*Thank you to stillthewordgirl for brainstorming and putting up with my babbling. (Seriously...you have no idea!)
**Yes, I am aware that Elizabethan handwriting and grammar (and spelling!) can be problematic...let's just assume that Gideon's translators help with written words, shall we?
I. When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
Martin Stein looked up at the sound of footsteps. "Leonard," he said neutrally. "Come in."
"Are you sure?" Leonard Snart asked, in a tone utterly devoid of his usual snark.
Martin huffed out a breath, and rubbed at his forehead wearily. "No one blames you for this, Leonard, least of all her."
Snart looked past the professor, to the woman who lay still on one of the examining couches. "I blame me."
"Leonard," Martin began sternly. "You can focus on things that the Legion made you do, or you can focus on getting Sara back. If it were me, I certainly know which I would choose."
"What do I do?" Snart asked, in that same broken voice.
Martin smiled, for the first time that day. "Sit with her. Talk to her."
"And say what, exactly?"
"Say what's in your heart - and don't you dare give me that crap about not having one. Just…let her hear your voice. Give her something to hang on to. Read to her, if you don't know what to say." Martin picked up Sara's discarded jacket and fished a slender volume out the inside pocket. "I believe this is a favorite of hers."
Snart's hands shook slightly as he accepted the small book. Shakespeare's Sonnets. It fell open to the twenty-ninth, the page marked with a dried sprig of rosemary, from the posy he'd bought her from a street vendor in Elizabethan London.
He stared down at Sara's unmoving form and swallowed down a hard lump of guilt and pain. "Can I?" he asked, gesturing vaguely to the examining couch where she lay.
"Yes, of course. You can't hurt her, and I believe the contact would actually be beneficial."
Snart nodded silently, then hitched himself up onto the couch. Martin helped to rest Sara gently against his chest.
"If you don't mind, I'm going to go get something to eat. Have Gideon page me if you need anything." He patted Sara's shoulder gently, then left.
Snart looked down at the book and tiny sprig of greenery in his hands. "Do you remember that mission?" he asked quietly. "First time we spent the night together."
Normally, that remark would garner him at least an eye roll, more likely an elbow in the ribs. Now…the silence pressed in around him, and Sara lay unnaturally still and heavy in his arms.
II. With hey, ho, the wind and rain
"We should get a room," Snart said quietly.
"Yeah, don't think so," Sara replied, murder in her eyes.
Snart raised his hands defensively. "Listen to that storm. No way are we going out tonight, and I, for one, don't want to spend the night down here with this crowd."
Sara glanced around the common room of the inn. Merry old England was getting very merry right about then, and she didn't relish spending the night down here, either. "Fine."
"I promise, I'll be a perfect gentleman."
Sara just snorted back a laugh. "First time for everything, right?"
"Well, at least it's dry," Sara muttered, surveying the meager accommodations.
"More or less," Snart agreed, eyeing a suspicious stain in the ceiling.
"Is your comm working?" Sara asked, fiddling with the device in her ear.
"No. I'm guessing something to do with the storm. Did you notice that guy who was watching you?"
"Sort of ferret-faced? Off in the corner? Yeah. You think he's one of Savage's?"
"I don't know," Snart mused, stretching out on a wooden bench under the window and folding his hands across his stomach. "He was scribbling away with a quill and ink. Didn't quite seem to fit the evil villain profile. He could have just been admiring the scenery," he added with a smirk.
Sara shot him a hard look.
"What? It's a pretty dress."
She slipped off her shoes and curled up on what passed for a bed. "You gonna be all right over there?"
"Dandy. I like all my appendages just the way they are, thanks all the same."
Sara laughed and blew out the candle, and they settled into an uneasy silence, listening to the storm howling around the inn.
Sara bolted upright as thunder and lightning roared, seemingly right overhead.
"Sara?" Snart asked. He'd rolled, cat-like, to his feet, a knife materializing in his hand as he scanned the room for possible intruders.
Sara gasped, and pushed back her hair from her sweaty face. "I'm sorry," she said finally. "It's this storm…it's like the one, the night the Gambit went down. I'm sorry I woke you."
"Don't be," he said, in a peculiarly gentle voice. "You want to talk about it?"
"Seriously?"
"Isn't that what one is supposed to say in these circumstances?"
"Since when do you play by the rules of polite society?"
"I don't play by anyone's rules but my own."
Sara shivered, then jumped at an especially loud crack of thunder. "You may as well come over here and be comfortable," she said, moving to get up. "It's not like I'm gonna sleep any more after that."
"Stay." Snart came over and sat down beside her, resting his back against the headboard.
Sara was hunched forward, arms wrapped around her knees.
"Does this happen a lot?"
She shrugged. "I have a lot of fuel for nightmares." She flinched as another crack of lightning illuminated the room. "Storms like this are pretty much a guarantee. It was like this - right overhead - just before the ship went down. The water was so black and cold…"
Snart reached out and laid a tentative hand on her back. "You nearly died. That's no small thing. It would give anyone nightmares. But you survived. That's what matters."
Sara peeked back over her shoulder at him. "You know a thing or two about survival, don't you?"
"You could say that."
Sara was surprised to find herself waking a few hours later, with sunshine streaming though the window. Her head lay in Snart's lap, and one of his hands rested gently in her hair. That hand moved almost immediately when he sensed that she was awake.
"Feeling better, Birdie?" he teased.
She sat up and smiled at him. "Yeah, I am. Thank you."
"All part of the service." He got to his feet and extended his hand gallantly. "Come on…let's go see if your devotee is still down there."
"Why so interested? Thought he didn't seem the type?"
Snart shrugged. "No reason not to have a little chat with him. If he's one of Savage's - fine - we'll call in the team. If he's just some creep who likes to leer at pretty girls? Maybe a little chastisement might be in order."
"Aw, Leonard…you say the sweetest things."
III. Wishing me like to one more rich in hope
"Of course, your admirer was gone, so we went out in search of Rip and the rest of the team. And we were having such a lovely day, right up until that charming fellow accused me of being a cutpurse."
Snart looked down at Sara, nudging her gently. "This is the part where you always say that even if I didn't steal his purse, you're pretty sure there was something in my pockets that didn't belong there."
Sara remained unresponsive.
"Come on, Sara! You know this - you remember this…please. Please don't leave me."
Snart closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, inhaling the sharp scent of the rosemary, and recalling that long ago mission.
IV. Haply I think on thee
"Well, there's two days of my life I'm not getting back," Snart drawled as they climbed aboard the Waverider. "No Savage, no mystical object to help us defeat Savage -"
"But I'm pretty sure we've all got flea bites," Sara griped.
"If you will all report to the medbay, I will supply you with a delousing spray," Gideon supplied helpfully.
"Peachy," Snart muttered. He glanced down at Sara and smirked. "I'll wash your back, if you wash mine."
"Nice try."
Snart bumped her arm with his own. "What's bothering you? Aside from the fact that Rip set us down in the completely wrong time and place -"
"I heard that, you know!" the captain called back over his shoulder.
"Like I care," Snart muttered under his breath, eliciting a small smile from Sara.
"I guess…I just thought, Shakespeare's London, you know? The place where he wrote Romeo and Juliet -"
"Please, don't tell me you think a celebration of miscommunication and mutual suicide is romantic," Snart pleaded.
"All of the poetry that he wrote there…I guess I just thought it would be…"
"Cleaner? Quieter? Less fragrant?"
"All of the above," Sara admitted.
"For our next mission, I'll try to find you a more idyllic locale, Miss Lance," Rip snarked.
"Without the need for delousing after!" Snart added.
"Yes, well, on the subject - just once, I'd like to take you three someplace and not have a bar brawl erupt."
"Technically, I think this one was a tavern," Sara replied mischievously. "Or would that be public house?"
Snart smirked at her, and Rip threw up his hands in disgust - or maybe defeat. They took it as a victory, either way.
Mick wandered up beside them, examining a coin he'd pulled from his pocket. "Hey Blondie, for what it's worth, I think you look better than this broad that's on the money."
"Yeah - that would be Queen Elizabeth!" Rip called over his shoulder.
"Aw, thanks, Mick."
Snart looked down at her with a warm expression in his eyes that said he agreed with that assessment - even if he didn't say the words.
"Hey, Boss."
"What is it, Mick?" Snart looked up from lacing his boots as his old friend appeared in the doorway.
"I got something from that bar. Don't know if it's worth anything, but Blondie was saying she liked poetry, and this guy said he was a poet."
"What guy?" Snart asked curiously.
"He was sitting over in the corner, writing with one of them feather things -"
"A quill pen."
"Yeah. And drinking, a lot. He was complaining how much it sucked that the theaters was all closed for the plague. Anyway, I figgered anything that old might be worth something, so I swiped it right before the fight broke out."
"Thanks, Mick," Snart replied thoughtfully, taking the smudged bit of parchment.
Sara smiled as she set the aromatic posy Snart had purchased for her on her desk. She'd teased him for actually buying something, and he'd replied that the little girl reminded him of Lisa. She suspected that he'd given her quite a few more coins than were called for. She looked up as the crook in question entered her room.
"Any good souvenirs?" she asked lightly, knowing that he always managed to steal something.
He flourished a deck of cards from the tavern, then passed her the parchment.
"What's this?"
"Something Mick swiped. Thought you might find it…interesting. I know I did."
Sara studied the hastily written lines curiously. "But…what is this? The title is Sonnet Twenty Nine, and the signature - William Shakespeare? But it's written to -"
"To a fair lady in blue, with golden hair," Snart said gleefully. "I think you made quite the impression on a certain someone."
"I don't understand. Shakespeare's Sonnets were supposedly written to -"
"To the mysterious Dark Lady. Always did hear that the Bard had an eye for the ladies…and the gents."
"Wait. Shakespeare was writing this, in that tavern, and Mick swiped it?"
"Yup.. Waited until he was passed out drunk and grabbed you a present."
"So this was the only copy? Gideon?"
"The timeline remains unchanged, Miss Lance. There are no surviving sonnets mentioning anyone who resembles you."
"That's good…I guess," Sara replied uncertainly. "I mean…it's kinda flattering to think that I inspired Shakespeare…even if he did forget it the next morning when he sobered up."
"I was always rather partial to the original," Snart said with a slight shrug.
"The original, which is actually the revised version, because Shakespeare was blitzed when he was writing about me?"
"Whatever."
"Does Mick know who he stole that from?"
Snart shrugged. "Doubtful."
"So, Boss, is it worth anything?"
"Is what worth anything?" Rip demanded.
Ray happened to peer over Snart's shoulder at that moment. "Hey - is that -?" He snatched the parchment.
"Easy there, Raymond," Snart chided.
"What is that?" Rip asked, with mounting exasperation.
"It appears to be a draft of the twenty-ninth sonnet - by William Shakespeare!" Ray exclaimed, practically vibrating with excitement.
"An original draft?" Martin inquired. "How astonishing!"
"I've seen samples of Shakespeare's writing, and this looks similar, but…" Ray's voice trailed off.
"Guy was pretty drunk," Mick supplied helpfully.
"But what?" Rip wanted to know.
"Well," Ray responded slowly, "for one thing, this isn't the twenty-ninth sonnet that we know. And…it describes a woman who -"
"Looks an awful lot like Sara?" Snart drawled.
"But is it worth anything?" Mick interjected.
"Well, a previously undiscovered work of Shakespeare would be priceless, at least in academic terms, but this is so…anomalous…not to mention, beer stained," Martin explained. "There would be no way to verify it."
"But we were there," Mick said, puzzled.
"Time travel doesn't make a very good explanation, Mick," Sara said, clapping a hand on his shoulder.
A panicked expression suddenly crossed Rip's face. "Gideon, are there any repercussions in the timeline?"
"No, Captain. As I explained to Miss Lance and Mr. Snart, the timeline remains unaltered. One might go so far as to say that Mr. Rory actually prevented a time aberration."
V. Stony limits cannot hold love out
"…then my state, like to the lark at break of day -"
"Not a lark," Sara mumbled.
"Sara?"
"'M a canary," she insisted with sleepy logic.
He sagged with relief at the sound of her voice. "Yes, you are. Will you come back to me?"
She blinked up at him owlishly. "Where've I been?"
"Too far away." He tightened his arms around her convulsively, and pressed his lips to the crown of her head.
"Read the rest?"
"I think you know how it ends."
"I like hearing your voice," she replied, gazing up at him through her eyelashes.
"How could I refuse a request like that?"