This chapter doesn't have a nightmare, really, and contains a bit more focus on post-brainwashing!Carter than I'd originally planned, but here it is. The last chapter of 'The Darkness that Keeps You Up at Night'.
'Parallels' is still going pretty slowly, but after this I think I'm going to take a break from 'Legends' for a while and focus on other fandoms that I've been neglecting. I promise this isn't the last you'll hear from me, however!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow.
WORD COUNT: 1740
TOTAL: 15697
"The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other." – Mario Puzo
It's all so dark. He can't even see his hand in front of his face.
"Rip."
Miranda's voice is as clear as a bell. He whips around, desperately searching for her.
"Daddy."
Jonas! Where are they?
Finally, he spots them. They're standing only a few feet away from him, silhouetted in a door-sized rectangle of light that provides the only source of illumination in the dark space. He runs over to them, desperate to hold his wife and son again. But the distance between them seems to stretch out; no matter how much he runs, he can't get to them. But he can see their faces clearly. They're smiling sadly at him.
"You know you can't come with us, Rip," Miranda tells him, "It's not your time."
He wants to protest. He knows it's not his time to die; he's accepted that already. But he wants to hold them one last time.
"It's okay, Daddy," Jonas says, "It's okay."
He reaches out to his family, wanting to touch them one last time. To tell them how much he loved them.
"Miranda," he gasped, "Jonas. Please, let me have just one more min-"
Thursday, May 26th, 2016, 11:59pm
DAY THIRTY ON THE WAVERIDER
Rip woke up at the sudden noise that had disturbed him from his slumber. He looked around and realised, to his own embarrassment, that he'd fallen asleep at his desk – again. After sending his crew off for some well-deserved rest, he'd begun researching various time aberrations, things that would go unchecked thanks to the destruction of the Time Masters. There'd been an uptick sure enough, but most of them went away on their own, without his interference – evidence that there were still Time Captains out there who hadn't been at the Vanishing Point and therefore hadn't died during its destruction. It was a relief; he'd known virtually all the Captains out there, and each name removed from the list of possible casualties was a small lightening of the guilt that burdened him. Not to mention that it meant that he and his team weren't the only ones history would be relying on. The downside, however, was that it would be just a tad difficult to convince the other Time Captains not to kill them for destroying the Vanishing Point.
But all that worrying could wait until they actually met another Time Captain. For now, Rip was going through the various aberrations and wondering which ones would be best to set his team on. It didn't help that he wasn't entirely certain which members would choose to stay at home in 2016 and which would decide to join him on his quest.
"Sorry."
Speaking of his team, Rip jumped at the sound of the voice coming from directly behind him, twisting around in his seat to see Carter Hall's apologetic face staring back up at him from where the other man was crouched in front of the hidden cabinet. Or not-so-hidden, as the door was wide open, and Carter was frozen mid-reach inside. Of course, Rip had been so caught up in his thoughts about the Time Masters that he'd even forgotten the noise that had woken him in the first place.
"Bloody Hell!" he gasped, "You very well gave me a bloody heart attack! What on Earth are you doing back there, anyway?!" Of course, it was fairly obvious that Mr. Hall was helping himself to Rip's not-so-secret-anymore liquor stash. By now, it had become commonplace to find his collection short another bottle practically every morning. Gideon freely admitted to knowing that Mr. Snart and Mr. Rory were frequently stealing his hard-obtained high-end liquor, but there wasn't much she could do about it. The lock on the door was one of the few things on the ship that she could not access – and was therefore one of the few things to which she could not deny someone else access.
"I-I was…" Carter stammered a bit, "I couldn't sleep. I was on my way to the Med Bay to get something to help when I bumped into Rory, and he said you had something back here. I don't think it occurred to him that I wasn't talking about alcohol."
Rip sighed. "Well, Mr. Rory has a habit of stealing a bottle practically every night, so his answer was rather predictable. And no one was actually supposed to know that this cache even exists, but then our resident lawbreakers must have gone snooping around and found it, because now they seem to treat it like their own personal stash." He swallowed. "Or, I suppose it's just Mr. Rory, now."
Carter frowned. "Kendra said there was another member of your team, and I think I remember that, but…"
Rip looked at him carefully. "How much do you remember?"
The reincarnated man shook his head, standing up and crossing the room to flop down on the couch. "Bits and pieces, mostly focused on Kendra and Savage. But there are others. When she said there was another person on the team, I had this… flash… of a man handing me the knife Savage used to kill us in Egypt. He was saying… 'Go get that son of a bitch'."
Rip nodded. "Yes, that was Leonard Snart. Without his sacrifice, we never would have been able to even look for you and Kendra, let alone find you."
"And there was something else. I remember a man, a grown man, calling Kendra his mother, and I remember wondering how I could've forgotten him. My own child, even if he was one from a past life. I-I mean, I sort of remember Kendra – no, Sheila, her name was Sheila then, and then we had to change our names, and she became Edith – but I have this image of her holding this little boy, and I know he's mine, but his name… I could never remember his name." The guilt was obvious on his face. Rip remembered Kendra being so sad and confused at being unable to remember her son, recalled her breaking down in his arms after a dream that brought back her memories of how much she loved her child. Carter had claimed, early on, that he remembered the entirety of his past lives, but hadn't recognised Dr. Boardman's name when he should have. Rip supposed that Carter's memories hadn't been as complete as he'd thought, even without Savage's meddling.
"It may come back in time," Rip tried to assure him.
"How? This is something that happened before Savage got into my head. Aside from being the one who killed me all those times in between, he had nothing to do with me forgetting the name of my own son." He sighed. "At least you won't have to live with that."
Rip's breath hitched at the reminder of his own loss, but it didn't hurt as much as it would have mere days ago. Seeing Miranda and Jonas before he crashed the Waverider into the sun… it had given him the strength to move on. Rip had never been much of a religious person – the Time Masters would never have given their rescued orphans such an upbringing – but he just knew, in his heart, that in whatever afterlife awaited him, Miranda and Jonas would be there to welcome him with open arms. And while he still no longer needed to obsessively watch and re-watch his one recording of them, he knew that with it, he no longer held any fear of forgetting their faces, or the sound of their voices.
"Perhaps," he suggested, "But that doesn't mean you should give up hope of ever remembering. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but perhaps you just didn't have anything to remind you of him. I remember you saying, early on in our journey, that you remembered falling in love with Kendra and dying at Savage's hands two hundred and six times before, but maybe your memories were otherwise incomplete because they were the only two commonalities in each life. The only thing that was constant. Perhaps all you need is something else to trigger the rest of your memories. I'm sure if you remember enough of your names in each life, Gideon can do some research and help you fill in the blanks."
Carter stared at him, openly astonished. "You would do that?"
Rip pulled out his pocket watch and opened it, revealing the smiling faces of the two people he loved the most. "The ones we love may no longer be with us, but they deserve to be remembered."
"Hear, hear." Both men turned to see Martin standing in the office entrance, a sad, yet warm smile on his face. Behind his stood the rest of the crew, even Mick.
"We couldn't sleep," Sara offered as an explanation, "Still too keyed up from the battle, I guess."
"I only wanted another drink," Mick added, "They just followed me here."
Rip smiled. "Perhaps we could all use one."
He got up off his chair and knelt by the liquor cache, pulling out the bottle of scotch he and Mr. Rory had shared earlier. Jax and Kendra ducked out of the room and came back a few minutes later with eight glasses from the galley. Rip filled them all up and everyone took one – Stein didn't even protest when Jax took a glass.
Rip held up his. "To those we have lost. They may not be with us now, but a part of them will always live on in our memories. And we shall honour them by moving forward, together. Cheers."
"Cheers," they all echoed and drank.
They drank to Miranda Coburn-Hunter.
They drank to Jonas Hunter.
They drank to Leonard Snart.
They drank to Laurel Lance.
They drank to Ronald Raymond.
They drank to Aldus Boardman.
They drank to Anna Loring.
They drank to James Jackson.
They drank to all those they'd loved and lost, choosing to remember and move forward.
THE END
I kind of wondered why Carter implied that he remembered everything from his past lives, but didn't know about Aldus until Aldus himself told him; he should have recognised the name as soon as he heard it. My theory is that he remembers Kendra and Savage the most because they've been present in every single one of his past lives, but the rest needs something else to trigger the memories, and sadly, Aldus's name was one of them.
And here's a little preview of 'Parallels', just to give you something to look forward to:
"Let me guess," Len pre-empted him once they were away from the crowd, "If I hurt Sara, you'll kill me? Hate to break it to you, Queen, but if I ever hurt her, she has first claim on kicking my ass, and her parents are next in line, assuming there's anything left of me once she's finished." That seemed to leave Queen temporarily speechless, something Len took no small pleasure in. "Besides, I thought we were talking about your ex-girlfriend, not your baby sister."
Queen glared at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"That this speech is usually something said by the father or the older brother or sister, close friends if the above aren't available. And while you certainly fall into the latter category, Sara has a cop father who is available. Trust me, I've given these same threats myself."
"Really? You threaten the guys your supervillain sister dates?"
"Your baby sister used to be a vigilante just like you, the daughter and ex-pupil of the former Ra's al Ghul, and you would still do anything to protect her. I would do no less for mine. Though I loathe to admit it, Queen, we have that much in common."
And it did piss him off, having anything in common with one of the heroes that he hadn't recently been fighting alongside.