#dc coldwave

Len and Mick like the story of how they met, even if they weren’t repeating it to anyone. Mick was waiting for his link to open for almost two years now. His own parents weren’t bonded to each other. The pair platonically bonded to his father were good people, but couldn’t afford to take care of him. His mother only had one bond, her second link never opened. He had never met that person before, but they took him under their protection, or so it was believed. The man was a capo of the Falcone family. As payment for his “good heart,” he asked Mick to do small jobs for him. Slowly, these jobs got more and more dangerous, in the end, it landed him in Central City Juvenile Detention Centre. He couldn’t complain so much, he was big enough that the other kids, and even the guards, left him alone.

One day, he was on the patio thinking about a better way to get a lighter from the guards when he saw a group trying to beat up the new kid. He didn’t like it, the kid was too smart for his own good. The moment he saw the metal reflex, he moved. He moved so fast that he didn’t even know what he was doing. One moment passed, and he was at their side stopping them.

Neither Len nor Mick noticed the link snapping into place, or the bond fixing into place immediately. Between the adrenaline and the hits both of them received on their heads, no one could blame them. The first to notice was Len, but he waited almost one week before talking to Mick. How he could do it was still a mystery. After all these years, they only told it to Lisa. It was her favorite story during her teenage years.

It has been around twenty-two years. Twenty-two years of ups and downs, fights and make-up… For a while, their bond seemed to miss something. It wasn’t as it was incomplete, but sometimes it was like their bond reached something clouded. After decades, they could say they had found a balance. Then they started to listen to it. It was very muffled, weak and unclear. They couldn’t believe it. They had a third.

When they started to hear a new voice, it was a surprise, even if big age gaps weren’t unheard of, they are very uncommon. After a big delight, the reality crashed their happiness, they are linked to a kid. The fact the kid didn’t like to be called a kid didn’t change the truth that he was a kid. For some reason, this was their first fight, resulting in one week of silence and cementing the nickname Kid.

With time, the Kid made his mark on their relationship. He tried to make them leave the criminal life, but Len and Mick were too good and liked the job too much, so they agreed to a no kill rule. The Kid always tried to meet them at the start. Len and Mick avoided it for years. When Kid should have been turning eighteen, he didn’t bring up meeting them. Len and Mick neither.

~~

It’s a clear night. A full moon is up in the sky, the stars shining like small diamonds. The man uses the few shadows that exist to cover his movement. He has the layout of the shop clear in his mind. He is highly skilled and doesn’t have a problem unlocking the door and bypassing the alarm on it. He takes his tools to open the safe, small stars compliment him, and he smiles.

The alarm sounds. Mick swears under his breath, and two distinct voices join him. He knows what he did wrong, but it doesn’t change that he doesn’t have time and needs to concentrate. He doesn’t have time. The two voices are always welcome, but so distracting, both voices urging him to run, to leave before it is late, to get himself safe. Unfortunately, it was already late.

The Kid shuts up after hearing he was caught; Boss just complains louder. Boss is pissed, and Mick can feel his rage and anxiety. Lisa, Boss’ sister, has been sick for a couple of days. High fever and a cough made it important that she not be left alone. Her two thirds were out of the city, they couldn’t make it to Central City in time. This heist was time sensitive, and missing it today would be throwing months of planning in the trash. Boss and Kid wanted him to let the chance pass, but Mick was anxious and needed the adrenaline of the job. Otherwise, Central City would have a couple of buildings destroyed before regular demolition teams showed up.

The cops catch him before he can make it to the car. He tries to remain calm so the Kid doesn’t spiral with worry. He can’t avoid sharing with Boss the bite on his wrists, where the handcuffs hurt from being extremely tight. Mick is loud and uncooperative. He can hear Boss making plans to break him out during the ride to CCPD.

Chronos is the last life Time Masters give him, there are others before.

First, there's the student, the moment time masters finish erasing all his memories and send him to train to become a bounty hunter. He proves himself to be better than mindless hunters, the Pilgrim likes him, she picks him as her partner, personally trains him, and teaches him, his mind is filled with temporal and anomaly knowledge. Now, at the main base, there are rooms filled with bright flowing temporal energies, they call them core rooms. Druce is finally convinced that perhaps he can be more. He locks him in there. Instead of being annihilated, he absorbs the energy, Time recognizes him as part of themselves. It's Time who gives him the name Chronos, but for the first time he keeps it a secret.

The second life is the General, that's how they called him around. Strong, imposing, getting the respect he deserves. The Pilgrim is that tiny and deadly woman walking at his side. They make the best team. He has his missions, not as a Hunter but to keep the timeline safe, has his own beautiful ship, the Hyperion. It's in that life he meets and somehow befriends the time pirate Buck. (Ah, no, Mick didn't make him up for novels. He writes the adventures of that damn idiot.)

Third life, time masters decide they need an elite team, so they put the Titans together. Chronos, the Pilgrim, Karsa, and Themis. Themis is mostly a cyborg, human once, but instead of regenerating her body parts, they welded her back together. Karsa is a bright blue alien, bomb, and long-range weapons expert. Dangerous. Loyal. Makes quite some messes around.

They're Temporal Agents, above bounty hunters, below Time Masters.

The third life is when a still very young Rip Hunter gets taken in. He once, or twice, perhaps a bit too much, sneaks on board the Hyperion, chronos takes him under his wing, teaches him things, and raises him to not fully trust time masters, but secretly. Never tells him the name Chronos, though. He still goes as General and still calls Rip as Michael.

It's in this life that the connection between Chronos and the timestream grows deeper, he belongs to Time, can feel the changes and aberrations as they happen. Worse, he can see the faults in the Time Masters. The Titans set base at the Junction, at the limit of the timestream, they plan. Plans go wrong, leafing to...

Fourth life, the bounty hunter. Time Masters find out. Druce is definitely upset.

They take themis first, dismember her. She's not human anymore.

They take karsa second. He's sent on a mission alone. It's a trap, he knows, he can't refuse though. "Meet you there when im back, boss", they never meet again.

The Pilgrim is resetted. Omega protocol activated, she's the same deadly operative she had been once. No attachments.

Chronos is last. They find out the name, it's the only thing they let him keep. Turn him in the hunter chasing the Legends. They didn't consider his connection with Time, keeping him safe.

He finds Len, they fight, they make up, Len dies. (There's more there, in between. The connectionwith time has side effects and consequences, len notices them, theyre not so pretty sometimes.)

Mick doesn't stay, he can't. He goes to Nanda Parbat, retrieves the Hyperion, decides to fix things when Time tells him that Len is alive, just lost. He saves him, takes a while, the ship is damaged, they get a bit stuck but they're alive and they're together. They decide to keep doing that, keeping the timestream safe the way Chronos did as an Agent.

That's pretty much the general idea I had.