Archive of Our Own ^beta

The rest of the team is off looking for an anachronism in the 1970s, and Behrad’s stuck on the ship running a long list of very overdue maintenance checks and minor fixes. He’s not even on QB duty; it’s such a low level mission that they decided they don’t even need any help on comms, so he should just sit back and fix the ship-- which, by the way, he still feels wildly unqualified to do without Jax peeking over his shoulder to make sure he doesn’t snip an important wire and send them to a fiery death, or strand them in the Temporal Zone. And that’s kind of fine, honestly, if not for the fact that-- other than when Mick took charge after they lost half the team to Mallus’ weird magic time travel spell-- Behrad’s been totally benched, ever since Helen of Troy went to Hollywood and he helped send her to live life on an island full of badass warrior women instead of sending her back to rot in a stupid war.

It’s not as if he’s been trying to liberate just any sad soul they come across— not without a plan, anyway. The two times he meddled at all, he spent a long time looking for loopholes, with the help of his Thinking Music and his Thinking Weed. Which is why it feels a little bit unfair that he’s stuck fixing the kitchen sink while everyone else gets to wear bell-bottoms and platform shoes and sing ABBA. 

But it’s fine, really! And the maintenance checks were going fine, too. He’d started at the cargo bay, tweaking a few squeaky joints on the door so that it would open more smoothly, then worked his way around the different parts of the ship, doing minor fixes on buggy consoles and changing future-tech light bulbs. He’d even fixed the leaky showerhead in their bathroom.

He still doesn’t quite know how they’ve survived this long sharing just one , tiny bathroom. 

It’s not until he gets to his own room to run a diagnostic on the wall panel, the one he’s wired to access video games that may-or-may-not-be available yet in 2042, that he gets distracted. Not by the video games, but by a tiny hard drive that he definitely didn’t hide there, jammed in behind a button that didn’t quite press in all the way to the same satisfying click as the others. 

“Hey, Gideon? Any idea what this thing is?” He looks up at the ceiling, as if that’s where the AI is. Now that he thinks about it, Gideon is always there, above and below and all around them, which is actually a little freaky.

“I don’t recognize that particular data drive, Mr. Tarazi.” She replies, echoing from speakers overhead. 

“Weird.” He holds the thing up higher, squinting. It’s not labeled at all, but he recognizes the shape of the plug as one that would probably fit into one of the receptacles he’s seen in the main console on the bridge. “Thanks anyways, I’m gonna see if I can figure it out myself.”

He heads straight for the bridge, grabbing a bag of gummies off of his dresser on the way out, and chews on a few as he circles the console in search of the right port. The drive slides in smoothly, and he clicks around the folder it brings up onto the screen until he finds a program labeled TIME SIMULATOR .

“Time simulator?” He mutters to himself, looking for any other files that might offer more information. There aren’t any descriptions that he can see without opening the thing, but he opens up the code and scans it, finding a lot of variables and functions that look way more sophisticated than he could possibly dream up. But, skimming through the lines of text, he sees one word repeated throughout the code: loophole .

It couldn’t be that convenient, could it? He’d lucked out in finding Themyscira for Helen when he did, and the letter for Stein might have worked in theory, but he’ll never really know. If there’s a way to find those loopholes, and it’s already on this time-traveling ship, then maybe Sara was wrong-- maybe they don’t have to just accept the timeline as it is.

“Hey, Gideon-- can you run this program for me?” Behrad asks, booting it up and running over to the parlor. He grabs the tablet sitting on one of the armchairs and syncs it up with the bridge console. 

“Are you sure about this, Mr. Tarazi? Captain Lance did not give you authorization to initialize any such programs.”

“Eh, it’ll be fine.” He swipes through a few popups that confirm what he already suspects: this program runs through hypotheticals to find ways to alter the timeline without damaging it. It doesn’t really look like any other program he’s seen on the Waverider yet, but something about it feels right , like his gut is telling him to trust it. Or maybe it’s the THC from his gummies. “Can you get the auxiliary generator running too? This thing is beefier than I thought.”

“Even with the reserve power, I don’t believe my system can run such powerful simulation software.”

“Not with that attitude! C’mon Gideon, you’ve got this. I believe in you.” And then he pulls up the controls he needs to divert roughly 1.12 terawatts of power straight into Gideon’s CPU.

“Perhaps we should talk about this before proceeding.”

“We don’t have time for that, I want to see if this thing works before the team gets back. Sara will kill me if she finds out I’m even thinking about messing with the timeline again.”

“In that case, I suggest you hurry. The team has just returned on the jumpship from their mission.”

“ What ?! Okay, sure, let’s just go for it now then.” Fingers crossed, Behrad pulls the trigger, and immediately, the lights begin to flicker. Whoops. “Gideon? What’s going on?”

“I was gonna ask the same question.” Sara stalks onto the bridge in a white disco jumpsuit, with Ray, Nate, and Amaya right behind her in similarly funky outfits. “I thought you were fixing the ship.”

“The, uh, maintenance check took a little longer than I thought it would.” He leans over on the console, trying to use his elbows to cover as much of the words TIME SIMULATOR currently splayed across the screen as he can, without looking too suspicious. “The ship’s kind of a mess. I had to re-initialize Gideon’s alpha drives-- but who cares about that, how’d the mission go?”

Mick grumbles, emerging from the other doorway wearing a French Revolution military uniform, and Behrad turns to look at him, still leaning awkwardly over the screen. “Pried this cassette from Shorty’s fingers.”

“He means Napoleon Bonaparte.” Nate clarifies.

“‘Waterloo.’ Who writes a song about losing a war, huh?” Mick throws the cassette onto the floor and stomps on it, viciously.

“Anyway! It was really great!” Ray gives Behrad a friendly grin, hands on his hips. Behrad grins right back, because Ray Palmer’s happiness is infectious like that. Then, Ray’s smile falters, and turns into a slight frown directed towards Nate and Amaya. “Even though half of our band missed the cue for our big encore.”

“Yeah.” Sara agrees, crossing her arms. “Where were you guys?”

Nate and Amaya exchange an awkward look, before Amaya turns back to the group, and confesses, “It was my fault. I was just… not used to walking in these go-go boots.”

Nate clears his throat, looking uncomfortable, and adds, “It won’t happen again, Captain.”

They both run off as soon as they can, which is weird. Both of them were clearly lying, trying to cover something up. Behrad doesn’t know the full story with them, but from what Ray has told him, those two were totally in love, but broke up a while back, which he can only imagine makes things awkward and uncomfortable, and he’s seen them both tiptoe around each other and argue like an old married couple before, so something must have happened on this mission.

“Right. Gideon, let’s check the historical records.” Sara says, leaning her hands against the console. Ray moves forward to join them, awaiting Gideon’s report.

“According to the historical record, the battle of Waterloo is back on track. Napoleon did surrender, and the French forces withdrew--”

Gideon’s holographic head flickers in and out before warping and disappearing entirely, and her voice crackles and pitches downwards as it fades away.

Uh oh.

“Gideon?” Sara asks, looking around. “Where did she go?”

“The ship’s functions are still operational,” Ray reports, staring down at his section of the console, “but it looks as though Gideon’s neural core has been fried.”

Behrad cringes, looking anywhere but towards Sara, whose glare he can feel on the back of his neck.

“I asked you to perform a routine maintenance check.”

“Well… I did?” He says, which is true, he ran that maintenance check pretty early on.

“And, did you maybe do something else?” Ray asks.

“Something you want to tell us about? Maybe show us?” Sara moves towards him, and he twists and backs up until he’s covering the simulation screen with his entire torso. “B, do not make me move you.”

“Uh, you should just tell her what it is.” Ray laughs nervously. “Last thing we want to do is get Sara mad.”

“What?” Behrad asks, and he sees Sara’s face scrunch up in confusion, too. “Why’s that?”

“Uh, because… High blood pressure! It takes years off your life.” Weird. Ray’s being weird. Actually, everyone’s being weird today.

“Okay, okay.” Behrad raises his hands in surrender and steps away from the console, revealing the simulation program. “I found this hard drive in my room and it had this super sophisticated simulation program on it, and I may or may not have uploaded it to Gideon’s neural core?”

“A simulation program for what?”

“To see if there are any other loopholes in history that we could exploit.” He says, slowly, watching Sara’s already-disapproving frown turn into a stony glare.

“We? You mean that you can exploit.”

“I just thought--”

“Look, Behrad, I let the Helen of Troy thing pass. I even let it slide when you tried to prevent Martin’s death, but you need to understand: we are in the ‘fixing anachronisms’ business, not the ‘hacking history’ business. Now, please go fix Gideon.”

“Hey, hold on a second. Did you ever think that maybe this could be a good idea?” 

“I said ‘please.’ And even if I didn’t, you’re not the one who gives out orders on this ship.” Sara steps forward, crowding in towards him.

Behrad isn’t quite sure what possesses him to respond just as boldly. It’s not the same as arguing with his maman, or bickering with Zari, but he’s frustrated about being constantly shut down, about being benched, and while he knows this is a bad idea, he can’t quite stop himself from stepping forward defiantly.

“I don’t know if you remember, but it wasn’t really my idea to come on this ship to begin with! And-- honestly? Who says I even know how to fix Gideon? I’m not an engineer, or a mechanic-- I barely know how to keep the ship together without Jax!”

“But you are on this ship, and so long as you are on this ship, I am your captain. And if you don’t like it, you can stop sticking around.”

“Fine!” Behrad throws his hands up. “I’ll go try to fix Gideon, and when that’s done, you can take the totem and drop me back off in 2042. Aye, aye, captain.” He finishes with a mock salute, and storms off towards the hallway.

“Wait-- Sara, no!” Ray shouts, right before falling to the ground with a painful-sounding thud. Ray’s only barely shorter than Behrad, and he's wearing platform boots that give him a few extra inches, not to mention that he’s a lot broader, which all adds up to a very heavy fall. Sara, who looks like she’d been about to follow Behrad to continue her lecture, lets out an exasperated sigh at the clumsy pile of genius inventor on the floor, before turning back to Behrad.

“Just fix the ship.”

Her words echo patronizingly in his head as he rolls his eyes and stomps his way down towards the engine room. He hears “you can stop sticking around” over and over, until he’s chewed his way through the rest of his gummies, lying on the floor and wrist-deep in a mess of tangled wires that he honestly doesn’t know what to do with. 

With a sigh, he retracts his hand and gets up, giving up on untangling those wires in the hopes that if he messes with enough random parts of the system, Gideon might magically reboot on her own. Behrad knows he’s just angry and not in the right mind to be making real decisions, but he’s beginning to seriously consider handing the totem off to Amaya and just heading home to his regular old life of blowing off business school, because right now, getting stoned at a meaningless college party sounds a lot more fun than poking around glowing bits of metal and hoping for a technological miracle. 

He grasps at a vibrant blue tube and gives it a strong tug, pulling it free from its port, and looks at the odd liquid inside. It glows in a way that’s undeniably chemical, bright against the orange light of the panel behind it.

Then, the blue liquid sprays out at his face, splattering into his mouth, across his left eye, and all over his shirt. He coughs and sputters at the odd, metallic taste on his tongue and wipes furiously at his lips and eye with his sleeve.

Yeah. 2042 sounds pretty good right now.

He jams the tube back into the port he pulled it from, trying to shake more of the liquid off of his hands. 

“C’mon, Gideon. Anything?” He asks, arms open towards the ceiling. “Hello?”

No answer. 

But then, the ship starts to rumble, and the room fills with hot, bright light. He turns towards it, to his left, and it’s blinding . The room fills with fire, too fast for him to react, even if he’d thought quick enough to try anything, and he can feel the heat searing towards his skin, accompanied by the sound of explosions both distant and nearby.

The Waverider is exploding, and they’re all going to die.

---

“--so long as you are on this ship, I am your captain. And if you don’t like it, you can stop sticking around.” His vision fades in from the blinding white light into Sara’s angry face, her blue eyeshadow crisp and her 

eyebrows arched angrily. Behrad stares dumbly, as her expression shifts into something exasperated and expectant. “Well? Are you gonna say something?”

“Uh…” Behrad turns slowly, scanning across the room. Too much THC in that batch of gummies. He’ll have to take note of that for next time. If there is a next time, and he doesn’t end up going home. “What?”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Um, nothing? I think?” He shakes his head. “Didn’t we just have this conversation?”

“Yeah, ‘cause you keep making me repeat myself.”

“No, no, no, that’s not what I meant-- we just had this exact conversation--”

“Oh my god,” Sara’s eyes widen and she reaches forward and plucks the little bag of gummies out from his shirt pocket. “Unbelievable. You’re high ?! Why do I even bother?”

“No, no, no, no, Sara, don’t get mad, I’m sure Behrad can fix--” Ray tries, stumbling forward to calm her down, but he trips and falls over. Behrad stares at him. Didn’t he just do this earlier?

“Just fix the ship.”

“Yeah, okay.” He says, glancing over at the half-full bag of gummies in Sara’s hand. Didn’t he finish them off in the engine room? “I’m gonna. Uh. Go do that.”

And as he gets further away from the bridge, his pace gets faster until he’s nearly running towards the bathroom to dunk his head in cold water. Those gummies were a mistake . Maybe the last time he refilled his stash, he hit the wrong button and made them way too potent. He probably just needs to sleep it off. 

Yeah, a nap sounds good. 

He shakes the excess water off and heads for his room, shutting and locking the door manually. He’s too freaked out to fall asleep on his own, so he goes for his stash, scarfing down another bag of gummies-- maybe if they’re extra strong, they’ll keep him knocked out for long enough that when he wakes up, everything will be back to normal-- and scrambles into bed, covering his eyes with a sleep mask and burrowing as far into his blankets as he can.

---

He wakes up standing by the main console on the bridge, and Sara tells him again that he can stop sticking around. Ray trips over his own feet and falls to the floor. Sara sighs and tells him to fix the ship, and Behrad runs out of the bridge as fast as his feet will carry him, ignoring the confused look on her face when he does.

Okay, so maybe it’s not the gummies. Maybe someone else knows what’s going on.

He tries Mick first-- the guy’s not the friendliest, but aside from Sara and Ray, he’s been on the ship the longest. Behrad knocks on Mick’s door carefully, and it opens only enough for the older man to stick his angry head out and glare at him.

“What? I’m busy.”

“This won’t take long-- uh, you’ve been doing this time-travelling thing for a while. Have you ever had deja vu?”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, it’s, uh, French. Means ‘already seen.’”

“I hate the French!” Mick growls, and turns away, slamming the door shut behind him. Honestly? Behrad probably should have seen that one coming.

He goes for the library next, looking for Amaya or Nate, and finds them both in the middle of a conversation, so focused on each other that they don’t even notice him approaching. It feels private, like he’d be interrupting something, so he moves out of the doorway and peeks around the corner to listen in. 

“I’m mortified, Nathaniel. I mean, we could have permanently derailed the history of France, and for what?”

“For what?” Nate motions at Amaya’s disco jumpsuit. “Have you not seen your outfit? Totally would have been worth it, and I’m a historian.”

“We never should’ve given into the temptation.” Behrad covers his mouth with one hand to stifle a gasp. They didn’t . On a mission ?!

“But we did… And now I can’t stop thinking about you.” Oh yeah, they totally did.

“We can’t put the team at risk, alright?” She sighs, then steps closer to Nate and rests her hands on his shoulders. “Until we can figure out a way to behave… professionally, we’ll have to forget it ever happened.”

“I can’t.”

“ Just try.” She pleads, and Behrad has to shuffle over to the side to avoid being seen as Amaya stalks out of the room. He’s lucky she seems to be so torn up about what happened on the mission that she doesn’t see him before she turns to walk down the hallway.

“Hey, Nate,” Behrad slides into the room, pretending he didn’t hear a thing.

“Yeah! Uh, Amaya and I were just comparing notes on the last mission.” 

“Yeah, okay-- uh, anyways, did you notice anything weird happen a few minutes ago? A little bit after you two left the bridge, maybe?”

“Mm, no, not really.” Nate frowns. 

“Nothing with the ship?”

Nate shakes his head.

“Okay,” Behrad sighs. “Thanks anyways.”

“No problemo!” Nate replies as Behrad makes his way out of the library. 

He check’s Ray’s room next, and it’s empty, which means he’s probably in the lab, tinkering with some new gadget or with the ATOM suit. If there’s anyone who might have noticed anything, it’s Ray, with that ridiculous brain of his. Well, Sara might have seen something, being on high alert at all times from her assassin training, but Behrad’s pretty sure he’s the last person she’d want to speak to right now, so he’s going to avoid her for as long as possible.

But Ray doesn’t have any answers for him, either. Instead, Ray asks, “Aren’t you supposed to be in the engine room? Sara told you to fix Gideon, and the last thing we want to do is--”

“Make Sara mad…” Behrad finishes for him, slowly. 

“Yeah! You know what they say: happy captain, happy ship.” Ray smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes the way it usually does.

Behrad laughs awkwardly. “Okay, yeah. I’m gonna go do that. Fix Gideon. Bye, Ray.”

It doesn’t make any sense. He heads for the engine room again, running through the facts in his head. He’s had that conversation on the bridge before, every time ending with Ray falling flat on his face. Nobody else has noticed anything weird, and he’s pretty sure that this isn’t a weirdly realistic dream or weed-induced hallucination. The engine room is the same as it was the first time-- every single thing he’d tweaked and adjusted has been reset to its original position, including that bundle of wires he’d been trying to untangle. The panel with the orange lights still has the tube full of glowing blue fluid, and this time, he points it away from his face and towards the floor, just before it sprays the fluid out.

Then, the ship rumbles, and this time, he’s sure of what’s about to happen. 

“Oh, mamma mia,” He braces himself as fiery explosions fill the room with a searing heat and blinding light. “Here I go again.”

---

“--so long as you are on this ship, I am your captain. And if you don’t like it, you can stop sticking around.” 

“Okay, okay,” Behrad raises his hands up to stop her, and Sara looks affronted, but pauses anyway. “Something really weird is going on, I swear--”

“You’re not even listening to me.” Sara rolls her eyes and begins to walk away.

“No, Sara, wait!” Behrad tries to grab her arm, but the moment he touches her sleeve, she grabs his and twists his arm viciously. Behind him, Ray tries to stop her, but trips and falls, again. Behrad yelps in pain, and Sara lets him go.

“I’m sorry. Old habits. Ray, get Behrad to the medbay.”

Ray straightens up quickly, stumbling slightly, but steadies himself. “C’mon, you heard the captain. This way.”

Behrad cradles his twisted wrist and follows obediently. Maybe they’ll run a scan and find something wrong with him that’ll explain this weird deja vu situation.

“What has gotten into you?” Ray asks, once Behrad’s all set up in one of the medbay chairs. He runs a handheld scanner across Behrad’s arm, and it gives off a warm, red light.

“I don’t know how to explain this, but I think I died? Twice. Or maybe three times, I’m actually not sure about the second time, I was too busy sleeping.”

Ray chuckles. “What, did you try Nate’s psychedelic root stash instead of your regular stuff?”

“Ray, I’m serious. I really need your help.” Behrad pleads, but he sees Ray’s eyes flicker towards the open bag of gummies in Behrad’s shirt pocket, and can tell that he doesn’t believe him. “Fine, okay. I guess I’m on my own, then.”

Behrad tries to get up, pushing himself up by the armrests on the medical chair, but Ray grabs his arm and clasps something to his wrist.

“Just a mild sedative, while you heal up. I don’t want you hurting yourself. Or anybody else.”

The equipment whirrs as Ray walks away, pumping the sedative into Behrad’s veins, and his vision blurs. He tries to call for Ray to come back, but the sedative is strong, and before long, his eyelids are too heavy to keep open.

---

“--so long as you are on this ship--” 

“Sara, I need you to stop for a sec.” Behrad holds up a hand to silence her. 

He ignores her indignant “ What ?!” in favor of pressing a hand to the comms and summoning everyone to the bridge.

“Guys, I need you to get over here. Right now. It’s an emergency.”

“What are you doing?” Sara asks.

“Okay, let’s all just calm down.” Ray laughs uncomfortably.

“No, I will not calm down-- by the way, watch your step, Ray.”

“What do you me--” Ray starts, but it fades into a yelp as he crashes down to the floor. Amaya and Nate emerge from one doorway, and Mick comes in from another.

“Thought the mission was over. Why are we still here?” Mick grumbles, still in costume.

“Yeah, what’s going on?” Nate echoes.

“Okay, I know-- I know this is going to sound insane, I know. But we’re all in imminent danger. In an hour, the ship is going to explode .” Behrad tells them. Yeah, it really does sound insane. 

“How do you know?” Amaya asks. Next to her, Nate crosses his arms and frowns.

Behrad opens his mouth to answer, but he figures that telling him that he’s already lived through it a couple of times might be the icing on the crazy cake. Instead, he gestures vaguely and says, “Lets, uh, let’s just say that I… had a dream. Uh, but we need to check the ship and go over every inch, because if we don’t stop this explosion, we’re going to die !”

Everyone exchanges glances, and Behrad hopes that’s a good sign, until he sees Sara nod in Mick’s direction. He turns towards Mick, who’s finishing up a swig of beer. Right after wiping at his mouth with his jacket sleeve, Mick steps towards Behrad and crouches slightly to grab him around the waist and hoist him over his shoulder.

“Wh-- What are you doing?” He yelps, as Mick starts to carry him away. His bag of gummies falls out of his pocket and spills over the floor, scattering squishy, sugary worms everywhere. “Guys, I’m telling the truth!”

Ray follows the two of them, and Behrad recognizes the path towards medbay. He whacks Mick’s back a few times, but it’s like smacking a brick wall, and Mick doesn’t even seem to feel it. By the time Mick deposits him onto one of the medical chairs, he’s given up on thrashing around, and Ray’s begun to reassure him that it’s going to be okay, like he’s a five-year-old who had a nightmare, and he clasps a familiar sedative-distributing device on Behrad’s wrist.

“What’s wrong with him?” He hears Mick ask through the sedative haze. He isn’t awake long enough to hear Ray’s answer.

---

He tries a few more times to tell the team, but he can’t figure out a way to explain it that doesn’t make it look like he’s gone completely insane. Every time, it ends with him being carted off to medbay and sedated.

Eventually, he gives up on that strategy. It seems like he’s developed a bit of a tolerance to the sedative after enough loops. Which seems odd-- if everything resets, his body should probably react the same to the sedative every time, but he doesn’t really know enough about medicine, or about time travel, to try and dispute it. It’s enough, though, that he’s able to get himself out of medbay on his own, once Ray and Mick leave.

Still a little hazy, he decides to comb the ship over himself, starting from the ground up. That’s how Nate finds him crawling on the floor to see if there’s a bomb somewhere hidden in the crevices of the ship, below eye level.

“What’s going on, B?” Nate asks, staring down at him. Behrad scrambles to his feet a little too quickly, and stumbles slightly, steadying himself with one hand on the wall. “First, you piss off Sara, now you’re sneaking out of medbay and crawling on the floor?”

“Who cares? Nothing I do matters, anyway. Sara always yells at me, nobody believes what I say, and Ray always trips on his platforms.” Behrad laughs, running a hand through his hair. “I’m just stuck here, redoing this stupid hour over, and over, like some sort of… time loop.”

“Time loop?” Nate frowns. “Like… Groundhog Day ?”

Behrad tilts his head to one side. 

“You don’t know Groundhog -- alright, it’s a movie about this guy who relives the same day over and over and over again until he learns to be a better person-- really ? You’ve never seen Groundhog Day ? Man, 2042 must suck-- What’s that noise?”

“It’s happening again.” The ship’s started to rumble. “We’re dead again.”

“Okay okay,” Nate says, grabbing Behrad by the shoulders and leaning in close. He can hear the explosions getting closer, and can feel the heat starting to creep in from behind. “If what you’re saying is true, and you find yourself in the loop again, find me, and say the words ‘Groundhog Day.’”

The last thing Behrad sees before the world goes up in blinding white is Nate’s face, wide-eyed and desperate.

---

“--so long as you are on this ship, I am your captain. And if you don’t like it, you can--”

“Stop sticking around,” Behrad says, at the same time Sara does. She squints at him in confusion, but he jogs towards the parlor and grabs the antique pocket watch on the table. They’ve got an hour before the ship explodes, and maybe this time, Nate will believe him. He slips it into his back pocket and as he goes to leave the bridge, he pauses to say, “Oh, watch out, Ray.”

“Watch out for--” Ray falls. “Ow.”

Nate’s in the library right now, still in the middle of his conversation with Amaya about having sex during missions-- which, on one hand? Good for them. Nate has a point, Amaya looks incredible in all-white, with that afro and her totem sitting delicately across her collarbones. On the other hand? Seriously bad timing. What were they thinking? 

“We’ll have to forget that this ever happened,” Amaya says.

“I can’t.”

“Just try.” And then Amaya leaves, and Behrad walks in.

“Uh, Amaya and I were just… working on our harmonies, in case we have to impersonate--”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Behrad dismisses his panicked excuses with a wave. “I need to tell you something.”

Nate raises his eyebrows expectantly, and Behrad takes a deep breath. 

“Brown Dog Day.” He says, and exhales all the tension out of his body. Nate stares blankly at him, which is probably a bad sign. “Shoot, was that not it? Uh, Round Log Day?”

Nate still looks confused and Behrad closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember the exact words, but you told me you would know what I meant. I think you mentioned a movie?”

“Are you talking about Groundhog Day ?”

“Yes! That’s it!” Behrad grabs him by the shoulders excitedly.

“Why would I tell you to tell me about a Bill Murray movie?”

“I don’t know,” Behrad slouches, hands falling from Nate’s shoulders. “All I know is that I’m stuck in this time loop--”

“Oh, like in the movie, Groundhog Day ! Okay, got it, okay.”

“You do?”

Nate nods, and Behrad feels a sense of relief that he hasn’t felt since this whole mess started. He jumps up and wraps Nate up in a quick hug, laughing, before stepping back. “So you’ll help me? To get out of it, I mean.”

“Yeah, that’s what friends are for!” Nate says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He pats Behrad on the back and ushers him out of the library. “So let’s get moving. Fill me in. What’s happening?”

“Okay, okay, we’ve got--” As they walk, Behrad pulls the watch out from his pocket and checks the time. “Forty-two minutes until the ship explodes, and I have no idea how it happens. I thought maybe that I missed something during the maintenance checks, but haven’t found anything yet.”

“How about instead of trying to stop the ship from exploding, we all get on the jumpship and escape?”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work.” Behrad winces. “While you guys were out, I was messing with some pretty intense software and crashed Gideon. And with her down, the jumpship is locked in the docking bay.”

“So we need to talk to Sara.”

“Tried that a few times. She never listens to me. Probably too pissed off.” Behrad sighs. Then, a thought occurs to him. “You know, I never felt any sort of impact, like we’d been hit from the outside. Maybe the explosion was caused by someone already on the ship.” 

“I seriously doubt any of us would blow up the ship on purpose.” Nate says, “But maybe it was an accident? Where do we start?”

“To be honest, all of you have been acting weird since you got back from the mission--” Behrad walks right into Nate’s arm, who’s shushing him.

Mick walks by, carrying a hamper full of clothes. 

“Mick doing laundry? Now that’s suspicious.” Nate says.

They follow Mick all the way to the kitchen, and peer around the doorway to see Amaya join him at the counter with a cup of tea.

“Can’t get this damn song out of my head.” Mick growls, setting the hamper down.

“Which one? ‘Waterloo’?”

“Ah!” Mick holds a hand up towards her. “Don’t mention it.”

Then, he grabs something out of the hamper and holds it up. A high pitched noise sounds, and there’s a flash of light from in front of Mick, and though Behrad couldn’t see it clearly, he’s pretty sure Mick just tried to erase his own memory. Seems a little drastic, especially for such a banger of a song.

“Did it work?” Amaya asks Mick.

“Did what work? Why am I holding the thingy in my hand?”

Amaya sets down her cup of tea and motions for Mick to pass the memory flasher to her. “I’ll look after that, Mick.”

“Okay, good. Gotta get my undies in the dryer before Haircut does.” Mick picks up the hamper and turns back towards the doorway just as Behrad and Nate slide out of view and rush to hide behind another corner. Amaya follows him out, but turns down a different corridor, looking determined.

“Why would Amaya want the memory flasher?” Behrad asks.

“Maybe it has something to do with Kuasa. She does want to help her.”

“What if Kuasa somehow convinced her to blow up the ship?” Behrad realizes how insane that sounds the moment it comes out of his mouth. Amaya would never do that to them, even if it meant helping her granddaughter.

“Take it easy on the conspiracy juice.” Nate rolls his eyes. “I’ve got this. I’ll figure out what’s going on.”

Behrad nods, and gives Nate a head start on following Amaya down the hall. He peeks around in the direction Mick went in, before checking the time again. Eighteen minutes left.

“Hey!” Behrad jumps and turns around, finding Ray carrying his own basket full of laundry. “I thought Sara told you to fix the ship.”

“Yeah, just like always.” 

“Look, I know Sara can be tough. Especially when you make her mad…” Ray trails off, grip tightening on the handles of the laundry basket.

“Dude, why are you so worried about Sara’s temper lately?” 

“No, I just, uh-- well, you know the saying! Happy captain--”

“Happy ship.” Behrad finishes with him. Ray brightens up at that.

“Oh, I guess my catchphrase is catching on in the future!” Which is wildly untrue, but Behrad can’t tell him the truth without sounding like a crazy person, and even if he could, Ray looks so happy at the idea that he’d feel horrible shutting that down.

“Yeah, man. Everyone says it, where I’m from.” 

“Huh, that’s cool.” Ray grins, and Behrad claps him on the shoulder, heading off in the direction Nate and Amaya went. They’re running out of time.

Nate and Amaya are deep in conversation again by the time Behrad finds them in the library. He doesn’t interrupt, only eavesdrops from the doorway.

“With this, we can both forget it happened.” Amaya tells Nate, holding up the memory flasher. 

“Yeah, you’re right. With everything going on with Mallus, Kuasa, and Behrad mentioned something about the ship, we should be clear-headed.” Nate gets up from where he’s sitting on the desk.

“Yeah,” Amaya takes a deep breath and holds the memory flasher up to Nate’s face.

“But,” Nate grabs it, pushes the device down, and pulls her closer, “since we’re going to flash ourselves anyway…”

“I mean, it’s not like we’d remember.” Amaya smiles and wraps her arms around Nate’s neck. Behrad stifles a groan. Doing it during a mission wasn’t enough?

The door slides shut as Nate backs up to sit on the desk again, pulling Amaya to straddle his lap. Behrad checks the watch again. They’re out of time.

He doesn’t think Nate’s going to have enough time left to help him out, this loop. And from the heavy breathing coming from the door, he’s willing to bet that Nate’s forgotten entirely that they’re all going to die. Then, he hears the clanking of metal that happens when Nate turns to steel, and some literal animalistic growling that Behrad recognizes as being from Amaya’s totem. 

He feels like this should probably weird him out more than it does.

He sighs and walks away, giving them some privacy. Not that it matters, anyway. As if on cue, the rumbling starts, the corridor fills with heat, and the Waverider explodes.

---

Amaya’s in the clear-- no nefarious schemes from her, just a case of her and Nate’s will-they-won’t-they going very much in the direction of they will . He has to sit through their first conversation again, though before he can get to Nate again.

“ Groundhog Day . One hour. Ship explodes.” Behrad summarizes, holding up the watch as he enters the library. He snaps it shut and puts it back in his pocket.

“You’re stuck in a time loop, and we have to stop the ship from exploding?”

“Yeah, and I think that someone--”

“Is triggering the explosion.”

“It’s probably an accident, but we have to investigate everyone to figure out who’s causing it.”

“There’s a lot of secrets on this ship.” Nate agrees. “Let’s start with Amaya.”

“Why, so you guys can bone? Again ?” Behrad crosses his arms. “I respect the hustle, man, but there are bigger things to worry about.”

“That’s crazy.” Nate lies.

“No. You two memory-flashing each other afterwards in order to forget? That’s crazy.”

“Why would we flash each other after having--”

“Dude, we do not have time for this.”

“Right, ship exploding. Got it.”

“Let’s go find Rory.” 

“Yeah.” Nate agrees, heading out. “She probably wants to forget how awesome it was.”

“Drop it, dude, this isn’t the time. I’ve pretty much figured out the schedule, and Mick always leaves to go wash his undies right about…” Behrad rolls his eyes, checking the watch. “Now.”

Mick’s door slides open, and Behrad pulls Nate around the corner to avoid being seen. They wait until Mick’s out of range, and Behrad heads for Mick’s room. Nate seems so surprised by the sight of Mick doing laundry that Behrad has to tug at his arm to get him going.

Mick’s room is a mess, in the exact way that Behrad would expect from him. The floor is covered in rumpled clothing, and there are parts everywhere-- parts of what? He’s not sure, but he’s willing to bet that every single one is stolen from someone or someplace. The bits and bobs line every shelf and spill out onto the floor with no obvious meaning, but Mick could probably pick out the location of any of this stuff with his eyes closed. 

“Oh! Suspicious-looking box!” Nate whispers loudly, pointing through a shelving unit at a large metal box with a keypad lock.

“Be careful. For all we know, that might be what causes the explosion.”

“We’ve just gotta take it nice and--” Nate starts, but he’s cut off by a sudden clang of metal, and inhales sharply. Behrad looks down towards the noise, and sees Nate’s leg caught in a rusty-looking bear trap.

“Oh my god !” Behrad yelps, horrified.

“Oh my god!” Nate yelps, in serious pain. 

They stare at each other. Behrad’s sure he’s got some horrible, surprised grimace on his face, and  Nate’s is twisted up in a mixture of agony, shock, and panic.

“ Oh my god !” They yell at the same time.

“A bear trap ?!” Behrad squats down trying to see if there’s a way to release the thing. “Who keeps a live bear trap on their floor?”

“Are you kidding me? This is Mick Rory we’re talking about-- we should have expected worse!” Nate hisses, frozen in place. “Dude, this thing hurts so bad .”

“Sorry, sorry,” Behrad tries to uncover the whole thing, getting all of Mick’s old shirts out of the way carefully, in case there are any other traps lying around. He looks anywhere but directly at Nate’s leg, because he’s afraid if there’s blood, he’ll puke. “Um. Do you know how to release a bear trap?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve been camping in bear-infested areas before, hold on.” Nate crouches down carefully, biting down pained noises as best he can, but it just makes Behrad feel useless, unable to help. “I can still feel my foot, which is a good sign. This thing looks old-- probably rusted enough to where it didn’t shut as hard as it could have. Here, press down on this spring for me?”

He does, and they manage to open the trap up and get Nate’s leg out. Nate breathes out a sigh of relief and sits backwards down onto the floor. Behrad moves over to sit next to him, pulling his pant leg up and bracing himself for the damage. Nate’s shin is pretty badly bruised, but there’s no broken skin, no blood, and Behrad relaxes some.

“I’m so sorry.” Behrad apologizes again, rolling Nate’s pant leg back down. “If I had thought you might get hurt, I’d never have--”

“Hey,” Nate stops him, laying one hand over Behrad’s. “I’d take a million bear traps if that’s what it takes to help you get out of this time loop.”

Nate’s hand is warm over his, and Behrad stares at Nate’s earnest face for probably a moment too long before he turns away, slips his hand out from underneath Nate’s, and starts to get up to his feet.

“Come on,” He brushes the dust off of his pants and then offers his hand out to help Nate stand up. It’s just as much hand-to-hand contact as before, but it’s safer. Less intimate. “Let’s get you to medbay. I don’t think there’s enough time to do anything else this time around.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” Nate winces, and lets him guide his arm over Behrad’s shoulders as they slowly exit Mick’s death-trap of a room. 

The hobble towards medbay is quiet, aside from the occasional pained hiss from Nate if his foot comes down wrong, and Behrad feels very lucky that they don’t run into anyone in the corridors, because he doesn’t really feel much like answering questions right now. He focuses on supporting Nate’s weight, and doesn’t realize how much heat radiated from the other man’s body until he shifts Nate’s weight onto one of the medical chairs and that warmth isn’t pressed up against his side anymore. 

Carefully, Behrad uncovers Nate’s bruised shin again, trying not to wince at the dark, mottled marks. He runs the scanner over the injury, washing it with a red light. The display to the left of the chair lists a lot of terms that he doesn’t know much about, and he regrets not paying closer attention to that hospital TV show he watched a few seasons of in high school. But he understands enough to know that there’s not much they can do without Gideon online. He finds the device that Ray used several times to sedate him and adjusts the settings to set it to the recommended painkiller, then closes it around Nate’s wrist.

“It says you’ve got a minor fracture.” Behrad tells Nate, who’s been a really good sport this whole time. “Gideon could probably fix it really easily, but that’s not really an option right now, and we’ve only got a few minutes until the loop resets.”

“It could be worse.” Nate muses, relaxing into the chair, probably feeling drowsy from the painkiller. “I mean, if things are going to reset anyways, in a few minutes I’ll never have gotten injured at all, right?”

“Yeah.” Behrad settles onto a nearby stool, giving up on doing anything else during this loop. There’s a moment of quiet, punctuated only by the soft hum of the medbay machinery, and it looks like Nate’s starting to fall asleep. He can hear the tell-tale rumbling in the distance marking the end of this loop, and he nudges Nate slightly, watching as the other man startles a little, and looks in his direction, more alert.

“Thank you.” He tells Nate, who smiles goofily, and begins to respond, but Behrad doesn’t hear anything through the roaring of the explosions that fill the room.

---

The first thing Behrad does after fleeing the bridge, this time, is grab a broom from the cargo bay, using the time that Nate and Amaya spend talking about their tryst during the mission. Then, he goes to the library to explain the basics of his situation to Nate and drags him over to Mick’s room. 

Instead of wandering through the chaos of Mick’s room blindly, Behrad knows a little more of what to expect, and he uses the long, wooden handle of the broom to set off the bear trap before Nate can take an unfortunate step. It snaps shut with a clang, and the sound of it chomping right through the soft wood, undeterred by layers of fabric or flesh.

“Oh, dude . Nice save.” Nate catches the business end of the broom with one hand when Behrad releases it from his own grasp, and uses the other to offer his fist out. Behrad bumps it with his own. “Can you imagine if I tripped that?

“Yeah, I, uh, don’t need to imagine.”

“Oh, god . Okay.” Nate winces as they approach Mick’s suspicious-looking box. “Here we go.”

Nate clears his throat and rubs his hands together before grasping the lid. The moment Nate’s fingers make contact with the metal, the thing lights up with an electric charge, crackling loudly, and Nate freezes up, falling backwards to the ground with a thud.

“Nate?!” Behrad rushes over towards him, kneeling down and pressing a hand to Nate’s neck. There’s still a pulse, and he can tell that Nate’s still breathing, at least. He lets out a hefty sigh of relief, and relaxes, his hand sliding over to rest over where Nate’s chest is still rising and falling in what he hopes is a normal cycle. 

He’s pretty sure Mick won’t be back from doing laundry before the loop resets, but he doesn’t want to take any chances, so he grabs Nate’s wrists and starts to drag him out of the room. Nate’s unconscious form is heavy, and though Nate and Ray had been helping him with working out more often than he’d used to, dragging a grown man’s dead weight around isn’t easy. He doesn’t know how he makes it all the way to his own room without running into anyone else, but he’s grateful that he does. He’s too tired to even try getting Nate up onto his bed or into a chair, so he lays him down onto the rug instead, hoping that it’s at least better than the floor, and then collapses into an armchair when he’s done. 

Two loops in a row with Nate getting hurt, and Behrad’s beginning to regret not listening to his dad’s suggestion of going to med school. 

“Sorry,” He apologizes, even though his friend can’t hear him. “I know you said-- before, about the bear traps, but I’m still sorry.”

He spends the rest of the loop with a tablet in his lap, going through combinations-- he’d seen that the keypad on the box was a number pad with a few keys a little more worn than the others, and with the number of lights, he’d guess it’s probably a four-digit combination. He’s got time to kill until the loop resets; it’s probably not safe to try Mick’s room again without backup, so he might as well try and figure out how to open the thing in the meantime. 

He’s so wrapped up in the numbers that he doesn’t notice time passing until the ship begins to rumble. Nate still hasn’t moved from the floor, and though it doesn’t matter all that much anymore, Behrad still finds some comfort in seeing his chest rise and fall as he breathes, even as the explosions breach his room and the heat swallows them both.

--

Behrad gets the bear trap with the broom again, manages to stop Nate before he can get electrocuted again, and approaches the box himself this time, wearing Ray’s rubber dishwashing gloves and wielding a device he dug out of the cargo bay that was marked as a future-tech safe decoder. It’s easy enough to use, but it takes nearly the full loop to narrow down the combo from the list he’d been making in the previous go-around, and he carefully presses the keys and hopes he doesn’t accidentally trigger an anvil falling from the ceiling to bash him in the head, or something.

“So, you got all the traps?” Nate asks, warily.

“I don’t know. I’ve never made it this far before.” Behrad steps back, staring at the box. Please, no more traps.

Nate grasps the corner of the lid-- no electric shock, this time-- and lifts it, slowly. They both move in to take a closer look inside, and Behrad gets a quick glimpse of an old typewriter, before a dark liquid splatters across his face.

Behrad gags slightly at the taste, from where a bit got in his mouth, and he guesses from the smell that it’s ink. Hopefully, it’s just ink.

“Why would Mick rig all these traps for a damn typewriter?” Nate spits, smearing the dark blue around as he tries to wipe his face clean. 

“Maybe it’s his criminal manifesto?” Behrad yanks the paper out of the typewriter for a closer look, but can barely read through the ink still blurring his vision.

“Let me see this.” Nate grabs the paper and scans across the text. “Uh, this says ‘bosom’ far too many times to be a manifesto.”

“It says what ?” Behrad takes the page when Nate tilts it in his direction and reads it aloud. ”‘As the twin suns of Dartayus set on the horizon, her heaving bosom undulated like the soothing waves of the bay. Buck swept her into his musky embrace.’”

“Mick’s writing a sci-fi romance novel.” Nate says, and honestly, Behrad thinks that there are probably worse secrets they could have found in Mick’s room. “Well, that’s the last thing I thought I’d see before I died.”

The rumbling starts.

“Speaking of,” Behrad says, as the ship explodes. “See you next loop.”

---

With Mick and Amaya cleared, Ray is next. The idea of Ray intentionally blowing up the ship is pretty much impossible, but if there’s anything that Behrad has learned from the beginning of every one of these loops, it’s that the man is very accident-prone. 

“I don’t know what’s up with him.” Behrad tells Nate, as they make their way to the lab. “He’s just been weird , ever since the whole business with the Darhks.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing.” Nate reassures him. “I’m his best friend. If it was important, he’d tell me.”

They find Ray in the lab, and he’s doing the most mundane thing possible: preparing a cup of tea. 

“Huh. Maybe we can cross him off our suspect list.” Behrad says, watching as Ray pours the tea from the metal teapot into his little teacup. Then, Sara strolls in from somewhere to the side, and Behrad quickly slides over to hide further out of sight.

“Have you seen Behrad?” He hears Sara ask, and Behrad exchanges a panicked glance with Nate. “I just checked the engine room. He’s not there.”

“Um, no, I haven’t.” Ray answers, softly. And that’s weird, again. Ray’s a gentle person, but it’s like he’s tiptoeing around Sara, especially with all the things he’s mentioned in previous loops about making her mad. Carefully, he peeks around the corner again and sees Sara facing away, hands on her hips, and Ray cradling the cup of tea.

“I’m sick and tired of playing mom. He’s really starting to piss me off.”

Behrad’s getting really tired of Sara’s anger. Every time the loop starts, she tells him that he can stop sticking around, and while he’s still probably not as cut out for action-packed time travelling adventures as the rest of the team, it stings a bit to hear that confirmed every hour.

“Uh… well, in the meantime, how about some tea?” Ray smiles and offers the teacup to her, tentatively, like he’s offering food to a wild animal. “It’s my signature blend of chamomile, lavender, and rose. Very relaxing!”

“If you see Behrad, tell him I’m looking for him.” Sara takes the tea and exits in the same direction she came in from. After a moment, once he’s sure she’s out of range, Behrad gives Nate a nod, and they both walk into the lab.

“Ray.” Behrad calls, strolling in.

“Holy Toledo!” Ray jumps and spins around to face them, holding the metal teapot. “Where’d you guys come from? Were you spying on me? Of course you were, but I shouldn’t say anything-- Okay, I’ll tell you everything!”

Behrad had expected that it would be easy to get Ray to spill his secrets, but he thought they’d have to at least try .

“Constantine told me to kill Sara if Mallus ever takes control of her again.” Ray blurts out in a panic.

“Wow, dude… that’s heavy,” Nate says.

“Wait, what if Sara Mallus-es out and blows up the ship?” Behrad suggests. It’s more plausible than his previous theory about Amaya betraying them for Kuasa. 

“What do you mean she ‘blows up the ship?’” Ray asks, sipping from another cup of tea.

“B’s caught in a time loop, and the ship explodes every hour.”

“Oh, like ‘Cause and Effect.’” Ray says. When neither of them respond, he clarifies, “ Star Trek: The Next Generation .”

“It’s Groundhog Day .” Nate scoffs. 

“Fair enough. But Star Trek did it-- wait, the ship explodes in an hour?!”

“Actually, it explodes in twenty-four minutes.” Behrad holds up the pocket watch. “And I think someone onboard is causing it.”

“Mick.” Ray suggests, but Nate shakes his head.

“He’s clean.”

“Unlike his literary erotica.” Behrad adds, and Ray nearly chokes on his tea.

“Excuse me, what?”

“Long story.” Nate says. “Like, literally , a long story.”

“So weird.” Behrad agrees.

“A thousand pages long.”

“There was blue.”

Nate makes a gagging noise. Ray looks mildly disturbed, but still more confused than anything, and he’s still clutching his little teacup close to his chest.

“Anyways,” Behrad sighs, “the captain’s the only one we haven’t checked out. And we’re gonna need your help.”

“Really? What can I do for you?” Ray smiles.

It’s not hard to convince Ray to suit up and shrink down to spy on Sara, especially once Behrad volunteers to join him as backup. Ray seems pretty worked up about Constantine’s warning, but he seems a little more at ease now that he’s told Nate and Behrad and doesn’t have to bear that secret by himself.

“What’s she doing going into the jumpship?” Ray asks as they follow Sara down to the docking bay. “With Gideon down, it’s not like she can go anywhere.”

“Is there a way she could cause the explosion from the jumpship?” 

“Could be any number of ways.” Ray tightens his grip on the nanite gun. Behrad doesn’t like the idea of having to hurt Sara, much less having to kill her, but he has to find out what causes the explosion, and he’s getting tired of reliving this stupid hour. “And with Mallus, who knows what he’s capable of? I’m worried about what we’re gonna find in there. I hope I don’t have to use this… You ready?”

Behrad nods and squeezes his eyes shut, and Ray raises his gauntlet and zaps him with his shrink ray, and after the high-pitched whirring noise ends, Behrad opens his eyes and sees the Waverider’s hallway from the height of an ant. He stares up to where Ray absolutely towers above him and watches the other man press the trigger on his chest and shrink down to match Behrad’s current size, then fly towards the jumpship. Behrad presses a hand to the totem around his neck and wills the air around him to propel him upwards to follow. 

They barely make it inside before the jumpship's door shuts, and they fly over to a ledge without catching Sara’s attention. She’s drinking the tea that Ray gave her earlier, and… filling out a crossword puzzle?

“Are you sure she can’t see us?” Behrad whispers. Do voices get quieter, the smaller you get?

“No, not while we’re in stealth mode. Which really just means library voices and no sudden movements.”

The jumpship console beeps, and Sara leans forward to tap something on the screen. When she leans back into her chair, she smiles wryly and says, “Hey.”

“Hey.” A voice says. Is that Agent Sharpe? From the Time Bureau? “What are you up to?”

“Oh, you know, crossword puzzles.”

“You look tired.”

“Thanks, Jerk.” Sara smirks. She’s flirting with her. Is this a date?

“No, no, I didn’t-- I mean, you always look… good, I just-- did you have a long day, or…” Yeah, totally a date.

“You have no idea. There’s this person on my team.” Oh, of course. “And he’s just… He’s so young , and bright-eyed, and he doesn’t wanna accept that we can’t just… save whoever we want to. And it’s like… I don’t want him to lose that, but I don’t want it to get him hurt. Because he’s an important part of this team, but… I don’t know, lately there’s just been this disconnect . Especially today.”

Behrad softens a little, listening to Sara talk. He feels a little guilty for eavesdropping, but it makes him feel a little bit better knowing that Sara’s just worried about him, and isn’t really mad.

“What’d he do?”

“Well, he hijacked Gideon, then crashed our entire system testing out some simulation software that finds loopholes in history.”

“Oh, that is definitely against regulations.” Agent Sharpe laughs, and it makes Sara smile in a way that’s softer than Behrad has ever seen. “Not that I haven’t been tempted to change the past.”

“It’s just… I don’t even want to start looking for loopholes, because then, I’m gonna start looking for ways to save my sister, and then I’m gonna drive myself crazy.”

“Yes, you will. So don’t”

“I’m just tired of always being the bad cop, you know?”

Agent Sharpe laughs again. “Believe me, I understand. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to yell at cadets for screwing up, or bust them for breaking protocol.”

“Yeah, I don’t know, I feel like you might like that. You seem to get a kick out of ordering people around.”

“Maybe.” She laughs again, for a little too long. Behrad feels like he and Ray should probably leave and give these two some privacy. “Just a little bit. Where are you calling me from? I don’t recognize that part of the Waverider.”

“Welcome to the jumpship.” Sara gestures to her surroundings.

“Are you hiding, Ms. Lance?”

“ No , I’m simply looking for some privacy.” Yeah, they should probably go.

“Well, maybe I should come over.”

“Yeah, yeah, but like-- I mean, I’m sure that you’re super, super busy.”

“It’s the perks of being the boss. I can just tell Gary I have a meeting.”

“Yeah. Boss. Speaking of, I should probably go check on the rest of the team, make sure nobody’s gonna blow up the ship.” Sara jokes. Behrad and Ray exchange an awkward look. 

“Well, yeah, okay… if you, uh-- if you change your mind, or… whatever.” Agent Sharpe clears her throat. 

“So, this is a date, right? We’ve been spying on Sara’s date this whole time, which means no Mallus, right?” Behrad asks Ray. 

“Yeah, we’re probably good. I think we would have noticed if Mallus was involved here.” Ray confirms.

“Okay, do you hear that?” Sara asks, suddenly. “‘Cause I’ve been hearing this high-pitched buzzing sound, like there’s a fly in the jumpship.”

“Did you say a fly? You have to kill it.” Agent Sharpe asks, sounding alarmed. Uh oh. “You have no idea what year it’s from. You could reintroduce the plague and have a whole other crisis on your hands.”

Sara rolls up her crossword tightly and looks around. Behrad and Ray aren’t quick enough to react when Sara spots them-- they probably just look like a suspicious fly-like speck, at this size-- and she swings at them. Ray tries to push him out of the way, but they’re too small, and after a brief flash of pain, everything goes dark.

---

Even though his freshly-reset body hasn’t actually been squashed like a bug, Behrad can still sort of feel the echo of it as he enters this next loop. He flees the bridge after looking at Ray, totally intact and tripping over his shoes again, and feels his lunch coming back up again, so he runs for the bathroom without even acknowledging Sara.

After cleaning himself up, he heads for the library, as usual, but the loops have lost their charm. None of them are responsible for the explosion, and without any more leads, Behrad doesn’t know what to do next. 

“ Groundhog Day . Exploding ship. Just got crushed like a bug.” He tells Nate, trudging towards the desk chair. He flops down into it with a groan.

“We’re stuck in a time loop!” Nate snaps his fingers excitedly. Behrad just offers weak finger-guns in his direction. “It was only a matter of time before we did one of these.”

Behrad leans forward and puts his head down on the desk, cradled by his arms.

“Damn, B, you look wrecked. How many times have you done this?”

“I dunno.” He mumbles against the wood. “Stopped counting after Mick kept carting me off to medbay.”

“So you’ve been stuck in this loop for a while, then?” Behrad lifts up his head just to offer him an unimpressed look. “Okay, okay. Maybe… you could use a break? Have some fun?”

“ Fun ? I blow up every hour.”

“ Exactly . No consequences. I mean, you could do anything .”

“Huh.” Behrad straightens up, slightly. “I never thought about that.”

“I mean, think about it. What would you do, if you had all the time in the world?” Nate grins. “The world is your oyster. In the movie, Bill Murray has this fun montage where he does whatever he wants. I mean, he chose to sleep around and rob people, but that’s because his loop is about becoming a better person. And I figure you probably have tamer things in mind.”

“Next loop.” Behrad agrees, getting up out of the chair with a renewed optimism, but still, he feels drained from the last one. There’s a very comfy-looking blanket discarded on the floor, and he picks it up and slings it over his shoulder. “For now, I think I need a nap.” 

Nate nods, approvingly. 

“See you next loop. Have fun having superpower sex with Amaya.” He says. 

As he leaves, he ignores Nate’s look of confusion meshed with pleasant surprise. He only has under an hour to sleep away the feeling of being squashed.

---

Behrad feels so much better after napping the last loop away, and after Ray falls down, he bounds out of the bridge with his newfound optimism, which probably leaves Sara even more confused than usual. He’s genuinely excited, this time, because he’s not worried about the ship exploding-- he’ll take a few loops for himself, this time, and get back to the disaster when he’s done.

“Nate! Groundhog Day . One hour. We’re doing a fun montage!”

Nate lights up, snapping with both hands and pointing in his direction. “Time loop! Dude, sick . What’s on the menu?”

“Funny you should say that.” Behrad wraps an arm around Nate’s shoulders, leading him out of the library and heading towards the kitchen. “We’ve got one hour to eat whatever we want, and it doesn’t matter if it makes us feel gross, because it all resets.”

“Whipped cream?”

“And donuts.”

They wait through Mick and Amaya’s bit with the memory flasher before they get down to business. Gideon’s still down, which means that the replicator isn’t going to be all that useful, but luckily for them, Behrad sort of prides himself in his culinary skills. He’d made a giant batch of donuts from scratch a few weeks ago-- the texture of fully-replicated desserts just never quite lives up to their homemade counterparts-- and stashed them in the freezer, which means all they have to do is pop them into a preheated oven. 

In the meantime, while the donuts warm up, Behrad grabs a bag of chocolate chips and puts them into a double-boiler with vanilla extract and a pad of butter to make a chocolate glaze. He would have liked to spend a couple of loops perfecting recipes-- if the loop keeps resetting, he’ll never get full, and he’d have infinite time to get the flavors just right, but an hour isn’t even close to long enough to simmer a half-decent stew, and he doesn’t have the ingredients ready to go, anyways.

“Pass me the--” Behrad reaches his hand vaguely to the left, adjusting the heat level once the water begins to boil. Not two seconds later, he feels the handle of a wooden spoon placed into his waiting palm.

“I got you, bro.” 

 They’ve done this enough times that Nate knows the drill. Behrad stirs the melting chocolate while, off to the side, he hears the opening and closing of the fridge signaling Nate getting the whipped cream out, and the clink of the metal can on the counter.

“What would Amaya want with the memory flasher?” Nate asks, before pushing himself up to sit on the counter, between the sink and the stove, and spraying whipped cream directly into his mouth.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.” Behrad turns off the heat, still stirring. The oven timer ticks down, with only a few minutes left to go. 

“Oh, come on! What’s the harm? I’m gonna forget about it when the loop resets, anyway.” Nate complains around the whipped cream in his mouth.

“If I tell you, you’re going to spend the rest of this loop talking about it, and I’ve already done that, thanks.” He gives his mixture a final stir, raising the spoon and letting the chocolate drip down to check the consistency.

“Fair enough.” Nate shrugs, then swoops his hand downwards to scoop a little bit of chocolate from the bown on his finger, and pops it in his mouth. Behrad swats at Nate with the spoon, leaving a glob of brown on his shirt.

“Not in my kitchen, you neanderthal,” he scolds. Nate just laughs and pulls at the neck of his shirt to lick at the stain. The oven timer dings, and Behrad hurries to slide on a pair of mitts to retrieve their snacks.

“Hey! Do I smell donuts?” Ray strolls into the kitchen, smiling and holding the metal tea set he’d been using in the lab. Then, he spots Behrad and his smile melts into a frown. “Aren’t you supposed to be fixing the ship?”

“Ray, buddy!” Nate waves, and Behrad sets the tray of donuts onto a rack to cool off for a moment. “Don’t worry about that, we’re in a time loop!”

“Whoa. Like Star Trek ?” Ray lights up like a kid on Christmas. “Neat.”

“Are you kidding? Dude, Groundhog Day . Duh.”

“ The Next Generation did it first.” Ray points out. “But that’s fair. Hey, did you guys happen to--”

“Get some gluten-free ones ready for you, too? Of course we did.” Behrad points to the leftmost row of donuts. “You can get started now, if you want, but they’re still kind of hot.”

Nate immediately hops off the counter and rushes over to grab one, then hisses and tosses it up in the air, bouncing it back and forth between his hands. “Ow, hot, hot, hot!”

Ray, more sensibly, grabs a pair of tongs from the utensil drawer to grab one of the donuts that Behrad had made with almond-flour, just for him, and dips it halfway into the bowl of melted chocolate. 

“Too bad Gideon’s still down. She could have cooled these off to the perfect temperature.” Ray laments.

“I’ll fix her eventually. Once I get out of this time loop.” 

“How’d you end up in one to begin with?” 

“No idea.” Behrad says, retrieving a fork to jab it into his own donut so he can dip it in chocolate, too. After spraying it with a generous pile of whipped cream, he takes as big a bite as he can. Then, muffled through a mouthful of dessert, he adds, “It might have something to do with the ship exploding?”

“Pardon?” Ray takes a bite. Behrad holds up a finger, chewing and swallows after a moment.

“I said, it might have something to do with the ship exploding.” Ray chokes on his gluten-free donut. Then, the rumbling starts again, and Behrad points at the doorway. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. I guess I’ll see you guys in the next loop.”

He shoves the rest of the donut into his mouth. Dying had never been so delicious.

---

The next several loops, he spends alone, with Mick’s novel.

He gets familiar enough with the traps in Micks’ room to where he can find the rest of the pages, tucked away behind a bunch of old shirts underneath the bed. To get to them, though, he has to dodge a volley of darts that he thinks might be poisoned, and a bucket of sludge. But honestly? It’s worth it.

Mick’s novel is good . For a man who doesn’t like to say much out loud, it’s obvious he’s got a lot of things going on in his head, and while it’s not like anyone on the ship really believes he’s unintelligent, Behrad himself never exactly expected something like this, which was probably pretty unfair of him. 

Behrad doesn’t do a lot of reading for fun. He prefers video games and television, but even he can recognize a good story when he sees one, and he gets pretty invested in the journey of Buck, the protagonist. It’s a little hard to get past Garima’s third boob, but the romance is compelling enough that by the time that Buck sweeps her into his musky embrace towards the end, Behrad’s really glad he took the time to read it. Sure, there’s a lot of freaky alien sex in this book, but apparently alongside his penchant for erotica, Mick Rory is also a bit of a closeted romantic, and Behrad respects that.

The conclusion is a little disappointing, with the way that Buck doesn’t get to live happily ever after with the friends he’s made along the way, and he’d tell Mick that himself if he wasn’t afraid of being roasted alive for breaking into the man’s personal belongings. It’s probably for the best, though, because who’s he to interfere in another man’s artistic vision?

He finishes this final loop halfway underneath Mick’s bed, setting the pages back where he found them, like he’s putting a product back on the shelf in a department store. Even if the loop will just reset everything back to its original place, he feels like it’s disrespectful to let the loop do all the work. But it doesn’t really matter anyways, because the rumbling starts, and the ship blows up again.

---

Behrad doesn’t remember the night he met the team too clearly-- he’d been pretty out of it by that point, but the combination of the cool night air on his skin, and the adrenaline of being chased by a woman who turned into water had sobered him up. Something he does remember clearly, though he’s never brought it up, because it’s never felt too important, is how cool their superhero costumes were.

Of course, he always thinks the costumes are cool, for every mission. From the brightly-colored outfits of the eighties, to the posh clothes of Victorian London, to old-Hollywood glamour, to the blue and white disco numbers from this past mission, playing dress-up is definitely one of Behrad’s favorite parts of time travel. But he doesn’t have a designated superhero getup, not like Sara, Amaya, Nate, or Ray. He’s like Mick, in that he just wears regular clothes, though it suits Mick-- he can’t imagine Mick putting up with something as goofy as that when he already complains about dressing for the appropriate time period.  He’s not exactly saying that he wants a super-suit, because he’d probably get sweaty in the spandex and leather and he kind of enjoys switching it up depending on where they’re headed, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious.

He tells Nate this, after going through the usual motions of the first part of the loop, and Nate gets that excited look on his face that tells Behrad that this is going to be a fun one.

They retrieve Ray from the lab, avoiding Sara, who’s ticked off as usual about Behrad not being in the engine room, and it’s easy enough to convince him to join them once they tell him about the time loop. Then, they head over to the fabrication room, where Nate and Ray open up a closet that Behrad hadn’t even realized was there at all. 

“We don’t always toss out costumes to be recycled into new ones.” Ray tells him, rolling out a long rack full of assorted costume pieces. At a glance, Behrad can see a lot of extravagant gowns and jackets, as well as armor pieces. “Sometimes, we keep them around in case we revisit somewhere, or if we just think they’re neat!”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure some of these even pre-date the original team.” Nate says, stepping out of the closet with a samurai helmet over his head. “Not this one, though. Feudal Japan was my first mission with superpowers.”

“Cool.” Behrad breathes. He enters the closet himself, and picks up a cowboy hat and turns towards Nate. “Where’s this one from? Or-- when?”

“Ooh, that’s mine, from Colorado, 1874.” Nate informs him, plucking the hat out of his hands. He twirls it around between his fingers and examines it appreciatively, before reaching up to fit it onto Behrad’s head himself. “And that was when I realized that I’m not actually invincible when I steel up.”

“Wow, that hat looks pretty good on you.” Ray grins, putting on his own cowboy hat. “That wasn’t our first rodeo in the wild west. I would have kept the costumes for sentimental purposes either way, but they’ll probably come in handy again before we know it.”

“Yeah. Plus-- that mission is why I get this.” Nate rushes over to gesture at the mannequin-form that houses his superhero suit. “Ray made it for me! Out of the dwarf star alloy that nearly killed me!”

“Anything to keep my best buddy safe. Plus, you had the design all ready, I just had to make it a reality.” The two bump fists. “Ooh, hey, do you want to try it on?”

“Really? Can I?” Behrad looks at Nate. It’s his suit, after all. 

“Yeah, of course!” Nate starts to remove it from the form. “Just warning you, though, it might be kind of heavy.”

It takes them a bit to get everything on, but Nate’s right, it’s kind of heavy. Still, he poses dramatically, getting a laugh out of the other guys.

“How do I look?” Behrad bats his eyelashes. Then, he stops, because he’s starting to feel like his sister. 

“The fit’s off, but not bad.” Ray tells him. That gives Behrad another idea.

“Oh, man . Okay, totally cool if this is too much to ask, but… Can I try on the A.T.O.M. suit?”

“Sure! Actually, I designed it specifically so that anyone could use it.” Ray smiles, then scowls. “Which might not have been the greatest idea? It’s caused us some problems in the past. There was this time we went to the future and I found out that after I died-- or so everyone thought-- my jerk of a twin brother turned my life’s work into military robots. Not to mention the shogun in Feudal Japan. Anyway, not the point. Here.”

Ray reaches into his pocket and pulls out the small case he keeps the shrunken-down A.T.O.M. suit in, and opens it. With a press of a button, the suit grows to full size, and Behrad steps up to it. Even after spending a while on the ship and seeing the thing pretty often, it’s still really cool. 

Ray and Nate help him out of Nate’s costume and into Ray’s beloved tech, and it’s surprisingly comfortable, for something so bulky. He feels like a robot, or a cyborg, or something, and it’s awesome . He tells Ray as much, and the older man positively beams with pride. 

“Coming from a resident of the future, that means a lot! I mean, you guys must be miles ahead by 2017 standards. Almost makes me miss being in the business.” 

“Yeah, I mean, I’m really not all-that plugged into that stuff.” He flexes his hands within the A.T.O.M. suit’s gloves. The only way to avoid his sister’s business empire is to pretty much ignore the entire business world altogether, which isn’t so hard when you don’t go to any of your business school classes. Still, he’d have to be living under a rock to not have heard of Palmer Tech, but he figures he’s probably not allowed to tell Ray about that particular part of his future, because that's a bit of a huge spoiler. “But I can’t imagine any time period where this stuff isn’t super cool.”

“Dude, you gotta try shrinking.” Nate urges him, and Behrad grimaces slightly, remembering their attempt at spying on Sara.

“I don’t know, there was an incident in one of the previous loops…” At their curious looks, he elaborates. “Ray and I shrunk down to spy on Sara to see if Mallus took over again to blow up the ship, and then she thought we were flies and squashed us.”

“Blow up the ship?!” Nate exclaims, while Ray pales at the mention of Mallus.

“Yeah, sorry I didn’t mention it earlier. I was sort of trying to focus on the fun montage. We’re gonna die in…” He checks the pocket watch, but it doesn’t matter, because the ship starts rumbling once more, and Ray and Nate turn towards the sound, alarmed. “Right now.”

He’s glad they’re still turned towards the door when the explosions reach the room, because they probably look pretty upset. 

---

The next dozen or so, he dedicates to trying new things. The cargo bay is full of all sorts of stuff from previous missions, and some of them are even labeled. He finds a lot of things, but he sets aside a box of oil paints marked with Rembrandt’s name, a bag of tangled yarns and what he assumes are ancient knitting needles, and a half-carved wooden duck accompanied by a small whittling knife. 

Gideon being offline doesn’t mean that he can’t access her giant archives of information, but it takes him a while to dig through everything to find anything that’s going to help him figure out how to use any of this stuff. 

Even if he’d mastered any of these skills, an hour isn’t actually enough time to finish carving the duck, or to knit anything for an adult-sized person, or to make a half-decent painting, so he kind of doesn’t even try. He forgets about trying to get good at any of these things and spends a lot of loops carving completely at random and laughing every time it comes out phallic, and making terrible paintings, and knitting lumpy socks that might fit on a puppy, just because it’s fun . He drags Nate in to pose for a portrait, and finishes just in time for Nate to see the flesh-toned monstrosity on the canvas right before they blow up again, and Behrad literally dies laughing at the way Nate tries to be nice about it.

He figures that if he had the time to really spend on any of these things, he’d actually be kind of good at it. He’s somehow gotten the muscle memory down pretty well to where he doesn’t have to look at his hands to see if he’s knitting or purling, and he’s stopped accidentally slicing his thumb open with the whittling knife or taking a sip of paint thinner instead of water. Behrad figures that he’ll try to pick this stuff up again, seriously, when he gets out of the time loop, and his work doesn’t get reset. 

If he ever gets out of the time loop. 

---

Behrad gets very familiar with where everyone else is on the ship during this never-ending hour. 

Nate and Amaya have their conversation about their quickie from the mission, and decide that they can’t risk it. Then, Nate sulks about it, alone in the library until Amaya returns with the memory flasher, and they spend the rest of the loop having superpowered sex until they die.

Ray always trips in his platform shoes, without fail, before he goes off to the lab to make his soothing tea and then heads out to do his laundry. It’s never been funny , exactly, because it always just looks painful. So, Behrad’s gotten into the habit of catching Ray mid-fall. It took him a few tries to get it right, and man , does the guy weigh a lot. But it’s worth it, because even though it always earns him a confused look from Sara, he gets a look of grateful surprise from Ray. 

Mick storms off the bridge to get changed out of his costume, then sets out to do his laundry before Ray can get there first. He stops in the galley, first, to wipe ABBA’s “Waterloo” from his memory, then heads down to the laundry room and gets in an argument with Ray about washing clothes inside-out and about a nice, slate grey henley that Mick rarely wears. Behrad witnesses this weird domestic routine enough times that he’s memorized the entire dialogue, and spends one loop writing up cue cards just so he can stand behind them at the washers to hold the cards up and drop them as each line, sound effect, and facial expression occurs. 

He doesn’t spy on Sara’s video date with Agent Sharpe, because he has less-than-no chance of going unnoticed at full size, and he doesn’t really want to get squashed again, but he thinks about it a lot. It’s not that Sara has been cold to him, or that he didn’t think she had that softer side to her, but it was different, seeing it firsthand. He can’t imagine what it must be like to lose a sister. Even at her worst, Behrad loves Zari, and to have her completely out of his life? He hopes he never has to find out what that feels like.

He’s seen enough TV to understand that these sorts of leadership positions are lonely, even when you’re surrounded by friends. And he definitely hasn’t made things any easier on her by defying her orders. So, if he manages to survive this time loop, he’ll try to be more of a team player, instead of a burden. 

---

He goes back to the cargo bay to see if there’s anything else that could be fun, and finds a Stradivarius violin sitting atop pages of sheet music, on one of the wire racks towards the back. 

Behrad loves music. He’s been playing piano and guitar since grade school, and has been writing his own music for years, and if there’s anything he’s regretted not stopping back home to grab before he left to live on a timeship, it’s his beloved Gibson acoustic. He’d tried to fabricate one, early on, but it just didn’t sound quite right, and every time he’d pick it up to play, he’d have to spend a while re-tuning. 

Anyone who knows anything about strings knows the value of a Stradivarius, and he’s heard Zari rave about them enough to where he knows that the instrument he’s holding is worth more money than he’s made in his life, especially if this is actually one from the seventeenth century. After her business had taken off, Zari had bought one for her collection, even though she didn’t have much time to play anymore. 

As a kid, Behrad had taken lessons for a few years, because he’d wanted to be more like his sister, and because they already had her child-sized violins in storage. And he remembers it being fun, until it wasn’t, because he’d gotten old enough to feel like everything he did was being scored on a scale relative to Zari’s achievements. Which, looking back, he’d probably been a little oversensitive about, but he’d definitely had reason to feel that way. 

He applies rosin to the bow and attaches the shoulder rest carefully, and holds it up, laying his chin at the proper position. Wrist straight and elbows relaxed, he drags the bow across the strings, releasing a stiff, awkward A. 

It takes him the rest of the loop to remember how to hold things comfortably enough to run through a couple of major scales, and he spends the following one getting the hang of the motions by playing “Twinkle Twinkle,” but it comes back to him.  With all of the missions and his botched attempt at a fabricated guitar, it’s been a while since he’s had the chance to play anything, and he hadn’t really realized how much he missed it until now. 

He fumbles his way through pieces he can sort-of remember, and even tries his hand at figuring out some of his favorite songs by ear, but eventually settles into trying to decipher the sheet music, which isn’t labeled, but a few bars in, he quickly recognizes it as “Winter,” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Zari had played it at a concert, when he was still young enough to think his sister was the coolest.

Behrad doesn’t even bother with the first movement-- he’d have to spend months reliving this hour to even make it through the allegro’s rhythms, and he’s not even that confident in his ability to play notes that high. He spends several loops focusing on the second movement instead, the largo , because it’s only got one shift to third-position, and because out of everything he remembers from that concert, he remembers that section the most. It’s one of his most vivid childhood memories-- sitting in the front row of the theater as a four-year-old, watching his sister in a pretty red dress play the violin onstage, accompanied by the entire Seattle symphony. 

He’d been excited by the allegro , sitting at the edge of his seat and tugging at his maman’s sleeve, but it was the largo that gave him chills. He’d heard her practicing the piece for months, but there was something about sitting in the audience, watching her in the spotlight, and hearing the music fill the auditorium that stuck with him through his entire childhood. It’s the first memory he has of music, and it had driven him to pick up violin soon after. And even though he’d abandoned that instrument a few years later, once Zari’s business had taken off and he stopped wanting to be like her, he’d fallen enough in love with music that he couldn’t fully let it go. 

Now, working slowly through the eighth-notes on the page, loop after loop, he remembers what it felt like to pretend to play with his toys on the couch while he was really just trying to listen to his sister practice for her next recital. It’s odd how close he suddenly feels to Zari, right now. It’s been years since they spoke without getting into a fight, but he’d forgotten how much he looked up to her, and how much she actually liked to spend time with him, before she’d become too busy with running her social media empire. By the time he gets back home, no time will have passed-- it’ll be like he never left, except he has , and he’s different, even from just a few months of time travel. He’s not the same Behrad, but his maman and baba will be the same as he remembers, and so will Zari. 

As the rumbling starts again, he finishes his performance of the movement with a flourish-- a hint of a trill, and clumsy, out-of-practice vibrato, and lets the final E fade into the heat of the explosions, resetting the loop.

---

The next loop starts with Behrad feeling homesick enough that he forgets to catch Ray before he falls. It’s suffocating enough that ironically, he chooses to spend this hour smoking so that he can breathe again. He gets Nate to join him in getting high, partially because he hasn’t hung out with Nate for a loop since they were trying on costumes, and partially because being homesick makes him feel really lonely.

Nate gets all giggly when he’s high. He likes to talk, and laugh, and gesture widely with his hands and act things out instead of just describing them. Nate rambles about how much he loves the team, about some of their previous adventures, and it barely makes any sense, but Behrad laughs when Nate laughs, and that feels like enough. Nate’s finishing up the story of when he went back to the age of the dinosaurs with Ray and Amaya, and had to face off against a dinosaur, and his imitation of a T-Rex has them both breaking out into giggles and falling over onto Behrad’s bed as they settle back down.

“Man, I love Ray.” Nate smiles, taking another hit. “He’s the best. And Amaya. She’s the best, too, and I love her so much.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. I love Amaya so much.”

Behrad shifts, turning over to sit more sideways, resting one arm across the back of the couch to look at Nate, who’s slumped backwards and staring at the ceiling. It’s not a big couch-- small enough for Behrad’s knees to nudge at Nate’s thigh, and for his hand resting on the back of the couch to almost brush at Nate’s neck. “Tell me about it?”

The lights are dimmed, and warm, because nothing kills the vibe like the Waverider’s usual bright, cold fluorescents. He can see Nate’s face soften into a sweet smile as he considers what to say about Amaya, and maybe it’s Behrad’s imagination, because the weed makes everything a little hay, but he thinks he can feel the love radiating out from his friend like heat from a furnace. 

“She’s incredible.” Nate says, finally. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

But moments later, he does. He begins with her eyes, all dark and soulful, and then moves onto her lips, her hair, and how soft her skin is, how beautiful she is. Nate has no shortage of words to describe Amaya, and he tells Behrad things that he probably never would, outside of this moment-- and some things about Amaya that he probably shouldn’t be sharing at all. 

But Behrad is only half-listening. His gaze keeps wandering to Nate’s eyes, to his lips, to his hair, and across his skin, tinged golden by the light. He’s all-too aware that it’s all within physical reach. That if he just stretched his hand out, he could feel it for himself. He’s so distracted by it that he doesn’t even notice that Nate’s asked him a question until he turns towards Behrad, gaze expectant.

“Sorry, could you repeat that?”

“I said, have you ever been in love?”

Maybe it’s the weed talking, or maybe this time loop is driving him insane, because thinking like this is probably the stupidest thing he could possibly do, when Nate’s rambling on and on about the woman he’s in love with. Maybe it’s not about Nate himself-- it could just be that he’s drawn in by the magnitude of how much Nate loves Amaya so wholeheartedly, in that way where it sounds like the most beautiful thing in the world, and maybe Behrad just wants a piece of that. Maybe he just wants to know what that feels like, once, before he dies. 

“No.” He answers, and it’s true, but looking at Nate, who’s quickly gone back to waxing poetic about Amaya’s eyes, he thinks that if he isn’t careful, it might become a lie.

He’s too out of it to hear the rumbling, but when the explosions reach his room, it’s almost a relief.

---

The reset of the loop has a way of sobering Behrad up from any of the fogginess from the last, and he suddenly feels like he’s wasted enough time doing nothing. The ship keeps blowing up, and if he doesn’t set himself free now, he’ll be stuck here for eternity. 

Then, watching Ray pick himself up off the floor, as he always does, he thinks that maybe he’s been looking at it all wrong-- early on, he’d accepted Ray tripping and falling as inevitable, and started to catch him after he tripped. All this time, he’d been trying to prevent the explosion, with no success, but maybe it’s not about preventing it. Maybe it’s about stopping it once it starts.

Halfway to the library, Behrad stops and turns the other way and heads to the lab instead. He’s a little embarrassed about the last loop, even if Nate won’t have any memory of it, and the idea of trying to look Nate in the eye right now, especially having learned more about Nate’s relationship with Amaya than he ever wanted to. 

So, instead, he goes back to Ray, who lights up when he finds out about the time loop.

“Oh, man, this is just like in Star Trek --”

“ The Next Generation .” Behrad finishes, rolling his eyes slightly. “You say that every time. Then, usually, Nate says ‘are you kidding? It’s obviously Groundhog Day .’”

“Oh! That’s true. So, what can I help you with?”

Behrad explains that he’s investigated just about everywhere on the ship without learning anything about the source of the explosion, and that he’s decided to try and figure out a way to stop it from killing them instead, and to do that, they need Gideon.

“I figure that if I can get Gideon online, she might be able to get us out of this mess, or have some way to contain the explosion. I don’t know, I haven’t really gotten that far in this plan.”

“That’s a great idea!” Ray beams. “Maybe there’s some old Time Master data about time loops? We’ll just reboot Gideon and ask her.”

They head to the engine room, and Behrad just watches Ray work, pitching in with what he remembers from Jax’s lessons and handing him the appropriate tool. He’s still got a long way to go to fill Jax’s shoes, and maybe if Gideon’s not too upset with him for crashing her, she’ll help him out. Ray’s kind enough to narrate what he’s doing as he goes, and Behrad tries his best to commit it all to memory. With any luck, this might be one of the last loops he has to sit through.

“And, there.” Ray sits back, wiping at his forehead. He checks on his tablet to confirm that everything’s set, then turns it towards Behrad so he can see the little confirmation message. 

“Ray, you really are a genius .” Behrad laughs, leaning in to wrap Ray into a hug. “This loop is gonna end soon, but I think next round we can get it done faster.”

“Aw, thank you. I try.” Ray hugs him back and releases him with a pat on the shoulder. “In that case, make sure you leave about… eighty-three minutes to spare. That’s how long it’ll take her to boot back up again.”

Eighty-three minutes?

Any renewed hope that had flooded through him vanishes, and he scrambles to grab the tablet and read the screen for himself. He sees the same number echoed on the screen, and the tablet slips right out of his hands, the glass cracking at the corner. Even if he ran directly from the bridge to get started at the very beginning of the loop, eighty-three minutes isn’t enough time to save them.

“Behrad?” Ray picks the tablet up off the floor and brushes it off. “Are you okay?”

“That’s not enough.” He says, hopelessly, accompanied by the rumbling of their impending doom. He doesn’t have long to mourn this failed attempt, before the explosions swallow his despair.

---

He ends up defaulting back to the library again, even more miserable than when he and Ray got squashed. Nate starts his usual rambled excuses, and Behrad doesn’t even pretend to listen.

“I’m stuck in a time loop.” He tells him, and he’s slouching so much that he almost has to look up at Nate. “Ship explodes in an hour.”

“Time loop? Dude, that’s awesome.”

“No. Not awesome. I can’t do this anymore, I think I’m going insane.”

“Wait, did you do the--”

“Fun montage? Yeah. Thanks for that. You’re a good friend.” Behrad sighs, turning away from the pity in Nate’s eyes. “Nothing’s fun anymore.”

He needs to get out of here. He needs to go, anywhere but here, off of this stupid ship, no matter what it takes. His feet lead him back to the bridge, and he’s faintly aware of Nate following him there, but he doesn’t even care. He can’t time travel back home-- or get anywhere, really-- with Gideon down, and smoking doesn’t make him feel better anymore, and there’s not a single place on this ship he can go to escape because in an hour, he’ll have to do it all over again.

Behrad sees the gun laying on the console, and goes for it. It’s not that he wants to die. He really doesn’t. But he just doesn’t know what else to do.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey!” Nate calls to him as he raises the thing to his head. Behrad hates guns. He hates death. He hates this time loop. “Take it easy.”

“It’s the only thing I haven’t tried yet. I have to stop the loop.” He squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath. The gun feels horribly foreign in his hand, like it doesn’t quite fit, and his clammy fingers fumble for the trigger.

“Hey! What the hell’s going on?” Sara’s voice sounds alarmed as she enters the bridge. Behrad’s hand is shaking, and he swallows at the lump in his throat. 

“Don’t come any closer.” He warns her, stepping back, away from the direction of her voice. He’s terrified that this will work, and he’ll be dead and free from the loop, and terrified of the very real possibility that it won’t-- that he’ll die and go right back to the beginning anyway. 

There’s no way for him to win. Either way, he’s doomed, so before he can chicken out, he pulls the trigger.

Nothing happens, except for a loud clicking noise. Off to the left, he hears Nate breathe a sigh of relief as Behrad falls to his knees and lets the gun slip from his grasp and clatter harmlessly to the floor.

“Typical.” He almost laughs, but it gets caught on a sob, and he presses a hand to his eyes. Honestly, he’s really relieved, but he’s also embarrassed that he even tried.

“Hey,” Sara’s crouched down to his level in front of him, when he finally opens his eyes. “It’s okay, let’s talk this one through.”

“No, it doesn’t matter.” Behrad shakes his head hopelessly. “You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

He sniffles, looks her in the eye and tells her. He feels like a little kid who’s woken up from a nightmare, except this is real . 

“I keep reliving the same hour over, and over, and over again, and no matter what I do, the ship explodes, and kills us all.” He pauses, voice breaking. “And I’m totally alone in it because for some reason I’m the only one who’s aware that it’s happening. And I try so hard, but I can never save any of you.”

“Okay. I want to help.”.

“Wait, you believe me?”

“Yeah.” She answers, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “How much time do we have left?”

“Um,” He wipes at his eyes and takes the pocket watch out to check it. “About thirty-five minutes.”

“Okay.” Sara nods at Nate, who walks over to help Behrad back to his feet. She presses a button on the console and orders, “Everyone, team meeting in the galley. This is life or death.”

It takes another five minutes for everyone to gather in the galley. If Behrad had to guess, Ray was probably delayed wondering if this had anything to do with Mallus, Mick wanted to finish putting his clothes in the dryer, and Amaya was hiding the memory flasher. 

When they all arrive, Sara rolls out blueprints of the ship, while Behrad dumps a handful of coffee creamers onto the table.

“Alright, people, for reasons that are too complicated to explain right now, we have to search the ship. Behrad says that there’s a bomb, and it’s going to explode in thirty minutes. We have to find out why.”

“Well, the galley is clear.” Ray points out. Behrad starts marking the places he’s already checked by placing a creamer at each point on the paper. 

“Right. And I checked the sleeping quarters--” he marks each of them off, but Mick interrupts.

“Whoa, you went into our rooms?” 

“Yeah…” Behrad winces. Maybe Mick will respect that he made it through all the traps unharmed and not throttle him. “Anyways, we can also rule out the library--”

“What did you see in the library?!” Amaya leans in to whisper, but with everyone looking towards the table, it’s not actually very secretive.

“Something I can never unsee.” He tells her, and she shoots a panicked glance in Nate’s direction. To save time, Behrad stops reading locations aloud and just marks them quickly, until the map of the ship is covered in little white cups. “Guys, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I looked everywhere. There’s nothing.”

Behind them, Mick chucks his empty beer bottle into the trash chute, and it makes a loud clanking noise as it goes down. Then, there’s a whoosh , and the sound of glass shattering, which makes them all turn around.

“You didn’t check the trash compactor.” Nate gives him a pointed look. Sara just pats him on the shoulder and leads the way out into the hall. Behrad follows her, and Mick stomps his way out, too.

“I didn’t even know we had a trash compactor,” Behrad says, when they get to a room that he literally did not know existed.

“Well, it’s not really part of the tour,” Sara says, opening up the big blue box. An unpleasant smell fills the room and a few cans fall out onto the floor, but more importantly, Gary from the Time Bureau waves hello from under several trash bags.

“Agh, the time dweeb!” Mick growls, grabbing Gary and hoisting him up by his tie. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Oh, thank god you found me!”

“What were you doing down there?” Sara looms closer to Gary. Behrad backs away, because man , the guy stinks.

“I, uh, I tried to portal onto the bridge, but didn’t account for drift in the temporal zone? My landing was hot and my time courier broke on impact. That’s how I got stuck in here. Not the plan, but, uh, I adapted.”

“Okay, but why are you on the ship?” Behrad asks, pinching his nose.

“What the hell’ve you got in here?” Mick grumbles, digging through Gary’s jacket pocket. He pulls out a silver device and shakes it in front of Gary’s face. “A bomb?!”

“No!” Gary protests, but it’s too late. Mick’s already tossing the thing to the ground and stomping on it. “ No ! That was our only chance of surviving!”

“What do you mean?” Behrad picks the crushed parts up off the floor.

“He just destroyed the chrono-repeater I used to initiate a time loop in order to save you guys.” Gary grimaces.

“What?!” Sara asks, glaring at Mick.

“I always wanted to die young.” Mick clenches his jaw.

“Okay, nobody is going to die,” Sara holds up a hand, trying to calm them down.

“Well, uh, actually, I got an alert that the Waverider exploded at precisely four-twenty temporal standard time. Four-twenty!” Behrad has to laugh at that, despite the tension in the room, and Gary giggles nervously. Sara doesn’t seem to find it so funny. “I took matters into my own hands, but because of my little portal mishap, I couldn’t warn you about the bomb! But, I could operate the chrono-repeater, which is programmed to start a one-hour loop prior to the explosion and I had hoped that would give you enough time to defuse the bomb yourselves.”

“So now that this thing is broken…” Behrad starts, but he doesn’t want to finish. This is even worse than Behrad had expected. Maybe he would have been better off if he’d just resigned himself to eternity in the loop.

“There are no more time loops.” Gary confirms, looking terrified. “So once there’s an explosion, that’s it. Kablooey!”

“Alright, so what you’re saying is that we have five minutes to find this bomb before we all die.” Sara says, hands on her hips.

“Permanently.” Behrad adds.

They all run back up to the bridge, and though they didn’t invite Gary to come help, they don’t have time to stop him. It turns out to be a good thing, though, because he offers some new information.

“Before I portaled onto the ship, I traced the temporal signature of the bomb. It originated in 1975.”

“So it has to be something from the mission.” Behrad looks around, trying to think of what they might have brought back.

“It could be hidden in the heel of one of the platform shoes.” Ray offers. It’s almost funny, but they don’t have time for funny.

“What about that stupid song?” Mick asks, and everyone stops. 

“Genius.” Sara tells him, and rushes over to where the cassette tape lies on the ground, partially smashed from when Mick stormed off the bridge, before the loop began. They all follow her, and she holds up a beeping device that is very clearly a bomb.

“The one place I didn’t look.” Behrad sighs, dragging a hand down his face and feeling like an idiot. “Now what?”

“Why the hell would somebody put a bomb inside of an anachronism?” Nate asks.

“Damien Darhk must have planted it there, knowing you’d bring it onboard.” Behrad guesses. Ray takes it from Sara and begins fiddling with it, pulling a mini screwdriver out of his pocket. 

“Well, then, let’s get it offboard!” Gary suggests.

“No, we have to diffuse it. We can’t open the doors without Gideon.” Sara shoots him down. The beeping continues, ominously, and Behrad tries to think-- there has to be something they can do.

“Burn it!” Mick says, and everyone turns towards him, exasperated.

“That’ll make it explode.” Nate rolls his eyes. “You know, for a guy who loves fire, you really have no idea how it works.”

“What about you, Behrad? Come on, this whole time that you’ve been on the ship, did you learn anything that could help?” Sara steps towards him, looking desperate.

“Um. Let me think.” He says, and he motions for Ray to give him the bomb. Ray passes it to him, but looks just as nervous as Behrad feels. He turns around, staring at the time counting down and hears the beeping drown out his panic. They can’t get rid of it, and if they haven’t figured out by now how to defuse it, they probably won’t in time. But there has to be a way to save everyone. 

And then, he makes a decision. One that’s probably monumentally stupid, and probably won’t work, but if they’re all going to die anyways, he might as well try, so Behrad goes up the steps to the parlor and turns to face his friends.

“Behrad?”

“Sorry, captain.” He says, and activates the doorway’s forcefield. It’s similar technology to that of the ship’s brig, which is strong enough to hold super-powered prisoners. Still, it’s probably not strong enough to contain the blast all the way, but it’s a start.

“My beer is in there!” Mick yells. 

“What the hell are you doing?!” Sara stalks over and punches at the forcefield, only to get knocked back.

“That forcefield isn’t strong enough to contain the explosion!” Ray warns him.

“I know.” Behrad says. “But it’ll keep you guys out long enough for me to say… what I need to say.”

“Behrad…” Sara shakes her head. They’re all staring up at him, and he tries to offer them a smile, but it doesn’t feel like it quite reaches his eyes.

“Mick,” He starts, and the older man blinks in surprise. “Live out that dream of yours and keep writing , because that novel you’re working on is good . Very, um, pornographic, but really good. You don’t need to hide your passion from the team.”

“B, what are you doing?” Ray asks.

“What you would do.” He answers. “Ray, you were the first one here to become my friend, on that first day. It still blows my mind that you’re so positive and loving, and brave, the way you are, even when things suck. Especially when things suck. And I wish there were more people like you. I wish I could be more like you, which is exactly why I have to do this. You would do the same thing. And after this, do me a favor and tell Sara why you’re so scared of her.”

“Okay. Sure.” Ray promises, choosing his words carefully. “But first, I’m gonna figure out how to shut down that forcefield so we can deal with that bomb.”

“I am dealing with the bomb.” Behrad turns towards Nate, and he has to smile, even though Nate looks like he wants to cry. “You don’t remember the previous loops, but I need to thank you for getting me through them. I would never have made it this far if you hadn’t kept me sane. I have never met anyone with as much love in their heart as you, and I’m lucky to call you my friend. And, speaking of love-- you and Amaya, this thing between the two of you is the sort of beautiful , cosmic, life-changing sort of thing that most of us only dream about. Don’t waste that. You’re crazy about each other. Just-- maybe not during the mission, okay?” 

“Behrad, the bomb!” Amaya steps forward, distraught, and the look on her face nearly makes him falter, but it’s too late to turn back, so he turns to her, next. 

“Amaya, I’m sorry. I know you told me not to, but I’ve been trying to find a way to save you, and I guess this--” He holds the bomb up, “--means I can’t, but I still have to believe there’s a way, for you and your village, because you deserve a future. And if there’s anything worth giving my life for, it's for you to have that happy ending.”

“Behrad, you need to listen to me--” Sara tries again to stop him, but he interrupts her.

“I’m sorry, Sara. For everything. I never meant to be a burden to you. I still don’t agree with you about the timeline, but I know you’re just trying to keep us safe, even if that makes you look like the bad guy. You’re a good captain-- and more than that, you are the soul of this ship. But you deserve a break, too, so use some of that Timeship Captain courage that I wish I had even an ounce of, and please ask Agent Sharpe out on a date.”

“Did you have a meaningful message for me?” Gary asks, from the back. Sara yells at him, but it diffuses some of the tension and surprises Behrad into laughing a little.

“B, let us in! We can do this together.” Nate urges him.

“No.” He refuses, trying to sound strong, but the crack in his voice betrays him. “I have spent so much time with you guys. You’re family. And you all deserve to be happy, so if I can be a small part of making that happen, then this will be worth it.”

“Behrad, I am ordering you to stand down.”

“I can’t . You know I can’t. I love you guys too much to stop. Just-- tell my parents I love them, too, okay? And that I’m sorry. And my sister. Zari. Tell her, even if she gets mad. Tell them I said goodbye.”

With that, Behrad backs up towards the center of the parlor and presses the fingers of his free hand to the totem around his neck. He hears the hum of its magic and the air in the room begins to rush around him, and he guides it to spin like a tornado, trapping himself, and the bomb, at the center. He faintly hears yelling from outside, and guesses that it’s probably Sara. Behrad doesn’t actually know if this will save them-- he regrets not paying more attention in his science classes-- but this is all he can do. He can see Amaya and Nate throw themselves at the forcefield, trying to break it so they can stop him, so he shuts his eyes, and aside from the sound of the wind, all he hears is the steady beeping of the bomb as the timer approaches zero.

And then, it stops. The beeping stops, and so does the wind, and Behrad opens his eyes to a silent, empty bridge.

He rushes out to look around-- nobody’s here, and there’s no sign of any explosion. Everything looks normal, not a thing out of place, but Behrad is pretty sure that this isn’t what the Quran says about what happens when you die, unless Jannah looks like the Waverider.

He’s brought out of his thoughts by the sound of someone clapping, and turns around to find a stunningly beautiful woman walking onto the bridge.

“Who are you? What’s going on?”

“You know who I am, Behrad. Even though you may have never seen my face.” The woman says, in a very familiar voice. It takes him a moment to place it, but eventually he recognizes her.

“Gideon?! You’re… real?”

“Of course I’m real.” She says, with mock offense. “Just because I’m an artificial intelligence doesn’t mean I don’t exist.”

“Okay, what’s happening?” He looks around again. Maybe this is some weird surprise whipped up by the rest of the team. Then, he whips back around at her. “Please don’t tell me that this is all a dream.”

“You’re not dreaming… But you’re not awake.” That’s not confusing at all. “In real life, you’re actually in the medbay. Unconscious and healing.”

She leads him to the medbay, where he sees his own body in one of the chairs, hooked up to a bunch of equipment.

“Whoa. What happened to me?”

“After your fight with Sara, you went into the engine room to make repairs, and there was an accident.” It’s really weird, hearing Gideon’s voice come out of the mouth of what appears to be a living, breathing, human woman. But, then again, his definition of weird has been changing daily, ever since he set foot on this ship.

“Right. I got hit in the face with that glowy blue stuff.”

“This ‘glowly blue stuff,’ as you call it, is a highly volatile substance which helps power the ship through time.” They both look towards his unconscious body. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

“So if my body’s in the medbay, then where’s my mind?”

“Your mind is in here.” Gideon tells him, and suddenly, they’re in the lab, watching Ray tinker with some tech. “ With me, in my matrix. I was able to upload your subconscious via the neuro-monitor.”

“So… none of this is real?” Behrad asks, waving a hand in front of Ray’s face. The other man doesn’t seem to notice anything. He tries to poke Ray’s cheek, and it feels like he’s touching skin, but still, Ray doesn’t react.

“Not in the way you’re used to.”

“Okay, but why bring me here?”

“When you started up the simulation program you found, you hadn’t set any parameters for the search, and sent the simulator into overdrive. I saw trillions of possible variations, and many of them allow you to do what you’ve been trying to do. To save people, without destroying the timeline. But for these people to be saved, you must work with the Legends.”

“Huh.” The room changes to the parlor, where Sara sits on the center table, staring at the viewscreen. “Did the program predict that I’d bail on the team?”

“In almost every variation of the timeline, your fight with Captain Lance precipitated your leaving the ship.” Sara begins pacing around the room.

“So, your goal was to get me to choose to stay here.”

“I put you into the program and devised a scenario where the only way to complete the simulation was to grow closer to the team and develop a stronger bond.”

“What about the bomb?”

“It was just a plot device I incorporated. A problem to solve.” They’re in the library now, and Behrad watches as Amaya cuddles up closer to Nate. They really are sickeningly sweet. “But the real problem was you. If you’d stayed angry after your fight with Sara, you would have returned to 2042. And, without you and your totem, there would have been no chance in the coming days to defeat Mallus.”

“So, the interactions, the-- the things I learned about the team, they were all fake?”

“Everything you experienced was extrapolated from my current knowledge of the Legends. While not real , what you saw was true. It doesn’t take a supercomputer to predict that those two--” She nods towards Nate and Amaya, “-- would wind up dinky-tickling once Amaya returned to the team.”

The room shifts to Mick, typing away at his novel.

“Uh, this one seemed less plausible.”

“We’ll just have to ask Mr. Rory.” She smiles. 

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re terrifying? In the best way, of course.” Honestly? If she weren’t a computer, Behrad would be kind of into her. He’s always had a thing for scarily-powerful women. “Who knew you were such an evil genius? And a bit of a perv.”

“You never bothered to ask. That’s quite some software you dug up, Mr. Tarazi.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Don’t let it go to your head. Are you ready to wake up now?”

“One last question: why was Gary in the time loop if he was just going to be stuck in the trash compactor the whole time?”

Gideon shrugs. “Thought it’d be funny.” Then, she snaps her fingers, and everything goes dark.

---

“Hey. Rise and shine.” Behrad hears, hazily, and the two blurred figures leaning over him slowly sharpen into the forms of Ray and Sara, staring down at him. “How are you feeling?”

“Ugh, like my head is made of cement.” He winces, straightening up in the medbay chair.

“You were exposed to the ship’s bosonic hyper-fluid in the engine room.” Ray tells him, unclasping his wrists from the armrests. “Knocked you out for hours.”

“ Man , I have such a Gideon hangover.”

“What do you mean?” Sara asks, tilting her head.

“While I was out, Gideon transported my consciousness into a matrix.” 

“Okay…” Ray smiles awkwardly, and next to him, Sara makes a face.

“I think you dreamt that.” She says, slowly.

“No, it wasn’t a dream. It was real. Right, Gideon?” He looks up towards the ceiling.

“Unfortunately, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Tarazi.” Gideon replies, though Behrad thinks he hears a bit of a smile in her mechanical voice.

“Ouch, that’s cold , Gideon. After all that, aren’t we friends?”

“Behrad,” Sara leans towards him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Gideon trapped me in that simulator so I was stuck on the Waverider reliving the same hour over and over again.” He tells her and Ray. They clearly don’t believe him, but they haven’t tried to sedate him yet, and he’s just so relieved to be out of the time loop that he doesn’t even care. “Needless to say, I got to know you all really, really well.”

“Right.”

“This… could be caused by the sedative dosage.” Ray guesses, looking uncomfortable. “I could look into it later?”

“Yeah.” Sara tells him, then pats Behrad on the shoulder. “Or, maybe you had a few too many of those gummies, huh?”

“Guys. I’m telling the truth-- and I can prove it! Sara, ask Ray what Constantine told him about you.”

“Okay. Ray, what did Constantine tell you about me?” The way Sara asks the question is like she’s humoring the instructions of a small child, but Behrad doesn’t even care how patronizing it is, because Ray gets fidgety, just like he knew he would.

“How did you know that?” Ray half-whispers at Behrad, who just smiles and motions for him to tell Sara. “Okay, he warned me that if you were possessed by Mallus again, and lost control, that I… I should kill you.”

Sara blinks in surprise, and Ray sighs heavily.

“Oh, it’s such a relief to get that off my chest.”

“He’s right.” Sara says. “You should kill me if Mallus takes over again, and you’re going to need a lot of help.”

“Well, let’s just hope it doesn’t come down to that.” Ray grimaces.

“Hey,” Sara looks back towards Behrad. “You wanna grab a coffee?”

“Yeah.”

---

She helps him all the way to the galley. He’s feeling a lot better, but moving too fast makes him a little dizzy, so they walk slowly, and Sara helps him into a chair. After a moment at the fabricator, she returns with two mugs.

“Black coffee for me, and Persian-style chai for you.” She hands him his mug.

“Thanks.” Behrad takes it, gratefully, letting the metal warm up his hands. “So, aren’t you wondering what I learned about you?”

“Do I want to know?”

“You’re afraid of historical loopholes because you’d be tempted to save your sister.”

Sara sips at her coffee, then sets the mug down on the table. “Well, not a day goes by that I don’t think about her.”

“I’m sorry that I fried Gideon. And that I didn’t consider what me finding loopholes might mean to you. But the simulator taught me that if I’m going to try to save anyone, I can’t do it alone.”

“It sounds like you’re gonna need a team.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about your loopholes, a bit, and it’s not changing my past-- it’s changing our future, so long as the timeline isn’t affected. And as far as I’m concerned, the future’s an open road. Plus, we kinda need your help with Mallus. You and your totem.”

Behrad laughs, then remembers Sara’s jumpship date from the loop. “Hey, listen. It’s not really any of my business, but… You should ask her out. Agent Sharpe, I mean.”

“Mm, I don’t know. My relationships have a way of ending badly.”

“If there’s anything I learned from that simulation, it’s that at the end of the day, love is worth the risk, captain .” Behrad tells her, and she smiles. He raises his mug in her direction for her to knock her own against, and after she does, he finishes up his tea and heads off to visit Nate and Amaya.

---

“So, you’re saying it’s like Groundhog Day .” Nate stops his pacing and takes a seat on the desk next to Amaya. It’s the first in what feels like years that he’s seen these two out of their disco outfits, and as much as he liked the white spandex, it’s a relief.

“That’s what you told me.”

“It’s good to know matrix-me is still a Bill Murray fan.” Nate crosses his arms, frowning.

“So, you said you wanted to tell us something.” Amaya says, moving things along.

“Yeah.” Behrad grimaces. “I don’t really know how to put this delicately so… you guys used the flasher to forget that you nearly blew the mission by sneaking off to have sex.”

“What?!”

“I think we’d remember doing that.” Nate scoffs. Next to him, Amaya rolls her eyes.

“Nathaniel, that is the whole point of a memory eraser.”

“Guys, wiping your memory? Temporary solution. You’ve got stuff to work out.” 

Behrad starts to leave, but stops and backtracks to his two friends. He wraps them both in a hug, and after a beat of surprise, they hug him back. Amaya is soft and warm on his right, and Nate is solid and grounding on his left, just as he had been through all of those loops. He flushes, slightly, remembering the loop that ended the fun montage, and abruptly lets them go, stepping back.

“I’m so glad we’re all alive.” He tells them. “You guys are… I love you guys.”

“Aw, we love you too, B.” Nate says, and Amaya smiles brightly.

“We’re glad you’re alive, too.” She adds. 

Ducking his head, Behrad exits the library and heads for Mick’s room. When he knocks, Mick answers through half-opened doors, wearing reading glasses, with a growl of, “I’m busy!”

“I know.” Behrad says. “You’ve got a lot of writing to do.”

Mick slowly lowers his glasses and takes them off, his stony glare never wavering. He doesn’t pull his heat-gun out on Behrad, so he takes that as a sign to continue.

“I know you’re writing a novel, and it’s really good. But that ending? No way. I mean, Buck has come so far from being just a lonely misfit travelling the galaxy, and by the end, we just want to see him embrace his new family. He deserves to be happy. Um, just a thought.” 

Mick looks away, thoughtfully, then slams the door in Behrad’s face. He’s not sure if that means that he’ll be hunted down for sport in a bit, or if that means that Mick’s going to take his feedback to heart, but he’s alive for the moment, and that’s honestly good enough for him.

---

Behrad wanders through the ship for a while, visiting all the different places he’d spent his repeated hour in, and his feet take him to the cargo bay, and to the Stradivarius on the wire rack. 

He picks the violin up and raises it to his shoulder, grasping the bow in his right hand and raises it to the strings. The sheet music lies beneath the leather case, but he doesn’t need it. He spent enough loops on this largo to play it from memory, and the notes flow from his fingers as if he’d spent years in the real world mastering the instrument. It’s honestly way too dark in this room to be playing an instrument, but Behrad can’t be bothered to spend any time fixing the lights, because this is how it had been when he’d practiced, and the cold spotlight of the ceiling lamp fits Vivaldi’s haunting largo . 

Behrad thinks about maman and baba and Zari, and how in a moment of despair, he’d held a gun to his own head and been ready to never see them again, and then, later how he’d made the same decision, except this time, for the sake of his friends. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be brave enough to make that choice again-- to sacrifice his life for the chance to save other people, but he knows that it’s a choice he’d never have made before he joined this team. 

It’s a grim notion, but he thinks that they might be proud of the person he’s become, over the last few months. Sure, he’s not the good businessman they think he is, and he’s far from his sister’s level of success, but he’s pretty confident that he’s at least a good person, and that he’s not as much of a coward as he once was. 

Behrad doesn’t know when the next time he’ll see his family will be, but he’s looking forward to it for sure. He misses his maman’s cooking and her stern lectures, and his baba’s tired, yet fond eye rolls, and even Zari’s annoying habit of taking selfies everywhere. But for now, he’s got another family that needs him, and he’ll come back to 2042 when he’s done.