Dedicated to the awesome community of CaptainCanary shippers I've met of the course of the past few months.
I hadn't write fic in more than a decade before these two grabbed me and made me put pen to paper.
I'm heartbroken.
xxxxxxxxx
Ultimately, Mick gives her the ring.
"No, Blondie. I know what it means. You should have something."
Eventually, she stops demurring. She puts it on a chain around her neck. A reminder.
" 'Cause he never had a chance to get to the point of giving you a different one. Don't look at me like that. I'm not blind."
The two of them finally get the nerve to step into his room. It's spare, with very few possessions. Few momentos. But she sees that goddamned parka hanging over a chair and picks it up and just … dissolves, sitting right down on the floor and weeping silently.
Mick pats her shoulder silently, but recognizing catharsis when he sees it, leaves her to it.
It doesn't really help, much.
She takes the parka. There's nothing else she wants, not even the pack of cards. They're meaningless now.
It's funny, though. One morning, she wakes up with the ring on her left ring finger, instead of on its chain where she'd clutched it overnight.
One morning, the parka isn't in her closet, but spread out over shoulders as she tries, restlessly, to sleep.
She'll turn a corner and feel a chill in the air.
She asks Mick if he's noticed anything odd. He admits he feels like he's being watched now and again, but nothing like what she thinks she's experiencing.
She starts to think. Leonard … died … in the Vanishing Point, right? Where time does funny things? Didn't Mick say he came back, there?
She asks Rip, who just gives her a sad look. She asks Mick, tenatively, about his own dying experiences, but while he answers, they have more to do with a controlled process, not some wild release of energy.
Eventually, the ring is on her finger more times than it isn't. She leaves it there.
The cards, which she thought discarded, are fanned out on the bed once in a while.
One night, she dreams of him, then wakes up fully clothed, but drenched in sweat and … well, sated. And while she can't say she's never dreamt of him that way before, this was … different.
(She considers asking Gideon if it really was merely a dream, but loses her nerve.)
She desperately wants to talk to Laurel, not so much about these odd experiences, but about the loss itself. Mick and the others care insomuch as they knew him. Laurel will understand the broken heart she's barely even admitted to herself.
When they land in 2016, with Rip's warnings about the decisions they have to make in their heads, she heads to Star City.
But Laurel, too, is gone.
As she stands at the gravesite, helplessness wars with anger inside her. She didn't make a difference here. She didn't make a difference there. What good has she done, after all? She places the flowers on the grave and closes her eyes.
She feels that chill again.
When she opens them, one red rose has been added to the bouquet.
She spins and, there, near the treeline. A tall man, in black, merely a shadow in the trees.
She runs.
Her father calls her name from the car. Still, she runs.
The figure hesitates, turning away at the last moment. She catches the merest suggestion of a profile…
And he's gone.
She does, after all, stay to fight Savage. Why not? It seems foolish not to finish the job. She couldn't save them. Maybe she can save others.
She's battling it out with some of Savage's goons on a rooftop. And while she's more than a match for them, the numbers are starting to build.
None of the others are in sight.
She's just starting to worry when she hears the voice, clear as day, in her head.
"Sara! Down!"
She accedes without question, taking a knee, adrenaline coursing through her even as she registers who yelled the words.
Impossible.
Her eyes are closed, but she can feel the frost as it passes, coating the very tips of her lashes, a breath of chill against her lips.
Her eyes fly open.
No one is there.
But there's a circle of ice around her, and the minions are frozen within it.
They defeat Savage, though not without … more … cost. There's more to do, and she throws her lot in with the team again. The Waverider is full of sad memories, but it's still a timeship. And that may be exactly what she needs.
One of these days, she'll find him.
One of these days, he'll make it back to her.
It's only a matter of … time.
xxx
"And maybe, I'll find out
A way to make it back someday
To watch you, to guide you
Through the darkest of your days…"
"Wherever You Will Go," The Calling