1.
Deep inside, there is a warrior inside Rip Hunter's heart. He borrowed the jumpship and took his leave, feeling a strange weariness creep up in his bones. He felt so cold, shivering shivering shivering, remembering the things he's done, brainwashed or not. He found a niche in 2017 Star City. Even though he had been a time master for decades, travelling everywhere staying under thirty years old biologically, Rip still didn't know who he was.
The man who devoted his life to protect history, the man who travelled alone and the man who assembled a team, here he is in the city of the flash and green arrow. Supergirl and Superman and Batman and their super friends weren't that far away. Either way, Rip had gone through a lot of trauma and sometimes, he hated himself. Defeating an ex-assassin, almost killing her, Gideon saved him from becoming a murderer. It wasn't you, his conscience told him. His heart told him.
Somehow, he knew that he had to take a firm hold of the man he was long before he became a time traveler. Somehow. His memories are this: pain pain pain and so much suffering and blood and blood and blood. The only thing that made sense was to take his own blood and suffer the way doctor mid-nite did. The way Sara did when he was choking her. A strong, tough girl who had been training in martial arts for years, an elf or a faerie.
Rip figured that by now he wasn't human. He punched a brick, just to hurt himself, and the brick wall shattered all around him. It crumbled into an redolent red dust. Mud, clay, becoming what it started as. 'I was clay,' Rip thought. 'God's clay.' His knuckles burned as they bleed, as the wall fell apart and Rip collapsed in his own agony. Who am I? It didn't matter. He grabbed onto his chest and thought about his red red red heart beating thumping wanting to fight back, wanting to go back to the Waverider because it was the only life he ever knew.
But he couldn't, at least not yet. It's not that he didn't feel welcome there: he figured that they were better off without them. You saved them. You gave them purpose. Some cause to stand up for. Was that Gideon? Or God? He never thought about God before. But now his skin was burning, bleeding, and before this he never felt so alive, his whole body electrocuted burning water coursing through his veins.
So he ran. He ran and knew he had to find a temporary place to stay, find some sort of brand new purpose for himself. He closed his eyes and covered his injured fist with his other hands. Too much power, too much risk. He ran and he thought of his wife and son and he thought of Savage and the evil speedster and he thought about how much he loved Sara and felt wonder for the way Amaya channeled animal powers. What you don't know, can hurt you. Talk to the animals, Amaya will say. They attack because they are afraid. They attack because they are wild and you are wild too and that wildness is what makes you so beautiful, what makes you a hero.
He accessed his safety bank and bought a small cottage near Star City. He thought about protecting people, about becoming a super hero. He thought about writing books about history and he thought about making advanced technology like Ray did…does. They aren't dead. They are protecting time without him, and that stung. Then he reminded himself that it was his own choice, his own free will. He applied for a passport and applied for jobs as a history professor near Star city.
Every day he thought about the bricks crumbling in his hands. Running faster than cars, though not as fast as Barry Allen. He thought about it all the time. How alive he felt when the cuts on his thumbs were stinging.
So he tried it. He bought double-edged razor blades and dug it into his arm and yanked it. He expected something to happen…like there's an aberration when a time traveler settles in the past and cuts himself instead of fighting to save the world. Fighting against time twisters and fighting in solidarity with his lost wife and children. And the blood and pain took all of that away. He was numb. He was awake and so so so alive and he knew that he wanted to do it again.
He fought himself. He wanted to be the man recruited by the time masters. He thought about God and what God wanted him to do. Find purpose. Get up. He took a sip of whiskey and almost puked and then took another sip and another, drowning in his sorrow.
Sometimes help is harm, and harm is help. Sometimes when you lose someone, you never stop grieving. Sometimes you lose yourself, but Rip promised himself that he wouldn't lose grip of the person he started out as. He wouldn't let go. He thought about the monster that Vandal Savage was and he wondered if he was, after all, just like him. And he dismissed the thought and cut himself. He felt better, wise, sorry, but most of all, okay. He felt okay.
He found a job. He was paid enough. He lectured college students about medieval England and the revolutionary war and told his students all the secrets he found out during his vocation as a time traveler. And he missed Sara, who pushed herself too hard in her training, and even Mick and Ray and Amaya. After what he did to them, how could they want him back?
But Rip sensed they did. They wanted him to be Captain Rip Hunter again. Gideon wanted Rip to come back. But Rip wasn't ready. He kept a journal and sometimes he wrote with his own blood. Not often. He didn't need it often. His memories burned him, seared him quite enough. He felt a strange sort of nostalgia for something he couldn't quite put his fingers on. It doesn't matter, Rip told himself. But it did. It hurt and burned and even when he wasn't cutting himself he bleed bleed bleed in his heart in his soul.
His students looked up to him. And he to them. He spent time with Barry and Oliver and they made him a super-suit: a suit that was bullet-proof and knife-proof and a mask and a hood. Here, in Star City, he can be Rip Hunter again. Different vocation, same purpose. And Rip found he enjoyed running through the city trying to achieve superspeed. He chased the cars and practice sparring with Oliver. They told him about Bruce and Kara and Clark and Lana and he was alive alive alive. Another league of its own: the justice league.
The suit was comfortable and had black leather over the bullet-proof material. Maybe, he wasn't meant to be a time traveler after all. And he remembered all of his walls crumbling down. Pain pain pain. The first time he interceded between a murderer rapist and a lady with long red hair he felt empowered and brave. Bravery isn't a lack of fear: it's going into a battle with your fear and ignoring it. Powering up, feeling the energy in his body in his skin all over the place.
"You're safe now," Rip Hunter whispered. He couldn't help but wonder about Sara Lance. Train hard, he heard with Sara's voice. He couldn't betray his wife. He loved Sara, but his wife was…is…his soulmate. That would never change. His feelings, he could battle those things. He cut himself when he got home, after peeling off his super-suit, his second skin. He felt super numb and happy and peaceful all at the same time. And his fear of being stabbed washed away. I am okay, he said to himself. And maybe it wasn't a bad idea to think about Sara too. Let her into his heart. He couldn't tear his heart away from them, his team, and he knew they would be looking for him.
You're safe now, Gideon whispered. You're not evil. It wasn't you. You didn't kill anyone, not on purpose. But he remembered it, and sometimes, he wanted to die and find his wife and son. Like Rip, they were strong. He went to his job and he told his college age students how important to live – re-live – remember – history. Herstory. Yourstory. Who you used to be, and who you could become.
And then he would get home and cut his arm and hop into his jumpship and sets off for year 3017. The millennia that he was from. The war, the dystopian government, it is all gone. His team succeeded, though they failed to save Rip's family. How could this alternate universe be home? He didn't live on Earth. He lived in the vanishing point, having sworn an oath to protect history, to protect the future, to protect people. There was crime, of course, and advanced technology. But a great thing changed: Vandal Savage was gone, and the true definition of anarchism allowed every citizen to be free. No power in human hands, another immortal Man – or, God, per say – had come back. The thing he was told was called the Second Coming.
A friend? Rip knew that because of time travel that he himself was immortal. Is immortal. But it is Jesus that gave him his immortality. Yes, Gideon said. A friend. He thought of Laura Story's song. God will be God, and Rip is free to be the person he's meant to be.
When Rip is ready to stop cutting himself, he will with no help at all. He had a strong sense of self deep inside of him, yet he couldn't forget the Rip he was when he was in the cell on the Waverider curled up in a ball, in fetal position. He could not forget the enemy that he became, and now, the hero he does not have to be.
Let God, Rip's intuition whispers. Let go and let God. He jumped back to 2017 and found Jesus in his heart, smiling at him. I want you to be happy, Jesus says. And Rip finds a love for this God, the only God, that he never had before. A love for Jesus and His Father Yahweh. And the Holy Spirit, surrounding Rip's apartment.
It's 2 a.m. and Rip doesn't care if he lives or dies. He goes outside and wanders around, his keys in his pocket. He finds a park with a grassy field and lays down kicking screaming at the constellations. He smokes ganja instead of drowning in liquor and he talks to the stars. He talks to the Great Man above the stars. He takes a hit and closes his eyes and lets himself collapse against a woody tree. He finds the heart inside the tree as the leaves sway back and forth and he sings the song he sang to his son when he was a screaming one year old.
They're alive. Where are they? That was all Rip could think about, so he gazed at the black but shiny sky and burns himself with his lighter and he screams. So much pain, and not all of it is physical. He closes his eyes and visualizes his wife and sun and Sara and a Man that he imagines Jesus probably looks like. You are safe. You are safe.
He stares at his arm and finally cries. He cries because he misses the time ship that was his only home and he cries because his arm itches and he cries because his family is lost and he cries because he is betraying himself by loving Sara Lance too much, even Mick, and Ray and Amaya and that maybe leaving was the worst mistake he could ever make.
He doesn't mind his job, or 2017, or Star City. He doesn't mind patrolling the city in the dark at night, smoking weed and staring out to space. His time ship went there. His time ship, not Sara's, though he unofficially gave it to her. He gave the Waverider to Sara and to Jax and to Martin Stein and Lilly if she ever wanted that life and Amaya who he barely knows and Ray and Steel. He didn't even realize that he started something more than a team: he found a new family. And he missed it so much that it was like he was tugging his heart out of his chest.
And in the morning he drove to work and he missed England too and he even missed all of his many enemies. He missed fixing abberations and he missed everything even new things self harm and speeding through the night smoking herb teaching molding young minds maybe even saving the world in the way only a misfit could. And he finds an identity in that: misfit, loner, legend. That will never go away. My soul is the mirror of your own. My eyes are your eyes and we spin and spin and spin and who are you that I forget about my dead wife when I think about you? He thinks this over and over again and he closes his eyes and remembers being Phil dropping acid and eating mushrooms and filming all of the ideas that he had forgotten about.
And he has some nostalgia for forgetting. It would be so easy, so painless. But he is here for something more than that. He was put here to be a hero, a vigilante, and now he knows that he can't save time itself. Only Yahweh and Jesus can do that. And learning that is freeing if you let it. Let him in. Let him in. He's knocking on the door wanting to open a million doors for him. A million millenias. A million centuries and settling down back in 3017 if he wanted to, but he doesn't.
He feels free free free ready to fight back fight his weary pain and let love and peace replace it. And he secretly hopes his team is looking for him, trying to find him, because he is not the sort of man to settle down. But feeling pain when everybody is hurting is wise and it is glorious sadness and Rip wants to feel more so he slashes his own skin and watches his blood run down his pale, now scar-scattered arm and he smiles. And now he knows he is ready. Ready for an adventure and ready to face the man that he has become. And he knows he can no longer live this life as a loner.
Not anymore.