"Are you even listening to me Gray?" Jax questioned, he had just told Stein about what Rip had nearly had him do, and about the plan to take the jump ship, and yet the stubborn old man still wants to stay and help save the world.
"Yes Jefferson I am, and while I am grateful that Mr. Rory was able to prevent you from attempting repairs on the time drive and any consequences that could've followed, we can't just abandon the mission." The older man argued and Jax groaned as he finished with the coffees he was currently making for the two of them, setting Stein's down in front of him before taking a sip of his own.
"Look, bad as I feel about leaving Rip stranded in the time stream, on a broken ship, with Savage, but I have a mom back home who still doesn't know where I've been." He said and Stein looked sympathetic at that, but not like he was about to change his mind. "I'm sorry Gray, but I gotta do what I gotta do." He said, echoing what Snart had told him only minutes ago as Stein took a sip of his coffee.
"I understand Jefferson, but…" he trailed off, running his tongue over his lips as he began to feel lightheaded and put together too late what had happened, although in hindsight he really should've seen it coming.
"Carter's still under Savage's control, and Kendra refuses to leave without him." Mick informed Len when he met him and Sara at the escape pod.
"And Ray refuses to leave without Kendra," Jax added, coming up behind Mick and drawing the attention of all three of his fellow defectors.
"What happened to Stein?" Sara asked, noting the obvious fact that the professor was unconsciously slumped over his young partners shoulder.
"Same thing that got me on this ship," Jax replied as Len opened the escape hatch and they filed into the pod.
"Wait, so we're just leaving half our team here?" Sara questioned as the hatch closed and Jax dumped Stein into the nearest seat.
"We gave them a choice, it's not our problem if they made the wrong one." Mick growled lowly.
"We can't just leave them stranded here with Savage!" Sara argued,
"We agreed to do that to Rip," Len reminded her and she rolled her eyes, she hadn't exactly loved that aspect of the plan to begin with.
"Rip treats us like canon fodder, but we don't treat each other that way!" She argued and Len sighed, hating to admit that she was right and they can't leave the others behind.
"So what do you want to do?" He asked her, "We can't fix the time drive without dying in the process, and we can't drug the others because at least one of them should be smart enough to figure out what we're doing." He reminded, "So what do you want to do?"
She thought on the subject, knowing very well that everything he was saying was true.
"Let's go to the vanishing point," she suggested,
"What?" Jax asked, looking at her as if she was crazy.
"We can't leave Ray, Kendra, and Carter to do die when Savage inevitably gets out of the brig and kills them. So let's go to the vanishing point and tell the Time Counsel about how he's been messing with time; they'll come collect him from the time stream, and we can all go home." She explained, the other three exchanged uneasy glances with each other but ultimately decided that Sara was right. They were all more or less ok with leaving Rip behind, but the others hadn't done anything to deserve this fate.
"You're driving kid," Snart said, looking to Jax and his tone indicating that the final say in the plan belonged to him as the pilot.
"To the vanishing point we go," he agreed before strapping into the pilot's seat.
The trip to the vanishing point was, as it was on the Waverider, a long one. Apparently while traveling through time is both fast and nauseating, traveling through the time stream is slow and not unlike a long drive on the highway. They had been able to make an initial jump further down the stream that Gideon said shortened their equivalent to an eight hour trip by one hour, but seven hours is still boring.
By now they had been in the ship for four hours, Mick had fallen asleep and Stein had woken up. The professor was initially furious to discover that his partner drugged him (to which Jax responded "Now you know how it feels,") but he calmed down when he was told where they were going and what they were doing. He was currently keeping himself entertained with a pencil and notepad that he apparently had in his pocket.
"I should've known getting you to walk away from all this wasn't as easy as it seemed," Snart commented suddenly from where he sat next to Sara. For the most part the entire ship was quiet, save for the scratching of Stein's pencil, and with both him and Jax focused on their own tasks and Mick asleep, Len knew that this was the closest thing to privacy that he was going to get with Sara.
"Hm, you should've." She mused with a grin, "But if it makes you feel any better after this we'll all be heading home to 2016 and I'll hang up my Bo staff, at least for now." She said and he smirked,
"That does make me feel better," he told her and although she smiled she didn't say anything and it was silent for a few more seconds.
"Thank you," she finally said, prompting him to raise an eyebrow at her in confusion.
"For what?" He asked,
"For being here," she replied, "I know it's only been a couple of days and you could still change your mind, and I won't blame you if you do. But I was so afraid that you were going to be mad at me or-"
"Sara," He cut her off, not wanting to hear this. "I'm not mad, I'll admit that I'm still in shock but I'm not mad. And if I ever try to walk away from this then I give you permission to have Queen put an arrow through me." He said and she chuckled.
"Ok," she agreed before stifling a yawn.
"Still tired?" Len asked and she nodded as she rubbed her eyes.
"I think I was only asleep for ten minutes earlier," she replied,
"Well we've still got about three hours to kill; take a nap." He suggested and she nodded before shifting in her seat so that she could slouch and lean her head back against the hard plastic of the chair, folding her arms over her chest in order to get something close to comfortable as her eyes fluttered closed.
Len watched as she adjusted herself, wanting more than anything to tell her to just use him as a pillow. But while they may be having a baby together, something that he still can't really believe, their relationship isn't all that intimate. They had that one night, but it was more about finding some release after what happened during the day than it was about any emotions. For now the two of them are teammates, friends, and soon to be parents of the same baby. They're on a mission through time to stop an insane and immortal man from destroying the world and with that mission being at it's peak they don't have time right now to move forward in their relationship, so for now Len would just have to live with that.
It felt like it had been forever and a day when the ship finally came to what appeared to be a futuristic city floating about in space.
"Is that?" Jax asked as the others all gathered around the window to get a better look.
"The Vanishing Point," Mick confirmed,
"Astonishing," Stein proclaimed, Len was about to mock the old man for his catchphrase but the jump ship beginning to shake cut him off.
"Um, I think I just lost control of the ship." Jax announced,
"That's because we're caught in a tractor beam." Mick explained
Suddenly, the monitors on the jump ship flickered to display the image of an African-American man wearing a yellow suit, reminding most of the jump ship's occupants of a character who might have appeared on Star Trek.
"Jump ship Waverider, we've taken control of your guidance system. Prepare to be boarded." He ordered them,
"Before you bring out the cuffs and throw us in prison let me say this," Snart began, "Agenda's changed and for safety reasons we all jumped ship, but instead of going home we decided to do history a favor and come here instead, and tell you where to find Hunter." He continued, knowing that as of right now the Time Counsel wouldn't give a rat's ass about Savage's location, but Rip's is pretty high on their list.
The man seemed to contemplate what he was saying, before finally speaking.
"I'll arrange an emergency meeting with the Time Counsel."
"Sara Lance, Leonard Snart, Jefferson Jackson, Martin Stein." An older man, roughly Stein's age, dressed in a black robe greeted the team before his eyes settled on Mick and his face contorted in disgust. "Chronos," he said the name as if it left poison on his tongue.
"Hogwarts," Mick replied curtly, he had never had the patience to follow the Harry Potter series but that aside Time Master Druce had always, to him, looked like he belonged teaching magic at the famous boarding school.
"You claim to have information on Captain Hunter's location?" He asked but didn't give them a chance to answer right away, "What, may I ask, caused the change of heart?"
"Well for one thing he tried sending Jax here to reboot a damaged Time Drive," Mick grumbled,
"But he has Savage prisoner and Savage didn't conquer the world the way you think he did," Sara began their explanation.
"He's been using technology from over a century into his own future, he's gained access to time travel." Stein explained and Druce's face paled at the news,
"Where are they?" He questioned,
"Sector 12 of the time stream," Mick replied and Druce nodded.
"I'll send a search party to retrieve them and then I promise you we will get this whole mess straightened out, thank you." With that said he headed to leave, and Len got a bad feeling about what they had just done a little too late. He didn't have time to speak up, not before darkness was consuming his mind.
When Sara came too she did so with a groan at the mixture of a pounding in her head and an unsettling feeling in her stomach.
"Ugh, not again." She whined before kneeling over and heaving up the last few things she had eaten.
She heard a sympathetic sigh from somewhere around her, but paid it no attention. Only once she was done vomiting, for the time being, did she finally take in her surroundings. She was trapped inside of a steel cell with walls that the top halves of were made of windows so that she could see into the cells next to her. On one side of her was Ray and on the other was what appeared to be an empty cell.
"Well, that's one of them back with the living." Ray joked as the blonde in the cell next to him climbed to her feat.
"How…" she took a minute, swallowing a gulp of air as so to keep down the next wave of nausea she was already feeling. "How long have we been out?" She asked and out of the corner of her eye she saw Kendra shaking her head over in the cell on the other side of Ray's.
"We're not sure, they just brought us in." She replied; it was then that they all noticed someone standing up in the cell next to Kendra's, Jax. At almost the same time Stein rose to his feet inside of the cell Sara thought was unoccupied, and the same happened further down the line with what turned out to be Mick and Len's cells.
"Lesson of the day; don't trust a Time Master." Len remarked as he shook off the headache.
"I could've told you that," Mick said and Snart rolled his eyes,
"Why didn't you?" He questioned but before Mick could answer the sound of Sara once again being sick cut through the chance. "Is she alright over there?" Snart asked; trying to see over into Sara's cell but the facts that she was three down and hunched over were working against him.
Sara, who was once again dropped on her knees and adding to the puddle of half digested food on her floor, gave Stein a thumbs up to relay to Leonard.
"Miss Lance says that she's fine," he called over,
"She doesn't sound fine," Len snarled back.
"Well aside from the obvious issue of being sick to her stomach, which I'm guessing is a result of her pregnancy more than it is anything else, she's ok." He confirmed, Len rolled his eyes but didn't press further.
"Where are Rip and Carter?" Jax questioned, taking most of the attention off of Sara.
"We don't know; they never brought them in." Ray answered, glancing at Kendra when he did and wishing he could do something to repair that heartbroken face he had seen her wear so many times today.
Just then the conversation was stopped before it could've had a chance to continue by four guards marching into the room and approaching some of the cells.
"Ah! Gentlemen I missed you! Come on in!" Mick pretty much invited, not seeming at all surprised that two of them were making their way for his cell. Sure enough, they unlocked his door and took hold of him, him cooperating the way Len had always seen him do when being removed from a cell. "That's it, break my arm." He said in an almost cheery voice to the guards as they lead him away.
What was a surprise, although in hindsight maybe it shouldn't have been, was that the other two guards went for Kendra.
"Hey! What are you doing? Why are you taking her?" Ray demanded as one guard led Kendra away harshly by the arm while the other kept a gun pointed at her back. "Hey!" He called out again but didn't have time to say more before Kendra broke out her wings and singlehandedly fought the two guards off.
"Guess all that training paid off," Snart commented as the rest of them watched the fight, but he quickly regretted jinxing it when one of the guards managed to reach his blaster and stun her.
"Hey! Kendra! Kendra!" Ray shouted, now banging harshly on the clear front of his cell.
"Why would they take Kendra?" Jax questioned. Taking Mick they could all understand, it probably had something to do with his past work as Chronos. But Kendra? Why take Kendra?
Considering Ray had already learned that the Time Masters and Savage are all on the same side, he had one unsettling guess.
It felt like hours passed before the guards finally came back in. During those hours not much was said. Ray informed the others that before the Time Master's appeared to arrest them Savage had broken free and nearly killed Kendra, would have if the sight didn't jog Carter's memory and turn him back over to their side. When the guards finally did return they brought a zombie resembling Rip Hunter with them.
"Rip?" Ray asked as the captain was led into the cell that had previously belonged to Kendra, making his gut twist at the silent confirmation that Kendra probably wasn't coming back.
"Rip?" Sara tried, but they still received no answer from the captain.
"My god, they've tortured him." Stein gasped, now realizing that the fates in store for the rest of them may in fact be worse than death.
"What did they do to you?" Ray asked once the guards were gone, Rip finally glanced at him but it was with a very haunted and defeated expression.
"They showed me the truth," he replied in a low whisper, "Druce showed me something called the Oculus; they've been controlling us all. Nothing we've done has been of our own accord. We've been following a script laid out by the Time Masters." He explained and while they all had some difficulty processing that, Ray was the first to say something.
"No," he denied, "That's not possible, I refuse to believe that."
"Well you should Raymond," Rip said, his voice far more serious than any of them wanted to hear it. "Because they showed me your death," he said, Ray felt his heart grow heavy and drop at that.
"Rip, whatever Druce show you-"
"They showed me your death!" Rip suddenly exploded, "Not a possible instance in which you died, no they showed me your DEATH!" He boomed, turning and looking the other man in the eye, "I don't know if you've been paying attention Raymond, but you are not seven years old! There is no such thing as miracles, or true justice, I don't know how in bloody hell it is that you manage to not even SEE the darkness in situations like this but it's here! It's all around us and there is no way out! So if I were you I would grow up and accept the facts before not doing so gets me killed!" He thundered and once he was done the prison went dead silent, everyone's eyes locked on at least one of the two men.
"You want me to be like you Rip?" Ray finally questioned, "Surrender to darkness, sit there in my cell, and tell myself that everything I've ever done was pointless?" He continued before taking half a step closer to the window into his neighbor's cell. "Tell me Rip, before I give it a shot, how's it working out for you?"
Rip didn't answer at first, and to be honest none of them suspected he'd answer at all. But then he finally stopped staring at the floor and looked Ray in the eyes once again.
"Alright Raymond, what's your plan?"
Ray, clearly not having expected Rip to actually put any faith in him, began searching around the room frantically as though something could give him inspiration. Eventually the sight of something did, or someone rather.
"Sara," he said as the plan came to him,
"What?" She asked but he didn't reply, he was too distracted by the wheels turning within his head.
"So far the guards have been coming in teams of two," he thought aloud, suddenly pacing around his cell with renewed motivation as his plan unfolded in his mind. "Two for Mick, two for Kendra, and two for Rip."
"So?" Jax asked, like the others he couldn't see where this was going.
"So who stands a chance against two Vanishing Point prison guards more than an assassin?" Ray asked, looking past Rip and over to Jax.
"Except they're never going to agree to a fight for our freedom deal," Snart commented but Ray ignored him and turned to Rip.
"Can they see or hear us right now?" He asked and Rip shook his head.
"No, because the Vanishing Point exists as being frozen in time camera's don't work here, and because this is the place where the Oculus exists they can't control us either." He confirmed and a pleased grin broke out across Ray's face.
"What about the middle ages?" He asked, "Do they know about what happened to Sara?"
"I don't like where this is going," Sara interrupted,
"Neither do I," Snart seconded, not that either of them were paid any attention to.
"Most likely," Rip confirmed and so now Ray turned around to face Sara.
"What if Gideon was wrong?" He asked, "What if you were starting to miscarry?"
"Do you know something I don't?" She questioned in a warning tone,
"You've been time jumping, going on dangerous missions, and considering you just found out you're pregnant a few days ago you only recently started eating enough and taking vitamins. So how hard would it be to believe that Gideon was wrong?" He asked again and thanks to the nearly excited smile that he couldn't seemed to wipe of his face Sara was starting to think he had gone off the deep end, until she started to catch on to what he was suggesting and smile back at him.
"Not hard at all," she confirmed; this plan was crazy, but it just might work.