I'm baaaack! And now fully qualified for Teaching English as a Second Language.
This story was a bit harder to write since it doesn't completely focus on Len and Sara, who I've found I'm a bit better at writing. The basic plan for this is that each chapter will focus on a different member of the team and their nightmare, and I will be updating this every week just like I did with 'Dear Lisa'.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow.
WORD COUNT: 1616
"Remember that all through history there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seemed invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always." – Mahatma Gandhi
Tuesday, February 16th, 572
"Brian!" Celia screams in a panic, running faster than her noble upbringing would otherwise permit, "Brian, he's here!"
Brian Kent looks up from brushing his horse, understanding right away who she means. It was only a matter of time before Hath-Set, whom they know to follow the power, would recognise the most beautiful daughter of the Penbrook family and come looking. He's about to throw the saddle on, but decides that it will take too much time. He knows he can ride bareback on this particular mount, so he picks up his travel bag of food and the barest amount of supplies and slings it over his shoulder. When Celia reaches him, he helps her climb up before joining her and urging the horse out the stable door.
"He's coming from the West," Celia tells him, and since Brian knows better than to doubt her instincts and senses, he immediately turns his horse to the East. She clings to him as they ride away through the woods, branches tearing at their faces and clothing. They are going to pick up his Silent Knight armour from where he has hidden it in the woods, and then run like this for as long as the horse can hold out before taking to the air.
Suddenly, the horse whinnies loudly in pain and starts jumping around. Both Brian and Celia are thrown from its back and land hard on the ground. Celia yelps and lifts her arm, bloody where a metal caltrop has pierced it. The forest erupts with movement around them as no less than six armed men emerge from the brush. Brian scrambles to his feet and pulls a knife out of his belt, lunging at the closest of their attackers.
He ducks under the other man's sword and drives the blade into his belly before dragging it sideways, effectively disemboweling him like he learned in his various past lives. Then he dodges to the side to avoid another sword coming down on him.
Brian is lost in the dangerous dance of blades as he fights for his life, until he hears the shrill scream behind him. He turns, but it's too late. Hath-Set, or Savage, as he now calls himself, has drawn his dagger across Celia's throat. Feathers from her wings are still fluttering to the ground. Bloody feathers. "CELIA!" he yells.
Savage sets her down almost gently, a mournful expression on his face. "I wish it didn't have to be this way, Chay-Ara."
"Then why won't you LEAVE US ALONE?!" Brian demands, charging forward. One hundred and thirty-five times. This monster has killed them one hundred and thirty-five times. One hundred and thirty-five lifetimes of rage fill him, his wings flaring out behind him, as he tries to come out on the winning side for once.
Pain suddenly lances through his back as an arrow pierces it from behind. He didn't kill all of Savage's men before attempting to attack their leader. Savage's knife soon lodges itself in his stomach.
Their tormentor is grinning at him. "You think you love her? Then why can't you protect her?"
Friday, January 22nd, 2016, 5:30am
"Celia!" The name burst unbidden through his lips as Brian surged up from sleep. No, not Brian. Carter. He was Carter now. The moments after waking were always filled with confusion, trying to remember whether he was James, Hannibal, John, Koenraad, Brian, Khufu… he'd had so many names over the past four thousand years. And the names he screamed upon waking were always different: Sheila, Kate, Charlotte, Kasimira, Celia, Chay-Ara…
Kendra. This wasn't the first time she'd had the same name as one of her past incarnations; it's something that can happen when you've lived over two hundred lives. She was Kendra in the 1940s, and now she was Kendra again. Just thinking of the name brought memories of her disappointment when he forgot their anniversary. They hadn't been married since they were James and Sheila (or rather, Joe and Edith).
But Kendra – this Kendra – wasn't married to him. She wasn't even his girlfriend; they'd just met in this life, and like many times before, her memories of their past, of their relationship, were coming back more slowly than his. She had her own room in Carter's apartment (she was adamant that it was his apartment, not their apartment), so she wasn't even lying next to him.
Carter slid out of his bed and padded to the kitchen, figuring the cliché glass of warm milk might do him some good. He paused in the doorway when he saw that the kitchen light was already on, Kendra's form silhouetted against the island. She turned around upon hearing him entering. "Can't sleep, either?" she asked over her mug of hot chocolate, "It was a weird night."
Weird was a good way to describe it. They'd been practicing their flying when they'd spotted a woman trapped in her car on a set of train tracks. They'd freed her and tried to fly off with her in between them, but Kendra had still been inexperienced with flying, and had slowed them down; Carter had had to pull her out of the way of the train, and once the danger had passed, he'd insisted on carrying the woman himself. Then, while they were arguing about it, some strange British man had appeared, made a comment about couples counseling, and knocked them out with a strange flashing device.
But it was what had happened afterwards that had Carter thinking. After they woke up with six strangers on a Star City rooftop, the British man had introduced himself as Rip Hunter From East London And The Future, and had explained how Vandal Savage, Carter and Kendra's immortal stalker, was not completely destroyed last month since they weren't the ones to deal the final blow, and would take over the world in 150 years. Hunter was amassing a team to stop him.
Carter had spent his four thousand years running away from Vandal Savage. Trying to have some sort of life with his soulmate until it all came to its inevitable end. The thought of actually seeking him out was… terrifying.
But it had almost always been the two of them. Occasionally they'd had friends and allies helping them evade and fight Savage, but most of the time they'd been on their own. Carter had learned a bit about the other people Hunter had recruited before they'd all scattered: Sara Lance, Laurel Lance's ex-assassin of a younger sister; Ray Palmer, another friend of Team Arrow and a certified genius; Professor Martin Stein and Jefferson 'Jax' Jackson, the two-in-one metahuman friends of the Flash. He didn't really care for the two criminals, Leonard Snart and Mick Rory, and wondered why Hunter thought even trying to recruit them was a good idea. It wasn't likely that they'd sign on for this, considering they'd been the first ones to walk away, with no indication that they might consider changing their minds.
But the others… Palmer had made his decision to join before leaving the rooftop, as had Stein. If Lance chose to go, and if Stein changed his young partner's mind, then they would have a fairly capable, competent team. Adding Hunter and his future technology into the mix made Carter start to believe that maybe they could win a confrontation against Savage. Having a team had already proven to work before. That maybe it could stop at two hundred and six.
A scratching noise brought him back to reality and made him realise that he hadn't responded to Kendra's comment, probably for several seconds. She was frowning at him with concern, now, pushing her stool back as she stood up. Carter blinked. "Uh, yeah, weird."
Kendra frowned. "What, have you seen… have we seen anything weirder? In our past lives?"
"Nothing involving time-travel." Suddenly he felt exhausted, and glanced at the clock. Five-thirty in the morning probably wasn't the best time to discuss this, not when they had taken the train all the way back to St. Roch from Star City, because Hunter apparently couldn't be bothered to provide them with a way back to the various locations he'd taken them from. Thankfully Dr. Palmer ("Call me Ray") had been gracious enough to pay for train tickets and provide bags with which to carry their armour. And thankfully both Kendra and Carter had been wearing some normal clothes under the armour, though Ray seemed like he would've offered to buy them whole new outfits if they needed them.
Kendra stretched, draining the last of her hot chocolate and depositing the mug in the sink. "Well, let's see if that worked. Goodnight."
Carter watched her shuffle back to her room, filled with a desire to finally be rid of the looming fear of Vandal Savage that constantly threatened to end their brief happiness. He made his own decision right there: he would join Rip Hunter's team. He would work with these heroes to put an end to this vicious cycle he and his soulmate had been subjected to for four thousand years.
Now, to convince her that that was the best choice for them.
It is my belief that Joe and Edith Boardman are really James and Sheila Wright, two previous incarnations of Khufu and Chay-Ara from the comics, since we already know that their identities as the 'Boardmans' were just the latest of a string of aliases. Brian Kent and Celia Penbrook were also previous incarnations, but I only know what I've read from the DC Wiki, which is very little, so I'm just taking bits and pieces of that.
Also: How did everyone get home after Rip kidnapped them? The locations of Star City and Central City are a bit sketchy in Arrowverse; all I know is that they're 600 miles apart and I figure they must be in the same state if they send their criminals to the same prison. My best guess is they're both in California, but St. Roch is in Louisiana, and Pittsburgh is even further away. Granted, Stein and Jax seem to have returned to Central after the rooftop speech, but that's still several hours away. I don't know how fast a train ride from Star City to St. Roch would be, but I've decided to not care too much.
