Work Text:
1989 / Washington DC
Ava wasn't running away, not exactly. It wasn't a mid-life crisis either, no matter what the little voice in the back of her head said: it was a completely rational response to a series of events that had happened.
Her girlfriend had broken up with her. She'd met someone else.
Ava spent that morning crying (very uncharacteristically) and, rather embarrassingly begging her to stay, but that hadn't stopped her now ex-girlfriend picking up the bags and leaving anyway.
Twenty minutes later, Ava was at her desk, eyes dry, face stoic, when her co-worker asked her to whip up some coffee for the meeting. Four years at law school and she was still being mistaken for the secretary.
Ava left.
She didn't know where she was going until she ended up in a little coffee shop a mile away from the office, newspaper in hand, breathing heavily.
Advertisements - Wanted - Park Ranger (Forest Fire Officer). Accommodation included. Ideal for those wanting a more solitary life. No previous experience required.
It was definitely not a mid-life crisis, Ava reassured herself as she applied for the position. She wasn't even forty yet.
///
Within 48 hours, she'd quit her job, paid the last of her rent and was on a plane.
Then a second plane.
Then a third, very rickety plane, to the middle of nowhere, where she alighted and was met by a large, gruff man who introduced himself as Hank.
He didn't speak much as they hiked up to the cabin, only mentioned that his 11-year-old son was back at school after being in the hospital. Ava kept quiet to, too focused on not tripping over the sharp rocks and winding roots that twisted over the forest floor to make conversation.
The cabin itself was twenty feet above the ground, set against a tree and held in place by sturdy timbers. It seemed rather small and squat, but Ava was oddly charmed as she stared up at it.
“Here,” Hank said, handing her a key. “There will be instructions in there from the last fire warden, but it's not difficult. Just watch the forest for anything suspicious, and call down to the main lodge if you see anything. Someone will come by every few weeks with supplies.”
Ava nodded, and as they said their goodbyes, she wondered idly when the next time she'd see another person would be.
It didn’t take her long to climb the ladder, and as Ava pushed up the trap door and hauled herself up into the room, she looked around - the cabin was small, but bigger than it had looked from the ground. It had a low bed with a lumpy mattress and several slightly pilled blankets against one wall, a little too small for Ava’s tall frame. Against the other wall was a desk with a heavy radio atop the dark wood, and some notebooks which Ava had been told were for her to record her observations in. Windows surrounded the cabin, the slightly dirty glass giving an unrivalled view of the landscape, which had started to glow orange with the setting sun.
Ava sighed, slipping into the desk chair, toeing off her hiking boots.
For a mid-life crisis, the view wasn’t half bad.
After a minute of just staring out into the landscape, she thought she better test the radio.
“Ava Sharpe, checking in.”
There was a crackle of static, and Ava pressed the button again.
“Ava Sharpe, checking in.”
“Loud and clear.” Came the rustling reply from the base camp.
Ava didn’t feel like making conversation, so she dropped the radio back into the little holder, and started to read through the log books.
///
It was 3 am when Ava’s fitful sleep was interrupted by the harsh buzz of the radio.
She got up, only grumbling when her bare feet hit the cold wooden floor, and took a step across the room to press her hand to the receiver, squinting out of the window into the semi darkness to see if there was something in the forest she’d missed.
“Hello?” She started, then remembered there was radio etiquette, “oh, uh – Ava Sharpe, checking in.”
There was a beat of silence, then -
“Who?”
Ava raised an eyebrow, a gesture invisible to the caller. “Ava Sharpe, checking in,” she repeated.
“Yeah, I got that the first time - who are you? How did you get this number?”
“You called me!” Ava said, slightly indignantly, both at the woman’s tone and at being woken up so early for apparently no reason.
“What? No, I didn’t -”
“You did! I’m Ava Sharpe, the Fire Warden in Cabin Twelve. You called me.”
“Nope, you called a freaking time ship - I didn’t even know you could do that -”
“A time ship ?” Ava spluttered. “This is ridiculous, I’m hanging up now.”
“Suit yourself, Ava Sharpe,” the voice on the other end said, “but I’m telling the truth.”
“Prove it.” Ava said. There was a pause, and she thought for a second the woman had hung up.
“What’s the date for you?”
“March 19th, 1989.”
There was another pause.
“Okay - so, on the 24th, this oil tanker spills a shit ton of oil into the sea in at - Prince William Sound in Alaska. It's gonna be a huge environmental disaster - the ship is the Exxon Valdez, if you wanted any more proof.” Ava stayed silent. The woman sounded oddly sure of herself.
“Fine.” Ava muttered. “And when it doesn't, you’ll end this childish joke?”
“Pinky swear.” The voice said with a snort, and the line went dead.
Ava sat down, not entirely sure what had just happened.
After a second of deliberation, she pulled down her log book and wrote down the frequency the woman had called from, the numbers neat and clear on the empty page.
///
The 24th came and went without incident, and Ava resisted the urge to radio the ranger base to ask them about the spill - there was no sense fuelling someone's prank, no sense in giving them the satisfaction of knowing they’d gotten to her.
She slid down the ladder on the afternoon of the 26th to find a young man with curly black hair and glasses bent double, two large canvas bags at his feet.
“Sorry I’m late,” He wheezed, then he stuck his hand out, “Gary Green, junior ranger.”
Ava shook his hand, a little awkwardly as he was still bent over. He stretched up, gulping down air for dear life, before pointing to the bags.
“I brought you the basics, food, toiletries – nothing special, I don’t know what you like – I did put a few extra things in – the new Rebecca Silver book, if you’re into that sort of thing, a couple of cassettes, a newspaper -”
“A newspaper?” Ava asked, and Gary nodded, apparently having got his breath back.
“Yeah, though don’t bother reading it, the world still sucks. That oil spill -”
“I’m sorry?”
“Some tanker went down in Alaska, those poor animals …”
“Thanks for the supplies,” Ava said, cutting him off. She knew she was being rude, but she was too shell-shocked to care.
“Anytime,” Gary said, beaming. “See you in three weeks!”
///
The radio rang twice before the mysterious woman picked up.
“The spill?”
“How did you know?” Ava asked, the radio clutched tight in her fingers.
“Because it happened, like, thirty years ago for me.”
“So that's where you're from? 2019?”
“2018. But right now, we're parked in 1612.”
“I can't believe this.” Ava said quietly, he eyes trained on the window. “This can't be real. You can't be real.”
The woman laughed. “Oh, I'm real. Captain Sara Lance, at your service.”
“How did you find me?” Ava asked.
“You found me! The jump-ship picked up your frequency -”
“What's a jump-ship?”
“It’s - a part of the time ship I’m on. It’s called the Waverider.”
“The Waverider.” Ava said, rolling the unfamiliar word around her tongue. “I still – I don’t believe any of this.”
“I don’t think I would either.” Sara said quietly. “And you’re - you’re calling me from a cabin in 1989?”
It felt weird to say it like that, from 1989 , but Ava reasoned a time-traveller must have to speak like that all the time, and she nodded, before realising Sara couldn’t hear her.
“Uh - yeah. 1989.”
“Weird.” Sara snorted, and Ava couldn’t help but feel that was the best word for it.
///
Ava spent most of her days the same way: watch the forest, go on patrol, wait for the radio to ring and hope it wasn’t the ranger base. It rarely was.
Sara called. She told her about her team, the little band of misfits who’d been brought together to defeat an immortal supervillain, and what they got up to.
Ava listened; their adventures playing out as her eyes scanned the forest.
She noticed Sara never spoke about her life before time-travel, and she never asked Ava about hers either, not after Ava had brushed her off the first time. She’d much rather listen to the remarkable woman on the other end of the call.
They ended up arguing, of all things.
“You thought it was a good idea to interact with your past selves? I thought Rick -”
“Rip.”
“Rip - I thought he’d said that was the one rule you couldn’t break.”
Sara snorted. “Nah, the number one rule is don’t stay in the bathroom for more than twenty minutes. Not interacting with yourselves is rule two.”
“Why not?”
“Uh - I mean, meeting yourselves causes a paradox -”
“No, the bathroom thing.” Ava said, slightly exasperated, tapping her pen against her notebook.
“Oh, we only have one.”
“Between all of you?”
“Yep.” Sara said, then, with a sigh, “there’s not even a bath. I haven’t had a bath in months.”
“Well, I have to shower in the woods -” Ava muttered, and Sara laughed, the warm and wonderful sound filling the cabin, and Ava smiled, the edges of her lips quirking up.
///
“If you're a time traveller, how does it work?”
“Work? What do you mean?”
“How do you travel through time?”
“It's - uh ... we have like a time core thing - it's like an engine? But for ... time.”
“That hasn't convinced me.”
“Look, you drive a car, right? You don't know how it works - you just drive it.”
“I know how my car works.” Ava said indignantly. “What if I need to repair it? Of course I know how it works.”
“God, or you could take it to the garage, like a normal person.” Sara said, the teasing evident in her tone.
“Is that what you do with your space-ship? Take it to the space garage?”
“Uh, no. We have a mechanic on board, he fixes things. Wait - Jax - Jaaax, how does the Waverider work?” Sara's voice tailed off and Ava sighed. “He says it would take too long to explain it to me so uh - it just does.”
“I'm so glad you're out here, protecting history -” Ava said, voice dripping with sarcasm, and Sara made an affronted sound.
“Look, has time collapsed around you? No? Then we're doing just fine.”
///
“I called earlier – you didn’t answer.”
Ava sighed, the radio in one hand, the other bent down to undo her laces. “A downed tree across one of the trails – I had to take the axe out and deal with it. That took most of the day.”
“I spent most of the day trying to convince Julius Caesar to give up a book -”
“Yeah, well, we’re not all time-travellers.” Ava muttered, and her expression loosened into a smile when Sara laughed.
“Tell me about it.”
“What?”
“The tree.”
Ava snorted. “I think meeting Julius Caesar tops that -”
“Nah, not every victory is about saving the world. I want to hear about the tree.”
Ava told her, as if she could ever refuse Sara anything.
///
Ava turned thirty-three in the tower.
“Happy birthday!”
“I didn't tell you it was my birthday.”
“I looked you up.”
“How?”
“That doesn’t - you don't seem excited.” Sara said and Ava looked around the cabin, wondering, not for the first time, if Sara was watching her.
“I don't usually celebrate my birthday.” She said quietly.
“Oh,” was the reply. “Why not?”
Ava sighed. What was she meant to say? She’d spent most of her birthdays for the last ten years with a bottle of wine and a dry slice of cake from the supermarket, alone in her empty apartment?
“I just don't.” Ava muttered.
“You should start.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Start. Today.”
Ava snorted with laughter. “I’m in a cabin; I won’t see another living soul for a week. What do you suggest I do?”
Gary had brought her a little bottle of brandy in her last supply haul, and that’s how Ava spent her 33rd birthday - on the floor, sipping the alcohol from a chipped enamel mug, listening to Sara tell her a story involving a werewolf and the Queen of France, laughing and hiccupping.
“You - then Jax jumped out of the window?”
“Stein caught him!”
“All because you were distracted?”
“Hey, it’s not every day you get seduced by a Queen.” Sara said, a teasing edge to her voice, and Ava wasn’t so sure her blush was from the alcohol anymore.
“You’re incorrigible.” Ava muttered, smiling to herself.
“Pretend I finished college and I know what that means.”
“It means unable to be corrected, even through punishment.” Ava said, then before Sara could make some flirty comment, she asked, “you didn’t finish college?”
There was silence, and Ava’s head buzzed with the brandy.
“No - uh – I didn’t.” There was an edge to Sara’s voice – an implicit don’t go any further .
Ava didn’t push it. She wouldn’t risk losing whatever hung between them.
“I went to Yale, class of ‘79.” She blurted out, just to break the silence.
“Law?” Sara asked, curious, and Ava hiccupped.
“Yeah. That’s where I was – before this. A law firm.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Mid-life crisis.” Ava said, her miserable tone cut through by the sound of Sara’s laughter.
///
That night, she dreamt of Sara. It wasn’t the first time.
Ava had no way to know it was Sara of course, no face to the voice on the radio, but she felt that it was her, and that was good enough.
Sara was in her dreams far more often now - the dreams weren’t always coherent, sometimes just flashes and moments, but it was always her – the dimpled chin, the blonde hair, the bright, clear eyes that shone with mirth and light as she moved, and Ava knew, knew it was her.
She wanted to ask – ask if it was her, but something always stopped her. If she asked, then the mirage would dissipate, and Ava would be left lonely in her dreams once again.
Sara didn’t call that night, but Ava thought of her still as she watched as the starlings danced across the evening sky.
///
A bird was nesting in the corner of the cabin window. Ava watched as it flew towards her and alighted on the ledge, tilting its head and pushing the tiny twig into place. The, it flew off, dashing and darting through the cold, pale sky.
Ava sat very still. It came back and repeated the process.
She thought she might call Sara and tell her about it, but it wasn't like it was important - not when Sara was probably off fighting time pirates or having tea with Marilyn Monroe.
Or maybe it was important. Maybe it was the most important thing in the world.
By nightfall, the nest was almost complete.
///
The radio clicked as Ava looked out onto the forest. She’d memorised it, every angle and curve, and could recall it far better than she could the contours of the city she’d left all those months ago.
“What time is it for you?” Ava asked quietly.
There was a pause, then Sara replied. “Uh - evening, I think? Time doesn't really happen here; Gideon just shuts off the lights when we should go to bed.” There was another pause. “Why? What time is it for you?”
“Sunrise.” Ava almost whispered, her eyes trained on the treeline, above which a cascade of pale orange, pink and blue was creeping across the sky.
“What does it look like?” Sara said quietly, wistfully.
“It's beautiful.” Ava said, at a loss for words. She’d never really been good with them.
They sat like that for a while, Ava watching the sun come up.
“I miss the sky.” Sara said, and Ava jumped slightly. She'd almost forgotten she was there, even though the radio was solid in her grasp.
“You don't see it anymore?”
“Not properly - not the real sky.”
“You should visit sometime. There's nothing but sky here.”
“I'd like that." Sara said, so softly. Then, she coughed. “If time could stay unbroken for like, five minutes -”
Ava laughed, and stared out at the sky as it bloomed around her.
///
“When were you born?” Ava asked, staring out over the woodland with a soft smile on her face, something only Sara seemed to bring out of her.
There was a pause.
“1987.” Sara said. “Why?”
“So, there’s a baby you? Just wandering around? I might pay a visit.”
There was laughter, a sort of static rush that filled the radio and the little cabin.
“Suit yourself. Though I’m a time traveller, I could visit you as a baby.”
“Not sure why you'd choose to go there.” Ava said quietly.
A falcon appeared, sweeping across the skyline, before dipping back down again.
“Go where?”
“Fresno, 1956.” Ava sighed. “That's where I was born.”
There was silence again, Sara seemed to be considering the question.
“We grew up in different worlds, didn't we?”
Ava just hummed, content to bask in the strange enormity of it all.
“Tell me about it.”
“About what?” Ava asked.
“Fresno, 1956.”
“There's not much to tell.” Ava said quietly. “White picket fences, a county fair – you should visit, if you’re so curious.”
“No way, I got stuck in the 1950’s once.”
“Stuck? For how long?”
“Two years.”
The number floored Ava, and her heart did something funny at the thought of Sara, stuck. “You were alone?”
“Not at first -” Sara tailed off. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She finished quietly.
“We don’t have to.” Ava said. “I’m sorry -” She started, but Sara cut her off.
“It’s fine. It was a long time ago.”
There was silence then, as Ava tried to find the words.
“You’ve seen it then - my world. But it’ll be thirty years before I see yours.”
Sara hummed, non-committal. Ava took a breath.
“Tell me about the future.” She asked quietly. Tell me it gets better.
There was a pause. “I – I can’t. It’s dangerous to know too much about your own future.”
“Dangerous?”
“There are rules. Things we can’t change, things we can’t do.” Sara said quietly. “If you knew about your own future, you could do things to change it -”
“Not my future, I don’t care about that – the future.”
There was another pause, and Ava took a few deep breaths, the cool night air calming her as she stared out to the blanket of stars. She heard the familiar rush of static as Sara sighed.
“Ava -”
“It’s okay.” Ava said quietly. “I mean – I'll find out for myself, won’t I? Just – the long way round.”
“Yeah,” Sara said quietly, “the long way round.”
Ava thought about it that night - her childhood home, in a way she hadn’t thought about for years. She thought of Sara too, out there, all alone and impossibly far away, until the faint cries of the wind whistling through the trees lulled her to sleep.
///
The dreams were every night now, dreams of far-flung places and Sara’s hand in hers.
Sara called that morning, explaining the latest mission as Ava sipped her coffee, bleary eyed, the warmth of sleep still heavy around her shoulders.
I dreamt of you last night. I dreamt I loved you.
The thoughts swirled around Ava’s head, the question on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it, and instead -
“You actually met Helen of Troy?”
///
Ava yawned, stood up and stretched, just when the radio rattled to life. She picked it up, a smile forming on her face as she answered.
“Sara?”
There was silence, and Ava pressed the button again.
“Hello?” She asked, and this time there was a reply, a small sound.
“Hey.”
It may have been the radio, but Sara sounded subdued, and Ava felt an ache settle under her rib-cage.
“What’s wrong?” She asked quietly.
“Did I wake you?” Sara said, and Ava looked out at the inky blackness of the forest.
“No.” She said, not caring to explain she really should be in bed. “It’s not so late.”
“It’s - it’s three in the morning, for me. Or four, I don’t know.” Sara said, her voice muted, then there was a rush of static, like a deep breath. “I - I lost someone today. A friend.”
“I’m so sorry.” Ava said quietly, at a loss of how to help at such a distance.
Sara sighed again, her breath catching in a way that Ava was sure she was holding back tears. “I don’t know what to do.”
Ave opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I’m here.” She said quietly, and her heart clenched as Sara made a small noise, not quite a sob, but close enough to make Ava want to cry too.
“Thanks.” Sara sniffed. “Can you just stay? For a while?”
Ava fell asleep in the chair around sunrise, the radio still clutched in her hand, inexplicable tears on her cheeks.
///
Sara hadn’t called again.
Ava was preoccupied with that, thoughts of Sara and her friends and if they were okay, as she followed her familiar route, round the curling stream, hands reaching to steady herself on familiar branches.
Something was wrong.
It felt hotter, heavier almost, like a bad head cold, and Ava stopped to take a breath, standing alone on the ridge.
As if in a dream, the deer rushed past her, white shapes moving either side as Ava turned – and there, in the distance -
Ava ran back the way she’d came, towards the crackling, screaming fire, but she needed to warn them – warn her -
When Ava pushed the trap door up, she heard Sara's voice.
“Ava? Ava? Can you hear me?”
“Sara?”
“Fuck -”
“Sara, I'm here. There's -” Ava said, more urgently, pressing the button on the radio, but Sara continued.
“I can't - okay, I'll have to be quick. I think time is broken - completely broken, and I think we caused it - I caused it - and we have to fix it. I don't know what will happen, if we'll even still exist at the end of this, but - please know that I'm here, and I love you. I'll find you; I promise.”
Ava couldn't speak. The radio beeped, then the message started again.
“Ava? Ava? Can you hear me?”
The fire was there, licking at her heels, and Ava screamed.
She blinked out of existence.
///
She blinked back in again.
Ava looked around.
It was so dark, the darkest night she'd ever known, and empty - she was floating in the darkness, nothing above or below her. As she tried to wiggle her fingers, Ava was a little surprised to realise she didn't have any. Her body was just gone - borne on in boundless space.
It was so cold, and so lonely. Like dying.
“Ava? Ava? Can you hear me?”
Ava thought about Sara, the sound of her voice - her dimples, her laugh, her eyes, the way she held herself, the way she spoke to Ava like no one else mattered but her -
“Ava?”
Ava lost consciousness; and the beginning of all things occurred for a second time.
///
She was in a library.
No, she was among the stars, below the deepest ocean, breathing in the scent of her lover under crisp white sheets, she was on the precipice, she was at Grand Central Station as a train rushed past, ruffling her collar -
She was in a library. It was very quiet. No one else seemed to be there.
Maybe she was dead. Maybe this was the end of the world. Maybe the end of the world just happened to look like a small library.
Ava looked around, but it really was just a small library, with comfy seats and shelves of books and beanbags and a noticeboard advertising piano lessons and an old climbing frame and a hamster cage, free to a good home. Ava read it all, very carefully, before moving to the door.
It rattled, clearly locked. Ava has suspected it would be, because what was heaven if not a place you couldn’t leave?
She was a little disappointed. It wasn’t like she wanted to spend all eternity with her family or her limited number of friends or her ex-girlfriend, but spending it alone seemed unfathomable, and if she could have anyone she would want –
“I don’t want to stay here.” Ava said. “I’d like to go home.”
Nothing.
“I’d like to be with Sara.” Ava said quietly, the words falling out of her like a secret.
Then -
///
Ava sat up, coughing violently, blinking to dislodge whatever was in her eyes, then she leant back, aware of someone next to her -
It was Sara, real and pink and alive, her face marred with soot, the only clean parts the little trails that had been carved by the path of the tears that ran down her cheeks.
“Hey.” She said, a little shaky and full of wonder, and Ava just stared back at her, the ashes of what had once been the cabin smouldering behind her.
“Hey.” Ava replied, breathless, the sound crystallising in the dawn.