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They only realized that the sounds they were hearing were outside about five minutes after landing. It was a little dizzy after the abrupt jump to focus on anything, especially because they had just brought him back and because their team was still incomplete. A particularly heavy thunder had to hit close to help them understand that it was pouring outside, and they didn’t even know where “outside” was.
“Gideon, where the heck did you take us?” Sara demanded to know, trying not to shiver.
“The closest to the site where you can get the next fragment of the Spear, Captain,” the AI answered. “Manaus, Amazon, September 2013.”
“Isn’t it rain season?” Amaya asked.
“It’s always rain season in the Amazon,” Mick observed, his attention all to the tuna sandwich in his hand, completely oblivious to the mixed looks he was getting from the others.
Another thunder cracked causing Sara to tremble and it didn’t go unnoticed by Leonard, who didn’t leave his chair across the room since before they landed, in part because he was handcuffed to it. He wasn’t sure they would let him go any time soon.
“So part of the Spear is in the middle of the rain forest during the biggest storm season?” Sara asked, just to make sure.
“No,” Gideon replied. “The fragment is buried in the former sacred ground of the Amazon Arena in downtown Manaus.”
“Sacred ground never ceases being sacred,” Amaya noted and Jax shook his head.
“It’s not sacred in the way you’re thinking,” he told her excitedly. “It’s sacred because this Arena hosted one of the greatest World Cup games of all times.”
Nate and Ray looked at one another letting out an excited “Ohhhh!”, Sara rolled her eyes and Stein decided he wouldn’t open his mouth about any of that because of reasons. Gideon cleared her imaginary throat.
“Uh, actually –“ she started, but Nate interrupted.
“I will have to stop you right there, Gideon, this place is sacred because of soccer!”
“Wait,” Ray spoke over him. “Does that mean we’ll be able to actually walk on the Amazon Arena’s grass to find the Spear?”
“I’m afraid there’s no grass in the field yet to do so, Mr. Palmer,” Gideon told them and almost all of them looked disappointed about it. “But I have the coordinates to get the fragment near the place where the left goal will be placed, and if you don’t get it out in the next couple of days, and if Captain Hunter and the Legion of Doom don’t get here in the mean time, it will be found by the workers and considered an Indian artefact. It will be taken to a heavily secured museum in Rio de Janeiro.”
“Oh, oh!” Amaya said jumping up and down. “Does that mean that we’ll g-“
“No,” Gideon said before she even finished. Sara sighed.
“Too bad,” she mumbled and Mick groaned in agreement.
“Easier to break into a museum than to dig the dirt,” he commented, mouth full.
“Will it be raining for the whole couple of days we have to find it, Gideon?” Sara asked.
“It will, Captain. That’s why the construction’s activities are suspended and you can look for the Spear without interference.”
“Okay, pass the coordinates to Nate, as a historian you should know how to dig the dirt,” she started to delegate. “Let’s form two teams of three, and you are responsible for them,” she said looking directly at Nate, who nodded gravely. “I’ll stay in the ship with the prisoners and as a back up in case anything goes wrong.”
“Uh, excuse me,” Leonard cut her. “I’m in the best interest here to take a good look at the place the US managed to let the mediocre Portugal team have a tie.”
Everyone looked at him then and he raised an eyebrow, sitting with his legs crossed and that smug expression that drove people nuts.
“What?” he said. “My sister used to play when she was nine.”
“Plus, that World Cup was awesome!” Ray added. “I don’t understand the last bit of soccer, but man it was fun to watch.”
No one commented on how Sara left herself out of the mission without even a second thought, they were all too busy joking about 7 against 1 and marveling about Messi being chosen as best player – like, what the hell? Podolski was better and he didn’t even play! – so they didn’t even notice her quietly trying to leave the bridge unnoticed.
“Sara,” he called that way only he knew how to call, quietly and yet so fiercely she could hear him from across the room – the same way it happened when she first saw him again after considering him dead, and the same way that showed her that it really was him.
She thought that after all this time, he wouldn’t, shouldn’t have the same effect on her, that she wouldn’t stop in her tracks to see whatever it was he had to show or say.
Now, she wasn’t sure that day would ever come.
Sara turned on her heels and faced him, waiting for whatever it was he wanted and hoping that she wouldn’t let show how he affected her. Leonard didn’t say anything at first, but he raised his hand showing the handcuffs that kept him in his chair. They had made sure to pick a pair he wouldn’t be able to open alone, but thinking about it now, it seemed a little extreme.
It should matter, right? That Leonard had fought his way out of the Legion to get back to them. They should be more grateful, right?
“You don’t happen to know if my room is still available, do you?” He asked and Sara sighed. She got closer to him and uncuffed his wrists, choosing to be the first to take that leap of faith.
“We didn’t touch it,” she said, avoiding looking him in the eyes. “Mick wouldn’t let us.”
Mick, who was now arguing about how they were all at bunch of pussies for liking soccer instead, or even alongside football, which was the real American sport, and the real macho one; Mick who was starting to go down on a very intense chat about gender identity that Sara would love to jump in to add her own opinion, if only there wasn’t thunders outside every couple of minutes that made her desperately want to hide in her room, and if only Leonard wasn’t walking by her side just half a step behind, heading to the dormitories.
His room was one of the firsts coming through this corridor, and when she was one step ahead to keep walking he touched her elbow shooting electricity all over her. Wait, he meant, and she did. Sara looked up at Leonard and he put his palm against the scanner. The door opened, but the room was dark. She didn’t know what she was waiting for.
“Lights at 70%,” Leonard requested and the room was suddenly lit; he walked inside noticing that everything was practically the same way he left, the only difference was the open cold gun case filled with the gun’s parts. It sting him a little, but on the other side it was fine, he had a brand new gun now, thanks to Thawne.
“Am I supposed to do something?” Sara asked crossing her arms and trying to pass her fear for annoyance.
From the middle of the room, and even with most of his back turned to her, she still could see half of his smirk.
“I have something for you,” he said and she frowned.
Leonard walked to his bed and opened a drawer under it, and then he opened the other where he got out a tablet. Her tablet, that she’d been desperately been looking for for months.
“That’s mine!” Sara exclaimed stepping inside and trying to reach for the device, but Leonard held it out of her reach. “Give it back!”
“I will,” he guaranteed stepping back. “I was going to when we’d come back from the Oculus, but…” Leonard typed something on the screen as he spoke and Sara stopped trying to take it from his hands, curious to know the story behind it. “I wanted to give you something.”
“Give me what?” she insisted right at the moment he turned the screen to her, showing her a keyboard of some sort of music app.
“A distraction,” he offered.
Sara put both hands on her hips and looked up at him.
“Distraction for what, Leonard?”
“You know from what,” he replied a little annoyed, and seriously, did she really think that he’d forget? Leonard sighed. “First time I noticed it, it wasn’t even a real storm, just this timequaves that sounded like thunders, and you hid in the cargo bay like a terrified kitten, but I thought it was just your way of trying to be alone. And then we went to St. Roch and you were off. So I observed, and after I observed, I asked Gideon.”
“You were spying on me?” Sara accused and Leonard rolled his eyes.
“I spy on everyone, you’re not special,” he replied acidly. “Gotta know my crew. It’s just that I didn’t go too deep on your story, since you were such an open book and everyone knew your problems. But not all of them, right? And it took a while, but I understood.”
Sara didn’t say anything, just waited for him to continue. There was so much mystery surrounding Leonard Snart’s existence, but the truth was, she wasn’t as shocked to know that he knew a lot about her as she should be, and neither could she blame him. Hell, she’d been finding herself checking Leonard’s timeline every now and again, finding out the best and the worst about him in the same shady way he did.
“Third time,” Leonard continued. “Was when I found you in the Professor’s room because he has that stupid keyboard, and you were awfully playing that Alicia Keys song with two fingers only and gosh, that was terrible.”
Sara lowered her head, part embarrassed, part amused. She remembered that day, one of his last. He had asked her a lot of things about her childhood and why the hell she was torturing the keyboard like that, but at the time she only thought that he was feeling nostalgic because of their younger selves being taken to the orphanage. Looking back, she should’ve known that he was up to something.
“But you told me that you played piano and trained ballet since you were three,” Leonard added. “And that even though you quit when you hit puberty, you still enjoyed it. So I thought…”
Leonard handed her the tablet and she took it with both hands, a habit she still hadn’t been rid of even after all these years. He had paused, but not finished his thoughts.
“I thought that maybe that was the help you needed, a hobby outside of throwing knives and punching things and dating people. Something to concentrate on and to do alone, to create your own world. And maybe that was me thinking about what I would’ve liked to have, but I asked Gideon anyway to develop this app for you where you can create your own music or just practice.”
Sara was hitting random buttons to see what windows opened and what kind of app it was that, and she was liking what she was seeing. The reason it had been so hard to adapt after she came back the first time was because her old self was a recipe for disaster and everything she touched seemed to crumble eventually. It felt like whatever hobby she’d had then felt wrong.
But maybe, just maybe… she could give it a try, now that so much had changed. Now that she was finding balance again (slowly, but steadily).
“Also,” Leonard spoke again, making her look up at him one more time. “With your headphones on it’d be harder to torment the rest of the ship with your techno-tacky.”
Sara chuckled.
“Techno-tacky?” she echoed. Leonard nodded soberly.
“Lisa had a worrisome phase of Brazilian club music, and it was as traumatizing as your two fingers version of Girl on Fire,” he confessed making Sara laugh. Being there with him, kind of going down Memory Lane, she even forgot about the storm.
Sara sighed and looked down at her long lost and finally found tablet, and then she looked at Leonard again. He had crossed the room and was leaning against his bed watching her. She smiled.
“Thank you,” she said with a nod that Leonard mirrored, and then she stepped back, willing to go her room, where she could get started on that app. “I’ll let you know if it’s any good.”
“If it’s not,” he replied. “Blame it on Gideon.”
With the feeling that she could relax for the first time in a long time, Sara went to her room, glad to be the first to take the risk of bringing Leonard back to their side. Maybe, now that he was here, things would start to look up for them. And the same way he had ended it so many months ago at the Oculus, he could also begin it now, in the Waverider.
Or so she hoped.