Sara was right, when she had said Rip planned on tearing the team a new one. The captain was standing in the bridge, leaning against the office door frame, waiting for them.
He scowled, when he spotted the team. Deserey figured he'd be upset about them starting a fight, but he looked even more pissed than she was expecting. She looked down, already knowing they were going to be screamed at again. She really hated the screaming...
Rip clapped his hands slowly, laughing bitterly. When he spoke, his words were cold, like a harsh winter night. (Which sucked, because Leonard was the only Cold she agreed to working with.)
"Here, here!" Rip cheered, sarcasm dripping from his voice like venom. "Now, you all deserve a hearty congratulations!"
The team moved into the bridge silently. Jax and Dez sat in the chairs, while everyone else gathered around the console. No one spoke, as they listened to their captain's lecture.
Rip shook his head, looking angrier and angrier the more he talked. "Not only did you fail to capture Savage, you exposed yourself and your powers to him, giving away the element of surprise for now and all of time." He threw his hands up in the air, fed up. "Well done, team!"
Ray sat across from Deserey, looking a little put out. She frowned, feeling the guilt settle its way into her heart, like a vacationer returning home, cozying up after a long, tedious trip. This time she really had messed up. Sure, she hadn't been the only one, but it still hurt, getting yelled at for it. Now, she was sure, Rip was going to send her back home. Now, he definitely knew she was useless. That it had been a mistake to let her join the team.
Carter shrugged. He glanced around the room, before speaking up to defend the team. "We don't need the element of surprise. We know he's in Norway, so let's find him and --"
Rip cut him off with an abrupt wave of the hand. He walked to the console at the center of the bride with a huff. "Unfortunately, we have larger problems than Savage," he hissed. "If only you would have listened to me about the dangers of upsetting the time line!" He was rigged, practically shaking with fury. Rip banged his hands on the console in frustration.
"What are you talking about?" Kendra asked, sounding fed up herself. Rip's attitude was clearly starting to annoy her.
Rip turned to her with a snippy reply. "Well, while you were busy saving Norway from nuclear annihilation --"
"You're welcome Norway," Mick butted in.
"-- Savage sent one of his cronies back to the site of the arms sale," Rip continued, ignoring the arsonist. "Anyone care to guess what he found?"
There was a pause, as the team glanced around the room. Deserey frowned, not really sure what Rip was referring to. She still had her sand bag. Sara and the crooks still had their weapons. Nothing was missing.
Ray was awkwardly playing with the arm of his suit, when he frowned. Apparently, he had noticed something wrong with it. He moved his arm to get a closer look, before slowly lowering it again. "...Oops."
Deserey remembered the snap she'd heard, when Ray was fighting one of those baddies near the bomb. Her eyes widened, realizing a small piece must have broken off his suit. That's what had made the noise. But the piece was so small she hadn't noticed it amongst all the chaos. She sighed, her heart feeling even heavier than before. How could she have been so blind? Now, Ray was going to get into even more trouble because of her...
Gideon's glowing blue head appeared above the console. "I am unversed in modern American colloquialisms," the AI said. "Is 'oops' slang for 'oh sh-'"
"Yes!" Rip grumbled, cutting the curse off and sending Gideon's head into hiding once more. Deserey envied the robot. She wished she could just disappear whenever people started laying into her.
"Language," Sara whispered to Dez, a teasing smirk on her face. Deserey shook her head, though.
"Not the time, Barbie," she told the assassin.
Rip went on, evidently not hearing the two women. (Or he just didn't care enough to respond to their antics.) "Dr. Palmer seems to have thrown a spanner in the works for the entire timeline."
Leonard raised an eyebrow, looking bored. "Come again?"
Rip sighed. He was annoyed with them all for not understanding, but he had hardly explained anything to them yet. When he did give them an explanation it was usually after he had finished chewing them out for being stupid or disobeying. Deserey picked at her nails, wondering how the hell that was even remotely fair. Besides, it was his fault for choosing a bunch of losers to do his dirty work. He should have chosen someone else. Someone better.
"Armed with Dr. Palmer's future technology," Rip said, "Savage's engineers develop a weapon far more destructive than anything here in nineteen-seventy five!"
He pressed a button on the console, and a firey image appeared. It looked similar to the one he had shown them on the rooftop two nights ago, only worse. Robots stormed through the streets, terrorizing the people. Skyscrapers were burning to the ground. People were torn apart limb from limb, flesh dangling from their bodies, like strings. Deserey looked away, her stomach doing back flips. Why did he have to keep showing them stuff like that?
"This is Central City in twenty-sixteen," Rip announced. "Or at least it was. I'm not sure what the neo-fascists are calling it now."
Deserey didn't look up again. She hadn't even recognized the place as her home, until he'd said that. But she refused to look up to check that he was right. She didn't want to see her city burning to ash. She didn't want to see people being brutally murdered. The others stood around, quietly letting the image sink into their brains. The mood was once again, somber, as the residents of Central City watched their home get destroyed. Even Mick and Leonard seemed sad about it; now this whole saving time thing was a lot more personal...
"Argh! Okay, okay, we get it!" Dez shrieked, unable to take it anymore. "Just turn it off. Please."
Rip wordlessly pressed the button on the console again, causing the image to disappear. Stein stepped forward, blinking rapidly. "But there must be a way to correct this," he said hopefully.
Rip sighed again. When he spoke again, he was a lot calmer than he had been before, probably realizing he was acting like a huge dick, but he still sounded a bit testy. "Fortunately, Gideon was just showing us a forecast of the future you've all created." He leaned on the console, explaining things in a calm manner for once. "Time is like cement. It takes time to become permanent. In this case, until Savage's team have worked out the mystery of your future technology and molded it into their own ends." Rip nodded at Ray, as he said that last sentence. "And when they do, what you've seen here is no longer a forecast. This..." He sighed once more. "This is history..."
For a moment no one said anything. Deserey felt like her heart was drowning again, sinking in the pool that had filled her lungs on that roof top the night she'd met all these people. Her mind flashed to that image Rip had shown them that night. They had sped that up. Allowed Savage to take over several years before he was supposed to. They were supposed to be the heroes, they were supposed to be legends. Yet, so far all they've done was making everything worse. Typical.
Dez shook her head lightly. Darryl had been wrong. This trip wasn't going to fix anything, not for her. Not for the world. She was useless, just like everyone else here. What had she been thinking? Everything would have been better if she had just decided to stay, when they'd went back to Central City. If they had all just...stayed. Her thoughts turned, briefly, to the way Rip had found her. She couldn't help thinking that if he had wanted to save the future, he should have just let her hang herself. He should have left her corpse there to rot.
Leonard pushed off the wall he'd been leaning on. He walked to the center of the room, looking mildly annoyed. "So, thanks to Raymond leaving a piece of his suit in the past, the rest of us don't have a future to go back to."
"Unless, we do something to change this course of events, the future will become immutable," Rip sighed, sounding annoyed himself.
Ray shifted uncomfortably. Deserey couldn't blame him. Everyone was already angry at him for losing that piece of his suit and dooming the future. She imagined he couldn't have been feeling too good about himself right now; she would have stepped up to defend him, except she wasn't really in the mood. Too wrapped up in her own dark thoughts. (Just another reason she was a terrible human being. Another reason Rip should have let her die.)
"Exactly how much time do we have?" Ray asked.
"He already said that," Sara pointed out. "Pay attention, Ray!" She was irritated about the screw up sure, but Deserey thought the attitude was kind of unnecessary. Or maybe she was just being overly sensitive again. (How pathetic. Now she wasn't just getting offended about people yelling at her but about other people's issues too. She might as well grab her laptop and join the chaos that is the comment section on all social media.)
Rip sighed, (again) repeating what he had said just a few moments ago for anyone else who needed a recap. "We have until Savage's weapons team reverse-engineer your tech."
Stein stood at the center console now. He was waving his hands slightly, as he spoke, slightly worked up. "We're talking nineteen-seventies terrorists with twenty-first century weapons!" he ranted, "And since we don't know where Savage went --"
Ray cut him off, as he got to his feet. "We don't have to find Savage. We just have to find the other piece of my suit, which shrinks because it's made of an alloy which mimics intra-molecular compression of dwarf star, thus emitting Alpha Particles."
Deserey stared at him, unblinking. She hadn't understood a word he'd just said. Science was like a foreign language to her, all those big words she couldn't even pronounce. But when she looked around the room, she was glad to find she wasn't the only one who appeared to be confused. Sara, the hawks, and Mick seemed to be pretty baffled as well. In fact, the only one who really looked like he understood Ray was Professor Stein.
"So," the grey haired man said, sounding a tad excited, "we just need to be able to track them. Fortunately, Alpha Particles are highly trackable."
Ray frowned for a moment. "Yet, unheard of in the nineteen-seventies...It's like we're trapped in the Stone Age..."
Stein scoffed. He seemed mildly offended by that comment. "I'll have you know that I was researching Alpha Particles when you were eating crayons."
Deserey snorted. Little kids liked to stick things in their mouths. That was why she had never let her kids play with any of those small toys or even a crayon. They hadn't been allowed to touch anything until they were old enough to understand the phrase: "don't do that or you'll choke and die!" (What? Subtly wasn't her strong suit.)
Leonard stepped forward. He pointed at Ray for a second, picking up on what they were saying. "So, to track that piece of Raymond's suit we just need to talk to..." He turned swiftly, moving his finger to point at the professor.
"Me," Stein confirmed. "Twenty-five year old me, rather." He turned, moving to leave the room.
Rip stared at him, looking utterly flabbergasted. "Oi!" he called. "Where do you think you're going?"
Stein looked back at him. "To break into my old lab and bring us back the particle tracker."
Rip looked like he wanted to argue against the idea. Instead, he said, "Fine, but perhaps, you should take Jefferson and Sara with you to act as your intermediaries." He glanced at Deserey, like he was going to tell her to go too, but there was no way she was going to move anywhere.
It wasn't that she didn't want to help. She wasn't lazy, like Rory was. It was just that it became difficult to do anything, stand, eat, go on dangerous missions with fellow time traveling heroes. (Not that she was even much of a hero.) All she could manage was curling up in a ball and sleeping for a week straight. Honestly, why had Rip even bothered? She was crap. He should have let her die...
Rip turned back to Stein. (Dez guessed she had a long winded motivational speech coming her way later, though. Joy.) "Look, interacting with yourself in the past can have catastrophic effects upon the future."
"Fascinating." Stein nodded slowly, though he didn't give the impression that he cared even in the slightest. Perhaps there was a bit of scientific curiosity, but there was nothing to imply that he was actually worried about becoming the next legendary screw up. He turned to Jax and Sara. "Let's go."
Sara hung back, as the two halves of Firestorm moved to leave the room. "You two go on without me. I think I'll stay here and train with Dez." The two men nodded, before promptly exciting.
"Hm?" Deserey looked up, when she heard her nickname. She had barely heard the assassin's proposal. Her mind had joined her heart, drowning in the water that was ever rising inside her. It was clouding her vision, distorting the world around her, forcing her under until she was sure she'd die from lack of oxygen. To think, the water had once been a safe haven for her. It use to be the one place she could relax, the one place she could think without being tormented by hate or mental illness. Now, even that was killing her from the inside out.
"Yeah, I mean, you said you didn't know your limit when it comes to your powers right?" Sara said. "And it won't hurt to learn a few moves in hand to hand combat. Besides..." She walked over, holding her hand out for Dez to take. "You look like you need to get out of your own head."
"There's a room down the hall," Rip told the blonde woman. "It should be big enough. You're welcome to use it if you like." He walked into his office then, followed by the hawks, as Gideon announced that they'd be heading for the United States. The crooks and Ray stalked off, either to find some entertainment or to do something useful.
Sara was still standing in front of Deserey, her hand outstretched. Dez knew she wasn't going to leave her alone, until she did or said something. She sighed, forcing herself to take the blonde's hand. Sara pulled Deserey to her feet, dragging her down the hall and into the room Rip had told her about.
{~}
Carter was looking over his son's belongings in Rip's office, while the captain went over his notebook in the desk near by. Kendra was standing in the door way, staring blankly into the room.
"It doesn't feel real," she muttered, glancing at the jacket in Carter's hands. She touched the fabric gingerly. "Why doesn't it feel real?"
Carter shook his head. He wished he could have given her an answer, but the truth was he didn't have one. He'd been struggling with the same feeling himself for the last three hours. "Maybe we were just terrible parents..."
Kendra nodded slowly. She didn't meet his eyes. "Terrible parents and selfish people..."
Rip looked up from the notebook, eyeing them cautiously. Carter glanced at him, figuring he was going to say something. Instead, the captain just awkwardly turned back to reading the page he was on.
"We had a kid, knowing we could never give him a normal life, knowing we would probably just die soon anyway. And then we did," Kendra went on. "We died, and we left our little boy all alone. We didn't teach him to ride a bike. We didn't get to go to his school functions. We didn't help him move off to college or watch him become a professor. All we did was watch him die."
She crossed her arms over her chest, staring down at the jacket solemnly. "And I don't even know if I have any right to feel bad about his death, because I wasn't there. I barely even remember having him." She shook her head. "I don't remember my own son...Do you?"
Carter hesitated for a moment, realizing that she was right. He couldn't remember a damn thing. For all he knew they really were the worst parents ever. Had he tucked Aldus in at night, when he was little? Did she rock him back to sleep when he woke up from a nightmare? Did they support his hobbies? Did they even know what his hobbies were?
Any other father would have been able to answer those questions easily. Any other father would remember making the decision to have kids with his wife. He would remember the day his son was born, because that would have been the happiest day in his life. He would have remembered everything about his son, about the time he'd spent teaching him, helping him grow into a proper young man...But Carter didn't.
He couldn't remember anything about that life. The only reason they even recognized Aldus to begin with was because he had had to tell him. They didn't know until he had called Kendra mother. They didn't realize he was their son until he'd shown them a family photo of them at the state fair. (And even after that, Carter still couldn't remember that day.)
Whenever he tried to recall something from that life, Carter got a searing pain in his temple. It was like the memories themselves wanted to be locked away. And everyone knew only bad memories were kept from the forefront of a person's mind. So, how could he be sure of what sort of father he was? How could he say whether or not he'd been a good man? A good father...
The only real thing he could remember was Vandal Savage. He couldn't remember anything about his son. He didn't have one memory of himself bonding with Aldus. But that night, the night Savage took them away from their son...Well, he remembered that night quite vividly. He remembered hiding his son in the closet, telling him not to move or make a sound, no matter what. And he remembered running downstairs, hoping to keep that monster away from him. He remembered Savage slitting Kendra's throat, before jamming that knife through Carter's chest...But that was it. That was all he could remember.
Was there even anything to remember? Was there even a life for them outside of Vandal Savage?
Kendra was looking at him, her eyes glossy. He could tell she was having similar thoughts. "All these lifetimes...all these years we've been alive...and we haven't even really had one life..."
She looked at Rip. He had his nose deep into Aldus's notebook, trying desperately not to intrude on their conversation. Carter felt a little bad about that. It was awkward, watching someone have a somber moment, when you knew you shouldn't be part of it. (But shouldn't he have been? Rip was the only other one on this ship who had been badly burned by Savage. The only other one who knew what it was like to have his world ripped away from him by that monster. Shouldn't he have been in this conversation, too, then?)
"Where is he?" Kendra asked the captain. "Um, Aldus's body I mean...I went in there earlier, but I didn't see him..."
Rip blinked, looking around a moment, as if to make sure she was actually talking to him. "Oh, um...there's a cryo-storage in the medbay. We put him in there until we can give him a proper farewell...and we will give your son a proper burial."
She nodded slowly. "It's still so weird to call him that...Uh, sorry about all the...whining. It's just..." She shrugged helplessly.
"It feels like something's missing," Carter supplied, putting Aldus's jacket down again.
Rip opened his mouth to say something, but before he could something fell from the jacket's pocket.
Kendra frowned, picking it up. It was an old newspaper article with tint print and a picture of a golden dagger at the top. "I've seen this knife before..." She paused for a moment, trying to recall the details. "Savage used it to kill us. In our first life." Her eyes widened, as she locked gazes with Carter. He stared back at her, stunned.
Back in Central City, when Barry and Oliver had helped them stop Savage, (even if it was just for a few years) they had learned that the objects associated with the night of their death, (deaths?) could also be used to kill Savage. Though according to Rip only Kendra or himself, Carter, could wield the weapons. Still, if they got their hands on that dagger, they could end this once and for all. (Was it too much to get his hopes up?)
Rip flipped through Aldus's notebook, quickly finding a small bit about the same dagger that was on the newspaper clip. "The dagger needs to be wielded in conjunction with an incantation inscribed on it..." He trailed off, looking at the two hopefully.
Kendra looked back at the captain sheepishly. "I don't know," she said. "I can't read the language..."
"It's okay," Carter told her. "I'll help you remember."
"Splendid," Rip said, relief washing over his face. "Now as for the dagger... We'll need someone to steal it."
Leonard walked in to the room, Mick and Ray trailing behind, (the latter of which had changed out of his Atom suit) just in time to hear those words. He sighed dramatically, plucking the article from Kendra. "Okay, fine," he said, like they had even asked him. "Whatever. I'll do it. What is it?" He glanced over the clipping, as Rip quickly filled him and the other two in.
"Article says it was purchased by some rich Russian douche bag named Sasha Mahnovski," Len said. He shrugged, waltzing away with swagger.
"I'll go with you," Ray said.
"I already got a partner," Leonard said, nodding at Mick.
"Who we trust even less than you," Ray muttered.
"Look," Rip said, mostly just to avoid any more arguments. "You're more than welcome to go with them, just don't bring along any more of your future tech."
The inventor nodded curtly, following the two thieves out of the room.
Sorry, this was a little longer than I wanted it, haha. But it's super hard for me to make short chapters. I hope the content is good enough that you over look the length though...
Sorry Dez is skipping another mission, but I wanted to put a little more time into her depression. See, it doesn't just magically disappear one day. You have good days and bad days...and then really bad days. She had a good day, when she got her code name...now she's having a bad day. Let's hope Sara can help her, yeah?
I also steered away from following her a bit, with that last scene. It took me a little while to figure out how I wanted to do that one. But I couldn't find a way to do it with Deserey there. So, I wrote the scene from Carter's perspective, added Rip to it, and changed the dialogue a bit.
Okay, well I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I'd talk more to you guys, but this AN is putting this chapter in the 4,000 words area so...