#atomic hawk

Almost. Jax—after his own long visit to the brig—had told him what had sent Mick off the deep end on the Acheron, after all. Mick’s dramatic reaction to Rip’s words had been overkill, in Leonard’s mind—Mick, after all, had insisted he wasn’t interested in saving the world--but Leonard isn’t letting the captain off the hook.

“Well,” Rip says with a sigh, scanning them, “I suppose we need to talk about the elephant in the room.”

Sara and Stein both wince at his wording and Leonard and Jax snort and Raymond bristles, but Kendra, sitting in her own jump seat, laughs.

“Rip,” she says with amusement, leaning back a little, “that’s not really a good word to use in reference to a woman who’s more than eight months pregnant, no matter what the context.”

Rip stares at her a moment, then groans, lowering his head to his hands.

“You’re right, of course, Ms. Saun…Palmer,” he admits, voice muffled. “Mir…I remember. And I apologize.” He looks up. “But you are quite pregnant, and you are our only real way to defeat Savage. And we need to reconcile those two things if we are to have any hope of completing our mission.”

Kendra nods at that. “I know,” she says quietly, resting her hand on her abdomen. “Well. I won’t be pregnant much longer.” A fond smile crosses her face, followed by something more complicated. “But neither do I want to take on Savage with a newborn in tow, and it will take some time and training to get back in fighting shape.”

Raymond makes a pained noise, but he’s smart enough not to audibly contradict Kendra. Leonard notices Sara glancing at her friend and remembers that Sara had given Kendra much of her training.

“I do have a thought about that,” Rip allows. “I’m still…trying to figure some things out. But, in the meantime, we’re here in 2147.” He straightens and nods, reaching for some measure of authority again. “And on our way to the Kasian Conglomerate.”

“Which is…?” Leonard drawls, knowing he’s giving voice to what they’re all wondering. He may have…softened…somewhat (though he prefers to think that he’s simply expanded his range of concerns), but someone still needs to keep Hunter on his toes.

“By the year 2080, government began to give way to corporations.” Hunter nods. “In 20 years, Kasnia is the foothold from which Savage takes over the world.” He lifts a hand to forestall them. “And according to Gideon, in two hours, our favorite immortal psychopath is scheduled to attend a meeting of the Conglomerate's shareholders.”

“Ooh, sounds exciting,” Sara mutters, while Jax chimes in with “You think Savage takes over the world by trading stocks?”

Hunter rolls his eyes at them. “We hardly want to take him on during his rise,” he concludes, “but if we can figure out how his actions here lead to his rise to power, then we won't need to.”

Kendra looks intrigued. “So…I might not have to fight him?”

“Not yet, anyway.” Hunter nods as Gideon informs him that they’re landing. “Gideon knows what the typical garb is like during this time, so…ah, Ms. Saun….Mrs. Palmer, that’s going to take some getting used to…”

“I don’t care what you call me,” Kendra informs him tartly as Raymond nods staunchly besides her. “And who said I was changing my name?”

“…at any rate, it might be best if you stay here.” Hunter holds his hands out and shrugs. “Given that we don’t know precisely where else Savage will be or what he’s doing. If he sees you…especially pregnant with another man’s child…”

“I take your point,” Kendra murmurs, while Sara folds her arms and takes a deep breath, Raymond looks horrified and Stein and Jax both, in unison, curse…and then look, startled, at each other. Leonard tries to keep his poker face, which isn’t as hard as it might seem. He’s known evil before. Savage is evil.

“He’d really…yeah, he would, wouldn’t he?” the inventor says, sounding rattled. “Should I stay with you? Um. Someone should, right?”

“I’ll be fine, Ray,” Kendra says even as Rip asserts that Gideon will alert them as needed and that their first foray won’t take long.

“But.” Raymond looks at Leonard, wearing an apologetic expression that makes the other man sigh. “Well. Mick. If he…could he…”

Leonard ignores Rip’s protests (and Gideon’s) and gives the halting question due thought, even as Kendra says patiently, again, that she’ll be fine and the others murmur amongst themselves.

“I don’t think Mick at even his most pissed off would hurt you,” he says, meeting Kendra’s steady gaze. She deserves the truth as far as he can figure it. “But we’ve established that maybe…maybe I didn’t know Mick as well as I thought I did. And I don’t know Chronos at all.”

Silence follows that rather unSnartlike admission. Kendra regards him seriously a moment, then nods.

“I understand,” she tells him quietly. “But…” She looks up at Raymond. “…I’ll be OK. You’re also supposing that Mick could get out, and that Gideon couldn’t…take care of him. And I’m not helpless, even now.” She winks at Sara. “I’ll be fine.”

“But…”

“Fine, Ray.”

Sara isn’t fond of the woolen garb that Gideon manufactures them for 2147. It’s warm and a bit scratchy (more than 100 years past her time and no one’s figured out how to counteract that) and apparently comes in two colors: gray and black. As they dress, she jokes to Leonard that it’s just his style, though, and gets one of those side-smirks in response as he buttons up his coat.

She’ll take it. The thing with Mick continues to wear at him, and the shadows in his eyes continue to grow.

Jax dislikes the clothing every bit as much as Sara does, and they fall into step with each other as they leave the ship, unable to resist joking about Stein’s inevitable reaction to 2147. She’d missed the younger Legend, Sara thinks, grinning as the other half of Firestorm performs exactly as expected.

“The future is...”

“Astonishing!” Sara comments, just as Jax chimes in with “Fascinating!” and Stein, sighing, shakes his head at them.

“Actually, I was going to say remarkable,” the older man grumbles good-naturedly.

Rip, who’s strolling along in front of the group and looking about him with an air of mingled melancholy and affection, sighs too.

“Isn’t it?” he says. “2147 was considered the world's zenith.” Another sigh as he glances about. “All of these people have five good years to look forward to.”

“Before what?” Leonard, of course, has to be the one to ask.

“Before a ruthless dictator named Per Degaton comes to power, releases the Armageddon virus, and most of them end up dead,” Rip informs them, sounding far too blasé about the fact. Well, Sara supposes, if you’re used to looking at it as history, it’s not quite as immediate.

She’s spent too much time in a year that was decades before she was born to ever look at history the same way again, though. “Well, that's depressing,” she mutters, getting a nod from Jax—who then whirls at a noise from above them.

“Whoa,” he breathes, as Stein sidles closer and the others all move their hands closer to their respective weapons—whether or not those weapons are actually there.

“Is that my suit?” Ray asks a bit plaintively, looking up. “That's my suit!”

The team members, uniformly uneasy, watch as they get a firsthand look at what happens when one violates Ordinance 12 (whatever that is) in the Kasnian Conglomerate. Rip shrugs at all the looks darted at him, but even he looks a bit unsettled.

“This,” he says, watching the automated figures, which do indeed look an awful lot like Ray’s Atom suit, “is how Per Degaton's father, Tor, maintains order in Kasnia.”

“Doesn't look like progress to me,” Leonard mutters. Sara glances at him, reading the discomfort and distraction in his voice. He glances back at her, a flicker in his eyes before he glances away again.

Rip, though, is still a man on a mission, no matter how distracted his team is. “Speaking of progress, we need to get a better lay of the land,” the captain says, clapping his hands together.

“And I need to get a better look at how they made my suit autonomous,” Ray interjects, concern on his face.

“Well, why don't you take Martin and Jax with you?” Rip nods, still lost in his own thoughts. “Ms. Lance, Mr. Snart and I will work on locating Savage.”

While Rip somehow has the…contacts…to get into a meeting of the Kasnia board of directors, however, his “accountant” and “personal assist…bodyguard” have to stay behind. Sara gives Leonard a pointed look and steps aside, and he joins her as they move back along the corridors of Kasnia’s center of government, or business, or whatever it is.

He’d observed once, a year or 189 years ago, that Sara was just as adept at pretending she belonged somewhere as any talented thief. She glides along the corridor now, looking dangerous but as calm, aware and in control as any good bodyguard, and he follows, concealing his smirk and trying to look like the sort of accountant type who’d be grateful for such protection.

Well. He is good with numbers.

Sara leads them both outside, and Leonard relaxes a tiny bit as she does so. Rip had dismissed the notion of listening devices in the hallways, but Leonard had been unnerved by the fact that he wasn’t likely to recognize such things even if they were there. Presumably, they’ve changed over the years.

Sara moves a little way away from the entry, into a small, park-like, grassy area, and takes a deep breath, going off her guard a little. She glances at him, leaning back against a small tree, and Leonard joins her, letting their arms brush a little as they watch the building.

“So,” Sara muses after a moment, “d’you think it’d look a bit odd if Mr. Shareholder’s bodyguard and accountant decided to, y’know, go get a room somewhere? While he’s in the meeting?” Her tone is light and teasing, but her eyes are serious as she scans the area, looking for entrances and exits, windows and vantage points. Leonard, after a moment’s consideration, chooses to follow her lead in both ways.

“Oooh, exciting,” he drawls, teasing back even as he does the same. “So, is this an…illicit…affair between the two employees? Something they’re carrying on behind Mr. Shareholder’s back? Kisses in dark corners and quickies while the boss is in the loo?”

His words startle Sara into a laugh. “In the loo? You’ve been listening to Rip too much.” She darts him a quick smile as he snorts. “And that’s hardly worth my time.”

“Cut me a break. I’m improvising.”

But Sara’s apparently finished her inspection of the building and is now watching him intently again, with a considering expression that makes him glance away uncomfortably. They may be together, a team and a couple, but this thing with Mick trips a lot of his own issues and he’s struggling. She knows it, and he knows it, but that doesn’t mean he really wants to talk about it.

“How are you?” she asks quietly.

He gives her a smirk and his habitual nonresponse. “Peachy.”

But Sara, after all their time together, is patient in the ways of Snart issue avoidance. She lifts an eyebrow and gives him that smile that tells him she sees through all his bullshit and that she’s letting him get away with it for now--but that it won’t last forever.

He, in return, gives her the shrug that says that he knows it...but he’s not ready yet, either. It might not be perfectly functional—but it works for them.

And then Rip’s back, strolling toward them from the building at something just shy of a run, a bit wild around the eyes and urgent with the need to get back to the ship and discuss what he’s learned and what—and whom—he’s seen.

“He's a teacher,” Sara marvels, once they’re back in Rip’s study, where Kendra has joined them, Rip judging (correctly in Sara’s estimation) that she more than anyone else should know what Savage seems to be up to.

“Tutor, it would seem, to young Per Degaton himself,” Rip acknowledges, pacing again. Sara really can’t blame him. Seeing his old enemy here, when he’d known it would happen, must still be unnerving. Even Leonard, who’s never been inclined to cut the other man much slack, seems to bite back his usual snarky manner and what he’d originally been planning to say.

“You mentioned that name before,” he says tersely. “Tell, Rip.”

The captain sighs, pausing. “After the death of his father in five years’ time, Per Degaton unleashes the Armageddon virus, which decimates the world's population, leaving it ripe for conquest,” he says in his faintly lecturing “Time Master” tone. “As I said before. But now...apparently it was part of a longer game than I realized.”

Leonard makes a considering noise at that, and the two men—who are far more alike than they’ll ever acknowledge, Sara thinks—share a glance.

“Per Degaton primes the world for dictatorship, and then when the time is right...” Rip concludes.

“...Savage snatches that power away from him," Leonard notes, glancing at Sara, who nods.

“By killing Per Degaton,” she adds.

“Indeed." Rip sighs again, running a hand over his face.

Kendra leans against Rip’s desk, rubbing her back. “OK,” she says, thoughtfully, “so we don't have what we need to take out Savage—even if I could right now—but maybe now we can figure out a way to stop his rise to power.” She shrugs. “That’s the problem with long games, isn’t it? More time for things to go wrong?”

Leonard gives her a look of respect and Kendra smirks back at him. “Now that I have more of my memories from past lives,” she notes, “well, that’s a thing I understand.”

Rip nods to both of them, but he looks distracted, Sara thinks, and a little more disturbed even than before. Sara glances at Leonard, noting that he has a similar expression on his face—and she has an uneasy feeling she’s starting to suspect why.

She’s the assassin, after all.

Rip finally sighs.

“What if we deprive Savage of his springboard, Per Degaton?” he says quietly, staring at a sword in one of his display cases. “It's...quite simple, really."

Everyone in the study is quiet. But his meaning is unmistakable.

The idea, predictably, doesn’t go over well.

“To be clear, we're talking about murdering a child!” Stein says, distress in his tone as he crosses the bridge not long later. “Who...”

“Who hasn't done anything to anyone,” Jax adds, sitting down in a jump seat and crossing his arms.

Yet, Sara thinks from her own perch, glancing at Leonard. Her lover is doing his best to ignore the others, staring at some headlines of the time that Gideon had pulled up for him, his jaw clenched and a muscle ticking in it steadily. He hasn’t chimed in at all, yet, and his mental conflict is obvious, at least to her.

Leonard's pragmatic, to a fault sometimes, and they both know this is the simplest way to handle the issue. And maybe once, a harder, colder Leonard Snart would have been in with few reservations.

But this is a Leonard Snart who’d gone to great pains to convince another young boy that his past did not define him, that he didn’t have to be like his father, that he could go on to be a good man. And while Leonard is many things, Sara knows he’s not fond of the notion of being a hypocrite.

That David Jacobi, however, had adopted Leonard Snart as his substitute role model while Per Degaton had apparently handed Vandal Savage that role is some something she’s not going to point out right now. Leonard would probably be the first one to point out that preteen or teenage boys aren’t exactly always the best judges of character.

(For some reason at that moment, she thinks of Mick, only 16 when he’d saved the life of a 14-year-old skinny, scrappy Leonard Snart.)

“There's got to be a better way,” Kendra says helplessly, resting a hand on her abdomen as if barely aware of the gesture. Is she imagining her unborn child as the kid in question? Uncomfortable and torn, Sara glances away.

Ray comes up to join his wife, discomfort on his own face. He’s still upset about his Atom suits, and this just seems to be compounding his unhappiness.

“How do we even know that this Per Degaton kid's path to becoming a world-ruling dictator is inevitable?” he asks.

Footsteps herald Rip’s return and the team turns to watch the Time Master stalk across the room.

“Because in the future that I'm from,” the captain says unhappily, glancing at them, “children learn about Per Degaton in the same way that children in your time learn about Adolf Hitler.”

Stein frowns at the reference but doesn’t back down. “What about addressing the larger societal problems that would allow such a despot's rise to power?”

It’s so very impractical and just...Stein...that Sara starts to respond against her better judgment, but that’s when Leonard finally speaks up again.

“We already know what pushes this...kid...to the dark side," he says tersely. “Savage.”

Jax frowns at him, looking somehow disappointed. “Look, it's not the kid's fault he's got an immortal psychopath as his tutor,” he retorts.

Leonard gives him a look, then finally glances at Sara again. Understanding crosses between them and Sara sighs, physically crossing the room to join him, practicality warring with her better nature.

“Savage kills this kid as soon as he's done using him to take over the world,” she says, giving voice to what she’s pretty sure they’re both thinking.

Leonard finishes the thought. “Could we turn him against from Savage?” he asks, tone harsh. “No honor among psychopaths, after all.”

Rip frowns. “Perhaps. I don’t know how long he’s been working on getting his...his hooks...into the boy,” he admits, reluctantly. “Savage has spent years corrupting his mind. He seemed to look up to Savage. It may simply be...beyond hope.”

“OK, that’s not a good sign,” Ray mutters. “But…I mean…is anyone really beyond hope? Except maybe Savage himself.”

Stein draws himself up and sets his shoulders, glancing around at the rest of them and then staring Rip down.

“Murdering a child in cold blood just like Savage murdered your own son?” he asks quietly, and Sara winces at the words. “What's the use in saving the world if we stoop to his methods to do so?”

Ray nods. “I'm with Professor Stein." Jax murmurs in agreement as well.

Kendra, who knows Savage better than any of them and is carrying a child that the immortal would kill as soon as look at, is notably quiet, Sara notices. She exchanges a glance with Leonard, who still wears his conflict on his face for those who know how to read him.

After a moment, though, Leonard shrugs.

“OK, fine,” he said irritably. “If we’re not going to kill this kid...”

Rip nods, hopping right in as if reading his mind. “Then removing him from the timeline might be the next best thing."

Postures relax throughout the room, but Sara still has an uncanny feeling they’re all missing something. She meets Kendra’s eyes, then thinks about Leonard’s earlier assertion to her that they’re also missing something with the Mick situation.

She doesn’t have long to consider it, though. She and Leonard call dibs (or have dibs called for them) on Team Kidnapping with Rip, while Ray, Jax and Stein take on Team Robot Army and Kendra resigns herself again to being stuck on the ship.

Go team.

Leonard’s stomach is churning. And for the first time in a while, now, he’s concealing it all, hiding behind the cold façade that’s served him so well, because…

Well, he knows perfectly well he doesn’t need to hide it from Sara. He’s pretty sure she’s got him dead to rights anyway, judging from her glances earlier. And he’s not sure why he feels he needs to conceal it from the team, because, really, why? What possible ill would it do, to have them know he’s iffy on killing a 14-year-old kid? It’s a pretty low moral bar to meet, after all.

Leonard sits in his old room, lights off, head leaned back against the wall, eyes closed. While he knows he could have gone to the room he now shares with Sara—she knows when to give him space; they’d shared a house for months, after all—he’d come here instead, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. The corners of his mouth turn up in a grim smile, almost involuntarily. Their shared space, spaces, whatever, are, in his own head, for the “new” Leonard Snart, the changed man. The turmoil he’s wrestling with now seems like it shouldn’t intrude into that Snart’s life in any way.

A good man wouldn’t really struggle with the question of offing a kid—would he? The image of David Jacobi, at 12 and not the 35-year-old writer he’d last spoken to, rises in memory—and so does his gorge, acid in his throat, self-revulsion in his soul.

He’s always held hard to keeping his people from hurting anyone they didn’t have to. That was Lewis’ way, and Leonard would take a bullet himself before he’d let himself get equated with Lewis in any way, shape, or form.

Even when he’d taken out that train (stupid move, stupid) back in those first heady days of cat and mouse with the Flash, he’d known the speedster would save every passenger, had calculated it as well as he was able, which was pretty well indeed. He’d miscalculated once, in the theater before that, and no one else needs to know it’s a moment that still haunts his dreams.

Still, all the cold logic in Leonard’s head tells him they need to get rid of this kid, this Per Degaton, this “baby Hitler,” as Raymond had so fittingly called him. And, while he’s never been one to be so…undiscriminating…even in the pursuit of a heist, this goes far beyond even the richest haul.

This is the world they’re talking about.

And this is the team. And Leonard knows, even if the true heroes haven’t let themselves think of it, that the longer this whole mission goes, the more likely it is that one of them gets damaged beyond even Gideon’s repair, or killed. And heaven help him, he doesn’t want any of them to get killed. He’d protect Sara (who doesn’t need protecting, but still) with the last breath in his body, but even the others, Stein and Jax and Raymond and Kendra and the unborn kid—he wants none of them hurt.

Not even Hunter, as much as they clash. And not Mick. Oh, hell, not Mick again. They’re all his people now, to one extent or another.

But how can he reconcile that with what every instinct tells him needs to be done?

He doesn’t know.

So he sits, there in the dark, until Gideon quietly tells him that both Sara and Rip are looking for him.

Time for a kidnapping.

Ray is a good person. One of the most genuinely good people Kendra thinks she’s had the privilege to meet, in this life and in most of the past ones.

Knowing that, she can’t blame him for his reaction to Rip’s thoughts about Per Degaton. She’d had the same kneejerk reaction, after all, she thinks wistfully, resting her hand on her stomach as she leans against the holotable and feeling the baby kick sharply against the faint pressure.

Impossible, especially at this point, not to listen to talk about...she frowns, determined not to use euphemisms, not even in her thoughts...about murdering a young boy and not think of her child, about the children she’s had before. Aldus and fainter in memory, Mia and Ben, Celia and Amr and others. Mostly just flickers, but there if she concentrates.

Like, weirdly enough, Savage. He’s here. She can sense him. Her hand clenches into a fist.

Kendra would like to think she’s a good person, too. But she’s lived too long across too many lifetimes to not have a streak of pragmatism that Ray doesn’t quite manage. It may make him a better person, but he’s never had to see his child die. The death of his fiancée marked him, but a child...a child is different.

Kendra knows that.

And she’d do almost anything to protect her son this time.

Ray had sensed something off in her demeanor and hovered a bit, trying in his own awkward, beloved way to commiserate. But she’d reassured him, and he’d wandered off to prepare to go track down the Atom robots with Jax and Stein. She has no idea where Sara and Leonard have gone to, presumably preparing for their own portion of the mission, but she’s seen the cracks in them, too. Especially the thief, in his own way warring between pragmatism and the better angels of his nature, angels that had to bend a metaphor, been given a chance to flex their wings during their time in 1958.

The woman she’d been, even when first stepping onto the Waverider, would have scoffed at the idea of Leonard Snart, jewel thief and enemy of the Flash, having those better angels at all. She knows better, now.

Kendra thinks about Ray and Carter, about Aldus and the child she’s carrying. The presence of Vandal Savage, there like a taint on the outside of her awareness, and Rip Hunter, trying so hard to save his own son that he’s willing to kill someone else’s.

Then she shakes it off, a little, thinks another moment, and then heads to the brig.

Mick grunts at Kendra’s greeting but doesn’t look her way when she walks into the brig. He’s lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, still wearing the same vaguely military outfit he’d had on when she'd first come back on board the ship, when he’d been unconscious and newly out of his Chronos armor.

“It's almost funny how you guys keep parading in here like it's some kind of confessional or something. You, Blondie, the kid, the professor, Hunter… Snart ain’t been here in a while. Wuss,” he snorts derisively.

Then he glances up.

The expression on his face might almost be amusing, in its sheer dumbfounded nature, if she didn’t remember all too clearly what Chronos had been capable of. As it is, Kendra feels her lips twitch a little as she sits down, a bit heavily, on one of the benches.

“Whoa,” he says finally, sounding more like Mick Rory than she’d really expected him to. “Damn. Haircut knocked you up.” He pauses, eyeing her. “It was Haircut?”

The nickname also seems like a good sign. Perhaps Leonard really had been right, about what he’d asked them all to do. “Ray is the father, yes,” Kendra confirms for him. “You know we spent some time in 1958. You were responsible for it, after all.”

That brings the shutters down. No, she supposes, he wouldn’t want to be reminded that his own actions had led to Leonard being unable to go back for him—had led to how his friend had been forced to leave him behind in the first place. Mick sits back and stares at her. But Kendra can wait. She’s very good at it, after all this time.

The silence stretches. The former bounty hunter is finally the one to break it.

“Why’re you here?” he asks a bit gruffly but sounding reasonably like the man she remembers from...before.

Kendra considers that for a moment. There are a few reasons, actually, and only one is because she’s been asked to.

“Because there’s been lots of talk on the ship—and off it, as far as it goes--about people changing,” she says finally. “You told Leonard...”

That gets a snort. “Oh, it’s ‘Leonard’ now, is it?” he says mockingly. “It’s one thing with Blondie, but now you’re all buddy-buddy too?”

Kendra ignores the mockery. She thinks that maybe she can see the hurt behind it. “You told him that the Time Masters made you live lifetimes,” she continues, a bit flatly. “And it...affected you. You think maybe I don’t know what that’s like? That maybe I might have some insight into...coming back from it? You really think they had your best interests at heart?”

That brings all his self-righteous anger to a crashing halt. Mick stares at her, and Kendra raises her chin and stares back. She’s not going to pretend that anyone else is the real bad guy here, she’s long since decided. Savage is the true enemy, and she (and others on the ship) isn't so sure they can’t lump the Time Masters in with him.

Mick can’t seem to decide what to say to her about that. It hadn’t, quite clearly, been at all what he was expecting. Finally, he glances away, frowning, then back at her.

“S’pose you do,” he mutters then. “Doesn’t change anything.”

“No?” Kendra shifts a little. Her back never stops aching, these days, and these benches aren’t comfortable at all. “I think you’re not a true believer, when it comes to the Time Masters. You worked for them because you didn’t have much choice.” She pauses when he frowns, clearly about to argue. “And because you think you hate Leonard.”

“I do.” Mick’s voice is flat, now, and there’s a flash of anger there. But it’s not at her, and there’s no point in arguing with it.

“Is he really who you hate?” she asks instead, quietly.

Her former teammate opens his mouth to respond, but something stops him, some vestige, perhaps, of honesty. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to argue either. Instead, he shakes his head roughly, leaning back against the wall, watching her.

“Why’re you here?” he asks again, after a few minutes.

Kendra tilts her head at him, considering, trying to decide which reason to give him. “I just wanted to let you know that I hope you come back,” she says. “Because I think we need you. The same reason we needed Leonard in 1958.”

Mick snorts and mutters something, but Kendra holds up a hand, and there’s enough command in the gesture that he actually stops, letting her speak.

“You can do what needs to be done,” she tells him quietly. “And more than anything else, I want my next son to grow up without worrying about Savage.”

Kendra can see the moment Mick remembers that he—that Chronos—had been the one responsible for Aldus’s death. On the outside, it’s just a blink, an expression, a flicker in his façade--but it rocks him, and she sees it. And that’s the biggest sign of all that they’ve all been right, and there is something worth saving here.

It flickers through her head that she’s very glad, for Leonard’s sake especially.

Mick opens his mouth, and Kendra’s not sure if he’s going to try to apologize or explain or even justify it. She doesn’t want to hear it.

“As Rip says, time wants to happen,” she interrupts instead, “and Aldus was...he was going to die anyway, of a heart attack, in his office.” She sighs. “At least that way, I got to see him again.” Mick tries to speak again; she interrupts again. “And I don’t think you and Chronos were as much the same being as you want us to believe.”

Mick’s chin jerks up. “I am Chronos!” he barks, but Kendra’s pretty sure, really, that he’s protesting too much.

“Are you?” she asks, stretching a little again. “Really? Then why didn’t you-as-Chronos know better where we were going to be and what we were going to do? Why couldn’t you have tracked us down at any time? You were there.”

“I...” Mick shakes his head. He looks like he’s getting a headache. Kendra can sympathize. “I did...”

Kendra actually laughs.

“Mick,” she says with a hit of amusement. “You hit yourself with a car. Remember?”

The man puts a hand to his head, closing his eyes. Kendra decides, then, that her work here is done, for now. She climbs to her feet, sighing as her back protests, and turns for the door.

Mick speaks up again, though, after she’s taken a few steps.

“Son?”

He’d noticed her wording, after all. Kendra looks back at him, noting the lines of pain in his forehead and the stiff way he’s sitting, there in the barren, uncomfortable brig.

“Yes. And now you know something that even Ray doesn’t know, yet,” she tells him. “Gideon let it slip earlier to me. I’m going to tell him later.”

Mick stares at her, confusion and something more complicated in his gaze.

“Why the hell did you tell me?” he asks.

“Consider it...a gesture. Because I still think we have the same enemy.” She nods. “And although I know the old saying about the enemy of my enemy isn’t always true--I do think we could still be friends.”

Despite all the turmoil amidst the team members that the plans for Per Degaton have caused, the kidnapping itself goes off without a hitch. Even if Leonard and Sara hadn’t been quite so used to working as a team at this point, they know their business, and Rip has the unconscious boy back in the medbay in no time.

Leonard vanishes again after they do, and Sara’s still trying to decide whether to give him more space or go in search of him when Ray, Stein and Jax return as well, the former wide eyed and distracted by his own apparent further connection to the company making the Atom robots.

But before he can babble too much about his unborn child–or some other hypothetical child of his, for that matter—starting a company that manufactures “evil robots,” Kendra calmly cuts in and asks Gideon about Dr. Brice’s family line. The AI is inclined to be closemouthed about anything that involves their futures, but she admits that the scientist is related to Ray—to be precise, his brother’s great-great-great-great granddaughter.

That sets Ray off on a new tangent, but at least it’s one that doesn’t involve his supposed failings as a father. Sara shakes her head and decides to visit the medbay instead.

“I must admit, when I realized how much time had passed,” he says, “or rather, how much time was particularly unstable, between the day we…left…and the day we were able to return, I was worried. Worried about how Savage might have tracked you down. Worried that the Time Masters might have done so. But I thought, Miss Lance—” He looks at her, then switches his gaze to Leonard. “—and Mr. Snart are there. They’re survivors. They’ll go to ground. They’ll stay safe and keep the others safe.”

“We did.” Sara’s looking rather mutinous at the suggestion otherwise. “Safe and sane, or at least as sane as you left us…”

“…and you have well and truly caused so much change, so much potential change, to the timeline that I cannot believe the Time Masters didn’t find you first, find you and eliminate you with extreme prejudice.” The former Time Master has actually raised his voice and they both bristle at him, Sara’s hands tensing on Len’s and on the arms of the chair. “Even Gideon cannot pinpoint quite yet all the ways your actions have changed things at this point. You might have even changed your own lives, or the lives of the others. If…”

But Leonard’s had enough. It’s one thing to let Rip lambast him, but he’ll be damned if he’ll let the man light into Sara.

“We survived,” he drawls, forcing back the snarl he wants to let out, trying to keep his tone as cool and insouciant as he can. It annoys Hunter more than anger would. “No thanks to you, Time Master. Hell, if I hadn’t asked Gideon, we wouldn’t have even known about time drift.”

Hunter’s eyes narrow, but he also rather obviously tries to make himself calm down, running a hand through his hair again. “It’s not something you should have avoided!” he grits out, finally. “In many ways, it’s a means of protection, for you and for the timeline. A way time has of…of smoothing out the rough edges of something that’s not where it’s supposed to be…”

“Maybe we didn’t want to lose our rough edges.” Sara sounds pissed. “Maybe they make us who we are.”

Hunter’s glare gentles as it transfers to her. “Sara…”

“No, Rip.” She shakes her head, taking a deep breath, tightening her fingers on Len’s again. “I wasn’t meant to survive in a time and place like that. If I had either started to feel time drift taking over—especially if I hadn’t even known what it was—or if I hadn’t found a way to keep the…the core of who I am intact, I would have gone back to the League.” She glances at Leonard. “I almost did anyway.”

He’d suspected she was thinking something of the sort. Len keeps his gaze on hers, nonjudgmental and calm, and after a moment, she smiles at him.

“And we would have come for you.” Rip’s trying to sound reasonable and measured, but Sara just shakes her head at him.

“And how many people would I have killed in the meantime?” she says quietly. “What if I’d had the time drift set in there? I…”

But Hunter’s thrown up his hands, exasperation apparently taking over. “So, instead, we have Dr. Palmer teaching physics principles no one in this time should even suspect yet. You, Miss Lance, leading a mini revolution in feminism in Orange City.” Then he points at Leonard. “And you, Mr. Snart, the one I thought would be the most practical of all, playing 1958 Robin Hood and introducing advanced tech ideas to any number of individuals.” He lets out a noise that mingles a sigh and a groan, collapsing into his desk chair. “Miss Saunders may have changed the fewest things…”

“And she’s the one who came closest to losing herself due to sheer boredom…”

“But now the best…the only real…weapon we have against Savage is more than seven months pregnant!” His voice breaks into a bewildered sort of squawk, and the former Time Master just stares off into space for a moment before reaching into his desk and extracting a bottle of something that looks potently alcoholic.

“Where are Kendra and Ray anyway?” Sara asks after a moment, almost gently.

Rip shakes his head, pouring a drink. “In the medbay, getting Miss Saunders a thorough checkup.” He hesitates, then shrugs, taking a long drink. “She seems well. Just…well…”

Neither of them wants to finish that sentence and set Hunter off again. After a moment, Sara rubs her hands together, smirking, and takes a stab at something that will get them out of Rip’s office.

“Yeah, well, I want one of Gideon’s magic shots again,” she says lightly, winking at Leonard. “So…”

Hunter snorts but keeps staring into his drink as if it holds all the secrets of time. “I can’t figure out how the Time Masters didn’t find you all,” he murmurs. “You messed up so much…”

Leonard is getting just a bit tired of this. “Pretty sure we changed things for the better,” he drawls, starting to get to his feet.

But Hunter is having none of that.

“Are you sure? Are you really sure, Mr. Snart?” he asks, also standing, a hard note in his voice. “Because changing even small things in time, it causes…ripples. And those ripples grow as they spread.” He points at them. “You save one life, two lives, those people save or change other lives, have children, maybe those children also have an effect…”

Sara’s eyes are narrowed again. “Are you saying we should have just...what, watched…”

Hunter sits down his drink with a sigh. “I’ve only gotten the chance to look at the very basic level of what you—the two of you--changed, but do you know how many lives Miss Hayes and Miss Schuyler went on to touch?” he asks quietly. “To save? Or I should say now, the Mses. Hayes-Schuyler.”

Sara actually squeaks, putting a hand over her mouth, looking toward Len with sparkling eyes. “They got married? They’re still alive…”

“They were one of the first couples to marry in 2011, when New York…this isn’t what we’re talking about.” Rip struggles to regain control of the conversation, but Leonard’s picked up on something else.

“You said ‘save two lives,’” he says. “They…”

The words trail off. Hunter stares at him a moment, then nods, picking up his drink again.

“They were going to die,” he says, his voice emotionless, staring into the amber depths again. “There, in 1958, at that house, the night you met them, Mr. Snart. Mr. Travers was going to get into the house, then lose his temper and hit his wife so hard she fell and hit her head on the table. Then he would have grabbed Miss Schuyler to try to stop her screaming.” He takes a sip. “Shook her so hard, he broke her neck.”

He shakes his head. “He would have run off, eventually been arrested for it. But that night, Ms. Smith would have come downstairs to find them, then taken her children and run off into the night so that she wouldn’t be implicated in it. She wasn’t prepared. It…wouldn’t have gone well.”

His voice drifts off as he stares at the viewscreen in his office, as if remembering what it’s showed him. Sara can’t help herself.

“But the girls?” she asks urgently. “They’re OK? Now?”

Rip eyes her, taking another drink. “Oh, yes. And that’s another thing. Do you have any idea how many lives someone in a medical profession can change? I don’t know what you did, but instead of fading into obscurity as Ann Smith, young Anne May went on to not only save lives, but to teach others to do so. That’s not a ripple, it’s a bloody tidal wave.” He sighs as Sara grins, turning to Leonard. “And her sister! Her two daughters…a trauma surgeon in Star City and a defense attorney in National. And that’s not even addressing how many lives an author can affect, and that’s what the young Jacobi became…”

Leonard can’t help it. He barks out a laugh, a noise that’s both relieved and satisfied, grinning as he thinks of the tears in Dorothea’s eyes when he’d given her that nest egg. Sara actually has tears in her eyes now, smiling at him, and he nearly reaches for her right there in front of Hunter, to tell her…

“Yes, I know like it sounds that this is all well and good, but we don’t know yet what the fallout could be!” Hunter snaps. “What if a life one of them saves goes on to, to drive a car that hits Mr. Jackson’s mother before he can be born? Or what if…”

Leonard rounds on him, though, anger surging again. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have left us behind for so damned long,” he snaps back.

Hunter’s eyes are cold and furious. “And whose fault is that, Mr. Snart?” he asks in a clipped tone.

It’s a figurative bucket of cold water, in part because Leonard realizes that he still has no idea. Neither Raymond and Kendra had known back in Nickel City, and they’d barely gotten to greet Stein and Jax before Hunter had summoned them into his office.

“What do you mean?” he asks slowly as Sara steps to his side. “Fault? What happened?”

“No one told you why Gideon went offline? Or…” Hunter stares at them. “Oh, bloody hell. I should have known. You’d have been in the brig if they had.”

“In the brig?” Sara asks, a note of anger in her own tone. “He…”

“No, as a prisoner, but….” Hunter takes a deep breath, shaking his head. “Bloody hell,” he repeats. Then he reaches out for the booze on his desk and two more glasses, wordlessly pouring both and handing one to Sara, one to Leonard, who takes it in suddenly nerveless fingers.

He’s not sure how he suspects some of what’s coming. But he does. He knows.  

Hunter nods at his expression, then turns toward the viewscreen.

“Gideon,” he says, “show Mr. Snart and Miss Lance what happened on the ship, after…after it took off back in Harmony Falls.”

Next, “19 Gabriel Drive,” a one-shot, will show Sara and Leonard visiting friends in Orange City in 2016.