[Chapter 40]

The team was ghostly quiet as Rip quickly piloted us away from the Vanishing Point. We didn't look back.

We couldn't.

We were leaving Isabelle and Leonard behind. Letting them die so we could live. But losing them all the same.

I felt a twist of guilt for how I had first treated Isabelle. I was hypocritical and unfair, and even though we made amends, I still hate myself a little for it.

"Is there any chance...?" Kendra trails off but I understand what she means.

"I don't think so," I reply softly, keeping my emotions thrust as far from the surface as possible. Falling apart now won't help anyone.

Ray was about to say something when we all heard a huge crash from somewhere inside the ship.

"Man, I just fixed the damn thing," Jax groaned but Rip and I shared uneasy glances.

"I don't think that was the ship," I say and started heading towards where the sound came from. The rest of the team followed, but I ignored their footfalls as I focused on what could have made that sound and how I could kill it as fast as possible.

I turned down another hall and instantly smelled something burning. I slid a knife into my hand and moved forward a lot quicker.

I turn into the door of the MedBay and stop dead at the sight in front of me.

Medical supplies were scattered everywhere and the floor had a huge burn mark stretching from corner to corner. In the center was a girl, about fifteen, with shoulder length wavy black hair.

Her clothes were a burning mess but her pale skin was undamaged. She laid unmoving and I moved cautiously forward.

As though the girl could sense me, her eyes snapped open and I froze in utter shock...

...at the sight of vibrant violet eyes.

"Isabelle?" I whispered. She sits up and her eyes connected with mine and I knew without a doubt that this was Isabelle.

But could she remember me? Could she remember the team?

Could she remember who she was?

"It's me. It's Sara," I continue softly, aware of the rest of the team crowding at the door, staring at the scene unfolding.

Isabelle didn't divert her steel gaze from mine, and I desperately searched her expression for recognition. I didn't fail to notice how young she looked. And exceptionally beautiful. But completely and utterly different.

Gone was her highlighted brown hair that flowed over her shoulder like a natural wave. Gone was the smile that I had grown used to.

Was the girl who lived and breathed just under an hour ago continue to live inside this younger version of herself?

"Where is he?" she asked. Her voice was soft and beautiful like a melody, uncalloused by years of anguish and suffering. Isabelle still showed no sign of recognizing me. My heart gave a horrible twist and I found myself wanting to lie to her.

"He's gone," Ray replies softly, advancing toward Isabelle cautiously, like he would a frightened animal.

"Where?" Isabelle asked, but didn't move her gaze from mine. I slowly grab her warm and give her a small squeeze.

"He's dead Isabelle."

I looked at her face, looking for any sort of reaction. But there was nothing. Nothing to hint at how she would react.

Isabelle sat unnaturally still. I don't even think she was breathing. But her face revealed nothing of what was going on inside her head.

I turned my gaze to Ray so we could figure out what to do when Isabelle moved.

Lightning fast, she was sitting right in front of me and then she was lunging toward me. My body reacted before my mind could register what Isabelle was doing, and I jumped backward, trying to put some space between Isabelle and me so I at least stood a chance.

But Isabelle wasn't going after me.

She was going after the knife I had laid on the ground when I approached Isabelle.

I shouted and lunged forward, desperate to hit the knife from Isabelle's hands but she was too fast. There was nothing I could do as she plunged the knife right into her chest.

Piercing her heart.

The rest of the team had come closer now, possibly to try and stop Isabelle from killing herself, but all I had eyes for was the girl right in front of me.

I gaped in shock, ready to watch Isabelle die all over again. But Isabelle only let out an anguished sob.

I softly push her arm away from her chest and see the knife handle Isabelle was gripping to. But the blade was gone. I looked down and saw that it was shattered. The pieces were scattered across Isabelle's lap, but her chest remained unscathed and her heart remained beating.

I moved then. I peeled Isabelle's hand from the knife handle and tossed it to the side. Then I pulled Isabelle into my chest and stroked her black hair softly.

Only then did I notice how badly Isabelle was shaking. At the tears she was trying so desperately to keep inside.

"It's alright. You can let it out. It's alright," I say in a soft voice. I felt Isabelle shudder in my arms but I only held her tighter. "Just let it all out."

I signaled Ray to get the team out of the room and I listened as they all shuffled out.

When the doors shut, Isabelle and I just stayed there on the ground as I let her grieve. And stayed as she slowly put herself back together again.

"I'm sorry," she said in a whisper and I furrow my brow in confusion.

"What for?"

"Trying to stab myself."

I let out a huff of laughter. "I can understand it."

Isabelle lifted her head and unfurled one of her clenched fists that I noticed she hadn't opened. On her palm was the ring she had given Leonard, the one that had belonged to her brother.

"It's power is gone," she whispered. "This is all that is left of him."

I softly grabbed the ring from her hand and turned over her left hand and slipped it onto one of her fingers.

"He will always be with you. And with the rest of the team," I told her softly and she grimly nodded.

"What now?" Isabelle whispered and I realized I didn't have a comforting answer to give her.

"I don't know."

***

"What are we doing back here?" Mick grumbled as the remaining members of our team filed off the Waverider.

I was unused to how much shorter I am than everyone else, so I wore a new pair of study heeled fighting boots that I had Gideon fabricate for me, considering none of my old shoes would fit.

I was wearing a pair of ripped jeans and a gray sweatshirt along with my knives and of course my rings. My hair keeps throwing me off because it's a lot lighter than it was before. It comes down to my shoulder in waves, but my heart jumps a little every time I see the black color. If you're wondering, no. Black is not my normal hair color.

For my whole life, or well lives, I have always had brown hair that I had only recently started to bleach and dye. But this time, I came back with midnight black hair that I don't recognize.

I followed Rip with a close distance to Sara, who has gratfully been helping me adjust to my smaller and unfamiliar body. It's no joy being fifteen again.

"Savage has a timeship, courtesy of the Time Masters," Rip explains. "The timeline is unclear, due to our destruction of the Oculus, meaning Savage is lost to history. Which is why I brought you all home."

"Mission's not over, man," Jax protested.

"Jax is right. We've lost Savage before. We'll find him again," Ray said confidently.

"And then what?" We have no way of killing Savage, particularly now that Kendra and Carter are in his possession, assuming that they're still alive, which is highly unlikely," Rip grimaces and I felt my powers flare in anger at the thought of Kendra being killed again at the hands of Savage.

"So that's it?" I demand, Sara snapping her head toward me in worry but I ignore her. "We give up?"

"I'm on my way to the refuge to retrieve our younger selves and return to them to the timeline," Rip replies, refusing to meet my gaze. "It will be as if you never left."

"What, you think that we can just return to our old lives, and then pretend like none of this ever happened?" Sara asked incredulously.

"Mm, that might be a tad difficult," Rip surmises. "So I had to bring you back to May 2016, not January 2016."

"Great, so what you're saying is that for the last five months, my mom probably thinks I'm dead. Thanks a lot man" Jax said angrily and started to turn away.

"Okay, wait, why? Why the change of plans Rip?" Sara asks, probably the calmest one of us here. Or at least the least distressed. I try to use her steadiness as an anchor so I don't go tumbling down the tunnel of grief welling up inside me.

"If you're getting back on that ship," Mick says. "We get back on that ship."

I nearly jerk in surprise. That's probably the most assertive Mick has ever been about anything other than stealing something.

Mick poked Rip and too my utter surprise, Rip glitched in and out. Rage lanced my veins as I reached out with my senses and felt that Rip was a hologram and I was too distracted on keeping a hold of myself to notice that excess amount of electricity that followed us.

"In truth, I never left it," Rip admits as the Waverider started. "I'm sorry for all that I've asked of you, and that it all came to nothing. I wish you all well."

Rip glitched out and the Waverider blasted off out of 2016. There was a roar in my ears and in my heart and if I ever see Rip Hunter again in any of my next lives, I'm going to kill the son of a bitch.

Before I truly erupted, I stalked off in fury away from the legends.

***

I jolted awake at the sound of a car and voices.

"Ship's not going to be here, Gray," a familiar voice complains. "We saw it take off, remember?"

"Yes, and in doing so, it would have left-"

"Quantum signature," Ray finished Stein's sentence. "That's what I've been trying to tell Mick."

"Is that a Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita?" Jax asked and I assume he was speaking about the car I was in. "Where did you get an expensive car like that?"

"Hotwired it from some rich kook with a dozen more cars," I grumbled. "He won't miss it."

I take another swing of the bottle of bourbon I stole from said rich kook and grimaced at the light of the sun.

"You're drunk," Ray sighed as Mick took the bottle from me and drank some.

"Nope," I replied, popping the p.

"She's wasted," Jax replied.

"Also no. Unfortunately for my supernatural ass, I can't get drunk so soon after coming back from the brink of glorious death," I say with loads of sarcasm in my voice and snatch the bottle back from Mick, only for Jax to snatch the bottle from me.

"Alcohol isn't good for kids," Jax said and I glare at him. Then did a super immature thing at him and stuck out my tongue. Maybe I'm a little tipsy. If I want to be.

"Radio beacon," Ray holds up the cylinder device in his hand, ignoring Jax and my childish banter.

"Quantum entangler," Stein replies.

"Boring," Mick grumbles and snatched the bottle of bourbon back from Jax. "When do we get in contact with Hunter?"

Just then, Sara comes racing up, and even in my supor of light drunkenness, I can tell she's upset and pissed.

"Ms. Lance, are you alright?" Stein asks.

"How do we get the Waverider back here?" she demands instead.

Stein and Ray immediately got to work while Jax distractedly admired the car I hotwired.

"You doing alright?" Jax asks me softly.

"Peachy," I reply, and then my heart squeezes hard enough that I can't breathe as the reminder that Leonard would always say that. I fiddle with the ring on my left hand. The one Sara so kindly put on.

Thankfully, Jax didn't push it, but I did notice that he kept the bottle of bourbon as far away as possible from me. I don't know whether to be annoyed at him or grateful.

I'm saved from the decision when Jax points at the sky. "I think it just worked."

I squint my eyes against the light of the sky and see the Waverider blip into existence.

We watch it land and see Rip Hunter walk out of it and toward us. I reach out with my powers to check if he is real this time and to my eternal satisfaction, found that he was.

"I thought I made my intentions perfectly clear." Rip said instead of a greeting.

"And we wish to be equally clear about ours," Stein demanded.

When Rip approached us, Mick shoved him back a little, making me let out a huff of laughter.

"Do you mind?" Rip asked.

"Just checking to see if you're real this time," Mick replies monotone.

"You're not ditching us again," Jax said firmly. "When the mission's over, then we can all go our separate ways."

"And this mission is not over," I say, all humor drained from my tone. Only seriousness remained.

"Yeah, just curious, how much headway you've had tracking Savage without all of us," Ray asked and I sensed a hint of smugness in his tone.

"None," Rip said. "But neither have I got myself into bar fights in 1975 and the Old West, put dwarf star technology into the hands of terrorists, or gotten myself turned into a scary bird monster."

"So it's been dull and boring as well as non-productive," I summarize. "We get your point." I add at the minor glare Rip sent me.

"So get ours," Mick continues. "That ship's not taking off without us. You got that?"

Rip looked all of us in the eye. His team. Jax casually gestures to the Waverider and Rip finally relents. He turns and leads the way, us following behind him, ready to kick Savage's ass.