Archive of Our Own

“You do know you could just ask Gideon to replicate eggs already fried, right?” Sara says. Her legs swing back and forth, bare feet tapping rhythmically against the counters of the Waverider’s kitchen.The soft thud they make the only sound beside the sizzling of the eggs and the ever present electric hum of the Waverider herself. It’s technically the middle of the night on the ship’s internal clock and the crew is all asleep, not due to be up for hours yet.

John glances at her over his shoulder long enough to level a look of absolute disgust, as if her statement has personally offended him on a deep level.

“Have you had those eggs, love?” he says, turning back to the breakfast he’s got frying on the burner. “They taste like glue.”

“You taste like glue,” she says, nonsensically, laughing at her own joke. She leans forward just enough to pull him to her by his shirttails and he turns around and goes willingly, stepping into the space between her legs.

“That’s a new one,” he says and giggles into her neck before kissing it.

They might still be a little drunk from the wine they’d pilfered from Dionysus himself earlier that day. Or yesterday. Whenever. Sara’s brain is all fuzzy, inebriated and aroused.

Sara closes her eyes and surrenders to the sensation of John’s hands slowly sliding up her thighs. His fingers sneak under the hem of her sleep shorts, where she’s bare, and her thighs part just slightly to better accommodate him. His shower damp hair feels nice and cool against her heated skin. She wraps a hand around the back of John’s neck, putting pressure on the pulse point, just the way he likes it and he becomes more purposeful in his caressing, thumbs edging closer and closer to that spot between her legs. Her breath quickens, her mouth goes slack, she’s half-dizzy already.

"Captain," Gideon’s voice comes through the speakers, “pardon the interruption, but Mr. Heywood is currently heading over here.”

“Thanks, Gideon,” Sara says as she tries to slow her breathing.

John sighs into Sara’s neck and kisses it one last time before pulling away. They stew in their disappointment for a moment, but they know the night isn’t over yet and neither of them has got anywhere else to be.

It’s not exactly a secret that she and John are sleeping together--anyone with eyes could see it--  but still, they don’t flaunt it. It’s not something she’s discussed with anyone on the team. Not because she’s ashamed-- she’s not, she’s got no reason to be. She is single, after all, and free to sleep with whomever she wants to in the comfort of her own home. It’s just... complicated. Like most things in Sara’s life. And, well... there’s no one left on the ship with whom she’d actually want to talk about it.

And besides, sneaking around is half the fun.

John plates up their meal just as Nate shuffles into the mess hall, bleary-eyed and groaning. He’s probably been in the library since they got back from Ancient Greece, lost in his research. He’s buzzing with that paradoxical energy that lives somewhere between frantic and exhausted.

“Gideon, coffee, please,” Nate says, so focused on his goal that, for a moment, he doesn’t even see them.

“What rabbit hole did you fall down this time?” Sara asks.

Nate jumps and lets out an unmanly yelp he’ll later deny.

“Give a guy a warning before you try to kill him of a heart attack, will you? Oh, you’re still here,” he says, eyeing John up. “What’re you guys doing creeping around here at this hour anyway?”

Nate’s expression grows more suspicious as he takes them in: Sara in her sleep shorts and tank top, John in nothing but boxers and a half buttoned oxford shirt, their hair still damp from their joint shower.

“Eggs?” John offers.

Nate looks at the plate of eggs, bacon, sausage and fried tomatoes-- perfect islands in a sea of grease, as John would say-- and narrows his eyes.

“What’d you put in them?” he says.

“Oh, I just mixed up some of my spunk into the whites,” John responds.

Nate recoils in disgust, gagging theatrically and shuddering at the thought and Sara can’t help but laugh at him. The sound attracts Nate’s attention, and he turns toward her, a devious look on his face.

“You let him kiss you with that mouth?” Nate asks her, a taunting edge to his words.

“That's not the only thing I do with it, mate,” John says, and he makes a show of licking the corner of his mouth.

“Ugh, you're disgusting,” Nate says, grabbing his coffee and speeding away fast enough to give Wally a run for his money.

“Hey, you forgot your eggs, squire,” John calls out into the hallway after Nate’s retreating figure and then he turns around to give Sara the most innocent look he can muster and says, “Was it something I said?”

“Don’t traumatize my historian, please.”

“Might be too late for that, love.”

Nate and John have cultivated a love-hate relationship that amuses Sara to no end. It’s hilarious seeing Nate get his feathers all ruffled by John’s particular brand of masculine energy. John has his own theories about it. He’s just pissy I didn’t wanna shag him, he says. Sara had laughed it off at first, but maybe John has a point.

John is magnetic. When he turns his attention on you, it has a way of making you feel like you are the only one in the room. Sara has seen his charm work on many people these past few months, including the team. One by one they’ve fallen under his spell: He and Mick have a standing card game; he meditates with Zari and Wally; and John is ever patient and indulgent with Ray’s attempts at explaining magic with science.

And fuck, she’d fallen for it, too, hadn't she? A cheap parlour trick, a kind word, and bam: Sara’s crossing ‘sex in a haunted place’ off her bucket list. Of course, she knows his waters run much deeper, that the arrogance and the charm are just another one of his cons.

It hadn’t taken long for the two of them to fall back into each other after he’d officially-but- unofficially joined the team. I’m an independent consultant, love, don’t get it twisted. He’d refused his own quarters on the ship, saying he could always sleep in hers if the need arose. He’d thrown a wink her way and she’d rolled her eyes at his overconfidence. Back then, Sara still thought she and Ava would get back together.

Funny how that worked out.

After Mallus and 2213 and Rip’s sacrifice, and Sara’s father dying; after John showed up on that beach and they realized they’d forced the jaws of reality open and the world had spat out all the evil it’d once swallowed up, Ava asked Sara for space. Sara had had no choice but to comply.

She’s not angry about it, she understands, really. Ava has her own fucked up things to deal with, things that Sara can’t even fathom. Ava says she doesn’t know where Rip’s fake memories end and where the real Ava begins. She says she needs to find herself, feel secure in who she is before pursuing a relationship. Basically, Sara got a big, fat ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech and Sara’s only consolation is that technically, she’d been the one who’d ended things first.

Then why does it still feel like she got dumped?

The whole thing had felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Privately, Sara wonders if John’s continued presence on the ship had been the final nail on her relationship with Ava. If Ava felt she was preemptively cutting her losses by walking away. John always rattled Ava’s confidence and control. Deep down, Sara knows her reassurances wouldn’t have mattered much in the end because what really frightens Ava is that John is all the things she can never be; Ava builds her life around rules and structures and John defies all of them. Sara doesn’t believe Ava was lying when she said she needed to find her sense of self. But it’s also true that Ava’s insecurities are deeply rooted in her perceived lack of autonomy. It’s an inescapable trap, and the one thing Sara’s not really sure she can forgive Rip for.

Sara knows what this looks like, her taking up with John just shy of a month after Ava left her, but the honest truth is that falling into John’s bed had not been about Ava at all.

It’d been one of the loneliest moments of Sara’s life. She’d found herself overwhelmed by her losses and the evidence of her failures and John, well, John had been there, willing and available. The perfect companion for her to wallow in her darkness with.

It’s certainly not the love story she’d once imagined for herself, the one she thought was within reach just a few months ago, but being with him feels comfortable and familiar. Sometimes, it’s just nice to be with someone on your level, someone you don’t have to explain yourself to. Someone who understands where you’re at because they’ve been there, too.

Someone who doesn’t expect anything from you.

He doesn’t stay after every mission and they don’t always have sex when he does. Sometimes, after fugitives have been dealt with and reports filed, they drink together and then pass out on her bed. On the nights when she wakes from nightmares she’s glad to have him there, his warmth pressing into her back. And when it’s him waking up shaking and gasping, she offers up her chest for him to tuck into, like a child seeking comfort from his mother.

But John isn’t just someone for her to share her darkness with. He’s also fun and super hot. Especially right now, when they’re both still drunk on magic wine and wound up from having wrangled an actual Minotaur. They’d had to do the responsible thing and not stay for the bacchanal. But now The Waverider is quiet and they’re alone again and nothing’s stopping them from finally indulging in their own private celebration.

Sara waves goodbye to John as the time portal closes with an audible woosh and John’s apartment disappears into nothing, leaving behind the halls of the Waverider’s cargo bay. She turns to walk toward the bridge and her office, where there’s a report waiting to be drafted and sent off to the Time Bureau. She hates having to do them, but it’s a small price to pay to be able to keep her ship and appease the bureaucrats in blue.

“Gideon, timeline holding steady?” Sara says.

“Yes, Captain. No major incidents detected.”

As she makes her way through the ship, Sara pokes her head into various rooms, checking on the crew. Mick’s in the mess hall, as expected, and Ray and Zari are working on something together in the lab. She briefly wonders what the other two might be up to as she turns the final corner toward the bridge. The smile on her face fades into a questioning frown when she spots said missing crew members sitting on the steps that lead to her office. They’re huddled close together, tapping at a tablet. They are giggling.  

“Hey, what are you guys up to?” she says, announcing her presence.

They jump apart and Wally’s first instinct is to turn the tablet around face down on this lap. Interesting.

“Heeey, boss. Drop off the beau already?” Nate says, emphasizing the word beau in a way that makes the back of her neck heat up. What the fuck is that about?

“You didn’t have to get rid of him on account of us,” he continues, and turns to Wally and pretends to whisper, “I caught them having a midnight snack in the kitchen last night.”

Oh, that’s right. He’d almost walked in on them with John’s hands up her pants. Fuck, that wine had been strong.

“Was it like a snack or a snack ?” Wally says and Sara’s mind immediately brings up John’s lewd comment about the things he does with his mouth.

For a second she worries about what Nate will say and she’s relieved when Nate responds that no, they were literally just eating. A second later, though, Nate looks directly at her and clarifies, “Breakfast, I mean.”

The smirk on his face tells her his mind is exactly where hers went. If this turns into a thing, she’s going to kill Constantine.

“Oh. I saw them in the laundry room once,” Wally says. “They were not doing laundry.”

“Oh, no, dude.”

They descend into childish giggles and much to Sara’s mortification, she feels a blush spread all the way up to her ears.  

“Don’t you think it’s kinda cute they’re still trying to sneak around? Amaya and I did that, too, in the beginning.”

Nate’s shoulders slump. His whole face falls and Sara intervenes before a full on depressive moment takes over. She misses Amaya, too, but she’s not in the mood to deal with a sad Nate right now.

“Are you guys going to keep talking about my sex life like I’m not here? You never answered my question. What are you doing sitting around here doing nothing?”

She brings her hands to rest at the small of her back, and she cocks a hip slightly; it’s her mom pose. She puts on a serious look and stares at them intently. One of them will break eventually.

“We were just messing around with this app I found,” Wally eventually says.

“Dude!”

She steals the tablet from them and taps her way into what they were doing.

“It’s not finished,” Wally says as the screen goes black and a video starts.

A stork flies across the screen and drops a bundle of blankets. Then, text scrolls into the frame: Congrats on this next phase of your life. The blankets open and the photo of a baby appears.

“His name is Jance,” Wally says. “Nate wanted to name him Johnra but I told him that was stupid.”

It takes her a second to understand, but then she sees it. The baby is supposed to be her baby. Hers and John’s. What the actual fuck?

Embarrassment phases into anger as her head snaps up and her glare turns murderous.

“It was Nate’s idea,” Wally spits out before she has the chance to even ask.

“Wally, man, what the hell? You gotta admit, though, he’s super cute. Especially when you consider his dad is a demon spawn.”

“Out!” she says, pulling them off the stairs. “Go make yourselves useful. Wally, go do maintenance on the engines and you go research something.”

“Wait, don’t you wanna see what he’ll look like when he’s grown up?” Nate says. “He’s got your eyes and he kinda looks like the lost Hemsworth brother. Look, look.” He tries to reach for the tablet in her hands, but she blocks him.

“Nate, get the fuck out of my face before I put you on bathroom duty for a whole month.”

“Come on, cap, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. The ship needs a new power couple now that me and Amaya are no more. Embrace your love. Do you have any idea how jealous I am of you? I wish I got to bring my boyfriend along for the ride.”

Boyfriend.

He said boyfriend.

After the encounter with Nate and Wally, Sara had stayed in her office for an hour, trying to draft the mission report for the Time Bureau before she’d had to get out of there. The parlor had started to feel like a fishbowl, with her right there in the middle for all to admire. So she grabbed her things and headed to her quarters.

It’s been another hour, and the report is still waiting to be written. The tablet with the silly video card is face down on the table. She can’t stop thinking about what she’d seen on it.

The joke rattled her in ways she doesn’t want to think about. It’s not the actual picture that bothers her. She can appreciate the adolescent humor, and she knows the guys didn’t mean anything malicious by it, but it still means something. That’s the kind of good natured teasing you inflict on your friends when you know they like someone. Like, like like. (Such eloquence, Sara.)

It’s exactly the kind of teasing they subjected her to when Ava was around. Nate would say, So, where’s Mrs. Captain? Or where’s Aaava? stretching out the vowel sounds into a juvenile melody meant to tease and embarrass her.

They’d called John her boyfriend. It’s ridiculous. Right? Boyfriend. Boy. Friend. God, even the word sounds strange. When was the last time she called someone her boyfriend? Not even Oliver, after her return to Star City. That word never seemed to fit what Oliver was to her. He’d been her partner, in the field and out of it.

Not unlike John, her mind supplies.

No. John Constantine most definitely is not her boyfriend.

The last time she’d called herself someone’s girlfriend the title had lasted mere hours and the aftermath of its dissolution had wrecked her and she’d gone back to believing that maybe such things were not meant for her. She’s okay with that. Still, she wants to ask Nate what it is he sees when he looks at her and John. Is he just joking, or does he see something she’s afraid of seeing? Afraid of naming?

Relationships don’t scare her, but perhaps seriousness does.

Maybe that’s what she’s really running from: the day when seriousness arrives to settle inevitably into her life, forever.

And John makes it easy to pretend everything is just a game, even when the evidence of their connection is all around her.

There’s a pair of men’s combat boots by the foot of her bed; an ashtray with a half-empty pack of Silk Cut on the bedside table opposite hers; two whiskey tumblers on the table, a sticky amber residue on the bottom of each one; on the shelves, books in a language she can’t read; and a protective sigil hangs from the ceiling over the bed, to keep the sex demons away. The room always smells like cigarette smoke, even when John’s not here. Something Sara has apparently grown accustomed to when it used to revile her.

So, when exactly had this happened?

It wasn’t until the fourth time they fucked that they actually saw each other naked. The realization had come as a revelation the moment Sara’s calloused hands learned the feel of the circular scars that mar John’s body-- cigarette burns, courtesy of John’s own father. They’d screwed three times by then, and she hadn’t even known they were there.

The affair had started off as nothing more than a dare; a game of chicken that began the moment John snuck into the ship all those months ago. The sex itself was great, no complaints from either of them on that front, but the real thrill was in the lead up to the act. Who’d break first? Where could they sneak off to? The crazier the situation, the better; for them half the rush was knowing they weren’t supposed to be doing it.

The first was the asylum, with Mallus lurking over their shoulders and poor Leo under the threat of lobotomy. There’d been no time for finesse then. Just a quickie against the wall, shameless and dirty, undressing only the necessary amount to facilitate the act.

The second time, it’d been 1976, a grungy underground nightclub in London’s revolutionary underbelly, and a succubus on the run. By the end of the night they’d wound up in the dirty club bathroom with the thrashy cacophony of The Sex Pistols drowning out their primal grunting and Sara’s thong dangling from the leg wrapped around John’s waist, his pants around his knees, one hand gripping at her ass so hard he’d left imprints on the tender flesh. To their credit, they’d made sure the succubus they were hunting was back in Hell before they absconded to the bathroom.

The third time happened in 333 AD in Constantinople, or the city of Constantine the Great, John’s very own ancestor; a fact that John wouldn’t let her forget. High up in the Byzantine acropolis, they’d huddled together to stave off the cold while they waited for a djinn to fall into the trap they’d laid. That night, she’d come panting into John’s shoulder, her hand wrapped around John’s dick and three of his fingers deep in her pussy while the rest of the team kept watch on the trap not too far away.

If she had to come up with a word to describe what they were doing in the beginning, she’d say selfish.

The fourth time, though? That had been different:

A basement night club in New York City, 2018, Sara at the bar drinking martinis when she’d spotted him across the room. John. A cigarette perched in the corner of his mouth and desire in his eyes. The moment they’d locked eyes, she’d known exactly where the night would end.

She’d taken a solo mission in the city in an attempt to escape the condescension of Agent McNeil from the Time Bureau, their official liaison. Sara never thought someone could actually make her miss Gary, but McNeil managed it. He reminds Sara of skim milk. He’d shown up to check on them under the excuse of needing help with an anachronism, and Sara had begged Gideon to scan the scry map for anything, anything at all she could do and pretend it was urgent.   

And that’s how Sara ended up in New York with the rest of team back in 1825 in the hands of McNeil. It’d been an easy mission: a quick break-and-enter into a professor’s office to steal back magical amulet that belongs to the 16th century. The whole thing had taken her an hour, maybe. Amazing what she could accomplish without the herd of bulls in the metaphorical china shop.

Night still young, Sara had decided to treat herself to a night off. She’d wound up in the Bowery staring at John Constantine from across the dance floor of a dark and smoky nightclub, deep bass music thumping.

Game on.

They’d pretended like they were no more than two strangers catching each other’s interest in a crowded club. She’d played her part, making eyes at him from the dancefloor, dancing just for him, until finally his resolve broke. He’d abandoned his post by the wall and approached her from behind, arms circling her body, one across the hips, the other across her chest, teeth and stubble scraping at the side of her neck in that way that makes her nerve endings stand at attention.

“No, it's not a gun in my pocket and yes, I am pleased to see you,” he’d said.

Sara had smiled, self-satisfied, and turned around to face him. He’d looked good in tight black jeans tucked into a pair of well-loved combat boots and the perpetual white shirt. The normal trench coat exchanged for a black one with zipper detailing. Nicer than anything she’d thought he could even own. She’d hooked a finger around the chain on his wallet to pull him even closer.

“How about we do it on a real bed this time?” she’d said.

And so the night had ended in John’s Brooklyn apartment, the two of them falling into their experiment, finally bare before one another, hands tracing the ragged topography of each other’s flesh, at last undoing the sweet mystery of their diversion. Flesh and souls colliding, together they’d synthesized a brief universe of peace.

Every other encounter had been a dare, but New York was the event horizon.  

The picture, the stupid joke of a picture burrows into Sara’s brain where it takes root and grows like a parasite. For a week, Sara spends all her free time too lost in her head, overthinking every interaction she’s ever had with John and when Gideon announces she’s located a potential fugitive, Sara could just about cry with relief. She could use the distraction.

Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan on this ship.

The hit on the scry map leads the team to the heartbreaking discovery that a hunger demon that John banished in 2014 is somehow loose in a Sudanese village in the year 1954. Sara knows what this means for John. She knows what it cost him the first time around. He’d sacrificed his oldest friend to it.

She watches him fret and pace the library, smoking cigarette after cigarette, searching his books for a way to contain it. She thinks maybe she should say something, or offer comfort, but she doesn’t. It’s the kind of thing a girlfriend would do. And she is not his girlfriend. And so she leaves him to his research.

In the end, he does identify a potential vessel, and in true Legends fashion, they break it before John can even try the ritual.

“This is why I like to work alone,” he rages at the team. “You lot are a sorry excuse for saviours. You have no idea what you’ve just done, you bloody buggering cunt berks.”

Wally, Nate and Ray look like they’re about to cry, Zari looks sick to her stomach and fire burns behind Mick’s eyes.

“Hey, you can’t talk to them like that!” Sara says, even if she understands his anger.

“And why not? They’ve just broken our only way to trap the demon.”

The Sudanese heat is sweltering, Sara’s sweating through her clothes, heart hammering in her throat at the thought of what they’ll have to do.

She walks up to John and takes one of his hands between both of hers.

“Look, we’ll figure it out, we always do. There has to be another way to trap it.”

“Yeah, there is,” he responds, taking his hand back forcefully. “Sacrifice.”

The bile churns in her stomach, acid hitting the back of her throat, her mouth waters.

“Wait, John, stop-- Let’s-- let’s discuss this.”

“There is nothing to discuss, love.”

“Is that what you told Gaz?” Low blow, but she’s desperate.

“You’ve got some bloody nerve to bring that up when we’re here because of you.”

In the background she hears Mick say, “Ah, blondie and new englishman yelling at each other. Feels like old times.”

“That’s right. Me. I’m the Captain of this team and I say--” she says.

“Oh, Captain. Good for you. I told you, sweetheart, I’m not part of any team. You ask for my help, this is how it goes. But be my bloody guest, if you think you know what you’re doing. Of course, if you knew what you were doing, we wouldn’t be in this mess, now would we?”

He’s looking at her with eyes full of blame, hurt and irate by the fact that her actions have put him in this position again. And she can’t even defend herself.

This is her fault. She knows that. The first time, with Thawne and the Legion, they’d been backed into a corner with no other way out. She can’t claim that again this time. This time, she’d made a choice, and it’d all gone quite literally to hell.

In her short tenure as captain, she’s managed to break time not once, but twice. Now Rip's dead and there are demons roaming the time stream. So much for the chainsaw. But having him hurl her failures at her like that hurts. More than she thought it would. She’s trying so hard to do things differently. Better. Because what does it say about her that the only way she can fix something is by tearing it apart first?

“You kids go on back to the ship. Uncle Johnny’s here to bloody up his hands as always.”

The team does as he says, sensing the heaviness of the situation. But Sara can’t seem to do the same. It’s her responsibility, too, and she has to to see it through to the end.

John had warned her at the beginning. He’d said, I’m no hero and she’d arrogantly thought, I’ll make one out of you yet. But once more life comes around with a reality check. This is who they are in the end: destroyers.

Sara’s insides feel like they’re about to shatter apart but her hands are steady as she injects a sedative into the young man’s neck; the only mercy they can offer him. John uses the kusa knife to carve the required symbols on the young man’s skin, and then summons the hunger demon into his body.

They stay with him until the demon finally consumes him, taking with him yet another piece of their souls.

After, they walk back to the ship in silence, a slow corrosion working between them. She feels awful, like an ever expanding bubble has lodged in her lungs, fit to burst at any second. John walks a few paces ahead of her. His gait is heavy, angry, so unlike his usual swash. The silence feels cavernous; she can’t take it anymore.

“Hey,” she says, “Back there, I didn’t bring Gary Lester up to hurt you. I was only--”

“What, appealing to the better angels of my nature?” John responds. “Yeah, I don’t have those.”

When they finally make it back to the ship, John immediately lights a cigarette and asks Ray to drop him home, skipping their now customary post-mission drink.

Nate sees the whole exchange happen and comes to stand beside her.

“You guys fighting or something?” he says. “You’re not going after him, patch things up?”

“Nate, not now.”

“But what about little baby Jance? What’s going to happen to him?”

“Nate, just shut up, okay? Fun’s over.”

Sara watches John go, feeling like something might just have changed irrevocably, and it terrifies her.

They say that drinking alone is the first sign of alcoholism. And Sara, of all people, should watch herself, considering her family history. Still she pours herself another finger of scotch and swallows it all in one go. It offers little comfort. The whisky tastes bitter and settles heavily in her stomach. There’s death there.

God, what they’d done to that boy.

There’s laughter coming from somewhere on the ship. The mess hall probably. It’s dinnertime and it’s Zari’s turn to cook. She always makes the best meals. Zari’s meals feel like family meals. Sara knows there’s a plate with her name on it, just waiting. And yet ...

Sara stays in her office, drinking, feeling more alone than she has in a while. It’s worrying how normal it’s beginning to feel. Maybe this is what it means to be a Captain. To be a Captain is to be an island. Rip had understood that.

But when Rip was Captain, he’d had her to remind him of his humanity, and to call him out on his shit when he’d needed it. For all his faults, he’d always seen her as his equal. And she didn’t do that just for him. Sara had taken on the protector role since she accepted the mission.

She’s shouldered all the pain so they don’t have to. Like mothers do, she thinks.

But who helps her shoulder her pain?

She keeps losing her people. First it was Len and Kendra. Then Martin and Jax. Amaya left to fulfill her destiny, and Rip sacrificed himself before they’d had the chance to work through their differences. Her sister, then her father. Ava.

She knows the rest of the team has her back, but she’s their Captain first and foremost. Their fearless leader with all the answers.

It’s different with John. She’s not his captain, she’s his partner. John has slowly become her person; the one she relies on when the darkness threatens to close around her. Until today, she hadn't realized how much that meant to her.

Sara pours what’s left of the scotch into her glass and heads to her quarters. She takes the long way around to avoid walking by the mess hall. Once in her room, she sits at the foot of her bed to unlace her boots, letting them drop to the floor, next to John’s Doc Martens. She undresses down to her underwear and she drinks the last of the whisky before getting into bed, hoping she’s drunk enough to keep the nightmares away.

The thing with time is that you always think you have more of it. Specially when you’re a time traveler. But if there is anything Sara’s learned these past two years is that there is no virtue in silence. Silence looks a lot like regret, and regret is an empty space in a too large bed.

Sara adjusts the paper bag she’s carrying into the crook her arm and raises her fist to knock on the door to apartment 507. She’s been inside many times, but she’s never had to stand on this side of the door to nervously ask permission. And it feels absurd to have to do it now, considering who lives here. They’d done it all backwards.

The door opens just enough for John to stick his head out. If he's surprised to see her, he doesn’t show it. It’s been nearly a full day since Sudan. At least she thinks so. It’s always so difficult to tell when living in the temporal zone.

“Back so soon? When to this time, love?” John says, opening the door all way and leaning against it. He looks tired and serious. Perhaps weighed down is the better term. He’s wearing dark jeans and a t-shirt. It’s only the second time she’s seen him in something other than the white shirt and tie combo.

“That’s not why I’m here,” she says and holds out the paper bag toward him. He looks at it for a second, but doesn’t make to grab it and she moves her hand closer, insisting, until he takes it from her.

He peers into the bag and takes out each item, showing them to her as if she hadn't been the one to gift them in the first place: a bottle of cheap gin and a pack of Silk Cut.

“Enabling my dangerous habits. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were apologizing for something.”

“Good thing you know better then,” she says.

Except it is an apology, of sorts. She’s not taking the blame for what they had to do, but she’s still sorry John was forced to make that choice again.

He stands there in silence looking at her peace offering and she thinks, I don’t want you to go and leave me like the rest of them. She doesn’t like the feeling of needing people and John isn’t something she gets to keep. She knows the day will come when he will leave her life as suddenly as he’d entered it. And she’s okay with that. She’s just not ready for it yet.

“We missed our drink after… after the last mission. I know what that cost you. I thought you could use a friend.”

I could, is what she doesn’t say.

After a moment, he steps aside and lets her in. She walks into his apartment and is immediately comforted by the familiar smell of cigarette smoke, incense and anise seed. She follows him as he walks past the main room and into the kitchen. Her eyes are soon drawn to her white suede jacket draped over the back of a chair in the kitchen table, existing there in the same space as John’s crossword puzzles and empty coffee cups. She hadn’t even noticed it gone.

“You hungry? I was just about to call out for some noodles,” John says.

“You mean you were gonna harass Chas into bringing you noodles.” She says it to lighten up the mood-- and it works, it makes him chuckle. But she also understands what John is trying to do. He knows Chinese is her favorite. It’s his way of saying sorry.

“Noodles sound great,” she says.

When the food comes (courtesy of Chas, indeed), they sit on the floor of John’s living room and eat their noodles in comfortable silence. After, John makes them gin and tonics and they pass the time playing a game of gin. They don’t mention Sudan. But as the night goes on they slowly regain their rhythm, and soon enough, John is back to making jokes that make her roll her eyes and groan.

It’s much later and she’s lounging comfortably in one of John's leather armchairs when he fetches her a glass of whisky.

“Not as fine as you’re used to but this woman I’m working for doesn’t pay me much,” he says.

“She sounds like a real hardass.”

“She is. Lucky for her, I like that in a woman.”

And so it starts, the game that only ends one way.

Sara safely puts the glass down on the floor, and pulls him to her by his belt loops until he has no choice but to lower his own glass and catch himself on the armrests, lest he fall on top of her. She stares at his mouth, his eyes, the shape of his face. She inches forward to catch his mouth in a kiss, soft and slow. He exhales through his nose, and moves his head to adjust the angle, a hand going around to rest at the back of her head, but she stops it before it goes anywhere.

“What’s on your mind?” he asks, in a low, soft voice.

“I’m thinking about what happens when all this ends. What does the time keeper retirement package look like anyway?”

“Heh, probably not much better than the demonologist retirement package.”

“You know, Rip recruited us because we were nobodies, completely irrelevant to the timeline. And the whole point of our mission is for no one to know we’re even doing anything. What happens when I fix time for the last time? I don’t really have anything to go back to, y’know?”

He looks at her for a long moment and cradles her face with one hand, his thumb circling over the cleft in her chin.

“Are you getting maudlin on me now, luv?”

“You don’t think about that stuff? Ever?”

“Oh, I try very hard to keep from thinking about the end of my life.”

Right. The damned to hell thing.

Sara runs a careful finger along his jawline and he closes his eyes, enjoying the caress.

“Did you ever want it?” she says. “Normal life? Kids? A family?”

A deep sound rumbles in his chest. He takes a step back to stand at full height, grabbing his glass on the way. He takes a swig of his own whisky, considering her question.

“I love the little critters but… I’d be shite at it. I came out of the womb wrong, y’know? Do you want 'em?”

Does she?

All week she’d tried to picture the baby as a real thing. She’d imagined herself as a mother with a partner to raise her family with. It didn’t have to be John, but he’d do for the fantasy. But babies, a family, those were things Old Sara wanted. After the League she’d accepted the reality that that life wasn’t meant for her anymore. That life was supposed to be Laurel’s. Sara was the wild one, the free spirit wandering through life as a visitor in the lives of others. Just like John. But now Laurel and her father are gone and Sara’s still here. The last of the Lances. Navigating through an unnamed thing with a man even more broken than her.

And it has been a long time since Sara has believed in forever.

One whisky turns into two and before long they are naked in John’s bed, their clothes in a pile on the floor. Their hands and mouths trace familiar patterns on each other’s flesh. He knows her body like a lover does, like someone who’s taken real time to learn it. Not since Nyssa has that happened. What does that say about her? Her mind inevitably wanders to that stupid photo and the word boyfriend.

“What are we doing, John?” she says and he stops kissing her chest to push himself up on the mattress. He looks down at her flushed face, an eyebrow raised.

“We’re shagging, love. Fucking, screwing, making the beast with two backs. I didn’t think I needed to draw you a map after all this time.”

“I just mean, what does it mean?”

John sighs and rolls over. He sits up on the bed, his back against the headboard.

“I need a ciggy if we’re having this conversation.” He reaches for a cigarette and his zippo on the nightstand and lights up.

Sara reaches over the side of the bed for her jeans and takes out her phone from one of its pockets. She swipes at the screen, pulling up the composite of the chubby cheeked little boy with her eyes and John’s mouth. She looks at it for a moment before offering the phone to John. He takes it from her and stares at the screen for a long time.

“Ok, you got me, sweetheart. What is this?”

“That is baby Jance. Our son.”

“Our son? Is that why you-- Are you trying to tell me something?”

“No, no, no, no, no. Jesus Christ, no.” She shudders at the thought of it being reality.

“Well, you didn’t have to react so violently. I’ll have you know I have much sought after sperm.”

“I’m sure you do. But I’m not, you know. Nate and Wally just thought it’d be funny to see what our kids would look like.”

“Ah, I see. So your weird mood tonight is about our hypothetical child.”

“Yes, but no. Not specifically.”

She mimics his position against the headboard, nothing but her long hair covering her bare chest. It feels fitting they should be naked for this conversation. Her relationship talks always seem to happen in bed. She steals his cigarette and takes a long drag before giving it back.

“You know what I realized the other day?” she says. “This thing we’re doing, whatever it is, has lasted more than most of my relationships.”

Nyssa had been the exception, but then again, there had been extenuating circumstances there. She hadn’t exactly been free to leave at any moment, had she wanted to. She managed two months with Oliver after returning to Star City. And her time with Ava had been laughably short. But she and John have been falling together for months. Plural. Going on 5 now and it shows no signs of slowing down or getting stale. It flows with an ease that terrifies her.

She’d known that ease of companionship with Oliver. Few people know and understand her better than Oliver. But it’d never been uncomplicated between them. It had always been ugly, tainted by what they’d done to her sister. And Nyssa had been the only good and beautiful thing in the worst years of Sara's life. But a love that grows in the place that death dwells is unsustainable.

“It was supposed to be easy with Ava,” she says out loud. “It should have been.”

So, why wasn’t it?

(That spiteful voice inside her head answers: Because Ava doesn’t have a past and you can’t escape being defined by yours.)

“I had a girl once,” John says through a cloud of smoke. “Kit. Irish girl from a perfectly normal family. She was like the calm in the storm. Thought I'd be with her forever. She made me feel like I could walk away from the magic, and the cons, and all the bullshit. And I did, for a while. Played the good live in boyfriend role, until the itch struck again and she was caught in the crossfire. And Kit, she couldn't stand to look at me anymore. Probably for the best. She’d’ve ended up dead or worse if she’d stuck around. It should’ve been easy with her, too.”

He smiles a smile so sad it breaks her heart. “You, uh, you remind me of her, sometimes. Especially when you drink me under the table.”

That feels like an admission.

“Ah, bollocks,” he says. “Would you look at that? You went and made me say something honest.”

She puffs out a laugh, but her heart is in her throat. He stubs his cigarette out and scoots down on the mattress to lie on his side, facing her. She follows suit until they are almost nose to nose, hands clasped between them.

“The truth about us, Sara, is that we’re not made for easy. We’ll always wind up back inside the pit. Deep down, we’re addicted to our own darkness. We don’t want it, but we need it. It’s how we stay alive. Kit, she was with me ‘cause she thought she could fix me or save me and then she walked when she realized she never would. I’m a frigged up mess and so are you. But I don’t wanna fix you, you don’t wanna fix me. You ask me what this means, I say we’re just a pair of damaged souls trusting in the one thing life has not denied us.”

His words pierce the tension in her chest and she leans in, eyes on the tight line of his mouth. Her lips barely brush against his when his words really register.

“Wait, 'trusting in the one thing’... You stole that from somewhere, didn’t you?”

He grins at her, smug and childlike. “Depeche Mode,” he says, and wraps an arm around her waist, pulling her close enough to nose at her jaw and sing softly into her ear: “When I feel the warmth of your very soul, I forget I'm cold and crying.”

She pushes him off, playfully, but seriously.

“Does every word that comes out of your mouth have to be buried in, like, 5 layers of humor?”

“Oh, come on, love, I was just--Oh, bugger it. Look, you’re the only bird I’m screwing these days. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“No, no. I’m not-- I didn’t come here to, like, nag you or anything. I don’t need promises from you. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on with me.”

“You just got spooked that one day you’d blink and realize your entire life has gone by and you’re all alone.”

“Yes,” she exhales, a weight shedding off her shoulders.

“We call that anxiety, sweetheart. Look, you and me, we banish demons from the timestream, we shag, and sometimes we talk about our nightmares. That’s what it is. We’re not happy ever after. Maybe we don’t get to be that. Some bird or bloke might come, sometime, maybe, and sweep us off our feet. Until then I say, let’s just ride it out. We’re having fun, right?”

She’s said I love you twice in her life, and twice she’d meant it, even if it ended badly. He says his love has left a ring of corpses around him. But Sara’s already conquered death. It’s futile to invoke permanence on something fated for impermanence, but forever isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sara’s beginning to believe that sometimes, perhaps, it is better to be understood than it is to be loved.

“We would’ve made some sexy babies, though,” she says.

She takes her phone back and searches for the other composition courtesy of Nate and Wally, the one with the grownup version. Grown up Jance has longish blonde hair, her blue eyes and John’s jaw, and an earring. And he really does look like the lost Hemsworth brother.

“Well blimey, look at him. Do you see 'im? He looks like an Australian surfer or something. Christ, we did good. It’s probably best we don’t try to make him real, though. Think of all the broken hearts we’re preventing.”

“Or worse. With our luck, he’d turn out to be a time demon or something. I mean, if two people could manage to engender a time demon it’d be probably be us.”

“I’m guessing this would be a bad time to mention that I may or may not have demon blood in me.”

“Oh my god, John!” she says, sitting up. “What the actual fuck?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Title of your autobiography, right?”

“Of course. Co-written by you.”

“Fair point,” she says.

They lie back against the bed and sigh. John gets a faraway look in his eyes, his shoulders trembling as he shudders at whatever picture’s in his head.

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you? The baby?” Sara says.

“You sure you’re not pregnant?”

“Jackass.”

She hits his shoulder and he laughs loudly and honestly, making him wheeze. He really should quit smoking. The sound of his joy fills her with light and she’s got no choice but to try to steal it with her own mouth.

He meets her halfway, opening his mouth to her tongue and they’re on their way back to where they’d left off. Just as things begin to heat up again he cups a warm hand around the curve of her lower belly, where a baby would grow.

“Are you attached to the name Jance, cause if we named him Lance, he’d have both our names.”

“Ugh, stop it. You’re killing the mood again. Do you want me to dry up?”

“Christ, I love it when you get crass on me.”

He steals a kiss, bruising, and all she can do is just take it.

“You know,” he says, biting at the line of her jaw, “there is something we can do to ensure no babies, time demon or otherwise, are conceived tonight.”

She raises an eyebrow, half wary, half excited. The Sumerian sex ritual from last month actually turned out be really fun, even if it freaked her out when he suggested it. She tracks John’s movements as he pushes himself off the bed and walks over to a leather chest on the other side of the room. She’s intrigued; she’s never seen that one before.

John turns around and tosses his loot on the bed, which lands in the space between Sara’s spread legs. She looks down and sees a bottle of lube, a strap-on harness and the yummiest looking dildo Sara has seen in a long time.

“What do you say, luv? You up for it?”

Oh, fuck yes.