Just a little Legends/Constantine crossover that I've been wanting to see in canon since John started appearing back in S3. Sadly, I think it's safe to say by now that the writers are under some sort of constraint where they legally can't give us some closure regarding anything from 'Constantine' that wasn't Astra or John himself. Astra was a character from a backstory, rather than an active plotline in the show, which is probably why they were allowed to use her in the first place.
If the photo of John's will from 'Mortal Khanbat' is any indication, Chas and Papa Midnight are still alive, and that show's version of Jim Corrigan was briefly mentioned in 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' (mainly to clarify that the version who shows up there is a completely different Jim, not a recast), but we've still heard absolutely nothing about Zed, or what the ever-loving HELL Manny's up to. I can't even begin to think of how I might tackle the latter, so here's a little tiny snippet of the former.
Obviously, this is going to be non-canon as soon as the premiere airs, especially since it looks like Gary is on the ship with Sara and he's clearly not, here. Of course, as stated above, it's unlikely that there'll be anything in canon that features Zed.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own 'Legends of Tomorrow' or 'Constantine'.
WORD COUNT: 2,556
Ava Sharpe was a bit of a mess right now. Not that anyone could blame her. Her girlfriend-slash-co-captain had mysteriously gone missing three weeks ago, and no matter where she and their friends looked, they couldn't find her. It was as though she'd disappeared off the face of the earth.
Gideon couldn't find anything that would suggest Sara had ended up in a different time period, either. If she had, she sure wasn't making any waves. Not even the tiniest Time Tremor.
So, it was perfectly understandable that Ava was under a lot of stress right now, worrying about Sara while leading their crew and still dealing with the little voice in her head that said she couldn't match up to Sara when it came to captaining this bunch. She barely slept, living almost exclusively off coffee. More than once, one of the other Legends would find her slumped over the library, or one of the computers in the lab. Depending on the Legend in question, she might be left as she was, carried off to bed, or made comfortable wherever she'd fallen asleep, usually with a blanket tucked over her and a small plate of food left nearby for when she woke up.
The others were handling it as well as they could, in their own ways.
Astra was the least affected of the bunch, considering she barely even knew Sara, or any of the crew besides John, as anything other than an enemy-turned-grudging-ally. John himself was growing frustrated as spell after spell failed to track her down. When he wasn't casting said spells, he was usually dragging Gary around on exorcisms, just to give his mind something else to focus on.
Gary himself was fretfully trying to get John to talk about his anger – fat chance of that happening – while also hovering over Ava whenever he got the chance. That, or cuddling with Gary Jr. II. He was also considering getting everyone else therapy animals, but no one seemed to trust his judgement regarding where he got them from.
Mick didn't talk about how worried he was. That just wasn't his thing. He hadn't been drinking as much, but he stuck a lot closer to Lita whenever they were together, as if he was worried that she would be next. Lita, for her part, took his hovering better than most teenagers would, but that was mainly she'd been there the night Sara had disappeared, and had woken up a couple times from nightmares in which her father was the one to vanish without warning.
Nate was in a funk, not just because he was worried about Sara, but because he'd just gotten his memories of his girlfriend back, only to lose her again shortly after. When he wasn't working new leads with Gideon, he was usually in the lounge, watching and re-watching Stella get her groove back with the Tarazi siblings.
And speaking of having other worries, Behrad was still more than a bit shaken up after having been murdered and resurrected (and the fact that he was now able to remember his own death in an erased timeline). Similarly, Zari was sticking to her brother's side like glue these days, often feeling the need to glance his way and see him moving and breathing to remind herself that this wasn't a dream, that he really was back in the land of the living.
Weeks passed. The team continued dealing with the occasional time pirate and the problems that they caused (thankfully, those problems had been less prevalent when they'd had to prioritise fixing Anachronisms and catching Fugitives and Encores), but it felt like they were scrambling to keep it together.
One day, they found themselves pursuing a pair of time pirates in the midst of a summer festival in (most of) the team's present-day Atlanta. It didn't take long to find the pirates in question, and after dragging them back to the Waverider and locking them in the lab's cell (to be brought back to their native time period, where they had outstanding warrants for other crimes), Behrad insisted on going back to the festival to blow off some steam.
Zari and Gary were pretty quick to agree, and so was Astra, who hadn't been to anything like the festival since she was a little girl, and Nate and Mick only needed a bit of convincing (the latter being reminded of the various stalls selling homemade boozes. John rolled his eyes and grudgingly agreed, although he secretly planned on ditching the team and checking up on Jasper Winters's old Millhouse since he was already in the area.
Ava was the holdout, but in the end, under threat of being physically dragged off the ship, she relented and agreed to accompany them all.
"What's she doing?" Astra asked after about an hour of sampling different foods and enjoying some music. They were walking through a section lined with artists peddling their masterpieces, mostly handmade jewellery, wooden carvings, and paintings and sketches.
Ava looked over at the specific stall that Astra seemed to be pointing to. While there were some truly beautiful landscape drawings and a couple of very lifelike animal sketches, the main attraction was the easel set up in front of a bench from which a middle-aged couple was getting up. The pair walked around to see what the artist had drawn, and their faces lit up. They both spoke to the artist, clearly praising her, judging by their expressions and the small smile on her face.
"She's a sketch artist," Ava explained, "Instead of buying a pre-made picture, you can pay her to draw a picture of you right here on the sidewalk."
"Nice!" Ava jumped as Gary seemingly materialised behind her and Astra. "We should get some done!"
Despite Ava's half-hearted protests, her former subordinate enthusiastically dragged them over to the sketch artist's stall.
"Hi!" he greeted the artist, "Us next, please!"
The Latina woman sitting in front of the easel looked a little startled by his exuberance, but smiled back at them. "Sure thing! Would you like three individual pictures, or one of all of you together?"
"Which one's quicker?" Ava asked. She wished she could say that she was enjoying herself, and she knew that if Sara had been here with her, she absolutely would be. But right now, all she could think about was returning to the Waverider and resuming her search for her girlfriend. There had to be something she'd missed.
"I'll do your portrait first, alright?" The artist offered before Gary and Astra could protest. "Go on and have a seat."
Ava sat down on the bench, and put on a big, fake smile.
"You don't have to smile that big for this if you don't want to," the artist told her, "This takes a bit longer than a photograph."
Grateful for that advice, Ava relaxed her face into a smaller smile, although it was still fake. As Astra dragged Gary off to look at some of the jewellery while they waited for their turns (with a stern warning not to run off while they were gone), Ava occupied herself by looking at some of the artist's work more closely. There was a river with a man fishing in front of a tent on the bank, a street view of a building Ava recognised as the Tribune building in Chicago, a street that looked like the French Quarter in New Orleans, a small, quaint church, and a beautiful sunrise picture with what appeared to be the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. This woman was quite talented, and had an eye for detail.
After she got tired of looking at the pictures, Ava turned to the artist herself. She was definitely an attractive woman, with curly, brown hair and expressive brown eyes. The look she gave Ava was so… sad, even with the smile on her face. In fact, her expression seemed to be a bit distressed, and Ava wondered when that happened. Well, obviously it was while she'd been looking at the drawings, but how long had that been going on?
Just then, Gary and Astra wandered over, the latter now clutching a paper bag with some small purchase. They both cheerfully greeted Ava, clearly please that she hadn't gone running back to the ship in their absence, and peered over the artist's shoulder to check out her progress.
Ava knew something was up when both of their faces turned into perplexed frowns. "What's wrong?" she asked. The artist was now scribbling on the paper with increased intensity, her eyes glazed over and unfocused.
"Is that Sara?!" Gary finally gasped.
"What?!" Ava got up to look, as well, and the other woman didn't even seem to notice that her subject had moved. The co-captain of the Legends all but pushed Gary out of the way to get a good look at the drawing, and her jaw dropped when she saw it.
Sure enough, it was a startlingly accurate portrait of Sara, still in the punk outfit she'd been wearing at Charlie's concert. She was standing in an oddly-shaped window, staring through the glass with a horrified expression on her face. Also in the window was what appeared to be a reflected image… of the planet Earth.
"What… the hell… is this?!" Ava grabbed the artist by her shoulder, which seemed to snap her out of her disturbed trance.
"What-"
Astra grabbed the woman by both shoulders and aggressively turned her around so that they were face-to-face. "What do you know about Sara?!"
"I- Who?!"
"The woman in your picture!" Ava clarified, half elated and half furious. Who was this woman, and what did she know about Sara's disappearance?! "My girlfriend, she's been missing for weeks! How do you know her?!"
"I…" The woman blinked and stared at her drawing, as if seeing it for the first time. "Damn, not again." She sighed, running a hand through her curls and squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. "Look, this is going to sound insane, but sometimes… sometimes I get these…"
"Visions?" Gary supplied, his eyes still fixed on Sara's picture, "I think we've seen insaner things than that."
The artist blinked at him, surprised, before continuing. "Look, I don't know who this woman is, but if I'm drawing her without realizing it, she's probably in trouble. I don't know how much I can help; I'm kind of out of practice with this sort of thing, but if you've got something of hers that I can get a read off of…"
"You're psychic." Astra's tone wasn't that of a question. She still hadn't let go of the woman's shoulders. "What kind? Telepathic? Clairvoyant?"
"Bitsa," the woman replied with a sad, wry smile, "That's what an old friend called me, once. Bits a' everything."
Ava felt her hopes rise for the first time in what felt like forever. "So, you can help us find her?!"
"Maybe," Astra interjected before the apparent psychic could say anything, "But can we trust her?"
"I'd like to help," the woman insisted, "If your friend's in danger, I want to help."
Ava bit her lip. "Okay, I can get something of Sara's from our room on the ship, and then-"
"Zed?" The four turned around at the new voice interrupting their conversation. John was standing behind them, a large paper bag clutched in one arm and his lit cigarette tumbling out of his mouth. Nate, Mick, Behrad, and Zari were standing behind him. "What the bloody hell are you doin' here?" their resident exorcist gasped, bending down to snatch the cigarette back up.
The woman, Zed, only looked even sadder at the sight of him. "John…" she breathed, "It's been a while."
"Aye, it has," John agreed, his voice suspiciously rough in a manner Ava had only ever heard when he talked about Astra or (more rarely) Desmond, "What're you doing here?"
Zed smirked humourlessly at him. "Putting those art classes to good use," she retorted, "You?"
"Master, you know this woman?" Gary asked, even though the answer was clearly obvious.
Zed didn't even break eye contact with John as she answered. "He's taught me how to use my gifts, how to focus them properly. I even accompanied him on a few exorcisms; fought a couple of demons with him, too. But it's been almost five years since we went our separate ways. How've you been, John?"
John readjusted the bag that was about to slip out of his arms. From the clinking sound within, it contained glass bottles that probably contained some of that homemade booze being peddled a block away. "Been better. Also been worse." He nodded in Astra's direction. "Zed, meet Astra."
Clearly, Zed knew John well enough to know that bit of his history, because her jaw dropped as she turned to stare at Astra. "You… you got her out of Hell?" she gasped, her voice almost a whisper.
"Alive and well," John confirmed.
And then Ava was treated to the rare sight of Astra being completely flabbergasted as Zed threw her arms around the young woman with a cry of sheer delight. "I can't believe it! This is amazing!" She let the confused Astra go after a few more seconds of hugging. "When did this happen?! I still talk to Chas from time to time, and he never mentioned this! What about Ritchie, or Anne Marie or Judith? Do they know?!"
John waved a hand dismissively, although Ava noted that he looked massively uncomfortable at the last question. "No, I haven't told anyone, yet."
"Well, you should! They'll want to know she's okay!"
As much as Ava felt that Zed was probably right, however, she wasn't about to let them get distracted from their more immediate priority. "You can call your friends later, John," she insisted, pulling Sara's picture off the easel, "She drew this picture of Sara; she can help us find her!"
Nate, who'd been pretty much silent up until that point (along with the other new arrivals), gasped and grabbed the sketch out of her hands. "Whoa, this looks really good!"
"Is she on a spaceship, or something?" Behrad gasped, peering over Nate's shoulder.
The bottom dropped out of Ava's stomach as she finally realised the significance of the planet Earth in the picture. If Behrad's theory was correct, then her girlfriend really had disappeared off the face of the Earth.
"Wait, we aren't talking about aliens, are we?" Zari asked skeptically, "Really? Aliens?"
Mick shrugged. "Not like we haven't fought space freaks before." The former arsonist would have given off the perfect appearance of apathy if not for the fact that his eyes hadn't strayed from the image of Sara even once.
John, on the other hand, was still staring at Zed. "Zed, you think you can help us find her?"
Zed nodded, looking more resolute than ever. "At the very least, I can try. Anything for a friend of yours." A soft smile crossed her lips. "It's good to see you having friends again."
"Well, let's not waste any more time!" Gary enthused, fumbling around in his jacket for his Time Courier, "We've got a co-captain to rescue!"
For the first time in weeks, Ava smiled a real smile. 'Hold on, Babe,' she thought, as if Sara could hear her, 'We're coming for you.'
THE END
Before you ask, I won't be taking this any further than a one-shot – not when I don't know how Season 6 is going to handle Sara's abduction. I actually started writing this back in August, but the bulk of it was actually written today, as I was putting the pressure on to get it up before Sunday's premiere.
All the locations in Zed's sketches correspond to places she's been during her run on 'Constantine': the river scene is where they found the pastor in 'The Darkness Beneath', she went to New Orleans in both 'Danse Vaudou' and 'Waiting for the Man', 'Blessed Are the Damned' centred around a preacher in a small church in Kentucky (and whose sister was played by Juliana Harkavy, aka Dinah Drake), and Quid Pro Quo' took place in Brooklyn.