Chapter Text
Sara was a half a set pull ups away from collapsing on her bed when Gideon called out for her. She dropped to the ground, silencing the huff that accompanied the move, and made her acknowledgment.
“Captain, there is someone who would like to speak to you.”
“Is the League trying to vid-call again? I told them that we weren’t compatible with their frequencies in here. And if it’s Rip, just tell him that I’ll message when we hit the temporal zone, tomorrow. We all need to sleep and the others will want to be there when I tear him a new-”
“It is neither party, Captain. And I do not believe that you would wish this person to go unaddressed until the morning.”
“Fine. Who and how, then? I’d rather not wake up the boys.”
“The visitor is waiting outside, though I cannot confirm their identity as of this moment. My data of Earth Reference-Number-49 is still woefully incomplete-”
“I know, I know. But give me something to work with Gideon. Are they by the cargo door?”
“The most I can tell you is that their - his , actually - biological signature was present at both the battle of City Plaza this afternoon and the Hall of Justice public entrance earlier this evening.” Sara’s brow furrowed. His being at either place could mean a great many things, but being at both meant one of two: He was a League ally or one of the Questors they had failed to apprehend when the Apparition disappeared. “And, no, Captain. He is in the cargo hold.”
“You mean outside the-”
“No, Captain.” that meant he was inside -
“What the hell, Gideon!? How did he get on board?”
Sara didn’t stick around long enough to hear the response in full (and Gideon didn’t seem to mind, considering she didn’t cast her voice into the hallway as Sara moved) but it sounded suspiciously like whoever was waiting for her had ‘asked nicely’.
Her staff was at rest in her right hand, crooked behind her elbow and at an angle behind her head. The hall and bridge lights were dimmed to half strength, she guessed that someone had turned them down after Nate complained - she couldn’t blame him, after a few solid hits to the skull, she preferred the dark, too. Sara paused for a moment, debating the pros to powering to the lights, but decided against it and pressed forward. Her training in the dark would best nearly anyone else’s - and if Gideon was self-assured enough to let this person on without warning her beforehand then it wouldn’t be worth it if it woke up Ray or Jax in the medbay.
Just as she was going to begin her descent to the hold, a voice called out softly.
“No need to brandish your weapons, I’m unarmed.”
A dark shape sitting - no, crouching - against the wall in the choke point of the corridor moved as he spoke, shadowed hands floating upwards in surrender. Her eyes hadn’t adjusted quite well enough to make out any more than the fact they were, in fact, empty; no sound of steel unsheathing or a hammer being pulled back, only a slight sound of fabric shifting.
“Says the man hiding in the dark.” She kept her voice low, though not as quiet as his. This was her house, she had the power here.
“Well, I’ve already nearly woken your teammates in the infirmary once tonight by trying to find a light switch.” His voice was calm, gentle even.
She took the stairs seamlessly, putting her feet on level with his on the cargo floor. She towered over him without even trying.
“If you touched either of them-”
“Do you really think I would have lasted this long on your ship if the voice above witnessed any kind of malice?”
True. Gideon would have woken up the entire crew if her initial assessment had been malformed, or if she’d been proven wrong since his boarding. But Sara didn’t need to tell him that.
There was another quiet sound, a hum. Apparently, he had recognized her silence as an answer.
“Nothing to worry about, Captain, they’re still sleeping like babes - though, the younger one’s vitals did spike, but I think it was just a dream. Hopefully a good one; he could use it after today.” Maybe tired was a better word than gentle; like he’d rather be in bed than having this conversation. His voice gave away nothing in particular, sounding vaguely midland US with a measured caution.
“Oh?”
“Yes. I’ve been on the receiving end of the Kryptonians’ aerial interventions and, trust me,”- another sound, this time like a wet boot’s tread dragging across the floor, “the kid’s gonna be sore for a few days, with or without his nuclear powers, after the way he was tossed around.”
“You were there?”
“Yes.”
“Doing what, exactly?” A little bit of an accusatory tone went a long way with two strangers in the dark. The man began to straighten, slowly, as he answered, obviously hoping to show some backbone.
“The Trio-” Sara had noticed some of the locals and league members refer to the hard hitters like that, as a set “-decided I was more useful above the playing ground, so I was laying down some cover across from the waterworks building while you and the rest of the color-coded circus played Galaga . I’m the reason that your shiny friend isn’t a puddle of molten goo.”
Sara had listened to people justify their actions - by truths and lies - for years, and rarely were they ever just the right amount of self-assured, analytical, and realistic. But she always loved the outliers.
“Funny, I don’t remember hearing you talk at the tower after.”
“That’s because I didn’t go. I stopped in at the Hall to have a word with Prince before heading out to take care of other things.”
Convenient.
“And why should I believe you?”
“You shouldn’t. But since I need this conversation to continue, I’ll ask your ever-so-helpful co-pilot to pull up the coverage of today’s . . . skirmish.”
And there it was again, no lie to be found and no pride to tempt.
“Gideon, pull it up.”
Within a few seconds, the screen nearest them - one mounted on the wall that usually acted as an ID portal - blinked on with one video set to play in the foreground and the handful of other at the ready behind it. Sara tapped the screen and the footage rolled.
It was odd, seeing the events play out in standard time as opposed to how they felt while she was fighting. Seconds ticked by - even counted down by the second by the camera’s timestamp - instead of the hectic fast-forward and slow-mo intervals that she usually experienced. She found Amaya and Firestorm first, glowing blue and burning orange, respectively, and then saw herself fighting between Nate and Mick. The members of the League dove in and out of frame like the camera operator had long since given up any hope of properly focusing on any of them, choosing to tackle to newcomers and challengers instead.
Sara felt the stranger move up along her side, not close, but near enough that he was softly illuminated by the screen. He was tall, drawn up to near his full height, but Sara had taken down taller. The gleam didn’t shed much light on the state of his clothes, but the material absorbed more than it reflected, so a dark martial - canvas perhaps, judging by the way it gave silently as he rose, unlike leather or the tri-polymers that Cisco was so fond of using to form the speedsters’ costumes. If she were to guess, one of the rustles that she had heard earlier had been to push back the equally dark hood that was partially collapsed around his neck now, but she could make out nothing else since the rest of his head seemed to be covered.
His hand raised, sheathed in a thick glove, and paused for a moment before moving forward to point out a shape tucked far above the normal reach of the fray, just in the shadow of the courthouse bell tower. There was a body, but too small and far away to see. He seemed to realize and moved to select the third clip in the lineup.
With the new file came a moment of buffering, causing that man the cock his head to the side.
“I thought Vic gave you a data share to add to the ship’s mainframe, why is she pulling from the networks in town?”
This close she should be able to feel his exhale displace the air, but nothing. Like his voice was being projected smoothly from a speaker or a greater distance, not at all like he was standing just to her right. Yet, she could make out the movement of his chest, shoulders, as they cycled through each breath.
But that would be a question for later, so Sara redirected her attention to the screen while she answered.
“Yeah, but Jax, the younger half of the human warhead, has declared that only he’s allowed to make additions to the closed system unless we’re properly docked and since he’s nursing radiation poisoning and toxic exposure. . .”
“Hmm, understood. Unsanctioned streaming it is.”
The new vantage point seemed to be for a news helicopter circling the block, placing Sara’s companion in the foreground instead of in the distance, allowing her to catch a glimpse of the setting in whole.
He was kneeling, half pressed against the tower’s facade, with some sort of modified rifle knocked to his shoulder. He fired every few beats and each time he did one of the attacking Questors fell or were forced to redirect whatever move they were making. Halfway through the clip, Gideon’s pirated version seemed to align with what had been run on the local network because a thin white frame appeared accompanied by a banner that rolled across the screen informing the viewers that “League and newcomers, ‘Legends’, hold off the combined forces of the Apparition and the Questors with Colonel assisting from above”.
The man moved his hand again, pointing so that this time pulling Sara’s attention back to the ground-level field of play.
“And here,” he began, “is when you heard me on your comms. Not that you knew it was me.”
Sara remembered as she witnessed it as an observer. She was taking down a Questor - this one more black-crusted scar tissue than flesh - when “Blonde in white, duck to your left” had rung through her earpiece. She had acted, without thought, reassured by the knowledge that the League’s tech gurus had taken the chance to sync both team’s earpieces as well as fortify them against other frequency users, and it had served her well. The projectile, a kind of gray gelatin venom-ball that the Apparition specialized in, zipped right over her head and crashed into the crispy henchman.
His quick words had kept her from going the way of Jax, minus the superhuman matrix that overpowered the most caustic toxins in moments. He’d saved her life. But it didn’t explain why he was here, and she said as much.
“Like I said, I don’t mean you or your team any danger,” he began, but his words were carefully guarded. “But I do need your . . . help.”
“So you show up here, now, in the rain at past midnight? With no warning or League assurances outside of these videos. What could we possibly do for you that the home-Earth heroes couldn’t?” Out of couple dozen members whose histories and obligations span galaxies, how could the Waverider’s crew provide any assistance that they couldn’t?
“The only reason that any of your people are here is to pick up the out-of-space materials - the irradiated carbonite canisters. Which makes it sound to me that you can make it back home with more than you came in with - right?”
Sara nodded, slowly, and watched as his shoulders adjusted, like he was releasing tension.
“What do you need moved? And why wouldn’t having one of the green guys sending it into space be enough, or one of the small herd of Supers that you have floating around?”
“I’m not flinging anything in space, Captain. Between rainbow brigade, the US armed forces, and the ‘Supers’, I wouldn’t make it ten minutes before being carted away.”
If Sara were to bet, he was speaking for experience.
“But, no, none of the many things they could do would suffice, not without great personal cost to me. . . and others.” His voice sounded hollow, like he was imagining just who would be affected, and how.
She considered him: an ally, as far as either could substantiate or challenge; alone, as much so as he was willing to say; and as straightforward of a person as she had met in recent days.
“I won’t make any promises - the team gets a say in what happens on this ship - but I can talk to them.”
“It would be much appreciated,” it seemed that it was his turn to regard her, and crossed his arms over his chest in doing so, “I heard from Billie that the plan was for you to head off tomorrow morning, is that correct?”
Sara shrugged, most of the team had been too hangry or tired to discuss any more than the broad strokes of their plan moving forward - the League had probably assumed that since they had made their goodbyes before they left the tower hours ago that they wouldn't be making another timely appearance in civilization.
“Noon’s a better bet, but yeah, that’s the plan. Why? Is your transpo time sensitive?”
“I should think so, since the next time I step foot on the soil of my home I’ll be signing my own death warrant.”
His delivery was deadpan, like he had been made to say the same words - or something similar - many times.
“I take it that means you’re the cargo, then?” He didn’t bother with more acknowledgment than the slightest downward turn of his head. “May have to charge extra for that . . . Care to explain what drove you to the extreme of seeking our help?”
“You mean apart from my impending doom?” He didn’t require a response but she gave a brief hum anyway.
“Strangers from another reality couldn’t have been your first choice.”
“You’re right. You and your team are my only choice.”
Despite her intentions to remain impassive, her left brow jumped, ever so slightly, without her permission and he caught the movement.
“That surprises you. But, trust, when it came down to the organized chaos of this lot and assured death, I chose to live. Though to be clear, I haven’t forsaken my associates. I was never a part of the League - never a card-carrying member - but I know them well. Both of those facts have served me well and will continue to do so in the coming hours.
“I believe in all that they can do, the acts that they can perform. One of them has a part to play in all of this as well. But that step can only be taken once I’m gone .”
“And gone meaning . . ?”
“I’m sure you can imagine the possibilities.” Gone could mean a hundred things and she’d been most of them, so, yes, she could. And while she couldn’t see his eyes - strange, given that he was there attempting to prove his worth as an honest person of need - but there was no doubt that he was meeting hers. “I am at your mercy, Captain. If you tell me to leave I will walk into town and have a nightcap, maybe even get a good night’s rest before my token is pulled. My peace - along with a few final acts of war - has already been made; checked all the boxes before I came here to see you tonight. Not that it will matter come tomorrow.” There was no repentance in his voice, but he said the last bit quietly enough that Sara barely catching more than a murmur against the covering over his mouth.
“So, I’ll be signing your death warrant if I push you out into the rain?”
“No.” Definitive; even a little cool. “You and your team are a passive party in all of this. Nothing you do or do not do will reflect back onto you. If you take me aboard, you’ll get no more praise than you would if you told me to try my luck elsewhere. I cannot force or threaten you; I can’t steal this ship out from under you. And I cannot lie.” Sara made out a humored tone in his voice, enough to know that he recognized, at least, the worthlessness of the last statement. “There are rules to all of this.”
Hell, pulling a willing man from his timeline on an alternate Earth was a first, but it was far from the most questionable thing they had done. A part of Sara was still waiting for 1776 to come back and bite them in the ass - accidentally resculpting their home country would not be a smiled upon by the Bureau.
“This is what I can give you, tonight. You can stay aboard - we have an open room right now - and then tomorrow we’ll talk to the crew. Playing taxi isn’t our usual business but I can’t imagine that they’ll have anything against you tagging along for a bit.”
“Thank you.” For the first time since they had begun talking, his speech patterns changed notably and Sara caught it: just a little bit of a break before the vowels. He hadn’t been sure that he would be helped here, by them.
He was at the end of his rope and she had just held out a hand.
“Come on, I’ll show you to the cabin.” In a stroke of luck, Amaya had recently cleared her stuff out of the rearmost room, having decided to take Sara’s old one while Sara herself had taken the Captain’s quarters just off of the bridge. He could be contained and out of sight until necessary in the morning.
The length of the hall was still dark as they made their way past the training room and infirmary, where Sara took note of Jax’s content snoring. All the doors along the stretch where closed, so a little conversation wouldn’t bother anyone.
“So, the news labeled you ‘Colonel’ . . .” She drifted off, question clear.
He scoffed next to her, breaking his silence of the past moments - another oddity, he could almost match her for stealth in movement, only her proximity allowed her to make out his steps.
“A joke of their own making, I assure you. A play on my connection to another celebrity personality more than anything else.”
“Hmm, good. It’s a little lacking in personality for our Earth. And we have friends who would love to help give you a new alias.”
“I can imagine.”
Sara slowed to a stop outside of cabin 9, pressing her hand to the sensor for access.
“This is you. Pretty clean, though I think the nards have been trying to using it for storage. And watch out for anything that starts moving, Mick’s rat may have escaped again.”
He moved, stepping to stand facing the room and seemed to peer around her into the dim space. He nodded after a beat.
“Not like I’m in the right to complain. You know what they say about beggars.” Sara almost pointed out that different Earths could say a great many things about beggars that Sara wouldn’t know, but the mild bitterness that leaked into his voice made it clear that certain idioms surpassed gaps in space continuum. “Gonna lock me in, Captain?”
“Apparently I can’t even keep you out of the ship, since Gideon took a shine to you. But that doesn’t mean that this door shouldn’t stay closed out of a reason of good faith.” In truth, Sara was working off fumes and was willing to bet that he wasn’t doing much better. Neither of them were awake enough to build or remove the contingencies that would need to be put into place to best the locks and the AI oversight.
“And you can call me Sara. The crew only uses ‘Captain’ when I threaten them.”
“Good to know.” He stepped into the room, turning to face her again in the same movement. “And I take it that she’s not usually one to pick up strays?”
Sara nodded her agreement. She could see a little more of him now, since the room was set to 1/10 strength instead of minimum like the rest of the ship. His head was dark haired and bare, but his ears, nose, and below were hidden by some sort of modernized balaclava with his eyes hidden behind the shaded lenses of a pair of goggles. Both seemed to have avoided most of the rain outside but enough remained to throw a glint of light.
“How did you convince her to let you on board anyway? She’s never been one to listen to strangers - and you shouldn’t have been able to talk to her without being inside the hull of the ship.”
“Sure, if we weren’t all still on a shared comms frequency. I told her that I was waterlogged, tired, and running for my life. Made it clear that I meant no harm to her, the ship, or the team. In the end it was a promise that I would do her a favor of her choice; ended up swearing that when I got the chance I would ask Heywood - the metal one, I believe?-” he paused for another confirming nod, “to stop streaming something called ‘Friends’ until he fell asleep every night. Apparently, it's migraine-inducing to those of artificial intelligence.”
“Hmm, and that was it? She didn’t give me your name, vigilante or otherwise. And it's not like her not to ask.”
Sara was prying, but at this point, it was ridiculous not to have at least a name.
“Odd. It seemed to me that she was avoided asking - and giving, didn’t know she was ‘Gideon’ until you said as much.” That would be investigated later, after some sleep.
“Well. I’m not her.”
“No, you’re not,” he sighed. He stepped further back, deeper into the room, bowing his head slightly as he went. Sara supposed for a moment that he would leave their conversation as it was, until he raised a hand and threaded two fingers under the band of his goggles and the top hem of the mask, working them down quickly past his nose and chin.
“So, Len will do. Goodnight, Captain.”
Sara blinked as the doors zipped shut and chimed with the interior lock slipping into place, then shut her eyes. She stood there for a moment, the exhaustion of her mind fighting between banished memories forcing their way forward and the brief glimpse that she had seen before the bulkhead sealed.
Dark brows, a widow's peak, familiar planes of a wide jaw, and angular, full lips; she even thought she caught a glimpse of the little spot of brown by his left ear when he turned his head to hit the sensor. All of it, with the name, and the eyes that flicked to meet hers for only a second - the same ones that used to stare her down; the mix of blue and green and grey that she could never pinpoint - meant one thing.
She had welcomed Earth 49’s Leonard Snart onto the Waverider.