Series: Part 3 of Time Of Our Lives

Time Has Come For Letting Go
One-shot

Sara walked with them the rest of the way to the hotel, waiting by Snart's side while Mick went to check in. She bit at her bottom lip when Snart curled a protective arm over sore ribs. "Maybe you should stay on the ship," she said with a frown. "Gideon can work on you some more."

Snart rolled his head towards her, somewhere between bored and incredulous that they were having this conversation again. She'd been flip flopping for days, torn between the mission and keeping an eye on the team member they thought had died a year ago. The team had been even worse, but they'd left them behind on the ship with strict orders to be ready to go when Sara got back. Maybe she should have stayed too.

"Don't look at me like that," she groused. "You're the one that died."

"Haven't you died about twelve times?"

"Not funny." She huffed and looked towards where Mick was leaning against the front desk. "We're supposed to be acting like a stronger team. It feels like we're ditching you both," she admitted, guilty.

"Are you coming back?"

"Every week," she answered and reminded herself not to smack the injured man that didn't believe she'd make the landings right. He and Mick really were perfect for each other, she thought. Pains in her ass, the both of them.

"Doesn't sound much like you're ditching us, then," he said and winced when he shrugged his shoulder an inch too high. "My sister checks in less."

"You did tell her you're alive, right?"

His eyes moved over to Mick, but he didn't even bother to put on an innocent look. "She wouldn't believe it until she saw me," he explained. "Can't do that if I can't time jump yet."

Sara wanted to argue, stand up for a girl she'd never met and say that he should have called her the second he regained consciousness, but… She couldn't. Guilt weighed heavy on her with the reminder that none of them had called Lisa in the aftermath of the Oculus explosion. Mick had told them over the dinner table one night that he'd gone back the last time they were in Central to tell her and tell the Rogues. Someone should have been with him to do it. They should have remembered Snart had left someone behind too.

She nodded instead, eyes downcast. "Do you think she'll want you to stay in Central after?"

"Depends on the mood we catch her in," he replied, but it sounded honest instead of dodging, and Sara wondered if Lisa was as complicated as her brother.

"All set," Mick said when he rejoined them, flashing a pair of keycards. A man in uniform appeared at his heels, gathering raggedy duffels onto a luggage cart. With that and their clothes, they stuck out like a sore thumb in a hotel as fancy as the Ritz-Carlton. The people watching them seemed to know it. "Presidential suite."

"You had to, didn't you?" she sighed. The credit cards were old, Time Master issued and limitless, but honestly.

"Not like any of us are footing the bill," he said. No one was. No Time Masters. No… She wondered if they'd had accountants to handle those things.

"Besides," Snart added and pulled a gold card from his pocket, "we have two. Just in case one manages to run out."

She gave him a flat look and snatched it out of his hand. "You get one. Not one each." She looked over at Mick. "What names did you use?"

"Michael and Leonard Wynters," Snart answered for him.

"Boston aliases," Mick clarified. The smirk said there was a story behind it that Sara wanted and didn't want to know in equal parts. Maybe with alcohol, she considered and promptly remembered who she was standing with. Definitely with alcohol.

She shook her head and waved them off. "Go. Follow your bellhop or whatever they call them in 2032. Don't forget to tip him."

"Can the tip be that he needs to have his pants tailored?" Snart asked at a mumble.

The man looked back at them, confused, when she started laughing.

The ship seemed a little more empty once they were two down. In some ways, it made sense. Jax was sure Gray would go off on some lecture about people occupying a space and turn it into a science lesson, but that wasn't the way he meant it. Snart had only been back for a week, body mending as Gideon tried to patch up his injuries. They'd gotten used to him not being there, but to get him back and lose him and Mick just as quickly…

He looked around the bridge, counting out chairs and trying to remind himself that they were going to come back. Mick had been right when he said they couldn't just quit their mission while they waited for Snart to recover. Travelling wasn't safe for him yet and none of them were willing to risk pulling him back into the time stream too early.

Still, there was an uneasy feeling in his gut as he wandered towards the kitchen area and counted the chairs around the dinner table too. They'd added an extra one when Snart came back, but he'd never been well enough to sit at it.

"They left their guns, right?" he asked Ray when the older man came around for a coffee.

"What?"

"Mick and Snart," he said, "they left their guns, right?"

"Oh. Yeah." Ray chuckled. "Snart started threatening to freeze my-" he cut himself off, coughing, "you know if I touched his."

"He won't let you live that down, will he?" Jax asked, grinning.

"Doesn't seem like it."

Their first mission without Mick around was an unmitigated disaster.

A former bounty hunter for the Time Masters, driven mad by things they couldn't begin to consider, but she was causing aberrations across time in some blind effort to catch her old masters' attention. She hadn't. She never would, but she wouldn't listen when they tried to tell her the Time Masters were gone.

"They're coming back," she insisted, eyes crazed as she pointed a gun at them. She still wore her armor, helmet gone and matted hair hanging over her shoulders. "The Time Masters will rise again!"

They wouldn't. She didn't. They did what they could to stop her, warring with themselves as they went against someone that wasn't in her right mind.

Nate killed her by accident, a victim of adrenaline and strength that still got the better of him sometimes.

He cried until he threw up and kept crying until Amaya coaxed him into taking a sedative. She stayed with him that night, tears staining her own cheeks as she stroked his hair. "He didn't mean to," she whispered when she finally slipped out of his room and sank into a chair at the dinner table.

Sara reached out to squeeze her arm. "I know."

"Mick would have known how to talk to her," Jax sighed.

"He did have experience," Stein admitted, eyes lowered.

"We needed him," Ray said, but it wasn't accusatory. There was no anger, no flinging of blame. It was simply him voicing a realization they'd all had when they faced down someone that could have been Mick in another lifetime. If he'd still been Chronos when the Time Masters were destroyed… None of them wanted to think about it.

Jax stood. "Do you think he'd notice if I took a beer from his stash?"

Sara snorted softly. "Definitely."

"I'm taking one anyway."

"Bring a round."

They'd replace them later.

Sara landed them back in Boston a week late.

Ray grumbled and slid Nate a twenty.

Mick looked entirely too smug. "You want me to teach you how to land?"

"Bite me."

Snart caught her in the little hallway near the guest bathroom in the too-big suite. He kept his voice low, a rumbling that she knew was flirtatious. It made her stomach twist as her mind pulled on memories of maybes and almosts. Maybe that was why she let him kiss her, his good hand buried in her hair as his tongue danced over her bottom lip.

It was more than the quick one she'd given him when he was shoulder-deep in the Oculus. That one had been over before her mind could decide if it was a goodbye for him or something she'd wanted to do for herself—for them. She'd never given herself much time to think about it after, resolute that there was no point in contemplating her feelings for a dead man.

Then, he wasn't dead. Not dead, but definitely married to the man he was sharing this disgustingly huge hotel suite with. Married, but not monogamous, but her own past still made her feel like it was cheating. It wasn't, she told herself as she broke the kiss and flattened her hand against his chest to stop them both from leaning in again. Mick said he hadn't vetoed her and Snart was definitely still on board if she was.

But she wasn't.

The realization came between one breath and the next. For Mick and Snart, it wasn't cheating, but it wasn't something she could do. She'd been the other woman and no matter how different the situations were, her brain couldn't make the disconnect.

He let her hair fall through his fingers and stepped back.

They didn't speak, shared no more than a look that seemed to say nothing and everything at the same time. He understood, returned her I'm sorry look with an easy smile.

The door to that section of the suite swung shut like a chapter ending and she felt okay. Whispered words and a kiss that gave as much closure as it had made her toes curl.

Mick gave her a knowing look when they rejoined the group and leaned over to tell her she had lip gloss on her chin. "You two good?"

"He's all yours," she murmured back.

"Always was," Mick said, "but I don't mind sharing."

She shook her head, but they shared a smile.

There were rings on Mick and Snart's fingers when they visited again (she landed a week late again and Ray looked at her like it was her fault he kept making bets with Nate) and she joined in on the congratulations. She hugged Mick and let Leonard seem to struggle about if he was okay with the touching or not. He accepted hers easier than the others and she kissed his cheek.

"You're not getting a second wedding present," she told them.

"But Raymond already paid for it," Snart said as he waved a wallet.

"Hey!"

"Snart."

"It was in his back pocket. He practically gave it to me."

They found their footing on the missions by the second month, but they still found themselves looking for a flash of flame or a nasally voice delivering a horrible pun. They worked, but they weren't complete. Amaya and Nate could feel it too, thrown by Mick's absence in the group more than missing the dynamic the partners brought when they were together. The rest of them found themselves missing the package deal. Stein seemed especially surprised that he felt it too.

"Do you think they'll come back soon?" Jax asked one night as he helped set the table. "Snart's gotta be healed up now, right?"

"Mick said his wrist is still giving him problems," Amaya said. "He's going to be wearing the brace for a while. Gideon thinks there was some nerve damage."

"Damn."

"It's just his wrist," Ray reminded them, pointedly cheerful. "He's not even left-handed. Gideon will probably clear him as soon as the temporal energy is gone."

"Is it?" Nate questioned.

"Nearly there," Stein replied from his place chopping onions. He pressed his eyes shut when they began to burn. "Judging from the last scans, he seems to be in the final stretch of it."

"They'll come back when they're ready," Sara told them. "He spent months bouncing across the time stream and playing Mick's Ghost of Christmas Past. Let him adjust."

Jax winced. "I forgot about the ghost part."

"Exactly."

Mick and Snart rejoined them three months after they left and it felt like the team had come back together.

The End