Fic: A Time For Great Things - Chapter 12
TITLE: A Time For Great Things Chapter 12
FANDOM: Legends of Tomorrow
CATEGORY: Fix-it, Adventure, Romance, Team As Family
PAIRING: Eventual Len/Sara
As always, thanks to stillwordgirl for the beta!
--
Rip didn’t have to climb to the fog. It came to him, and he could see the images within it before they engulfed him.
People running, crying out in fear.
A burning city.
A mushroom cloud.
Himself, weeping over the bodies of his family.
And he didn’t just see it. He could hear the screams, smell the smoke. He closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears. “No,” he said. “I’ve seen enough death and destruction.” He took a few steps up the slope, and the sounds faded.
He opened his eyes, and saw a multicolored tendril at his feet. It wound around him, as if testing him. As if tasting him. It withdrew, and then offered new images:
Primitive men painting pictures of deer and buffalo on the walls of a cave…
Slaves moving huge blocks of stones under a hot Egyptian sun…
Blood soaking into the sand of the Colosseum as gladiators dueled and died…
History pulled at him, the way it had when he first learned about time travel, tempting him with visions of things that had been:
Tall ships crossing the sea, voyaging to new lands…
An artist with hammer and chisel, carving a masterpiece out of the finest Carrara marble…
A man gazing through an early telescope at the heavens above…
He stared as the images rolled on, each one offering him knowledge and vicarious adventure:
Explorers hacking through a steamy jungle…
Rough-looking men on horses, riding quickly across a plain…
A woman peering at a strange device, then writing down a string of numbers and letters…
Climbers ascending the final feet to a snowy mountaintop…
Rip shook himself and took a few more steps up. “It’s almost as if you’re sentient,” he said to the stream. “As if you know just what I’m drawn to. But these are all things I can see and do with the Waverider. You offer nothing of value to me.” He turned his back on the stream and began to climb.
He stopped at the sound of his name, spoken softly.
It was Miranda’s voice.
He turned back. She was there… no, her image was there, in the stream, and he saw himself there too. She was holding him as if she would never let him go.
“Daddy…”
And then Jonas was there, leaping into his arms in this… mirage of a reunion with his family. His throat began to feel raw and tears rose in his eyes as he watched this… fantasy of Miranda walking with him, holding his hand. This illusion of Jonas running to play with another child, a boy with curly dark hair.
Rip had never seen that child before.
He watched himself kissing Miranda, laughing as she pulled him toward their bed on the Waverider…
Then put his hands over his eyes, trembling. “No. I cannot watch these lies. Miranda and Jonas are beyond my help, but there is a man here who is not. I need to find him, and if… whatever you are isn’t going to help me with that, then I have no use for you.”
He uncovered his eyes and turned away from the images. The multicolored tendril circled him one more time, then started running up and across the slope. He watched it for a moment, then followed.
----
Lisa had now joined the procession of images. Leonard saw himself hugging his sister in a way she hadn’t allowed since she’d become an “independent” nine-year-old. He also saw her with Cisco…
And somehow didn’t mind that the Flash’s long-haired sidekick was holding his sister’s hand.
Of course it was all an illusion. There was too much… joy… in these visions for them to ever be his reality. He’d never be that lucky, to see himself in something resembling a normal family.
To see his sister wearing a sweet, open smile, unlike the sly ones she’d grown into over the years.
To see actual happiness on Mick’s face instead of the grim glee associated with a job or with a destructive fire.
To see himself nestled with Sara in a hammock, with a look of utter peace.
He scrubbed his hands over his face, blocking the visions for just a moment, and remembered a visiting preacher who’d come to Iron Heights once to promise the fires of hell for any cons who stayed on the path of greed and evil.
The preacher had been wrong. Fire wasn’t the worst punishment Leonard could think of, now that he was seeing all the things that could have been.
“Nothing quite like dying to make you think about all the mistakes, all the wrong choices.”
To see what might have been was possibly the bitterest pill he’d ever taken.
But he couldn’t turn away from these images for long. They were like a drug, and while he’d never been one for drugs in life, what did it matter here and now, when he was dead?
He sighed and uncovered his face to see what other sweet torture awaited him.
“It’s the things I didn’t do, keep me up at night.”
His words to Sarah haunted him now as he saw her asleep on an outsized hospital bed in what looked like the Waverider’s Medbay. Two children lay on either side of her. One was the boy he’d seen in an earlier vision, older here, stretched out along Sara’s right side, his curly head pillowed on her shoulder. On her left was a small golden-haired girl who was partly sprawled across Sara.
The children were holding hands over Sara’s stomach. His heart turned over at the sight.
As he watched, a multicolored thread surrounded the image, framing it before the vision faded away…
To be replaced by Rip Hunter.
Leonard wiped at his eyes again and let out a frustrated sigh. “Great. So you’re done torturing me with might-have-beens and are going to stick me with Rip frickin’ Hunter for the rest of eternity? Now I know I’m in hell.”
The Time Captain laughed. “I might have known that when I found you, the first words out of your mouth would be an insult.”
Leonard’s eyes widened. None of the visions had ever talked to him. “Rip? Are you dead too?”
Rip smiled broadly. “I’m not dead, Mr. Snart. And neither are you. You’re just… stuck in the time stream.” He hunkered down in front of Leonard. “I imagine you’ve seen quite a few interesting things here.”
Leonard leaned back just a little. “Yeah. You could say that. So how do I know you’re real?”
Rip thought for a moment before reaching out with his right hand. “You’ve been able to see the visions, but you haven’t been able to touch them, right?”
Leonard gave him a side-eyed look and nodded. “But I can definitely be touched,” Rip said. “Take my hand.”
Leonard studied the proffered hand. Then he slowly reached out with his own right hand, certain it would pass through this vision of Rip as had happened with the other visions.
He let out a surprised breath as he felt Rip’s warm grasp.
“You see, Mr. Snart? I’m not an illusion. And I’m here to take you home.”
Home… Lisa. Mick. Sara. “I haven’t known what to believe,” Leonard said. “The things I’ve seen here… I’m not sure what’s real. I’m still not sure you’re real.”
“This place, Jurgen’s Ridge, can show you what is, what was, and everything that ever could be, Mr. Snart. But they’re only images,” Rip told him, and squeezed his hand. “This… this is real, my friend.”
Leonard thought about the images of himself and Sara. “Things that could be?”
Rip smiled again. “Yes. You can stay and watch the possibilities… or you can come with me and make some of them into realities.”
Lisa. Mick. Sara. Leonard smiled back. “I’ve always preferred reality.”
He let Rip pull him to his feet.
----
“Bumpy ride, my ass,” Sara muttered under her breath. It felt like the Waverider was going to shake apart under the pressure of the irresistible force. “What’s taking them so damn long?”
“Captain Hunter did say no time passes on the Ridge,” Stein said over the comms. “It may be that he is unaware of how long he’s been away.”
“Or maybe he’s having trouble finding Snart,” Jax added.
“Or maybe he’s having trouble convincing Snart to leave,” Ray suggested, naming the possibility that worried Sara the most.
She shook her head, willing that worry away. “Gideon, what’s our power situation?”
“We have power to maintain our position for five more minutes, Miss Lance,” the AI responded. “After that I will shut down to provide an extra five minutes.”
“What if we cut life support to the areas we’re not using?”
“Life support is already cut to the crew quarters, the galley, the workout room and the lower hold.”
Sara thought for a moment, her grip tightening on the armrests of the captain’s chair. “Jax, Ray, Professor. Get to the jump ship with Mick. Gideon, once they’re there, shut down life support to all sections except the bridge and the main hatch access.”
“I can also shut down the communication system. Those cutbacks will provide us with five more minutes,” Gideon reported.
“It’s worth it,” Sara murmured. “Gideon, shutting you down is the last resort.”
“Sara, we’re supposed to monitor the ship’s engines…”
“There won’t be anything to monitor if we don’t have power, Ray!” Sara snapped back. “Just do it!”
Her teammates reluctantly acknowledged the order. Then Mick spoke up. “Blondie, how will you get to the jump ship if all the systems are shut down?”
Sara answered with a false brightness. “Captain’s supposed to go down with the ship, right? I’m in the captain’s chair. If we lose everything, I’ll scuttle the ship while you get away.”
Protests from her teammates.
“That’s my job, Blondie.”
“Sara…”
“Miss Lance, no…”
“Do you wanna die again?”
She smiled slightly. “I don’t want to die again, Jax. But I’m not afraid to. I think that’s really why Rip wanted me in the seat for this.”
“Blon… Sara.” A rare catch in Mick’s voice. “I’ll see you on the other side, you got that?”
She blinked away a tear. “Yeah, Mick. I got it.”
“Life support now shut down to all sections except the bridge and main hatch access,” Gideon reported after a moment. “Communications shut down.”
She drew in a deep breath, then asked, “Gideon, how long can you stay with me now?”
Quietly, Gideon answered, “Eight minutes, Miss… Captain Lance.”
Sara’s lips quirked at the honorific. Then she crossed her fingers again.
----
The tendril of color preceded them down the Ridge, through a white fog that limited how far they could see ahead of them. “It didn’t look like this before,” Leonard said.
Rip glanced around. “This is probably some sort of reaction to the Waverider’s time drive. We’ve got the ship blocking the Ridge from its path through the time stream.”
“At least we’ve got our little friend to guide us back.”
“Yes. It’s almost as if it’s intelligent,” Rip mused. “Whatever force is at work here, it responded to me when I resisted its original displays of history.”
Leonard chuckled. “I told it to cut the Wikipedia crap. Then it started showing me…” He shook his head. “It showed me things I’d rather not remember.”
“Yes,” Rip agreed. “And things you’d give anything to have.” There was a rough note in his voice.
Leonard nodded. He could imagine what Rip’s visions had been. “There was even a point where it seemed like it wanted me to see certain things that I can only guess were from the future, like…”
Rip cut him off brusquely. “You can’t tell me, Mr. Snart. And don’t tell anyone else, either. If those were visions of the future, they have to unfold without our interference. The more people who know, the greater the chance of mucking it up.”
Leonard gave a hmph of agreement and thought for a moment. “You know, you’re always telling us ‘time wants to happen.’ But wanting is a conscious emotion.”
Rip shot him a look. “You’re suggesting time is a conscious force? I don’t know, Mr. Snart. But…” He stopped and his eyes widened. “We need to run.”
Leonard looked ahead. The fog had thinned enough that he could see the Waverider at last. Its belly was pressed crazily against the black rock surface, engines flaring as if it were in flight.
And it was slowly sliding across the rocks.
“The Waverider can’t hold the Ridge for much longer!” Rip exclaimed. “Come on, Mr. Snart!”
They began to run down the slope toward the ship, toward home. Lisa. Mick. Sara. Those three names echoed through his mind with every step. He was almost there.
The Waverider began to slide faster. As they got close, Rip leapt toward the external hatch release, slapping it open with one hand while grabbing on to a rail with the other. Leonard tried to follow, but slipped on some of the loose gravel covering the slope and fell hard.
“Leonard! Grab my hand!” Rip scrambled to the end of the now open entry ramp and extended a hand.
Lisa. Mick. Sara. Leonard pushed himself off the ground and jumped again, reaching, reaching…
And catching the Time Captain’s hand. Rip hauled him up onto the ramp and into the Waverider. As Leonard caught his breath, kneeling on the deck, Rip hit the hatch control and shouted, “Sara, get us out of here!”
“Ship’s communications are down to save power, Captain.”
Rip huffed. “Then it’s up to you, Gideon!”
“Course?”
“Anywhere!”
“Course set and executed,” Gideon said, ever the voice of calm. “Welcome back, Mr. Snart.”
Leonard rose and chuckled at the AI’s even tone. She’d probably report the end of the world in the same matter-of-fact way. Still… “Thank you, Gideon. It’s good to be here.”
“Captain, my scan of Mr. Snart shows he does not need immediate medical attention.”
Rip nodded. “Good. None the worse for wear, eh, Mr. Snart? Gideon, besides the comms, what’s our status?”
“Life support was cut to most of the ship to conserve power. We are down to critical levels but there is enough restore life support to the passages leading to the bridge. I suggest the crew convene there.”
Rip smiled. “Tell them we’re on our way.”
The two men fell into step as they headed up the passageway. As they walked, Leonard ran a hand over the walls and conduits. Just a little more reassurance that this was all real. “Rip, how long has it been for all of you, since…?”
“Since the Oculus? A bit over two months, Mr. Snart.”
Leonard looked over at him. “And Mick and Sara…?”
Rip’s smile grew broader. He nodded as a door slid open in front of them. “See for yourself.”
His teammates… his friends… were ranged between the doorway and the holo table. But Mick and Sara were front and center, waiting for him, Mick standing utterly still but tensed as if to fight or fly, Sara’s eyes seeming to search his own for… something.
He just stared at them for a moment, and felt the tug of old habits urging him to turn away, so they couldn’t see what he was feeling.
He told the old habits to go to hell. “Am I forgiven?”
He couldn’t stop the internal wince at the way his voice broke on the question.
And then they collided, all three of them, arms tightly wrapped around each other, clinging together in a knot of relief and joy and… love that he never wanted to untangle. He felt the tears starting, and didn’t care who saw them.
He was home.
FANDOM: Legends of Tomorrow
CATEGORY: Fix-it, Adventure, Romance, Team As Family
PAIRING: Eventual Len/Sara
As always, thanks to stillwordgirl for the beta!
--
Rip didn’t have to climb to the fog. It came to him, and he could see the images within it before they engulfed him.
People running, crying out in fear.
A burning city.
A mushroom cloud.
Himself, weeping over the bodies of his family.
And he didn’t just see it. He could hear the screams, smell the smoke. He closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears. “No,” he said. “I’ve seen enough death and destruction.” He took a few steps up the slope, and the sounds faded.
He opened his eyes, and saw a multicolored tendril at his feet. It wound around him, as if testing him. As if tasting him. It withdrew, and then offered new images:
Primitive men painting pictures of deer and buffalo on the walls of a cave…
Slaves moving huge blocks of stones under a hot Egyptian sun…
Blood soaking into the sand of the Colosseum as gladiators dueled and died…
History pulled at him, the way it had when he first learned about time travel, tempting him with visions of things that had been:
Tall ships crossing the sea, voyaging to new lands…
An artist with hammer and chisel, carving a masterpiece out of the finest Carrara marble…
A man gazing through an early telescope at the heavens above…
He stared as the images rolled on, each one offering him knowledge and vicarious adventure:
Explorers hacking through a steamy jungle…
Rough-looking men on horses, riding quickly across a plain…
A woman peering at a strange device, then writing down a string of numbers and letters…
Climbers ascending the final feet to a snowy mountaintop…
Rip shook himself and took a few more steps up. “It’s almost as if you’re sentient,” he said to the stream. “As if you know just what I’m drawn to. But these are all things I can see and do with the Waverider. You offer nothing of value to me.” He turned his back on the stream and began to climb.
He stopped at the sound of his name, spoken softly.
It was Miranda’s voice.
He turned back. She was there… no, her image was there, in the stream, and he saw himself there too. She was holding him as if she would never let him go.
“Daddy…”
And then Jonas was there, leaping into his arms in this… mirage of a reunion with his family. His throat began to feel raw and tears rose in his eyes as he watched this… fantasy of Miranda walking with him, holding his hand. This illusion of Jonas running to play with another child, a boy with curly dark hair.
Rip had never seen that child before.
He watched himself kissing Miranda, laughing as she pulled him toward their bed on the Waverider…
Then put his hands over his eyes, trembling. “No. I cannot watch these lies. Miranda and Jonas are beyond my help, but there is a man here who is not. I need to find him, and if… whatever you are isn’t going to help me with that, then I have no use for you.”
He uncovered his eyes and turned away from the images. The multicolored tendril circled him one more time, then started running up and across the slope. He watched it for a moment, then followed.
----
Lisa had now joined the procession of images. Leonard saw himself hugging his sister in a way she hadn’t allowed since she’d become an “independent” nine-year-old. He also saw her with Cisco…
And somehow didn’t mind that the Flash’s long-haired sidekick was holding his sister’s hand.
Of course it was all an illusion. There was too much… joy… in these visions for them to ever be his reality. He’d never be that lucky, to see himself in something resembling a normal family.
To see his sister wearing a sweet, open smile, unlike the sly ones she’d grown into over the years.
To see actual happiness on Mick’s face instead of the grim glee associated with a job or with a destructive fire.
To see himself nestled with Sara in a hammock, with a look of utter peace.
He scrubbed his hands over his face, blocking the visions for just a moment, and remembered a visiting preacher who’d come to Iron Heights once to promise the fires of hell for any cons who stayed on the path of greed and evil.
The preacher had been wrong. Fire wasn’t the worst punishment Leonard could think of, now that he was seeing all the things that could have been.
“Nothing quite like dying to make you think about all the mistakes, all the wrong choices.”
To see what might have been was possibly the bitterest pill he’d ever taken.
But he couldn’t turn away from these images for long. They were like a drug, and while he’d never been one for drugs in life, what did it matter here and now, when he was dead?
He sighed and uncovered his face to see what other sweet torture awaited him.
“It’s the things I didn’t do, keep me up at night.”
His words to Sarah haunted him now as he saw her asleep on an outsized hospital bed in what looked like the Waverider’s Medbay. Two children lay on either side of her. One was the boy he’d seen in an earlier vision, older here, stretched out along Sara’s right side, his curly head pillowed on her shoulder. On her left was a small golden-haired girl who was partly sprawled across Sara.
The children were holding hands over Sara’s stomach. His heart turned over at the sight.
As he watched, a multicolored thread surrounded the image, framing it before the vision faded away…
To be replaced by Rip Hunter.
Leonard wiped at his eyes again and let out a frustrated sigh. “Great. So you’re done torturing me with might-have-beens and are going to stick me with Rip frickin’ Hunter for the rest of eternity? Now I know I’m in hell.”
The Time Captain laughed. “I might have known that when I found you, the first words out of your mouth would be an insult.”
Leonard’s eyes widened. None of the visions had ever talked to him. “Rip? Are you dead too?”
Rip smiled broadly. “I’m not dead, Mr. Snart. And neither are you. You’re just… stuck in the time stream.” He hunkered down in front of Leonard. “I imagine you’ve seen quite a few interesting things here.”
Leonard leaned back just a little. “Yeah. You could say that. So how do I know you’re real?”
Rip thought for a moment before reaching out with his right hand. “You’ve been able to see the visions, but you haven’t been able to touch them, right?”
Leonard gave him a side-eyed look and nodded. “But I can definitely be touched,” Rip said. “Take my hand.”
Leonard studied the proffered hand. Then he slowly reached out with his own right hand, certain it would pass through this vision of Rip as had happened with the other visions.
He let out a surprised breath as he felt Rip’s warm grasp.
“You see, Mr. Snart? I’m not an illusion. And I’m here to take you home.”
Home… Lisa. Mick. Sara. “I haven’t known what to believe,” Leonard said. “The things I’ve seen here… I’m not sure what’s real. I’m still not sure you’re real.”
“This place, Jurgen’s Ridge, can show you what is, what was, and everything that ever could be, Mr. Snart. But they’re only images,” Rip told him, and squeezed his hand. “This… this is real, my friend.”
Leonard thought about the images of himself and Sara. “Things that could be?”
Rip smiled again. “Yes. You can stay and watch the possibilities… or you can come with me and make some of them into realities.”
Lisa. Mick. Sara. Leonard smiled back. “I’ve always preferred reality.”
He let Rip pull him to his feet.
----
“Bumpy ride, my ass,” Sara muttered under her breath. It felt like the Waverider was going to shake apart under the pressure of the irresistible force. “What’s taking them so damn long?”
“Captain Hunter did say no time passes on the Ridge,” Stein said over the comms. “It may be that he is unaware of how long he’s been away.”
“Or maybe he’s having trouble finding Snart,” Jax added.
“Or maybe he’s having trouble convincing Snart to leave,” Ray suggested, naming the possibility that worried Sara the most.
She shook her head, willing that worry away. “Gideon, what’s our power situation?”
“We have power to maintain our position for five more minutes, Miss Lance,” the AI responded. “After that I will shut down to provide an extra five minutes.”
“What if we cut life support to the areas we’re not using?”
“Life support is already cut to the crew quarters, the galley, the workout room and the lower hold.”
Sara thought for a moment, her grip tightening on the armrests of the captain’s chair. “Jax, Ray, Professor. Get to the jump ship with Mick. Gideon, once they’re there, shut down life support to all sections except the bridge and the main hatch access.”
“I can also shut down the communication system. Those cutbacks will provide us with five more minutes,” Gideon reported.
“It’s worth it,” Sara murmured. “Gideon, shutting you down is the last resort.”
“Sara, we’re supposed to monitor the ship’s engines…”
“There won’t be anything to monitor if we don’t have power, Ray!” Sara snapped back. “Just do it!”
Her teammates reluctantly acknowledged the order. Then Mick spoke up. “Blondie, how will you get to the jump ship if all the systems are shut down?”
Sara answered with a false brightness. “Captain’s supposed to go down with the ship, right? I’m in the captain’s chair. If we lose everything, I’ll scuttle the ship while you get away.”
Protests from her teammates.
“That’s my job, Blondie.”
“Sara…”
“Miss Lance, no…”
“Do you wanna die again?”
She smiled slightly. “I don’t want to die again, Jax. But I’m not afraid to. I think that’s really why Rip wanted me in the seat for this.”
“Blon… Sara.” A rare catch in Mick’s voice. “I’ll see you on the other side, you got that?”
She blinked away a tear. “Yeah, Mick. I got it.”
“Life support now shut down to all sections except the bridge and main hatch access,” Gideon reported after a moment. “Communications shut down.”
She drew in a deep breath, then asked, “Gideon, how long can you stay with me now?”
Quietly, Gideon answered, “Eight minutes, Miss… Captain Lance.”
Sara’s lips quirked at the honorific. Then she crossed her fingers again.
----
The tendril of color preceded them down the Ridge, through a white fog that limited how far they could see ahead of them. “It didn’t look like this before,” Leonard said.
Rip glanced around. “This is probably some sort of reaction to the Waverider’s time drive. We’ve got the ship blocking the Ridge from its path through the time stream.”
“At least we’ve got our little friend to guide us back.”
“Yes. It’s almost as if it’s intelligent,” Rip mused. “Whatever force is at work here, it responded to me when I resisted its original displays of history.”
Leonard chuckled. “I told it to cut the Wikipedia crap. Then it started showing me…” He shook his head. “It showed me things I’d rather not remember.”
“Yes,” Rip agreed. “And things you’d give anything to have.” There was a rough note in his voice.
Leonard nodded. He could imagine what Rip’s visions had been. “There was even a point where it seemed like it wanted me to see certain things that I can only guess were from the future, like…”
Rip cut him off brusquely. “You can’t tell me, Mr. Snart. And don’t tell anyone else, either. If those were visions of the future, they have to unfold without our interference. The more people who know, the greater the chance of mucking it up.”
Leonard gave a hmph of agreement and thought for a moment. “You know, you’re always telling us ‘time wants to happen.’ But wanting is a conscious emotion.”
Rip shot him a look. “You’re suggesting time is a conscious force? I don’t know, Mr. Snart. But…” He stopped and his eyes widened. “We need to run.”
Leonard looked ahead. The fog had thinned enough that he could see the Waverider at last. Its belly was pressed crazily against the black rock surface, engines flaring as if it were in flight.
And it was slowly sliding across the rocks.
“The Waverider can’t hold the Ridge for much longer!” Rip exclaimed. “Come on, Mr. Snart!”
They began to run down the slope toward the ship, toward home. Lisa. Mick. Sara. Those three names echoed through his mind with every step. He was almost there.
The Waverider began to slide faster. As they got close, Rip leapt toward the external hatch release, slapping it open with one hand while grabbing on to a rail with the other. Leonard tried to follow, but slipped on some of the loose gravel covering the slope and fell hard.
“Leonard! Grab my hand!” Rip scrambled to the end of the now open entry ramp and extended a hand.
Lisa. Mick. Sara. Leonard pushed himself off the ground and jumped again, reaching, reaching…
And catching the Time Captain’s hand. Rip hauled him up onto the ramp and into the Waverider. As Leonard caught his breath, kneeling on the deck, Rip hit the hatch control and shouted, “Sara, get us out of here!”
“Ship’s communications are down to save power, Captain.”
Rip huffed. “Then it’s up to you, Gideon!”
“Course?”
“Anywhere!”
“Course set and executed,” Gideon said, ever the voice of calm. “Welcome back, Mr. Snart.”
Leonard rose and chuckled at the AI’s even tone. She’d probably report the end of the world in the same matter-of-fact way. Still… “Thank you, Gideon. It’s good to be here.”
“Captain, my scan of Mr. Snart shows he does not need immediate medical attention.”
Rip nodded. “Good. None the worse for wear, eh, Mr. Snart? Gideon, besides the comms, what’s our status?”
“Life support was cut to most of the ship to conserve power. We are down to critical levels but there is enough restore life support to the passages leading to the bridge. I suggest the crew convene there.”
Rip smiled. “Tell them we’re on our way.”
The two men fell into step as they headed up the passageway. As they walked, Leonard ran a hand over the walls and conduits. Just a little more reassurance that this was all real. “Rip, how long has it been for all of you, since…?”
“Since the Oculus? A bit over two months, Mr. Snart.”
Leonard looked over at him. “And Mick and Sara…?”
Rip’s smile grew broader. He nodded as a door slid open in front of them. “See for yourself.”
His teammates… his friends… were ranged between the doorway and the holo table. But Mick and Sara were front and center, waiting for him, Mick standing utterly still but tensed as if to fight or fly, Sara’s eyes seeming to search his own for… something.
He just stared at them for a moment, and felt the tug of old habits urging him to turn away, so they couldn’t see what he was feeling.
He told the old habits to go to hell. “Am I forgiven?”
He couldn’t stop the internal wince at the way his voice broke on the question.
And then they collided, all three of them, arms tightly wrapped around each other, clinging together in a knot of relief and joy and… love that he never wanted to untangle. He felt the tears starting, and didn’t care who saw them.
He was home.