The post big-bad defeat party was in full swing in the galley. Everyone was there, of course. Ray, soul recently returned to his body and Constantine, recently returned from hell, included. Even Robbie had stuck around for it, though that might've had more to do with the party happening before they got a chance to drop him off in his time. He didn't have much of a choice.

Still, he didn't seem to hate it. He hit it off with Mick pretty quickly, the two of them clustered in the corner with beers in hand, watching the others celebrate. Sara had to admit it was a bit surprising considering Mick's soul definitely wasn't clean. Made her wonder what exactly the Rider judged a soul on. Was hers clean enough? It must've been if his only reaction was an exasperated groan and an "of course you've died too".

She watched them from the corner of her eye with interest when Zari approached with Nate and tow. From where she sat at the center table with Ava and Ray, she couldn't hear what was said, but she could see the softness in Robbie's eyes when speaking with Zari. It wasn't hard to see why. Daisy and Zari were two peas in a pod. Another point for why Daisy would make one hell of a Legend.
Which is why her insistence on departing to get back to a team that didn't even bother to look for her irked Sara so much. But she did it. She jumped Daisy and Daniel back to 1983-the SHIELD team was much easier to find in historical records without Daisy running interference for them-and let her go with a kiss on the cheek for luck and a communicator pressed into her palm.

Would she come back? Instead, she asked, "Think he's gonna stick around?"

Ava twisted slightly so she could see the group as well. "Maybe. I just don't know how much we can trust the Rider. You guys don't exactly have spotless records."

"Eh, I figure if he hasn't tried to drag us all to Hell yet, we're probably fine," Charlie said. They dragged a chair over and sat in it backward, facing the table and resting their arms against the backrest.

Sara's lips twitched and she inclined her head in their direction. "True."

Ava's hand found its way onto Sara's thigh, the touch enough to pull her gaze over and make sure Sara was paying full attention to her. "It's still a risk… Who knows what his rules are."

"But Sara's redeemed herself, hasn't she?" Ray piped up with his ever-present enthusiasm. "I mean, I think saving the timeline multiple times makes up for everything."

"No." Sara shook her head, looking down at Ava's hand. "I tried to redeem myself in Starling City. I found the people I hurt and I tried to fix it, to atone. I couldn't. And this? This was just running for me. It's not anymore, you guys need me, the timeline needs the Legends. But I'm not righting my wrongs with the power I have, I'm not atoning."

"And even if you wanted to, you can't," Ava sighed.

Sara nodded and Ava's hand slipped up from her thigh to instead lace with her fingers and give a small squeeze of support.

"Captains, I hate to interrupt, but there is an incoming transmission from Daisy," Gideon said.

"Put her on in the office." Sara stood and pulled Ava up with her, grateful for the out.

"Ooh! Can we come?" Charlie asked, standing as well, nearly bouncing on their toes. "I didn't get to meet her last time!"

From the corner, Sara caught Zari's pleading eyes as well and sighed. "Yeah. Whatever. Come on." And with that, she left with Ava in tow and Robbie somehow ending up nearly in step with her, the rest of the crew following further behind.

"Any guesses?" she asked off-handedly as they stepped into the hallway.

"Ten bucks says she tried to sacrifice herself for a stupid reason," Robbie grumbled in reply.

She snorted. From what she knew so far, it was a fair guess. Except, "she wouldn't call us if it was that. My money is on her team finding the communicator."

"-can't tell me that's not cool!" a male voice was saying loudly as they approached the office.

"It's just a cowboy poster? I don't get it." Daisy. Sara recognized her voice immediately, and though there was strain in it, it wasn't weak. She was fine. Whatever was happening, she was fine.

"Just a- That's Jonah Hex!"

Sara took the first step into the office when Robbie was already surging past her, pointing an accusing finger at the screen where a balding middle management-looking man stood beside Daisy and Daniel. "You're dead."

"Oh, hey Robbie!" Daisy brightened, her arms uncrossing from their previously defensive stance. Daniel, ever observant when it came to Daisy, tilted his head at the action, looking between her and the screen curiously.

"Not now." Robbie brushed her off and walked closer to jab at the image of the middle management guy. "You're. Dead."

"Yup." The man smiled blandly. His gaze shifted to Sara, his head tilting with some sort of consideration. Great.

Daisy grimaced, fingers twisting a bit. "Right. So… uh… fun fact…" she trailed off, opening her mouth as if to say more and then closing it with a snap and shaking her head.

The man rolled his eyes and answered for her. "I'm an LMD."

Robbie's angry confusion turned to barely constrained horror as he took one step back. His eyes darted between Daisy and the man.

"Yeah. That horror you're feeling right now? Imagine that times ten when I woke up and realized what I was." The man leaned forward, his even, bland façade turning to one full of false cheer. "I've started the past ninety loops shutdown in a charging port. Disconcerting."

Sara felt Ava's hand land on her arm and looked over to be met with the same confusion she was feeling reflected back at her.

"Wait, I'm sorry, did you say loop?" Zari asked at the same time as Ray asked "Charging port?"

Robbie cut across both of them with a growl. "Who?" he demanded.

"Robbie-" Daisy said.

"Who?" he demanded again.

Her eyes darted from the camera. "Fitzsimmons, but-"

"Fitz!" His hands clenched into fists. "I thought SHIELD would know better than to mess with LMDs after last time. I am not dealing with another AIDA."

"If it makes you feel better, I wasn't built with the Darkhold. Just evil alien parts." Coulson rapped on his chest mockingly, uncaring under Daisy's venomous glare.

"Great," Robbie scoffed.

"It's- look, I don't like it either, but we don't have time right now. Coulson and I are-"

A black box appeared with blinking red script: Connection Lost.

"Gideon?" Sara asked, ignoring Robbie's angry huff and subsequent pacing beside her.

"It appears the transmission ended on Daisy's end."

"Can you call her back?"

"I will try."

"Hey!" Daisy appeared back on screen with the man at her side, oddly lacking Daniel. "Sorry. Took me a second to get Coulson."

"Where's Daniel?" Ava asked.

"Didn't have time to go through the whole explanation with him again. You guys have done the time loop thing before, right? Like, that's gotta be a pretty common time travel thing?"

As a group, they all turned to face Zari.

"Wow. Thanks, guys." She shook her head and stepped past the team huddled in the back observing to take a place beside Robbie, Sara, and Ava at the front. "Nice to finally meet you. I'm Zari."

Daisy's eyes lit up. She snapped her fingers together and pointed. "DJ Z!"

"That's me," Zari laughed awkwardly. "Anyway. Looping isn't super common? I'm the only one who's done it. Had my own… uhh… fuck. What was it? Mousehole day?"

"Groundhog Day," Daisy, Nate, and Ray corrected in unison.

Zari rolled her eyes. "Yeah. That. But it wasn't a real time-loop. It was a simulation someone," she looked upward accusingly, "decided to put me through."

The man's creepily bland smile took on a new quality of creepiness as all of the life behind his eyes seemed to fade. And yet, he didn't move a muscle. Daisy looked at something something just off-screen with a burning anger, and then whirled around so they could only see her back. Her shoulders moved with a deep breath. When she composed herself, she turned back around, her voice wavering only slightly. "Cool, cool, cool. Great. You have no ideas?"

"Why don't you describe what's going on? We may not have had that exact situation but the Bureau's handbook does have descriptions for time-loop scenarios," Ava said.

Daisy and the man shared a look. He just shrugged. "Worth a shot."

She nodded and turned back to them to explain. "Current theory? Our time drive is stuck in some sort of feedback loop-"

"-like a record skipping," the man interjected.

Daisy gave him a look and continued, "we don't know how to fix it, and we're the only two who remember things from loop to loop."

Ava blew out a breath and from her pocket pulled out the stupid handbook that she still carried religiously. Though Sara gave her some credit, it wasn't pulled out nearly as often anymore. "Okay… time drive loop… Let's see. Have you tried flying out of the time stream?"

"Navigation controls got fried in a radiation flare."

"What about increasing the time that you have? Does it reset after a certain number of minutes or after a certain event happens?"

"After, like, fifteen-ish minutes I think. Nothing we've done makes it reset faster except dying."

"Huh." Ava flipped the page. Then went back. Then flipped again. Her eyes scanned frantically as her lips slowly thinned into a line.

Sara stepped in to buy her some time. "What do you have at your disposal?"

"Other than us? Another inhuman who basically has superspeed but is trapped and takes ten minutes to bust out. The scientist who built the time drive but can't remember how she did it. And a Chronicom whose race has already discovered time travel but he's more of a historian than a mechanic." Daisy finished her little list counted on her fingers. "Outside of them? Not much. Most of our systems are fried and the distance to the wormhole is shrinking between loops. If we don't break out soon, we'll be sucked in."

Sara rubbed her chin in thought. The easiest way out, by every measure, would just be to fix the drive. If they had a speedster, that meant the time it might take to fix was negligible. They just needed the knowledge. Sara wasn't a slouch when it came to time drives by any means, she'd done her time working on the Waverider's, but that was a system she'd been taught, not a system she'd need to learn herself.

"Good news," she grinned, "I know a guy."

"Is the guy like Robbie?" Daisy asked hesitantly.

Robbie glowered. "Thanks," he grumbled under his breath.

"Nope." She shook her head. And then, from behind her, she finally heard Ray's gasp of realization and Mick's approving grunt. "Gideon," she said, "get the jumpship ready. Central City, 2019."

Mick and Ray had naturally come with her to pick Jax up in the jumpship. By the time they got back, Daisy had to have been through two more loops. And sure enough, they stepped into the office to find Daniel back on screen along with Daisy and the other man. They had moved to sit on the floor, and her team had followed suit, sprawled around in various states.

A stack of cards sat in the center of the ring of her crew. Robbie sat with his back to the screen displaying Daisy and co. with cards in his hand that he was holding up. It took Sara a moment to realize he was making sure Daisy, Daniel, and the older man could see them and give their input.

"You and your team are stuck in a trash compactor in an impromptu and possibly fatal homage to 'Star Wars'," Nate said. "What do you do?"

Daisy and the middle management man turned to one another. "Have we done that one?" she asked, seriously.

The man tilted his head. "You know what? I don't know."

"What's 'Star Wars'?" Daniel asked.

Nate's eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas. "Oh my god, you haven't- okay. Next time you guys come over we're having a 'Star Wars' marathon. No exceptions."

"A movie… marathon?" Daniel looked to Daisy for an explanation.

She just grinned, dodging Daniel's question. "Deal. Oh, and we're picking the third card from the left."

Robbie passed the respective card in. Charlie, Ava, and Zari handed their cards to Nate as well.

"Damn, playing Cards to Save the Timeline without us? That's cold."

Nate's head snapped up immediately. "Jax!" He scrambled to his feet to meet Jax halfway. They gripped hands and patted one another on the back. "It's good to see you again, man."

"You too. Now cmon, let's see those cards."

With a laugh, Nate pulled back and held out the cards so both of them could read. He announced each one.

"Escape via musical number… Eh… Don't think that'd work this time. Steal a time courier, classic, classic, but I dunno how many time couriers are lying around in a trash compactor. Merge into a giant blue bear with the power of the totems… Would Bebo even fit? And cheer Sara on as she goes ninja mode, another classic."

"Ninja mode?" Sara turned to Ray with a raised eyebrow. "Really?"

He had the grace to look sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck. "In my defense, I started working on this deck in our first year on board."

She shook her head and moved to sit down beside Ava, leaning in so she could whisper against her ear. "Lemme guess. Stealing a time courier?"

Ava's little pretend huff and obvious smile had Sara smiling as well as she pulled back. "It's the obvious solution," she argued. "Efficient."

"I'm gonna have to go with… cheer Sara on as she goes ninja mode." He looked up at the screen, Daisy in particular, expectantly. Sara did too.

It surprised all of them when Charlie banged the ground. "Point to Charlie! I'm on the board!"

Nate slid the card over to them. "Zari with the musical number, I'm guessing?"

"Hey, it worked before. And it was either that or 'put a mystical totem inside a nuclear reactor'."

In unison, the team turned to stare at the three on the screen, because that meant the Shield agents of all people had chosen Bebo. Daisy just shrugged, unashamed. "What? We wanted to hear about the Power Rangers bear moment." A pause. Then, "That's real, right? All of these cards are definitely things you've done."

"You believe it? Just like that?" Ava questioned.

Again, Daisy and the middle management man looked at each other and shrugged. Robbie groaned, leaning his head back. With a little smile, Daisy said, "we've seen some things."

When Ava looked at Daniel, he rubbed the back of his neck. "I saw someone absorb another person's body once. After that, you stop thinking things are impossible."

"Wait what?" Daisy did a double take. "Was it gravitonium?"

He shook his head. "Zero Matter."

"Darkforce," Coulson clarified for a still confused Daisy. "We renamed it sometime in the nineties."

"Huh." Was all Daisy managed to get out before the screen went black and the connection cut.

"That normal?" Jax asked.

"Yeah, happens when their loop resets," Ava said. "They'll be back in three, two-"

"Hey! Sorry," Daisy said as she and Coulson appeared on screen once again. "We're getting real close to worm-holing. Is that the guy?"

The others scrambled to make room for Jax in the center of the office. "Engine trouble, yeah? I've got some ideas."

And then the ideas ran out.

"None of it works," Daisy said as soon as she appeared again. Another loop. The fifth since they started trying to fix the drive. She hopped up onto a counter in the center of the room, some kind of tech place where they kept the robot man, who she now knew was called Coulson, and dropped her head into her hands. "I don't think any of it will. It's not like the drive you guys have. And I don't know how the hell to even explain it because of course the only person who could tell me brainwashed themselves."

Coulson stood beside her, close, but his hands stayed clasped in front of him instead of offering physical comfort. "She made a call," he said, his voice soft but not gentle. A current of steel ran beneath it, an unspoken disapproval.

"Sounds like it was a bad one," Sara sighed. "But fine. Jax… please tell me you have something?"

She didn't need to look to know the answer.

The room fell silent. Only a few remained now. Robbie paced in the corner, he had gone quiet after the second try failed. Ray sat at the desk with diagrams on diagrams spread in front of him, all various versions of time drives the Time Masters had collected information on. Jax hovered over his shoulder.

It was Zari who broke the strained tension. She sat up straight in her chair and rubbed at her forehead. "Okay. What if we're thinking about this all wrong?"

Sara and Daisy looked up in unison. That. That was why they needed Zari. If anyone could think outside the box, it was her. If she could apply some of that hacking time craziness to this…

"Playing remote superhero tech support is just stupid." She stood up and squinted at the screen. "How bad would it be if we just go over there?"

Coulson and Daisy shared a grimace. "I mean, you guys could get stuck in it too, and then we all die? That's pretty bad," she said.

"And if we don't, at this rate, you guys die either way," Zari shot back.

"That's assuming you can reach us." Coulson gestured around him. "Think about it. What have we learned from the past five loops? The fundamental system we use to time travel is different from yours. Without Simmons… It's hard to say if it would be safe for you to even attempt to cross into our…" he trailed off, searching for the word.

"Timestream," Sara supplied. "Jax?"

He blew out a breath, his hands coming to rest on his hips. He opened his mouth, then shook his head. "It's risky. If it's actually different, the Waverider and jumpship's time drives might not work. You'd be stuck."

"Please tell me there's a but in there."

"But," he smiled a little bit, "you could try the time courier. I'm no expert, but I think they can latch onto time drives. That's how you can courier to the Waverider, anyway."

Sara pulled the time courier from her coat pocket. "Time courier it is."

"Hang on," Daisy said quickly. "The team isn't gonna take four strangers plus Robbie showing up out of the blue without batting an eye. We don't have time to explain if we get busted."

The logic was sound. Sara still hated it. And she wasn't the only one, apparently. Robbie stalked closer to the screen, his arms crossed. "Jax and me, then."

"Seriously?"

"They try to question me, they can talk to him. And Fitz and I need to have a talk about creepy-ass robots." He paused. Glanced at Coulson, who only shrugged in response as if to say 'fair'.

"Fitz isn't even on board. We legit have no clue where he is. Thank you, memory blockers," she grumbled.

His eyes rolled back in his head. "Fine. Simmons then."

"You can talk to them when we're not barreling toward a wormhole!"

Now, Coulson placed a hand on Daisy's bicep, quieting her after her outburst. Calmly, he said, "he may be able to figure out who keeps," his pause was almost imperceptible, but Sara noticed the way his jaw shifted as he changed what he was about to say, "getting in the way of getting Simmons' memory back."

She stared at him in a silent argument. Her jaw was set, muscles tensing under flesh. But eventually, she relented, dipping her head in a small nod.

"Cool." Jax messed with the time courier in his hands. "Now we just key it to your time drive," he looked up at the confused faces on the screen and explained, "your time drive doesn't have to work enough to time travel to send a signal the courier can catch. Means we'll show up pretty close to it, so meet us there. And… got the location."

"Be careful," Sara said. "If anything goes wrong, you comm. Worst comes to worst… we evacuate the SHIELD team onto our ship and go from there."

"You got it, Captain," Jax said with that little mocking tone and shit-eating grin he always had when calling her Captain. She rolled her eyes fondly. And when the connection to Daisy and Coulson cut out once more, she gave her final nod and watched unmoving as Jax and Robbie stepped through the open portal into a time drive bay. The portal closed.

She felt movement behind her before she saw Zari in the corner of her eye. "They're gonna be fine. Daisy and Coulson let some stuff slip during Cards. Sounds like these guys are like ARGUS if ARGUS wasn't, you know, evil."

"That's not what I'm worried about."

Confused eyebrows drew together for only a second before realization struck. "Ohhh. You're trying to steal her aren't you!" Zari cackled. "Can't do that if they know who took her. That's smart."

"I'm not trying to steal her," Sara said quickly. "I'm… giving her the option-"

"That she doesn't know about."

"-to join a better team." Sara gaze Zari the stink eye. "You saw her with Coulson. She hung on his every word and he treated her like a subordinate."

"He could be their leader."

She shook her head, dismissing the idea. "Wouldn't have accepted whatever decision 'Simmons' made if that was the case."

"Something definitely feels fishy with them," Ray piped up from the desk. "I mean… Why didn't they bring their whole team in on this in the first place?"

"Blah blah blah, takes too long to explain, blah blah," Zari said. Her hand mimed a mouth with the blah blahs. "Trust me, explaining it to you knuckleheads fifty times got real old. I don't blame them."

"But they didn't look surprised at all with the cards in Cards to Save the Timeline," he pointed out. "And it sounds like Coulson has some kind of authority. They'd probably listen."

"Captain, Jax would like me to inform you that he is using the fabricator and should be done soon."

"Thanks, Gideon," Sara said. She rubbed at her face. "Ray's right. It just… feels off. That and the whole leaving her and Daniel in the 70s to be tortured." A certain bite came out at the end and she quickly swallowed it down. "I'm not going to steal her, but if her team screws up again, I'm giving her an out."

Zari held up her hands. "I'm not complaining," she said. Across the room, Ray inclined his head in agreement. "I think the others are down for her to join us too. And Daniel."

"It'll be the biggest crew we've ever had." Sara looked up at both of them and noticed the way Ray's mouth twitched slightly in response. Noticed his silence too.

"Yeah, that sounds like a convo for you and Ava, not for me." Zari plopped into the seat beside her. "But Daniel strikes me as another Ava anyway so I think it'll balance out."

"I ho-"

"Man, they are way too comfortable with the whole self-sacrifice thing." Jax stepped through the freshly opened portal and wiped at a bit of sweat that was beading on his brow. Robbie followed close behind. "You're getting them outta there, right?" Jax asked once the portal closed behind them.

Her head slowly sunk down as she heard the telltale signs of Zari's wheezing, snorting attempts to keep from outright laughing.