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Ava takes a personal leave from the Bureau.
In almost five years, Ava hasn't taken a sick day from the Bureau, but she’s felt sick ever since she told Sara to leave her office. She’s a little bit afraid that Sara is right and something nefarious is happening in her Bureau, and she’s a lot afraid that she’ll never fall in love again. And all of that adds up to something at least slightly worse than the sore throats her colleagues call out about.
So Ava is on leave.
Ava has free time.
Ava has never had free time before. At least none that she can remember. And she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
She cleans her already immaculate apartment. She takes a walk around her neighborhood - the cherry tree blossoms are even more astonishing than were described to her, but the rest of the city leaves much to be desired. She finishes the Househunters backlog on her DVR.
She drinks.
She drinks and recovers and does the rest of her routine and drinks and recovers and drinks and it passes the time better than anything else has.
And Sara has left her 5 voicemails and no less than 20 texts but she’s done with Sara and she will be able to accept that and also do her job any day now.
Five Thursdays after the Sunday she and Sara last spoke, Ava has settled into a routine. The grief is no longer overwhelming. The apartment has been cleaned and the entirety of the Househunters couples have been summarily judged. The cherry blossoms have been awed over. And the love of her life has been grieved.
Ava spent the afternoon drafting an email to Hank, explaining that she’s mostly overcome her illness and will retake her post next week.
And then Ava planned to start the evening with a shot of Macallan 30 neat, in celebration of her new life, or more accurately, a re-commitment to her old life. A life uncomplicated by Sara or her Legends, outside of the regular demands of her job.
She’s going to have this one shot of scotch, from the Vegas casino shot glass her ex gave her as a mostly-gag-gift, before she drinks the rest of it mixed with club soda, a cardinal sin according to Rip.
She wondered, after she found out who she was, what she was, if Rip programmed her to like aged Macallan with soda so he had someone to verbally spar with after hours, or if whomever had her programmed before Rip wrote this into her programming, or if this was just some aberration of her pre-programmed nature - what non-cloned humans call taste.
She doesn’t think about any of that now. She’s too busy not thinking about Sara now. As she takes this pure expensive shot of liquor before she spends the night indulging, a tradition her former Director bullied her into.
The shot, and its follow-up of whisky and soda in a crystal glass, has been meticulously poured, with the former approximately five inches from her mouth, a fitting indulgence after hours of composing and sending the second-most difficult email she’s ever written, when she’s unceremoniously interrupted.
A time portal is opened up in her living room, in full view of the stool at the kitchen island she’s perched upon, and she lowers her shot glass, as this almost certainly means she’s in the middle of a crisis she’ll need her full wits about her to solve.
A young girl comes through, pale and blonde with freckles, her hair french braided into two ponytails resting at the base of her neck. She falters for a second, her eyes not leaving Ava’s, before she continues her cocky stride and says, with a half smile as she confidently presents her right hand, “It’s nice to meet you Ava Sharpe.”
Ava has been trained to take in dozens of verbal and non-verbal cues every second and despite that, or perhaps because of it, she quickly takes the shot in her right hand that had been making its way back towards the table.
This girl, with her chin dimple and her smirk reminds her of Sara in so many ways that it overwhelms, maybe even triggers, her autonomic response and she’s trying to clear her throat as she counters with “and you are?”
The girl doesn’t drop her smirk or her cocksure stride but she shows a microexpression of what Ava would categorize as awe if she wasn’t afraid she was projecting.
Before Ava can analyze what that could mean, the girl is casually pulling up a stool perpendicular to Ava - essentially across from her, but with the sharp edge of the counter jutting out between them.
Before Ava can react - and she could react even with the alcohol still warming its way through her blood stream, if it weren’t for these glimpses of Sara in this girl. And the Time Bureau suit - long over the ankles, but short on the wrists, exactly two shades lighter than the current issue, the exact way it would look, without alter, approximately 25 years in the future assuming proper sun exposure - worn by this girl who is confidently pulling Ava's pre-poured crystal glass over to herself and making eye contact before she says “Macallan 30 and soda” before taking a long sip.
Ava is in the rare position of what she’d derogatorily describe in a subordinate’s assessment as ‘flailing’ before her instincts take over and she’s gracefully grabbing a second glass from her cabinet while sternly asking, “and who are you?”.
The girl has taken the first sip without flinching and she doesn’t fully drop her glass but instead brings it back up to her mouth, before about 2 inches before her lips, in an expression that Ava is trying not to compare to a very cocky Sara, says, “I’m one of your proteges, from the future”, before she gulps the rest of the drink with very little ceremony, and lets it drop, loudly to the counter before she follows up with, “and don’t worry” - she pulls out the exact model of ‘memory flasher’ Ava and the Bureau still uses - I will wipe your memory. Consensually. At the end of this interaction to avoid any time paradoxes as per section 11 point 6 point 2 of the Bureau code.
Ava is caught off guard, or perhaps somehow comforted enough, to just look at this girl, and instead of immediately interrogating her, meticulously pours her new glass with scotch before doing the same to the girl’s, and then pulls out two cold cans of lime club soda from the mini fridge built under the kitchen island and slides one across the table.
She doesn’t open her can, but instead watches this calm intruder, to maintain eye contact with this Sara-doppelganger as she casually wears that smirk as an umbrella over it’s chin dimple as she tilts the glass to pour exactly two thirds soda over the exact one and half ounces of scotch Ava had auto-counted, keeping the bubbles from overflowing, before she drops the can and says “I know you Ava, or more importantly, you know me. Or you will.
You’ll take me under your wing someday”
Ava barely gets the chance to transmit her breakthrough fear to her face before this girl is speaking “and I have this flasher” - nonverbally gesturing to it with a head tilt and eyebrow raise that jilts Ava, some expression she can’t immediately comprehend, but if she had to time analyze without the immediate stress and impending memory loss would realize she sees in the mirror most mornings - “and the timeline will be safe, no matter what happens here; I promise.”
Ava believes her.
Ava can barely believe she believes her and takes a swig of scotch to steady herself as she says “and how can you promise that?”
To any of her subordinates, it would be a scathing indictment of their work, but to this girl it just sounds sincere.
“Because I was trained by the best.”
“By the Bureau?”
“By you.”
Ava is more overwhelmed with emotion than she can ever remember feeling in any instance where she wasn’t in Sara Lance’s presence but manages to ask “and what crisis brings you to this moment in time?” before she takes another faux-causally indulgent sip.
“Your breakup with Sara Lance”
Ava starts to choke on her whisky and makes her way to the sink to cough up the liquid that went down the wrong pipe and probably some of what she drank earlier, disgustingly regurgitating it into an empty sink.
As she begins to get her composure back, she turns towards the girl, just then rounding the kitchen island with both glasses and, upon making eye contact with Ava, drops them both on the counter and then hastens her way to the fridge to grab a full ice cold pitcher and pours it into a glass Ava’s already pulled down, even as she gets her bearings.
Ava catches her breath and takes the glass and sips, and the girl is exceedingly careful to make sure Ava’s finished drinking before she says “My name is Lo”.
Ava, with her voice raspy and broken, repeats ”and the crisis that brings you to this moment is?”
The girl has already grabbed a second tall glass, from the same crystal-patterned collection of the tumblers, and is holding both it and the pitcher in front of Ava before she gently goads, “lets go to the couch”
Ava immediately takes one more sip and swishes, gargles, and spits into the empty sink before she makes her way to the couch with her water and she justifies it by thinking she went because of the necessity of this future mission and not the kind supplication in Lo's eyes.
They make their way to the couch, in front of a coffee table holding their previous glasses along with the opened bottle of Macallan and two unopened cans of cold lime clubs soda positioned carefully on coasters, and Lo says “you should take one more sip”, and Ava does so, with an inadvertent roll of her eyes, if it will get this girl talking.
“So why are you here?”
“You always go—get right down to business, huh?”, the girl says with a chuckle.
Ava notices the clumsy tense change but ignores in favor of the rhetorical high ground - “Yes. You said you're a protege of mine. Have I not made that clear?”
The girl, to Ava’s dismay, chuckles again before she pulls her glass to her lips and says around it, “You have. You always do.”
Ava is immediately annoyed, in the way Sara always annoys her, which she is decidedly not thinking about, and says “I do. And as my protege you should know that.”
This tone always pushes recruits off-kilter, but this girl just calmly replies, “I do”, and her smile is fond, in a way that sets Ava off balance. Ava takes a sip from her cold water glass and then places it on her glass coffee table.
The girl seems to notice Ava’s uncharacteristic lack of concern for a coaster and says, with her legs spread, elbows resting on them, patterned crystal carefully cradled in both hands, as her smile shows even more affection and she replies “I definitely do.”
She looks Ava up and down with a careful scrutiny for several seconds, and Ava can’t help but wait before the girl unceremoniously announces “I’m your daughter”.
Ava’s eyes immediately widen and she thinks if she was holding a glass it would be shattered by now, and this girl, her daughter apparently, seems to hold the same thought and has the audacity to chuckle again.
She follows up, “yours and Sara’s”
“No, I can’t…”, she takes a big gulp from her scotch glass.
“You can. You will. Some stuff happens I can’t let you in on, even with the precautions we have in place”.
As Ava’s head immediately turns towards Lo’s flasher, left sitting on the counter, she can see Lo’s eyes move towards it as well.
“But all the timey-wimey hijinks the Legends fall head-first into” - Ava can’t help but smile at that turn of phrase - “lead to a way for you and Sara to naturally conceive a baby together”.
She makes a flourish down her body with both hands, careful enough not to spill a drop of her scotch, as if to say “me”.
Ava gapes at her, with her mind in a rare instance of short-circuiting, when Lo cuts in with, “drink some water, Ava”.
And Ava does, surprised to be following the orders of this girl, an intruder in her home pretending to be her daughter.
After she swallows, she asks the only question her brain can come up with, “why don’t you call me ‘mom’?”
“I do. You’re ‘mom’ and Sara’s ‘mama’. But most definitely, right now, you are ‘Ava’. You’ve got a ways to go until you become my mom. Which is fine! I just need to make sure you get there.”
“And how are you going to make sure of that, if you’re going to wipe my mind according to protocol after this interaction?”
“How familiar with time loops are you, Agent Sharpe?” the girl asks, in a sincere tone that belies more than a bit of teasing, before she takes another swig of her drink.
“More than almost anyone else on the planet.”
“Exactly” Lo confirms, trying - and failing - very hard not to be smug. “In my timeline this already happened. And mom gave me enough details to know this is the turning point. This evening, before you were about to shoot that glass of scotch.” She exaggeratedly tilts her head back to the counter towards the shot glass in a gesture Ava is almost certain she means to be at least 90% more subtle, and Ava is once again overcome with images of Sara.
“You’re really hers aren’t you? Sara’s?”
Lo immediately breaks into a wide smile, and Sara’s dimples are on full display.
“Yeah. And yours.”
“How so?”
“Hmmm?”
“You…you look like her. You act like her, even in small ways. But you said you’re mine too. I haven’t seen that.”
Lo looks at her, incredulous.
“I’m wearing a Time Bureau suit. I brought a fully-charged memory flasher. I used coasters. I…”
She stops abruptly as Ava breaks out into laughter. It’s the first time she lets herself believe it. She’s not sure Lo is biologically hers but she’s already made a solid case for the fact that Ava has some influence on her upbringing.
“And why you? Why tonight?”
“Because you’ve spent the last 5 weeks alone. Which was good for you; the not working part I mean. But you’re wallowing, drinking excessively, and watching dumb reality TV”
Ava starts to argue that Househunters is not dumb before Lo silences her with a look. (A look Ava pretends doesn’t send a jolt of self-recognition through her).
“And you don’t believe Ma…Sara cares about you, or has your back. But she does. She always does. Even when she disagrees with you. It’s pretty annoying, your whole ‘united front’ thing to be honest. If you realize it’s me who did this I’m going to have to deal with it again in about 20 minutes.”
She rolls her eyes and Ava feels her chest tighten as it tries to hastily make room for the swell of affection she feels for this girl.
She squashes it with the annoyance at Sara she’s been trying to quell. “She went against me at every possible instance of this case. She undermined my authority as Director. She…”
“I know. And you’ll need to work that out - the hard way. My presence doesn’t change that.”
“Then why are you here?” Ava asks in a voice that sounds way more pleading that she’d prefer.
“Because all the stuff that happens around the Legends is…about to happen. And you tell the story about how tonight you had a change of heart. About how you took a shot of scotch and were ready to meet the next adventure. I know enough about Director Sharpe and Captain Lance at this point, and how you both bent, to know that something happened to you tonight. Something more than an expensive shot of Scotch.”
Ava swallows down the obvious question with another sip of her drink, and instead asks, “are you even old enough to be drinking?”.
Lo looks at her, expression full of fondness and affection and what Ava is now afraid to believe is recognition, before she answers “I’m about 8 months shy of the legal age in this place and time, mom, but I’m legal in the future. And it’s been less than two drinks.”
‘Mom’ pings something deep in her heart and Ava is very good at ignoring things as trivial as feelings while on the job, but she struggles to hold this one in line.
“Disregarding that for a moment - I believe that Sara and I will make up, and you ‘flash’ me, and the timeline is secure?”
“Yeah something like that.”
“And how does it differentiate from that?”
Lo looks at her again with a fondness that once again squeezes Ava’s heart but very calmly explains “It’s not belief. It’s not just belief. It’s hope. You need to hope you and Sara will get back together. That you’ll work out this disagreement and become a couple again.”
Ava stands up so abruptly she catches herself, but apparently not Lo, off guard. “How am I supposed to believe that when she - “
“Mom”
Ava’s entire body freezes as Lo seemed to know it would, as she slowly approaches, gently grips Ava’s bicep and says “You see Sara in me but I know you see you too, even though you’re denying it. I’m yours.”
Ava begins to deflate until Lo’s grip tightens.
“Mom, I’m yours. Yours and Mama’s. I would be even if I wasn’t biologically related to you, but I am. You made me.”
Ava shrugs off Lo’s grip as she chokes out “there is no me, I’m a -”
“Clone, yeah I know. Mom, that isn’t even in the top 10 things of weirdness I’ve been exposed to. You’re a clone! And Mama’s a cl…Listen you’re both exceptional, amazing, incredible in the purest sense, women and all the things you love about Sara. All the things you made Sara believe about herself. All those dark corners she shouldn’t be terrified of. That’s true of you too. How can you believe that about her without believing Mama sees that in you too? Because she does. She always has. She told me that a million times! And if you just hold on, I promise a lot of other people are going to see that too. You’re going to have a family. Even years before I’m born. People will love you, for exactly who you are and you will love them.
And since I was a little girl both you and Mama promised me you’d do everything you could so that I’d never have to feel as lonely and isolated as you both did and I haven’t. So far at least; the future is not promised, especially in our family business”.
She chuckles and Ava can’t help but join along even though what actually comes out of her mouth is a sound she’s never heard before. But Lo seems unphased.
“They knew who you were, right? Mama, and Uncle Gary, and even Uncle Ray. They knew who you were in that AVA factory, because you’re you.
“Uncle Gary.”
“Mom, please just go with it. That’s like 3 other visits at this point in your life.”
Ava wants to laugh that horrible sound again, but Lo is moving towards the counter, towards the flasher, and she suddenly feels desperate. As wary as she was of this girl when she showed up, she doesn’t want her to leave now. She doesn’t want to let go of this future where she has Sara. Where she has a daughter.
“I…wait…”
Maybe it’s just that she wants company. That she did miss the chaos of other people even as she reveled in the peace of solitude.
“Ava, Mom, I promise it will be fine. You will be fine. Not for a little while, but you and Sara will work things out, and you’ll protect the timeline together, and you’ll have me. And it won’t be easy, but it will be so much easier than this, I promise.
You took the time you needed to figure out who you are alone. Now it’s time to figure out how you fit into a family.”
“You keep saying that. Family. Do you mean the Legends? Because I can believe in a lot of impossible things but that’s…”
“Mom”
She's impetulant, and Ava gets a glimpse of who this girl was as a teenager. A glimpse into the past and future all at once.
“Am I a good one?”
“What?”
“A mom? Am I a good one? Do I warm your bottles to the right temperature, and scare the monsters away, and listen - really listen not like -”
“Mom, you’re the best.”
She’s looking at Ava with an expression of pure delight. Regular and chin dimples all on pure display, head tilted up, even though she is maybe only an inch or so shorter. Ava has seen this exact expression and posture on Sara before, only once, when she got Ava drunk on jello shots before convincing her to do Karaoke with the Legends and Ava completely embarrassed herself. She was furious the next day, as the group kept cracking jokes about her performance, but held at bay by the intermittent flashbacks of that exact expression on Sara’s face. The same one she had as she poured syrup on Ava’s french toast the next ‘morning’ at almost 1pm.
“Am I?”
Ava’s voice breaks. And her expression breaks. And her whole body breaks. And she she wishes she brought the bottle of scotch over to the counter with her.
Instead of answering, Lo hugs her. And even though she’s comforting Ava, her posture in the embrace is still somehow seeking comfort. Ava awkwardly but instinctually uses one arm to pull Lo closer and the other to cradle the back of Lo’s head in her hand and the girl melts.
Gone is the cool, confident, pseudo-Time Agent and in her place is a little girl Ava desperately wants to take care of. She wants to buy her toys and put bandaids on her knees and bake her snickerdoodles, but before she can address this urge, Lo is pulling away and putting her mask of adulthood back on.
“You’re the best.” The cocky smirk returns as she teases, “tied for first at least.”
“Does Sara make you say that?”
She laughs, genuine, and Ava doesn’t see Sara this time, or even a piece of herself, but instead sees a joyful little girl she yearns to raise.
“Maybe”, Lo says mischievously.
“Are you okay?” Ava feels compelled to ask, “besides the need for this trip I mean.”
“Great. I mean not great because I’m 20 and that’s really hard for a million reasons. But absolutely none of them has to do with you being my mom.
“Really”
“Yes . You and Ma, you’re great. I don’t tell you that enough because again, twenty, but you are. You’re an amazing wife and an even better mom.”
“Wife?” Ava awes over the term.
Lo laughs.
“Really? Everything I just told you, showed you, me, and you’re hung up on ‘wife’? Oh my God, you both always were this sickeningly in love, weren’t you?”
“What?..I don’t…”
“Mom,” Lo’s voice has turned stern, more similar to the one she had when she first showed up.
“Wait. I mean, do you want to have one more drink? Straight seltzer for you maybe?”
The suggestion makes Lo smile, but she holds firm.
“I think it’s time for me to go. I can see it in your eyes, hope. And that was my mission.
Ava tries not to deflate, to lose this look of hope Lo is looking for, but she seems to notice it anyway.
“I’ll have a drink with you and Ma tonight. My tonight. I promise.”
She holds her hand out, pinky extended and Ava doesn’t know what to do with it, feeling truly panicked for the first time despite the bizarreness of this evening.
Lo just casually drops it with, with a laugh as she envelopes Ava into another hug. This time it definitely feels like Lo is hugging her.
When they let go, Lo reaches for the memory device, and Ava feels another aching sense of panic. But Lo assures her again, “Mom, everything is going to be okay, I promise. Can you please set back down on that stool for me?”
“I had the -”
“The bottle and the glass, I know. I’ll grab it before you come to”.
Lo knows that the placement of any of the glassware in Ava’s apartment won’t matter due to how she’ll be found weeks from now, and she accepts that knowledge as one of the first difficult responsibilities of the adulthood she’s always claiming she’s achieved.
Ava nods and sits down and for a moment neither of them know what to say.
“You’ll see me soon. Well I guess not super-soon, but you know...”
Now Ava chuckles, casually taking back the upper hand for the first time since the beginning of this conversation, “I know. I promise that I’ll do everything I can to turn you into this person you are now.”
Lo wants to cry. Wants to put the flasher down and hug her mom. This young, insecure, terrified woman that will become her mom.
Instead she does her job. Activates the flasher. Hurries to gather the bottle and one glass to place back on the counter while her mother is still stunned. And opens up a portal to her room in the opposite direction of the one where Ava is blankly staring into space.
Ava ‘comes to’ sitting at her counter with an empty shot glass and a half-drunk tumbler before her. She doesn’t even notice she’s smiling as she looks at the ⅔ full bottle, or that she feels lighter as she dumps her remaining drink into the empty sink.
She doesn’t notice the hope blooming in her chest for possibly the first time in her life as she grabs the dish soap and sponge.
She barely even registers the sound of the shot glass shattering as Neron pulls her away from the sink with enough momentum to break her mirror as she crashes into it.
When they return to her apartment from purgatory, her achy and both of them exhausted, Sara will smile at her as she holds 4 crystal glasses, a tumbler and water glass in each hand, as Ava clears the sink and it will unlock something in Ava’s chest she can’t explain.
And for once she won’t search for an explanation. Her girlfriend has faced hell for her, and is carefully tidying her trashed apartment, and still looks at Ava like she’s the only thing that matters.
And even as Ava cuts her finger on a shard of the shot glass, she’ll know everything will be alright.