Archive of Our Own

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Part 1
It's funny, the day you lose someone isn't the worst -at least you've got something to do- it's all the days they stay dead.

-Peter Capaldi, Doctor Who- Heaven Sent
               Lily had thought that time jumping would be like when she and her friends went to an amusement park in college. They had been desperate for a little thrill, so of course all of them agreed to get on one of the more stomach-churning rollercoasters. She had been excited for it until she was actually on the ride and screaming as the world turned upside down and threw her from side to side. When she had gotten off with her friends, they’d all gone to sit down somewhere for ten minutes.               Time jumping felt reminiscent of that, except she wasn’t going upside down and it felt so much faster. She gripped the harness tightly as darkness started to creep into the edges of her vision. Mick Rory had warned her that she was probably going to puke, but it only made her determined not to. Lily swallowed back the bile trying to creep up her throat and shut her eyes tightly.               Finally, there was a boom outside of the ship. Lily kept her eyes shut as she felt her heartbeat pounding in her ears. Jax was feeling perfectly calm, but he was also used to this. Hopefully, she could get to that point soon. This was her first time jump, so she was probably bound for discomfort this time.“Congratulations, Lily,” Sara’s voice rang out suddenly as harnesses were lifted around her. “You just survived your first time jump.”               Lily opened her eyes and regretted it immediately. Two Jaxes were looking back towards her. There were also two Saras spinning around in their seats as two Zaris stretched their arms out. Everything was doubled, even the center console. It made her feel dizzy.“I’m seeing double,” she groaned out while pushing up her harness.“Yeah,” the two Rays nodded as they rose to their feet. He was starting to overlap more though, so she had to be getting over this. “Go easy when you stand up.”Lily gave him a thumbs-up as she rose from the seat and stood on her feet. She walked out towards the console slowly. Everything started to look like one person again. However, the room was starting to tilt to the side with alarming speed. She didn’t realize she was falling until Zari grabbed her by the shoulders and righted her.“Thanks,” she told the other woman, shaking her head. “Sorry. I think I’m okay now.”“Everyone’s had different experiences with side effects,” Jax explained as he walked over to the center console. “I couldn’t feel my whole face once.”“Pretty blew chunks,” Mick contributed, jabbing a thumb towards Nate Heywood. “I did too.”“I fell on the floor,” Ray added. “No one caught me though. Then again, it was the first mission and we didn’t really know each other.”Amaya shrugged. “I was in the ceiling when you jumped out of 1942 and went blind for a few minutes.”“Yeah, that’d freak me out,” Lily muttered.“We can recount all those fun memories later,” Sara said, bringing everyone back together. “Right now, there’s an anachronism to stop. Gideon, what do we need to know about this one?”                Jax pulled the vest out of the fabricator once it was finished being created. He was the last one of them who had to get dressed since there had been a slight hiccup in one of the engines during the jump. Thankfully, it turned out to be nothing major, but he still fixed the problem so it didn’t get any worse. When he got back up, Amaya and Zari had just been leaving the fabrication room in period wear, leaving him to get himself in seventeenth century clothes.“How are you holding up?”He didn’t jump when Sara spoke out. Living with her onboard had gotten him used to her quiet approaches.“I’m fine,” he replied as he put the vest on. “It’s weird without having Grey here.”“Yeah,” Sara entered and leaned against the wall. “I keep looking over and expecting to see him before I remember what happened.”“It’s easier to remember he’s gone when there’s a new psychic link in your head,” Jax replied. “Lily’s like him, but also a lot different. Just a process of accepting that she’s here and one of us now.”“Yeah, it’s still going to take me a little while to get used to her being around,” she nodded. “But there’s something I have to ask you about.”Jax crossed his arms. “Shoot.”“There’s a chance we could encounter the Darhks, Grodd and anyone else we’re facing off against,” Sara continued. “That includes Kuasa.”He had a feeling where she was going with this if Sara was mentioning Martin Stein’s killer.“Does Lily know who killed her father?”“Not exactly,” Jax admitted. “Ray and I told her that it was a water witch we were facing. We didn’t give her a name, and we never told her that Kuasa’s Amaya’s granddaughter.”The captain nodded. “You know you’re likely going to have to tell her eventually.”“I know. Lily’s still grieving. I don’t want to drop that bomb while she’s upset over Grey.”“But you will tell her?”“I will,” Jax promised. “I need better timing, that’s all.”“Fair enough,” Sara sighed. “But do it before she finds out on her own.”“She’s stubborn enough to try if I don’t tell her everything soon.”Sara nodded as she started to head out before stopping. “Keep an eye on each other. I don’t want to lose another teammate.”“Me neither,” Jax agreed. “I let Grey down. I won’t let it happen again to Lily.”                Nate provided the historical commentary that he’d read up on as they entered 16th century Prague. What was supposed to happen was that a protest by Bohemian Protestants would be ignored by the Catholic governors. In response, Prague Castle would be stormed. Three Catholic officials would be thrown out a window, but would survive by landing in a pile of dung. However, the Catholics claimed that the officials had been saved by angels from heaven.“And if this doesn’t happen?” Jax asked.“The Second Defenestration of Prague set off a chain reaction,” Nate explained. “This is a trigger for the Thirty Years War. If the officials don’t get thrown out the window, the Holy Roman Empire could last longer and more violent uprisings could occur between the Catholic and Protestant bodies.“So three people gotta go out the window?” Mick shrugged. “Sounds easy.”“And we have to find the anachronism,” Amaya added.“Gideon’s records showed that it was two Imperial governors and their secretary who went out the window,” Sara said as they moved to the side of a cart passing by. “So they have to be the ones to go out the window. Their pile of crap better be there too.”“Because if it’s not,” Zari clapped her hands together. “Splat.”Lily grimaced. “That’s not a fun image.”“So let’s figure out what’s wrong, aside from the fact that it seems pretty peaceful here,” Sara muttered. “Something’s got to set them off if they’re going to start protesting, but things seem calm.”“Maybe they’re just waiting?” Lily suggested.“It’s never that,” Nate shook his head. “Besides, things were apparently pretty tense before the defenestration. Right now, it’s way too chill.”“Probably the anachronism,” Zari said.Amaya nodded in agreement. “Whatever it is, it could be preventing the protest.”“Then we need to make sure it still happens,” Sara turned around to face them all. “Ray, you and Amaya come with me to the castle so we can make sure the Catholics get tossed. Mick and Zari, try to get the people riled up to protest.”“Ah, the fun job,” Mick grinned. “Can do, boss.”“Good,” Sara turned to Lily, Jax, and Nate. “The rest of you search for the anachronism. Keep an eye on each other.”               The three groups split away from each other for their tasks. Lily followed Nate and Jax, but she couldn’t stop staring around her. She still was amazed that she had time traveled to the past. Last week, the only weird thing about her was that she was an aberration. Now she was half of a superhero searching for something that didn’t belong in the sixteenth century. Life could really change in the blink of an eye.She was so entranced around her that she didn’t notice Nate and Jax has stopped until she bumped into them. They were staring at something with stunned expressions. Through her psychic link, Lily could sense surprise from Jax, even if he had been doing this for a while.“Uh, guys?”“We found the anachronism,” Nate murmured, shaking his head. “This explains a lot.”“Huh?’ Lily frowned and looked in the same direction they were at the group of men gathered around a small brown-skinnned man. “Wait, is that who I think it is?”“Yep,” Jax nodded. “That’s Ghandi.”                It took another hour for them to find out that Ghandi had been there for over a month and managed to get people to like him enough to start listening to him. Nonviolent protests were now being staged against the ruling Catholic bodies. It had thrown a wrench into the plans of getting everyone riled up. Fortunately, they found a way to make the people angry enough, and it involved kidnapped Ghandi and dragging him inside Prague Castle.               With the popular newcomer inside with the Catholic ruling class, Mick and Zari were able to stir up enough trouble. The protest of the Protestants roared to life quickly. From there, it should have gone off without a hitch. But something had to go wrong at the last minute, and that was the meeting of the governors getting moved to another room- one that didn’t have a cushioning pile of fecal matter beneath it.“Guys, they’re getting close to the windows,” Sara called through the comms. “I need aerial backup.”“I’ve got too many people around me,” Zari reported. “I don’t know if I can get through in time.”“I’m heading for the roof,” Amaya said. “I’ll fly down from there.”“Amaya, you’re strong, but you can’t take three men.”“We’ve got it,” Jax volunteered from the corner where he and Lily were watching the uproar before turning to his new partner. “Ready?”“As much as I can be,” she answered with a nod.               They brought their hands together to fuse into Firestorm. Igniting his hands, Jax shot up into the sky over the buildings. Everyone seemed too busy with the protest to notice the burning man flying overhead. Jax flew around the side of the castle, spotting the pile that the officials were supposed to fall into. He started to peer through the windows for any sign of them.“Jax!”               Jax spun around to see Amaya hovering in the air above another window. A glowing aura of some kind of bird surrounded her. Lily was somewhat surprised and made a noise in his head. That in turn startled Jax before he remembered that Lily was the other half now, not her father.“They’re over here,” Amaya called out. “Get ready.”“We can catch them, right?” Lily asked inside his head. “They won’t catch fire?”“We’ll be fine,” Jax told her as the windows were thrown open.               The first official went out not five seconds later. Amaya dove to catch him before carrying him down to the pile. Another was pushed out with a scream. Jax flew forward and caught him by the arm. His eyes widened in panic as he took in the burning man and he began to try and writhe away.“Don’t be afraid,” Jax declared as loud as he could. “I’m saving your life.”“Jax!” Lily shouted. “The third!”               He whipped his head up to see the third man falling from the window. Quickly, he flew up to catch this one by his hand. Lily gave a sigh of relief in his head while Jax lowered the men towards the dung pile. They only had about a foot of a drop onto the pile, but he let them go so they did fall just a bit.“We better split somewhere without an angry mob nearby,” Jax suggested as the officials ran off.
“Good plan.”
               They flew back to where they had first merged and separated there. This split went a lot smoother than the first one at STAR Labs. Lily was able to keep on her feet this time as she pulled apart from him. She was grinning excitedly when she turned towards him.“That was awesome,” she gushed.Jax shrugged. “Couldn’t have done it without you. History’s back on track, and no one got hurt.”“Yeah, we just scared some Catholics,” Lily nodded before pausing. “Wait a minute.”“What is it?”“Didn’t Nate say the Catholic officials claim they were saved by angels?”               He remembered the officials they’d caught and how they’d looked at him. Getting snagged by a burning person in midair did sound a little biblical. Amaya could have surely passed as an angel too with the aura that had glowed around her. Add in confusion and panic with getting thrown out of a window, and the claim was understandable.“Huh,” Jax nodded. “Well, now we know why. Maybe I can add ‘angel’ on my resume underneath Legend and ‘god of war’.”“God of war?” Lily wrinkled her nose. “What?”“I told some Romans I was Ares once.”“Mars is the Roman war god though.”“Your dad said the same,” Jax smiled briefly at the memory. “We better get back to the others and then take Ghandi home.”“Sounds easy,” Lily remarked. “Is this how smoothly things normally go? Hop around time, find the anachronism, drop it back in the proper time, and then onto the next one?”“Definitely not,” Jax shook his head. “We’re lucky things are easy for once. Usually there’s complications, and sometimes the bad guys show up. But we manage to pull through.”“Huh,” she nodded. “Just one thing though.”“What?”“Do you ever ask for autographs from any of the people you meet throughout time?”Jax laughed out loud. “I don’t, but Nate probably does.”                Once Ghandi had been dropped back off where he belonged, Sara piloted the Waverider back to the temporal zone. Everyone went their separate ways once they were clear. Lily remained in the bridge though, her duffel bag still beside her seat. She looked like a new kid on the first day of school, unsure of where to go.“You did pretty good for your first mission,” the assassin told the scientist. “You and Jax team up pretty nicely.”“Thanks,” she smiled hesitantly. “So what happens now?”Sara shrugged. “Rest, recharge, relax. You’re free to do whatever in your downtime. I can show you your room or give you a tour of the ship.”“Dad showed me around last time. I just need somewhere to put my things.”“No problem,” Sara lead her out of the bridge. “I’ll show you there. I don’t know how much alone time you’ll get before Ray intercepts you for some icebreaker games. I know he’s probably cooking up something.”                After he had gotten out of the period clothes and taken a shower (the 1660’s had been muddier and dirtier than he’d thought), Jax swung by to check on Lily. She was in her father’s old room now that Grey was gone. He had cleaned it out with Ray after the funeral in case he’d found another half of Firestorm. The new half was now on board and settling in slowly, unpacking her duffel bag.Jax rapped on the side of the door as Lily gazed at a frame in her hands. “Hey.”Lily looked up and set the frame onto a shelf. “Hey, Jax.”“Settling in okay?” he asked, taking a step inside the room.“Yeah,” she nodded. “Don’t worry, I’m doing fine.”“Good. Just checking in to see if you needed help or anything.”“Thanks, but yeah, I’m doing fine.”               It wasn’t a lie. He could pick up that she was feeling normal. There was still a large part of lingering grief over her father, but that could only be expected. Losing a parent wasn’t something you moved past quickly, especially someone as loved as Grey had been.“If you need anything, just come find someone,” Jax told her. “Or ask Gideon.”Lily smiled. “I will. Thanks.”               Jax nodded, his eyes drifting over the photo frame Lily had just set down. It held a picture of her in graduation robes, standing between Martin and Clarissa. All the Steins were beaming happily in the photograph, but it only reminded Jax of the look on her father’s face when he’s died. He swallowed a little and patted the side of the door frame.“See you around,” he told her as he walked offHe only made it around the corner before he ran into Amaya.“Sorry,” Jax apologized as he tried to move around her to walk off.“Jax, wait,” Amaya grabbed his arm. “I have to ask you something.”He stopped and looked back to her.“Does Lily know about Kuasa?” she inquired.“No,” Jax shook his head. “I didn’t tell her who exactly killed Grey, or how she’s connected to you.”“Thank you.”“But I can’t keep it quiet forever,” he warned. “Sooner or later, she’ll turn up again and realize Firestorm is back at it. And Lily’s brilliant, she’ll work things out sooner or later.”“I know,” Amaya sighed. “I want her to know, but I don’t want her to hate me because of what one of my granddaughters did.”“She’s not going to hate you for that,” Jax replied.”“I hope you’re right about that.” “So how is this possible?” Zari interrupted the twenty questions they were playing. “Sorry, I’m just really curious. There’s no way you could have inherited the Firestorm matrix or genes or whatever. Was there something you came into contact with when the particle accelerator exploded?”“Oooo, good question,” Ray grinned.               Lily paused and thought it over. Sara had been right about Ray thinking of icebreaker games. However, he’d waited a little while before coming and asking her to take part in them. Aside from the two of them, Nate and Zari had been the only other Legends to join in. Everyone else had taken a hard pass on it, although Zari said she was doing it so Lily wouldn’t be surrounded by so much ‘dudebro’.“Well, Jax wasn’t near anything that resembled the matrix, just dark matter,” Lily shrugged. “But I was in Central City when the accelerator blew. A few months before, I’d given my dad some assistance with the matrix and figuring out how to beef up the containment structure. I must have gotten exposed that way. When the accelerator disaster went down, the dark matter might have done something to me on a cellular level.”“And it must have remained dormant until Jax merged with you for the first time!” Ray finished. “Sorry, it just clicked for me.”“Wow,” Zari shook her head. “Thing are weird in your time.”“Says the girl from the future,” Nate muttered.The room suddenly rocked violently. Lily was thrown to the side against Zari before she righted herself.“What the hell was that?” she groaned.“A severe time aberration has developed, Dr. Stein,” Gideon chimed from above.“What, like Lily?” Nate blurted out.Lily pursed her lips and looked at the ceiling.“Whatever it is, we better get to the others,” Zari rose to her feet. “Then we can figure out what’s happened.”               By the time the four reached the bridge, everyone else was already waiting for them. Sara greeted them and asked Gideon to explain to them what had caused the aberration. Within seconds, the screens around the console displayed covers of different newspapers. Despite the different headlines, it was all about the same thing.“Edison Astounds at World’s Fair,” Ray read aloud. “It’s from 1893.”“That’s not right,” Nate shook his head, looking at another paper. “It says here that the General Electric Company powered the exhibitions, but they never won that bid in our timeline.”“Westinghouse did,” Lily finished. “Nikola Tesla was a key factor in that when he proposed an AC system. He even put on a demonstration of it at the fair. Winning that bid was huge for him and Westinghouse. It led them to light up the world, and took Tesla to bigger and bigger heights.”Nate gaped at her. “How do you know all that?”“Dad was a huge fan of his, and it rubbed off on me,” she shrugged.Ray leaned forward. “Gideon, what happens if Tesla doesn’t get this deal?”“Mr. Tesla leaves Westinghouse in 1895 and will die two years afterwards,” Gideon answered as another set of clippings appeared.“No!” Lily and Ray shouted together.Sara raised her eyebrows. “That’s a bad thing then?”“He’s not supposed to die until 1943,” Nate cut in. “Somehow, something went really wrong. It says here the Westinghouse did win the bid, but General Electric swooped in last minute with a new method to provide electricity deemed even more efficient.”“An anachronism.”“No, this is an aberration,” Nate rolled his eyes. “No anachronism.”“Wrong,” Mick shook his head. “Pretty, you said there was a new nerd process for power that was causing the aberration. But where did it come from?”Jax snapped his fingers. “He’s right. The anachronism affected the timeline so much that it created an aberration.”“Then let’s go stop it,” Sara announced as she slid into the captain’s chair. “Gideon?”“Charting a course for Chicago, Illinois 1893.” “No one here really looks out of the ordinary,” Lily remarked while wandering through the fairgrounds with Nate and Zari.“Anachronisms aren’t always people like Ghandi was,” Nate told her. “They can be objects too. Aberrations and anachronisms can be the same things, but they just have different effects.”               Lily nodded sternly, but kept her mouth shut. He’d been bringing up aberrations a lot lately, at least twice today. She wondered if that was just how he saw her or if he normally didn’t care what came out of his mouth. If he kept on doing it, she didn’t know if she’d be able to keep her mouth shut.Zari was eying Nate warily though as she walked up beside Lily. “Everything seems pretty normal. Whatever Edison found as an alternative power source, it’s gotta be low maintenance. That man we talked to back there said Westinghouse nearly had everything set up before Edison and General Electric came in and took over.”“The question is where,” Nate huffed.“Maybe we should split up to cover more ground?” Lily suggested.“Not a bad idea,” the historian mused. “Let’s do it. If any of you find anything, say something.”               The three of them took off in different directions. Lily wove in and out of the different stalls and workers who rushing to get everything prepared. She wished she knew what the anachronism was exactly. Besides, how displaced was the object anyways. If it was only a few years, then she would have no clue.               As she passed by the booth where Edison was now going to be holding a demonstration instead of Tesla, there was a strange feeling in the air. Lily looked around quick to make sure that no one was around to watch her before hopping over the counter and swinging her legs over to the other side. Scurrying through the curtain, she found herself behind the booths. On the top of a small box, there was simplistic circuit was connected to a futuristic spherical frame that contained a glowing blue orb.Lily tapped her comm. “I think I found the anachronism.”“Great,” Sara replied. “What is it?”“I’m not actually sure,” Lily bent down at eye level to it. “It seems to be some kind of power source, but not one from our time.”“Let me get a look at it,” Zari chimed in. “Where are you, Lily?”“Edison’s booth. I’m behind it.”“Stay put, I’ll be there in a second.”               Lily straightened up and turned away from the anachronism, only to find that she wasn’t alone anymore. A dark-skinned woman in period dress was standing a few yards away from her. She stared right at Lily with a calculating expression. Then her eyes drifted down to the anachronism. Lily stepped to the side so her skirts obscured it.“I got a little lost,” she lied with an innocent smile. “Sorry, but you wouldn’t happen to know where the way out of here is?“Step away from the box,” the woman ordered.“What box?” Lily shrugged, although she was beginning to get a bad feeling about it.“Leave, girl,” the woman warned. “I won’t hesitate to remove you if you decide to be stubborn.”“Oh really?”               That probably hadn’t been the smartest thing she could have said to her. The woman smiled wickedly as she raised one hand. Lily’s eyes widened as her flesh became fluid and translucent. It was now water, and unless there was another one roaming about, this had to be the water witch who had murdered her father.“You,” she whispered.“I guess we’ll be doing things the hard way,” the woman taunted as she sent a stream of water shooting towards her.               Lily tried to step back, but the water looped around her legs and yanked her into the air. She felt nothing for a minute before she hit the ground hard. The woman approached her and pulled her back up to her feet. A current of air slammed into both of them and sent Lily flying away from her. Zari descended gracefully to the ground before rushing over to her. She extended a hand to her, which Lily took gratefully.“You okay?’ Zari asked as she pulled her up.“I think so.”The water witch was now rising to her feet again. Zari took an offense stance between her and Lily. “Grab the power source. I’ll keep her busy.”               Lily nodded quickly and ran over to the circuits. She scrambled around for something to pull the power source from it. Eventually, she came across some tools and used them to pry the orb from the rest of the connecting wires. Once it was, Lily grabbed it and ran back to Zari.“Hold on tight,” Zari ordered as she looped an arm around her waist.               She pressed a hand to her totem as Lily slung her arm over her shoulder. Wind swirled around them before they rocketed up into the sky. It was nothing like when she was Firestorm with Jax. She had to cling to her teammate so she didn’t go fall down to the ground below as they flew away from their attacker. As soon as they were both back on the ground next to Nate, Lily let go of her and sunk to her knees in the ground.“Thanks for the save,” she gasped out.“No problem,” Zari nodded to the orb. “Is that what you found?”Lily passed it over to her. “Yeah, do you recognize it?”“No, but it looks like an Argus prototype I found when I hacked into their systems, or at least a part of it.”“A part?” Nate frowned. “So there’s more?”Zari nodded. “The plans showed three of the orbs connected together. Someone must have broken apart. You can see the marks on the containment ring.”“We could get it back to the Waverider and ask Gideon about it,” Lily suggested. “And let the others know the water witch who killed Dad is here.”“Kuasa’s here?” Nate groaned. “That’s gotta mean the Darhks are around too. Or Grodd.”“Grodd?”“Telepathic gorilla. Just hope you never meet him.”              Jax watched as the fireball flew from Eleanor Darhk’s palm towards Nikola Tesla. The man was staring in a mixture of horror and wonder. Shaking his head, Jax took off running despite the protests his knee gave. He tackled Tesla down, the heat of the fireball passing over his back. Quickly, he pulled the inventor back by a post to avoid the battle raging in the center of the fairgrounds.“I thought you said your friends could handle this!” Tesla shouted.“We didn’t see the superpowered energy cores from the future being used by our enemies,” Jax retorted before pressing a finger to his comm. “Zari, where are you?”“We’re coming,” the hacktivist replied quickly. “I’m getting us there as fast as we can. We have two of the cores on board. You and the others have to get the third core so we don’t blow up Chicago.”“You better hurry then,” Jax watched another energy blast narrowly miss Ray. “The thing’s getting more powerful. We have to get it stabilized.”Tesla’s eyes widened and he pointed straight ahead. Jax turned, feeling his blood run cold as he took in the trail of water speeding towards him.“Jax?” Lily’s voice filled his ear. “What’s happening?”“You gotta come down here now. I need help.”The water rose up to form the shape of a woman. Kuasa stood before them fully a moment later. She regarded Tesla briefly before turning to Jax. His fists clenched as he remembered the last time he’d faced her. This time, no one would be dying.“Hand over the inventor,” Kuasa demanded.“Never,” Jax snarled.“You’re awfully brave for someone who’s lost their powers,” she laughed. “I killed the old man. It’s just you now. You don’t stand a chance.”               At that moment, the Waverider materialized above them. The cargo doors opened above as a silver body plummeted to the ground and a figure descended straight towards him. Jax stepped to the side as Zari landed with Lily hanging onto her. Once they were on the ground, Lily stepped away from Zari to stand beside Jax.“What’d you say about standing a chance?” he asked Kuasa, extending his hand to Lily.She grabbed his hand and they merged to become Firestorm. Tesla gasped in bewilderment. Kuasa’s eyes widened.“I killed the other half…” she murmured.Anger flared up in Jax automatically. It wasn’t just his own that he felt. Lily’s fury blared like an alarm and mingled with a strong wave of grief. Jax glared at Kuasa and rose into the air. Now was the time to avenge Grey.“There was another,” Zari smirked as Jax let his hands catch fire. “I’ll get Tesla to safety.”“Okay, so I’ve never been in a fight before,” Lily said inside his head. “What do I do?”“I just need eyes and ears,” Jax replied as Kuasa started to summon massive streams of water from the nearby basin. “I’ve got the rest.” “You know, it’s not going to disappear if you look away from it,” Zari teased Lily as she entered the kitchen.“Are you kidding me?” Lily scoffed as she looked up from the map of the 1983 Chicago World’s Fair. “Nikola Tesla actually signed this for me. I watched him write his name! He even shook my hand! And Ray’s!”“He looked like he was going to faint,” Zari teased, leaning against the counter where Lily was sitting on. “But I didn’t think I’d see anyone geek out about something more than him until I met you.”Lily reddened a little. “I just never thought I’d get to met him. Maybe I’ll get lucky and met Rosalind Franklin one day.”“Well, we haven’t met her yet, so you have a chance,” Zari told her.The replicator dinged and opened up to reveal a bowl of popcorn.“Didn’t know the boys were doing movie night again,” Zari remarked as the scientist hopped off of the counter to retrieve it.“They’re not,” Lily shook her head. “I’m about to watch The Walking Dead.”“That old show?” Zari snickered.“Maybe it’s old for you, but it’s current for me. Have you ever seen it?”Zari shook her head. “It got banned right along with anything else interesting from your era.”“If it was for the gore and violence, then I could understand that,” Lily muttered. “If you want to watch it, I’m happy to start at the beginning with you.”It sounded like a tempting offer to Zari. Plus, she’d get to know Lily better.“I’ll even split my popcorn,” she offered.Done deal.“Why not?” Zari told her. “Although you’re one of the last people I’d peg to like zombie stuff.”“Well, Dad’s the one who hates zombies,” Lily chuckled before pausing. “Or he had hated them. Me, I’m fine. They don’t bother me.”“I’ve not had enough exposure to zombie media to take a side,” Zari replied as they left the kitchen. “But I am willing to find out.”“Then I will be your guide to the zombie apocalypse life,” Lily grinned, then winced. “Ouch.”               She nearly dropped the bowl of popcorn as she jerked her hands back. Zari caught the bowl before it could hit the ground. Lily was grimacing and turning her palms down before rolling her sleeves over her hands. When she took the popcorn back from her, Zari noticed that Lily’s knuckles peeking out of the sleeves were reddened.“Are you okay?”“I think so,” Lily nodded. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s just go watch the show.”                Jax didn’t know how long he had been in the gym for. After they’d left 1893, he’d changed and come straight here. Seeing Kuasa again had brought up a lot of emotions, none of which were particularly positive ones. In order to blow off some steam, he’d taken to whaling on the punching bag. His hands stung a little, but Jax ignored them and payed more attention to get out the anger and grief of letting Grey’s killer escape with her time travel cube.“Jax!”The call barely registered for him. He just continued to punch.“Jax, stop!”               Someone yanked him away from the punching bag. His arms were still carrying out the motions, only they now fell through the air instead of connecting with something. He slowed them down as he looked over his shoulder to see who’d pulled him away. Sara was glaring at him as she released her hold on him.“How long have you been down here for?” she demanded, her arms folded over her chest.Jax shrugged as Gideon answered for him. “Mr. Jackson has been here for nearly two hours.”“It’s been two hours?” Jax frowned. It had felt only half that long. He’d just told himself to keep pushing instead of taking a break.Sara sighed. “Then that’s a sign that you need to stop. Come one.”               Jax slumped his shoulders and began to unwrap his hands. He’d been in such a rush to get his anger out that he hadn’t done it properly. The wraps were speckled with blood the more he unwound them. As they fell away from his hands, it was then that he saw the rawness he’d inflicted on them and that the pain began to truly click in.“Gideon told me Lily was getting ice for her knuckles half an hour ago,” Sara explained as she lead him towards the med bay. “Wanna talk about it?”“Thought we were the kind of team that buried our feelings when someone died,” Jax muttered bitterly. “That’s what we did with Snart so we could press on.”Sara pursed her lips momentarily before sighing. “We should have handled that better. But right now, you’re deflecting. What’s got you beating the crap out of the punching bag without caring if you hurt yourself or not?”Jax glanced over at the chair where Grey’s body had been in as they entered the med bay. “Kuasa got away from us.”“Darhk and all his allies escaped,” Sara replied. “We couldn’t stop them from escaping when they have those cubes. But we fixed the anachronism and the aberration. The World Fair went off without a hitch. Tesla’s going to get to have his crows or whatever Ray was rambling about before he dies. Even though yes, a killer’s going to be prowling about during it, you didn’t become one.”“But I could have ended it,” Jax muttered. “We were both so angry. We could avenged Grey right there.”Sara shook her head. “You’re too good to do that, Jax. Lily too. If you had killed Kuasa, you would have done to Amaya what her granddaughter did to both of you.”Jax felt tears start to prick at his eyes, but ignored them. “He shouldn’t have died, Sara. He deserved better than that. I keep seeing it happen over and over in my dreams. I want to change it, but I can’t.”“I know,” Sara gently wrapped her hand around his. “When we do defeat Mallus and the Darhks and Kuasa and Grodd and anyone else they’ve recruited, we’ll doing it for Martin. But I won’t let you fall into the darkness. Got it?”He nodded. “Damn right.”“Now, let Gideon check out your hands,” Sara ordered. “Then get some sleep. If you still have the nightmares, see if Gideon can do something to divert the dream.”                Something was wrong. Lily couldn’t get air into her lungs. All of her senses were beginning to feel cloudy. It was like she was becoming disconnected from the world. Slowly, she sunk to her knees, gagging.She didn’t want to die!               Finally, she felt her lungs free up and sucked in a greedy breath of air. But there was still a feeling of wrongness. It was as if there was a pit of emptiness in her, like some part of her had died. Turning around, Lily found herself looking upon her father lying on the ground. He wasn’t breathing and a puddle of water encircled his head. Someone was standing beside him, but she didn’t have the courage to look up.“GREY!” Lily found herself screaming. “GREY!”               She flinched sharply before hitting something hard. The place she’d been in now had now become her room on the Waverider, or at least the floor of it. She had only been dreaming. It had felt so, so real though.               The scientist crawled back up onto her bed and curled up in a ball. For a few minutes, she focused on trying to calm down. She could feel Jax’s dying panic from down the hall. He must have been dreaming about her father’s death, and the psychic link had acted in a way so she experienced it too.“Just a dream,” she whispered aloud as an attempt to reassure herself. “It was just a dream.”                Jax wound the screw tighter. He’d tried to go asleep with happy thoughts, but the nightmare of Grey dying had reared its head again. Every time it had happened, he’d tried to tell his dream self to turn around and stop Kuasa. It never worked though, and he stared at Grey’s body before waking up.               He decided to come down to the engine room to clear his head. This had started to become a common practice for him. As a result, the Waverider was in better and better shape. All of the big impending problems had been taken care of, so now he looked at the day to day stuff. It let Jax focus on something else that wasn’t his nightmares.               Sooner or later, he’d probably be able to stop coming down here. After Snart had died, he’d had nightmares for a week of Grey being the one who stayed behind. Those had cleared up with time. This was going to take a lot longer, since it was like he’d lost a family member this time. But one day, it would stop haunting his dreams.               After another hour, he started to feel more exhausted. Jax packed everything up so it was where it belonged and left the engine room. As he wandered down the halls, he thought he saw Mick slip into the library, but he wasn’t certain. With a shake of his head, Jax stumbled towards his own room and flopped on the mattress.“Hey, Gideon?” he murmured.“Yes, Mr. Jackson.”“Can you redirect dreams?”“Yes. Are you taking the Captain’s advice from earlier?”“Yeah.”“Then I will. Sweet dreams.” Ray swallowed a bit of his eggs. “How could you have done that?”“Because I didn’t think I was ready!” Lily protested. “Besides, it was Harrison Wells! What if I’d let him down?”“You got offered a job at STAR Labs!” Ray couldn’t believe the information he’d just learned. “How did you not share that in the ice breaker?”“Maybe because we got interrupted by the aberration? Besides, I wouldn’t have had it very long if I’d accepted. The particle accelerator went kaboom seven months later.”“Okay, true, but then you might have ended up on Team Flash.”She nodded. “Yeah, but I like working with you guys.”“Thanks,” Ray grinned at her. “Man, if I’d known you when I first came to Star City, I would have offered you a job at Palmer Tech.”“Maybe in another world, you did,” Lily teased.“Maybe a lot of different things happened in that other world,” Ray shrugged.Jax groaned. “Can you two not flirt over breakfast?”Ray blushed. “We’re not flirting.”“It’s just a conversation,” Lily added, although Ray noticed she was studying her coffee more intently.Jax rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” “No way,” Jax shook his head. “Not without me.”“I’ve been without you before in Chicago.”“Yeah, and then Kuasa could have killed you if Zari hadn’t stepped in.”Lily rolled her eyes. “It’s not like I’m doing this alone. Ray and Amaya will be with me, and we’re only doing recon.”Jax sighed. “Let me come with you guys as a back-up. If something bad happens, then you’re basically helpless, Lily. It’s not like you can fight or anything.”“Four is way too many, Sara said it herself,” Lily snapped. “And I can do things without you, Jax! I don’t need a babysitter!”She stormed off down the hall towards the fabrication room. Jax threw up his hands and huffed.Sometimes, Lily was even more stubborn than her father.                As the Waverider came further into sight, Ray felt like his steps were growing heavier. Beside him, Amaya was just as miserable. It had only been meant to be a simple scouting mission in the twenty-third century. Lily and Jax had gotten into an argument beforehand about Lily going into a mission without him, so she was more than happy to volunteer to join them. But now things had taken a turn for the ugly and the mission had a new objective.“I can explain what happened,” he told Amaya as they stepped on board.She shook her head. “Don’t be putting all that blame on yourself, Ray. She knew the risk.”Ray knew she was right, but it still didn’t take away the sinking feeling. It had just been this morning they’d been laughing together over breakfast. Now he’d had to leave her behind after he’d promised Jax he’d look after her.“We have to get her back,” he said as they walked down the halls.               When they entered the bridge, the rest of the team was present and waiting. Jax was drumming his fingers on the console. Zari’s arms were folded over her chest. Sara was expressionless, but Ray still swallowed nervously.“What happened?” she demanded tightly.“We found out who the Kasnians were holding,” Ray started. “They were talking with Darhk about handing her over to him. We didn’t hear the soldier come up from behind us until Amaya reacted. After that, it was a mad dash to get out.”“We made it through the fence because it was still powered down,” Amaya continued. “Both of us were ahead of Lily. Some of the guards caught up to her and grabbed her before she could get to the fence.”“And you couldn’t get back in because the fence powered back up again,” Zari closed her eyes. “Damn it.”“We have to get her back,” Jax declared. “I’m not losing anyone else on this team.”“Kid’s right,” Mick nodded in agreement. “He needs Junior anyways.”“We’re not leaving Lily,” Sara promised. “But we also need to stop Darhk. Ray, Amaya, who is it that the Kasnians have?”“Anastasia Romanov.”                Cold was the first thing that Lily sensed when she came to. It took a few seconds for her to realize that she was lying on a cold stone floor. Groaning, she pushed herself upright with a wince. The Kasnian soldiers had hit her over the head when she’d gotten uncooperative during interrogation.               The room she was in only contained a metal bunk bed and a bucket. A girl was peeked out at her from the top bunk. Her hair was matted and dirty from where it cascaded out of her hat. The coat she wore was heavy, but looked two sizes too big. Lily felt like she’d seen her before, but she wasn’t sure.“Are you okay?” the girl, who couldn’t have been more than a teenager, asked softly. “The guards brought you in and you weren’t waking up.”“My head just hurts,” Lily murmured, rising to her feet. “Where am I?”“Some kind of prison,” the teenager told her. Lily could detect a Russian accent in her speech. “Who are you?”“Lily. And you are?”“Anastasia. Why are you here?”“I got captured by the soldiers,” she murmured, then remembered the conversation she’d heard before she and Ray and Amaya had fled. “Wait, Anastasia Romanov? Like Nicholas II and his family?”Anastasia perked up. “You’ve heard of me?”“Yeah,” Lily nodded, remembering the stories a friend had told her in undergrad. “Oh, wow. Um, so how did you get here?”The youngest Grand Duchess suddenly looked very frightened. “I…have no idea.” “I should have gone with her,” Jax murmured.Ray shook his head. “It’s not your fault. I should have looked after her while we were out there. I let both of you down.”“Yeah, you did,” Jax said bitterly. “But now we have to figure out how to get her back alive.”“It’s times like these that make me miss Snart,” Ray sighed as he stared at the diagrams of the prison they had finally traced Lily to. They had no idea where she’d been taken, but there were a few options that had been likely. Two days had been wasted breaking into twenty-third century Kasnian prisons, each with a different security system than the last.“With him, he’d have cut the time spent breaking into these places down by half,” Jax sighed as he projected a three-dimensional model of the prison where Lily was being held. “At least Mick knows a few ins and outs, and we’ve got the Koshmar records to draw off of, even if they are from three centuries ago.”               Ray nodded as he started up another simulation. The model turned scarlet red, signaling that there had been a failure. Jax’s heart sunk as he slammed a hand on the console. Not only did they have to get Lily out, but they also had to find Anastasia Romanov. She had to be returned to history to keep things intact. The legend was that she had vanished from her family’s execution, and the absence of her body somehow lead to a series of coups being started that eventually caused Russia to split apart into two countries. To prevent that from happening, it meant they would have to sentence a teenager to death.Regulating the timeline could really make your moral conscience suffer at times.“Do you know if she’s okay?” Ray asked as they reset new factors into the simulation.“She’s alive,” Jax confirmed. “But she’s been better. I’ve felt cold and scared, but it’s been a faint feeling. Yesterday, my wrist hurt like hell, and I still feel it today. But Lily hasn’t lost hope yet. I want to get her back before she does.”“We will,” Ray promised. “We’re not losing any more Steins. Not after Marty.”The doors opened to let Zari in. Jax offered her a weak smile. “Anything new?”“Nope,” Zari shook her head. “Thought I’d come here and help out.”“Have you ever broken out of prison?” Jax asked.“Nope, just been on the run,” Zari cracked her knuckles. “But I am a hacker. Buildings are just like computers. You need to the easiest way in that’s also the least obvious. May I?”Jax and Ray stepped aside as Zari studied the simulation before reprogramming in new components. After two attempts, the hologram turned green. As soon as it did, Jax started to smile for the first time in days. 
“GREY! GREY!”
               Lily gasped as she woke up from the nightmare. Something was scratching on her arm, almost like it was cutting into her skin. Climbing out of the bed and moving over the window, she pulled back her sleeve. In the moonlight, she could see red words appearing on the skin of her arm. As disturbing as it was, she couldn’t look away from it.
We’re coming
               It was then that she realized her connection to Jax was getting stronger. All week, it had been distant and faint, but she’d still sensed exhaustion. It was growing now with determination. That had to mean that the Legends had finally tracked her down.Minding her broken wrist, Lily hurried over to shake Anastasia awake with her good hand. “Wake up!”The Grand Duchess’s eyes flew open, darting around with panic. Lily knew she had her own night terrors that she was experiencing. After all, Anastasia told her she’d just seen her father shot before she’d wound up here. At least tonight she hadn’t been screaming for them. Lily didn’t think she’d ever be able to forget such a cry.“What’s happening?” Anastasia muttered sleepily.“My friends are coming,” Lily whispered. “You need to get up.”Anastasia rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Are you sure?”Down the hall, a whoosh could be heard far off that could only have come from a heat gun, followed by a shout abruptly cut off.Lily nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure.”               Another minute passed before Mick, then Nate appeared in front of the cell. Both were dressed in guard’s clothing. Lily watched as they worked to get the cell door open. Once it was, the Legends stepped inside.“It’s about time,” Lily sighed in relief. “Where’s Jax?”“With Sara and Haircut,” Mick replied. “Ready to run out of here, Junior?”“You have no idea,” she said before looking at Anastasia. “But she’s coming with us.”“We came here for you,” Nate protested. “We can’t take any other-”“This is Anastasia Romanov.”“Oh,” Nate looked to the teenager. “Uh, Grand Duchess, just stick with us and you’ll be okay.”Anastasia bobbed her head quickly. “Do we leave now?”“Don’t plan on staying here myself,” Mick declared. “Keep up and follow me out.”                Jax fired the stunning rifle he’d taken from the armory on the Waverider at the Kasnian soldiers. He was perched behind a few crates next to the truck that they were all planning to drive off in. With every second, his connection with Lily grew stronger and stronger. Nate had already called in to tell them that they had both Lily and Anastasia Romanov and they were heading towards them.“Guys, you gotta hurry,” he shouted into his comm as Amaya and Zari used their totems to cast soldiers away from them. “I don’t want to run out of charge.”               As soon as he said this, the door to one of the buildings in the distance opened up. Sara, who was closest to them and had just knocked down another soldier, ran over towards it. Nate was the first to come running out, followed by Mick. Lily hurried right behind him with her arm clutched close to her chest. Finally, another girl stumbled out at last to follow them. That one had to be Anastasia.“Hurry!” Jax shouted, running from around the crates.Lily’s face lit up as she kept on running. “Jax!”He raced towards her, ready to form Firestorm to provide some extra cover in the escape. She started running as well, Mick providing cover for her as she went. Jax started to hold his hand out as he got closer. One touch and they’d be able to be back to their burning glory.               A shot suddenly rang out, loud and sharp. Anastasia dropped to the ground suddenly. Jax slowed down at the sight, and so did Lily. She turned around and screamed as soon as she saw the Grand Duchess lying in the mud. Nate dodged in front of her, deflecting bullets that would have killed her otherwise. Jax snapped back into action and ran over to Lily.“No!” Lily wailed as Sara stopped to pick up the teenager’s body. “No! No!”Jax skidded in front of her and held out his hand. “We gotta go, Lily.”               She stuck out her hand and grasped his. Once they’d merged, Jax nearly dropped to his knees with the anguish that filled him. Lily was silent inside his head, but he could tell that she was close to screaming. Raising his hand, he sent a wall of fire blazing out at the soldiers who were running towards him.“Jax, come on!” Sara shouted.               Jax turned to see the truck beginning to leave. He flew straight into the back with the rest of the team and separated from Lily. She was on her feet for a moment before sinking to the truck’s bed. Amaya and Sara moved over to her while Jax stared at the body that was lying beside Nate. Anastasia Romanov, the youngest of Nicholas II’s daughters, laid still with a hole in her head.“She didn’t make it,” Jax uttered. It was hitting him now as to how young the girl was.Nate nodded solemnly. “Her destiny was to die, Jax. If she lived, Russia would be thrown into chaos.”“It’s still not right,” Jax shook his head. “Nate, she’s a kid. I don’t care what her family was responsible for. She was just a kid. It’s not fair.”“No,” Nate agreed. “It’s isn’t.” Lily opened her eyes. It was almost a relief to see the bright lights of the Waverider’s med bay rather than the cold Kasnian prison cell.“She lives.”               Her eyes lowered to see Jax sitting in a chair next to her. She started to smile at him, happy to see him again. Her wrist was no longer feeling like someone had crushed it. Glancing down at it, she saw a cuff with blue tubes trailing out of it.“How long have I been asleep?” she asked Jax.“About a day,” he told her. “You were a mess when you came in here. A few fractures around your wrist, dehydration, more cuts and bruises than Sara usually has. It’s no wonder you slept for so long.”“Whoa,” Lily knew she’d been hurt, but she hadn’t realized it had been that much. “Where’s Anastasia?”Jax didn’t answer.“Jax?”“Back in 1918,” Jax finally answered. “We brought her body back after the execution. Claimed she’d been shot trying to escape.”“Her body…” Lily trailed off as she remembered what had happened in the escape. She’d passed out soon after she had unmerged with Jax. “She didn’t make it.”“When we got back, we brought her to Gideon,” Jax explained. “It was too late though. I’m sorry, Lily.”“She just wanted to go home. That’s what she told me.”               Lily didn’t want to cry. She was sick of crying over people, but she couldn’t stop herself. Jax stood up and leaned forward to hug her. Lily gripped him tightly for a few minutes.“I’m sorry I fought with you,” she apologized. “You were right.”“Yeah, I should have laid off you a little though,” he admitted. “We were both right and wrong, just about different things.”“Sure,” Lily nodded. “But if I’d let you come, you wouldn’t have had to save me. Anastasia would have had more of us watching out for her and would have made it out alive.”“She was going to die if we took her back to 1918 alive,” Jax told her. “We might be heroes, but we don’t always win. It’s a loss for all of us. It’s also a win though because we got you back alive, Lily.”Lily smiled a little at that. “I guess you missed me?”“I did,” Zari announced as she entered the room with the rest of the Legends trailing behind her. “I’ve still got to kick your butt at Mario Kart.”“And we need someone around here that gets Ray’s science gibberish,” Amaya added.“It’s not gibberish,” Ray shrugged. “We just…speak the same language.”“Seriously though,” Sara smiled. “We’re glad you’re back, Lily. No Legend gets left behind.”Legend. It finally hit Lily that she was one of them now. It probably wouldn’t make sense on a resume or business card, but it still filled her with pride.“Thanks, Sara,” she said.                Sleep and Mick Rory were not always the best of friends. Sometimes the past was too loud for him to be able to fall into any kind of slumber. When that did happen, he ended up wandering the ship. Sometimes, he would read in the kitchen. There was something soothing about the blue walls and a classic novel that was able to quiet some of the ghosts.               While the kitchen was usually empty, tonight there was someone in it. Lily Stein was seated in one of the chairs. She wore pajamas and looked half asleep. As Mick stepped past the replicator, she didn’t acknowledge him. Instead, she just kept staring at a cup of tea in front of her.Finally, Mick cleared his throat. “Junior?”Lily jolted out of her state. “Mick? What are you doing here?”“Could ask you the same thing.”The scientist sighed. “Nightmares. Couldn’t sleep. There was too much noise in my head.”“Still less than in mine,” Mick told her as he plopped down at the table beside hers. “What is it you see? Science screw-ups? Running out of cardigans?”“My dad dying, actually.”Mick glanced over at her as he lifted his book. He tended to see something similar some nights.“I think it’s because of my psychic link with Jax,” Lily continued, tapping her temple. “He saw Dad die, and he dreams about it. Then I wind up seeing it and I wake up. Sometimes I wake up and I’m not sure I can breathe.”“Greif’s that bad, huh?”“Yeah. Have you ever had someone close to you die and wish you could change it?”Mick lowered the copy of Frankenstein before nodding. “My partner. He used to be with us.”“Captain Cold, right?”“Yeah, been nearly two years, I think. Still see it happening.”Lily nodded silently. Mick picked the book back up and opened it back to the page he’d left off on.“That’s a good book,” Lily remarked. “The Modern Prometheus. Science going beyond man’s plan.”“You’ve read it before?”“I do things other than science and being half of a hero. Besides, it’s a classic. Although I haven’t read it in ages.”“Finished this a few weeks ago,” Mick nodded, not sure why they were still talking. “Doing a reread now.”“Oh,” Lily started to rise from her seat. “I can go if I’m bothering you.”Mick watched her walk towards the door when an idea came to him. “Hey, Junior.”Lily turned around. “What?”“Pretty sure there’s a second copy of Frankenstein in the library,” he told her. “And reading in here helps me with the nightmares at least.”Lily smiled and ran off out of the kitchen, returning moments later with Mary Shelley’s finest. Jax sighed and turned to Lily. “Look, can you just tell me what it is?”“What?” Lily looked up from the toolbox. “Uh, the future wrench thingy?”“No, no,” Jax shook his head. “And it’s a quantum torque wrench.”“Oh,” she nodded and set it back. “Okay then.”“Well, now you know,” he said, sitting back to face her. “But anyways, you have something on your mind. What is it?”Lily groaned and leaned back against the wall. “Having the link isn’t going to let me hide anything from you, is it?”“Not really,” Jax shrugged. “So what’s the problem?”“You’re having nightmares,” Lily told him. “And your emotions about them are so strong that I’m seeing them too.”“Wait, what?”“You’re still seeing Dad die. I know because I see it now too.”“Dammit,” he sighed. “So you see him-”“Yeah,” she nodded. “It’s like I’m you. And I want to save him, but I never can.”“Same thing happens to me,” Jax ran his hands down his face. “Lily, I’m sorry. I had Gideon start redirecting my dreams, but then I stopped after you were taken. I had the nightmare again after Anastasia Romanov died. I never meant for you to see it.”“I’ve been seeing it since the Tesla mission,” Lily explained. “But I have to ask you if you’re okay since you had it again last night.”“I’m fine.”“If you’re still dreaming of him dying, I doubt it,” she said. “I’ve been so wrapped up in my own grief, I never asked you about yours. I’m sorry.”“He was your dad.”“But he was half of Firestorm with you. You felt him die. How did you cope?”Jax exhaled slowly. “I think I spent the days after burying him crying. Wally helped me through some of it. We spent a lot of time together. When we first merged, I had to keep reminding myself that it was you in my head, not your dad. That was hard to remember sometimes. I’m remembering it more now. I won’t forget him though. I can never forget him.”Lily smiled. “Me neither.”“The grief isn’t gone though,” he continued. “That night you had to go and get ice for your hands, it was because of me. I was mad we let Kuasa get away, and I took it out on the punching bag. Sara found me after you went to go get ice to tell me what had happened. I started asking Gideon to redirect my dreams if they started going in towards that day after that. It works, but some days I just can’t stop blaming myself.”“If you have those days, you can always talk to me,” Lily said. “You’re like my brother, Jax. I’ll be here for you if you need it.”“Thanks,” Jax nodded. “And I’m here for you too.” “So this is the right formula to counter the bioweapon?” Lily asked.Caitlin, all the way back in the 21st century, nodded onscreen. “It should do the trick.”“Thank you so much,” Lily smiled in relief. “You’ve really saved us here.”“It’s not a problem,” Caitlin assured her. “How’s life as a Legend?”“I’m adjusting.”“We’re happy to have her here,” Ray added, grinning over at her. “She’s a great addition to the team.”The bioengineer chuckled. “You’re lucky to have her with you guys. But I do miss you, Lily.”“I miss you too,” Lily replied. “I’m sorry, but we have to get the counteragent produced. Good luck with the metahumans.”“Good luck with cleaning up time,” Caitlin said. “Bye, Lily. Bye, Ray.”“Bye, Caitlin,” Ray waved before Caitlin disappeared from the screen, then turned to Lily. “Ready to do this, Doctor?”“As ready as you are, Doctor,” Lily beamed back as they looked upon the materials they’d gathered per Caitlin’s instructions.“Then let’s stop a bioweapon. Can you pass me that beaker?”                More and more missions stacked up for the team. Jax finally thought he was used to having Lily inside his head instead of her father’s. She was both like and unlike Grey. Stubbornness must have been a Stein thing, for one. The sass was another. But there was also just as much goodness and kindness that came from her whenever they were Firestorm.               Lily was vastly different from her father in terms of thrills. When Jax had gone and done something risky, he’d always have to deal with Grey screaming and panicking in his head. Lily had been quiet and only offered a voice when needed in the early days, but soon she revealed a taste for danger. What ifs didn’t hold them back. Trying something with risk wasn’t feared by either of them.“We should do that thing,” Jax declared as they wove around skyscrapers towards where the rest of the Legends were fighting the latest foe. “The one you wanted to do last time.”“Do the thing!” Lily encouraged.  “We have the altitude for it.”“Okay,” he grinned as he hovered over the battle below. “Ready?”
“Oh yes!”
               Jax let themselves fall out of the sky. Wind rushed against his face as the ground grew nearer and nearer. Lily told him to act now as soon as he was low enough. It was then that Jax sent out a fiery blast to slow their fall that burned the adversaries beneath them. Sara gave them a grateful smile as she and Amaya took out the one who remained. Jax then shot back up in the air to give some extra aid to Zari.“I love this feeling,” Lily murmured inside their head.“It’s even better up here,” Jax replied as he hovered beside Zari.               With the newest half of the matrix, there was something that Jax couldn’t help but wonder about. Firestorm now had two young, strong bodies and two intelligent minds. He pondered the possibility that during one fusion, he could be in the backseat while Lily got primary control over them. However, Jax wasn’t sure if the matrix was permanently set on him as the body and Lily as the mind, or if it could be switched through willing to be in the other role.Maybe one day, he’s be able to figure out if it was possible.                It took another injury after the Kasnian kidnapping before Sara to instruct Lily to meet her in the training room once Gideon had healed her. While Amaya was prepared for combat if she ever lost her amulet, Lily had no experience whatsoever. Zari could do with some training as well, but at least she knew how to throw a punch and Amaya had volunteered to help her out. Once Lily had more practice, Sara would rope the other two girls in to help.“Jax is more a fighter than I am,” Lily said as she and Sara warmed up. “I’m more of a runner, and if I’m going to hurt someone, it’s most likely to be because I stabbed them with a pencil.“First, there are numerous ways to kill someone with a pencil if you do it correctly,” Sara replied. “But what happens if you and Jax get split up? Remember Kasnia?”She shuddered a little. “I try not to.”“Well, okay, then the last mission. You were alone and someone saw you as vulnerable. I want to teach you to fight back so nothing like that happens again.”“Okay, fine,” Lily shrugged. “But I’m not badass ninja material like you are.”“I’m not training you to be an assassin,” Sara clarified. “I’m training you to hold on your own if you’re not with Jax and get into trouble.”“You’ve trained people before, right?”“A couple assassins and a reincarnated hawk demigoddess,” she shrugged. “Now, can you form a fist?”Lily did as she was instructed. Sara approached her and studied her hand. Her pupil’s fingers were wrapped over her thumb. She shook her head and took Lily’s hand in hers.“If you punched with that, you’d be lucky not to break your thumb,” she explained as she formed a proper fist with her hand. “This is how you form a fist.”“Oh,” Lily copied Sara’s finger placement. “Okay then.”“Don’t forget that,” Sara told her. “Now that you know you can make a fist, we’ll move onto how to actually throw a punch.” “Is it done yet?” Nate asked for the fourth time.“Be patient,” Jax snapped as he finally found the circuit panel he’d been looking for. “Lily, pass me the screwdriver.”She slapped the handle into his hand quickly. “Here.”“We can’t wait any longer,” Nate protested. “You two have to hurry up.”“If you happen to know anything about rewiring a system from the future, please don’t hold back in sharing with us,” Jax muttered.“We’re working as fast as we can,” Lily said quickly as she pulled apart the wiring.“Well, work faster,” Nate said as he eyed the door to the control room.               Jax watched as Lily glared at the historian. She had gone undercover earlier with Zari and Mick as members of a gang who were collaborating with a company in the twenty-fourth century for both to profit dirtily and was still wearing the outfit from that time. Her futuristic punk get-up made her stare look even more intimidating. Nate took a step back, looking rightfully unnerved.“If you tell us that again,” Lily hissed as her fingers connected the wires to new points. “I will find out your melting point and see if Jax and I can reach that temperature, which I am fairly sure we can.”“I won’t stop her,” Jax added. “Nate, I love you, man, but shut up and let us do this.”               Thirty seconds later, the room went dark and the emergency lights flicked on. Through the comms, Zari reported that the floor she was on was still dark. Mick and Amaya had retrieved the anachronism and were ready to meet them at the exit point. Nate steeled up and Jax held out his hands. Lily slapped his palms to fuse into Firestorm so they could move out faster.               As soon as they reached the lobby of the building, something slammed into Jax. He felt himself separate from Lily and fall a few feet to the floor. As he sat back up with a groan, Nate went flying past him to leave a dent in the wall. Jax whipped his head towards the direction the historian had come from, Eleanor Darhk was approaching him with a smirk. Kuasa wasn’t with her, which was either a good thing or a bad thing.“The survivor and the daughter,” Eleanor drawled, looking between him and Lily. “So that’s the one who carries on the old man’s legacy.”“Better than choosing to resurrect a murderer with too many dad jokes,” Jax bit back.“He’s my father,” Eleanor replied simply. “Why wouldn’t I try to save him after he was taken from me?”“Didn’t he try and bomb a whole city?” Lily asked.Eleanor ignored the comment. “You must miss Professor Stein though. I know the pain of missing a father. But there is a way to bring him back. Mallus can do that, if you join us.”She extended a hand to them. Jax gazed at her with disgust.“As much as I wish Grey was still alive, I’d never work with you to resurrect him,” he told her sharply. “He’d never forgive me for doing that.”“And you really think I’d work with you after your friend killed my father?” Lily rose to her feet now. “Joining you is the last thing I’d even think about doing.”“At least we wouldn’t keep secrets from you,” Eleanor said smugly.Jax’s eyes widened. He still hadn’t told Lily about Kuasa and Amaya quite yet. The timing had just never been right.               Before anything else could go down between them, a glowing blue mountain lion leapt out from behind him and took down Eleanor. Amaya floated down barely a moment later to land beside Lily. Certain that his partner was safe with Amaya, Jax hurried over to check on Nate. Fortunately, he was still alive, just unconscious.               When he looked back around to check on Amaya and Lily, Eleanor was hurling two balls of light at them. The orbs entered their chests before they dropped to the floor. A roar of rage followed by a stream of fire signaled Mick’s entrance onto the scene as he strode down the nearby staircase. Jax hurried over to Lily as the rest of the Legends entered the scene. Ray ran over quickly to Lily and removed his helmet.“What happened?” he asked quickly.“Darhk’s daughter hit her and Amaya with something,” Jax explained as he checked for any injuries. There were none, and thankfully he could still feel a pulse. “She’s alive, but our connection feels weird. It’s like she’s coherent or something, I don’t know.”“Oh no,” Ray murmured. “Can we wake her up?”Jax was willing to try anything. “Lily? Lily, can you hear me?”                After Eleanor hit her with that magic, Lily felt the world spin. She felt herself falling, but she sunk through the floor and kept on falling. Her vision had blurred and no sound came from her mouth when she tried to scream. All her senses went in an out as visions started to race and swirl past her.               It started with moments from her life that she knew, then followed with things Lily had never seen before. Herself fusing into Firestorm with another woman and hovering between two speedsters she didn’t know. Walking down a hallway in an orange jumpsuit with armed guards surrounding her. Singing to a baby while rocking him back and forth. Jax standing beside her, passing a wrapped package to Wally West in a seedy parking lot. Rising into the air on a large plant and choking men to death with vines. Her arms held out in front of her, making the earth tremble before her. The reflection of herself in a parka, holding a sleek gun with a blue glow.               Lily wondered if she was watching the future or if these were alternate realities. She watched them pass, unsure of what to do. As much as she wanted out, she couldn’t stop watching these things happen. There was so much love and pain and good and evil. Eventually, she screamed out and tried to throw her arm out, wondering if there was something she couldn’t see to grab onto to stop all of this.               A jolt ran through her body as she suddenly found herself running out the bridge of the Waverider. Mick and Sara were right behind her as she ran through the halls to the workshop where she and Ray usually spent a few hours in every day. As soon as the door opened, she saw Ray by a panel and Jax on the floor in an enclosed glass chamber. Lily could make out blood on the floor around him. Quickly, she gained entry despite Ray’s protests, which sounded distorted in her ears.“Jax!” she shouted as she bent down beside him when the doors shut. The link between them felt weird. He looked like he was hurt really bad. “Jax, what happened?”He pointed past her. Lily whipped her head around to see some sort of tripod that was whirring and generating blue light.“Stay with me, Jax,” she pleaded as she looked back at him. “Stay with me!”Jax looked up at her. “Lily…”“No!” she shook her head. “We got together, remember?”“Lily.”The device began to glow blindingly bright.“Lily! Lily, come back to us!”               Jax’s bleeding body was replaced with him and Ray looking down at her in an instant. Both had alarmed expressions on their faces. Quickly, she reached her hand out to grab Jax’s not to merge, but to just confirm he was there. The concern she’d been feeling from him slowly ebbed away as Ray helped her sit upright.“Are you okay?” Jax asked her. “You weren’t moving and then you just started seizing up. Amaya was doing the same thing, but she woke up sooner.               Lily glanced over at the other woman, who was currently leaning against Zari. The rest of the Legends were getting Nate back up on his feet. Eleanor Darhk was gone though. She must have made a break for it after hitting her and Amaya with that magic.“Lily, are you okay?” Jax repeated.She nodded slowly.“What did she do to you?” Ray inquired. “You weren’t responding for the longest time.”“I saw...things.”“What kind of things?” Jax asked.“I’m not entirely sure,” she admitted, turning towards him. “But the last thing I saw was you bleeding, and it wasn’t good. I think it was the future.”Jax’s face dropped as soon as she said that. “Are you sure?”“I don’t know,” Lily shrugged. “I hope it was another life or something. I don’t want to lose you.”“Me neither,” Jax squeezed her hand back. “Because we’re all that’s left of Firestorm. We can’t die on each other. If anything, we go together.”
“We go together, remember?”
She swallowed at the memory of what she’d heard. “We go together.”                Once they got back to the Waverider, Sara piloted them the temporal zone to pass the anachronism along to Agent Sharpe, who they at least had a semi-decent relationship with. Lily and Amaya both disappeared off to their rooms, shaken from their experiences with Eleanor. Jax wanted to know more of what Lily had seen. Hearing that he had been in dire shape in her visions scared the hell out of him.               He decided to go to the workshop to try and zone out for a little while. Ray was the only other person in there. Jax noted that he seemed preoccupied with adjusting his suit. He let Ray do his thing and picked up the stunning rifle. It had jammed up a week ago, but he hadn’t gotten around to do anything about it until recently.“How’s Lily?” Ray asked out of the blue.Jax raised an eyebrow at him. It was no secret that he had feelings for the newest Legend. He just didn’t know that she had a crush on him too, and a pretty decent sized one too. She had admitted it to him when they were heading back to the Waverider after Jax had accidentally interrupted a slightly personal goodbye between her and Jane Austen’s sister during a previous mission.“She’s strong,” Jax answered, disassembling the chamber of the gun. “But I think it shook her up a lot.”“From what I heard you two talking about, I don’t blame her.”“Yeah, apparently she saw me dying,” Jax muttered. “And that’s not freaking me out at all.”“You don’t know if you’re going to die,” Ray set down his tools. “Sometimes, it ends up being someone else.”Jax frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”“Before we met you at the Oculus, Rip got a vision of its destruction. He said that he saw me holding the failsafe down as it exploded. I thought I was going to die, and I made peace with it.”“But you didn’t die. Snart took over the failsafe and died.”“Exactly,” Ray nodded. “Everything changed. I survived, Snart died a hero.”“So you’re saying I shouldn’t assume Lily’s vision is going to happen?” Jax clarified.Ray nodded again. “Pretty much. But if it still does happen-”“I do not want it to,” he cut in.“I’m with you there,” the genius agreed. “If it looks like you’re dying, then I’ll do everything I can to stop it. You aren’t going to die. We’re a team, and we look out for one another.”Jax smiled. “Damn right.” “Knock, knock.”               Amaya opened her eyes to see Lily standing at her doorway. She seemed nervous and frazzled, to which Amaya had a pretty good guess as to why. Eleanor’s magic had done a number on her too, bombarding her with a series of visions. The last one was the most haunting, where she’d had to watch Zambezi burn. Everything had been charred and broken, everyone dead or lost.“Hey,” Amaya forced a smile on her face as she waved her in. “How are you?”“Tired of being in circumstances where people have to keep asking me that,” Lily confessed. “I’ve actually got a question for you though.”“This is about Eleanor, isn’t it?” Amaya guessed.“Yeah,” Lily nodded. “Unless there’s someone else whose attacked us on a personal level.”She still didn’t know about Kuasa. That relieved Amaya that her granddaughter wasn’t the topic of conversation, but it also worried her. Jax hadn’t told her the truth about it yet.“What did you see after the magic hit you?” Lily asked.Amaya swung her legs over so they hung off of her bed. “Some of my memories from my life. There were other things too. It was like I saw lives in other universes. I had my totem in one, but I could shift into the animals instead of channeling their spirits. I was caught in a fire with a little girl in another. And there was one where I saw you and another girl. I think we were criminals.”“I wasn’t wearing a parka and holding a cold gun, was I?”“How did you know that?”“Because I saw something like that too,” Lily shrugged. “Was the last thing you saw something that looked like it could have been your future?”Amaya sighed. “Yes. It was my home in Zambezi, and it was burning. I broke a rule of time travel a while back and looked into its future. My village is going to burn.”Lily’s face expression turned to fear.“What did you see?” Amaya asked.“Jax bleeding, and it didn’t look good. I was scared he was going to die.”               Both women went quiet. Lily might have been with them for the least amount of time, but she was still a Legend. She and Jax didn’t just have a bond through Firestorm. They were like brother and sister. It didn’t surprise Amaya that she was so scared about it.“If that’s the future, then I’m scared,” Lily continued. “I don’t want to lose Jax. I already lost my father, I can’t lose a brother now.”“You won’t,” Amaya promised, standing up. “Jax is my friend. I will do everything I can to help you save him.”“Thank you,” her teammate nodded. “And I could find a way to help you save your village though.”“It has to burn for my granddaughter to become Vixen in Detroit,” Amaya explained sadly. “But Jax is someone we can save.” “Stop doubting yourself,” Sara instructed as Lily pushed herself up from the mat. “Again.”“Look, I appreciate this,” Lily muttered as she picked up the bamboo staves they’d been practicing with. “But you’re an assassin. How the hell do you think I’m ever going to be able to match up to you?”“You’ve learned a lot since we started,” Sara told her. “You should be proud of how far you’ve come. Now, again. Try imagining me as the enemy instead two friends sparring.”Lily tightened her grip on the staves. When Sara made the moves to attack her, Lily imagined Kuasa or Eleanor in her place and gritted her teeth. She managed to block more of Sara’s attacks and even got in a few of her own. It surprised the captain, who stepped up her game to knock Lily off her feet.“There you go,” Sara nodded. “Don’t doubt yourself.” “This is insane!” Zari laughed. “How are we actually doing this?”               Jax laughed as he shifted the gears. The Waverider had touched down outside 1814 Washington D.C. in search of an anachronism. The Darhks, Grodd, and Kuasa had been sighted by the Time Bureau agents who had also arrived to clean up this particular mess. They were working to disable the brainwashing number Grodd had done on all the soldiers. Half of the Legends were evacuating the city, among them Lily and Amaya.               The rest of the team had gone searching for the anachronism. It had ended once they found American soldiers planning to make use of their ‘stolen British invention’ to lead a charge against the British. Said invention was actually a Model A. Jax had needed to hold in his laughter the first time he saw it solely for the mental image it produced.Three hours later, he was driving the Model A with a girl from the future to outrun British soldiers and direct them towards D.C. to keep history on course.“This is for you, Grey,” Jax thought to himself as he turned up another path.If Martin was here with him right now, he’d be holding on for dear life while loving the adventure.“I’ve got the city in sight,” Zari said into her comm.“Nate, Ray, and I are on our way back to the ship,” Sara reported. “Just drive right into the cargo bay.”“I’m finishing evacuations, or least for the people willing to leave,” Amaya added.“We’ll regroup at the meeting point,” Lily said.“Awesome,” Jax let himself grin a little. “I know what you guys are going to say, but do we have to return this car? Because if we can keep it, I’m calling dibs.”“Aw man,” Ray whined. “You better let me have a go at driving it.”“Me too,” Mick chimed in.“Sorry, boys, we promised the Bureau we’d be good and take it back,” Sara reminded them. “But they didn’t say anything about test drives before returning it.”“I call first ride!” Ray shouted immediately.“Second,” Jax put in, grinning wider.Wally was going to be so jealous of them when he heard about this.Suddenly, anger flooded the psychic link. It made Jax lose focus for a moment, and Zari grabbed the wheel to keep them on track.“Jax, you with me?” she asked.“Yeah,” he nodded. “Something’s wrong.”                The training she had received from the other girls was paying off for her. Kuasa had shown up in her watery glory, ready for a fight. Lily had told the citizens she was with to run to safety before turning to face her. Her adversary hadn’t tried to use her powers to take her in, thinking it would be too easy. Lily had managed to land a good punch before she took off running through the streets and into the fire consuming the city.               Now she and Kuasa were in a square, and Lily had the upper hand. The fire and its heat had weakened Kuasa and her powers. While the smoke and ash were no better for Lily, she finally had her father’s killer cornered. Anger was raging inside of her as she stepped towards the water witch, who was coughing on the ground.“Why did you kill Martin Stein?” she demanded.Kuasa glared bitterly up at her. “Why are you so hung up on the old man?”“Why did you kill him?!” Lily shouted.“To weaken the Legends,” Kuasa spat back. “Mallus’s orders. I had to bring you all down somehow. It was either the old man or the young one. I just picked the one I was closer too.”At her right, another home began to burn more fiercely. Slowly, Lily drew out the gun she had taken from a Time Agent. Mick had taught her how to pickpocket a while back during one of their book club sessions. He probably never expected that she’d make use of those skills for this purpose. But she was too angry to think about how he’d react to her doing this.“My name is Lily Stein,” she announced evenly. “You killed my father. Prepare to die.”Kuasa didn’t look disturbed by the words. Instead, she chuckled.“You can’t kill me,” she smirked. “You don’t have it in you. You’re not a killer.”“Take someone loved away from a person, and you can’t predict how far they’ll go to avenge them.”“Oh, I know,” Kuasa shrugged. “How do you think I got here?”Lily set her jaw firmly and started to raise the gun.“LILY, STOP!”               Mick and Amaya came running towards her and Kuasa. Lily glanced up at them, but kept her hand on the gun. Amaya looked utterly horrified as she stopped and stared at her. Mick, on the other hand, was pissed yet seemed conflicted. He was probably regretting teaching her how to pickpocket.“Oh, lovely,” Kuasa smiled. “We’re all here together. How perfect.”“Lily, put the gun down,” Amaya ordered. “Don’t hurt her.”“What?”“This isn’t you, Junior,” Mick said. “You’re no killer.”“She’s hurt us!” Lily snapped. “She killed my father!”“But I can’t let you kill her,” Amaya screamed.Lily shook her head. “Why?”“Because if you kill me,” Kuasa said evenly. “Then you do to her what I did to you.”Lily lowered the gun, puzzled. “What do you mean?”The water witch looked nearly gleeful. “Oh, she never told you?”“Amaya?” Lily looked to her friend. “What’s she talking about?”Amaya gazed from Kuasa to her. “Kuasa is my granddaughter.”               The words changed everything. Before, Lily had been determined to take down Kuasa. Now, after all the time they’d spent together, she was finding out that Amaya had been keeping this from her. That explained why she’d kept avoiding her during the first week on the ship. She’d had to deal with her descendant murdering a team member.Lily let the gun drop to the street. As she turned toward Mick and Amaya, a blinding flash of light greeted her.                Amaya watched as Lily dropped to the street, unconscious. Kuasa didn’t make a move to grab the gun, even though she had the opening. Mick lowered the device he’d stolen from Rip so long ago and turned to her.“I’ll get her out of here,” he said. “You two talk.”“There won’t be a lot to talk about,” Amaya stated as she walked over towards Kuasa.               While Mick retrieved Lily and the gun, Amaya approached her granddaughter. Kuasa was now rising back up on her feet. She cast a glance over at Lily and Mick before facing her grandmother. Amaya swallowed, knowing she had limited time to talk with her.“I am letting you go because you are family,” she said. “But know this. I am ashamed of what you did to her father. She was in the wrong today, but you were in the wrong when you murdered an innocent man with a family. Now get as far away from this place as you can.”Kuasa didn’t respond. Instead, she pulled out her little time travel cube and vanished.Mick stepped up beside her. “You okay?”“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I doubt she will be when she wakes up.”
TBC....

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Part 2“Did you know?”               Jax felt his heart sink at the question. There was no need for a psychic link to tell him what Lily was asking about. Her puffy eyes spoke for themselves. She had finally learned the truth about Grey’s death before he could come clean about it.“Yeah,” he nodded. “We all knew.”Lily heaved a sighed and shook her head. “Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”“Because you were grieving,” Jax answered. “Then you got kidnapped, you got injured, you were hung up Cassandra Austen, you had the vision of me dying. Every time I wanted to tell you, something else was happening and we needed to focus on it.”“So you just kept hiding it?” Lily cried out angrily. “You never told me that Kuasa was Amaya’s granddaughter!”“Well, I should have,” Jax snapped back. “I should have told you sooner. That part is on me. Maybe if I had, then you wouldn’t have gone to seek vengeance on your own. Maybe I could have stopped you. You have no idea how glad I am that Mick stopped you before you did something you would have regretted! Seriously, Lily, what the hell were you thinking?”“She killed him! She didn’t even care who she killed, she just picked whoever was closer to her. Dad wasn’t anything more than a name on a list for her to cross off!”“You were going to kill her though. Call it what you want, but it still would have been murder. You are not a killer, Lily. I never thought you’d try to be one!”Lily ducked her head in shame. Jax stepped forward and took her by the shoulders.“I wanted to kill Kuasa too when she first took Grey away,” he admitted. “I wanted to do it at the World’s Fair, and I missed my window then. I’m glad that I did, but I wasn’t at the time. That’s why I was going at the punching bag that night. But Sara pulled me off and I spilled everything out to her. She told me that I made the right call then, that I wasn’t a killer. If I had killed Kuasa then, it wouldn’t have just made me a murderer, but you as well. I know you’re angry, I’m still angry some days too. But we can’t let that anger make us monsters. We have to be better, understand?”She nodded quickly. “I’m just so sick of seeing people I know die.”“I know,” he said. “I hate it too.”Lily covered her face with her hands. “What am I going to say to Amaya? I tried to kill her granddaughter. How the hell can I face her now?”“You’ll find a way,” Jax assured her. “You’ll figure out what to say. After all, those brains have gotta be good for something.”Lily snorted out a laugh. Jax hugged her tightly.“I love this life,” she said as they sat down on the floor a few moments later. “I love the Waverider. I love time travel. I love being Firestorm with you. This place is becoming like home, and everyone on the team is becoming my family. I’ve gone from being the girl who wasn’t supposed to exist to half of a nuclear superhero. And yet right now I just want to run away from everything.”“We all have those days,” Jax sympathized. “But let’s do it.”“What?”“We can take the jumpship back to 2018,” he said, an idea forming in his head. “Just for a day or two to check in on everyone and clear our heads. Then we come back to the rest of the Legends.”Lily smiled. “Think we could get away with it?”“I’ll tell Sara what we’re doing, but we’ll be fine.” Clarissa Stein opened the door and instantly smiled when she saw who was standing before her. “Lily! Jefferson!”“Hi, Clarissa.”“Hey, Mom. It’s been a while.”               Clarissa smiled and hugged both her daughter and the boy who was like a son to her. It had been months since she’d heard anything from either from them. She missed being in contact with her daughter, especially after losing Martin. Both Jax and Lily looked alive and safe, save for the slightly haunted look in their eyes. Clarissa had seen it in Martin’s as well, and knew it came from time travel.“I’ve missed both of you,” she told them as she released Lily.  “And you have perfect timing.”Lily frowned. “What do you mean, Mom?”“It’s Wednesday, Lily,” Clarissa reminded her. “I’m pretty sure you’ve been here for one of them.”“Ohhhh yeah!”“I’m still lost,” Jax said sheepishly. “What happens on Wednesday?”Before Clarissa could explain, her guest came up behind her, likely having heard the conversation. “Jefferson?”“Mom?” Jax looked stunned before running forward to hug her. “What are you doing here?”“Clarissa and I meet every other Wednesday for lunch or tea,” Alice Jackson explained. “We’ve been doing it since you and the professor first became Firestorm. Now we’re keeping it going since Lily’s filling her dad’s shoes.”“I wouldn’t go that far,” Lily shrugged. “He’s left quite the legacy behind.”“But she’s living up to it,” Jax finished.“I figured a bright girl like her would,” Alice said as she and Lily hugged. “Is she keeping you out of trouble?”“Or is he keeping her out of trouble?” Clarissa asked.Lily and Jax exchanged a look before the latter answered. “Depends on the day.”Clarissa chuckled. She hadn’t noticed how much she’d missed them until now. Had Martin still been around, he’d be so proud of them.“If you two haven’t eaten yet, then you can join us for lunch,” she offered.“That’d be great,” Jax nodded.Lily smiled. “We’d love to, Mom.”               The security at STAR Labs was pitiful enough for Lily and Jax to walk right on inside after they left lunch with their mothers. They headed in the direction of the cortex, hoping they wouldn’t scare the people in there too badly. However, they ended up running into Cisco on the way there. He was elated to see them, although he was wondering where the rest of the Legends were.“They’re back on the Waverider,” Jax explained. “The two of us took the jumpship back here for a day or two. We needed some time off.”“Jax is being too nice,” Lily said. “I did something I’m not proud of.”Cisco patted her shoulder. “We’ve all been there, especially Caitlin. She’s actually going to be thrilled to see you two again.”               They entered the cortex just then. Wally was lounging back in one of the chairs, still in his suit. Caitlin was in an adjoining room, waiting for something to print out. She wasn’t facing them, but Wally was and noticed them immediately.“Jax!” the speedster cracked a goofy smile and shot out of his chair. “What are you doing here? Thought you were too busy protecting the timeline?”“We were, except we’re taking some time off,” Jax told him. “I missed you, man.”               Wally laughed and went in for the hug. Jax clapped him on the back, feeling happy all over. He had missed Wally a lot while he’d been with the Legends. They’d been able to hang out whenever the timeship had landed and usually took any chance they had to do so. With Wally, Jax felt about as normal as a time-traveling hero could.“Got enough time for a round of Super Smash Bros?” Wally asked. “I’ve been waiting way too long to kick your ass again.”“If anyone’s ass is getting kicked, it’s gonna be yours,” Jax laughed.“In your dreams, Jackson,” Wally shook his head.“You two need a room?” Lily asked, grinning over at Jax.Wally started a little as he remembered there were other people in the room. “Hey, Lily.”“Hi, Wally. It’s good to see you again.”“Okay, Wally, I’ve got the readouts on the sample you got from the new meta,” Caitlin announced as she came out of the room. “It seems that- Lily!”Lily frowned. “Do I know you?”Caitlin stopped short, looking terrified for a moment until Lily giggled and shook her head,“I’m just kidding,” she said, holding out her arms. “Of course I know you, girl. Get over here.”“That wasn’t funny,” Caitlin shook her head as she walked over. “Oh, I missed you.”Jax felt himself overcome with a bubbly feeling as the two women hugged. He couldn’t help but smirk a little at her. Lily rolled her eyes at him before going back to catching up with Caitlin. Jax just gave her a salute as he turned back to Wally and Cisco.However short their time was here, it felt good to be back. “You’re kidding me,” Caitlin shook her head as she and Lily sat down at Jitters. “I can’t believe that.”“It’s not a lie,” Lily grinned as she held up her hands. “Mick and I have a book club.”“Never would have thought him to be the book club type. What do you two read?”“Anything we can find,” Lily told her, deciding not to include that the book club had come to be from their nightmares keeping them awake. “We’ve read Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Grapes of Wrath, a couple others. One time we found this trashy novel called Rancher Daddy and read that for fun.”Caitlin laughed loudly. “Now you’re messing with me.”“No, it actually exists. Although since I’m off ship for a few days, I’m betting he took my copy of A Brief History of Time. Probably just to mess with me since I borrowed Dracula from his room.”“I can’t believe that’s your life,” Caitlin shook her head. “Not that I’m unhappy to see you, but why did you and Jax really decide to come back?”Lily chewed her lip. She’d gotten a new nightmare to join her father dying and Anastasia’s death. In this one, no one stopped her from pulling the trigger on Kuasa. The body that fell back was not hers though, but Amaya’s. Seeing that, even as a nightmare, was able to put Lily off of trying for vengeance again.“I tried to kill someone,” Lily confessed. “Amaya’s granddaughter, Kuasa. She was the one who killed Dad. I was so angry at her for it, and I wanted revenge. No one told me she was related to Amaya until I had a gun to Kuasa and Amaya told me everything.”Caitlin’s gaze softened. “Oh, Lily.”“I was so close to killing her,” she continued. “Jax was furious with me. He had every right to be. It was his idea that we take a break, at least for a day or so. That’s why we came back here.”Caitlin pressed her lips together, saying nothing.“I know, I’m a horrible person for wanting to do something like that,” Lily sighed, blowing on her mug.“No,” Caitlin shook her head. “You had no idea. Besides, you’re not the first person to try and get back at someone who took away one of your parents. And you’re not a horrible person. I’m more deserving of that title.”“Because of Killer Frost?” Lily asked.“Yeah,” she nodded. “I can deal with her better now, but those weeks where she took over were the worst.”“I remember being scared when Cisco told me what happened. I thought I’d never see you like this again, but you did come back.”“I did,” Caitlin smiled at her. “The things I did as Killer Frost were horrible. Eventually, you move past the wrong and work back into the right. The memories don’t really leave you though. They’re a reminder for what happens if you go too far.”“Thanks, Caitlin,” Lily said, raising her mug. “To moving forward.”“To being better,” Caitlin clinked her mug against hers.                After another day, Jax and Lily were ready to return to the rest of the Legends. They exchanged farewells with their families and friends in 2018 before getting back on the jumpship. Lily acted as copilot on the way back, slowly learning the controls to the ship under Jax’s guidance. Luckily, the Waverider was in the temporal zone and hadn’t yet embarked on another mission, so there was no need to time jump.“Welcome back,” Sara greeted Jax with a hug as he and Lily walked onto the bridge. “You two have your heads back in the game?”“Yes, ma’am,” Lily affirmed as she accepted a hug from Mick. “Mick, did you steal any of my books while I was gone?”“Gonna plead the fifth, Junior.”               Jax snorted at that as he greeted the others, noticing how much had changed with Lily’s interactions with the team since she’d first boarded the Waverider. She embraced Ray happily, who told her that he’d missed her. Zari also hugged her, asking if she wanted to marathon some of The Walking Dead later. Sara was asking her if she was ready to get back to training with her and the rest of the girls, which Lily agreed to. Nate exchanged a few words with her, but they had never been entirely close.When Lily reached Amaya, Jax stopped to watch the two of them.Lily spoke first. “I am so sorry.”Amaya nodded. “Me too.”“I should never have done what I tried to do,” Lily told her. “I thought it would avenge Dad, but I went way too far. Can you ever forgive me?”“If you can forgive me for not telling you sooner.”“I do,” Lily hugged Amaya. “If I’d known, I never would have done it.”“Well, I’m glad forgiveness is going around because I don’t want to deal with a divided ship,” Sara declared. “Now that you two are back, we’ve got another anachronism to hit.”“Back to the game then,” Jax nodded. “What do we need to know?”“Pennsylvania, 1967,” Ray said as they all took their seats. “It’s a level five.”“Strap in, everyone,” Sara instructed.Jax glanced over at Lily. She smiled back at him as she pulled her harness down. Summer Day had seemed like an ally when he and the rest of the Legends had first met her. She had been displaced from 2023 and was eager to help the Legends figure out why people were going missing in return for getting a lift home. It wasn’t until Jax and Summer had gone searching for the missing people and a familiar time travel cube fell out of her bag that he realized she was working for Mallus before she’d knocked him out. He’d awoken with the other missing people in a cabin for her to tell him they were enemies in her future, but she’d been offered a chance at revenge.“What are you?” he asked Summer, glancing out the lone window to see the last bits of daylight fading away.               She gave a twisted grin before sinking to her knees. Her whole body began to tremble as her fingers scraped against the floorboards. The people around Jax started to whimper as Summer’s limbs elongated and grew fur. Her ears grew longer, claws left grooves in the floor, and the smile became a mouthful of sharp canines. When the transformation ended, Jax stared at the humanoid creature with spotted fur.“What are you?” he asked. “Some kind of werehyena?”Summer’s now yellow eyes glinted. “Where I’m from, you just call me Hyena.”“Why kidnap these people then?” Jax motioned the people around him. They were a mix of men, women, and children, but no elderly people. “What do you want?”“Mallus needs an army,” Hyena explained. “And I need a pack to fight with me. So I picked them out, and now they’re going to become just like me. Not sure if I’ll bother turning you. It’ll be a pleasure to tear you apart instead. Too bad your partner’s not here. I’d like to do the same to her.”“Yeah, not gonna happen,” Jax muttered, grabbing one of the chairs in the cabin to slam against her face.She went down for a moment, but it was long enough for Jax to grab the keys to the cabin and toss them to one of the kidnaped people. “Go! Get out of here!”The woman who’d caught the keys hurried over to the door with the others as Hyena rose to her feet again. Jax stood ready with the chair to strike again. Hyena growled and swiped a clawed hand at him. He blocked it with the chair, although one of the legs was taken off.“Here we go again,” Hyena laughed as Jax began to back towards the open doorway. “But you don’t have your other half with you this time.”“Doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have back-up.”Jax spun around to see Zari stepping up towards him. He moved out of the way as Zari threw out her arms and sent a gust at Hyena. The werebeast went flying back against the cabin wall hard. With her down, Zari grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the way, leading him towards the people Summer, Hyena, or whatever she was calling herself had kidnapped.“Did she get you?” Zari asked. “Please tell me she didn’t bite you.”“No,” Jax shook his head. “Apparently we’re enemies in the future or something. She knows I’m Firestorm.”“We know,” Zari nodded. “Gideon pulled up her file. We went looking for you as soon as we found out.”“We?”“You didn’t think I’d let you face our future enemy alone?” Lily said as she came out from among the survivors with Ray and hugged Jax. “Are you okay?”“Yeah,” Jax nodded. “We should get ready though.”“Ready for what?”“Me.”               Jax whirled around. Hyena was coming right for them, teeth bared. As she leapt into the air to land on them, Lily grabbed his hand and merged with him. Now Firestorm, Jax sent out a burst of flame to strike Hyena right in the chest. She went flying backwards as Jax rose up into the air. The people around him gazed in amazement.“Ready for this?” he asked Lily.
“With you, always.”
Jax turned back towards the enemy. “You want to start running now, or are we going to have to make you?”Hyena was getting back to her feet, a singed oval on her furry chest. “You never fought me before. Who do you two think you are?”Lily spoke in his head the same time Jax formed the words with his mouth. “Firestorm, bitch.”                They managed to send Hyena scrambling in retreat back to wherever Mallus was. The kidnapped people were examined to make sure they hadn’t been infected by her in anyway to become werehyenas. All tests came back clear, and the Legends divided into groups to return the people to their homes. Lily watched as each one was welcomed home by at least someone, be it family or friend.               The last person she and Jax were bringing home was a woman named Holly Burns. Her leg had been broken when she’d tried to escape Hyena, so they made sure to give her some treatment before taking her back home. The whole way back to her house, she talked about her husband and children and how much she’d missed them.“We’re here,” Jax said as they pulled up at the address Holly had given them. “You need help getting out?”“I wouldn’t mind a little assistance getting to the front door,” Holly admitted.               Lily got out of the car and walked around to the other side to help Holly out. The woman leaned on her as they limped towards the front steps. Ahead of them, the door flew open as two children and a man came running out. Holly called out to them, and the younger child, a girl, tried to embrace her legs. The boy scolded his sister and told her to go easy on their mother.“Mama, you’re back!” the girl, her daughter, cried happily. “We missed you.”“I missed you too, Alice,” Holly told her.Jax stopped. “Alice…Burns?”Holly nodded. “Yes. My husband, George. My son, Wilbur. My daughter, Alice.  I want you all to meet Lily and Jax. They found me and brought me back home to you.”“Thank you so much,” George said, shaking their hands. “Is there any way we can repay you?”“No,” Jax shook his head. “Just…have a good life. All of you.”Lily smiled at the family before turning around to return to the car with Jax.“Why’d her name trip you up?” she asked him once they were back inside. “Aside from it being the same as your mother’s.”“Because it is,” Jax explained. “My mom’s maiden name is Burns. I just didn’t make the connection until I saw my mom and Uncle Wilbur.”“So we just saved your grandma,” Lily clarified before nodding. “That’s pretty cool.” “I cannot believe you!”               Mick looked up from tinkering with the heat gun to see Lily striding towards him. She was holding a book with a look of disbelief on her face. As she sat down across from him, Mick caught sight of the word ‘Byron’ on the spine. He’d been able to meet the author on a recent mission, and Lily might have acted as his wingwoman a bit. Things had gone very well that night before the anachronism ended up wreaking havoc.“Look,” Lily opened the book up and slide it across the table to him. “He didn’t forget you.”Mick read the page in front of him, his eyebrows shooting up at the poem. “Sweet.”“This didn’t exist before,” Lily babbled. “Now it does.”“Guess I was pretty memorable for him then,” Mick said, settling back with a smug look on his face. “That puts us even now.”“When did we start keeping score?” Lily asked.“Keeping score of what?” Nate asked as he walked past them.“Nothing you need to worry about, Pretty.” “Happy birthday, Jefferson,” Grey said onscreen as the camera swung over toward him.
“Did you plan all this?”
Onscreen Sara nodded. “He roped us all into it.”“Time for the song!” Ray announced off camera. “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you-”“What are you watching?”Jax whirled around to see Sara standing in his room. Quickly, he paused the video from his birthday. He still couldn’t believe that Martin had gotten the whole team, even Mick, to celebrate his birthday.“Old clips of Grey,” Jax explained. “By Gideon’s calendar, today would have been his birthday.”“Ah,” Sara took a seat beside him. “Figured it must have been something big if you couldn’t hear me come in.”“Yeah, well, Lily’s holed up watching old films with Amaya, but she isn’t telling her they were her dad’s favorites.”Sara shook her head at that. Jax sighed and fell back onto his bed.“Sometimes I feel like a part of myself is still missing, even though I can still become Firestorm with Lily,” he confessed. “Even after all these months, I don’t feel like I’m past it. I think I get how Grey must have felt now after I replaced Ronnie.”“That’s what happens when we lose the people we love,” Sara told him. “Laurel, Martin, Snart. They all meant something to me, and they left holes in me when they died. They’ll never be filled in completely, but it doesn’t stop me from loving the people I have left.”“I know that,” Jax replied. “Martin was like a dad to me. I lost him, but I got another sister through it.”“We all lost Martin in some way,” Sara agreed. “You and Lily aren’t the only people who miss him. But it’s a good thing that we do miss him. That’s how much we know we loved him.”                Lily gazed through Jax’s eyes down at the army below. History had dictated the army mostly perished on the trek to provide support. However, Hyena had shown up and altered enough of them so they could endure the harsh conditions and fight with tooth and claw like her. If history was to stay on course, then the army needed to be taken out.“We need to think of something fast,” Nate said through their comms.“Are they even human anymore?” Jax asked, gazing down at the creatures below.“Most of them are going to die in the timeline,” Sara told them. “I’m sorry, but we can’t let them live.”“There’s too many of them to kill on our own,” Amaya reminded them. “We’re outnumbered.”Zari, who was hovering beside Lily and Jax, nodded. “So what do we do?”“I might have an idea.” Lily told Jax.“Lily’s got something, guys.”
“Can Zari create tornados?”
“Zari, can you do tornados?” “Hey, guys.”“Everything okay, Ray?”“Yeah, we’re good down here, thanks to the…fire tornado. But Mick’s crying.”“Course I am, Haircut. Look at it. It’s beautiful.” “Ray?” Jax stopped talking to Nate about which two people of everyone they’d met through time travel would be the worst to leave in a room together. “Ray?”               The man was standing in front of the door to the training room. He held a cup of coffee in his hand that had been steaming when he left the kitchen earlier, but it now looked cold. Nate tried calling out to him, but Ray didn’t acknowledge him either. Whatever was happening in the room had his full attention. Jax approached his side to see what had him so transfixed.               Inside the gym, all four women of the Waverider were sparring. Lily fought against Sara, and Amaya and Zari were facing off beside them. Sara and Amaya weren’t going as hard on them as they normally could, but they were putting up a fight. Lily and Zari were actually holding their own pretty well. It was fascinating to watch.               However, it didn’t take long for Jax to notice that Ray was focused on Lily. He’d perk up whenever she managed to get in a hit or wince when she took a hit and stumbled back. But for the most part, it was admiration that he looked at her with. It was clear as day that he was in deep for her.“What’s everyone watching?” Mick asked as he came up behind them, bumping into Ray. “Oh…oh.”Ray was jolted from his daze. “Huh? Oh hey, guys. What’s up?”Jax shook his head.                A well-placed fireball knocked the cube out of Eleanor Darhk’s hands. It soared to land a distance that was the same between herself and Firestorm. For a moment, they looked at each other. All three of them knew what was coming next.“Go!” Lily screamed inside his head. “Before she gets it!”               Jax didn’t have to be told twice as he flew straight towards the cube. Eleanor also took off running right for it. Right now, he and Lily had the chance to one up her and they couldn’t lose it. Landing on the ground, Jax thrust his hand out to grab the cube at the same time as Eleanor reached for it.               Light flashed in front of their eyes. The next thing Jax knew, they were no longer in a cotton mill during the Industrial Revolution. However, they did seem to be standing in front of some old abandoned factory. Traffic could be heard in the distance. They’d gone forward from the time they’d been in before, but by how much?
“Where are we?”
“Dunno,” Jax answered. “But I’m going to get us airborne so we can figure it out.”               He shot up into the sky. Jax could make out a city in the distance. However, it was night, so the lights were the only things that gave it away. Something was coming closer to them from the distance though.“We’re by Pittsburg,” Jax said aloud. “Grey took me here after we first became Firestorm. We trained here until Rip Hunter recruited us.”“Jax, something’s coming,” Lily told him.               The object was close enough to make out now. As it neared, both halves of Firestorm gasped. It was another Firestorm flying towards them, except that one was Ronnie Raymond. This was the original fusion of Firestorm; Martin Stein and Ronnie Raymond. If those two were here, that meant they’d been transported to 2015.               Jax lowered them quickly to the ground. Ronnie followed him. Lily was starting to freak out a little. He didn’t blame her because he was feeling the same way. The possibility of seeing Grey again made him happy, but it just meant he’d have to say goodbye all over again.“Who are you?” Ronnie demanded as he landed in front of them.“Firestorm,” Jax answered. “Just like you two.”“Are you two people too?” Ronnie asked.“Yeah,” Jax nodded. “And your other half just happens to know mine.”
“Oh god.”
Firestorm I narrowed his eyes at Jax. “Separate and introduce yourselves.”               Jax exhaled slowly. He and Lily concentrated on splitting apart, stepping away from each other. Lily stumbled a little when she came apart from him, the first time she’d done so in months. She was nervous, her fingers twitching as she stared at the other Firestorm.“Holy shit,” Ronnie swore, his eyes widening.               A burst of flames came from the original Firestorm as they separated. Ronnie Raymond, now less flammable, was staring at him and Lily. Beside him, an alive and astonished Martin Stein gaped at them. Jax tried to keep his face void of emotion. This was Grey’s past, and he couldn’t find out his future.“Lily?” Martin sounded shocked and elated. “You and this young man can form Firestorm too?”Lily smiled weakly. “Hi, Dad.”                Ronnie thought the weirdest his life could get was when the particle accelerator exploded, and he became a voice in the back of his own head. Learning how to operate as a nuclear superhero was a step up from that weird. However, finding that there was another Firestorm was the strangest thing yet, especially since with Professor Stein’s daughter being one of those halves. He’d never met her until now, although the professor had nearly gone ballistic in his head the second he saw his daughter stumble away from the kid who’d introduced himself later as Jefferson Jackson.“How long have you known about this?” Stein asked them curiously once they’d gotten to a place safe enough for all of them to talk about the new development. “Did STAR Labs send you after us?”“No!” Jefferson, who insisted on being called Jax, shook his head quickly. “Not exactly. We didn’t really plan on winding up here, but Lily said her father had gone up to Pittsburg and we just found ourselves here.”“Right,” Lily nodded. “As for knowing, it’s probably been a month since we found out we could do this. Feels like longer though.”“Then you’re lucky,” Ronnie commented. “I spent over a year as a voice in my head while he had control.”“Ronald, I’ve apologized to you multiple times about that!”“I know, Professor,” he nodded at the older man before looking at the new duo. “So how did you two figure out how to separate and then merge again?”“Uhhh, Jax built a quantum splicer,” Lily explained brightly. “We did a little research and figured it out.”Professor Stein nodded at Jax. “Impressive.”“Thanks, Grey,” Jax said immediately before stopping. “I mean, uh, professor.”Jax’s rambling just brought a smile out of the old man. “I’ve heard worse from previous students, Jefferson.”Lily exchanged a look with Jax before turning back to her dad. “I’ve missed you.”“I’ve missed you too, Lily,” Stein replied. “Does your mother know where you are?”“Yeah, I gave her a call about this,” she explained with a wave of her hand. “She told me to send her love to you.”“I’m glad to hear that,” the professor smiled and rose from his chair. “Excuse me for a moment. I’ll be right back.”               Ronnie watched him walk off towards another room of the little apartment they were staying in before turning back to Lily and Jax. There was concern over the link, as if something was troubling him. It probably had to do with finding out his daughter was more like him than he’d thought. Ronnie didn’t blame him for that. If he and Cait ever had a kid who turned out to be a superhero, he’d been feeling the way right now.“Kinda wish that STAR Labs had sent you,” he lamented. “My fiancée is back there, although things are complicated now after all this. I love her so much, but I just can’t seem to stop causing her pain.”“You don’t mean it though,” Lily told him. “I’m sure she sees past what’s happening to who you really are and how much she cares about you.”Ronnie smiled. “Caitlin keeps herself guarded, but she can make anyone with layers peel them back.”“Sounds like a great girl.”Jax smirked over at her and Lily elbowed him. Ronnie held back a laugh at their antics. The two of them acted so much like brother and sister.“So what’s it like with Grey inside your head?” Jax asked suddenly.Ronnie exhaled slowly and looked around to make sure Stein wasn’t coming back just yet. “Bossy. Aggravating. Know-it-all. Pretentious at times. But he’s also reliable. Kind. Wise. He’s saved my ass more times than I’d care to admit.”Jax gave a wistful smile.“How about you two?” Ronnie asked, gesturing to them. “What’s Lily like when you two fuse?”“Just like her dad,” Jax grinned as Lily rolled her eyes. “Maybe a little less pretentious though. Plus, she’s a daredevil. And she likes zombies too, but she’s told me her dad hates them.”Lily shrugged. “Okay, I’ll own up to those last two.”“I’m glad that there’s a second Firestorm,” Ronnie said with a laugh. “Finally, there’s two other people who get what Stein and I go through.” Martin waited patiently as the phone rang, waiting to see if his suspicions would be proven or disproven.“Hello?” his daughter answered.Martin froze at Lily’s voice. He peered out into the main room, where the Lily out there was shaking her head at something Ronnie had just said. There was no phone in sight for her to have spoken on.“Hello? Hello? Anybody there?”               For a moment, Martin debated answering. It had been a while since he had talked to Lily, or at least one Lily. But instead, he just hung up the phone. She’d probably think he accidentally dialed anyways.                Jax flew low across the river, turning to send up a spray of steam in his wake. Ronnie was right alongside him in just as much burning glory. It had been three days since they’d ended up in Pittsburg and begun ‘training’ alongside Stein and Ronnie. Jax had sent out a signal to the Waverider in secret, silently thanking Zari for teaching him some basic hacking knowledge that one time. Now all he and Lily had to do was to wait.               Waiting wasn’t so bad in this era. 2015 was a pretty decent year as they went. He’d finally gotten to meet Ronnie, the man who he had succeeded. Ronnie was actually a pretty cool guy, and it was painful to remember that he only had a few months left to live before he died closing a hole in the sky. Jax still had his compass back on the Waverider that Caitlin had given to him a few years ago. He never took it off the ship out for the risk of losing it.               Seeing Grey again could only be described as bittersweet. Jax had a whole set of memories of their time together from beginning to end, but the professor didn’t even know who he was yet. To him, Jax was just Lily’s partner to become Firestorm. Yet being around an alive Martin Stein almost made Jax feel like his first partner had never died. Plus, Lily was more than happy to see her father again.                       In the distance, cars crossed back and forth on a bridge over the water. Jax pushed himself to fly a little faster, edging out Ronnie and Gray little by little. Lily was cheering him on inside his head while Ronnie worked to gain ground behind them. By the time they both passed under the bridge, they were neck and neck.“We totally smoked you,” Jax declared triumphantly as they slowed and flew down to land on the shore.The original Firestorm unfused, both halves shaking their heads.“It was a tie,” Ronnie countered as Lily pulled away from Jax.“Yeah, like two hundred yards from the finish,” Lily snorted.Her father sighed. “While this was fun for the three of you, I think we have established that we can carry significant speed when merged. Not as much as the Flash has, but still substantial.”“Oh come on, Professor,” Ronnie grinned at him. “You were having fun too.”Grey tilted his head from side to side. “It was quite the race. Although we might not want to stick around here for very long.”“How come?” Jax frowned, looking around. “It’s just us.”               Ronnie gave him a questioning look as a low growl echoed from the water. Jax turned towards it with Lily as the surface began to ripple. A lone water fowl was floating alone in the middle of the river. The water’s surface suddenly broke as a large creature rose from the water with open jaws. They closed over the bird before the thing sank back into the watery depths.“What was that?” Lily finally said after she stopped staring. “Dad?”She received a funny look from her father for the question. “Lily, you know all about the last of the prehistoric creatures. Everyone does. Now I suggest we get out of here before we become the next item on the menu.”Both Firestorms merged with their partners and took to the skies to fly back home.“Anachronism,” Lily said.“Damn right,” Jax agreed. Hopefully this would help with the beacon to bring the Legends here to find them.               As they returned to the building where they were staying, Jax spotted the jumpship on the rooftop. Two figures were standing beside it, the taller one either being Ray or Nate. Jax felt cold was he realized that his reunion with Grey had finally arrived at its close. Slowly, he lowered himself down to land in front of them, trying to think of how he could explain this to Grey and Ronnie. “So you’re from the future?” Ronnie repeated.“Yes,” Zari nodded at the two present halves of Firestorm while Lily and Jax averted their eyes for a moment. “I’m from 2042, but I’ve just recruited Dr. Palmer here to help me in my mission.”“They’ve developed time travel by 2042? Fascinating.”Lily managed a small smile at Zari as the other woman explained that she wanted to recruit Lily and Jax with abilities for a mission to protect the timeline. Ronnie seemed pretty convinced, although Lily noticed her dad was eyeing her and Jax carefully. It was as if he was waiting for them to break and tell the truth or something.“We need to leave as soon as possible,” Zari continued. “The fate of the timeline is in peril, and the sooner we address it, the less chance of failure we have.”“Well, the professor and I can join in too,” Ronnie offered.“No!” Ray shook his head quickly. “Only one Firestorm is needed. I’m sorry, but it has to be Lily and Jax.”The engineer looked disappointed as he looked back over at them. “So I guess this is it for now then.”“Guess so,” Jax told him, sticking out his hand. “It was great to meet you. Really, really great.”“You too, man,” Ronnie replied, pulling him into a hug. “When you and Lily get back from this, we all need to get together again.”Lily gave a weak nod as she hugged Ronnie. “Okay.”Martin turned to Ronnie. “Ronald, would you and Jefferson mind if I talk to my daughter privately before she leaves?”“Sure thing,” Jax nodded. “Talk as much time as you need. Ronnie, wanna see if they’ll give us a tour of their ship?”Lily watched them go inside the jumpship as she and her father walked away from them. “So what you you want to talk about?”“How far into the future are you from?”“Huh?” Lily stopped short. “Dad, what are you talking about?”“I know you are my daughter, but you’re not from this time,” he said. “I called you the first night you and Jefferson showed up. You’re currently in Denver right now. Jefferson is working as an auto mechanic in Central City, and he’s there right now.”“Damn,” Lily bit her lip. “Yeah, we’re not from here.”“So where are you from then?”“We’re from 2018.”“Not too far away then. Judging by the way you’ve been looking at me and Ronald, I’m guessing there aren’t two Firestorms in that future, are there?”Her mouth felt dry now. “It’s just Jax and I. For a while, it was you and Jax, but then-”“Then I died?” her father finished. “Jefferson replaces Ronald, and you succeed me next.”“Yep,” Lily nodded. “I shouldn’t even be telling you that. It’s your future.”“I won’t try and change it.”“But it would mean that you’d live, Dad!”“It would take this from you though,” he told her firmly. “Lily, I’m an old man, but Ronald and Jefferson are young. I won’t be around forever, and I don’t know if one of us can survive without bonding to another half, and even if they could, how long would it be for?”Lily wiped a tear away quickly.“I’m happy to know that Firestorm will continue to live on after me though,” her dad continued. “And knowing that my daughter is the one who will take my place in the matrix makes me prouder of you than I could have ever imagined. You are truly a hero, Lily.”She didn’t bother wiping her eyes this time. “I miss you so much, Dad.”Martin pulled her gently into a hug. Lily buried her face in his shoulder, letting out a muffled sob.“The matrix brings people together,” he told her. “Firestorm holds pieces of myself and Ronald. When we both eventually leave it, I suspect those parts of us will still remain. Even though I will be dead in your future, a part of myself will still live on in you and Jefferson. Do you understand?”“I think so.”“Don’t mourn me forever,” Martin added. “Live your life. Make it full of adventure and love. I know you will go very far in life. Now go with Jefferson and those people who I assume are your friends?”Lily lifted her head and nodded. “I will. I love you, Dad.”“I love you too,” he said, pressing a kiss into her hair. “Goodbye, Lily. Have your adventure.”“I will.”They walked back slowly to the jumpship, which Jax was now getting out of.“See you around, Grey,” he said, holding his hand out to him. “It was nice to meet you.”“Goodbye for now, Jefferson,” Martin said, shaking his hand. “I look forward to meeting you properly in the future.”Jax frowned. “What are you saying?”“He knows,” Lily told him. “He figured it out.”“Oh,” Jax’s expression fell to one of sadness. “I miss you, Grey. I gotta tell you that.”“I’ll tell you what I told my daughter then. Don’t mourn me. Live your life to the fullest that you can. You two will go very far. I am certain of that.”               Ronnie climbed out of the jumpship then as Zari told them it was time to go. Accepting one last hug from her father, Lily stepped inside the craft with Jax and her teammates. She watched them disappear back inside the building as Jax and Ray piloted them away. Zari explained that the rest of the Legends were waiting for them. The Time Bureau had arrived to take care of the anachronism, as well as the memories of the first Firestorm.“We persuaded Ava to let you guys say goodbye,” Ray added. “She and Gary are waiting for them downstairs to modify their memories.”“So now Dad won’t know he’s going to die in two years,” Lily murmured.“Pretty much,” Ray nodded.Zari turned to look over at her. “How are you holding up?”“I’m okay, actually,” Lily said, wiping the last of her tears from her eyes. “I think I might have gotten some closure.”“Me too,” Jax agreed. “Plus, I finally got to meet Ronnie.” “I can’t believe of all the people we have to bail out,” Nate muttered as they followed the officer. “How did it end up being these three?”“Eh, I’m proud of ‘em,” Mick said.“Yeah, because your approval is going to make them feel any better about this.”“Enough,” Sara ordered as they approached the holding cells. Jax was in one while Lily and Zari sat in the other. “Anything you three have to say for yourselves?”“I was not involved in this,” Jax said as he was let out. “I just was trying to stop Lily before she could do anything else she regretted.”“I don’t really regret it,” Lily piped up.Sara sighed and shook her head as Lily and Zari were both released. “Lily, did you really have to punch him?”“Well, it was more civilized than what my fifteen-year-old self would have done.”Mick snickered. “Damn, Junior.”“Not helpful, Mick,” Nate lectured.Zari shrugged. “Hey, she told me all about it in the cell. I don’t totally fault her in punching him.”“Well, we gotta get going,” Sara told them. “I want to get out of the sixties since we found our anachronism. Mendel needs to get back to his monastery.”“Unless you’d like to punch him too,” Nate huffed at Lily. “I can’t believe you actually went and punched James Watson. You’re a scientist. I would have thought you’d have been singing praises about him and his discoveries.”“When it comes to DNA, my praises will be sung to Rosalind Franklin." “You think it’s possible for me to be the host of Firestorm?”Jax nodded. “It’s untested, but I think it could happen.”“Well, I’m all ears,” Lily leaned forward. “Tell me what we’d have to do.”“When we fuse, I always think of myself as the body. How about you?”“I’ve always expected to be the mind ever since we first merged back at STAR Labs.”“Then here’s what I’ve been thinking,” Jax explained. “After this next mission, we try and fuse with you preparing to be the body and me expecting to be the mind.”Lily nodded. “Sounds like a plan. But we should probably go and deal with the latest problem first.”Jax grinned. “Just another day in the life of a Legend.”                Ray watched as Firestorm set the object in the control chamber. It had been the anachronism they’d most recently apprehended from New Zealand during the Land Wars. The thing was oblong and four feet tall, but was heavy and gave off radiation of some sort. It made him suspicious that the smooth silver surface was only a casing and the real anachronism was beneath it.The doors to the chamber reopened, and Ray looked up as Firestorm stepped back out and separated.“Anachronism’s secure,” Jax reported. “Now we just have to figure out what’s inside it.”“We should begin with testing the outer surface of it,” Lily suggested, oblivious to the nasty cut above her eyebrow. “Figure out what it is first and its properties.”“Then we can figure out what it’s used for,” Jax finished.“Jax, you and I can handle that,” Ray said. “Lily, you better see Gideon and get patched up.”“Ray, I’m fine.”“You’ve got something up there” he pointed to her forehead.Lily brushed a hand and opened her mouth to reply, but Jax beat her to it.“I will drag you there myself,” he said sternly. “I swear, you’re ever more stubborn than Grey sometimes.”“Runs in the family then,” Lily muttered. “But fine, I’ll go. Should I give Sara an update about this?”“Get healed first, then tell her,” Jax instructed.“Don’t worry,” Ray added. “I’ll wait until you’re back before we get to the really fun stuff.”“Please do.”Jax shook his head as she left the workshop.  “I’m half convinced that she just wants to end up with a scar.”“Above the eye isn’t too terrible,” Ray shrugged. “It’d look kinda badass.”Jax grinned at him as he picked up a few tools. “You’re not just saying that because you have a crush on her, are you?”“What? No!”“No, you don’t like her or no, scars aren’t badass.”“Uhhhhhhh…”“I’m joking,” Jax laughed. “I’m going to go get a sample of the casing, okay?”“Okay,” Ray stepped over to the panel to let Jax back into the chamber. “Good luck.”               Jax nodded as he made his way inside. Ray watching between him and the panel monitoring the chamber conditions. Things were looking normal, with the radiation from earlier having gone to much lower levels. Still, he kept a watchful eye on the readings just in case anything happened.As Jax touched the outside of the casing with one of the tools, a massive spike of energy flooded the readings.“Hey, Jax,” Ray called out. “We just-”               The case suddenly exploded, shaking the entire room. Ray grabbed onto the control panel as the Waverider suddenly tilted. Through the glass walls, he could see Jax on the ground, shrapnel surrounding him. It looked like there was blood there too.”“Oh no.”                The explosion shook the bridge violently. Lily grabbed onto one of the chairs to stop herself from falling over. Suddenly, the center console went dark and the ship started to tilt down. Sara ordered Mick to take the controls before telling Lily to see if she could figure out what had happened to the console. The scientist hurried over to get things stabilized and back to their operations as pain suddenly stabbed her lower abdomen.“I’m getting us outta the temporal zone,” Mick shouted as Lily was jarred to the side of the console.“Lily, how’s it looking?” Sara asked.“Give me a few more seconds,” Lily yelled back as she finished the reboot. “There!”“-anyone!” Ray’s voice shouted throughout the bridge as the console hummed back to life. “Guys?”Sara’s eyes widened at the alarm in Ray’s tone. “Ray, what just happened?”“The anachronism’s shell exploded. Jax got hit.”Lily’s blood ran cold. Her vision was coming true. She should have recognized it when she left Ray and Jax alone with the anachronism.“Can you pull him out?” Sara demanded.“Radiation’s spiking again,” Ray replied. “I’d need to get my suit on to get him out safely. But I might just try to make a break for it.”“Stay where you are, Ray!” the assassin ordered.Green broke away to reveal blue sky. Lily pulled herself up against the console and looked at the screens. They were in the Bermuda Triangle in 1817 now.“No,” she decided, moving to the exit of the bridge. “I’m getting him out.”“Gideon, keep us in the air,” Sara ordered, following her. “Lily, wait! You heard what Ray said.”“And I don’t care,” she shouted as she started to run where she’d left the boys, knowing Mick and Sara would be following. “I’m going after Jax.”                Jax laid on the floor, the world echoing in and out around him. Ray had started to shout something before the casing blew up in his face. It had thrown him against the glass wall hard. When he’d been about to stand up, pain in his stomach had stopped him. A piece of shrapnel the size of a water bottle was partially sticking out of him.               Outside, Ray was starting to panic as the ship dipped. Ahead of him, most of the casing had fallen away to reveal what was beneath. Despite the oblong shape of the outer casing, the device inside was linear. Three legs met in a crux about two feet up from the ground. A pole rose two feet from that to end in a ring about a foot in diameter. Light sparked around the inner part of the ring with increasing frequency.               His body really hurt from getting slammed into the wall. Luckily, he could still wiggle and feel his fingers and toes. There were other smaller cuts on his arms from the shrapnel. The only one he really had to be worried about was the one in his torso.               Arcs of blue light were beginning to spit from the ring now. Jax faintly wondered if Ray was okay. Had he gotten hurt too? Also, the large piece of shrapnel was starting to bother him. He had no idea what it had done to him on an internal level. The last thing he wanted to do was pull it out and cause more damage.“Ray,” he groaned out turning his head towards the glass wall.Ray pressed himself against the glass. “Jax? Are you with me, buddy?”“Yeah,” Jax nodded, although his head was hurting now. “I gotta get out of here.”“I know,” Ray told him. “Gideon won’t let me in. She says there’s too much radiation inside there with you now.”“Dr. Palmer, I’ve told you”-“Jax’s life is at stake!”Two beats passed before Gideon responded. “Right away then.”“Jax!”               Lily came bolting into the room, eyes wide with panic. Jax watched as she told Ray to let her be the one to pull him out instead. Ray agreed as Sara and Mick entered next. Jax looked to the device again while Lily made her way through the doors to the chamber. He could swear he saw something moving inside the ring.“Jax!” Lily bent down in front of him. “Jax, what happened?”He pointed behind her at the device. As Lily looked behind her, Jax gazed down to note there was a lot of blood around him now. It reminded him of what Lily told him she’d seen after Eleanor’s magic had sent her into that state. She really had seen the future then.“Stay with me, Jax!”He glanced back up to Lily, who looked scared. “Stay with me!”“Lily,” he croaked out. There was definitely rotation happening inside the ring.“No,” she shook her head. “We go together, remember?”He didn’t want to die like this. Something had to be done.“Lily,” he called again as the device began to glow.“I’m here,” she told him. “We need to get you out, Jax. I don’t know if I can move you though without hurting you.”Jax held out a bloody hand. “Think you’re the body.”               Her eyes widened in understanding. As she raised her hand, Jax prepared himself mentally. He thought of himself becoming the copilot like Grey had always been, like Lily usually was. It was time to be the mind in this instance. Hopefully, it would actually go according to plan.Lily grabbed his hand. The ring suddenly exploded in a burst of bright white light that blinded him just as he felt himself merge with Lily.                As the blinding light faded, Ray lowered his arms that he’d held up to shield his eyes with. The panel readouts said that everything was normal inside the chamber now. Within the glass walls, the anachronism lay on the floor in various pieces. A scorch mark was burned onto the floor where Lily and Jax had been. However, the room was empty and there was no sign of Firestorm.Amaya and Zari ran in, but stopped suddenly beside Mick.“What just happened?” Amaya asked.“The anachronism,” Sara said grimly. “Something was hiding inside it, and Jax got hit by shrapnel.”“Lily went inside to get him out,” Ray added, feeling guilty. He should have just run in and carried Jax out sooner instead of worrying about the radiation.Zari glanced back to the empty chamber. “So where are they?”Ray stared at it. He didn’t think they were dead. That was the last thing he wanted to assume about them.“Ray, you were here, you get this kind of stuff,” Sara said. “What happened to them?”He gave a numb shrug. “I have no idea.”                Amaya’s arm felt heavy as she raised it to knock on Clarissa Stein’s door. She thought back to her friends and teammates in the JSA. Had someone knocked on their doors too after Rip had time scattered them? Or had they needed to wonder why their loved ones weren’t coming home?               It had been a week since Lily and Jax had vanished. During that time, the remaining Legends had been juggling trouble from Mallus and scouring history to find the missing teammates. They had been knocked down to six Legends and one AI, so progress wasn’t exactly great. But with a week gone by and no evidence of them, Sara suggested that someone needed to tell their mothers what had happened. She was over at Jax’s mother’s, Ray and Mick had gone to STAR Labs, and Nate and Zari were waiting back on the ship.The door finally opened to reveal Clarissa Stein, who seemed surprised at the sight of her.“I don’t know if you remember me,” Amaya said. “My name’s Amaya Jiwe.”“I know,” Clarissa nodded. “We met briefly at my husband’s funeral. My daughter’s mentioned you before too. You help save the world.”She smiled briefly at the compliment. “About Lily…”Clarissa shook her head. “No. Please don’t tell me-”“We don’t know,” Amaya said quickly. “She and Jax are missing though. They’ve been gone a week and we don’t know where or when they are.”Lily’s mother straightened up. “She and Jefferson are both missing?”“Yes.”“Come inside and give me seven minutes. I’m coming on that ship with you.” “So they’re not dead,” Wally said. “They’re just missing?”“Yeah,” Ray nodded. “Or at least that’s what we hope. It’s my fault they’re gone though.”“Quit blaming yourself for finally havin’ some self-preservation,” Mick grumbled. “No one knew this was gonna happen.”Caitlin glanced between the two Legends. “And you’ve been searching for them ever since?”“It’s been a week, and we’ve found nothing. Plus we’ve got Mallus and things are a bit more difficult now that we’re down two Legends.”Wally stood up. “What if you were only down by one?”Caitlin frowned. “What are you saying?”“Jax is missing,” the speedster said. “I can sit her and be Barry’s sidekick with Ralph or I can help you guys find him. Let me come with you. Besides, a speedster is a pretty decent ally in a fight.”“He’s got a point,” Mick nodded. “How about you, Snow? We’re down a scientist.”Caitlin leaned back. “What?”“Caitlin, yes!” Wally pleaded. “You should come too.”“Oh no,” Caitlin shook her head. “You do not want Frost on board with you. I can’t endanger history by exposing her to time like that.”“But you worked out your control issues,” Wally reminded her. “You’re not going to go on a rampage like you did when Savitar was around.”“Your other half wouldn’t be the only bad guy on board,” Mick added.“Aw, buddy,” Ray pouted. “You’re not a bad guy. You’re a hero!”“Don’t insult me.”Ray shook his head and sighed. “We really need all the help we can get for stopping Mallus and finding Firestorm.”Caitlin bit her lip. She was tempted to join, but she still had her concerns.“Do it for Junior,” Mick said softly.“Junior?”“His nickname for Lily,” Ray explained. “I know you and Lily were close, Caitlin. Wally’s coming along to do this for Jax. Come with us for Lily.”Lily. That was one area where Caitlin and Killer Frost were in agreement about. The decision was clear to her now.“I’m in.” “Hey, Alex?”“Winn?”“Something’s falling out of the sky.”“Of all the times Kara and J’onn had to go off world,” Alex Danvers sighed. “Any agents in the general vicinity to the impact zone?”“One moment,” Winn typed in a few commands. “Oh! Oh yes, one.”“Oh, not him.”“Why do you have such a problem with him?”“He was working with smugglers!”“To try and get home!”“You just have a crush on him.”“He’s very attractive, okay?”“Look, just notify him and tell him to check it out. I’ll get backup rounded up to be on standby for him.”                The ground disappeared beneath Lily as the white light enveloped her. When it faded, she found herself falling through a cloudy sky. Turning her head, she could make out parts of a city that was steadily getting closer to her. For a moment, she lost all sense and reason and started to scream.
“Lily!”
               Jax’s voice rang through her head, snapping away some of the fear. She then realized that she could feel his presence in her, so they must have merged. However, Lily noticed she had full command of motion for both of them. Brown hair was whipped across her face as pale hands flailed before her. Jax’s suggestion of thinking during the merge had either worked or he had been too injured to serve as the host.“Are you okay?” she thought to him.
“For a while, yes. But it still hurts. Lily, you have to start flying or something.”

“You always flew though!”

“Now you have to. You can do this, Lily.”
She closed her eyes and concentrated. The fall began to slow ever so slightly, but they were still going down.“More,” Jax urged, but he felt weaker now.               Lily gritted her teeth and reopened her eyes. Her hands and feet were now on fire. She angled her body slowly to straighten out so she wasn’t falling backwards. Her descent continued to slow more and more as she continued to burn. However, she was starting to feel drained.“Jax?” she called out. “What’s happening?”
“Feeling…tired.”
               His thoughts were sluggish now. It was starting to affect her too as they descended into an alleyway. Lily lost her focus, and they dropped the last three feet to land in a dumpster. She laid there for a minute before getting up and hoisting herself out to land on the ground with a groan. Rising back to her feet, Lily unmerged from her partner, feeling her head clear slightly.“Are you okay?” she asked him, noticing the shrapnel was gone now.Jax collapsed to the ground.“No!” Lily shook her head and bent down beside him. She could still feel a pulse thankfully. “No, no, no you have to get up!”“Step away from him!”Lily whipped her head up in the direction of the voice. In the shadows, she could make out a figure aiming a gun at her. A face was impossible to make out though.“He’s hurt,” Lily tried to explain.“I said step away!”               She backed away quickly, raising her hands into the air. The figure stepped out of the shadows and hurried over to Jax. Something about him seemed familiar. Lily couldn’t place where she’d seen him. He did seem to know Jax though, calling him by name and asking if he was okay. When he didn’t respond, the man gave her a cold glare.“What did you do to him?” he snarled. “Where is Martin Stein?”“Dead,” Lily said quickly. “He’s been dead for months.”“Did you kill him?” the man demanded. “Did you kill Stein, then hijack his partner and the Firestorm matrix?”“No!” she shook her head. “I’m his partner!”“I know Firestorm. You’re not a part of it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re not to be trusted.”“I can be,” Lily protested. “Get Jax medical attention please, then ask him. He’ll tell you everything!”“I will, but until then-”Something pricked Lily in her neck. Her eyes began to feel heavy. She crashed down to the street, fighting the drugs that were no doubt coursing through her system now.“Sweet dreams,” the man drawled out.               Lily finally realized why the man was familiar. She’d never met him, but she had heard plenty about him. He’d been featured on the Flash blog before a few times. But it was the voice that triggered the connection, bringing her back to a video she’s seen on the Central City news a few years ago.
“Greetings, citizens of Central City. I am Leonard Snart, but you can call me Cold.”