Work Text:
+++ 1 +++
Ava was surprised to find herself back at Sink, Shower, and Stuff for the third time that week. She hated the big box store but had to acknowledge that they had all of the little things they needed quickly after moving into an actual home that lacked the fabricator she’d grown fond of the last few years of her life.
“Oh, yeah, we just moved here so we’ve been by a few times,” she overheard Sara tell the store employee who’d asked if they needed any help. “Actually, we’re looking for some of your garden stuff today.”
As Ava maneuvered the cart closer to them, Sara asked, “Where do you guys keep your tractors?”
Both the store employee and Ava gave her confused looks. “Um, ma’am, we don’t carry tractors. But I can give you the number of the farm supply store down the road.”
“To mow the lawn,” Sara replied as if it was self-explanatory. “We live on a farm so we need a tractor to do all-”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Ava said, waving her hands to pause whatever her wife’s train of thought was. “One, that is not what a tractor is for, and two, we don’t live on a farm.”
Sara’s eyes went wide in response. “Uh, yeah, we do? What else would you call like, the acre of land we own?”
“A yard.”
“Sorry to, uh, cut in,” the worker interjected, “but we do sell lawnmowers if that’s what you’re looking for?”
“I guess,” Sara grumbled.
Ava sighed and placed a comforting hand on her wife’s lower back. “Do you sell any riding mowers maybe? Instead of push ones?”
+++ 2 +++
Sara was thrilled to learn that there was a weekly Saturday market in their town. She convinced Ava to include it in their new fridge calendar, which really wasn’t hard considering Ava wanted to go, wanted to get Sara excited about using the calendar, and wasn’t going to say no after the number of kisses Sara planted on her just before asking.
Plus, Ava figured it would be a nice way to integrate themselves into the community. As they walked hand in hand past the various stalls, Sara pointed to one with fresh produce. “Want some veggies, babe?”
“Sure,” Ava says, pressing a kiss against Sara’s forehead as they walk over. They chat with the woman at the stand before ordering.
“We’ll take some carrots, and tomatoes, and…” Sara trails off, looking at the offerings in front of her.
“Ooo they have cherries, babe,” Ava supplies.
“Cherries,” Sara echoes, “and maybe some snap peas?”
“Sounds good to me,” Ava replies pulling out her wallet to pay. Offhandedly, she asks the woman, “Do you grow this all in your own garden or is it just locally sourced?”
The woman smiles as she counts their change. “Actually, my husband always wanted a farm growing up, so when we were looking for our first home, we decided to just go for it. We’ve been selling our produce ever since.”
“That’s amazing,” Ava responds with a smile.
“We have a farm of our own,” Sara chimes in, to which her wife shakes her head in response.
“We have a big yard.”
“Yeah, big enough to be a farm,” Sara continues.
The older woman gives them a knowing smile and turns around to grab a small packet of something which she deposits in their bags. “Here. I’m not sure how big your…land is, but you can start with a few seeds. See how it goes.”
Ava smiles politely, looking over to see Sara giving the stranger a huge grin and promising to return the following week with any updates.
+++ 3 +++
Zari points to some napkins with silverware expertly wrapped inside and Ava turns, happily accepting the silent request. She’s thrilled to be reunited with family and, this time, it feels less like she’s the team mom, more like the week and a half on the outside has made them all into semi-functioning adults already.
Spooner has finished with the placemats and Behrad finished arranging the dishes as he’d like on the table when she hears him ask Nate how his book is coming along.
Ava sighs to herself, as Nate dodges the question, saying something about organizing and outlining. She’d received a text from him that morning that said something along the lines of How am I supposed to write a book if I can’t read ?? and hopes that the Zari who is currently in the totem calls him out on it all.
“Writing, that’s the easy part,” Nate wraps up. “So, uh, how’s the farm?”
Ava assumes the question is directed at Spooner, which is why she stops in her tracks and gives Sara a look when, she too, pipes up and says, “It’s great!”
Sara looks over at Spooner, who gives her the go-ahead, before glancing up and a smirk appearing on her face. “Sorry, we have a farm too,” she says, pouring her drink.
“We have a yard,” Ava pointedly states, placing her wife’s cutlery down.
“With a lot of grass,” Sara added, as if that’s all that’s needed to call their home a farm.
Knowing that she is losing the battle in front of people who lived on a chrome spaceship for the better part of the last few years, Ava just rubs her wife’s shoulder comfortingly before mouthing over her head at Nate, ‘We have a yard’.
“And,” Sara continues, “I’m thinking about getting up some, ah, chickens, you know? It’s pretty quiet without you kids around.”
Behrad and Astra are beaming from the other end of the table as Ava knows that most of the team still really does look up to them as Captains and as their time moms.
Zari steps between the two as she continues to arrange the table. “Well, you know you could get some real kids. Just saying,” she quickly adds, hands up as if she already knows Ava’s next words.
“Okay, okay,” Ava interjected quickly, heart pounding in her chest. Of course, she and Sara had multiple discussions about children after seeing what Robo-Gideon showed them, but she wanted to take it slow. Essentially, reintegrate themselves into the world before bringing a kid into it.
And Sara was more than ready to be a mom. She’d said so herself, but she also didn’t want to push Ava into doing something she was still skeptical about. Plus, Ava knew that with both of them being women, and the high likelihood that she, as the mostly human one, would be the one to carry, it would take time for everything to come together.
“Let’s just start with the chickens,” she conceded, hoping to move on from the subject.
+++ 4 +++
They had begun building the coop much to Ava’s chagrin. It wasn’t that she couldn’t say no to Sara, she’d said it plenty of times as Director of the Time Bureau. It was that since getting back from their dinner Sara had been a ball of energy, close to combusting any time she mentioned farm fresh eggs and caring for their chickens.
“It’ll give me something to do when I wake up early,” she’d added, knowing Ava was not a superfan of Sara’s internal clock which, despite her having left the league almost over a decade ago, still woke her up at 5 am.
And when Sara was bored at 5 am, it often led to her waking Ava up for an early morning workout or to cuddle and finish the movie they’d fallen asleep watching or for some sleepy sex (which Ava was never opposed to).
In short, Ava had gone out to the closest homeware store and picked up some supplies before realizing she had no clue what she was doing. Sara, while a good mechanic when it came to the Waverider, was just as clueless, so they called over the next best people.
“Hey, need a refill?” Ava asked Nora, who was sitting on their porch, drinking lemonade, and watching Ray build a coop that Ava would bet was more hi-tech than necessary.
“Absolutely,” she responded. “Although I’ll need some help getting up soon. Your nephew loves playing soccer with my bladder.”
“That is just not how it works, like, biologically,” Ava replied, pouring some more lemonade into her cup.
“Eh, po-tay-to, po-tah-to,” Nora said, turning back to look at Ray.
Ava heard the side door slam and Sara yell out, “I’m working on it!” before she could get chastised by her wife.
She just shook her head and poured herself a drink, sitting down in the lounge chair beside Nora’s. “Do you think it’ll take your kid more or less time to learn not to slam that door?” Ava asked her friend playfully.
“I heard that,” Sara replied, coming over to sit on the arm of Ava’s chair.
“We’ve been here like a month, babe.”
“Three weeks,” Sara quickly replied, giving Ava a smile that usually got her out of trouble. “And I leave through the front door most mornings.”
“Alright, alright,” Ava grumbled into her drink as she took a sip.
Sara ran a hand through her wife’s hair, pushing some blonde whisps that had escaped her ponytail back behind her ear, before looking over at the other woman on the porch with them. “So, Nora, how do you like the farm so far?”
“It’s really nice,” she responded at the same time Ava jumped in and said, “It’s not a farm.”
“It IS,” Sara insisted.
“Yeah, she’s right,” Nora added. “You definitely live on a farm.”
“It’s just a big yard!”
“There’s a lot of grass though,” Nora countered.
“That’s what I said!” Sara cried out. “See, babe?! It’s a farm.”
“Plus,” Nora continued, shifting slightly into a more comfortable position, “how many yards have fresh veggies growing out back with a chicken coop?”
“Probably a lot,” Ava offered, despite not being able to think of an example.
“And I wouldn’t say that a wraparound porch is super common in normal houses either. Or having that big car out front,” Nora finished.
“That big car is for Sara’s gym equipment,” Ava tried to argue.
“And for our future farm kids,” Sara added, causing Ava to groan out.
“It’s a yard,” she replied meekly, causing Nora and Sara to laugh in tandem.
+++ 5 +++
Somewhere, in the very back of her brain, Ava is extremely grateful they weren’t able to get chickens before they got arrested. She knows it wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but she can’t help but think of the disaster they may have had to return to.
She sighed as Sara sat on her bed, leaning over to rest her head on Ava’s shoulder. “Tired,” her wife mumbled. “Your kid just keeps moving around in there.”
Despite Sara’s discomfort, Ava smiled hearing those words and began to run her hand through blonde curls. “Anything I can do babe?”
“Be my pillow for a bit?” Sara replied, jostling them apart and coming to now rest her head in Ava’s lap.
Once settled, Ava continued her soft scratches down Sara’s scalp with one hand, while laying the other comfortingly on Sara’s slightly swollen belly. “Better?”
“Much,” she sighed out, closing her eyes.
Ava just looked longingly down at her as she thought about the last few weeks. To probably no one’s surprise but her own, domestic life suited them. She and Sara were settled in a way she could only dream of before. But then came Gary’s news and Gwyn’s absence. Then came World War II and a surprise pregnancy and getting thrown into a solitary jail where it took her what she counted to be about a week to find any other legend.
Finding Zari during laundry duty was sheer luck. Finding Astra during some type of battle simulator a few days later allowed her to begin formulating a plan. The three women knew they would have a singular opportunity when their wing of the prison experienced their moment of whatever outdoor time meant on a foreign planet for the first time since being arrested.
They all knew the chances of getting recaptured were not only likely but probably the only way to make it to the others. So, naturally, they burnt down half of the prison, using Astra’s powers - which surprisingly no one had bothered to look into due to her being human - and made it all the way to the other side of the enormous prison. Ava, knowing her wife well, found Sara, slightly more pregnant than she had left her, rallying a group of humans and aliens together.
Although everyone was recaptured, Ava managed to scare the warden enough to have some time organization leader come down from above and give the Legends a trial. It was obvious to everyone that they were more dangerous separated than together, if the destruction, damage, and enormous amount of escapees they left behind was any proof, so they were moved to another prison on another planet for whatever rehabilitative time travel program was suggested by the judge.
Ava had to admit that, despite their continued capture, this prison was nicer than the last, maybe due to its specialization.
“I can hear you thinking from here,” Sara said, interrupting her thoughts. “It’s ruining my naptime.”
Ava snorted at her teasing. “How?”
“You’re thinking and then you stop with the scratchies and I can’t think about getting home if I’m not well rested and cuddled,” Sara answered sweetly.
“Babe-”
Before she could say what she wanted to, Spooner cut in from her own cell next to theirs. “I get that you guys are in love or whatever, but you do realize there is 0 privacy in these things?”
Astra rolled her eyes next to her as Gary added from a few cells down, “It’s like a free rom-com!”
“No,” Behrad insisted, “It’s like the cell on our ship. That we need to get back to. Again.”
“See?” Sara replied, still only looking at Ava. “Cuddles so I can think of our home and our home away from home. Speaking of, we need to get chickens and also I think we’ve been gone long enough that our jobs have fired us.”
Ava lowered her head, now thinking about the sweet library who had hired her, not because of her long resume full of accomplishments, but because Rebecca Silver had agreed to serve as a reference for her. “Fine, fine,” she said, returning to comb her fingers through Sara’s hair. “So we can get home.”
After a few minutes passed in silence, the alien living across their cell chimed in. “You guys have chickens? To eat?”
Ava shook her head no. “Not yet, but we have a coop. And some vegetables around it.”
He nodded once and, from her understanding of his physiology, did something akin to smiling. “I had a farm back home too.”
“Oh, no, it’s just a yard but-”
“See!” Sara interrupted cheerfully, still not sitting up from her spot. “We do live on a farm!”
“We don’t even have the chickens, babe. Just the spot to put them in.”
“It’s a farm,” the alien solidified. “Although, mine had Earth chickens and Pliny-78Y3 chickens and…”
As the alien continued on, Ava rolled her eyes, hoping they would all be able to escape soon.
+++ +1 +++
Ava woke up to the sound of giggling and a chicken bawking somewhere that definitely sounded a bit too close for comfort. Without opening her eyes, she said, “There better not be a chicken on the floor.”
“She’s not on the floor, silly,” she heard 7-year-old Laurel respond. “I put Petunia on the bed.”
Ava’s eyes opened wide as she scrambled to sit up against the headboard. True to Laurel’s word, there, in the middle of her and Sara’s bed, was 4-year-old Violet Sharpe-Lance cuddling with Petunia the chicken. “I help, mommy!” Violet added.
“Yeah,” Laurel assured her from behind her sister, “Vi got on the bed super sneaky like Mama so we wouldn’t wake you.”
“If there is a chicken on my bed, I’d like to be woken up for it,” Ava responded, still slightly reeling. “Please,” she added as an afterthought, almost in disbelief.
Violet began to pet the chicken all while she could hear Sara waking up their youngest down the hall. Before Ava could put the chicken down or yell out for her wife, Laurel clambered onto the bed. “So, can we keep her?”
“Keep who?” Ava asked, confused as to what her daughter was talking about.
“She would be just like Petunia, only softer. So this is like a test run, really. And we help with the chickens so we could feed her too when we feed them. And I’m sure she wouldn’t steal food from Sir Clucks-a-Lot or Cluck Vader or Attila or-”
“Baby,” Ava interrupted, rubbing comforting circles on Laurel’s back to slow her down. “I have no clue what you’re talking about. Or who.”
“Cat!” Violet provided as Petunia, now done with her antics, fluttered off the bed and down the hall.
Ava yawns, hoping Sara would at least see the chicken out on its journey. For a moment, the chaos reminds her of their single bathroom Waverider days as Sara calls out, “Did you guys bring a chicken upstairs?!”
“Maybe,” Laurel responds as her other mother walks into the room holding baby Poppy.
“Well, a little warning would’ve been nice,” Sara replied, placing Poppy in Ava’s arms before leaning down to kiss Ava. “‘Morning, sleeping beauty,” she mumbled against her lips.
“You know it was on our bed?” Ava said before placing a kiss on Poppy’s forehead. She babbled in response, causing the rest of the Sharpe-Lances to laugh.
“It’s fine. We need to do laundry today anyways,” Sara said, laying back down in her spot on Laurel’s other side.
Violet launched herself at her Mama, but if Ava had noticed anything since their girls were born, it was that Sara’s assassin reflexes had only gotten better with motherhood. “Cat, Mama!” she repeated as she cuddled close.
Sara blushed in response and gave Ava a pleading look. “Okay, listen…” she began, causing her wife to laugh.
“I don’t think anything good has ever started with those words,” Ava teased.
Sara rolled her eyes playfully and continued. “This morning, Vi and Laur were helping me with the chickens and veggies when we found a…well…” her face twisted as she tried to find the right words. “I’m not sure feral is correct, but something like a barn cat?”
Ava immediately knew where the conversation was going and sighed. “And you three want to keep him?”
“He has nowhere else to go, Mommy,” Laurel replied as if it was obvious that the cat needed to live with them. “And his fur looks so soft but Mama said I can’t play with him until he takes a bath and you say it’s okay.”
Ava looked from her daughter’s pleading eyes, up to her wife’s. “Mommy, I want to play with kitty too,” Violet added. “I’ll give soft pats and hugs,” she finished with a nod that was entirely Sara’s mannerism.
She waited for a beat before looking down at the baby in her arms, Poppy’s blue eyes just staring back at her. “What do you say, Poppy? Should we get a cat?”
They waited with bated breath until Poppy babbled again and reached to put her foot near her mouth.
“I think that’s a yes,” Sara said with a laugh.
Suddenly, Ava found herself with two little girls cheering and jumping on her bed, chanting, “Cat! Cat! Cat!”
Ava smiled at their antics and felt Sara get closer. She leaned her head down on her shoulder as Sara wrapped an arm around her back .”First the chickens, now a cat.”
“It’ll be good in the fall for the mice,” Sara responded absentmindedly. “And he’s an outdoor cat so we don’t even need much. Maybe just a cat flap leading out back.”
“You said barn cat.”
“They’re essentially the same. Barn cats…outdoor cats…they had a few when Laurel went on that field trip to a farm in kindergarten.”
Ava hummed in response and watched two of her daughters in their silly moods as the third wriggled in her arms. “Hey, babe,” she whispered, moving her head to mumble against the skin of Sara’s neck. “I think you were right.”
“About what, babe?” Sara asked, tightening her grip on Ava lovingly.
“We live on a farm,” she replied, feeling Sara’s laughter before she heard it, and causing Violet and Laurel to focus back on their moms, asking what was so funny and if they could bring the cat to the bed with Petunia.