Everything had been working fine over the last few weeks. Rip had been able to help the team sometimes and had been happy with his role on the ship. Everything was back to normal and Rip had been himself again. But now Sara recognised a change in Rip´s behaviour. He didn´t try to help the team as hard as he did in the beginning but that was ok. What wasn´t was that he started to look very tired, she had seen him often wandering up and down on the ship and wondered if he ever went to sleep. The hardest part was that he started to evade the team members and especially Sara. He left the room as soon as someone came in, did only talk when it was really important and hid himself in his room. One day it was enough for Sara and she followed him when he disappeared again. He went to his room and she saw him through the window wandering around in his room. At first he sat on the bed then he stood up went around in a circle stopped in front of the door as if he was deciding whether he wanted to go outside again and then sat down on the bed again. His posture didn´t please Sara. Rip sat there with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands and closed eyes. He seemed sad and anxious. She decided not to interrupt him because she knew that it would only make thinks worse. Instead she walked back the bridge.
"Gideon" she said, when she was sure that nobody could hear her.
"Yes, Captain Lance" the calm voice of Gideon answered.
"I want you to have an eye on Rip. Please inform me if he is doing anything unusual, he is behaving freaky at the moment" Sara ordered.
"Yes, Captain. Therefore I may inform you that Captain Hunter did not sleep the last three nights and instead wandered around the ship. I took it upon myself to prepare his water with some tranquilliser today because I was concerned his health could worsen." Sara was amazed by these words and thought about how often they would have been lost if Gideon wouldn´t be there.
"Thanks Gideon, that´s a good idea."
In the middle of the next night Sara woke up by the sound of Gideon´s voice.
"I am sorry to wake you Captain Lance but I should inform you that Captain Hunter´s heart frequency is high above normal and that his breathing is way too fast." Sara stood up in the split of a second and was on her way to Rip´s room.
"Thank you Gideon" she sat when she arrived in front of the door. She opened it and stepped in the dark room. Her eyes needed some time before she was able to see Rip lying in his bed. He turned around groaned and turned around again. Sara saw drops of sweat streaming over his forehead.
"Is he having a fever?" Sara asked quietly and Gideon answered in the same volume.
"Negative Captain. It seems that Captain Hunter is having a nightmare." Rip turned around once again and hit the bedside with his fists. He moaned, not as if he was himself in pain but as if something was definitely wrong.
"Medically it is unpropitious to wake a person who is having a nightmare but in this case I would like to induce you to wake Captain Hunter up before he hurts himself" that sounded plausible to Sara and when Rip winced once again she started shaking him slightly at the shoulders.
"No, no don´t" Rip whispered scared but he didn´t wake up. Instead he buried his face in the pillows and shivered at his whole body. Then Sara shook him harder and suddenly Rip opened his eyes, lifted his head, recognised Sara right in front of him and flinched as far away from her as he could.
"No, don´t come near me" he said in pure fear and Sara was reminded of the prison cell in Rip´s mind. He was probably dreaming about it and though that she was hurting him.
"Rip, everything is alright. You are in your room on the waverider and nobody is hurting you." she said with a calming voice, despite the fact that she was certainly not calm herself. She was extremely concerned.
"I know you don´t hurt me Sara...but I might hurt you" Rip said sadly and moved further away when she tried to approach him. He stood up from his bed and was now in the corner of his room opposite to Sara.
"Please leave" he pleaded but Sara was not going to do anything until she knew that Rip was going to be alright.
"Rip you are not hurting me" she said and attempted to step closer to him but he held lifted his hands as a warning and she froze.
"How can I be certain of that? I did it before and it could happen again. I don´t have control about what I am doing" Rip sounded exhausted which was not really astonishing considering that he had not slept the past couple of days.
"Rip, believe me when I tell you that it was a uniquely situation and that something like that will never happen again. You have vanquished this faked reality in your mind and it won´t happen again because you are not captured anymore and this time I will make sure that it stays that way." Rip looked up – he had been looking on the ground again like he always did when he tried to evade the team – and looked at Sara. She saw tears in his eyes and felt sorry for him. Rip was so exhausted that he sank to his knees, head in his hands.
"I don´t want to go there ever again, Sara. I have done things I would never do and it feels as if I did it because I wanted to. I remember every bloody detail. I remember how I shot at Mr. Jackson, I remember how I fought against all of you with a sword and I remember how it felt when I broke your neck." Tears dropped through his hands and on the ground.
"Every time I close my eyes I can see you dying under my hand and I can´t get rid of the feeling that, at that time, I really wanted to kill you" Sara had stepped closer and knelt down next to Rip. She hugged one arm around him and he didn´t flinch away again. Instead he leaned into her touch and laid his head on her shoulder.
"Rip, you see all the bad things that you did but you forget about all the good stuff. I was in your mind and I can definitively tell you that you didn´t do it willingly. The fact that you were captured and tortured by evil versions of us tells me that you didn´t stop trying. You wanted to stop yourself from doing what you did because you indeed would have never done something like that and they had to lock you up inside your head to make you their weapon. And I am sure that it will never happen again." Sara said hugging Rip who still sat on the floor.
"How can you be so certain?" he asked looking up into her eyes.
"Because of what you have said only seconds before. You said that you rememberd everything as if you had wanted to do it but you also said that you would have never done something like that. That tells me that you are questioning your own memories and that is good because they are not real. They are not your own but the ones of the evil Rip. The Rip that was left after they locked up every good part of you – like your loyalty and morality – into your mind." Rip understood what Sara was talking about and Sara noticed that the shivering stopped and that Rip´s breathing, which had been hectic and irregular, calmed down at least for a little bit.
"At least I know now what I am dealing with." he said and Sara added
"And the next time you find yourself in that cell you can still use your own willpower to toss people around as if you were some kind of a hyperactive Darth Vader" that comment caused a smile on Rip´s face.
"That was really cool" he admitted and Sara found that he sounded like a four-year-old who had been on his first roller coaster – it was kind of sweet.
After a few moments Rip was yawning and Sara send him back to bed by telling him that he looked as if he should sleep five days in a row. After she had left the room she watched the livestream from the camera in Rip´s room to make sure that he has no nightmare. She was pleased to see him go to bed and immediately falling into a deep dreamless sleep. She smiled and went back to bed herself.
