Just One More Time

(Based on the CW television series, Legends of Tomorrow)

Who he’d find on board and how much time had passed for the others since he’d left with Kayla were, as far as Mick was concerned, nothing more than picky-picky time technicalities.  That the Waverider he was visiting was not precisely the one he’d left was equally irrelevant.  He arrived by courier; he looked round the old familiar bridge.  It was nearly half a minute before the unannounced opening of the portal brought the crew, tensely alert.  The sight of their old shipmate was both surprise and relief.

“So what brings you to 2348?” asked Sara.  “Everything okay at home?”

Mick grunted.  “Turns out Necrians grow up real fast.  They hit that growth spurt hard.  You try living with forty-eight teenaged man-eaters.”  He slung down his duffel, and plonked himself in a chair.  “What the hell’re you doing here, Haircut?  Last I saw, you were home with Nora.”

“It’s a long story,” said Ray shortly.

“Which he’s not telling us.”

“And we did ask!” added Nate.

“Whatever.”  Mick shrugged and got up.  “Gideon, my old room free?  Or where d’you want me to put this?”  He lifted his bag, and headed off the bridge.  Behind him, Sara pumped the air.  “Par-tay!” she cried.  Nate high-fived; and Ray broke into a broad, happy grin.

It had, of course, never really occurred to Mick that his old quarters would be left untouched.  Now and then, his friends had called his trans-temporal communicator to lightly sketch their adventures.  So he knew when Astra left the Waverider to start her run for office.  Spooner had, in the end, also returned to her own time, for all its limitations and restrictions.  As for the incarnation of Gideon (and her subsequent reintegration with the ship’s A.I.), Gwyn’s quest to save the man he loved, Booster Gold’s time-meddling, and Chameleon’s brief stay aboard—well, those Mick had missed altogether.  Legends came, and Legends left; and it was obvious that everyone aboard needed some place to lay their head.  So he was not at all perturbed when Gideon directed him to a different door that led to a cabin that was entirely empty.

He surveyed it, dropped the duffel, gave it a kick that slid it over the floor to bounce off the far wall, and said laconically, “The hold?”

“Your property is in storage, Mr. Rory, if that is your question.”

He nodded, turned on his heel, and went off to find where his things had been stowed.  Over the next couple of hours, he hauled things up and set them out in the slightly different configuration required by the dimensions of the new cabin.  He ignored the busy noise off in the distance—although, at one point, when he went off to the fabrication room, he found Sara and one of the Zaris all too busy.  Before they could barely react, he let the door close behind him on the way back out.

“Was that Mick?” Zari asked, in response to the sliver of a glimpse as he departed; but, by the time Sara turned to see, only footsteps echoed.  The two returned to the creation of gaudy decorations and then headed off, arms full, to string the results around the lounge.  They passed Ray in the galley making party eats.  Nate was on the bridge, assembling guests.  Eventually, as time portals began opening, he left the others to greet everyone in order to hunt Mick down and drag him, protesting the fuss, to join the celebration.  “It’s a party!  In your honour!” he said, more than once, before finally resorting to Steel Mick by the arm in a friendly, unbreakable hold.  By force majeure, therefore, he finally hauled him along to the lounge.  “So nice the metal grew back,” he said with a grin.  “Convenient, right now, isn’t it?  You might as well just come along quietly.”

Mick grimaced.  “Shut up, Pretty,” he said.  “You sound like a cop.”  The accusation made Nate relax his grip a little; and Mick shook off the hand.  Nevertheless, he did come along, albeit unquietly.  Grumbling his reluctance, he entered the bridge and saw the waiting assemblage.  “What the hell you do, Pretty?  Call the whole damn phonebook?”

“More or less,” said Nate cheerfully.

Spooner came over to give Mick a quick, unexpected hug.  Charlie gave him a wave across the room.  Behrad clapped him on the back.  He greeted Astra with, “See you magicked the old Waverider back just as I remembered it.”  Then a Zari pressed a large stein of beer on him.  She squealed and planted a kiss on his cheek, which pretty well identified which of the two she had to be.

Mick downed half the beer at a gulp.

“Great to see you again,” she whispered in his ear.  “You staying for good this time?”

Before he could answer, there was a hail from Sara.  “Where else d’you think I’d go,” he replied hastily, and turned to greet the ship’s captain.  Holding a wine glass in her other hand, she was hauling over a toddler in a silver, pointy party hat.  “That Sara and Ava’s kid?  She’s grown almost as fast as mine did.”

“This is Uncle Mick,” Sara said as they came up.  “Say hi.”  She leaned over the child to clap Mick on the shoulder.  “Hi, Mick!  Ava’s round somewhere.”  She gave the room a broad wave of her arm.

Passing the stein over to Nate, Mick knelt by the little girl.  “Your moms’ve told me a lot about you,” he said.

She shrank back a bit, knocking her hat sideways against Sara’s knee.  “She’s a bit shy,” said Ava, coming up and straightening it.  “Go on, honey.  Shake his hand.”

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Sara put in.

“It’s the polite thing,” Ava urged.  “When you’re introduced, you shake hands.”

Biting her lip nervously, the child reached out.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Mick with uncharacteristic formality, pressing her fingers lightly.  “My daughter has a little kid who must be about your age by now.  Maybe someday your mothers can arrange a playdate for you.”

“Well, not today,” said Ava, with a glance at Sara.  “It’s past her bedtime.”

The little girl looked shyly at Mick.

“Oh, come on!  It’s a celebration!” said the other mother ebulliently.  Mick got up.  Sara looked at her half-empty drink and said, with a flick her eyes back to Ava, “I need another.  You need half-a-dozen other.”  With the wine-glass, she gestured down at their daughter.  “We got soda, too.  Hang loose and have fun.”  Ava just gave her a firm look, gathered the child, and raised her time courier.  As they left through the portal, Sara called “Party pooper!” after them.  Then, turning back to Mick, she asked after Lita.

“Dunno, really.  We don’t talk much.”

Sara rolled her eyes, grabbed his arm as he rose, and pointed him towards the table.  “Go eat,” she said.  “If you don’t stuff your face with all that food Ray made, you’ll make him miserable—and he’s down in the dumps a lot nowadays.  See if you can get him to talk.”

Mick gave her an incredulous (but unheeded) look.  Still, after repossessing his stein, he did head for the food.  Never turn down either food or drink was a lesson he’d learned decades ago.  It was quite an array.  He looked it over, and concluded that, for a guy “down in the dumps a lot”, Ray must have been over-compensating in the galley.  Most of the party eats were generically recognizable as those … what’d’ya ’ems? … canopy things.  The beer he knew.  (The beer he downed.)  Having wet his whistle to whet his appetite, he then looked over the selection again and cleared a plate of assorted whatever-they-weres that turned out not to be too bad.

“Like them?” Ray said, coming up behind him with a slap on the back.

“Okay, I guess.”  Mick crammed a couple more in.

Ray leaned back against the table.  “So how are that brood of yours?”

“Ah, most of ’em went to Necria with Kayla,” said Mick dismissively.  “And no, I didn’t decide to go with her.  I’m not stupid, you know.  I could guess what would happen if she decided to make me her baby-daddy a second time.  I don’t got a death wish!”  He shrugged.  “So it was stay in an empty house or come back here.  ’Bout as much home as anywhere.  As the boss would say if he wasn’t dead, ‘Chill!’  It ain’t that big of a deal.  I’m back, that’s all.”

“You give Lita a call … let her know you’re off with us again? So she won’t worry.”

Mick gave him a surprisingly keen look.  “You keep in touch with Nora?”

Ray’s face hardened.  He hesitated, and then stalked off.

“Bite me,” Mick muttered to a plate of anchovy puffs.  He tried one, left it half-eaten on the table, and grabbed another beer.

A couple of days later, the Prognosticator in Ava’s office at the new Time Bureau indicated an anomaly in 44 B.C.  “The precise day is important,” she told Sara, who in turn instructed Gideon to take the Waverider to the month of Martius.

“The Ides of March?” put in Nate.  “Don’t tell me … we’re supposed to stop the murder of Julius Caesar!”

“Not exactly,” said Ava drily, “though you do have the right day.”

Mick just shrugged.

“History has to be preserved,” averred Ava.  In that respect, at least, the mission was a wild success.  The fabrication room provided suitable clothes; Nate instructed the others on the right way to drape a toga; and they arrived early enough in Rome to stop at a thermopolia for a bite to eat on the way to the forum.  There they enjoyed a grand brawl with the town guard (giving Brutus et al. their chance at Caesar), and finished the day toga-less at a convenient popina where they chugged down enough cheap wine that, next morning, they pretty well cleaned the ship’s infirmary out of hangover cures.

“Serves you right,” said Ava severely.  “But congratulations on a job well done.”  A few minutes later, she activated her time courier and stepped onto the bridge to give Sara a big hug.

With a loud, “Mommy, Mommy!” their daughter joined them, clinging to Sara’s leg.  “You stay forever now?”

Sara bent down and picked her up.  “Not forever, no.  We can’t do that, honey.  But—” She looked at Ava.  “—if there’s no mission coming up immediately…?”  Ava shook her head.  “…then you can stay on board for a good long while, and we’ll have lots of fun, and it’ll be Mommy Ava who commutes to work for a bit.  Okay?”

“Sounds good to me,” said Ava.

“And do we get some time off, too?” asked Behrad.

“Actually,” Nate began, twirling a raised finger for attention, “I’d kind of like to take Zari—my Zari—and go visit my Mom.  It’s her birthday.”

“Sure thing,” said Behrad easily; but he shared a glance with his Zari.  She tossed her head, shrugged, and finally said, “Okay, as long as we get to see our own folks for Eid.”  With that they touched their Air Totem and disappeared.

“And I’m gonna call Lita,” Mick declared.  “Though I don’t reckon she’s up for visiting.”  Indeed, when he opened a portal, she simply said she’d see him when she’d see him.  It was Sara who asked after Niko, and Ava who suggested a play-date for the children.

“Sorry,” said Lita.  “Your timing couldn’t be worse.  I just got the kid down for a nap.  Some other time maybe.”

Mick shrugged and headed for the library.  There he hunted down a sci-fi thriller from 2035, The Sultan of Planet X, put a bookmark down on the coffee table beside his chair, and got stuck in.  To his irritation, he’d only worked his way through the first couple of chapters when he was interrupted.

“So what’s up with you and Lita?”

He looked up to see Nate lurking inquisitively.  “Timey-wimey stuff,” said Mick, sliding the bookmark in and taking off his reading glasses.  “I missed a year or so of her life because of Kayla and the baby-brood; she got herself knocked up.  She’s got Niko; she’s got the munchkin; and, if she didn’t know how much time babies take up, she’s learned the hard way.  So she’s got no call still to be pissed.”  He removed the bookmark with ostentatious deliberation, put his glasses back on, glared at a now-slightly-out-of-focus Nate, and sat back to read.

Nate rolled his eyes, sat down comfortably in another chair, and waited.

Mick kept reading.

Nate kept waiting.

Eventually, without looking up, Mick said, “You know, I’m feeling kinda thirsty.”

More than a bit amused, Nate got up and went to the galley.  He came back with two beers, plonked one down beside Mick, and opened the other.  He took only a small swig to ease the atmosphere, and was pleased to see Mick—without looking up—open his own beer.

Eyes still on the book, Mick said, “I wanted more for Lita.  Don’t all parents want their kids to do better than they did themselves?  Niko may treat her okay—at least he seems to be sticking around—but….”  He shook his head.  “I shoulda killed him for knocking her up.  I don’t know why I let him talk me round.”

“Well,” said Nate thoughtfully, “that was about the time Kayla knocked you up.  Baby hormones kicking in?”

Mick snorted.  “Yeah, probably.  You tell me, Pretty, you read sci-fi?”

“I live sci-fi, apparently,” was the bitter reply.  “I wrote that book I was talking about, got a publisher—you know how they market it?  I wrote a history of our time travels, they stick it in the Science Fiction section.  Well, you probably saw it.”

“Not really,” said Mick honestly.  “Why would I?  I lived it.”

“Ray probably read a fair bit of SF as a kid.”

Mick ignored this.  “In sci-fi, there’s a lot of aliens laying eggs in people and such,” he brooded.  “And it never ends well.”  He picked up his beer and drank deeply.

For a long moment—it was a long draught—Nate observed him thoughtfully.  “We’re taking the jump ship,” he said eventually.  “Lots of presents for Mom’s birthday.  You could drop in on Lita, why not?”

Mick glared at him over the lip of the bottle, and then lowered it to ask, “What year is it for you?”

Nate looked a bit puzzled.  “Well, 2023.  Since joining the ship, that is.”  With a grin, he added, “April, if you want to be more precise.”

Mick grimaced.  “April 2023’s when Lita pops her kid, Pretty.  I kind of had my hands full at the time.  Didn’t even call.”

Nate lit up.  “Well, then you should definitely come along!  Break the ice, make amends, touch base—whatever you want to call it.  Better late than never.”  Overriding Mick’s protests, he whipped the book out of his hands, flipped it shut on the bookmark, and set it on the table.  “Not taking no for an answer,” he said briskly.  “And if you don’t come quietly this time, I’ll sic Zari on you.”

From Lita’s dorm room, Mick went to Ali’s house, found both empty, and proceeded to the hospital.  He discovered Lita sitting up in bed with the baby in a crib beside her.  She looked both tired and radiant, and also very much on her own.  “Hey, nice to see you, Dad.  You just missed Mom,” she greeted him.  “Where’s Niko?” were the first words out of Mick’s mouth.

“No congratulations?” said Lita wryly.  “Well done?  Lovely baby?”

Mick moved awkwardly closer to the bed and bent over the crib.  “Just like its mom,” he cooed.  “Lovely baby.”

Lita snorted.

“So where’s Niko?” Mick persisted.

“Heading back to the dorm.  He’s got to study for an exam tomorrow.  Intersectionality and Feminist Activism.  You remember?” Lita asked sweetly.  “It’s the course the two of us met in.”

With a dawning frown, Mick got the implication.  “So don’t that mean you got an exam tomorrow?”

“Well, I can’t be there,” said Lita patiently.  “I’m here.  Anyway, it doesn’t really matter.  A baby needs more care than I can give if I’m cracking the books.”

Nate and Zari returned to the ship, replete with birthday cake and good wishes—and no intention of returning to the Air Totem until their time out had timed out.  They found Mick in the library, nose deep in The Sultan of Planet X.  To his irritation, they insisted on prying his attention back to the real world of the Waverider.

“The party was great!” Nate said ebulliently.  “A couple of Mom’s friends, and none of the relatives.  You know, I bet we can miss Thanksgiving this year!”  He proffered a slice of cake on a paper plate; and, when Mick didn’t instantly reach for it, put it down on the table next to the bookmark.  Mick gave it a hard look and returned to his book.

“So how’s Lita doing?” asked Zari.

Mick just grunted, without looking up.

“The baby okay?” put in Nate.

“Yup.”

Zari rolled her eyes.  “I’m going to find Sara,” she said to Nate.  “You coming?”

“In a moment.”  Nate leaned against the wall, eyes on Mick.

Mick kept reading.

Nate kept waiting.

Eventually, without looking up, Mick said, “You know, I’m feeling kinda thirsty.”

Amused even more this time, Nate headed for the galley and came back with two beers.  He plonked one down beside Mick, stuck a fork on top of the slice of cake, and sat down.  He opened the other, and again took a small swig to ease the atmosphere.  “So what’s up with you and Lita?” Nate asked.  “Didn’t the visit go well.  I could’ve sworn you’d finally decided you were happy being a grandfather.”

At this, Mick did glance at him.  Then, eyes back on the book, he said, “I don’t mind the munchkin.  But Lita doesn’t hafta go drop out of college just ’cause she’s got a kid.”  He finally looked up, slipped the bookmark in, and removed his glasses.  “I know kids take up your time.  After forty-fuckin’-eight of them I damned well oughta know!”  He opened his own beer.

Nate considered the matter.  “This is an undergrad course, right?  So she’ll already have some tests under her belt … mid-terms, Christmas exam, maybe a couple of short term papers.”

“Sure.  But she can’t write her finals.  She’s gonna flunk.”

Nate pursed his lips.  “No, what she needs to do petition for an aegrotat grade.  Then maybe get a leave of absence.  A gap year, basically.  Time with the baby; then … the university probably has daycare, if she’s quick to put down for it.”  Mick looked at him skeptically, and took a long chug of his beer.  Nate grinned, “Hey, I know this, Mick.  Remember, before I joined the Legends, I was a history professor.”

“So you dropped out too,” Mick said flatly.

Nate grimaced, put down his beer, and stood up.  “Low blow, Rory.  You don’t want to talk, fine.  It’s your business.”

Mick merely shrugged and slipped the bookmark out again.

“Right, then,” said Nate crisply.  He headed for the lounge, where he found a sort of Junior Book Club in full swing.  Zari and Sara were sprawled in their chairs and a very little girl was curled up on the floor, all of them listening to Ava, who was sitting primly, reading to them.  Nate stood in the doorway for only a few seconds before grasping that the story was all about a rather lovable bear whose quest for honey kept being thwarted by sharply stinging bees.  It was a story he’d always enjoyed when he was very small himself; so he came in, grinning broadly, and sat down cross-legged on the floor in order to listen to the end of it.  After that, as the others played toss with a large stripy plastic ball, he and Ava commiserated over the grumpiness of their own favourite bear.

Somewhat later, but still before Mick managed to get to the end of his own book, he found himself interrupted yet again.  Unlike Nate, Sara had no patience with waiting.  She put her left hand flat on the page he was reading, plucked his glasses off with the other, and informed him they were going to talk.  “I gather Lita’s quitting college,” she began.  “You know it’s all your fault, right?”

He pulled the book out from under her hand, and reached for his glasses.  “Buzz off, Lance,” he told her.  “It’s none of your business.”

“No, seriously,” she said, sitting down beside him.  “You’re going about this all wrong, you know.  Barging in, throwing your fatherly authority around—I know you, Mick.  The trouble is, Lita doesn’t.  Which isn’t entirely your fault, of course.  I mean she’s born of a time change; and, since your original time line never had her in it, you never knew she existed.  So how could she know you?”

“I went back….” Mick began.

“Yeah, I know you did.  And that’s what I want to talk to you about.  You slid yourself into her life here and there—not enough from a child’s perspective, of course—and hoped that would do the job.  What did win her round was you letting her visit on board the Waverider.”

“I can hardly do that when she’s got the kid.”

“No, no, I don’t mean that.”  To his surprise, Sara reached over and patted his knee.  “No, I think you maybe had the right idea at the wrong time.  Go back—take the jump ship and go back—and fill in some of that time you didn’t see her when you were off with Kayla.  I mean, what is it?  A year or two?  I kind of remember her saying you just dropped out of her life.  So drop back in!  Just here and there.  Trust me.”  She winked.  “No college kid wants their dad around all the time.  Just a bit of friendly attention.  She’ll be a lot more inclined to listen to you.”  This time, she gave his knee a more than firm slap.  “Drop the book, Rory, and get going.  Captain’s orders!”

First time, he went back a mere couple of weeks.  Lita was in her dorm room; so was Niko.  They looked very sweet together, all lovey-dovey with a baby crib in the corner.  “Just thought I’d pop in and see how you were doing,” he said, and smiled at the pair of them as ingratiatingly as he could manage.

“You know, I’m good for any money you need,” he said partway through the visit.  “You need money for the munchkin,” he gestured at Lita’s belly, “just give me a call.  Diapers and day care … I know they both cost.  You need an apartment of your own?  Maybe a nanny?”

When he got back, he found Sara waiting.  “She won’t listen to me,” Mick stated flatly.  “She’s okay on that Eiger-trat thing Pretty was on about.  She did, after all take the courses.  But daycare, nanny, whatever she wants—I offered her all the money she’d need.  Hell, I offered her a fucking fortune if she’d stay in school!”  He shrugged.  “No problem.  I can always steal more. She says she don’t want it—says money can’t make up.”

“Try again,” Sara ordered.

Mick turned up at Ali’s house the previous Christmas with a load of presents even bigger than the pile that Nate and Zari had taken for his Mom’s birthday.  Sara had told Mick to take his time about it; so he parked the jump ship at S.T.A.R. Labs (to their surprise), took public transit, and came over daily.   Lita was only showing a bit; and, this time following Ava’s advice, he barely mentioned the forthcoming happy event.

He went with them to buy the tree, carried it easily into the house (barring the needle-burn on his arm), helped haul out the boxes of decorations, and put the lights up on the roof.

He took them all—yes, even Niko!—to the movies.  Their choice, God help him!  And it bored him silly, being a chick flick; but he didn’t say a word.

He coaxed Ali out of the house for a walk in the pretty snow and offered the money that way, figuring she could work on Lita in the months ahead.  “I’m sure it’ll be very welcome,” was all the answer he got.

He went to Christmas service, for the first time since his folks had died, and even remembered most of the words of the carols.

He peeled potatoes.

“What’re you planning when the kid comes?” he asked, with all the subtlety he could summon, just after helping Lita with the dishes after Christmas dinner.

“Not sure,” she said, handing him a towel to dry his hands.

“When’s it—I mean, he or she—due?”

“April.”

“You’ll have the whole summer before school starts again,” he ventured.

“Yeah, about that….”

“Try going back before she met him,” Ava suggested.

Mick had to admit it sounded reasonable.  He counted back, more or less on his fingers.  Yeah, if he got the arithmetic right, Lita must have got carried away by the thrill of first love (to put it as nice as he could) pretty soon after meeting Niko.

He checked his daughter’s schedule with Gideon and put in a call.

“Hang on a minute,” Lita said to her friends at an insistent buzz.  “I’ve got to take this.”  She pulled out her trans-temporal communicator.

“That’s not your usual phone,” one of the other girls commented.

“No,” she said lightly, flicking it on.  “It’s one my Dad gave me.”  She ignored the glances the others shared.  “What’s up, Mick?”

“Thought I could come by, if you’re free.”

“Well, class is over for the day, far as that goes, but … look, Mick, some of us were going to hang out—”  Lita looked round at her friends, and saw that they were shaking their heads.  “Hang on a minute.”

“Go with your Dad,” one of the girls said.

“But look … we were just waiting for—”

“No, no,” another girl interrupted.  “Didn’t you say your Dad lives out of town?  Is he in for the day or something?”

“Yeah, you can catch us up after he’s gone,” said a third.

Lita hesitated.  Behind them, the door to the building opened, and a couple of guys from their class came out and ran lightly down the steps.

“Oh, go on!”

Finally, Lita nodded.  “Yeah, okay, Mick,” she said into the communicator.  “I’m just leaving the lecture hall now.  Meet you at the dorm, okay?”  And then, with a wave to the others, she headed off at a quick walk.  She found her father lingering impatiently outside the building.

“I swear, Mick,” she said, after giving him a quick hug.  “I’ve seen more of you this past few months, what with all those trips on the Waverider and now this.”  She nudged him in the ribs.  “You want to drop back into my life?” she added lightly.  “You should’ve been here to help me move.  I dunno how much stuff I lugged up to my room last month.”

This time, Mick didn’t bother to go back to the Waverider.  He could already hear Sara’s advice.

Ali had to work; so it was Mick who helped Lita load her stuff into the back of his rental.  With two of them, it wasn’t so bad a job, even though only one of the dorm elevators was working.  She’d have waited till it came back down; but he chivvied her into carrying the boxes up the stairs.  “Only three flights,” he pointed out.  The room looked a lot larger empty than it did after they’d made two more trips and crowded the whole lot in higgledy-piggledy.  The bed needed making; there was no toilet paper (and they’d forgotten to bring any); and the desk had a chunk taken out of one leg.  “I can fix that,” said Mick quickly.

Lita looked around.  “This is going to be great,” she declared.  “And thanks, Dad, for shelling out the fees.  Mom couldn’t have swung it.”

“You go to college, you ought to live on campus,” he declared.  “Leastways that’s what Haircut and Pretty say; and they both went to university and got strings of degrees to prove it.”  They unpacked enough to find the sheets, and made the bed between them.  Lita shoved her clothes into drawers and on hangars, stuck a box of toiletries in the small ensuite, and then declared the job done.

“How about I take you for a chocolate malt to celebrate?” he suggested.

“Mick, just how old do you think I am?” Lita laughed.

Not old enough, he thought; but what he said was, “You pick, then.”  So they walked a few blocks off campus to try to find a bar that Lita thought she might like, passing the Sigma Psi Phi fraternity along the way.  “You remember?” Mick said, with a nod towards the frat house.

“Could I forget?”  She looked at him suspicously.  “Mick, what’re you doing here really?”

“Being your Dad,” he said.  (She rolled her eyes.)  “Seriously, you remember what those frat boys were like?”

“You giving me the talk?” she asked incredulously.  “You don’t need to, honestly.  I can handle guys just fine.”  She grinned at the look on his face.  “Don’t worry about me, Mick.  I can take care of myself.  I’m a big girl.”

“I’m just giving you a bit of advice, that’s all.  I don’t want to get a call from you—or worse, from your mother—telling me you went to some party and got blotto drunk, or some guy roofied you.  I’d have to kill him.”

Lita could only hope he was joking but he sounded far too serious about it.  He had, after all, spent a good few years of his life in Iron Heights.

“Seriously, though, if you’re thinking about your Mom and me, anything we did we were both in it together, however it may have turned out.  Sure, we got carried away; and she forgot she hadn’t taken the pill, and all that.  But we were really into each other.  So take your old Dad’s advice:  fall in love with a nice guy, and don’t get blind drunk.”

“You are giving me ‘the talk’,” said Lita wryly.  “Any more good advice?”

“Study hard?”

“Oh, that one I hear from everyone.  Mom said it too.  Don’t worry.”  She gave his arm a little hug.  “You spent a lot of money on my fees and all this.”  She gestured broadly round the bar, the campus, and Hudson University itself.  “I don’t plan to waste a cent of it, I promise.”

Mick could only return to the Waverider hoping for the best.

He arrived to a degree of expectant confusion on the bridge.  Sara was saying a quick but loving farewell to Ava and their daughter; Nate and his Zari were swapping themselves into the Air Totem.  Ray turned round and saw him.  “We’re off again,” he said.  “Good thing you’re back.”

They were, Sara told him, headed for the year 4728 where the Futuresmiths were organizing to take over history.  “Sounds familiar,” was the general consensus.  There had, after all, been too many temporal dictators in the years they’d been aboard.  Still, the danger to the timeline was obvious.  Without further ado, therefore, they fastened themselves in and headed into the timestream to save the world yet again.  That, when they arrived at their destination, the Futuresmiths presented themselves as heroic and benevolent didn’t help.  In fact, for a while, their resident Boy Scout tried to persuade the rest of the crew that the Legends were on the wrong side of the issue; and only when the ship was nearly destroyed by a sneak attack was he convinced that right and justice lay with his shipmates and the preservation of history.  Needless to say, it was the sort of mission that kept them all on their toes.  There was little enough time to sleep, and nothing resembling leisure.

Once the leader of the Futuresmiths had been destroyed and the superteam disbanded, the Waverider returned to the safety of the time zone.  At that point, Zari laid prompt claim to the bathroom and flatly refused to come out till she’d not only showered but prinked herself into a state of perfection.  Loud complaints and knocking on the door did no good:  she was obviously going to be ensconced in the bathroom for an indefinite (but long) time.  So Behrad went to his quarters for his own notion of relaxation; Sara went to hers for a long, lingering chat with Ava via communicator; and Nate went back in the Air Totem, thus neatly managing to beat everyone else to a proper bath.  He lingered in bubbles, happily filling in his Zari on all their adventures.

Mick had never been one to object to a bit of honest sweat.  He figured his turn at the shower would come eventually; and, as far as he was concerned, it didn’t much matter when.  In fact, he expected to be the last to shower; and that was fine by him.  Instead of hanging about in the corridor trying to talk anyone out of the bathroom, he went to the library, hunted out his much-interrupted sci-fi thriller, and stuck his nose in.  He badly wanted to learn if the hero would beat the villain and live through the grand finale.  (He would, of course.  Mick knew that perfectly well.  The Sultan of Planet X was that kind of book.  Nevertheless, he did want to find out how it would all come out right in the end.)  He was, therefore, deeply engrossed—and not at all surprised, though somewhat fed up—when Ray came in.

“What?” Mick growled, not looking up.

“I was just wondering … what year it is for you?”

Mick pushed his glasses a bit further down his nose, glared over them, and said, “Do I look like I got a calendar in my back pocket?  Ask Gideon.  Last I heard we were in 4728 fighting the Futuresmiths.  Or have you been flying on a different ship?  As for now, we’re in the timestream, unless that green stuff outside means something else to you.”

Ray blushed his usual gawky self and stammered, “N-n-no, I meant what date did you return to the Waverider?”

Instead of answering, Mick slowly took off his glasses and set them on his open book.  “Nora’s fine, if that’s what you really want to ask.”

Ray looked even more embarrassed, said “Thanks,” and backed out the door.

“And you’re okay then, too,” Mick murmured sotto voce to the closed door.  Just more timey-wimey crap, he thought.  Then he shook his head and put his glasses back on.  Always a slow reader, he did eventually finish his book.  Then, since Gideon told him the bathroom was still occupied (though no longer by Zari), he headed for his new cabin.  Eventually, he woke before everyone else and got his shower.  Prudently putting on a bathrobe, he decided it was time he called Lita to see how she was doing.  How long had it been since he’d rejoined the Waverider?  He honestly didn’t know; but Gideon did, and ensured that his call went to the right time and date.

“Hey, Dad!” Lita said brightly.  From the little he could see behind her, he reckoned she was her in dorm room, which was good.  “Been on a mission?”

He filled her in briefly.

“Well, I’ve got great news!” she said.  “Not only did I pass all my finals, I actually got an A minus on my Gender and Environmental Justice paper!”

“That’s great, honey,” said Mick, genuinely pleased.  “I’m so glad to hear you didn’t decide to drop out.”

“Drop out?” she said, astounded.  “Why on earth would I drop out?”

“Oh, no reason,” he said hastily.  “How’s your Mom?”

“She’s fine,” said Lita.  “I’ve got a summer job in National City; so I won’t be seeing all that much of her for a while; but I’ll be sure to call her regularly, don’t you worry.”

“And the munchkin okay?”

She stared at him blankly.  “What munchkin?” she said.

For a long moment Mick couldn’t reply.  Then, with hard self-control, he said simply, “Oh, never mind.  Not important.”  The call wittered on for several more minutes.  Presumably he answered with something more or less relevant; but, for the life of him, if one of the crew had asked him what they’d talked about, he’d never have been able to tell them.  He could only hope that Lita didn’t realize something was wrong.

Afterwards, he got dressed and headed for the bridge, but found that—early bird as he’d been today—most of the crew were still lining up outside the bathroom.  “Zari’s in there again,” Ray told him.  “Can you believe it?”

“Yes,” Mick replied simply.  “Sara, you do remember Lita, right?”

“We all remember Lita,” said Behrad.  “Your daughter’s a nice kid.”

“And you remember her kid?”

Behrad frowned—which might mean nothing, Mick hoped, depending what he’d been smoking yesterday.

But Sara also frowned.  “Yes?” she said vaguely.  “I sort of do, I think.  Weren’t you worried Lita was late, or something?”

“Gideon?!!” Mick called.

“Yes, Mr. Rory,” came the prompt reply.

“Do you remember my grandkid?”

“I remember all our timelines,” said Gideon primly.  “Whether they are current, or not.  I can’t always tell you very much about them, though.”

Oh, crap.  Timey-wimey crap.  Mick turned on his heel and went back to his room, where he hit the punching bag for far too long (but not long enough); and found that there was no way he could punch out the past.  Eventually, he answered the buzzer at his door to find a freshly washed Sara, hair done up in a turban towel, looking rather concerned.

“Mick, did I get what you were saying—and what you were not saying—more or less right?  Are you saying that Lita had a kid; you had a grandkid?  Because I sort of do vaguely remember something.  Only I can’t recall whether you said it was a boy or a girl.  Or the name.  Or anything.”

“I can’t remember, either,” said Mick bleakly.  “I did … and then I didn’t.  Like you say … I can’t even remember the munchkin’s name any more!  It’s slipping away … just slipping out of my head.  And I was the one did it.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I want to punch the time zone to hell and gone,” said Mick bitterly.  “What the fuck will talking do?”

“I don’t know what to say.  I’m sorry?  Time giveth and time taketh away?”

She was honestly concerned, Mick realized; and it was utterly unhelpful.  With difficulty, he persuaded her to go, and locked the door behind her.  “Gideon,” he said, “I don’t want to be disturbed, okay?”

“As you wish, Mr. Rory.”

He sat glumly down on the bed, feeling himself all sweaty from beating up the punching bag; briefly debated with himself whether he should chance the shower finally being free again; and then just … sat.

Yeah, it was true.  Time had giveth and taketh away again.  Time had given him Lita; and that had been unexpected and weird, but it had been good.  He mustn’t forget that.  Time had given him Lita.

Maybe … maybe … he should take the jump ship again and go back … just once more.  Go back and try again.

Or maybe not.

Arrowverse Fan Fiction
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