

“You’re Sara Lance, the Canary,” said the man in front; blonde, very attractive (oh yes, look at that chin, those eyes! Move over, Ollie), and dressed in blue and gold. He was holding out a hand, and after a moment, Sara took it. “I’m Booster Gold, and we could really use your help right now. Everybody’s help.”

That’s when the alarm sounded out, of course.

Some people jumped a mile, but one guy shouted to follow, and they all dashed down another corridor, hunkering down as the halls filled with frantic – and angry – Time Master Acolytes, all of them prepping weapons and straightening uniforms. The intercom started blasting messages as well, identifying them all.

“Dammit,” said Sara.

“This is the time,” said Carter, looking to Sara. Grimly, she nodded, and he began to move forward. “We grab one, get them to tell us what we need to know –”

“No!” snapped Booster, throwing out an arm. “If we grab one, they might alert the rest of the them, and then we’d be up the creek without a paddle!”

“We don’t have time!” snapped Sara in return. “They’ve got our Captain!”

“They’re probably being held in the detainment area,” said Booster, but Kendra shook her head.

“That’s where they were keeping us,” she said. “They took Rip somewhere else.”

“Wait – Rip? Rip Hunter?” said Booster, startled, and they stared at him.

“You’ve heard of him?” asked Ray, and Booster nodded.

“Sure. Bit of a stickler for rules, but generally a good guy,” he said. “Why – wait, how did he become your captain?”

“Long story…” said Jax, scrunching his face up.

“Long story short,” interjected Len. “Rip broke the Time Master rules - got married, had a kid, both of them died because of a despot the Time Masters are supporting, and now Rip’s in big trouble. And here we are.”

Booster stared. “Wait – Time Master rules? There aren’t any rules against marriage or kids…”

“Uh, apparently there are,” said Sara. “Seeing as that’s what they’re pulling Rip up for.”

“That, and trying to save the future from Vandal Savage,” added Kendra and Booster’s mouth dropped open with horror.

“Savage?!” he exclaimed. “That asshole?! The Time Masters are allied with Savage?!”

“Yup,” said Mick. “And Englishman’s gonna hang for it.”

“What?!”

“They’re holding an execution –” explained Sara, but she was cut off by Booster exclaiming again.

“They’re holding a what?!” Booster, in a flurry of impatient movements, broke his cover and immediately grabbed the nearest Acolyte that had been running frantically in the opposite direction. The Acolyte found himself unceremoniously shoved against the wall, with a pistol jammed under his chin.

“Where’s the execution taking place?!” snarled Booster, and the Acolyte’s eyes widened.

“B-B-B-Booster Gold?!” he exclaimed, then choked when Booster’s grip tightened.

“The one and only!” snapped Booster. “Where’s the execution taking place?!”

“Uh – ah, the main hall – the Authority has gathered there to pass sentence on Rip Hunter –”

“For what?!”

“Interfering with time in order to bring about personal gain, violating several sworn oaths –”

“Oh, for the love of –” Booster let the Acolyte go, but pulled off the weapons belt. A number of silver spheres were attached.

“Oooh, those are Stasis Orbs!” said Skeets, popping up from behind Booster. The Acolyte’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head.

“T-that’s – but – you were both killed!” he exclaimed, pointing a shaking finger at the floating A.I. “We learned about you in our histories!”

Booster turned an incredulous look on the Acolyte as he pulled the spheres off the belt.

“Seriously?” he said. “You’re a Time Master and you believed what you were taught in history class? Geez.”

“Uh, Superstar?” said Mick slowly.

“We got company!” finished Len with significantly more urgency. Booster looked around to see a large group of Acolytes surrounding them with weapons drawn, although they did look very nervous as they did so.

“Whoever you are –” started one of them, but they were interrupted by the Acolyte that Booster had apprehended. He flung his arms out, moving quickly so that his body shielded Booster, and by extension, the other Legends.

“Wait!” he cried out, waving his arms. “Don’t shoot! It’s Booster Gold! It’s Booster Gold and Skeets!”

Pure shock rippled across the Acolytes. Slowly weapons lowered.

“Wait –” said another Acolyte, staring gobsmacked at Booster. “You’re Booster Gold? The Booster Gold? Hero of Time?”

“The execution, Booster,” said Len in an undertone, and Booster gritted his teeth.

“Yeah,” he snapped. “I’m Booster Gold. And right now, I’ve got an execution to stop. Who’s with me?”

~~~~~

In a darkened room, with only a single spotlight, Rip Hunter was kneeling on the ground, head heavy and arms bound behind his back. He was making no protest, no plea. Beyond, in the darkness, soft steps could be heard; the sound of dozens of feet solemnly filing into the room, belonging to the Time Master Authority as they gathered to pass judgment on Rip Hunter.

It was all for show, of course. They had Rip exactly where they wanted him. But a death in the streets is murder, a death in battle is tragedy, a death of illness or old age is only natural.

Execution requires ceremony.

Out of the darkness slipped Chronos, unmasked and holding a pistol. He silently approached Rip, priming the weapon. It was only then that Rip looked up, and his face was devoid of any and every emotion.

“Rip Hunter…” said a Time Master. “You stand accused of violating the oaths you sworn upon your initiation. You are sentenced – to death.”

Chronos raised his pistol, aiming it unwaveringly in the centre of Rip’s forehead. Rip met his own gaze with resignation; no panic, no tears, no begging.

“This is for Miranda and Jonas,” said Chronos, and unless you were listening very closely, it was impossible to hear anything other than grim determination. Impossible to hear the tiny hitch in his voice, to hear the fear.

Rip heard it. Rip knew what to look for, of course.

“Yes,” he agreed, quietly. “For Miranda and Jonas.”

The Time Masters were silent as the two condemned prisoners took a deep breath, held each other’s gaze, and –

Something small and gold whizzed forward at incredible speed, knocking the pistol out of Chronos’ hands. Time Masters cried out in shock and anger as a gold blur whipped around and around the room, before finally stopping and hovering above Rip and Chronos.

“Forty-three Time Masters identified, Booster!” the little machine chirped. “That makes all the Authority! Time to kick some ass!”

The doors blasted open and a dozen silver spheres came shooting in. The shouting from the Time Masters turned from angry to frantic as they all tried to escape, but in moments, the spheres shot out streams of white light that froze everyone where they stood. The only ones unaffected were Chronos and Rip, who could only stare at the sudden attack.

In the resulting stillness, a man, dressed in gold and blue, walked into the room. Both Rip and Chronos gasped; Chronos’ legs gave out and Rip fell back, both of their faces reflecting utter shock.

“Booster Gold,” breathed Rip.

“Hero of Time!” exclaimed Chronos.

“I wrote my thesis on you!” said Rip, scrambling to stand.

“You were lost in the Battle of the Time Shards!” added Chronos, also scrambling.

Booster Gold, founder of Vanishing Point and Time Travelling Hero, shook his head, an unusually serious expression on his trademark sunny face.

“That wasn’t a battle,” he said, darkly. “It was a mutiny.”

Wide-eyed, Chronos and Rip looked up at the Time Master Authority, still frozen in the rays of the silver orbs. Then they looked back at Booster.

“Mutiny?” they said, in unison, not even noticing.

“Yep,” said Booster – and now a grin appeared on his face. He cracked his knuckles, then his neck. “Looks like their time…has just run out.”

And just like that…the battle was over.

~~~~~

Jax peeked into the holding room, where rows of truculent Time Masters were being solidly detained in numerous cells. Their angry calls echoed around the room, and Jax grimaced, pulling his head back out and closing the door behind him. One of the Acolytes – a surprisingly large number of them turned coats and helped Booster Gold re-take Vanishing Point, once they heard that the Time Masters had imprisoned him – nodded at Jax and took up position in front of the door. Jax just nodded at the guy and wandered back to the control room, where Booster Gold, along with numerous other costumed individuals, were working feverishly on consoles.

“- but what about Savage?” Carter was saying. The rest of the team was gathered in the area as well; it had the feel of a hastily constructed house, where all the furniture was missing and the lights weren’t quite right. A far cry from the ominous sentencing room the Time Masters had kept cloaked in darkness.

“Savage is fine, we’ve located him and once things are settled here we’ll send a team to contain him,” said Booster Gold distractedly. A loud beep, combined with a powering down noise, let out of the console he was working from, and everyone working gave a huge sigh of relief, slumping back into their chairs.

“Okay, guys – crisis averted,” he said, tiredly. “Literally. Timeline’s stable, go get some sleep, something to eat.”

“Are you sure, Booster?” asked a woman with green hair. Jax was pretty sure he’d seen her flying around earlier, made of living green flame. A superhero, then. “The anomalies –”

“They’ll untangled themselves, Bea,” interrupted Booster, weakly waving a hand to shoo them away. The heroes began to stretch and excuse themselves for food and sleep – Jax jumped when one guy dressed in purple literally stretched his arm out an extra six feet, looping around Jax and patting Booster on the shoulder.

“Give us a call if ya need anything, buddy,” the guy said, withdrawing his hand, and Booster yawned.

“Thanks, Ralph,” he said, waving goodbye. While the others were filing out of the room, leaving behind only the Legends, Booster slouched in his chair and knocked his head back, yawning again. “Oh, geez.”

“What were you doing?” asked Jax, curious despite knowing instinctively that he might not understand the answer if it came with a whole bunch of technobabble attached. Booster gave a jaw-cracking yawn, strong enough that it nearly set off everyone else.

“Trying to isolate the forced anomalies the Time Master were causing,” he said, once the yawn was complete. “There was a lot of interference with timelines – people dying and not having kids or grandkids or great-grandkids that were supposed to invent small cures and solve local political crisis’. Little aberrations like that build and build, like pills on a fleece. It doesn’t destroy the overall timeline, but there were localised timelines that didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to, and these left open holes in Time. Which, in turn, had the potential to suck out all of Vanishing Point’s power. Don’t ask me how, for the love of god –” He interrupted Stein and Ray, who had been opening their mouths for further questions. “It’s garbage. The science is garbage, okay? Time just does whatever the hell it wants and it doesn’t care about us or our sanity. I don’t know what the hell I’m even talking about half the time, but I’m Booster Gold! I’m the expert on all things time! God, I miss Ted, life was simpler then…I wonder if he’s still in Star City…”

“Savage,” said Carter sharply. “What are you going to do with him?”

Booster tilted his head to him, scratching the back of his neck.

“Well, for starters,” he said. “I’m going to strip him of all those gimmicks the Time Masters gave him.”

 Gimmicks?” asked Kendra, and Booster blinked.

 “Well, sure,” he said, slowly. “How else do you think he managed to not age for thousands and thousands of years, and find you in every timeline? The Time Masters were helping him.”

Resounding silence met that statement. Booster blinked again, hard.

“Wait…you didn’t realise it?” he said. “You just thought he was immortal? I mean, sure, he has advanced healing, but the man hasn’t aged a day since Ancient Egypt and you guys didn’t even wonder?”

“We thought it was magic…” said Ray, and Kendra and Carter nodded.

“It was an ancient ritual,” said Carter. “The night the meteorites fell – the power from the meteorites combined with the ritual and bound our souls together.”

It was Booster’s turn to be hit with silence.

“Uh…” he said. “Okay…I’m just going to save you some time and trouble, okay? Savage was recruited by the Time Masters to save the world in the future by leading it into victory with the Thanagarians. Everything he did was either for personal entertainment, or because the Time Masters needed him to do something in order to bring about their penultimate plan. And…I hate to say this to you, but he was a serial killer who’d decided that you guys were his perfect victims. There was no magic ritual that bound you all together. The Time Masters just tracked you down and sent him to you.”

Kendra and Carter stared.

“No,” Carter said forcefully. “I’ve seen it. He absorbs our energy –”

“Yes, which is part of his meta-human abilities, enhanced with help from the Time Masters,” said Booster. “I can show you the research if you want – you guys study this in a version of the future. That reincarnation business? It’s actually the result of a local time aberration, in combination with latent meta-genes and infected meteorite. This melting pot resulted in you two being flung through time, repeating your lifetimes together. Because of the nature of the aberration, there was a unique energy signature that the Time Masters were able to track through every lifetime. Your genetic make-up, along with the meteorite’s activating properties, meant that your bodies looked the same, too, and you retained your memories.”

“What – what do you mean? We look the same because we are the same…right?” asked Carter, and Booster sat up properly.

“Didn’t you guys ever wonder why you both look exactly the same as you did in your first life?” he asked, incredulous. “Didn’t you wonder why your memories never came to you in date order? It’s because you didn’t live your lives in date order! We have memory-retrieval technology in this place, I could probably show you at least one life that took place prior to the meteorite shower that activated your abilities!”

“So – wait, hold on,” said Kendra, holding up her hands. “What you’re saying is, we’re not part of some mystical bond that ties us together throughout the ages? It’s because of a cocktail of circumstance and a bunch of stupidly timed events, and this whole reincarnation thing is an accident?”

“And Savage is a serial killer who’s been literally hunting us through time?” added Carter. “He’s not tracking us as revenge for the night of the meteor shower and killing us to steal our life-energy?”

“He’s literally just a creep?” said Kendra. “He’s just a creep who got mad I wouldn’t date him in Ancient Egypt and the Time Masters said they’d help him do whatever he wanted so long as he led an attack against Thanagar?”

“Why do we have the same powers?” demanded Carter.

“Because the meteor came from Thanagar,” said Booster. “None of them are born with wings, either; they’ve found a way to grow them, and store them away. It’s a method that only works on those with a meta-gene, which all Thanagars either have, or genetically engineer themselves to have.”

Silence hit the room; Kendra and Carter looked utterly shell-shocked. Then Kendra punched Carter in the arm.

“Ow!” exclaimed Carter. “What was that for?”

“You and your stupid soulmates talk!” she snapped. “Honestly! Magic and rituals and Ancient friggin’ Egypt –”

“Uh, I mean – magic is real –” Booster shut up when he caught sight of Kendra’s fierce glare.

“But magic isn’t what happened here, right?” she said.

“N-nope. Pure science.” Booster paused. “Insofar as time travel and its many complications can be called a science.”

She threw her hands up in the air.

“I am way too tired to have this conversation right now,” she declared. She jabbed a finger in Carter’s direction. “But when we get back home, we are having a conversation.”

The word was said with such deadly finality that all Carter could do was timidly nod in hasty agreement. Kendra collapsed into another chair and stared angrily at the ceiling. The ‘fuck-off’ aura she was projecting was so mighty, everyone else naturally began to slide towards the other side of the room.

“So…you’ll pick up Savage, and take care of him?” asked Sara. Booster hesitantly nodded, after checking quickly that Kendra wasn’t looking in their direction.

“Yep,” he said. “I’ve also got a vacuum cleaner the Time Masters picked up from the Waverider...”

“Yeah, you can go ahead and shoot that into the sun,” said Jax, with feeling, and this somehow broke the tension – Kendra could be heard giving a loud snerk, and everyone else started joining in. The laughter may have turned a little hysterical towards the end, but…

Hey. They needed it.

~~~~~

Later on, once they had all eaten and slept and received thorough medical care from almost scarily-worshipful groups of Acolytes (turns out Booster Gold was a Serious Big Deal and he was all their literal #1 Hero of All Time, pun both intended and not intended), they gathered in the time ship bay outside the Waverider. It was time to go home. Booster was waiting for them, along with Chronos, and Rip, Miranda, and Jonas - who had been safely retrieved from their future and had spent the meantime in tearful, happy reunion with Rip - were already inside the docking portion of the Waverider, smiling at the Legends as they approached.

“Guys, I can’t thank you enough,” said Booster. “Without you, this universe would have been seriously screwed. As it is, there’s a lot of work to do to fix the damage the Time Master Authority did.”

“And that’s what you’ll be doing?” asked Sara. When Booster nodded, she titled her chin to Chronos. “What about him?”

Chronos shifted on his feet a little, but let Booster answer.

“I’ll be depositing him back to his timeline,” he said. “Thanks to the manipulations of the Authority, there’s a split universe, which they pulled him from – it’s almost exactly like ours, except for a few small changes. This timeline shouldn’t really have existed, so sooner or later he’d disappear even if I didn’t put him back.”

“So wait – you’ll die?” Jax asked Chronos.

“I won’t die,” said Chronos. “No more than pulling your past selves into the future would kill you simply because it created an alternate past. I’ll simply be put back into the timeline I came from, and these timelines will eventually merge naturally into the timestream.”

“How?” asked Ray.

“Not a flippin’ clue, my dude!” said Booster cheerfully, and there was more than a hint of manic in his expression. “But Time’s existed so far, and it’ll continue to exist, so…I’m not gonna worry about it too much!”

Sara laughed and slapped his shoulder. “Sounds like my kinda guy!” she said, winking. “If you’re ever around Star City…”

Booster grinned. “Well, if Teddy’s still there, I just might be…”

“Teddy?”

“Ted Kord –”

“Ted Kord?” burst out Ray. “You know Ted Kord?! Ted Kord knows you?!”

Booster blinked. “Uh – sure. We were, uh, superhero buddies.”

Ray’s mouth dropped. “Could…could you introduce me?” he said weakly. “I am such a fan.”

Booster stared for a moment before throwing his head back and laughing.

“Guess you haven’t seen the last of me!” he said, finally, and his smile was brighter than a thousand watts. Behind him, Vanishing Point bustled with activity, some of the Acolytes waving at them as they did their work, and the team looked around at the enormous buildings and rows of timeships. Most of them wondered how their lives had gotten so crazy that time ships and time-space travel was as noteworthy as a walk in the park.

“Well! If there’s anything I learned from a lifetime of heists,” said Snart suddenly, breaking the moment. “It’s to get out while the going’s good. I say we time-skip back to 2016, before Booster here thinks of a reason for us to stick around.”

Mick grunted with agreement. “Might’a been fun roasting Time Pigs, but this job stank of hero work. Ain’t my scene.”

“And with that,” said Sara, rolling her eyes as the two criminals – and the rest of the team – boarded the Waverider. “We say goodbye.”

“See you later,” corrected Booster, smiling. And as the Waverider’s hatch closed, Sara smiled too.

~~~~~

The Waverider returned, as originally promised, to 2016 – only two hours after they’d first left. Rip, Miranda, and Jonas gathered together to see them off; Rip could hardly glance away from his family, and the sheer joy in his face tugged something in Sara’s chest. It could’ve even been her heart.

“Thank you,” said Rip, voice choked. “Thank you for everything you’ve done. I really – I can’t thank you enough.”

“Just doing our duty!” said Ray, puffing his chest out – but when Miranda turned a blinding smile on him, his bravado actually stuttered. “I mean – of course. ‘Cause…”

“We weren’t just going to let you die,” interrupted Sara, deciding to be nice and save Ray.

“What are you going to do now?” asked Jax. “Booster Gold’s got things in hand in Vanishing Point. Are you gonna go back and work with him?”

Rip looked at Miranda, who shook her head slightly, smiling.

“I think we’ll take some time for ourselves,” she said, and she smiled even wider down at her son, smoothing his hair. “I think that’s fair, don’t you, sweetheart?”

“Do we get to keep the Waverider?” asked Jonas eagerly, and his parents laughed, utterly carefree.

“Thank you again,” said Miranda, and it was said with an unspoken sense of goodbye. “We truly wish you all the best.”

That was that, really – she, Jonas, and Rip got back on the Waverider, waved goodbye and shouted their thanks as the door closed, and the time ship rose into the air, took off –

And in between one blink and the next, they were gone. The team looked into the empty sky for a moment before glancing at each other and beginning to make their way out of the warehouse district, back to their homes.

“Man – being a hero wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be,” announced Ray as they walked. “But wow it was fun!”

“I sure as hell liked saving the day,” agreed Jax, grinning. Stein nodded.

“Time travel,” he said. “It was certainly extraordinary, wasn’t it?”

“I guess being heroes was pretty cool,” said Kendra thoughtfully, and Carter shrugged his shoulders and smiled a little. The good cheer wasn’t broken even when Leonard interrupted with his usual drawl.

“Well, isn’t this all so very sentimental,” said Leonard. “Take it easy – I might start tearing up."

Mick grunted. “Think you’re all forgetting something – we’re not heroes."

“No,” said Sara, smiling slowly at the group in front of her – a scientist the world thought was dead, a two-for-the-price-of-one walking torch, two criminals whose monikers were self-explanatory, two reincarnated metahumans with wings, and a former assassin…

No, nobody would mistake them for the good guys, that was for sure, even after all the world saving they’d done. So she planted her feet, looked them in the eye, and said:

“We’re not heroes…we’re something else. Something even better. We’re… legends.”

THE END

P.S. For those of you wondering what happens to Rip, Miranda, and Jonas:

With the timeline safely in the hands of Booster Gold and an appropriate team, Rip, Miranda and Jonas retire to the quiet countryside (in an undisclosed, but modern, era) and he and his wife become prolific writers to wide critical acclaim (Rip writes stunningly accurate Westerns and Miranda writes Science Fiction/Science/Ethics and Technology). They’ve taken on new aliases for their new lives, although Jonas still retains his name. When Jonas grows up he also becomes a writer and records all the stories his parents told him whilst growing up, as well as making up a few of his own. His bestseller becomes the running series entitled “Legends of Tomorrow”, about a rag-tag group that try to save time and rescue the future. There’s talk of it becoming a tv series. They occasionally help Booster out with Time-related shenanigans - much to Jonas' delight, since it gives him lots of new material for his stories - but generally just have a really happy, normal life together.

There is more than one way to be a hero, after all.