"Hey."
The man, Daniel, jumped a bit in his seat and looked up. Sara's lips quirked into a grin. She still had it. The team had gotten too used to the assassin in her. It was nice having some fresh blood around she could still get the jump on. Even if she hated the circumstances it was under.
"Oh, hey," he said. Tired fingers rubbed at equally tired eyes as he tried to pull himself into a somewhat presentable state. Not very successful considering his rumpled, dirty clothing. He hadn't even left Daisy's side to change into something that didn't smell like a barn. It'd only been an hour or so since they had rushed Daisy in and were met with a too-quiet ship. And only a few minutes since the romance novelists deigned to finally show up. "What's wrong?"
Her head tilted and she made a stronger effort to control her expression. "Nothing." Everything. Constantine, Gary, and Ray were gone. Nate was recovering at the Time Bureau. She wasn't there to stop any of it. "Just…" She sighed and joined him in the medbay, taking the empty chair beside him. From behind her back, she produced a bottle of vodka. "Looks like you could use a drink."
His eyes flicked down to the bottle, then to Daisy lying still with soft glowing lights playing on her skin from Gideon's ever-present scans, and finally back to Sara. "Alright."
Swiftly uncorking the bottle, she passed it his way. He hesitated for a second. Then his eyes found Daisy again and the bottle was at his lips. He passed it back after a swig. When she put the bottle to her lips for a swallow of her own, she felt his eyes boring into her.
"What?" she asked in the wake of the pleasant burn making its way down her throat.
He pursed his lips, eyeing the rim of the bottle in particular, for whatever reason. "Uh… Nothing." With a shake of his head, he settled back into his chair. "Didn't think a 'Captain' could drink on duty."
Sara snorted, waving an agitated hand. "Not much I can do right now. Just waiting on Ava to do her thing. She's kinda badass like that."
"Ah," he said, and Sara followed his soft gaze to Daisy. "I know the type."
They watched the gentle rise and fall of Daisy's chest together in companionable silence. Daniel, who had to be from sometime in the past, quickly got over whatever weird sensibilities he had and more readily shared the bottle. Actually, the way he acted… She'd put her money on the 40s. He'd fit right in with the JSA.
"Captain," Gideon said, but her voice came from the comm in Sara's ear instead of the ship's speakers. She tilted her head slightly. "I've attuned the magic-o-meter to Constantine's frequency. When he uses his abilities, I can zero in on his location."
Sara flicked her gaze toward Daisy. Her initial prognosis wasn't good. Even with Gideon's care, she needed more time to heal. They could hardly just kick her and Daniel out to their own team, which she seriously doubted was from the future at this point. Who knew if their tech would be able to keep up with what Gideon could do? Which was everything short of bringing back the dead. Or… well… she could even do that, as long as their brain still had some functionality left and she had some samples of the form she needed to rebuild. Sara was living proof of that.
But Daisy hadn't gone through a scan like the rest of the Legends when they first joined the team. Gideon's work on her was slower, limited both by a lack of stored cells to replicate and by a certain… something in her DNA that made finding a match impossible.
Plan B, then.
Daniel, she'd discovered, was a lightweight. It didn't take long for his lips to loosen and let slip that he was a veteran of World War II. And it definitely wasn't her fault she made an assumption about his tolerance for alcohol with that information.
She sighed as she draped a blanket over his sleeping form, still awkwardly squeezed into the tiny rigid chair in the medbay. In the chair she occupied not too long before, she placed a water and some pain relievers. Professor Stein would've gotten a laugh out of this. For all the flack he got at the time for roofie-ing Jax, here she was getting a man absolutely wasted to get him through what was bound to be a typical Legends clusterfuck of a mission.
It was… familiar. This man out of time, a misfit in the time her came from and a misfit in the group that found him, desperately clinging to the one connection he had.
There were certain qualities to Legends. If you asked Rip, he'd have said they were all insignificant. If you asked Nate or Zari or Constantine they'd say the Legends are misfits, outcasts of society. If you asked Ava, that misfit label would be paired with delinquent and gremlin.
But Sara? She'd seen Legends come and go. She'd mentored them all save Mick. And her and Mick? Well. They knew what made a Legend was love. That stupid brash love that defied all logic, reason, and sense. The love that drove them to break the timeline almost as much as they fixed it because no Legend could ever sit back and let injustice slide.
Yes, Daniel was a Legend. She hoped this Daisy, despite whatever she had been through, was still as much of a Legend as she was all those years ago.
Gideon came through her comm instead of through the ship's system. "Captain, I've picked up an alert with Constantine's magical signature."
She nodded her acknowledgment, eyes lingering on Daisy. Her cheeks were still sunken, her eyes rimmed red and fitful under her eyelids, but she was alive. And for now, she'd have to be content with that.
She stepped out of the bay with no small amount of effort and met her team on the bridge.
"The signal is coming from 1.3 million years ago," Gideon announced.
"That's in the ice age," Nate said as he arrived on the bridge, Zari in tow.
Charlie and Mick were already sinking into their seats and pulling down the overhead restraints to rest securely over their chests. Nate and Zari followed suit a moment later.
"He's in the part of North America that would come to be known as the Donner Pass, named after a doomed group of settlers in the 1800s who resorted to cannibalism after their foot supplies ran out."
Sara finished her quick review of the charted course on the main console and took her seat at the controls. She wasn't particularly religious, but if Hell was real… God help Daniel if he woke after this jump. 1.3 million years could cause one hell of a bout of time sickness.
With the team looking at her expectantly, she rolled her eyes. "There's such a thing as too much exposition, Gideon." Her hand threw the throttle forward and the ship hummed in response, diving through the timestream.
In another instant they were out of the swirling green vortex of time and into a mountain range, the ship just skimming over a cliff before lowering down as Ray and Constantine became visible in the snowy mountain pass. Sara put the ship down carefully in the compacted snow and pushed up on the over-the-shoulder restraints, stepping up to the front of the ship to see better through the windshield.
Ray stood unaffected while Constantine knelt shivering in the cold, small crystals of ice forming in his five-o-clock shadow. "Captain Lance, thanks for coming all this way," he greeted in that always chipper voice fed through the ship's intercom. Of course, Neron would still talk like Ray to twist the knife just that much further. "If you're looking for Ray, he's, uh, checked out."
"Is Neron on comms?" Zari asked from behind.
"But if you'd like to join him, I can make arrangements," Ray continued as if she didn't speak.
Constantine's teeth chattered, voice wavering in the cold. "Sara open fire now. This may be your only chance."
Her eyes narrowed.
"We can't fire!" Nate said. "That's Ray!"
"Ray made a deal with a demon. He's. Gone." Constantine's cavalier attitude was nowhere to be found now, and that spoke volumes. "We can't lose anyone else to this bastard. Do it."
"What about you?" She asked. Cavalier about the death of someone like Ray wasn't his usual MO but it wasn't totally out of left field.
"Blow us both to kingdom come. I'll be happy to go to hell for the cause."
Cavalier about his own was.
Her lips pursed. Constantine was panicked, but Ray—Neron—was calm as ever. Why? If it was a bluff he was trying to call… "Gideon, ready the blasters."
"Yes, Captain."
"Woah, woah." Nate ran up behind her. "Hold up! If we kill Neron in Ray's body, we lose Ray forever!"
"But if you let Neron walk, then things are gonna get much, much worse." Constantine's eyes were pleading. "Trust me."
"Sara…?" Charlie joined the growing ring of Legends just behind the captain's chair. "Come on, boss."
Constantine was right. It was the logical play. Everything she learned dictated they should blast them to hell then and there. Except for one constant principle. Trust your gut.
Neron smiled.
Her gut twisted.
"Something's wrong…" Nate said.
She didn't move.
"Awaiting orders, Captain," Gideon prodded.
"Gideon-" she began.
Rory cut her off. "Fire."
The moment the order was too late to call off, Neron laughed. His hand found Constantine's shoulder and the two vanished, leaving empty snow and rock in their wake. Avalanche. "It's a trap!" she yelled. And then the ship was sliding as the mountain's snowy face began to shift. Sparks flew from the walls, and the ceiling, showering them all as rocks and ice pelted the top of the ship. Power flickered. The light that had poured in from the windshield was gone, replaced by a thick wall of dark snow barely held at bay.
When everything settled, Sara righted herself from where she had stumbled, using one of the seats as leverage. Nate was already sinking into a chair on her left and pulling the restraints down.
"We gotta move! They're getting away!" he shouted.
Sara wrenched herself forward into her own seat at the controls. "Get us out of here Gideon!" She threw the throttle forward to full, braced for the force to pin her back against her chair. Nothing. The ship groaned without moving.
"That's not good," Zari said.
"By my calculations, we're buried beneath three hundred and fifty-seven feet of ice and snow." Gideon paused for a group groan and then continued cheerily. "Plus, our primary temporal delineator has been rendered nonfunctional with the extreme weather."
"Well, so that's it then?" Charlie asked. "We're just snowed in?"
Zari sighed. "Yeah, at the Donner Pass."
"No one's turning me into beef jerky!" Mick said. Honestly, surprising he knew that about the Donner Pass. Maybe Gideon's exposition was helpful.
Sara rose from her seat. "Everyone calm down. Gideon, hail the Bureau."
The team gathered around the central console and waited with bated breath. Until the screen flashed that the call went unanswered.
"Should we leave a voicemail?" Zari suggested.
Sara shook her head. "Ava will get the alert. In the meantime, we wait. Gideon, how long until the ice thaws?"
"The Ice Age ends in eleven thousand one hundred and twenty-one years."
"Alright, who we eatin' first?" Charlie stepped back from the console with her usual swagger and callous attempt at mood lightening. "Cause shotgun, not."
"Captain, we're running on reserve power. I recommend all nonessential functions to conserve energy for life support."
"What about Daisy?" Sara asked.
Gideon paused.
"Gideon…" she warned.
"The avalanche has caused her to begin to wake."
"Shit."
"Who's Daisy?" Charlie asked.
Sara looked up and closed her eyes. She didn't need this right now. The team was already at each other's throats. She had no idea how to get out of this situation. Two unknown variables were not helpful, even if one of them was someone she had been dreaming about for years. "Gideon, do it. We need to be responsible and conserve power. Cut off the main generator, the fabricator, and the thermostat. Wait before cutting treatment to Daisy."
"What? Neron is out there with Ray and Constantine all because we fell for his trap because you," Nate pointed at Mick, who had so far been silent, "fired on Ray! We don't need to conserve power we need to go after them!"
"And what was your plan, pretty?" Mick's stony facade didn't shift an inch. "Beat him in a snowball fight?"
"We were supposed to take him in, not take him out, Mick!"
"Ray's gone!" Mick's voice raised a fraction and then quieted again. "When a team member goes dark, you end them, before they end you."
Nate's hands rose up, curling in frustration, as though he imagined Mick's neck between them. Sara gave him a sharp side-eye and jerked her head toward the exit of the bridge. His teeth ground together in anger, and then he was brushing past her with Zari in his wake, leaving the room.
"Mick, go to the cargo bay and start digging. You got us into this mess, you can fix it," Sara ordered. "Charlie, you're with him."
Lucky for her, Mick took it without complaint. Charlie grumbled but knew better than to push her right now. She followed.
Sara all but ran to the medbay.
Daisy's eyes were fluttering open. Her battered body, still clad in a white-turned-pink tanktop, crusted with blood, began to shift in the chair. Her wrists strained instinctively against the cuffs that acted not as restraints but as fluid ports.
"Hey," Sara murmured, quickly coming to her side and resting a hand on her arm to stop her from jostling them out of place.
Dark, bruised eyes stared up at her uncomprehending, and then recognition brought a spark of life, turning the dark, calculating brown, warm. "Sara," she breathed. "Where-"
"My timeship." And before Daisy could ask the next question, Sara was tapping on the cuffs. "Fluid ports, not restraints. You're in the medbay."
"Fuck…" She started to sit up. Sara's steady hands stopped her in her tracks. "Sara…"
"Daisy," she answered evenly.
Slowly, Daisy's muscles relaxed back against the chair. "Where's Daniel?"
Sara stepped back to let Daisy have a clear view of the man curled up in the small chair. She snagged the one that was beside him, the water and meds she had placed there earlier already scattered across the floor from the crash, and dragged it over to Daisy's bedside. "He hasn't left your side since we found you." It came out more clipped than she intended. He wasn't the one she wanted to talk about.
The utter confusion plainly visible on her face hurt to see. As if she couldn't comprehend why he would do that. Why anyone would do that. Despite, for Sara, and Daniel too, it being the most obvious choice in the world.
"Is he okay? Did Nathaniel do anything to him?" Again, Daisy tried to sit up, and again, Sara pushed her down.
"He's fine. Just drunk."
"Drunk…?"
Sara shrugged. "Time sickness is a bitch. He also seemed, no offense, a little bit new to time traveling. Fresh out of the… forties? I'm assuming?"
"Fifties… but yeah." Her brows knit together. "Haven't heard of time sickness though. Simmons didn't mention… Sara, where's my team?"
She kept her face carefully impassive. Daisy didn't need to see the outrage turning in her stomach or the blame she held against her team. Not now. Though, she wasn't sure if she'd be able to hide it when, not if, she finally got to meet them. Assholes.
"I don't know. They weren't there when we got to you." Her words came out controlled, empty. "We planted a bug in the area," she lifted one corner of her lips, letting just a hint of levity in to offset what she couldn't keep hiding, "the DJ Z in '73 has been keeping an eye on it. But… as of 2018, they haven't shown up."
The ship was eerily silent when functioning only on life support. No ambient hum or vibration of thrusters. No faint electric crackle from the lights. No bursts of air from the vents. The cold, just now starting to seep into Sara's bones, only made the silence louder.
She'd need a jacket soon. Daniel would need a blanket, he was already shivering.
"She doesn't actually call herself DJ Z right?" Daisy joked.
Sara pursed her lips. "No. Her name is Zari. She's still looking-"
"Sorry to interrupt, Captain, but if Miss Daisy no longer requires care, disabling the med-bay's systems would add ten hours to the current estimate."
Daisy sat up, and this time, she didn't let Sara push her back down. "Ten hours?" she asked.
"Gideon." Sara didn't look at her. She didn't want to risk Daisy seeing the calculations she was quickly making. Ten more hours were sorely needed when the initial estimate was only for twenty. It was enough to put them over a day, and surely, surely Ava would get to them before then. But if Daisy was still hurt… "Is she even stable enough for that?"
"Stable enough for what?" Daisy demanded.
"Her condition-"
"No, hold on." She swung her legs over the side of the chair, forcing Sara into action to stop her from getting up. But when Sara tried to let go, Daisy held her in place and met her worry with narrowed eyes. "You crashed, didn't you?" Before Sara could answer, she continued. "You're not wasting power on me, okay? I can heal like… stupid fast anyway."
"Gideon. Is that true?"
"Yes, Captain. Miss Daisy appears to have an accelerated rate of healing. By my calculations, she no longer requires my care, though it would still help."
"See? Thank you, Gideon." A finger suddenly punched into the air, pointing vaguely upward and to the left. "We're hanging out before I leave."
"Consider it a date," Gideon replied cheerily.
On the list of interactions she had prepared herself to watch out for, this wasn't one of them. Zari and Daisy? Supervision required at all times. Daisy and Charlie? Get the jumpship ready to fix whatever blows up. Nate and Daisy? Avoid mentioning the references she didn't quite get at all costs. Ray and Daisy would be an immediate disaster, but limited to just the two of them. Mick and Daisy? She wasn't quite sure what would happen there. Constantine would get a right hook to the face.
In hindsight, she should've assumed Daisy and her presumably hacker self would be interested in a sentient AI from the future. Sara mentally made a note to squeeze a conversation with Gideon in at some point before Daisy could. The AI was as loyal as any member of the team, but she had been known to let information slip to people she took a shine to. Sara would know.
"Gideon, check on the rest of the crew. Make sure they aren't killing each other. Please."
Her robotic voice still held amusement as she responded with a sharp: "Yes, Captain." And presumably turned her attention elsewhere
"And the crew is trying to kill each other… why?"
Sara wanted to curse. Of course, she'd jump on that. "Two members of our team are…" She paused for a second. Daisy was a time traveler. She'd have seen some shit. But would she have seen a demon from Hell possessing people kind of shit? "They were taken hostage," she amended. "We came to try to free them and someone ended up springing a trap."
"Guessing you had a disagreement about how to handle it?"
Sara nodded, fingers anxiously twisting the rings decorating her fingers. The chill was starting to set in, already her fingertips were turning a few shades whiter. "And now we're stuck here."
"Alright." Daisy sat up straighter. Her eyes flickered down to Sara's hands. "We've danced around it long enough. Spill."
"Spill?" She tucked her hands into her pockets. "Spill what?"
Gesturing at the, admittedly unsubtle move, Daisy said, "The full story about how this happened."
"Not about how you got here?"
"That's an after we aren't in danger of whatever problem is so bad that you can't get off the ground."
At least she had her priorities in order. "What makes you think I'm going to reveal confidential mission details to you?"
Daisy rolled her eyes. "Because I can help."
"No."
Sara's own objection died on her lips as another voice beat her to it. Looking up, Daniel hadn't even moved. If she hadn't just heard him, she would've sworn he was still out cold. He, at least, wasn't itching to go somewhere and push his luck while feeling shitty.
Another eye roll. "Do I feel like I just got body slammed by the Hulk? Yeah. Kinda. But I've been worse. Tell me what you need."
"Why don't you start by telling me who exactly you are?"
Daisy's lips pursed. Sara grinned. If Daisy refused, Sara had every right to deny her information on the basis of not being trustworthy. If she actually talked, it bought time for the team to figure out another way out of here. Or, more likely, Ava to portal in and get them all out.
"Daisy Johnson. Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D."
"And Shield is…"
"Think government spy."
"Ah."
Daniel snorted from his chair, earning himself a stink eye from Daisy. "Spy is a stretch," he muttered. His eyes were still closed, but his head was angled toward them now, even as he used the palm of his hand to hold up his chin.
"Okay, admittedly we've gotten a bit more uh… front line in recent years."
Sara hummed. So far, that lined up with what she knew. She wondered if that switch from spy to soldier happened around the time they met in 2016. It would explain a lot. "You were already working for them when we met." It wasn't a question, but Daisy's nod was appreciated. "Time traveling then too?"
"No. That's… okay, discounting the time we got dragged into the future and stuck there for a bit, we've only been actively time traveling for like… a week? I think?" She rubbed at her temples. "Time hasn't felt real since 2018."
Sara's lips twitched, but she held the frown at bay. It was 2018. Or, rather, Gideon's estimate of the time elapsed from the point Sara became a Legend said it should be 2018 for her.
"I'm guessing you were already a badass time-traveling Captain when we met?"
"Nope." She chuckled. "Assassin turned vigilante, actually."
Daisy blinked and then nodded as if that was a perfectly normal answer. "Mhmm. That was my second guess." And at Sara's doubtful eyebrow, she added. "You caught me in my brief vigilante era too."
Yeah. Daisy would fit right in with the rest of them.
"Good enough to clear me for info?"
Finally, Sara let her defenses buckle, just barely holding in the sigh of relief it brought to allow herself to fully trust Daisy. She could honestly tell Ava now that it wasn't just a gut feeling from a shared night from what felt like several lives ago. No. This was real and measurable. This was a new Legend.
"We sprung a trap trying to get back two of our teammates. Now we're buried under three hundred something feet of snow in some time in the B.C. era with only thirty hours of reserve power." Daisy opened her mouth, and Sara quickly barreled on. "I tried calling the Time Bureau, basically the government-sanctioned time travel board who are definitely gonna have some questions for you, and didn't get a response. We don't have enough power to get ourselves out so until they can come get us… We're stuck."
Daisy fell silent for a moment. Sara took the opportunity to watch her. The calculation she found in those brown eyes was familiar. Not unkind, not cold and detached, but considering and assessing. It was a look Ava wore more often than not as well.
As if sensing a disturbance in the force, Daniel cracked one bloodshot eye open, squinting vaguely in Daisy's direction. "Risky," he warned. "We don't know what Nathaniel did…"
"Can't be worse than what happened to mom. I'll be fine."
He blew out an exasperated breath and closed his eye once more. "I know if I try to stop you, you'll just find a way around it. Just… try to be careful, alright?"
"Yes, sir," she said with a little smile. Turning back to Sara, she rubbed her hands together. "I'm gonna bust us loose. You might wanna get someone on the wheel to get us out when everything starts shaking."
"Gideon, tell Zari to get to the engine room. Have Nate ready to hail the Bureau."
"Yes, Captain."
She stood, offering a cold hand to Daisy to help her up. As their hands slid together, a tingling sort of warmth spread up her arm until it encased her body. She watched in slight fascination as her fingertips began to turn a soft pink again. Powers. "We're talking about that later."
"Aye, aye, Captain."
With a huff, Sara pulled Daisy to her feet and slipped an arm through hers, just in case she was weaker than the front she put on. But surprisingly, she stood strong, not even a waver as she took her own weight under herself.
"Is now a good time to tell you this is all happening because a demon broke loose of Hell and is trying to open up some more Hell Gates while possessing our teammate?" Because really, if Daisy had powers, that changed the game on what might shock her. She didn't think Daisy would call her a nutjob outright, either way, but she hadn't led with all of their insanity immediately just in case.
"Oh."
Sara braced for the denial at worst and questions at best as she started toward the bridge with Daisy on her arm.
A laugh rang out in the hallway and Sara's heart jumped to her throat. "Okay. Yeah. Easy. I know a guy."
"You… know a guy?" Sara looked up at her slowly.
Daisy shrugged with a shit-eating grin edged with weariness, not nearly as free as it had been back in the bar. "Guy, devil, same thing. He'll sort it out." Once they reached the bridge Daisy slipped her arm out of Sara's and cracked her knuckles. "Now let's get you guys out of here."