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Sara stands on the bridge of the Waverider. They sprang a leak a while ago: water drips a staccato tap, tap, tap into the buckets they keep grabbing. “Jax!” she calls, watching as the newest one swells with surface tension. “We need another one.”
“On it,” he says, reappearing seconds later with what looks like a metal trough. He sets it down by her feet as she drags the full bucket aside.
A spray of water erupts behind her. Another leak, gushing from the ceiling.
“Shit,” she mutters. She runs for the parlor, searching through Rip’s trinkets for something watertight. She lands on a weird looking bowl and yanks it off a low shelf.
“Sara, we got a problem!” Jax yells.
She stands up, looking back at the bridge. Two more leaks have burst, gouts of water sluicing onto Jax and Behrad’s heads—because Behrad’s there now, drenched and blinking hard.
“Shit,” she says again. She runs back over to them, shoving the uselessly small bowl beneath the downpour. What was a puddle is slowly spreading into a thin layer along the metal flooring of the bridge, splashing around her boots like shower water that won’t drain properly. “I’m gonna go to the fabrication room and get bigger buckets.”
“I’m coming with you,” says Jax, immediately.
“No,” she says. “I need you both here. Try to fix the leaks.”
“And how the hell are we supposed to do that?!”
She doesn’t answer him, though—she’s already headed out the door. She runs through the dark, rusty tubular hallways, dodging protruding pipes and spinning pressure gauges. She reaches the fabrication room in seconds.
“Gideon,” she says. “I need the biggest bucket you can make.”
But that’s not good enough: how is Sara supposed to carry that alone? With a moment of what feels like profound clarity—god, she’s smart—she adds, “Put wheels on the bottom, like a jumbo mop cart.”
“Of course, Captain,” Gideon says. Within seconds, a huge mop cart fills half the room, banana yellow and all. Still too large for Sara to pull on her own, though. Looking around, she spots two of the pony scooters left over from Nora’s bachelorette party. She yanks them over and hitches them to the front of the overgrown bucket, because she’s not just smart, this is a genius level idea. She jams the handlebar accelerators in the ignition position. With a satisfied grin, she watches as the scooters do the work for her, yoked to the cart like light-up pack animals and sending it careening back down the hallway to the bridge. She gives chase.
The trip takes longer this time. She gets turned around. By the time she reorients, she hears a roaring boom from somewhere onboard. The ship lurches, dipping sideways, taking on too much water. She slams her head into the corrugated bulkhead.
Fuck.
Reaching for the rungs of a ladder to pull herself to her feet, Sara resumes her sprint towards the bridge. Almost there, she knows, getting closer. Almost, almost, almost…
And then she’s there, surging out of the corridor and into the wider space. Horrifyingly, the water now laps at her knees, eddying and fighting to push her off-balance. The cart’s nowhere to be seen. Worse, neither are her friends.
“B!” she yells. “Jax!”
No reply. Water still spurts from the ceiling, but a bigger problem has emerged—the gaping maw of a tear in the ship’s hull. From it, white water unspools, frothing and sloshing around Sara’s thighs.
She tries to turn away. Maybe the rest of the crew has headed to the jumpship, if she goes there now she can check to see that they leave no one behind—
But something catches her, some invisible force. She lashes out reflexively but finds no purchase on the intangible hold. The thing launches her backward. She tumbles into the water, sea salt stinging her eyes. She gasps and coughs.
The water has a grip on her now. It won’t let go, no matter how hard Sara thrashes. She reaches out, straining to grab one of the crew’s jumpseats, or to dig her nails into the thin grooves between flooring plates. No cigar: the sea yanks her into its cold embrace like a drunk and overbearing uncle.
I remember you, it seems to gloat. When I last saw you, you were thiiiis tall.
Water presses up against every part of her, forcing tendrils into her nose and mouth. Her sinuses swim with a grainy pain like they used to after a somersault in the city pool when she was a kid. Washing machine headache, Laurel used to call it. That washing machine churns Sara’s mind as pressure curbstomps her chest. She paddles her arms, trying to aim in whatever direction is up, until metal crashes into her spine. The Waverider’s hull. That sucks the fight out of her. She floats.
And then she feels sand scrape against her stomach. The waves tickle the backs of her thighs. She drags herself farther up the beach, a beach she’s already laid on for at least a day.
“This one is alive,” someone says.
She squints, bleary-eyed, at the woman above her.
A hand reaches down.
-
“Hey, sleepyhead,” murmurs a voice. “You nod off?”
Sara blinks, though of course that does nothing. The blackness behind her eyelids looks the same as the blackness of the rest of the world. “No,” she mumbles. “Just charging my godly powers.”
“Mm.” Sara can hear Ava’s dorky, soft smile in the low husk of her voice. “Didn’t know godly powers ran on solar.”
Sara pushes herself up, feeling where the sun has made her lotion-oiled skin go tight. “Go green or go home.”
An amused exhale and the thin rasp of hair against a plastic pool chair—Ava shaking her head, maybe. “You doing okay?”
She’s been asking this all week; everyone has, really. Ever since Zari brought up the possibility of taking a day to celebrate their victories on her private lake, the crew has been checking up on her every step of the way. We don’t have to do this, you know. We can take a vacation somewhere drier, somewhere with less boats. Hey boss, you sure? You alright, Sara? You know, we can still turn back now, swap the day out for a concert festival.
Ava’s been pretty good about it. She asks casually, if the most frequently out of everyone. I’m giving you a way out, her tone seems to say, but I’m also enjoying this time with you.
Sara loves that about Ava.
“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, just had a dream.”
“Oh yeah? What kind of dream?”
Sara remembers the panic of the flood, the absurdity of the buckets, the awful powerlessness of being sucked into the dark water, and the ache of seeing Nyssa’s blurry dream-face, which hurts in the way missing people she loves always hurts. She feels, too, the deck of Zari’s lake boat roll and swell under her chair.
“Cannonball!” Nate shouts.
Sara snakes out a hand to touch Ava’s exposed side. Light and color pop like water balloons in her field of vision. Above her spreads a pale blue sky, patched with a few popcorn puffs of clouds. Tall evergreen trees sway along the shoreline, and dark blue water glitters in the light and claps together in peaks. A white yacht bobs in the middle of the lake. Some Legends—Sara, Ava, Mick, John, and Zari—lounge on the boat’s deck, while others—Charlie, Behrad, Astra, Mona, Lita, and Gary—splash around in the water around the boat’s perimeter. Nate, a gleaming bullet of swim trunk-ed steel, sprints down the length of the deck and leaps into the air.
Letting go of Ava’s hand, Sara grabs the pool umbrella extended behind them and angles it protectively in the right position. Seconds later, she feels the heavy rush of water against her shield.
“Pretty!” Mick yells, murderous, just as Zari exclaims, “Nate!” in a scandalized voice and John asks, “Seriously, mate?”
Sara doesn’t need to touch anyone to know that they weren’t lucky enough to avoid the percussive wave of Nate’s jump. She sets the umbrella down and reaches out for Ava’s hand anyway, half for the satisfaction of seeing them dripping and indignant and half because she just wants to hold Ava’s hand.
This time, she sees a soaked Mick standing at the ship’s edge, aiming something that looks suspiciously like the heat gun at the water.
“You wouldn’t!” dares Lita, and Mick growls, lowering the weapon. Charlie, wearing black boardshorts and a matching sports bra, laughs as she climbs up the ladder for her turn to jump.
Then the vision ends, and peaceful blackness returns.
“Good one, babe,” Ava says, sounding proud.
Sara grins. “See? Powers fully charged.”
To their right, she hears Lita taunt, “You wouldn’t!”
Ava chuckles. “My hero.”
Sara pretends to take a bow.
“That dream you had while you were ‘charging’.” Ava squeezes her hand. “Wanna talk about it?”
And Sara’s surprised to find she can talk about it. Here, surrounded by her team, her family, she feels safer than she possibly could have imagined ever feeling three years ago. Not even a boat can take that away.
“Just some old memories,” she says. “I’m okay, seriously.”
“The Gambit?”
“The Amazo,” she admits. “Kind of. When it sank.”
Ava doesn’t push. She just leans over and presses a light kiss to the undoubtedly new freckles on Sara’s shoulder.
“I’m okay,” Sara says again, and it’s not a lie.
Sure, she’ll always have some pretty fucked up trauma, and sure, the edges of the dream still make her chest ache. She misses Nyssa. She misses Jax. She wishes she could sprint after Charlie and cannonball into the water with her, surfacing to hear her laugh her wonderfully recovered laugh up close, without courting a panic attack.
But so much of this day, this moment, is good. The danger has passed. Charlie never has to face her abusive sisters again. Behrad is alive, wet curls plastered to his cheeks, and he’s using the air totem to win splash fights. Sunlight washes over Sara’s skin, relaxing all her aching joints. Her friends’ gleeful shouts fill her ears. Ava’s hand, warm and strong, holds hers.
Sara wouldn’t give this up for the world.
“I’m proud of you,” Ava says. “For doing this. Wait– I don’t mean, in like, a patronizing way. I’m always proud of you, and would’ve been proud of you no matter what, you know that–”
Sara purses her lips in amusement, rolling her eyes behind her sunglasses. “Aves.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.” Because Sara’s proud of herself, honestly. Having Ava acknowledge how big this is…well, it feels good.
“Oh. Always.”
From below, they hear: “Air totem’s no fair!”
“Oh, yeah? Don’t remember your normal skin being so shiny, bro.”
“Wolfie wants to play!”
“Woo! Go Wolfie! Aw, wicked, mate!”
“What is wrong with you people.”
The boat rocks, jolted by whatever horseplay the lake-bound Legends are getting up to. Her stomach barely dips with the motion; Gideon’s nausea drugs work wonders.
“Should I tell you what they’re doing?” Ava asks.
“Nah. We’re not on the clock, they have my full permission to kill each other.”
Ava laughs. “Hands-off captaining.”
“Did I seem like the helicopter type?”
“Never.”
A fine spray of water mists over them. “Wanna guess what my superpowers are telling me is gonna happen next?”
Ava hums. “I’m going to have to become Mick’s actual parole officer?”
Sara grins. “Nope.”
“Zari and John are going to join the lake-high club?”
“Maybe, but not what I’m thinking of.”
“Gary will announce he lost one of his Finding Nemo floaties.”
“Nope.”
“Alright…” Ava leans over and presses her lips to Sara’s. Sara melts into the kiss, the familiarity and the safety and the pleasure of it. It’s a long moment before Ava pulls back. “How about that?”
“Right on the money,” Sara agrees, and leans in to kiss her again.