HUNTRESS.
037. | ❛ i'm going to lose it. ❜

The whole team exited the timeship, back to Star City with Rip leading them out into the parking lot where it all began.

"What are we doing back here?" Crystal asked with her arms crossed,

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

"Mission's not over, man."

"Jax is right. We've lost Savage before. We'll find him again." Ray adds on

"And then what? We have no way of killing Savage, particularly now that Kendra and Carter are in his possession, assuming that they're still alive, which is highly unlikely."

"So that's it? We're... we're just giving up?" Crystal says thinking that it was all for nothing. That she'd now have to go back to her life in New Orleans living in the wallows of the bayou.

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

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

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

"Great, so what you're saying is for the last five months, my mom probably thinks that I'm dead. Thanks a lot, man." Jax said with a slight angry tone

"Okay, wait, why? Why the change of plans, Rip?" Crystal says frying closer to him

"If you're getting back on that ship, we get back on that ship." Mick says touching Rip's shoulder but results in his hand passing through it, like it was a hologram.

"In truth, I never left it." Rip responds as the ship behind them starts taking off.

"I'm sorry for all that I've asked of you, and that it all came to nothing. I wish you all well." The ship ascends as the engine roars into the sky, leaving the team with undecided feelings

"I never liked that guy." Mick said
_______________________

Crystal jumped aboard her motorcycle and started heading to the one city that felt like home. She kept driving until she pulled up to the compound that belonged to her ever lasting friend.

Crystal tried walking in but due to her vampirism, she had to be invited in. She banged hard on the door until an unknown face came to the door.

"Who are you?"

"A friend of Luna's," Crystal responded with her looking into the small peek of the door into the compound. After a few moments did Crystal see Luna, come from inside reassuring the stranger who was called Freya, that Crystal posed no threat.

Once inside, Crystal sat on the bar with Luna on the stool next to it.

"You know Elijah is going to get really mad that you're sitting on his one of a kind bar." Luna joked while sipping her drink

"Elijah adores me," Crystal responded taking her shot and gulping it down with a slight aftertaste

Luna, who wasn't the fan of playing around, got down to the serious questions

"So you took the vial,"

"Yup, but the bright side is that now I'm a heretic that can summon the danger of a thousand storms. But you lost the baby and came back as an equal to Lucien."

"You miss a lot when you're gone."

"So where is the cute boy that I met on the ship?"

Crystal stopped and looked at her drink, placing it to the side and hopping of the bar to make herself another drink.

"He died. To save us, all of us."

"Crystal, I'm-"

"If I hear the word sorry one more time, I'm going to lose it" Crystal cut her off before turning around, "We were engaged and now this ring is my sunlight and engagement ring. He was the love of my life." Crystal said with a single tear falling down her face

Luna somberly smiled and wiped the tear off her friend's face and taking her into a small embrace.

But deep down, Crystal deep knew what Leonard would have wanted her to do
____________________

Crystal jumped on her motorcycle and headed back to the lot she was at no less than 24 hours ago. When she got there, she saw the rest of the team already there.

"Ms. Pierce, how nice to see you again." Stein welcomed her

"I missed you too Stein, but let's get down to business. How the hell do we get the Waverider back?"

Both Stein and Raymond looked at Crystal with bright smiles before turning back to her.

"I don't understand. This should have worked." Ray said playing with his little object that did some scientific stuff that Crystal didn't understand.

"Did you account for subspace interference?" Stein asked

"It's the first thing I thought of. Did you adjust for temporal polarity?"

"Oh, Raymond, you insult me."

"Can you reach the Waverider or not?" Sara asked, who was getting impatient with the progress.

"We're working on it." The both said in unison.

"Actually, guys, I think it just worked." Jax said pointing off into the sky with the Waverider coming directly at them. When it landed, their captain came directly off his ship to meet them.

"I thought I made my intentions perfectly clear." Rip said

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

Mick pushed Rip slightly, "Do you mind?" He responded in a slight mad mood.

"Just checking to see if you're real this time."

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

"And this mission is not over. Yeah, just curious how much headway you've had tracking Savage without all of us." Ray

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

"We get your point." Crystal said flat out with Mick adding on.

"Now get ours. That ship's not taking off without us. You got that?"

Rip shortly exhaled before leading his team back onto the Waverider.

"Despite my wishes to pursue Savage alone, it seems that you're all intent on seeing this thing through till the bitter..." Rip was cut off with Sara punching Rip in the face with a knife to his throat and up against the wall.

"Oh! Speaking of bitter." Mick excitedly said

"You knew. You dropped us off five months later because you knew."

"Knew what?"

"You knew that Laurel was going to die, and now you're going to take me back, and I'm going to save my sister."

"I'm afraid that that..."

"You should be afraid." Sara hissed

"I can't allow you..."

"I don't care about the timeline. You're taking me back now."

"Look, Sara, I'm sure there's a valid reason why Rip didn't... "

"Stay out of this!" Sara turned to yell at Ray but before she could turn back to Rip, she was knocked out by Rip's tazer, causing her to fall into Mick's shoulders

"What the hell, Rip?"

"Mr. Rory, take Ms. Lance to sleep it off."

"Not to dismiss what just happened, but we do have to find Savage, assuming that Kendra and Carter are still on his timeship." Ray said with the team following behind them. He could..."

"Be anywhere in time and space."

"Oh, well that narrows it down a lot." Crystal says bumping into something making it fall to the floor.

"Sorry," Crystal apologizes before taking a hard look at the helmet, "Was this always over here?"

"No, it lives over..." Rip dozed off and coming to a realization.

"Did you put it there?"

"No." Crystal said nodding her head

"Did you?" Rip asked Ray before running over and taking the helmet away from Crystal.

"Dude, it's just a helmet."

"Chronometric repositioning."

"What?"

"Temporal changes can, on occasion, reverberate through the timeline, physically moving an object from one place to another." Rip said before turning the helmet over and looking inside to pull a piece of paper out of it.

"Gideon?"

"Yes, Captain."

"Plot a course for Saint-Lô, France, 1944."

"Why then?" Crystal asked

"Because that's where Kendra is." Rip replied showing the rest of the team the paper.

"How is that possible?"

"She sent us a message through time. Go ahead, say it." Ray said to Stein, who smiled back at him and uttering the word that has become so common to everyone.

"Astonishing."