"Let me get this straight," Ava said. She stood at her desk, stalking around it until she and Sara were face-to-face. Damn. She was hot when she was angry. Crossing the very, very small gap between them now to capture her lips was so tempting. Alas, while Sara didn't have much in the way of self-preservation, even she could feel the danger burning behind Ava's eyes. "You knew about a rogue time traveler for years? And you never once thought that might be something I should know?"

She blinked, raising open palms in a weak gesture of peace. "Honestly? I forgot about her until she helped us in '73."

Ava cursed, her breath flowing over Sara's lips, her hands spasming in the air as she processed. It took every year of training she had for Sara to resist reaching out and taking her hands to squeeze them in comfort. She didn't. It was too late for that.

"Why didn't you tell the Bureau then?"

"Oh yeah, 'cause Hank had such a great track record with not overreacting and treating everything like a threat."

Ava groaned. "She is a threat. A threat Rip specifically designed the Bureau to deal with."

"I don't trust the Bureau, Ava!" She took a step forward, finally reaching out calloused hands to frame Ava's face, holding it reverently between her palms, her thumbs gently rubbing lines of worry away. "I trust you."

Ava's eyes searched hers. Then, softly, "and Nate?"

"And Nate," Sara agreed with a small roll of her eyes.

Neither of them said a word, basking in the comfort of the deep trust between them, a trust that was so nearly shattered. A trust so carefully carved and cultivated to spite the very concept of an assassin and a clone being together.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

Ava nodded, reluctantly pulling away. "Okay. Lay it on me. Tell me what you need."

Sighing with relief, Sara let her shoulder slump for a second. She jerked her head toward the couch, and both fell into it, half on top of one another, hips brushing. "Her name is Daisy. I first met in a bar in 2016, not long before Rip recruited me. She was nice but hurting, like I was. We had our fun and went our separate ways."

"You think that's when she's from?" Her voice was surprisingly neutral, given the subject. Though, she supposed, a fling with a random time traveler was nothing compared to the Queen of France or Guinevere.

"Yeah. She fit in, didn't struggle with technology or anything." Then she snorted. Duh. "She's a hacker."

Ava hummed her understanding and motioned for Sara to continue.

"In one of our first missions with Rip, we went to-"

"1986 to steal classified documents from the Pentagon."

Sara cut her a look. Ava sheepishly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. They both knew she had read Sara's file front to back. "Okay, miss nosey. What isn't in my file is that I found another project Vandal Savage had worked on called 'Project Insight'."

"Military?" Ava sat up straight, her eyes glinting. "I have access to, like, any file. I'm sure I can find-" Sara was already shaking her head. "… No?"

"Nope. From what I can tell, it's not a project sanctioned by any of the military branches. It's an Air Force report, but it's all just speculation about what went down."

"So… What did happen?"

Sara shrugged. Her lips did quirk a bit at Ava's predictably frustrated groan and subsequent flop to lean back on the opposite armrest of the couch. "Daisy was involved, somehow, and it sounds like she and the others she was there with were the ones who destroyed it," she said as she pulled Ava's legs into her lap.

"That's…" She struggled for a second. "Good?"

Again, Sara could only shrug. "Hope so. That was in '76."

"Wait, hang on." Rubbing her temples, Ava frowned. "So she was in 1973, and 1976?"

"And 1931, according to the kid we tracked down in '33."

"Gideon can track anomalies; how did she slip under the radar three times? Once while she was literally in the same time as the Waverider and made contact?"

"That's where the hacker bit comes in. Zari thinks Daisy went back and wiped everything about herself from the record that was stored digitally. Like she did with the record of us uh…" she cast a sidelong glance, "kidnapping Nixon on TV in '73."

Ava only hummed. "Which is why Gideon can't find her, but your Pentagon papers," she smiled just slightly to herself, "still exist."

"Paper, yes. And also people. The kid I mentioned in '33?" Minus all of the threatening and light assault, she saw fit to leave that out in her recount. "Freddy Malick. He was a smuggler in '31 when Daisy and co. showed up claiming to be Mounties."

"Oh, we're absolutely stealing that cover sometime."

Thoughts of exactly how hot Daisy would've looked in Mountie gear flooded behind her eyes. "Ava."

"Right. Sorry. Go on?"

She only shook her head fondly. God, she wished she didn't need to get Ava back on track so she could get this over with before she lost her nerve, or started thinking too hard about Daisy, because the thought of Ava finally getting into the idea of costuming for fun and not strictly for a mission was something she didn't want to miss. And if there were other ways that enthusiasm could be directed… well… She shook her head. "Freddy said they were trying to protect him for some reason. Didn't know from who until a bunch of guys that moved like they had sticks up their asses started shooting at him with 'freaky laser guns'."

"Aliens?" Her head fell back on the arm of the couch. A groan fell from her lips. "Just when I thought we narrowed it down to magic this year."

A laugh bubbled up without warning, and she gave Ava's thigh a little squeeze. "Nah. This is just our teaser for next year.

"Right. Of course. Should've known," Ava remarked, dry as the desert. She waved a flippant hand. "So Daisy and co. They took down Vandal Savage's project, but decided to protect a kid who… smuggles for the Nazis?" The last bit was a guess; Sara hadn't fully explained that connection to her, but she expected the sound leap of logic from someone as obsessed with true crime as Ava was.

"Except, Freddy doesn't like her. And the rest of the Nazi's were actively warned about her and her crew."

"Do we know what he goes on to do?" The small hope that Daisy was somehow actively protecting the timeline went unsaid.

"Gideon?" Sara asked, one finger on the comm in her ear.

"Yes Captain?"

"Scan the timeline for a Freddy Malick."

A moment passed.

"Wilfred 'Freddy' Malick goes on to become a wealthy socialite in the 1950s through the 1970s. He had no known occupation; his fortune is rumored to have been acquired following a particularly lucrative smuggling career in his youth." another moment. "He is also listed in the files you discovered as the creator of 'Project Insight' alongside General Rick Stoner."

Ava threw her hands up again. "Someone should build a profile on this lady, 'cause none of this makes any sense!" A low growl of frustration came from deep in her chest. "Why would she protect the person who creates the damn thing only to destroy it later?"

"Dunno." She hated how often she'd had to admit that recently. "But… we do know what she's up to in 1976…"

Ava was finished programming the time courier before Sara even finished her sentence.

A system terminal just outside a bar in New York in 1976 caught the attention of Zari's newly minted 'Tech Anomaly Scanner'. It wasn't perfect. For catching Daisy, it operated on two rather large assumptions: that the woman could actually hack, and that she was the only active hacker bopping around the time stream. How fast technology began to develop with the rise of computers only made things more complicated. By the aughts, it became near useless, with even small ripples from sloppy Legends activity influencing some small date changes with modern tech. But for something in 1976? Yeah, it definitely caught the use of an algorithm that shouldn't have been developed yet.

Sara and Ava appeared inside the alley beside the one the system ping came from. A quick glance confirmed the alley was empty; no memory flashing required. They cautiously crept forward to the street.

Sara's heart caught in her throat.

"Shit…" Ava murmured.

They were too late. Already, Daisy had been caught. A twerp of a kid directed three larger men, one with an unconscious Daisy haphazardly thrown over his shoulder, the other with a man that must have been with her dangling in a similar position. The twerp hopped in the front seat as the men he commanded roughly threw Daisy and the other man into the back of a van and shut the doors.

A hand on her chest stopped her movement—an unconscious step forward she hadn't even realized she had made. "That was her! We can't just-"

"We won't," Ava said, her hand slipping from Sara's chest down her arm until their fingers could knit together. "But we don't know who we're dealing with yet. Those guys got the jump on a time-traveler. That's not easy."

Sara stared after the van as it roared away, the license plate on the fender already burning its way into her memory.

"Sara…"

She only shook her head in response. Ava was right, logically, as much as her heart hated it. The twerp could've been another time-traveler who somehow dodged Gideon's scans. Either that or Daisy had done something to change the timeline and didn't expect the kid there, which didn't bode well either.

A quick glance yielded a nice-enough car parked on the street beside the alley. Hurried steps carried her toward it. Another fast glance and strategic shift of her body, and one of her batons was through the glass. Thank God for old cars and no alarms.

Ava groaned, but had already shifted her own body to hide Sara's quick action from any wandering eyes. "We're returning the car after," she grumbled, but didn't complain further when Sara slipped inside and unlocked the passenger door for her.

An hour and a half later, they were out of the car, hidden behind a small bank in the countryside, watching the group led by the twerp as they carried Daisy and the other guy inside.

"Small operation," Ava noted.

Sara agreed. No way to get inside by pretending to be a part of it. Looked like four people were involved at most, all of whom were inside the warehouse already.

From the corner of her eye, Sara caught Ava's cute little head tilt, hair spilling forth over her eyes just slightly as she nodded in the direction of the van. "Deadrop?"

"Doubt it." With a sidelong glance, she caught Ava's eye. "Jump us forward an hour."

"But-"

Ava's confusion and worry-rimmed eyes pushed against the already tenuous hold she had on her restraint. Sara faced the barn again with narrowed eyes. "Hired help. They'll be careful for an hour and then get lazy. Then, we go." Her time with the Legends had made her soft, but the League built her first. Their training, their cold calculation, it wrapped its way around her heart now. She couldn't risk the chaos that came with her Legend's brashness, not when it could end with the loss of Ava or Daisy.

And the walls held. They gave her the strength and the cool detachment to turn her back on the barn and step through the portal.

And then the walls broke. Blood rushed in her ears, the hairs on her neck stood straight at attention, her stomach roiled. She noticed none of it through the anguished, blood-curdling cry that slammed into her the moment her feet touched the ground. And again. And again. A never-ending symphony of pain. Of Daisy

This time, she didn't hesitate, didn't wait for the right moment or a carefully crafted plan. With eyes locked on the barn, she burst from behind the hill. Distantly, she recognized the familiar steps on her heel. Ava. She slowed just enough for them to match stride.

A large wooden beam barred the big, peeling, red barn doors. Not the entrance the kid and co. took Daisy through, but the best shot at an unguarded entrance. In sync, they each took an end, positioning a shoulder under the beam with their hands bracing along it. The rough grain was damp in her hands, swollen and bloated, rarely opened.

Across from her, Ava mouthed 'one'. Sara joined her for 'two', and on 'three' they threw their shoulders up under the beam, their biceps and knuckles straining against the weight of the wood. Sara grimaced as the wood dug into the soft muscle connecting her neck to her shoulder, shifting as Ava changed her hold across the way. And then, with one final push, it groaned free of the iron arms that held it in place, punctuated by another scream of pain.

Sara spared no time to pay attention to where the bar fell as she shrugged herself out from under it and moved to the door. She wrenched it open, ready to run, to find Daisy and-

She came face-to-face with the dude that had been captured with her. He stood still in shock, blinking rapidly as his eyes adjusted to the flood of light surging in through the now-open door. His wrists and ankles were bound with chains pulled taut from the distance he was from the hook on the wall.

"Where is she?" Sara demanded. No scream interrupted her. In fact, her words reverberated in the eerie silence.

He came back to himself. "They took her through there." He pointed toward a door on the opposite end of what Sara could only assume to be an abandoned stable setup. "The kid that took her, he's… not right."

Sharing a silent look, Sara asked permission. Ava granted it with a reluctant nod. And then she was gently guiding the guy back to the hookup of his chains and urging him to sit as she got to work releasing him.

Sara was already moving. Her heavy boot smashed against the door. It flew open. A hallway with another door at the end. It too slammed open from the force of her kick. Her momentum carried her a step inside the room.

Daisy. On a wooden picnic table. Stripped down to only her pants and a pink tank top. No. A white tank top stained with blood. So much blood.

Stood over her, somehow managing to loom despite his thin frame, was the twerp with a scalpel in his hand. Shimmering red glinted against cool steel. A disgusting, perverted sort of glee shone bright in his eyes when he noticed her. "Wow, who knew you had so many friends?" He nudged Daisy with his free hand, prompting a low moan of pain. His lips twisted into a pout, turning his haughty gaze away from her and giving Sara his full attention.

Good. Yes. Her, not Daisy. She gritted her teeth, molars grinding over one another as she forced herself to meet his gaze in return.

He tossed the scalpel aside without a care, beginning to peel off blood-soaked gloves. Why would he disarm- oh. From the corner of her eye she could just make out two of the operation's muscle, one on either side of the door, previously unnoticed in her need to get to Daisy.

"Thank you for coming. Really, I've been curious-" His haughty gloating died in his throat, replaced only by incoherent gurgling. Hands, one clean, the other still gloved, soaked in Daisy's blood, rose in disbelief to feel his own blood flowing sluggishly from his neck.

Sara shifted her weight to the left. Twisted. Narrowly avoided the tackle from the guard on her left. The other drew a revolver. A throwing knife found his hand before he could squeeze the trigger. Whirling back to the one recovering from his tackle, Sara offered him a swift kick to the head. Now free of the concern of flanking, she closed in on the one doubled over in pain, one hand scrabbling for purchase on the knife lodged in the other.

She raised an eyebrow as he ripped it out with a howl of pain. Stupid move. Stepped back as he swung wide, the bloody blade clenched tight in his fist. He leaned further past his base to follow the momentum of his slash with his shoulder. She set her feet. A sharp breath pushed its way out of her lungs as his shoulder slammed into her diaphragm. She grabbed his elbow from where it pressed against her abdomen as they toppled back from the force of his momentum. Wrenched it around as they fell, angled it just so.

The man yelled in surprised agony. His wide eyes searched desperately for the wound, trailing down, down, until it landed on the knife embedded deep in his chest, gripped tight in his own hand, supported by Sara's.

"Daisy?" came a shout. The man stumbled into the doorway, with Ava under one arm for support. He too froze at the sight that awaited him on the table.

"Sara?" Ava, this time.

She weaseled an arm out from under the oaf on top of her and waved it. "Here." She groaned, pushing the man up slightly so she could scoot out from under his dead weight. Ava helped pull him the rest of the way off. "We need to get her to the Waverider."

"Are you sure?" Ava asked. "We still don't know-"

"I'm not leaving her."

The man limped to Daisy's side, ever so gently picking her up to cradle her in his arms. She folded into them desperately, still somehow conscious. Passing out was a mercy people like Daisy, and herself, were rarely afforded.

"Listen," the man said, "thank you for your help, but she needs to get back to her friends. A hospital won't be able to help her."

Ava gave a sharp nod as she helped pull Sara to her feet. "Where are they? We'll give you a lift."

He didn't reply. His furrowed brow and set jaw spoke of confusion and anger. He didn't know.

With a sigh, Ava softened. "We aren't from the seventies either, Daniel." Sara gave her an encouraging nod at her sidelong glance. "Let us help you."

His grip tightened on the battered woman in his arms. She mumbled something in protest, and Sara fought the urge to snap. To grab Daisy herself and bring her to the Waverider regardless of Ava or Daniel's protests.

"How do I know you aren't Hydra? Or those… freaky alien robot things?"

Sara and Ava blinked in unison. That… was new. They had joked about it being aliens; honestly, they knew they'd have to deal with them at some point. They'd already dealt with just about every other type of big bad. But it really had just been a joke.

She wasn't sure if their lack of actual shock really helped or if it was the more the fact that they really didn't know what he was on about, but he seemed to relax, if only slightly. She pushed on the small opening. "We aren't. And do you really want to argue about this right now? She doesn't have that kind of time."

He grimaced, looking down at Daisy's bruised eyes and pale skin. "Fine. Cut yourself. You bleed; we'll go with you."

Sara had a knife sliding through the skin of her forearm before he even finished speaking. Red bloomed in it's wake. Ava followed suit a moment later.

"Jiaying…" Daisy mumbled in the silence as the three warily observed one another.

That was enough.

"Hey, hey, stay with me." Daniel moved a soft hand to brush Daisy's hair from where it stuck to her face with sweat. "Just a little longer. I'll, hey, I'll tell you that story on the way. Huh?"

She groaned again in pain, but managed a weak nod.

He looked up at Sara, finally, with pained eyes. "Help her."

Finally, she could breath again.