Kendra was leaning against the doorway of her quarters, barefoot and relaxed; one hand held a steaming cup of something minty, the other was tucked around her waist.
"You should know," she started when Mick walked by. "When the others were deciding what to do with you? When they said you could be reformed? I didn't agree."
He'd planned to leave her until last, but the brandy was still warm in his stomach and it seemed as good a time as any. Besides, it wasn't like he blamed her for being one of the only people on the team with a survival instinct. "I know. Gideon showed me the logs. Snart didn't think so either."
"Like he wasn't just saying that so he'd have an in with me if he needed one." She rolled her eyes. "Please."
"Maybe. Maybe not. We done?"
She was holding the cup so tightly that her fingers were pale where they pressed against the ceramic, he realized. Not so relaxed after all.
"Guess not. Funny. I thought you'd take the long view."
"I can't." She sipped her drink, hand steady. "If I think in centuries, millennia - if I think about how little any of this matters in the grand scheme of things? I'd be Savage. I'd be you. So it all matters. Every day."
"Don't follow," Mick said, because there was a warning scratch at the back of his head and he needed time to work out why.
"You've changed. All of us can see that, even if we don't know what it means yet. But I think you do take the long view. You can't be redeemed," she explained kindly, "because you'll never care about us or anything else."
"You think I'll turn on you."
Kenda uncurled and leaned to the side, putting her cup on the small table inside the door. "You're a scorpion," she said, as she straightened again. "I don't hate you for your nature."
"But you do hate me." Mick hadn't felt the urge to take a step back in a long, long time. Maybe that's why it took him a moment to recognise it. He planted his feet and braced. "For your kid."
"His name was Aldus," she said, and took a deliberate step into his space; her wings didn't manifest, but Mick could hear the damn things beating. "You killed my son."
"I-"
She shook her head sharply. "Don't. If you're planning to apologize, or remind me you were fighting Chronos that day too, don't." She looked away at last; stepped back a moment later. "Or by every god I can name, I will end you."
"I won't apologize for the actions of another man, and I wasn't fighting for you or your family that day. But if I owe anyone on this ship a free shot, I figure it's you."
Her eyes raked over his face; finally, she looked thoughtful. "What makes you think you'd survive me?"
"That's the point."
"Sara's my friend," Kendra murmured, like she was trying to talk herself out of it, but already looking for loopholes. "She needs to believe you can change and she needs me to believe it too. And you pulled Ray out of the gulag even though Snart didn't want you to; he thinks that means something.
"Maybe it does," she concluded. "But I don't feel it. All I feel is my son in my arms. So where does that leave us?"
Kind, gentle Kendra, with the hunting instincts of an ancient predator. Even if she didn't remember her entire four-thousand year run, she was the sum of it. And she could smell when her prey was bleeding.
But maybe she could be distracted until Mick could think of something to put on the table. "Snart wanted me to get Ray out," he tried. "If he hadn't, he'd have shot him."
"What?" She blinked, derailed as he'd hoped.
"You really think he'd be on Blondie's case about killing the Professor, but leave Haircut lying half-dead in a prison? He gave me the choice so I'd think I still called the shots, then complained enough to make it convincing: he was playing me, same as he tried to do to you."
Her mouth twitched in unwilling amusement. "You two have a complex relationship."
"Not really," he denied. It was very, very simple.
"Did you remember your time with us?" she asked with a note of genuine curiosity. "When you were hunting us down?"
"Yes, but it didn't matter. Hunting you wasn't revenge," he clarified. "It was a directive. I didn't start coming back until..."
"Until the fifties," Kendra finished for him. "You weren't planning to take Snart when you attacked the ship, were you?"
"I was planning to kill everyone on-board and then I was coming for the rest of you. Burn out the infection. Then Hunter went down and Snart tried to pull him into cover. Rookie move, and he knew it." Mick shook his head. "I should have been pleased it was so easy and instead I was angry and that was ... familiar."
"When you came after us in Nanda Parbat, did you think the League would help us?" There was a speculative light in her eyes and, somehow, that was more unsettling than the coldly unpredictable fury.
"I didn't care," he said warily, unsure where he was being herded. "My orders were to take you out."
"But all you had to do was wait," she mused, tone a touch too sweet. "If you hadn't attacked, the League might have done your job for you. Rip said Chronos was relentless, not impatient. Mick Rory is impatient, but I don't believe Mick Rory would think he could take on the League, and all of us, and win."
He said nothing; she smiled, sharp and vicious as she found a place to tear.
"When Aldus was born, he was so small the doctors said he wouldn't survive. He fought as hard as Carter or I ever have to live. We'd had children before, but Aldus was the first in a long time. We wanted so badly to make something beautiful, meaningful, before we died.
"He was so clever. So curious about everything. Ten years. That's all we had." Her gaze had softened fondly; it hardened again as she focused. "And I'm going to tell you about every one of them."
He shook his head, mystified. "Why?"
"I'm taking my shot," she said, eyes glinting. "If it doesn't hit, I'll know I was right the first time and I won't hesitate to put you down. Do you believe me?"
She was fire, Mick realized. Not like Sara, but the kind that turned oceans to sand and melted mountains down into shards of glass. He believed her.
"I wasn't planning to kill him," he said. "He wasn't a threat, he was collateral. He shouldn't have been there."
"You think we should have left him behind? You, of all people?"
Mick's jaw worked. "Not the same."
Kendra turned and crossed to the old kettle that Ray had retrieved from the fifties, then pulled a second cup from the box of other things he hadn't been able to leave behind. Mick followed her as far as the door.
"We took him to the World's Fair. In San Diego. He showed me a photo, but I didn't remember until later. That or the necklace." She touched her throat. "He loved the Painted Desert. They actually built one. Can you imagine? Joe - Carter - and I, after four-thousand years we'd seen so much, but with Aldus this fake little village was a wonder of the world.
"I didn't get the chance to ask him if he remembered. They tore it down in the forties."
She finished making the tea and walked back; he took the cup he was handed and wrinkled his nose. Smelled like mint too.
"For a while, I got little flashes of him growing up. It hurt, but in a good way, you know?"
He did; he nodded.
"Then you stranded us. I wanted to find him, I thought it would be the one good thing about being left behind, but Ray persuaded me not to. He was right, I know that. Then a few months later, I lost my wings. The next morning I woke up and couldn't remember my own son's name."
"I have a time ship," Mick threw out quickly, like a defensive shield. "Right now it's back in the sixties playing bait for the Hunters, but I can call it to this position. It's good for a round trip. Play it right and you can save your son. Maybe even your man."
She stared at him, eyes wide and mouth open. "What would it do to the timeline?" she asked, breathless, like he'd punched her in the gut rather than offered her a second chance. "If they stayed on the Waverider. If they never left the ship. What could it do?"
"To history or to them?" In his experience, a cage was a cage, whether it had bars or not. "I only know what happens when when people are erased early, not when they're brought back."
"Carter will come back on his own," she said, slowly, as she thought it through. "Aldus won't. And he's older, an academic. He'd be happy here - it could work." She looked up with bright, desperate hope. "It could work. I could save my son. Perhaps he wouldn't have much more time, but he'll have a little. But when the Hunters come for us... whoever they send after that? He wasn't scared, when he died. Or alone. He shouldn't be - I don't want him to -"
"Lady, you want to save your son or not?"
Her eyes glittered with unshed tears, but her voice was steady. "More than anything in this world. And to do that, I have to let him die. Damn you."
Which put them where they started, worse: she had more reason to hate him now, if she thought he'd done this to hurt her. He hadn't. This once, he hadn't, and there was an unfamiliar twist in his chest. Didn't matter what he did, he left ashes.
He should have remembered that.
Kendra's devastation wasn't his problem, he told himself. Shiara could take it.
Shiara.
"My ship is set to autodestruct when the Hunters come on board," he said. "I'm not saying they'll take the bait, but if they do... there's a manual override. And internal cameras. "
"You're trying to make up for killing my son by letting me kill three people in cold blood?"
"Nothing can make up for it. I'm giving you the chance to protect the crew without anyone else getting caught in the crossfire. Don't pretend you don't want to get your talons bloody. I may be a scorpion, but you're no frog."
She smiled; tired, this time. Maybe real. "Nothing can make up for it," she echoed in agreement. "Maybe that's my grand revenge: you'll always owe me. You'll never make things even."
Seemed about fair.
Next time on "Talking in Spaaaaace aaaaand Tiiiiime": Rip Hunter and at least 100% more snark