Chapter Text
It was a quiet evening at the Refuge. The children were all snug in their beds, no dawdlers for once, and Mary Xavier was settling into her favorite armchair, cup of tea in hand when she heard the sudden noise at the front door.
It wasn’t a knock, not quite, but it was too deliberate to be a mere gust of wind. It was certainly not a scheduled visit, not at this hour, and Mary Xavier dismissed the thought of an accidental visitor. The Time Masters were very thorough when it came to choosing isolated locations for their Refuges. They would not risk contamination of their young recruits. And while she appreciated that the children would be valuable targets for any of the numerous enemies of the Time Masters, she suspected that attackers would be unlikely to stop quietly at her doorstep.
The surveillance system, a gift from the Time Masters who would not leave their recruits unprotected, showed a single waning life sign. This visitor was injured, perhaps dying. She opened the door.
Her visitor must have been leaning all of his weight on the door, for as it opened, he fell like a sack of potatoes at her feet. She could tell immediately that he was a Time Master, and from his age and anachronistic clothing, she guessed he was a Captain. He was in terrible condition. He looked as though he had been starved and beaten and his skin gave off a dreadful heat. His eyes were glassy and unfocused as they settled on her. “Mother,” he whispered.
Mary Xavier knew all of her children. This man was not one of them. At least, she thought wryly, he wasn’t one of them yet. Which meant that this man was a criminal, a violator of the Time Council’s strictest edicts. Her duty was clear.
As she examined the man, Mary Xavier remembered the day that Magister Druce first presented the idea of a Refuge. The Time Masters were a dying generation, he had explained. The young men and women that they recruited to replenish their ranks simply could not withstand the rigorous curriculum of the Academy. Those few who made it through were willful and defiant, disloyal, unable or unwilling to bend to the Council’s edicts. Most simply could not be trusted with the vast responsibility of protecting time.
Magister Druce believed that the answer was to recruit earlier. Children, the Magister believed, both had the flexibility of mind to adapt to the necessary training and could be trained to the level of discipline necessary for the pressures of their role. There were many children out there who were doomed by history to die cold, hungry or sick. They could give those children a chance to live instead as part of something greater.
The Magister’s proposal was approved immediately, and he came to her. She had been a captain herself then. Her strategic abilities had been unexceptional, but she had earned a reputation for competence and integrity. He felt that she, of all of the Time Masters, possessed the necessary temperament, patience and wisdom to take charge of the Refuge. She suspected he had other reasons for this decision, but agreed, with a clarification: if she would be mother to these new orphans, she was going to be their mother in deed as well as name. Her sole focus would be on them and their well being. To that end, she asked to be released from her oaths as a Time Master and took a new name entirely.
Druce had agreed with a patronizing smile. But he never understood. None of the Council did. On their pedastals, they only knew their grand designs, they had forgotten, or never knew, what it meant to hold a child in their arms. She could sense their bemusement as she took her name from figures of Earth’s vast folklore: a first century Levantine woman who bore a deity from her body and a twentieth century American man who became the father, by heart if not blood, of a nation of demigods. The Magister approved, for he liked the comparison of his new generation to Earth’s divinity. But Mary Xavier hadn’t chosen the name to exalt her children, but rather to remind herself that even the gods needed a parent’s love.
Magister Druce would expect Mary Xavier to report this man. Mary Xavier would do no such thing.
“At any rate,” she told her semi-conscious guest, “you’re hardly in a condition to answer any questions.” When she determined he was safe to move, she pulled him upright, an arm over her shoulder. “We can’t very well leave you for the children to stumble over.”
It took a lot of persistent coaxing to get the young man moving, and even then, Mary Xavier was holding up most of his weight. But he did shift himself unerringly in the direction of the infirmary, which, along with his trusting obedience, seemed to confirm that he was one of hers.
Some time later, she had the boy settled into one of the infirmary beds, with a privacy curtain drawn around him. Despite appearances, the Refuge’s medical facilities were state of the art. These children were the future of the Time Masters, after all, and the Council would take no chances when it came to their safety and well-being. The beds were her own insistence, for no child could recover easily in an unforgiving sickbay chair. In seconds, he was under sedation and the diagnostic computer could do what it needed.
With the young man settled, Mary Xavier decided it was time to get a few answers. She knew where to look: her guest certainly hadn’t just materialized out of the ether. There must be a ship somewhere close by, as the young man certainly wouldn’t have been capable of walking far.
It was cloaked, of course, but she found it easily by following the trail of damaged grass and foliage left in her guest’s wake. He had avoided the main clearing that the Time Masters normally used for their ships, opting instead for the edge of the treeline. It was impressive that he had managed to land the ship without damaging any of the trees. She wouldn’t have thought he was capable of such a feat in his condition, which meant that he likely had a conspirator.
She felt the edge of the ship carefully. Once she might have been able to identify its type, even without seeing it. But that was a lifetime ago. Now Mary Xavier didn’t bother to try. Instead, she felt gently for the wall of the ship and spoke. “You brought him here for a reason. I think we need to talk.”
At first she didn’t think she would get a response, but then, almost reluctantly, the ship’s doors opened. She stepped inside. The corridors had been dark; likely an attempt to avoid detection through energy emission, but they lit as she approached the bridge. She saw no sign of any other humans. But there was of course always one other being on a Time Master ship.
Mary Xavier cleared her throat gently and waited. It wasn’t long before the console before her flared to life. A bright blue holographic head appeared. “Why are you here?” Mary Xavier was surprised to hear a sharp, accusatory tone in the AI’s pleasant feminine voice. It had been years, decades even, since Mary Xavier had substantial interaction with an AI, but she hadn’t remembered Gaheris being nearly so expressive. “You’re supposed to be fixing him!”
“You brought him here.” Mary Xavier said, fascinated in spite of herself. AIs were of course programmed to see to the wellbeing of their Captains, but they were still constrained by Time Master law. The idea that one might willingly cross her Captain’s timeline to save him was absolutely extraordinary.
“I found the information in his dreams,” the AI said. “The coordinates were not precise, I was not able to ensure that we would arrive at the right time. We’re here too early.”
“A little bit.” Mary Xavier agreed. “Are you in need of diagnostic or repair yourself?” She considered the Captain’s injuries, they were terrible, but certainly not beyond the scope of a Time Ship’s sickbay.
“I am not malfunctioning.” The AI snapped back defensively. “And my sickbay is fine.” There was a moment of silence, in which Mary Xavier admired the facsimile of fear and worry in the AI’s voice. “I can repair the damage. I’ve done it before. But this time is different. I can’t fix him where it matters.”
Mary Xavier glanced at the console. Their last location was still on the screen: Westchapel, England, 2166 A.D. “What happened?”
The AI began to explain, “There was a man named Vandal Savage . . ."
--
Mary Xavier’s mind was reeling when the AI finished her explanation. A secret family, a desparate attempt to undo history, of course the AI had not hesitated to help her Captain cross his timeline. Not when his list of crimes was apparently so much longer. Apparently she had raised quite an over-achiever.
“Please,” The AI said, earnest and insistent. Mary Xavier didn’t believe that it was a facsimile anymore. Somehow, it was genuine. “He needs help, and I don’t know what else I can do. I don’t want to lose him.”
Mary Xavier should be contacting Druce right now. There was a difference between a child’s mistake and this deliberate and repetitive violation of the laws of Time. This one man’s actions could have a catastrophic effect on the entire timeline. And somehow, he had even incited his AI in his rule breaking. For the safety of the universe, she should be insisting on a communication channel, and ordering the AI to turn herself in.
“What should I call him?” She asked, instead.
--
Rip Hunter awoke to confusion. The last thing he remembered was pleading, or more accurately begging, Gideon to go back to Whitechapel just one more time. Damn her, he thought viciously. He had tried so many times, going back earlier and earlier, to find some way to get Miranda and Jonas to safety. Every time he’d burst through that door, every time he would see his wife’s pleasantly surprised face collapse into concern and fear, every time he’d grip his son’s tiny hands in his own. And every time it would end the same way. He would be separated from them, in that crucial moment, and then Savage would be there. And then…
And he would try again. Those last times, (god, how many were there?), he hadn’t even given a word of explanation. He’d just grabbed Miranda’s arm, tight enough to bruise, and shouted for Jonas. She trusted him enough to follow his lead. For all the good that it did. Just once more might have been the difference. Or it might have finally killed him.
He remembered the quote often misattributed to Albert Einstein, that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. He had always thought that the quote betrayed the anonymous writer’s poor knowledge of the scientific method. But he had to admit, the quote seemed to be accurate. Gideon had been right to refuse, of course, he admitted now, though the admission turned his stomach into lead.
Of course, it wouldn’t have been necessary at all had he not failed at the crucial juncture. When he had Vandal Savage, then Hath-Set, at his mercy in Egypt, that had been before he had discovered immortality, before the worst of his crimes. Rip still didn’t know whether it was some lingering doubt or shred of morality that stayed his hand, but it meant that the blood of every single one of Vandal Savage’s countless victims over the next millennia stained Rip’s own hands. What kind of man could fail to act at that moment? What kind of husband or father?
“I think that’s enough of that,” the crisp voice that startled him out of his recriminations was blessedly familiar. He realized that somehow he was in the Refuge’s infirmary, and for one split second Rip wondered if none of it had happened, if it had all been some child’s fevered nightmare. But it wasn’t of course. The cosmos was never so kind. Still, how on Earth had he gotten here?
Mary Xavier pressed a button on the machines which, Rip realized belatedly, had been giving off a shrill alarm. They had been reacting to his stress, no doubt. They should see him on a bad day, Rip thought frivolously. “Mother, how…”
Mother smiled at him gently. “Your AI loves you very much.” A new guilt flooded him as he remembered the horrific accusations he had shouted at her during those last few attempts, when she kept trying to get him to stop. He hadn’t cared about her then. All he had cared about was trying just one more time.
“Nonsense.” She said, though he hadn’t said a word. She always had been able to read him like an open book. “She understands that you are hurt and grieving. She doesn’t blame you.” Even so, she deserved better.
“Mother, what I’ve done…” He didn’t even know where to begin. What would she think of him?
“What’s done is done.” She wrapped her arms around him, and pulled him close to her. Her warmth made him tremble. “But you have to decide what you’re going to do next.”
“I can’t give up on them.” Rip said. “I can’t. I’ve failed them already, I can’t fail them again.” He knew what he should do though. “I’ll go to the Council. I’ll tell them what I’ve done. I’ll take whatever punishment they give me. But they’ll help me, they have to. What Savage has done, is doing, they’ll see that he needs to be stopped.” Won’t they? But he saw the faint frown cross his mother’s face. “They might say no. I have to be ready if they say no.”
Slowly, Mary Xavier released him and stood. “You should go. Your wounds are healed and the children will awaken soon. There will be questions if you’re found here.”
“Yes, of course.” He didn’t feel better, per se, how could he? But he felt calmer now, more focused. He had a goal and he would see it through. He turned back for one last, grateful hug.
“Whatever you do, Michael.” His mother said, “don’t do it alone.”