Hello, and welcome to another chapter of 'The Darkness that Keeps You Up at Night'.

For those of you who don't know, I've been nominated for the 2016 Captain Canary Awards on Tumblr in three categories: 'Best Short One-Shot' (for 'How Far Would You Go?'), 'Best Canon-Compliant Fiction' (for 'Dear Lisa') and 'Best Leonard Author'. Voting lasts until 11:59 on October 10th (CDT). So you have until Monday if you want to vote! And you can vote more than once, just in 24 hour intervals.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow.

WORD COUNT: 1551

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it." – Helen Keller

Thursday, November 12th, 1925

"Good night, Mommy."

Edith Boardman, formerly known as Sheila Wright née Carr, leans over and kisses her son's forehead. "Good night, Aldus," she whispers. She stands and walks over to the small motel room's even smaller washroom, where her husband is finishing washing up before turning in for bed. It has been five years since they'd changed their names again and left their home in the dead of night. Four years since they read in the newspaper that their previous home had been set ablaze and had burned to the ground. Edith mourned for the family that had moved in, but she is also glad that they took everything of Aldus's with them; the longer Savage remains ignorant of their child's existence, the better.

"Do you think it's enough?" she whispers, keeping her voice low, knowing that Aldus has a tendency to try and listen in on his parents' conversations, "Running from one city to the next?"

Joe towels off his wet face and turns to look at her. "It has to be."

Edith wants to say that running away has never helped before, aside from their life as Hannibal and Kate, and even then it only kept her alive into her sixties. But she doesn't want to scare Aldus. So she kisses her husband before turning to brush her own teeth.

Their motel room only has one bed, so the three of them share it, ten-year-old Aldus in between his parents. He's getting to an age where snuggling with his parents is something he balks at, but sometimes he just has to deal with it.

And so when Edith wakes with a start, it immediately wakes her husband and son. "He's here!" she gasps.

Joe immediately leaps into action, jumping out of bed and running to the tiny window. He turns back to face them with an expression she's seen in many lifetimes before this. "He's right outside," he gasps.

There's no way for them to escape. No way to run without being seen. Edith realises that this is the end, for this life. But she can't let Aldus die along with them. Spotting the tiny closet, she takes her son's hand and pulls him out of bed. "In here," she whispers, "Aldus, you must hide."

"Mommy!" Aldus whimpers. He can tell how scared his parents were, and it's scaring him.

"Aldus, listen to me," she insists, not caring that her tears are running down her face, "You need to hide in here, and whatever you hear, do not make a sound, do not open the door. I love you so much, my darling." She kisses him on the forehead again, moving only to let Joe do the same before putting Aldus in the closet with their suitcases and shutting the door.

Just in time, too. The door flies open, the lock proving useless. Edith and Joe flinch away from the flying shards of wood and see the silhouette of their eternal hunter standing in the doorway. Joe charges at him first, wings flaring out behind him, determined to protect his family. In the confined space, it's impossible to tell who is winning the fight, and Edith jumps in to help. Savage grabs her throat while simultaneously blocking an attack from Joe. "Please, my love," he says, in that falsely sad tone, "Let us not continue this cursed cycle." As if constantly pursuing them and killing them isn't his choice. Edith kicks out, her bare foot crashing into his chest and forcing him to let her go. Joe escapes from his grip, and deals an uppercut to Savage's chin, knocking him to the floor. For a second, Edith thinks that maybe, just maybe, they can knock him out and escape.

But then, almost too fast to be seen, a silver flash shoots out of Savage's hand and strikes Joe in the chest. Her husband looks down in shock at the hilt of the dagger protruding from his body before crumpling to the floor.

"JAMES!" she shrieks, using his real name in this life for the first time in a long time. Turning her eyes onto his killer, she feels the rage bubble up inside her, her own wings bursting from her back. She grabs Savage by the lapels of his coat, lifting him up and slamming him back into the floor. Once, twice, three times.

But she's made the mistake of leaving his hands free. They shoot up and grasp her throat again, crushing her windpipe and making it impossible to breathe. She abandons smashing him into the ground in order to try and wrench his fingers from her throat. But he's too strong.

As black spots begin to dance in front of her vision, she closes her eyes and pictures her son one last time, silently praying for his safety.

Saturday, October 18th, 1975, 12:31am

NIGHT ONE ON THE WAVERIDER

"Aldus!" Kendra woke with her son's name on her lips and tears in her eyes. The dream had felt so real; she could remember the smell of the motel bedsheets and Aldus's shampoo as she kissed him goodbye, feel the carpet under her toes and Savage's fingers around her throat.

Most of all, she remembered her son. The little boy who would become the man whose hand she held as he died.

Suddenly, the room became too small for her to stand. She could never stay in bed after a nightmare. Wrapping her blanket around her shoulders, she left the quarters Captain Hunter had given her and shuffled down the hall, eventually finding herself on the bridge. The swirling green light of the Temporal Zone made everything look eerie, causing her to shiver. She was considering finding someplace else to go when the sound of a child's voice caught her attention.

It was coming from the office-like area behind the Jump Seats, a space Kendra hadn't paid much attention to beforehand. Rip was slumped on a sofa, staring dejectedly at a hologram of a little boy. He was roughly eight years old, with dirty blonde hair. He told Rip that "We miss you", and added "and love you" when a female voice prompted him from 'off-screen'.

Jonas, she realised.

Rip looked up, and it hit Kendra that she'd said it out loud. The (ex-)Time Master hit a button on the small remote control in his hand, causing the hologram to wink out. It then hit Kendra that she'd stumbled onto an intensely personal moment.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude, I just…"

"It's alright," Rip sighed, standing up, "I really should get some rest, anyway."

He walked past Kendra towards the door she'd came from, and something compelled her to say: "He looks like you." Rip froze, and Kendra wished she hadn't said anything at all. "I'm sorry, I-"

"You're not the first person who said that." There was a faint note of wry amusement. "Everywhere we went together, someone would comment on it. He has… had his mother's eyes, though."

There was so much pain in his voice, even more than when he first told the team about his family. It was like a piece of him had been torn out, and Kendra wasn't sure how she knew that until she remembered Aldus. "Does it ever get better?" she asked shakily.

Rip now turned to look at her, but said nothing.

"I- I mean, I didn't even know Aldus until today, and I couldn't remember him, even when he was dying, but tonight, I…" She was forced to pause and swallow a huge lump in her throat. "I- I- I had a dream about him. And I remembered him, on the night we died, and I remember how much I loved him and… and…"

Then the tears finally came. They ran down her face like waterfalls as sobs shook her entire body, and suddenly Rip's arms were around her and pulling her close. She cried into his shoulder, unable to do anything else as the grief finally hit her.

"I wish I had an answer for you," she heard him whisper raggedly, "All I can do is focus on my mission. On bringing my wife and son back. I know we can't do the same for Aldus, but… there are other things."

Like killing Savage.

Like killing Chronos.

Kendra had never really been a violent person, not in this life, and as far as she knew, not in any others. But Rip was right; the very thought of taking the lives of the bastards who'd taken hers and her son's gave her something else to focus on. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was something.

She hadn't wanted to come on this mission in the first place, and had only done so for Carter, for the nebulous connection between them. But in that moment, Kendra swore she would see this through.

For Aldus.

Okay, so it ended a bit darker than I expected, but here it is!

Next week will be Stein's chapter. Which I haven't even begun to write. And I'm going away for the weekend with no wifi. Uh oh.