Doomed to Repeat It

Chapter 5

Ray and the Prisoner

Chapter summary:

Ray was pretty happy with his janitorial job, he enjoyed cleaning, until he got assigned to the pipeline cells and realised there was something strangely familiar about one of the prisoners. Unfortunately, that prisoner also had information that Thawne was prepared to do anything to get.

Warnings: Torture, psychological torture, non-consensual drug use

AN: Apologies that this is sooo late. I have to admit that this ended up being about four times longer than it was supposed to be and so it took a lot more writing than expected.

Ray Palmer was a great janitor. He loved his work; cleaning was therapeutic for him. You started out with something dirty, you applied cleaning products, worked at it a little, and then you made it clean. He liked his job at STAR Labs, cleaning, and he had a den in the basement where he slept and could play computer games and eat pizza.

He normally had a well-defined area that he cleaned, and his days were comfortingly similar. However, occasionally his boss asked him to cover for one of the other janitors, and so, on this particular day, he'd been asked to clean the pipeline where the prisoner cells were. He'd never actually worked in this area of STAR Labs before, but it wasn't any different from cleaning anywhere else, really. He washed the glass of the cells, doing his best to ignore the occupants, some of whom weren't exactly friendly. Others just sat there, staring into the distance, and a couple tried to engage him in conversation but he wasn't here to talk, just to clean.

He was mopping the floor when there were shouts from down the corridor and suddenly a man was running full pelt in his direction. He wore the same jumpsuit that all the prisoners in the pipeline wore, nondescript dark grey with a number printed on the pocket and sleeve. This man had a beard and sandy, light brown hair and wasn't looking where he was going, in fact, he was looking back towards his pursuers. He smacked right into Ray and his bucket of soapy water, landing on top of Ray and overturning the bucket of water.

Ray lay on his back, stunned into silence by the collision, and feeling the water seeping into his boiler suit. The man gathered his senses together quickly and then looked down at who he had bumped into. He'd been readying himself to spring off Ray and run onwards, but suddenly he stopped, a look of shock appearing on his face.

"Ray?" he asked. "Oh god, Ray!"

"Uh, how do you know my name?" asked Ray.

The man scrambled to his feet. "You don't recognise me?" he asked, frantically, checking behind him again. He reached down and pulled Ray to his feet. "I suppose the Spear must have taken your memories. That is not good news, but at least you're alive."

"What?" asked Ray, baffled by the entire thing.

"Hi, my name's Rip Hunter and we need to get out of here, now," he said, pulling Ray in the direction he'd been running. "I'll explain later."

Ray dug his heels in. "I can't go anywhere, I've got floors to wash."

"No, you don't," said the man who had introduced himself as Rip Hunter. "You're Doctor Ray Palmer, the Atom and none of this is right."

"Actually, I'm just Ray Palmer, and I'm a janitor for STAR Labs. You must have me confused with someone else," he replied.

"Damn it, Ray, now is not the time…" said Rip, his eyes widening as guards came running around the corner from the direction he'd just come from. "I'll be back for you," he said, and took off again, only to be tackled a few more metres down the corridor by a group of guards coming in the other direction.

Ray wasn't entirely happy about what happened next. Rip Hunter didn't go down easily, he punched one guard and kicked another, but the guards weren't gentle either and they outnumbered him. They hit him until he was down on the ground and then kicked him in the side. Finally, one of the guards used his shock baton on the prisoner and the man cried out in pain.

"Hey," said Ray. "He's down."

A guard looked at him. "What's it to you? He hit one of us and ran. He deserves worse."

"I'm just saying he doesn't look like he's much of a threat now," said Ray, with a shrug.

"Get back to work, retard," said the guard. "This is nothing to do with you."

Two guards rather unceremoniously picked up the man by his arms, his feet dragging behind him and head down. He didn't seem to be in any state to struggle anymore. Ray could see that he was bleeding from a cut on his head.

"Come on," said the one who appeared to be the head guard, "he's due in interrogation."

The guards moved off with their prisoner and Ray let out a sigh. There was water all over the floor and he was uncomfortably wet. He began mopping, trying not to think about what he'd just seen, and instead considered whether he'd order Chinese food for dinner tonight. He knew that prisoners weren't necessarily treated well in the pipeline, but they were bad people who had done some very bad things. Some of them had even tried to kill Mr Thawne, which was just ungrateful given everything that Mr Thawne had done for the world.

He had a flash of something. It was the man who had run into him. It was almost as if he'd seen him somewhere before in different clothes, with a long coat, but he couldn't place him. It was probably just a reaction to a long day and being thumped hard into the floor. He could feel a slight headache coming on. He shrugged and continued on with his mopping.

By the time he'd finished mopping up the water, it was getting late and he still had several cells to clean. He'd been given a list of empty cells and when they would be unoccupied. Mostly they just needed sluicing down for new occupants, which was easy enough. Some of them were already occupied, but the prisoners were in interrogation or at the labs. Those cells required various levels of cleaning, and the waste buckets needed emptying. Sometimes prisoners had thrown food around the cell, or… other things that he preferred not to think about. He knew that some of the prisoners were not right in the head, and often behaved weirdly. Maybe that was why the man who had crashed into him had thought he knew him. He was glad that this wasn't his usual area to work in. He preferred cleaning floors and toilets on the upper floors to this rather depressing place.

He was about to pack up for the day when he saw the guards returning a prisoner to his cell, and he recognised him as the man from earlier. He was limping, and being shoved along, making him stumble and fall. The guards threw him into the cell and closed the door behind the prisoner. At least the unfortunate man had a clean cell to come back to. The guards walked away, oblivious to the man lying in the cell, or Ray looking at them. The pipeline was regarded as being so secure that it didn't need permanent guards, they only came down to remove prisoners or lock them up.

Ray watched as the man stirred and rather feebly attempted to sit up. Ray felt bad for him. He was clearly in a lot of pain. Ray went over to the cell and saw him push himself to the back and then use the wall to help him sit. He finally came to rest leaning in the corner, breathing hard from the work of just moving. He opened his eyes and looked out at Ray.

"Uh, hello," said Rip, with confusion.

"Hi," said Ray. "I'm sorry about earlier."

"My fault," said Rip, closing his eyes again. His voice sounded tired. "Wasn't looking where I was going."

"You called me Ray. How did you know my name?" he asked.

The eyes peeled open again. "You don't remember, but we used to know each other."

Ray frowned, he really didn't remember, but something about the man was familiar. Lately, he'd been getting a very strong feeling that something wasn't right, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was. He'd decided that it was just his imagination and ignored it, but now there was someone in front of him who was setting off the same sense in spades.

"How did I know you?"

"You were part of my crew," said Rip. "I had a time ship and we protected the timeline. I realise how crazy that must sound, but it's the truth."

"Huh," said Ray. This prisoner was clearly mad, but he was also entertaining. "What did you say your name was?"

"Rip Hunter, Captain of the Waverider, at your service," he mumbled, his eyes fixed on the floor.

"So, if you were the Captain, then who was I? The cabin boy? Chief bottle washer? First mate?" he smiled.

Rip let out a small laugh, which turned into a cough and Ray had to wait for him to finish before he could speak again.

"You were our resident genius inventor and a superhero," said Rip. "You had an exoskeleton suit which allowed you to shrink."

"Cool," said Ray. "I was a superhero." He liked that idea a lot.

Rip nodded.

"How did we end up here then?" he asked.

"One of our enemies gained control of a reality altering artefact and this is what he chose to do with it." Rip blinked tiredly. "Apparently he wiped your memories and gave you a new life."

Ray shrugged. "I've worked here since I left school at sixteen."

"That's your false memories talking," said Rip, with a gesture in his direction. "You actually have multiple PhDs and owned your own company."

Ray laughed at that, but then noticed Rip's expression, still serious. "You weren't joking. Sorry, I'm not very smart."

"It's not your fault," said Rip. There was silence between them for a moment, as Ray just looked at the man, taking in the way he had his arm wrapped around his chest.

"They hurt you, didn't they?" Ray was a little concerned. He didn't like the idea of anyone being hurt, but he knew that the prisoners deserved it because they'd done such bad things. He wondered what Rip had done to be put in the pipeline.

"Yes," said Rip, "they did, and I fear this is just the beginning. You shouldn't be seen talking to me. It's dangerous."

Ray shook his head. "No one really pays attention to me. I just keep my head down. Besides, the guards don't come down here unless they're taking someone to interrogation or the labs."

Rip rolled his head to the side. "Of course," he said, somewhat miserably. "Why worry what your prisoners are doing when the cells are completely inescapable?"

"I guess," said Ray, with a slight shrug.

"I suppose you letting me out of here is out of the question?"

"Sorry, I don't have the code for the door," said Ray, "and there are alarms that go off for unauthorised access. You seem like a nice guy. I'd let you out if I could."

Rip let out a sigh. "Don't worry. I've been through worse and survived."

Ray nodded. "Anyway, that's the end of my shift. I've got to go. I don't normally work down here, so I don't know if I'll see you again."

Rip rested his head back against the wall, looking out at Ray. "Mr Palmer, you have been a bright spot in an otherwise rather miserable day. Please, continue to keep your head down and stay safe."

Ray gave the prisoner a small smile and a dip of his head. He grabbed his bucket and mop, and walked away, not expecting to see Rip Hunter again. It was a fun story that he'd been told, but he certainly wasn't smart enough to be a genius inventor, so a story was all it was. Still, it was kind of nice to daydream about a world where he was more than just a janitor and he got to have space adventures. He headed back to his bed in the basement room that he'd taken over as his own. No one bothered him down there, and he went to sleep dreaming of flying in the air and firing blue beams of energy at bad guys with his team of superhero friends.

The following day, he was cleaning one of the many corridors in his area and he saw Rip again. This time he was in handcuffs and being shoved along the corridor by some guards towards one of the interrogation room. He was moving stiffly, with a slight limp and guarding the left side of his chest as best he could. However, he was walking unaided, which was better than being dragged along a corridor.

Ray made himself scarce as the guards approached by ducking around a corner, having no wish to tangle with them again. He watched as they opened a door into a room, and escorted Rip inside. Ray got a glimpse of the interior before they shut the door and he got a feeling that the equipment in the room had some very unpleasant uses.

Mr Thawne stood in the room beside what looked like a dentist's chair, but with less padding. Thawne was disentangling some wires and smiled as the prisoner entered.

"Good to see you, Rip," said Thawne.

"Eobard," said Rip, managing to get disdain even into that one word.

"I hope you've enjoyed your cell these last weeks," said Thawne.

"I've slept in worse," replied Rip, appearing disinterested.

"I can guarantee that you'll long for its comforts by the time I'm done with you," said Thawne, removing his jacket and hanging it on a hook on the wall. He began to roll up his sleeves.

"Really, Eobard, torture? It's not exactly a reliable means of extracting information. I'm never going to give you the location of any of the artefacts that you think might threaten your ultimate power. You know that I'll die first," said Rip, and Ray thought he sounded surprisingly confident and sanguine considering the topic of conversation.

"Oh, you'll wish for death," replied Thawne, "and in the meantime, I get to have a lot of fun extracting my revenge for every single wild goose chase that you sent me on to find the Spear."

The door closed, and Ray didn't get to hear how the conversation continued. He was actually quite grateful for that. He didn't like the way it seemed to be going. Mr Thawne was supposed to be a good man, not someone who tortured a prisoner for revenge or information. Mr Thawne had basically saved the world and was respected by everyone. He was personal friends with the President of the United States of America and generally regarded as one of the good guys.

Still, this was way above his pay grade. He was a janitor. He cleaned floors. What Mr Thawne did was none of his business.

The screaming that came from the interrogation room was, also, none of his business.

Rip felt terrible. When they dumped him back in his cell he was barely conscious, and he could still feel the electricity coursing through his body as Thawne interrogated him. His limbs hadn't forgotten either and they convulsed at the memory of the electrical signals. He twitched involuntarily even now.

"Where is the Crown of Thorns? The Holy Grail? The Robe? The Bachal Isu? The Helmet of Constantine? The Veil of Veronica? Give me one of them and this can all stop. I'm a reasonable man. I know that the Time Masters were aware of their locations and protected them. I know that you didn't believe the Time Masters could be trusted with their power. Can any of them destroy the Spear? Can any of the artefacts stop the Spear? Why can't the Spear bring them to me?"

The questions went on and on. At first, he'd tried to be stoic, but at some point, he'd given in and just screamed. The screaming actually helped because at least he had an outlet for the pain, but Thawne had clearly found it amusing. Rip was annoyed with himself because of that alone. His one victory had been that he hadn't divulged anything, in fact, he'd remained wordlessly uncommunicative throughout. Eventually Thawne had tired of his games and decided that he was done for the day. At least partly this was because Rip was barely conscious and definitely unable to answer even if he'd wanted to.

Rip tried to push himself up off the floor of his cell. It smelt vaguely of lemon cleaning fluid, which struck him as incongruent. He put his palms flat on the floor and tried to persuade his limbs to brace him as he moved.

"Hey," said a familiar voice. "You should stay down for a little while. They did a number on you."

Rip opened his eyes and looked out through the glass of his cell door. "Mr Palmer," he said, breathing hard from the pain in his muscles. The man was stood there observing him and looking somewhat nervous. "I thought you didn't normally work in the pipeline."

"I don't, but I have a room in the basement here. I decided to come and visit. I'm not exactly supposed to be here but I… er… I thought… er… I actually… don't know what I thought, or what I'm doing here," said Ray, with a shrug. "But I brought you something." He pushed open the small hatch at the bottom of the cell door, where usually they posted through his food trays. Ray produced a bottle of water, unscrewed the top just enough to break the seal, and rolled it across the cell floor to him.

"Thank you," said Rip, earnestly, receiving it gratefully. He hadn't been given any water since this morning. With uncooperative limbs, he rolled onto his side and he fumbled at the cap of the bottle of water, finally unscrewing the top. He raised his head just enough that he could sip the water without spilling too much. "This is the best water I have tasted in some time."

He wasn't joking either, it tasted heavenly and it was definitely the best water he'd drunk in quite a while. Probably since Vandal Savage had imprisoned him in an Egyptian jail and tried to starve him into submission. You only realised how good water was when you'd been deprived of it, in Rip's experience. Thawne was being slightly more direct in his methods than Savage. Quite frankly Vandal Savage was looking like a rank amateur compared to Eobard Thawne at the moment. His limbs were still tingling unpleasantly and he had several small burns on his arms from where contact had been made with the electrical wires. He still couldn't stop twitching either, which was thoroughly annoying.

Rip looked over at Ray. He was wearing the uniform of a STAR Labs employee and his name tag proclaimed him to be a janitor. He was also wearing his baseball cap on backwards, which definitely wasn't something that his Ray would do, but there was a lot of the old Ray in this man, even if he wasn't quite the same.

"So, I suppose I'd better go," said Ray.

Rip frowned. "Actually, I wouldn't mind some company." He didn't really want to be alone with his thoughts right now.

Ray looked at him like he didn't know what to say to that, but he didn't leave.

"I washed your cell earlier. At least you can have somewhere clean to recover," said Ray, with a shrug. "I hope you don't mind lemon scented."

Rip let out a half laugh at the absurdity of all. "I'm sure it will be fine." He attempted to sit himself up again and this time he managed to make it. He leaned back against the cell wall.

Ray sat down on the floor on the opposite side of the glass. "I was wondering about that story you told me. The one where I'm a genius inventor. I was wondering, what did I do? Did I save people?"

Rip allowed a small smile to crawl across his lips. "Yes, perhaps you will permit me to tell you a little more about your life before all this?"

Ray nodded, his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. This man was still mostly the Ray Palmer that Rip had known. "Cool, story time, that sounds awesome."

"Okay. Well, where shall I start? I suppose I should begin with how you saved the life of Hawkgirl, the reincarnated form of the hawk goddess, Chay-Ara. It was early on in our acquaintance, and Hawkgirl had been injured and was at death's door. She had fought a madman who had a magic dagger and despite bravely fighting him to stand still, she had been stabbed with his blade. Normally, my ship's medical facilities would have been sufficient to heal her, but pieces of the dagger had broken off inside her and were moving towards her heart. Even the advanced technology that I possessed could not have saved her. You immediately began working on ways to save her life."

Rip continued the story, pausing in places to sip more water, and only embellishing events very slightly. Ray had been quite heroic without any need to add to the story. His audience was rapt, hanging on his every word, and the disappointment when he finished was obvious. Unfortunately, Rip was tiring and whilst he would have liked to tell Ray more, he didn't know what the following day would bring, and he needed rest.

"Wow, this is so amazing. The Atom is the greatest. You should be, like, a writer or something," said Ray.

Rip smiled and gave a short laugh. "My current circumstances would preclude any such activity, I'm afraid."

"Can you tell me another one?" asked Ray, childlike in his excitement. "Something else that the Atom did?"

"I'm sorry, Mr Palmer, but I don't think I have the energy tonight. Perhaps another time," said Rip, shuffling himself across the cell to the foam pad that served as his bed. It didn't provide much comfort, but it was better than just sleeping on the floor.

"Right, sorry, you must be tired," said Ray. "I'll go."

The janitor got to his feet.

"Do you mind if I come back?" he asked.

Rip shook his head, settling down for the night. "Not at all. In fact, I believe I would be quite pleased to see you. However, it is important that you don't put yourself in danger. Take appropriate precautions to hide your movements if you come again."

Ray looked a little perplexed but then he seemed to understand. "Okay, so basically be inconspicuous. I'm good at that."

Rip watched him leave and then closed his eyes, hoping that he'd at least be able to sleep well despite the aches. The fact that Ray was alive, and still so very like his old self, gave him hope. At least Eobard hadn't erased him from existence, so there was now the strong possibility that the rest of the Legends were out there somewhere and would come to rescue him. Things were definitely not as dire as he'd feared they might be.

The following day, he reconsidered his thoughts of the previous night and decided that he had spoken too soon. Thawne had attempted to drown him, several times. Rip was strapped to a table on a pivot and his head lowered, then a cloth was placed over his face and water was poured over his face until he began to choke and drown. His brain told him that he was dying on multiple occasions and it felt like he was really drowning even though he knew that it was just a stream of water. How anyone had ever considered this not to be torture, he didn't know. Waterboarding was miserable and enough to make him never want to take a shower ever again.

The session went on for a long time and by the end of it he was barely coherent. He was coughing and half out of it with hypoxia and fear. He was dumped on the floor of his cell without ceremony and he tried to regain his wits, sucking in lungfuls of water-free oxygen. He had no idea how long he lay there, just trying to get the memory of drowning out of his head, but then a familiar voice spoke to him.

"Hey," he said.

Rip opened his eyes and saw Ray. "Hello," he croaked.

He noticed that someone had brought him his food at some point and he hadn't even noticed. The meal was cold, but it would still be better than not eating at all.

The Time Masters had trained him even in this. When captured, a Time Master's duty was first and foremost to survive, and that meant eating whatever food was available and drinking liquid. Secondly you resisted whatever the enemy wanted you to do, whether that was answer their questions or give them your ship. Thirdly, if an opportunity presented, you attempted to escape. Rip was working on all three, but none of them were easy.

He sat up and reached for the food, and noticed Ray watching him. He seemed to be thinking. Perhaps wondering how you started a conversation with someone locked in a cell.

"Would you like to hear another story about the Atom?" asked Rip, taking a bite of a piece of bread.

Ray nodded with enthusiasm, but then his face fell. "I'm sorry that they hurt you again."

Rip waved off his concern. "There's really nothing to be done about it. I won't talk and Mr Thawne is determined to make me. The unstoppable force has hit the immovable object. Neither of us will get what we want, but Thawne isn't going let that bother him. Now, perhaps you would like to hear about the time the Atom saved the Waverider from Time Pirates?"

Ray again nodded with open eagerness. Rip allowed himself to smile back, and related the story of how the Atom had defended the ship, fixed a hole in the hull that had them venting oxygen, and fought off a turncoat team member and a group of Time Pirates. He may have given Ray a slightly improved role in all of that, but it was worth the look of happiness on Mr Palmer's face.

Rip slept better that night, but Thawne filled the next week with alternating water torture and electricity. Rip's days were occupied with agonising pain, and the refusal to talk, but at least he had interesting evenings to look forwards to. He found himself hanging on to that as Eobard Thawne questioned him again about the whereabouts of the Crown of Thorns. Ray, and good people like him, were the entire reason why he couldn't give up the location of any of the artefacts that Thawne wanted.

Ray visited him faithfully every evening and each night Rip told him a new story of how the Atom had saved the day. He told Ray about the Atom's heroism in Russia, being beaten up to save a team mate, and his fight with the huge robot leviathan. He described Ray's Wild West foray into law enforcement and his doomed romance with the Hawk goddess. He talked about how the Atom had once been marooned in the past and then helped to rescue a team mate from Nanda Parbat.

Rip knew that Thawne would change tactics if his first choice of torture didn't work, and when the new week began, Thawne decided to move on from less invasive techniques. He had him flogged for every question he failed to answer. He had begun by hanging Rip by his wrists from the ceiling, ensuring that he had to stand on tip toe to remove the weight from his arms, something which was totally unsustainable as soon as the punishment to his body began. By the end of the day's torture his back was burning with white hot fire from the lashes laid across it and even the slightest movement was almost more than he could bear. His shoulders also hurt in a way that he'd never experienced before and it was agonising. He considered himself lucky that he hadn't dislocated them with his weight.

He had passed out and awoken to someone tending to the wounds. He was bound by his hands and feet, lying face down on a bed. Hands touched him, without his permission, painfully rubbing something into his cuts. Eobard Thawne was watching with a critical eye.

"Wouldn't want these to become infected now, would we?" he said, seeing Rip's eyes open and watching him. "I have quite a lot more planned for you before I allow you to die."

Rip huffed out air and closed his eyes again. "I have no interest in your ridiculous, comic-book-villain taunts, Eobard."

"Take care, Rip," said Eobard. "I can just as easily string you up again and we can go another round."

"But you won't, because you need to let me heal a little before you inflict more pain on me," said Rip, fixing Thawne with a glare. "I know how this works, and if I die then you get nothing."

"Oh absolutely, and it's a very pleasant game, to watch you suffer and then let you recover just enough before I start again. However, you'd do well to remember that I have nothing now, so if you die then I just have to live with the status quo. Tragic, I admit, but not disastrous. Whereas you don't get to live at all and I'll make it my life's mission to ensure that every single remaining minute of your existence is a burning hell of pain."

"Six out of ten," said Rip.

"What?" asked Eobard.

"Your marks out of ten for your villainous threats. Six out of ten, could do better," said Rip.

Eobard's anger didn't take much to ignite and clearly Rip had hit a nerve. Defiance was definitely one of Rip's strong suits, and it briefly amused him to have caused such a reaction. The look on his captor's face was incandescent rage and Rip had only a moment to realise that his remark was going to cost him. Thawne picked up a scalpel and stabbed it into Rip's shoulder. Rip cried out at the sudden pain, pulling against the restraints.

"My eloquence isn't really that important here, is it, Rip?" said Thawne. "I'm quite capable of physically demonstrating my point. I have the upper hand and I really hope you keep testing me, because breaking you is going to be all the more interesting for it."

This time Rip said nothing for several seconds, and just willed the bright, red, flare of pain to go away.

"I'm not going to give you what you want, Eobard," he said, so quietly that Thawne had to get close to hear him. "I'm never going to give you what you want."

"Then the rest of your short life is going to be very unpleasant," said Thawne, dropping the scalpel back on the tray. He left Rip to the stinging application of antiseptic on his wounds.

He was very glad to be returned to his cell, where all he had to worry about was the coldness of the floor. He dozed on and off fitfully, the soreness jerking him back to wakefulness every so often, until the evening.

"Oh my god!" said a familiar voice. "What did they do to you?"

Rip was somewhat amused by Ray's reaction to his current state. Ray was already aware of why Rip was here, and that he spent his days in the company of Eobard Thawne being continually questioned and caused pain. He supposed that the janitor had been able to ignore that whilst Rip had no obvious bruises or cuts. His prison jumpsuit was currently open to the waist and pushed down to expose his back because it was too painful to do anything else. The lash marks were on full display for Ray to see, despite the fact that Rip would have preferred not to have let him see them. He didn't have the strength at the moment to move and re-clothe himself.

"Hello, Raymond," Rip murmured. He forced his eyes to open and found that Ray had his hands on the glass of the cell and was pressed up against it as if he could push through it.

"What can I do?" asked Ray, clearly upset. "There has to be something that I can do."

Rip rolled himself onto his side, slowly, trying to avoid pulling the wounds on his back too much. "There's nothing you can do, Ray," replied Rip. "If you try to help me then you'll be putting yourself in danger, and Thawne has no reason to keep you alive if you start to cause trouble."

"But they really hurt you this time," said Ray. "Your back…" He trailed off, unable to finish.

"I imagine it looks a mess, but it will heal," said Rip. Without the Waverider's medbay facilities it would leave him with a pattern of scars that would never fade, but, as he'd said, it would heal and he would be fine. "Thawne isn't going to kill me, I have information that he wants."

He was going to make his existence thoroughly miserable though, and he probably would eventually kill him, once he got bored with Rip's refusal to answer his questions, but Ray didn't need to know that. Rip knew that he was on borrowed time and had already made his peace with it.

Ray was looking like a small boy whose dog had died. This Ray felt more innocent than the one Rip was used to. He didn't have the practical knowledge of the cruelties of the world that Ray had picked up when his fiancée had been killed. This Ray, without his intelligence, still had his emotional vulnerability, his need to do good in the world, and Rip was worried that would cause problems. The next words out of Ray's mouth confirmed his worries.

"But I can't let them keep doing this to you."

"You can," said Rip, sternly. "You can, and you will. You're far more important than I am."

"I'm just a janitor," said Ray, shaking his head. "And it's not like I have many friends. Any really." He sat down with his back against the glass. "I kind of like your stories. They make me feel like maybe I could actually be something, something more than just a janitor."

Rip blinked at Ray. Sometimes he forgot that this was Thawne's idea of hell for Ray too. The reason Ray had become the Atom was because he wanted to make a difference and Thawne had clearly known that. Being a janitor at STAR Labs was the complete antithesis of being a superhero. Ray was totally powerless and unable to even help Rip get out of this jail cell.

"You are something more," said Rip. "I promise you. You just don't remember it." He sighed, feeling sore and tired. "I'm sorry, I don't think I'm up to telling you more about the Atom tonight."

"I could tell you a story, for a change," said Ray, turning back towards Rip. "I had this dream last night and it was kind of like the stories that you've been telling me, but there was a new character, a guy who could turn into metal."

Rip's eyes widened for a moment. This was an interesting development. "You're remembering Nate Heywood, Steel. That's his superpower. You gave it to him, actually."

"I did?" asked Ray.

"Yes, you created a formula which gave him the ability to heal and turn into metal. He was a haemophiliac but you cured him and gave him his powers as a side effect."

"I dreamed that we were fighting Japanese samurai and the Atom lost his suit," said Ray.

"Why don't you tell me about it? Start from the beginning?" said Rip, and Ray did. Rip listened with amusement to an account of one of the missions that he'd missed whilst he was away. He fell asleep to the sound of Ray's voice, anchoring himself to the familiar tones and letting himself use it as a source of comfort.

Ray was concerned about Rip. He always was to be honest, but a new round of torture had started at the beginning of the week and this seemed to be hitting his friend hard. Rip wouldn't say what they'd done this time and he could hardly speak from the pain that he was in anyway. There were nights when they didn't return him to his cell and Ray didn't like to think what was happening to him. Ray studiously cleaned Rip's cell so that he always had somewhere spotless to recover, but Ray constantly felt inadequate and like he was colluding with Rip's captors by doing nothing. However, every time he suggested trying anything to rescue Rip, the prisoner told him firmly that he was not to even try because it was too dangerous.

When Ray next visited, they had returned Rip to the cell with broken fingers on his right hand, possibly a broken arm, and probably done worse that Ray couldn't see. There were new bruises on his face.

"Do you want some water?" he asked, inadequately.

Rip gave a slight shake of his head as he took in another shuddering breath, eyes squeezed shut against the hurt. "Just… talk to me," he said in barely more than a whisper. "It helps… to know… not alone."

"I dreamt about something else last night," said Ray, trying to be upbeat for Rip. "I guess I've been spending so much time with you that you've started appearing in my dreams. Rip Hunter, a former Time Master, was one of four guardians of the Spear of Destiny…" He related to Rip the entire story, even though he didn't know what the ending was, but he'd probably dream it another night. Rip seemed amused by that. He waited with Rip while he fell into a shallow, disturbed sleep, and cursed himself again for not being brave enough to get his friend out of his prison.

The weird thing was that he was more and more getting the feeling that Rip wasn't living in a fantasy world, or telling him stories, it was rather the other way around. Ray was the one who was living the wrong life, and he'd had a strong urge to start tinkering with machines and building things. When he wasn't working or talking to Rip, he was usually playing video games and eating takeaway, and he knew he wasn't smart enough to invent things, but that didn't seem to stop him. Lately he'd started writing a list of parts for something he was calling a "transreality multiplexer".

It was a cool sounding name for a device that he hadn't yet discerned the purpose of, but he needed some magnets, and he knew where he could find them because he'd seen them in one of the labs. He intended on discussing his plan to steal the magnets with Rip because the guy seemed like he'd have some useful advice to offer, but he'd got distracted and forgotten the time. That evening he'd come to the cell later than usual to find Rip shivering violently, curled up on his side.

He knelt beside the glass.

"Rip…?"

Eyes with wide, black pupils opened and looked out at him. "I can't sleep," said Rip, shakily, "I keep trying, but they gave me something…" The shivers subsided for a moment.

"Drugs?" asked Ray.

Rip nodded, and then a violent shudder ran through his body. He groaned, clearly in some pain. "Sorry, not good company tonight."

"Hey, that's not really why I come down here," said Ray, pressing his hand to the glass. "I need some advice. I keep wanting to build stuff, and I don't know why or what it does. Do you think that's something to do with the Atom and all the other stuff you told me?"

Another shudder ran through Rip's body and he began to shiver again. He couldn't answer until the tremors had stopped again. Ray waited, unsure what to do and feeling like he should be able to help, but knew there wasn't anything he could do. Rip was on one side of the glass and he was on the other. He had no idea how to bypass the lock or what the code was, and even if he could open the door, alarms would sound and guards would come running.

"It could be," said Rip, his voice weak. "The Spear may not be perfect in its rearrangement of reality." He had to take a deep breath before continuing. "It is possible that there are minute cracks to be found." Then he stopped again as he tensed against another shudder. Whatever had been done to Rip wasn't getting any better. "The cracks in reality may be why you dream about your old life sometimes."

Ray nodded. He had no idea what Rip was really talking about but he could understand the idea that something was making him dream about being the Atom. At first, he'd assumed that it was just his brain feeding off Rip's stories about superheroes and time travel, but when he'd started dreaming about things that Rip hadn't told him about, that was when he began to wonder if there was more to it.

"So, I want to build something called a transreality multiplexer," said Ray. "My brain is telling me to build it, but I have no idea why. I think it's like ctrl-z for memories."

"Control zee?" asked Rip, between the shivers that were back again.

"That's the undo command on a computer," said Ray, waving a hand with excitement. "Why would I even need that?"

"To fix your memories," said Rip, lifting his head to look at Ray with sudden interest. "Build it," he said, firmly, and then rested his head back on the floor tiredly. He was still having trouble getting the words out between shivers. Ray could see that there was a slight dampness to Rip's skin and he looked wired, like he'd drunk too much strong coffee.

"Okay," said Ray. "I'll start collecting what I need."

The shivering slowed and Rip uncurled slightly with a relieved sigh.

"Ray, I'm going to give you some names. If these people come to you, ask them if they know what a Waverider is. If they do then they're friends. Don't trust them otherwise. Do you understand?"

Ray nodded. Something about this was sounding unusually final. Rip's tone was different.

"But I can bring them to you," said Ray.

Rip shook his head. "Too dangerous and I may not be around much longer. Thawne's getting increasingly frustrated with me."

"I'll find a way to get you out…" began Ray.

"No," said Rip, sharply. "You need to finish your project. Nothing else matters." Rip shuddered painfully. "You need to know these names. Repeat after me: Sara Lance, Jefferson Jackson, Martin Stein, Amaya Jiwe, Nate Heywood."

Ray repeated the names until Rip was satisfied that he had remembered them. Rip corrected him if he stumbled, stuttering as more tremors ran through his body. Ray had hoped the effects of whatever Rip had been dosed with would fade as the evening went on, but he was looking worse if anything.

"If you finish the transreality multiplexer…" said Rip, so tired now that he was barely audible through the glass of the cell. "If they don't come to you…" Again, he was prevented from finishing by a shudder that robbed him of the ability to speak. "You find them, Ray," he managed, breathing hard. "You go find them."

Rip gasped in pain as a spasm hit more violently than the previous ones.

"Rip?" asked Ray with concern.

"Nothing to be done," said Rip, his eyes trying to focus on Ray. There was resignation in his voice, but it turned to determination as he edged closer to the glass wall of his cell. He rolled over so that he could reach out a hand and put his fingertips on the glass. Ray matched it on the other side of the cell with his own hand. It was the closest he could come to offering any kind of comfort.

"Promise me," said Rip. His very breathing sounded pained. "No matter what… you protect yourself… stay alive… finish the project… find the names… fix this."

"But I can't just leave you like this…" said Ray.

"You can and you must," said Rip, emphatically. His body wanted to shiver again but he was fighting against it with all his being, eyes screwed shut at the effort. "I'm not important… you're important. You need to stay out of trouble… Promise me that you won't try to save me."

Ray hesitated in his reply, and Rip summoned strength from somewhere, although Ray couldn't fathom where. His eyes were open again and looking straight at Ray.

"Promise me!" he said, in what was probably supposed to be an emphatic shout, but was just louder and more forceful than his usual whisper.

Ray had tears in his eyes and he didn't care. "I promise, okay? I promise I'll finish the transreality multiplexer, and I promise I'll stay out of trouble." He closed his eyes as water escaped the edges of his eyelids. "I promise I'll find the people you told me about and I won't… I won't try to save you."

"Thank you," said Rip, with relief, giving in to the tremors again.

"But I'm not leaving," said Ray, stubbornly. "There's got to be something I can do for you. Get you water? Or something to eat?"

"Just… talk to me." Rip met Ray's eyes for a fleeting moment before he looked away. It wasn't the first time he'd asked him to do this small thing and Ray had always been happy to do it, because it was better than nothing.

Ray still had his palm pressed against the glass, even though Rip had brought his own hand back to wrap around his tortured body. He took a deep breath and began.

"Okay, so I dreamed a good one the other night. Did I tell you about how the Atom met the Green Arrow…?"

Ray talked until he had no voice, and Rip failed to sleep, because how could he when he was basically high and his muscles refused to rest. Rip described it as like his blood was buzzing with energy as it moved around his body, and his brain wouldn't slow down or be quiet. Ray's words helped quiet his brain enough for some respite, but he still couldn't actually rest. Eventually, he told Ray to leave and get some sleep, and Ray reluctantly did because they both knew there was nothing else useful that he could do. It wouldn't help Rip for Ray to be just as sleep deprived as his friend.

Ray went to work as usual in the morning, and had trouble concentrating on the task at hand. Suddenly mopping the floor didn't seem important. He was desperate to get the magnets that he needed and spend time working on his project until he could sneak into the pipeline and visit Rip. He knew he'd promised, and Ray believed in keeping promises, but he couldn't resist making the start of a plan to break Rip out. Maybe he'd get to put it into action if he found the names on Rip's list.

Rip was worse when Ray visited that night, and it went on for days. Rip was injected with the drug and then left in his cell to shiver and shudder, uncomfortably wired and unable to sleep. The number of hours he had been awake was growing worryingly. Ray didn't know how long the human body could be deprived of sleep, but he knew that it didn't feel good after even a couple of days, and Rip had already gone much longer than that. Every time Ray visited, his friend was less coherent, until he barely responded at all. Rip stared off into the distance and muttered, shivering and his muscles spasming as the drug coursed through his system.

Sometimes Ray thought he heard him say his name, but it was rare, and more often he heard him call out softly for someone called Jonas, or Miranda. Once he said that he was coming to join them and he almost sounded happy. It was only because it was so unusual that Ray took note. Ray visited every night and talked as much as he could. Even now, Rip still seemed to be listening sometimes and would reach out a hand to touch the glass, turn his head and make eye contact, before returning to wherever his mind had gone.

The only good thing in all of this was that he was progressing with his transreality multiplexer. He'd managed to appropriate the magnets that he needed for his mind-altering gun and he'd captured a rat, that he was calling Tesla, so that he could test the gun on it when he did get it finished. He just needed maybe another day or so to get it working and then he'd be done.

That night, he sat down outside Rip's cell as usual and was pleased to see that the man wasn't muttering or shivering today. His eyes were shut, but he was curled up on his side facing the glass wall of the cell.

"Hey, so I've got good news," said Ray, not really expecting to get an answer.

He was pleasantly surprised when Rip mumbled, "wish I could say the same."

"You're talking," said Ray. "I mean you're making sense."

"No drugs today," said Rip, "at least not that one." He pulled his arms around himself, as if he was cold. "Going to be a while before I can sleep. Still too high."

"Well, at least you'll be able to sleep once they're out of your system," said Ray.

"What was your good news?" asked Rip, eyes still shut. Ray noticed that he didn't agree.

"I've almost got the transreality multiplexer working," said Ray. "I reckon another day and it'll be finished."

Rip said nothing, a slight shudder running through him, although not as bad as it had been over the last few days.

"Rip?" asked Ray. "Did you fall asleep on me?" He was going to leave now if that was the case. It had been days since Rip had slept and he needed it more than anything else.

Rip muttered something to himself. He was still in the grips of the drug that he'd been given, but at least there seemed to be some lucidity breaking though.

"Sorry, I didn't catch that," said Ray.

"New game today," said Rip, seemingly unconnected to anything. "I think it might be worse."

"Rip?"

Rip's eyelids flew open and suddenly Ray realised what the new game was. Rip's eyes were both a milky grey where once there had been green irises and black pupils. Thawne had blinded his prisoner.

Ray let out a gasp of surprise.

"Rip, can you see?"

Rip shook his head. "They hurt."

He was shivering again, trembling, and Rip groaned as his muscles contracted involuntarily. Ray could see that Rip's eyes were shining with unshed tears, that he was rapidly blinking away. He didn't know if that was from pain or emotion, but it didn't really matter.

"Just… talk to me… please," said Rip, weakly. "I need to hear something."

Ray swallowed his own tears. Words spilled out, without much thought behind them. He just needed to talk to help his friend.

"It'll be okay. I just need one more day to finish the transreality multiplexer and then I'll be able to track down the names you gave me. Once I've done that I can come back and rescue you. Yeah, it'll be fine. I know I promised not to rescue you, but that was on my own, if I have help then it'll be good and I don't think that's breaking my promise. I'm the Atom, right? So I've got to be able to do it. Find the White Canary, Firestorm, Steel, Vixen… Okay, maybe I should just tell you another story…"

Rip was muttering to himself again, but Ray wasn't deterred. Rip had asked him to talk so he was going to talk. He started with the first story that Rip had ever told him and tried to fill in the bits that he'd seen in his dreams. He rambled on about the things that his brain was telling him to build that he'd never even heard of before, let alone known how to construct. He described the Atom's suit in excruciating detail and how he was considering doing cosplay of the Atom at the STAR Labs Christmas party this year. He didn't think he'd gone in previous years because he couldn't remember what he'd dressed up as.

Rip was incoherent and not responding again by the end of the night. He'd been lucky to get even the brief window of lucidity that he'd experienced he guessed. He sighed, hanging his head.

"Rip, I'm not sure what you can hear or understand, and I know I'm just a janitor and not very bright, but you have to hang in there for just another couple of days," said Ray. "I swear I'll have the gun finished by then. And whatever the hell it does, there's got to be a reason why my brain is telling me to build it. You said it was important that I finish it, so it has to be important. Just don't go anywhere before I can do whatever it is that I need to do, and fix this."

He looked at his friend's unseeing eyes and he wanted to scream and yell, but he didn't. He got to his feet.

"I'll be back tomorrow night no matter what," he said, and left to return to his basement den to get a few hours' sleep.

Mick Rory was not on the list of names, but two days later when Mick and Nate entered his basement domain just as he was taking a break from working on the reality gun, he realised he hadn't asked Rip what he did if they weren't on the list and asked him questions.

Mick uncovered his reality gun, which he'd hidden under a cloth just in case anyone wandered in whilst he was working. He'd been about to test the gun on the rat he'd captured, but he'd balked at hurting the animal at the last moment. He'd stopped to eat and play his favourite video game for half an hour just so that he could think out what his next move should be. It was too early to sneak into the pipeline to see Rip yet and the last couple of visits had been very one sided. After a very brief respite, probably because they needed him semi-coherent to question, they'd started injecting Rip with the insomnia drug again. Rip hadn't slept properly for seven days now, and Ray was feeling disheartened and impotent.

Then Mick had grabbed the gun and everything had turned into a chaotic descent into the rabbit hole. Ray now knew without a doubt that he was Dr Ray Palmer, the Atom, and he understood why Rip had made him learn the list of names and why Mick wasn't on the list, and why he deserved the punch Ray gave him. He knew what the Spear of Destiny was and why this world wasn't their world. Assassins arrived to attack them and there was some ineffectual fighting with Sara and Amaya. They managed to shoot Sara with the reality gun, but Amaya ran before they could use the gun on her too.

"The Legion will be on their way to kill us," said Nate.

"We can't go anywhere. We need to rescue Rip," said Ray, already casting around his workspace for the plan of STAR Labs that he'd hidden there.

"He's here?" asked Sara.

"Yeah, Thawne's been holding him in the pipeline and, er, torturing him for information. He's been trying everything to get him to break, and so far, he hasn't, but it's been months. He's barely hanging in there. I promised him that I'd finish the reality gun and find you all before I came to rescue him, but I don't think he has much time. He said that Thawne was getting frustrated with him," Ray finished.

"Shit," said Sara. "We're not equipped to be rescuing people from prisons."

"You may not be, but I am," said Mick. "Snart and I broke out of more jails than I can count."

"But Snart isn't here," said Sara. "Or at least not the right one."

"We were partners," said Mick. "I'm not just a pretty face. I'm an expert at being a criminal."

Sara gave a slight nod in concession to that with an affirmative raise of her eyebrows.

"He has a point," said Ray.

"What about Amaya?" asked Nate.

"Give me the gun. I'm going back for her," said Sara. "Hopefully no one will have noticed that I'm not still under the Legion's control and I can get to Amaya before she tells anyone what's going on. While I'm gone, you guys need to find us somewhere that we can hide, and plan how we break Rip out of jail."

"Sara, we can't leave Rip here," said Ray, "Thawne's torturing him and he's suffering."

"I understand that, Ray," said Sara, "but it won't do him any good if we get captured too, and with Amaya we'll have a better chance of pulling this off."

"You don't understand," said Ray, with both exasperation and desperation. "They gave him drugs, he can't sleep and he's blind. They broke bones. He should be in a hospital, not a cell."

Sara's expression showed her anger at Ray's word. It wasn't directed at Ray, he knew that much. She closed her eyes for a moment, and shook her head.

"No, we still have to do it this way. If Thawne finds out that we're getting the band back together then he'll either add security or just kill Rip," said Sara. "We have to stop Amaya from going back to Darhk."

Ray sighed sadly, but nodded with understanding. "Okay, but we have to come back tonight. We can't let them have him for another day."

Sara nodded. "Agreed. Thawne is going to regret hurting one of ours. Now, where are we going to meet up."

"I've got an idea," said Nate, and gave Sara the address of a house in a suburb of Central City.

Several hours later, Sara had recovered Amaya, reaching her just minutes before she was about to enter Damien Darhk's headquarters. So far, they were working on the assumption that Darhk was accepting their story that Mick had given them the slip with Nate and they were giving chase.

The team were stood in Nate's Mom's basement, where Nate was apparently living. It looked very much like Nate had furnished his flat with his Mom's cast-off furniture and everything seemed to be either beige or brown. He'd been running a conspiracy theory blog and stumbled across the same scars in reality that had prompted Ray to build the transreality multiplexer. Thawne had ordered Mick and Snart to kill him, but luckily Mick had refused, turning against Snart and fleeing with Nate. Mick's next stop had been Ray, figuring that if anyone could fix things then it would be Ray. Thanks to Rip shaking his memories loose, Ray had built exactly what was required to help them.

They had the plan of STAR Labs laid out on the table, and Mick was going over exactly how to break a person out of jail.

"How bad is he?" asked Mick, not beating around he bush. "Is he going to be able to walk out of there? Run? Fight?"

Ray shook his head. "He's too weak and they broke his hand, plus some ribs I think, maybe his arm too. He was guarding his left side, so I don't know what other injuries he has. He never wanted to talk about what they did to him. I think he was trying to protect me, or other, amnesiac me, anyway. I wasn't exactly smart and he was worried that I'd try to rescue him on my own."

Sara put a hand on Ray's shoulder, seeing the distress that just talking about it caused him.

"That's not good," said Amaya. "We'll have to carry him out and we could make his injuries worse."

"Plus, we've got no facilities to treat him with when we do get him out," said Sara.

"It's not like they're treating him now," said Ray. "We need the Waverider, and Gideon. My Atom suit would be useful too."

"Yeah, but we've got no idea where the ship is, or your suit," said Sara. "Come on, focus. One problem at a time. How do we get Rip out of the pipeline?"

Mick pointed to an area on the map. "Haircut can get in and out, and get us uniforms. He just needs to open this door and let us in. Scramble the cameras. Then we bypass the alarm and lock on the cell, grab the Englishman and run. Easy."

Nate shook his head. "Except none of us have our powers, and that place is crawling with Thawne's security guards. And we still need to get Jax and Martin after we've got Rip. As soon as the Legion work out what we're doing, they're either going to put more guards on Jax and Martin or kill them."

"Nah," said Mick, "Thawne's got them working on some top-secret project. The Professor's too important to be killed yet."

"Well, I suppose that's something," said Amaya, "but that doesn't help Jax."

"Then we split up. Amaya and Nate will go for Jax and the Professor with the reality gun. Mick, Ray, and I – we'll get Rip out of there. We'll meet up back here and then we'll deal with getting the Spear."

"Hey, Blondie," said Mick, looking at Sara with deadly serious eyes. "Snart had four rules when it came to plans: make the plan, execute the plan, expect the plan to go off the rails, throw away the plan. Expect the plan to go off the rails, Blondie."

Sara nodded with the slightest of smiles. "Got it. Good advice. Let's go get our people."

Ray would have been the first to admit that he didn't think the plan would work. However, he should have known by now not to underestimate Mick or Sara. Getting in went smoothly and he grabbed some janitor uniforms from the locker room for his team mates. He let them in the side door after quickly disabling the cameras by putting them into a loop. He was never more glad to have his quick intellect back, he desperately needed it to get Rip out of the pipeline.

If this worked then they wouldn't encounter any guards. It was late enough in the evening that the patrols were less now, and Ray knew the routes really well. He'd spent several months dodging them so that he could visit Rip unnoticed. He led Mick and Sara the same path now and down to the pipeline.

He felt nerves begin to set in as they reached Rip's cell. His mind was taking him to places that he'd been trying to avoid thinking about. His worst nightmare was that they'd arrive to find Thawne had simply decided to kill his prisoner or that Rip would be maimed beyond repair. He approached the glass of the cell and could at least see that Rip was curled on his side and breathing. His eyes were shut, but he was facing towards the glass. He was trembling, which probably meant he was dealing with the effects of the insomnia drug again.

"Hey, Rip," said Ray, just like the hundred other times he'd been here. He had no idea if he'd get a response. The last time he'd visited Rip, his team mate had been too out of it to respond. "The transreality multiplexer worked. I found the names on the list," he added. "We're going to get you out of here."

Rip stirred, he shuffled towards the glass and reached out a hand to touch the transparent door of his prison. He opened his unseeing eyes and blinked.

"Ray?" he asked, weakly.

"Yeah, I'm here, with Sara and Mick," said Ray.

Rip shook his head, and tried to push himself away from the front of the cell. "Not on the list."

"I know, but he's on our side, I promise," said Ray. He went to the keypad and began removing the faceplate and rewiring it.

"I made a horrible mistake," said Mick. "We're going to fix this mess."

"It's going to be okay, Rip," said Sara, but the man she was talking to didn't reply. He just stared into the distance. "Ray, as quick as you can," she said, glancing at the inventor, but her eyes were mainly on Rip. She was taking in the swollen, broken fingers, carefully held arm, the winces at even the slightest movement, the milky eyes and shivering.

Ray knew that she wasn't really asking if he was working as fast as he could, but telling him that she was worried without saying that out loud. She didn't want Rip to know that she was concerned.

"I'm on it," he said.

It took a couple of tense minutes, but finally the door swung open. Sara was the first to step inside and it was clear that she didn't know what to do. She knelt on the floor beside Rip.

"Hey there," she said, her tone reassuring and light. "Ready to get out of here?"

He didn't answer.

Ray could see that she wanted to touch Rip, to offer reassurance, but he was already flinching away. It was hard to even know where he could be touched without it causing him more pain. Ray stepped forwards, kneeling besides Sara.

"Rip, I know that moving you is going to hurt, and I'm really sorry to cause you more pain, but we have to get you out of here," said Ray.

"Ray," murmured Rip, holding out his good hand as he'd done to touch the glass before. Ray realised what he wanted and he touched his fingers to Rip's.

"Yeah, this is really happening. It's not just lack of sleep, we're really here," said Ray.

Rip let out a sigh of relief, and gave them a nod. "Glad… you could… make it."

He appeared to collect himself and much to Ray's amazement, he moved. He put his better arm on the ground and attempted to push himself up. The look on his face was determined, and by some miracle he managed to sit up, although he wobbled dangerously, and Ray attempted to ignore the small, rapidly suppressed, noises of pain that he made. Apparently Rip Hunter was as tough as nails, but he'd always suspected that might be the case.

"Rip, I'm really not sure this is a good idea…" began Ray.

"You're a stubborn ass," said Sara, butting in, and putting a hand on Rip's shoulder to stop him falling sideways. Rip flinched away from her initially but seemed to force himself to allow the contact.

"Had to be," said Rip. "Don't think I can stand. Sorry." A shuddering wave passed through his body, which nearly had him on the floor again, but Sara steadied him.

Ray looked over to Mick.

"Can you carry him?" he asked.

"No other option, Haircut," said Mick, an unusually dark look in his eyes. "Sorry, English."

Mick hoisted Rip over his shoulder, and Rip cried out, biting down on the exclamation as he breathed rapidly.

"Rip?" asked Ray.

"…'m fine," he managed to get out through clenched teeth, but he was blinking quickly. This wasn't at all comfortable for him. Ray suspected that he might have passed out but the drugs were working to keep him awake still.

"Let's get moving," said Sara. "We'll get Rip medical attention once we're not in the bad guy's lair."

Ray nodded, and he was about to move out when Rip called his name in the loudest voice he could manage.

"Ray, your suit," said Rip, falling over the words. "It's here."

"It is?" asked Ray.

"I saw it. One of the side labs in sector B," said Rip. His body trembled, and again his jaw tensed as if he was trying not to yell.

Ray looked at Sara. Rip had just expended energy, energy that he really didn't have, telling them this information.

"No," said Sara, "we don't have time."

"Waverider," said Rip, in little more than a whisper. "Waverider too."

"Are you saying that the Waverider's here?" asked Sara. "How is that even possible?" Rip didn't respond, because the shivering had overtaken him again.

"Sara…" began Ray.

"No," replied the assassin. "Rip's in no shape for us to be making detours."

"But it's hardly out of our way at all," said Ray. "And the Waverider has the medical facilities we're going to need."

Sara sighed. "Mick, get Rip to the rendezvous point. I'll take Ray to get his suit and maybe we can get a lead on the Waverider."

Mick nodded, and walked smartly away with Rip. Sara and Ray continued onwards down the corridor, and at about that moment two guards entered the same corridor and two seconds after that they were noticed. Luckily, Sara Lance was every inch the assassin she'd been trained to be and five seconds after they'd been spotted, the two guards were down, and one of them had been shocked with his own stun baton. Ray was indecently amused by that when he realised that it was the guard who had done the same thing to Rip all those weeks ago.

Ray helped Sara pull them into an empty cell and then grabbed one of their radios.

"We'll keep ahead of their patrols this way," he said to Sara.

She nodded. "Good thinking. Let's get your suit and get out of here."

Rip was awake, but he wasn't aware of much. He couldn't see and his brain could barely discern that there were voices around him that were his team. Everything faded in and out, like someone was playing with a volume control in his head. There were drugs in his system that made his blood feel like it was full of swarms of bees and stopped him from resting. He hadn't slept for days, and mere tiredness no longer described what he was feeling.

There had been carrying, and travelling, and then he'd been placed quite carefully on a bed.

"On his front," said someone. Possibly Ray. Yes, definitely Ray. "Thawne flogged him. His back must be painful."

Ray was right about that. Every shiver pulled his healing scars and jarred his broken bones. Unfortunately, Ray didn't know about the cracked ribs and the burns on his torso. He squirmed, trying to get back onto his right side, which at least didn't put direct pressure on his wounds. He eventually made it, although was worn out from the effort.

There were hands and he couldn't see anything that touched him. He shied away from the attention, trying to move again, quite unsuccessfully this time. He didn't know what was going on and he was scared. His befuddled brain wouldn't supply any answers.

"Can't see," he muttered. "Stop!" He really hoped Ray was there and would understand. The hands were withdrawn.

"Rip, it's okay. I'm going to tell you everything that we're going to do before we do it. I'm going to touch your good hand okay, just so that you know I'm here. We'll try not to startle you again," said Ray.

"Okay," mumbled Rip. He really wished he wasn't trapped in the dark, unable to even see who else was here with him. He tried not to flinch as he felt fingers touch his own, and instead he gripped them like a lifeline. It was good to be touched by someone who didn't mean him harm.

Ray was talking again, but he'd missed the first part of whatever he'd said while his mind wandered.

"You were drugged and that needs to leave your system. Then you'll be able to sleep, which is the most important thing. We're working on getting you back to the Waverider, but for now you need to tell us where you hurt."

And now he hadn't listened to the last part. His concentration was non-existent at the moment. Ray repeated himself again. "Rip, where do you hurt? Can you tell us?"

He tried to take stock. He didn't think "everywhere" was the most useful answer.

"Back, left side, head, eyes, chest, right hand, arms, ankle," he tried. He realised that was nearly everywhere. He had a headache that had been building over the past few days and it wasn't helping him to think any more clearly. He desperately wanted to sleep, but he knew he wouldn't be able to.

"We need to take a look," said Ray. "It's just me and Martin. We're going to cut off your jumpsuit rather than try to get it over your injured arm and hand. We'll be as gentle as we can."

"I'm going to start to undo your buttons," said Martin.

Rip gave the merest of nods to let them know he'd understood, and again, he tried to not flinch away as he felt Martin's hands begin on the buttons. He knew what was about to be revealed and he suddenly felt embarrassed. Why had he let people do this to him? He should have been stronger and escaped. He wondered if he'd even tried, and he couldn't remember.

He concentrated on Ray's hand on his, as his brain gave up paying attention to what was going on and drifted away again into weird, dreamlike thoughts. He desperately needed sleep, he couldn't focus on anything for more than a few seconds at a time, and his memory was like swiss cheese. He kept losing time and coming to awareness again having missed something that was being said. Ray was repeating himself a lot, but he still wasn't always able to catch what was being said.

He felt something metal and cold against the skin of his arm. Suddenly a wave of anxiety washed over him. He let out a worried whimper, without really intending to.

"Just scissors to cut the fabric," said Ray. "That's all. It's okay."

Rip was vibrating, partly with fear and partly from the drugs that were probably leaving his system by now.

"Dear god," said Martin.

He'd just found the marks that Rip had been hiding beneath the jumpsuit. The barely healed lash wounds on his back, and the excruciatingly painful burns that Thawne had inflicted on his chest and abdomen.

"Mr Rory," Martin called. "I think we need your expertise."

Rip shook his head, but he didn't think anyone paid any attention, because Mick's gravelly tones were approaching. He was wrong, though, because Ray spoke.

"Mick's just going to look at the burns. He's the best person to do this, I promise. He's not even going to touch you, just look."

Rip could smell Mick's distinctive smoky odour as he got close and probably looked him over.

"Looks like they were cleaned," said Mick. "I guess Thawne didn't want him dying. Some of them could be chemical, most look like contact burns, ones on his arms are electrical. They'll hurt and scar, but I've seen worse." He heard the creak of Mick's jacket as he moved. "They'll need cleaning again and bandaging."

Rip shook his head. He remembered the cleaning being more painful than the initial torture. "No, please, don't."

There was silence around him for a moment.

"We have to stop them from getting infected," said Martin.

"We'll be gentle," said Ray. "Take it slowly and you can tell us if it gets too much. Hopefully we can give you some painkillers to help with the pain too."

He attempted to squeeze Ray's hand, trying to hang on to anything that would keep him grounded in reality and stop him from disappearing into the darkness inside his head.

"His back is of equal concern," said Martin.

"Might want to check those bruises too," said Mick. "Could be broken ribs."

"When did you become a medical expert?" asked Martin.

"Can't exactly go to the hospital when you're on the run from the law," said Mick. "Had to know a few basics to stay alive. If they're not broken then they're definitely cracked."

Rip was fairly certain they weren't broken, because they didn't hurt enough, but his brain was refusing to remain present enough to communicate anything other than fear and pain. He was already drifting away again. The darkness was making it hard to anchor himself anywhere and he felt like he was floating away from his body, unable to stay tethered.

He was brought back to clarity by a sharp pain in his hand. Someone was touching his broken hand and he attempted to withdraw it back to his body, but had forgotten that his arm was also fractured. He couldn't help but cry out.

"Sorry!" said a familiar voice. It was Ray again. His one constant in all of this. Ray, with his good heart, who had sat with him all those nights. He suddenly felt guilty for yelling and being ungrateful for his help. "I won't touch it again. We'll wait until we can give you some painkillers."

"What are you doing over here?" asked an angry female voice. "You're supposed to be assessing his injuries and helping him, not causing him more pain."

"Sara?" murmured Rip, but it was so quiet he was probably the only person who heard. He wondered if she was angry because someone had hurt him. It sounded that way. He wished he could feel something about that, but his emotions were strangely monochromatic. All the good feelings had disappeared and he was just left with unhappiness and being afraid.

"Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to assess his injuries without causing him some additional pain," said Martin. "We can't even give him any painkillers until the drugs leave his system. Not that we have any that would be strong enough to do anything more that blunt the edge."

"We're going to need proper medical supplies," said Ray. "Things to splint his broken arm and fingers, antiseptic and bandages to keep his cuts and burns clean. And some proper painkillers that will actually give him some respite from all of that. We can't properly assess the breaks in his fingers because it hurts him too much if we touch them."

Sara sighed. "Okay, I'll send Mick and Amaya, to the nearest medical facility. Hopefully they can break into a store room or something and get what we need. Martin, give me a list."

"Of course," said Martin.

"Sara?" asked Rip, again, still several steps behind what was going on.

There was shuffling and the sound of someone getting down to his level. He presumed she was sat beside the bed, probably on the floor.

"Hey, Rip," she said. "Are you back with us?"

"Tired," was all he managed to say.

"I know," said Sara, "but just a little longer and you'll be able to sleep. You're not trembling as badly so I think the drug's leaving your system."

Rip nodded.

"Can I touch you?" she asked.

Again, he managed a nod. He felt her hand lightly touch his cheek and brush his hair away from his face. Perhaps she was examining the cut on his forehead. He felt her lean in and he could smell the pleasant scent of her skin and hair. He wished more than anything that he could see her.

"You're going to be okay, I'm going to make sure of it," she said.

"Everyone else?" he asked, unable not to worry about the team.

"We're all here and we're fine. Mick found Nate and Ray, after he decided that he'd picked the wrong side, and then I went after him and they used the gun on me. Amaya nearly got to Darhk, but I got her with the reality gun in time. Nate and Amaya collected Jax and Martin without a hitch. Apparently, Martin tried to go for some kind of alarm, but Amaya's deadly accurate with the reality gun. Then they stopped Thawne from building his incinerator. He was going to destroy the Spear, but Jax and the Professor made sure that he has to start from the beginning again. It'll take him a while to get back to where he was and hopefully we can grab the Spear before then."

He leaned into her touch, enjoying it as a distraction from the constant pain and misery. He didn't really understand what she was saying because he was drifting again. He was dreaming with his eyes open, sinking into the darkness of hallucinated lights and shapes, no longer aware of the real world at all.

Sara sighed as Rip seemed to disconnect and he muttered incoherently. She reluctantly removed the hand from his cheek and stood.

"He needs sleep, desperately," said Martin, pinching the bridge of his nose. "And unless we can get him to the Waverider, there's nothing we can do except wait it out. People have died from severe lack of sleep and he can't be far from the threshold. Not only that but sleep deprivation weakens the immune system, slows healing and makes injuries more painful. That isn't going to help." The fact that there was very little he could do for Rip was clearly upsetting Martin.

Rip was still clutching Ray's hand as if his life depended on it, and Sara was aware that Ray's presence had given him hope whilst he'd been locked in Thawne's jail cell. It seemed to at least calm him and help him to stay with them. Sara had no idea who Rip would be when he came out the other side of this. Torture did subtle things to strong people that went beyond simple physical injuries and pain. She had her own experience to draw upon and she knew what it was like to think that you'd never escape a cell or be your own person again. However, what Thawne had done to Rip was specifically targeted at his mind and Sara wondered if they'd ever get their Rip back to who he was before all this. She worried that this was one psychological trauma too many after losing his family, then his mind to the Legion, and now tortured with pain, sleep deprivation and drugs.

Martin was scribbling on a piece of paper. He handed Sara his list and she looked down it, checking the contents. It seemed reasonable. The painkillers and other drugs would be the hardest things to come by, but she had faith in the thieving abilities of Mick Rory.

Sara assessed the situation. The group had a number of problems. Rip was the most pressing of those. His injuries were severe, but she hoped not immediately life threatening now that they'd got him out of the pipeline. The pain that he was in was clearly more than he could bear though, and they couldn't continue to let him suffer. Medical care for their former Captain was a high priority. However, equally pressing was that they also had to deal with the fact that Thawne still had the Spear and was the only man who knew how to use it.

On the flip side, they now had a couple of assets. Following Rip's directions, Sara and Ray had found the Atom suit and, in the same room, a miniaturised Waverider. At first Sara had assumed that it was just a very good model, but Ray believed that Thawne had used the suit to shrink the ship. To be honest, it wasn't even the weirdest thing that Sara had dealt with this week, so she'd grabbed the model and ran. The fly in the ointment was that in the process of miniaturising the Waverider, Thawne had damaged the suit. Shrinking something that large had overloaded it, and it would need to be repaired before they could restore the Waverider.

Ray had started work on fixing the suit but Rip was so anxious without him that he'd had to break off to calm him down and help Martin. Jax was building something to see if he could contact Gideon, because she should still be working, even on a miniaturised ship. If they could talk to Gideon then she might be able to help with their other problems and talk them through some better medical care for Rip. Meanwhile, Nate was trying to identify the incantation used to activate the Spear, with Mick and Amaya pitching in to help him, with the hopes that they could end this entire thing.

"Mick, Amaya," said Sara, going over to where the others were discussing the manuscript and incantation to activate the Spear. "I need you to go to a hospital or somewhere they'll have these supplies." She handed Amaya Stein's note.

"Easy money," said Mick. "Hospitals have less security than banks."

Amaya nodded. "He has a point." She looked over to Nate. "Do you know where the nearest place is that might have this stuff?"

Nate nodded. "Yeah, there's a medical centre just down the road. I can give you directions."

Amaya, Nate and Mick went over how to get to the medical centre, and the pair left to do what was required. Sara would have liked to have joined them, but she didn't want to leave the team right now. Ray was talking quietly to Rip, although she doubted whether he knew if Rip could hear him. It did seem to calm him when they talked to him, but Ray's voice was going and they really needed him to work on his suit.

Sara wandered over to Rip's bedside and put a hand on Ray's shoulder.

"Hey, let me have a turn," said Sara. "I know that you were there for him when he was in the pipeline, but, right now, your time would be better spent fixing your suit."

Ray shook his head. "That's just it, I wasn't there when he needed me. I should have got him out of there weeks ago. He was coherent then. He was hurt, but at least he was still talking and telling me stories. I don't know how to help him with this. He probably prodded my memory enough that I was able to build the reality gun, which is why we're all standing here and not still sheep doing what the Legion wanted. And I can't help but feel that I let him down."

"If you'd tried to break him out on your own then you'd just have ended up getting caught and put in the cell next to his," said Sara.

"That's kind of what he said." Ray looked down at Rip, sadly. "I just couldn't think properly. I couldn't come up with a plan or even a way to open the cell door, at least not until Mick used the gun on me."

"There's a reason that Rip assembled a crew with two certified geniuses on it," said Sara. "You're a smart guy, Ray, and it must have been hard for you to be less than that, but it's time to move on. We've got to deal with the present, and our best chance for helping Rip and getting the Spear is to get back to the Waverider. That means you have to fix the suit."

Ray nodded. "I know. It's just that I feel it's my turn to help him, after he kept me going and got me to build the gun. He even made me remember all of your names so that I could go and find you if you didn't come to me. I don't think he expected to make it out of there."

"But he did, and we're taking good care of him. We'll get him through this," said Sara. "Now go on. I need you working on the suit. I've got this, I promise."

Ray gently put Rip's hand down on the bed, and got to his feet. Rip moaned at the loss of contact, and he moved restlessly.

"Tell him a story. He likes ones with superheroes," said Ray, and moved away to his Atom suit.

Sara's mouth turned up at the corners in something that wasn't quite a smile. "Have I ever told you the story of how Taer Al-Safer left the League of Assassins and came back to her family in Star City?" She paused, as if he might reply. "No? Then I guess we'd better start at the beginning. Once upon a time in Nanda Parbat…"

Rip's fingers twitched, reaching out towards her. The meaning was clear. She touched her fingers to his and he grasped them.

"Go on," he said, his voice rough and so quiet she could hardly hear him. "Sounds… like a good one…"

She smiled at him, even though he couldn't see her. She gave his hand a small squeeze.

"Good to know that you're still in there, Rip," said Sara. "As I was saying, once upon a time in Nanda Parbat, Taer Al-Safer decided that it was time to return home after six years in the wilderness…"

Rip was sleeping, finally. It had taken several more hours of stories before he'd been able to close his eyes and sleep, exhaustion knocking him out completely. One moment he'd been blinking his blind eyes at Sara's latest tale of the exploits of the Canary, and then the next he'd closed his eyelids and been out cold. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Martin expected that he'd sleep for hours, perhaps even days at this stage.

Ray had been having trouble concentrating on his suit, but now that Rip was sleeping he was doing better. A lot of the circuitry was fried, but he'd managed to improvise some replacements by taking apart a digital radio that he'd found in the basement flat. Sara had a feeling that Nate might not be too pleased about that when he finally noticed, but Ray needed the parts and getting his suit functioning was a priority.

Jax whooped with joy as he finished building his device to talk to Gideon on the Waverider. Sara had just finished gently tucking a blanket around Rip's lower half, when she heard Gideon's voice.

"It is good to hear from you, Mr Jackson," said Gideon. "I have been quite concerned about all of you. The Waverider appears to be somewhat smaller than it was."

"It's good to hear you too," said Jax. "We're working on a way to get you back to full size, but right now we've got a medical issue that we're hoping you can help with. Thawne hurt Rip and we need to know how to help him until we can get him back on board the Waverider. Can you channel the medical scanners through your forward sensor array and scan him?"

"That should be possible," she replied, "but I am low on power. Perhaps you could sit the Waverider in a sunny location for a moment, while I perform the necessary reroutes. My solar panels should be able to recharge my batteries sufficiently."

Jax nodded and put the Waverider on the windowsill for a few minutes, while he went to help Ray with his suit repairs. A little later it rose into the air and flew around the room, as both Ray and Jax cheered and clapped. The team were like a bunch of kids at times.

"Okay, now we're getting somewhere," said Jax.

"Indeed, Mr Jackson. Allow me to scan Captain Hunter," said Gideon's voice, through the external speakers.

The Waverider went over to Rip, who was lying on his side on Nate's bed in the corner of the room. It hovered over him and a blue light played across Rip as it scanned him.

"Captain Hunter has a number of injuries," said Gideon. "Shall I list them?"

Sara nodded. "Yes, we're going to need to know so that we can treat him," she said with resignation, aware that she wouldn't like what she was going to hear.

"Mild concussion, laceration to the forehead, chemical burns to corneas, lenses and conjunctiva of both eyes resulting in damage to retinas and blindness, hairline fracture of the left humerus, two sharp force trauma wounds to right shoulder, fracture of the right ulna and radius, electrical burns to both forearms, multiple fractures of the proximal and intermediate phalanges of the right hand, multiple lacerations to the back, damage to the left latissimus dorsi muscles, chipped spinous processes of T5 and T6, multiple burns to the chest, multiple chemical burns to the chest, lung damage suggestive of suffocation, three cracked ribs on the left side, multiple instances of deep tissue bruising, sprain to right ankle, dehydration, and slight malnutrition."

Sara looked down at Rip and for the first time in a long while, felt like crying. The others in the room were awkwardly silent, but Ray in particular looked like he might actually be ill. Gideon seemed to have come to the end of the injuries. However, after a short pause she added something else.

"Trace amounts of two separate drugs are also present in his system, and his brain chemistry is dangerously out of balance."

"He couldn't sleep, Gideon. Thawne tortured him by giving him drugs that kept him awake," said Sara.

"That would explain the imbalances that are present. Adrenalin levels and other indicators suggest that he is also experiencing high levels of pain," said Gideon. "Given his injuries this is not unexpected. However, with the unknown compounds currently present in his system, and without the facilities of medbay to remove them from his body or analyse them further, I would suggest waiting two more hours before administering painkillers."

Gideon sounded quite upset at that idea, but until they could get the Waverider back to normal size there wasn't much they could do. In fact, until Amaya and Mick returned, they didn't even have any painkillers to offer Rip. At least he probably was getting some respite now that he was asleep.

"Is there anything you can do for him, Gideon?"

"Unfortunately, only my medical scanners are operational outside medbay," replied the AI.

Rip stirred, restlessly, moaning uncomfortably.

"Hey, don't wake up now," said Sara, gently. "You need more sleep than that."

Ray looked up from where he was working. "Talk to him again. It really seems to help."

"Why don't you have a rest?" said Martin. "I think it might be my turn."

Sara nodded. "Be my guest, Martin." Her voice was getting a bit tired.

She vacated the chair that she'd been sat in and let Martin have it.

"I'm not sure that I can match Ms Lance's exciting adventures, but let me tell you about how Ronnie Raymond and I once saved the world with a little help from the Flash…"

Rip seemed to quieten down as he heard Martin's voice begin the story.

Sara vaguely listened in as she made herself a cup of coffee and ate some sandwiches. Martin may have been a little more into the scientific details than Sara had been, but the story of how Firestorm had helped the Flash close a breach, was still quite exciting, and, of course, it had a rather sad ending. Although losing Ronnie wasn't where Martin concluded the tale. Instead he went on to include the first time he met Jax and how he'd been sceptical that he was the right partner for him.

"Between you and me, Captain Hunter," said Martin, with a glance in Jax's direction, "I am very glad that it was Jefferson who was compatible. I could not wish for a better partner. So, whilst I miss Ronald and will forever remember him, Jefferson is a worthy successor in every way."

Jax gave a small laugh. "Yeah, yeah, and flattery will get you nowhere, Grey."

Amaya and Mick returned with the medical supplies soon after that, and Gideon said that enough time had passed that they could give Rip something to help with the pain. Unfortunately, that wasn't the only thing that had to be dealt with and Martin, Nate and Amaya started the delicate process of splinting Rip's broken bones. Even with the painkillers, Rip moaned in his sleep as they uncurled his swollen fingers. Sara suspected that if he hadn't been deeply asleep, under the influence of some strong pain medication, and so much in need of the rest then he might have come around at all the prodding, but he didn't and she was grateful for small mercies. Gideon gave them permission to increase the painkiller dose to the maximum safe amount and they continued.

Rip awoke to the sound of arguing. This wasn't unusual. The team always argued and often he had to step in to sort it out. He frowned and realised that he could hear the team arguing. He could hear the team arguing. Which meant that he wasn't in a cell in the pipeline anymore.

A quick check made him realise that he was still lying on his right side, but his broken fingers wouldn't move, nor would his fractured arm. They were strapped and immobilised, and it felt like his arm was tied up. Bad memories came flooding back, and he panicked. He couldn't see. He was groggy and his thoughts weren't exactly ordered. He tried to pull his arm free, but that sent a wave of pain shooting through him and he couldn't help but yell. The arguing ceased immediately.

"Rip! Woah, stop," said a voice. "Hey, it's okay. You're safe."

He shook his head and tried desperately move away, but he was weak and his chest hurt when he breathed or moved, and his back pulled painfully. Even though the pain was dull and less than it had been in some time, any movement seemed to bring it flaring back to previous levels.

"Rip!" the voice said again, and a hand was grabbing his good one. "It's Ray. You need to calm down or you're going to hurt yourself. We got you out. You're not in the pipeline."

He turned his eyes towards the sound of the voice, stilling his movements. "Ray?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm here. You're going to be okay. We're working on getting you back to the Waverider and then Gideon will be able to fix you," said Ray.

Rip let out a relieved sigh. "Sorry," he said, relaxing. "I'm… feeling a little strange."

"You still need more sleep," said another voice, this one female. "And we gave you a lot of painkillers, basically the most that Gideon would let us."

"Sara?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied, "and Martin, Jax, Nate, Amaya and Mick. We're all here."

He wished he could see their faces. "Where am I? How long have I been out?"

"You're in Nate's Mom's basement, where Nate has been living. Don't ask. It's been about a day since we got you out of the pipeline, but you've probably slept for about eighteen hours now," said Sara. "You really needed it."

"Why can't I move my arm?" asked Rip.

"We splinted it and then we strapped it across your chest," said Ray. "We were a bit worried that it would hurt worse to do that with your, uh, other injuries, but we had to immobilise it so that the broken bone didn't cut an artery or something."

"Ah," said Rip. "Thawne was quite thorough in his approach to my questioning. I very much appreciate the painkillers."

"Do you feel up to drinking some water?" asked Ray. "You're a bit dehydrated and even with Gideon instructing us, we can't put in an IV."

Rip nodded. "I am thirsty."

"Okay, we're going to help you up a bit so you can drink more easily. Nate and I are going to touch you," said Ray.

"Right," said Rip, appreciating the warning. He was still unnaturally afraid and he didn't think he could cope with anyone putting a hand on him without knowing it was going to happen.

Slowly and gently Ray and Nate positioned Rip so that he was more sat up but still resting against his good side. He began to tremble as they did it, his body recognising that touch led to pain. He had tensed and consciously had to relax into the pillows that were placed ready for him. His heart rate had gone up and he was trying hard not to be embarrassed by that. He took a couple of deep breaths which seemed to help.

"Glass and straw in front of you," said Sara, and he felt the straw bump his lips and he grabbed it with his teeth and sucked greedily. Sara was holding the glass for him, given her proximity.

"Not too much," said Martin, close by, but not as near as Sara. "Just sip it or you'll feel sick."

The straw was removed and he frowned, before it returned and he was able to sip more slowly this time until he'd had enough. He heard the sound of a glass being put down on a table.

"You can have some more in a minute. I'm going to take your hand," said Sara. "You're doing fine."

Rip gave a slight nod. He wasn't sure that he was doing fine. He was unbelievably tired and hated the permanent darkness that Thawne had driven him into. Gideon could probably fix his eyes, but the longer it was left the more difficult it would be. He remembered how his eyes had stung even days after Thawne had blinded him, and he preferred not to remember the act itself. They were surprisingly pain free now, but he suspected that was down to whatever medical care his team had been able to provide for him.

"What about the Spear?" he asked.

"Thawne still has it, but we stopped him from destroying it," said Sara.

"He's looking for other ways," said Rip, shivering at the memory. "He wanted to know about other artefacts associated with the crucifixion. He was particularly interested in the Crown of Thorns."

"The Crown of Thorns?" asked Nate. "As in the crown of thorns that Christ wore at his crucifixion?"

"The same," said Rip.

"If the Spear rewrites reality, what does the Crown do?" asked Sara.

"It allows you to control people's hearts and minds," said Rip. "It's perhaps not as powerful as the Spear, but it could cause a lot of trouble. However, I don't think he wants it for its powers."

"You don't?" asked Sara.

Rip heard Nate let out an exasperated sigh of realisation. He was on his left, behind his back. "Of course," said the Historian. "It will have trace amounts of Christ's blood on it."

"Which he could then sample and synthesise," said Martin. "He could manufacture the blood of Christ?"

"Would that even work?" asked Amaya, from somewhere near his feet.

"I don't know," said Rip. "But clearly Thawne thinks it would."

"So, where is it?" asked Ray.

Time seemed to slow for Rip. He'd spent weeks not answering that question as Thawne tortured him and he had desperately wanted to answer it, just to make the pain stop. He wouldn't even explain to Thawne that the Spear could not call the artefacts to it because the power of the Spear wouldn't work on other artefacts created at the crucifixion. He knew that even answering one question would open the door to more. His heart began to beat faster again as he was dragged back to the interrogation room. He closed his eyes, shaking his head and tried to put his hands out in front of himself but Sara held one hand and the other was strapped up. He panicked, his brain taking him to places he had no wish to be, and a sad whimper left his lips completely unbidden.

"Rip?" asked Ray. "It's okay, you don't have to answer," he added, rapidly. "I'm sorry, I didn't think. I'm sorry. I don't need to know. You don't need to tell me." Ray sounded distraught and Rip immediately felt guilt wash over him for upsetting his stalwart friend.

"Rip, you're okay," said Sara. "You're not in STAR Labs, you're here with us."

Rip shook with fear and tried to curl up, but that just pulled on his healing back and hurt him, reminding him of the pain of his torture.

"Please," he asked, weakly. "Don't. Please, stop."

"Oh, Rip," said Sara, but he didn't really hear her, he heard Thawne taunting him inside his head. He was remembering the smell of his own burning flesh and the pain that accompanied it.

"I won't give you the location," he said, voice breaking. "You won't win."

"He didn't," said Ray. "You won, Rip. It's over, we got you out."

"Ray?" asked Rip, his eyes searching the darkness for the friendly face of the STAR Labs janitor.

"Yeah, it's me," he said, his voice sounding a little strange.

"Talk to me, please," said Rip. "It helps."

"Did I ever tell you about how the Atom defeated Deathbolt with a little help from the Arrow?" asked Ray.

There was shuffling in front of him from the sound of it. The person who had been holding his hand was replaced by Ray. Rip recognised the calloused hands of his friend and he once again used Ray's voice as an anchor. He listened to the tale of how Ray had learnt how to fight using the Atom suit with the help of Team Arrow, and he let Ray's words help lull him into sleep.

The team moved away from Rip's bed, leaving Ray to calm him down as he seemed to still be the one that Rip responded to. No one was going to mention the tears in Ray's eyes, or that Rip and Ray now seemed to have a bond that they hadn't possessed before. Sara wasn't going to dwell on how it had come about.

"We need to know where the Crown of Thorns is," said Amaya. "We're going to have to ask him again to tell us."

Sara was already shaking her head. "You saw what just happened. That was a flashback," said Sara, with a gesture in Rip's direction. "He's spent the last few months being asked that question and hurt every time he didn't answer. He's recovering from severe injuries, he still hasn't had enough sleep to counteract the sleep deprivation, and Thawne blinded him. I'm amazed he's even talking, let alone managing to answer our questions coherently." She was trying to keep her voice down, because Rip did not need to hear any of this, but she needed to make her point. "I won't force him to answer. He protected that information with his life and it cost him. I won't hurt him further."

"Then what do we do?" asked Amaya.

"We go after the Spear," said Sara. "We know Thawne has it and we know it's in STAR Labs somewhere."

"But we still have to find it," said Nate, "although the good news on that front is that I'm fairly certain we've found the incantation to control the Spear. Mick recognised it anyway."

"Yeah, it was obvious when you read it out," said Mick.

"Well, at least that's something," said Sara.

"It still doesn't help us find the Spear," said Amaya.

Ray joined them, looking tired. "He's sleeping again. Probably for the best. I think he did realise he wasn't in the pipeline after a while, but he was half asleep by then." He looked at the others. "So… I'm going to work on the suit again. The sooner we can get him back to the Waverider the better. At least Gideon has better painkillers than we do and can start on healing him."

Gideon had suggested that it would take several sessions to heal Captain Hunter completely, and the sooner they got started the better. The tissue regenerators on the Waverider were miraculous but were taxing on an already ill person and had to be used carefully.

Martin nodded. "I had a discussion with Gideon about his prognosis. Most of his injuries can be healed, but she isn't certain that she can reverse his blindness, at least not completely. She suggested, at best, she could restore a range of vision which would still leave him legally blind by most modern definitions. The cost of protecting that information may well have been his eyesight."

Jax was shaking his head. "Nah, you can't be telling us that he's never going to see properly again."

Martin looked uncomfortable. "It is a distinct possibility, yes. The Waverider's medbay is highly advanced, but it looks like Thawne used an acid to damage the conjunctiva, corneas, lenses and retinas of both eyes. Rip mentioned that they hurt and that's because the acid continued attacking them until Dr Palmer and I were able to wash them out. The acid had been diluted by his own tears, but it was still working and it must have been incredibly painful when first applied."

Sara could only imagine the look on her own face, but she could easily see the shock on the faces of the others.

"Okay, new plan," said Sara. "We're going after the Spear. We're going to set everything right, and if that includes getting Rip his sight back, then so be it."

She looked at her team for their backing and they unanimously gave her their approval. Now they just had to find the Spear.

When Rip next awoke, it was to chanting from somewhere in the room. He felt slightly less befuddled, but it still took him a moment to put all the pieces together and remember why it was dark even with his eyes open.

"No, that's not right," said Martin, from across the room.

"Okay, let's go again," said Nate.

The chant started from the beginning again. It sounded vaguely Middle Eastern, but it wasn't a language that he spoke. It had to be the Spear incantation that everyone was learning. He listened for a moment, internalising the words and picking out the voices of the team. It was soothing to hear them and know that they were all here with him even if he couldn't see them.

Then his back twinged and he was forced to move. He groaned as the pain reasserted itself. The analgesics he'd been given earlier were wearing off it seemed, and everything was reminding him that his body had been very badly treated quite recently.

"Hey," said a voice, that he recognised as Sara. She must have already been sat at his bedside. "Are you awake?"

Rip nodded and regretted moving his head instantly. The headache which had been behind his eyes pretty much constantly since his escape from the pipeline had made an unwelcome return. He groaned, unable to say anything further.

"Hurting?"

"Yes," he murmured.

"I've got the painkillers ready. I was just waiting for you to wake up. I'm going to touch you on your shoulder, then there'll be sharp prick, okay?"

"Okay," Rip sighed, already tensed for the contact.

He felt something damp on his shoulder, it smelt sharply of alcohol, so probably an antiseptic wipe and then a needle stabbed him and was withdrawn. It only took a few minutes for the painkillers to begin to work and he started to feel somewhat better. He tried to untense and relax a little.

"Water?" asked Sara.

He nodded and she put the straw to his lips so that he could sip the liquid. She let him drink a bit more this time before removing it.

"Sorry… about earlier," he said.

"You don't need to apologise," said Sara. "Honestly, after everything that Thawne did to you, I'm surprised you're as together as you are."

"I assure you that "together" is not a word that I would use to describe my pitiful state at the moment," said Rip, with a shake of his head. "Broken, pathetic, contemptible, those would be better words."

"What are you talking about? You did the only thing a prisoner has to do, you survived. Not only that but you made it through torture, didn't reveal any information, and came out the other side. So, why don't we go with: strong, tough, and brave?" said Sara.

"Because they would be inaccurate," said Rip. "I'm none of those things. I only made one attempt to escape that place, and it was utterly unsuccessful. I should have tried harder."

"From what Ray said, once Thawne started questioning you, there wasn't much opportunity for escape. You were badly injured. You'd never have managed on your own. And Ray's been beating himself up about not helping you to get out of there sooner, even though he wasn't himself and didn't have his suit. So, you're both as bad as each other."

"It wasn't his fault," replied Rip, desperate to make sure Sara understood that. "He didn't have his suit or his usual genius level intelligence. He couldn't have even opened the lock without the code, let alone got me out without encountering guards. The most likely outcome was his death. I wouldn't let him try it. He had to finish the reality gun. That was the priority."

"I'd have made the same decision," said Sara, and for some reason that made him feel better. He knew it had been the right decision to keep Ray out of it and get him to concentrate on working on the gun, but it helped to have someone else confirm it.

"I was close to breaking," confessed Rip, quietly. "I could take the pain, well, I could endure it. But when he took my eyes… and I was losing my mind from lack of sleep… if you hadn't come to rescue me when you did, I'd have told him anything he wanted, just to make it all stop." He felt tears in his eyes. He tried to blink them away, but they rolled down his face, falling on his pillow and making it uncomfortably wet.

"I'm going to take your hand, okay?"

Rip nodded. He felt her thread her fingers through his, and was thankful for the contact once more.

"Everyone gives under torture, Rip," said Sara. "You know that. You held on longer than anyone I know would have, longer than I would have. You didn't tell him anything and we got you out before you did."

"But he broke me," said Rip, with utter misery. "He might not have known yet, but he broke me."

"Then we'll put you back together," said Sara.

"You can't fix this, Sara," said Rip. "A drink and a chat in the parlour are not going to be enough to undo weeks of Thawne's punishment, or help me deal with the inevitable post-traumatic stress that is bound to follow."

"No?" asked Sara, and he could tell when she was lightly teasing him even without the visual cues. "I'll tell you all the superhero stories you want."

Rip rolled his unseeing eyes. "You mock, but without Ray's nightly visits and stories of the Atom, I might have given up hope much sooner."

"I know," said Sara. "I've seen how you and Ray have bonded, and when you were still suffering from sleep deprivation, his voice was one of the things that helped calm you down. Martin and I took a turn as well, but we were definitely second best. When you're in a place like that, you hold on to anything you can. Any small glint of hope that you can get. I understand that, Rip, because I've been there too."

Rip took a deep, shuddering breath as tears continued to flow. He couldn't stop them.

"I can't see, Sara," he said, pitifully. "And I'm so scared."

He felt her squeeze his hand. "You don't need to be. We've got you, Rip. You're ours, a Legend, and we'll protect you now that we have you back."

"Not much of a Legend, am I? Blubbing like a baby," he said.

Sara simply raised his hand to her own face and he felt the dampness there too. "Yeah, I think being a Legend means tears occasionally. I know this is going to be hard, you're going to struggle and have bad days, but you're not alone. You're not on your own in the dark, we're stood right beside you and we'll always be there for you, no matter what, because we're Legends and you're Captain Rip Hunter, our founding member."

Rip actually let out a small laugh at that. He supposed he was. He felt Sara smile too, his hand catching the change in the contours of her cheeks. They both let the tears and smiles happen for a moment, and then Sara pulled out tissues and dabbed away her own tears before doing the same for Rip, after giving him due warning.

Ray bounded over, happily declaring his suit fixed and their moment for further discussion was gone.

"Okay, I have a plan. We need to get the Waverider somewhere big enough that we can get it back to normal size, but I don't want to move Rip more than necessary. I think we should shrink him down to Waverider size and then I'll take him on board and Gideon can start treatment while we move the ship." Ray sounded enthusiastic.

"Okay," said Sara. "That sounds like a reasonable idea. Rip?"

"I have to admit to being somewhat enthusiastic to get to the Waverider. I know you've done your best given the limited facilities available, but medbay is much better equipped, and I'd really like my eyesight back."

He felt the pressure of the ominous silence that greeted him. It wasn't just a pause in the conversation, it was a full stop followed by an ellipsis.

"I know that you're now exchanging a look and trying to decide who breaks the news to me," said Rip. "I'm not brain damaged as well as blind. I'm going to make an educated guess here and suggest that Gideon doesn't think my eyes can be fixed."

"Not immediately," said Sara. "You have a lot of injuries, Rip. She's can't heal everything at once because it would put too much strain on your body."

"I'm familiar with how the medbay works, Sara," said Rip, with annoyance. "Gideon doesn't think my eyes can be healed at all, does she?"

"Gideon thinks that she might be able to give you back partial sight, but by 2017 definitions, you'd still be legally blind," said Ray. "But there are other ways of giving you eyes. Doctor Mid-Nite was able to restore his vision using technology from the year 3000 so I'm thinking we should look there for a solution once we've fixed this."

Rip sighed. "He was coming from the 1940s where medical technology was poor. Even 2017's medical technology could probably have helped him."

"Don't dismiss it until we've at least looked into it," said Sara. "We'll find a way to get you your eyesight back. I promise."

"Don't make promises that you have no way of knowing if you can keep," said Rip.

"Don't be so damn pessimistic all the time. Miracles happen on the Waverider. You said it yourself," said Sara.

"So I did," said Rip, but he doubted this would be one of those times.

He heard Ray snapping on bits of his suit. "Okay, well if you're ready to get back to the Waverider, then I'll be your transport for today. I'm going to need to make contact, but I'll try to avoid anything that's broken or hurts."

"That's pretty much everywhere except my left hand, Ray," Rip pointed out. "You might as well just grab my hand like you've been doing."

Ray gave a small cough. "I wasn't sure how much you remembered of the hand holding. You seemed to like it."

"It was very… comforting," said Rip, "and it still is, to be honest. I can't see people approach or if they're still here. At least if you take hold of my hand then I can feel you're here."

He felt Sara's hand being exchanged for Ray's.

There was a familiar sound of engines, but somehow it seemed further away or higher in pitch, he wasn't sure what the issue was. He knew it was the Waverider, coming in close to be ready for their arrival, and it was only another moment before he worked out that the sound was wrong because it was smaller than normal.

"Are you ready to get tiny?" asked Ray.

"As I'll ever be," said Rip.

There was a strange whoosh noise, that Rip recognised as the sound of Ray's suit doing using its shrinking ability, and Rip felt Ray scoop him up in his arms. Luckily the painkillers that Sara had given him were working well and it only ached somewhat to have Ray's arm against his back.

"Not long now. I'm just going to fly us into the Waverider and then down to the medbay," said Ray.

"Okay," murmured Rip, feeling a little strange.

"Sorry, it can make you feel a bit weird the first time," said Ray. He flew Rip into the Waverider and carried him through the empty corridors down to medbay. Ray set Rip down on one of the medbay beds carefully, which Gideon had already prepared so that he could lie on his side.

"Gideon?" asked Rip.

"I'm here, Captain," said Gideon.

"You always are," said Rip, with relief. "It's good to be home."

"It's good to have you home," replied Gideon. "Let's see what I can do about your injuries."

"Okay, I'm going to put the cuff on your better arm, and then Gideon can get to work on the first batch of cell regeneration."

"Right," said Rip, and felt Ray do as he'd said, the metal cuff snapping around his wrist and tightening to make contact with his skin so that Gideon could infuse him with whatever drugs she deemed necessary to make him well again.

"I will begin with the lacerations on your back," said Gideon. "This is best done under sedation. Please could you remove the sterile dressings so that the cell regenerator can get access to the Captain's wounds, Dr Palmer?"

Rip barely had a chance to register Gideon's words before she had administered the sedative and he was drawn downwards into rapid unconsciousness. The change from awareness to dreams was almost imperceptible.

Rip spent most of the next few days sleeping in medbay between operations to fix his many wounds and injuries. He felt tired, but better. The pain lessened with every cut or burn that Gideon healed, and every broken bone that she reset. He was able to breathe more easily when Gideon healed the damage to his lungs and the cracked ribs. He could sleep on his back again once the lash marks were taken care of and he was very grateful for that. It also helped that she had dealt with the remains of the drugs in his system, so his concentration improved considerably.

His eyes were the most problematic part. Gideon explained that she could replace the lenses and corneas and heal the conjunctivas, the membrane that covered the eyes, but the drugs had also damaged his retinas and optical nerves. Gideon was unable to regenerate the delicate retinas without leaving him with serious sight problems. She could give him back light and some colour but his vision would never be detailed or have acuity. At least light was better than darkness. The operations to even get that much back were gruelling and left him worn out.

Meanwhile the team planned how to retrieve the Spear, putting together a detailed plan for how to get into STAR Labs and defeat the speedster. When they weren't getting ready for the mission, someone would visit him in medbay. It was usually Ray or Sara who were there when he woke up from whatever procedure Gideon had performed. He did make them promise not to come to medbay whilst Gideon worked on his eyes. Having had the procedure explained, he didn't want anyone to witness Gideon's robotic appendages delicately taking his eyeballs apart.

He opened his eyes after the final operation, and blinked at blurry light. He smiled as he detected movement.

"Hey," said Ray. "So, what's the verdict?"

"Light and movement," said Rip. "Maybe some colour too. You're sort of a blurry pink and black human shaped blob. Are you wearing a black t-shirt?"

"Yes," said Ray. "That's definitely an improvement."

"Yes, an improvement," said Rip, feeling suddenly downhearted. He still couldn't see well enough to read or even make himself a cup of tea. Gideon had done the best that she could, but the damage had been too extensive. This was as good as it was going to get. "When can I get out of here, Gideon?"

"I would suggest you allow the sedative to wear off completely, Captain," said Gideon. "My calculations indicate that will take approximately an hour. If you require more pain relief then you are not yet at maximum safe dosages."

"Thank you, Gideon, but I am comfortable," said Rip.

"I will fabricate some additional pain relief medication in capsule form," said Gideon. "Please take it."

Rip stopped himself from rolling his eyes, because that would probably hurt at the moment. Yes, he was quite bad about taking pain medication, but it was only because it tended to dull his mental processes and he preferred to stay sharp. However, annoying Gideon would get him nowhere.

"Of course, Gideon," replied Rip.

Sara came into the room. "So, how did it go?"

"About as well as it could have," replied Rip. "I can tell that you're over there and wearing a white top."

He could hear the happiness in her voice when she answered. "That's good news. Nicely done, Gideon."

"I'm sorry I couldn't do better," replied Gideon.

"You did what you could, Gideon," said Rip. "It isn't your fault that Thawne did this to me."

"Speaking of which, tonight's the night. We've located the Spear and we're going in to get it. Then we're going to use the Spear to put this all back to how it was, and we've all agreed that includes you getting your eyesight back," said Sara.

Rip let out a sigh. "I'm not really the highest priority though, am I? I assume that you've briefed everyone on dealing with Thawne and the Legion of Doom if they get the Spear."

"Of course," said Sara. "And we also agreed to not bring back any loved ones - past, present or future - from the dead. But this is the Spear of Destiny; we can ask it for what we like as long as it isn't going to damage causality and I'm pretty sure getting you your sight back won't hurt anyone."

"It's certainly worth a try," said Ray. "I mean, if the Legion can create Doomworld then I'm pretty sure we can ask for a couple of things."

Rip nodded. It was definitely worth a try, and he would like to be able to see properly again. "So, what's the plan?"

Sara told him. It actually didn't sound too hare-brained which was unusual for the Legends.

"I wish I could come with you," said Rip. "But until I can get my eyesight back, I'm afraid I would just be a liability."

"You can listen in on the coms," said Ray. "We could probably use your advice and Gideon can keep an eye out for Thawne for us."

"Yeah, that would definitely be useful," said Sara.

Rip nodded. "I think I can manage that, once Gideon allows me out of here."

"Another fifty-five minutes, Captain," said Gideon.

Sara giggled at that, and Rip sighed.

"Get some rest," said Sara. "We'll come and get you when it's time."

It was a long, nervous wait. He tried to rest and sleep but his mind was disturbed by images of Eobard Thawne taunting him as he took his eyes from him. He remembered the pain and the fact that Thawne had made sure to show him the large needle that would be used. The last clear image he had before the blackness closed in was Thawne grinning horribly at him. At least he wasn't shut in the dark anymore, thanks to Gideon's ministrations.

However, once the action started, he had a different kind of worry to contend with and that was concern for his friends. Ray escorted him to the bridge, at least partly because Rip was still stiff and sore from the various operations that Gideon had performed. The Waverider's medbay was miraculous in its abilities, but the body still had to deal with the aftermath of the tissue regeneration and bone knitting. It was tiring and had left him with very little energy. Under other circumstances he'd have gone to his quarters and slept, but not now, not with the Spear so close.

The Legends had planned a heist and it was a good plan. Rip had sat and listened to them, as they demonstrated just how good they'd become at this type of mission. Nate had taught everyone the incantation that they needed to say once they got the Spear. Mick had gone through the original plan that Sara had come up with and pointed out its flaws. Ray and Jax had worked out how to bypass the alarms and sensors that Thawne had installed and located the Spear's hiding place. Amaya had suggested releasing the Black Flash from his prison, and Martin had worked out a way to slow the Reverse Flash down so that he couldn't catch them.

Rip was left on the bridge of the Waverider, listening to the com chatter. Everything had gone according to plan until Amaya had tried to let the Black Flash out.

"I'm at the Black Flash's prison," said Amaya. "The override isn't working."

"I'm on my way," said Ray, "it probably just needs recalibrating. Oh…"

"Ray?" asked Rip.

"It's Thawne, he's on his way towards the Spear," said Ray. He was currently miniaturised so it was unlikely that Thawne had spotted him, but that wasn't the issue.

"Sara, get the Spear and get out of there," said Rip, rapidly. Sara and Mick were assigned to retrieve the Spear.

"Yeah, we're on it but we're having the same trouble that Amaya did," said Sara.

"Okay, I'm coming to you," said Jax.

"Wait," said Rip. "The only way that would happen is…"

"If he knew we were here," finished Ray.

"Get out of there now, everyone," said Rip.

"No!" said Sara. "We're only going to get one chance at this."

Rip wanted to dash off the ship and help, but there was very little he could do. However, he just couldn't sit there and do nothing either.

"Okay, I'm with Amaya," said Ray.

"I'm helping Sara and Mick," said Jax. "Give me a couple of minutes."

Rip felt his way around the bridge and towards the exit. He hit his knee on a chair and winced at the new bruise, shifting around the obstacle.

"Captain," said Gideon. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to help," said Rip, feeling his way off the bridge and along the corridor. He suddenly realised that he had no idea which way he was going. "Bollocks! Where's the armoury, Gideon?"

"I will direct you, Captain, although I feel I should remind you that your visual acuity is now 20/600 and that would preclude you from handling weapons," said Gideon.

"It is hard to forget, Gideon. I'd rather at least have the option of aiming a gun in Eobard Thawne's face," said Rip.

Gideon didn't complain further and gave him instructions for how to find the armoury, with occasional pointers on how not to bump into walls or fall down stairs. Rip had an impressive new set of bruises by the time he'd claimed an anti-speedster gun.

"Okay, we've got the Spear," said Sara, we're heading back to you now.

"Releasing the Black Flash," said Ray.

Then Ray's com went dead.

"Ray?" asked Rip. "Ray!" He couldn't be dead, thought Rip, he just couldn't be. Not like this.

"He's down," said Amaya, her voice sounding weird. "It was Thawne…" and then her com too was silent.

"Amaya!" shouted Nate.

"Back to the ship!" was Sara's response. "We can't stop now to pick them up. We need to fix this."

Rip made his way down to the hatch, doing his best to discern any movement. "Gideon, I'm going to need some help. I don't want to shoot the team."

"Understood, Captain," said Gideon.

He could see the blur of movement in the distance. As Gideon described it, Sara was in the lead running, with the Spear in her hand, then Mick and Nate were half a pace behind her. Jax and Martin were bringing up the rear. A yellow blur ran past the two halves of Firestorm and they lay on the ground.

"Captain, I am not detecting life signs from Mr Jackson or Professor Stein," said Gideon.

"I need to lay down covering fire," said Rip. "I'm going to need your help aiming, Gideon." He put the anti-speedster weapon to his shoulder.

"Certainly, Captain, please move your shot to the left six centimetres and down ten degrees, and fire on my mark."

Rip did as Gideon indicated, or at least the best proximity he could manage.

"Very good, Captain, fire!"

Rip squeezed the trigger.

"And again, Captain," said Gideon. Again, Rip fired.

"Ship's weapons, Gideon. Open fire and box him in. I doubt they'll be very effective against a speedster but they might narrow his ability to run," said Rip. "And please do be careful not to hit the team."

"Of course. A little to the right, Captain, fire," said Gideon.

Rip did as asked, hearing the reassuring sound of the ship's guns also opening fire.

"Rip!" shouted Sara. Then suddenly the blur that he'd identified as Sara was being flung to the ground, rolling away from Spear. Mick was knocked over by the backdraft, dropping his gun.

Rip aimed the gun at the yellow blob that had to be Thawne and was currently standing ready to snatch the Spear up from where it had fallen. He was perhaps slightly slower than normal so perhaps whatever Martin had cooked up had worked.

"Step away from the Spear, Eobard," said Rip.

"I see you restored your sight," said Thawne.

"Indeed," said Rip, doing his best to look at Thawne and not through him. He did not want to give away his lack of sight.

In less than a heartbeat Thawne was in front of him and Rip's gun was torn from his hands and thrown away, clattering to the ground uselessly. Thawne had the Spear in one hand and the other went to Rip's throat.

"No matter. I can take it from you again just as easily. You still haven't told me where I can find the Crown of Thorns," sneered Thawne.

"And I won't, ever, no matter what you do to me," said Rip, defiantly, pushing down the horror and fear that threatened to overwhelm him. Thawne was too close now to be anything other than a blur of yellow and flesh colour in front of his eyes.

Thawne began to laugh. "I was wrong, you can't see me at all, can you? I destroyed your eyes so badly that even your technology can't bring it back. How amusing. I am very much going to enjoy taking you back to the pipeline and breaking you. It should be easy when you can't even see what's coming."

There was a click from behind Thawne, that Rip heard distinctly but his attacker missed, too busy taunting his victim.

"Sorry, Eobard, but you're not getting a second chance," said Rip, his voice rough.

Thawne was blown away by a burst of energy from the anti-speedster weapon. He tumbled across the ground outside the Waverider and Rip realised that he'd dropped the Spear. He heard the wooden sound of it falling at his feet. He crouched down and felt around, closing his hand around the shaft. He could hardly believe that after all of this, the Spear of Destiny was in his possession.

"Do it!" shouted Sara, with her gun still pointed at Thawne in case he began moving again. "We agreed that whoever got the Spear would use it."

"But it can't be me," said Rip. "I'm not worthy. I'm not good enough."

"You're a good man, Rip, you can do this. And we don't have time to argue. You have it. Use it," said Sara.

Rip searched his memory and came up with the incantation. They'd been practicing it and he'd listened, learning the words too. He'd never thought that he'd be the one to end up with the Spear in his hands, but here he was. He still hesitated.

"Fix this mess," said Mick's gravelly tones, picking himself up from the ground.

Rip gave a sharp nod, took a deep breath and spoke the incantation. Suddenly he wasn't on the Waverider anymore, and he could see perfectly.

He was sat on the couch in the lounge in what had been his house in London before it was bombed into the ground. Jonas was playing on the rug whilst the news played on the television, describing the war. Miranda walked into the room carrying mugs of tea.

"I don't remember this," said Rip, looking around him. "I'd have moved you sooner if we'd seen the war coming."

"No, this didn't happen," said Miranda, as she put the tea down on the table.

"Who are you? You're not Miranda…"

"No, I'm the temptation. I am what whispered to you when you thought about using the Spear the first time you picked it up. What do you want, Rip?"

"I want you, and Jonas. I want you back… but I know I can't have that. I can't change reality for myself. I just want everything back to how it was before Thawne changed the world," said Rip, sadly. "I want my friends to live again. To not be dead. Ray, Jax, Martin, Amaya. For Thawne to be dealt with appropriately by the Black Flash, for Merlyn, Darhk and Snart to be put back where they belong, and no one to be able to do this ever again."

"You're asking me to undo a reality that reshaped the entire world. This reality has set and it is an undertaking to undo it now. There will be a price. Something must be given up. The life of one of your friends."

"Did you ask Thawne for the same thing when he changed reality? Not that I don't think he'd sell his own Grandmother for power, but I'm curious," asked Rip, somewhat crossly.

"All he wanted was to change the existing reality, made by time and causality. That was easy. You want me to destroy my work. Something I created. That is harder. The price is that the life of one of your friends will not be restored, unless you have something else to offer me," replied the fake Miranda.

Rip shook his head. "No, please, don't ask me to give up one of their lives. I'd rather you took my life in return for fixing this. It's only what I deserve."

Miranda looked sadly at Rip. "You wield the Spear and have certain privileges because of that. I will not take your life, and we will do everything that you have asked. But you will remain as you are now. We will not heal your mind or restore your sight, and we will reclaim the Spear so that it cannot be abused again. This is the penalty that we enact for restoring reality."

Rip briefly closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then he met the eyes of the woman who was not Miranda. "I agree. I accept your terms."

Miranda smiled at him. "It will be done."

Rip came back to himself on the bridge of the Waverider, and for just a second he caught a glimpse of his team, all of them restored and stood around him, before it faded away and he was back to vague blurs and washed out lights. He sighed. It had been nice to get one last look at his team before his sight was gone. He felt the Spear disintegrate in his hand, vanishing and now out of the hands of man. He leaned on the console table, emotion overwhelming him.

"Rip?" asked Sara, "hey, you did it."

Rip nodded. "Yes, I assume that reality has reset and we're back in the time stream?"

He could almost hear the moment the team realised that he still couldn't see.

"You didn't get your sight back?" asked Ray.

"Er, no," said Rip.

"Moron," said Mick. "We agreed you'd get your eyes back."

Rip nodded ruefully at that. He felt around the table and he walked the couple of steps that would take him in the direction of the chairs. He made it without crashing into anything and sat down gratefully. He wasn't entirely sure that he could have stood much longer. He was tired and sore.

"Why not?" asked Ray. "You brought me back from the dead, and the rest of the team. Why wouldn't you have the Spear give you your eyesight back?"

Rip shook his head. "The important thing is that I restored everything to its previous state."

"Except you," said Amaya.

"Except me," said Rip, with a shrug.

"You did something," said Sara, accusingly.

"I believe I just said that," replied Rip.

A slight movement in the air indicated that Sara was in front of him. He looked at the light-coloured blur that he had identified as Sara. He could imagine the look on her face and he wondered how long it would be before he forgot her face and the myriad expressions that graced it. Still, it had been worth it.

"No, you did something, like you always do," said Sara. "Without asking us if that's what we wanted, or giving us a choice."

"I had the Spear," said Rip. "I had to make a decision about how to use it. You told me to do it!"

"We agreed that whoever got the Spear would put everything back the way it was and that included giving you back your eyesight," said Sara. "So, why didn't you?"

Rip sighed. "The Spear demanded a price. Reality was setting and I couldn't just put everything back to how it was without giving up something. There was only one thing that it was my right to give, or rather to not have restored." He looked up at her.

"It was your sight or our lives," said Ray, with sharp realisation.

Rip turned towards Ray's voice, but said nothing.

"He's right, isn't he?" asked Sara.

Rip nodded. He could only imagine the looks that were being exchanged in the silence that followed.

"So, it's time I took my leave of you all," said Rip, finally.

"What?" asked Jax. "You can't leave. Where are you going to go?"

"I hadn't really decided yet," said Rip. "But I'm sure I'll find a corner of time and space to call my own. Who knows? Maybe you'll come and visit."

"No," said Ray.

"Oh," said Rip, somewhat disappointed. "Well, I just thought it would have been nice…"

"No, I mean you're not leaving," said Ray.

"I don't really have a choice," said Rip. "I'm blind. I'm of no use to this ship or this mission. You don't need me and there's nothing more I can teach you."

"You think we're just going to let you leave?" asked Sara.

"Well, I can't stay, can I?" he pointed out. "I can barely navigate my own ship without bumping into things."

"It'll get better," said Ray. "You'll learn the layout and you can see a little."

"Also, we haven't exhausted all the technological solutions yet," said Martin. "Or even all the medical ones, to be honest."

"And we could use someone to be on the ship and quarterback missions," said Sara. "We're mostly on radios anyway, so no eyesight required."

Rip raised his eyebrows. "You really think that would work?"

"It's certainly worth a try," said Sara. "Assuming that you're willing to put in the effort to make some adjustments."

"Come on, dude," said Jax. "You can't just give up without even trying."

Rip shrugged. "I suppose not."

Ray watched as Rip expertly navigated the bridge. It had taken a few months to bring everything together. Gideon had helped them with fabricating a lot of things, so that Rip now had a full wardrobe of clothes that included hidden sensors that sent messages to a tiny chip that was implanted just behind his ear. The chip sent signals to his brain that Rip had learnt to interpret as directions, shapes and objects. Rip described it as like having a wireframe overlay that was fed directly into his brain and gave him what amounted to a 360-degree radar. Unless you knew exactly what to look for, no one would even know that the sensors were there.

Rip also wore a pair of glasses that improved the little eyesight he had considerably and Ray had designed them himself using the latest optical techniques. In fact, a lot of the things they'd made to help Rip had been invented by Ray, with input from Professor Stein and Jax. Tea mugs on the ship now beeped when they were nearly full, the kettle spoke when it had boiled, and they'd added textured plates to the floors to indicate where doorways and stairs were.

They'd completely reorganised the galley and added braille labels to all the cupboards, boxes, cans and packets too, and it was a matter of course that everything was labelled with braille as it was stowed now. Ray had procured a number of braille label printers for the ship, which were coming in very handy. They'd also installed braille markers around the ship so all Rip had to do was put a hand on the wall to know which part of the ship he was in. Not that he ever got lost these days, he knew the layout too well after days of walking the corridors to learn it. He was even learning to shoot again, using the sensor net to help him aim accurately, although working out who he was firing at would be something of a problem even with the sensors. Ray was still working on that problem.

Ray saw Rip reach out a hand and put it on the console, feeling the bumps of the new tactile display with its braille output along the bottom edge. He'd been a quick study when it came to learning the new way of reading with his fingertips. No one had been terribly surprised by that or the fact that their missions were actually going more smoothly with him to offer support from the ship.

The physical stuff had been going relatively well. Rip could almost do everything that he'd been able to do before he lost his sight, although he still wasn't quite there with some of the things that needed more detailed control. There were a few mundane tasks, like writing a note or reading a sign, that were still beyond him, but there were ways around those, and trimming his beard had taken a considerable amount of practice, which Rip had found quite frustrating, but he'd got there in the end. He was not good at asking for help, but he was slowly realising that admitting he couldn't do something wasn't a sign of weakness.

There had been a period adjustment for the crew as well, while they got used to announcing themselves when they entered a room, and describing what they could see when they looked at a screen or document. The had all needed to negotiate how much help Rip wanted and come to an agreement on something less than they wanted to give, but more than Rip really wanted to accept. Ray vividly remembered how Rip had snapped at Sara in frustration because he'd accidentally spilt cereal in the galley and then she'd cleaned it up. The ensuing argument had been stupid but impressively angry. Rip had argued he'd spilt it through lack of care and should have been the one to clean it up. Sara had pointed out that she could do it much more easily, but Rip was frustrated at the loss of independence because Sara never would have tidied up for him before he lost his sight. Sara realised with embarrassment that he was right and apologised, but Rip had stormed off to brood. Eventually he relented, also apologised, and attempted to let Sara do a bit more for him because some things were just harder than they used to be. Neither had been exactly happy at the outcome, but everyone was still learning how they handled the new normal.

Mentally, Rip had bad days and good. Sometimes he screamed in his sleep and other days he couldn't sleep at all. Gideon occasionally called Ray or Sara to wrestle him from a bad dream, or Ray would come out of a late night/early morning session upgrading his suit to find Rip sat in the kitchen with wild hair and tired eyes, drinking a mug of camomile tea in his pyjamas, without his sensors or glasses. When that happened Ray would talk about his new upgrades or the last episode of Star Trek that he'd watched and Rip would listen until he felt able to go back to bed. Ray had long since run out of stories about the Atom's exploits to tell Rip, but Rip liked him to tell them again on the really bad nights when he wasn't going back to bed. Ray's voice still seemed to be something that Rip found calming and Ray was happy to be there for his friend.

Undoubtedly Rip was suffering from PTSD and depression, but his crew understood and didn't push him to be back to his normal self. Half of them had been where he was now at some point. They let him have days when he stayed in his quarters and did nothing, but someone would take him food and remind him they cared. And when something triggered a memory of his torture and he had to take deep breaths to still a panic attack or his awareness faded from the room, they were there to offer support. Gideon had deployed her psychiatry programs to help Rip deal with his weeks in the pipeline, and the two of them spent time every day doing talk therapy and exercises to improve his mood. Gradually, slowly, Rip was getting better.

There were, of course, times when Rip allowed his self-pity to get the better of him and he sulked impressively. When that happened Mick took it upon himself to issue a blunt reminder that actually things weren't that bad, usually with additional swear words. Or Sara decided that it was time Rip learnt how to become a blind ninja and dragged him to her sparring mat in the cargo bay, despite his protests. Blind ninja training was having mixed success, as the sensors had trouble with thrown objects, but hand to hand combat didn't seem to be much harder for Rip than it had been before.

"It is impolite to stare," said Rip, not looking up from his task. "And it is now pretty much impossible to sneak up on me, Ray, thanks to your sensors."

Ray was jerked out of his thoughts. "Oh, sorry, just lost in thought." He frowned for a second. "How did you know it was me?"

"I'm beginning to get a feel for height and build," said Rip, "although on this occasion, Gideon told me you were on your way."

"Ah," said Ray. "So, how's it going?"

"Well, I think I have a lead for us," said Rip. He let his fingers skirt across the braille readout and then feel the image on the screen.

"Actually, I wasn't talking about the next aberration, more whether you were done for today. I thought maybe you'd like to get off the ship for a bit," said Ray.

Rip turned his eyes in Ray's direction. He knew that, at best, he was a coloured blur to Rip. His friend appeared to think for a moment and then shook his head.

"I don't think that's a good idea," he said, hands going to his pockets.

"Why not?" asked Ray, "you haven't left the ship for weeks."

"I haven't really felt up to it," he admitted. "Besides, we haven't been anywhere that I could just go for a walk."

"The sensor net will mean you can get the lie of the land," said Ray. "Come on, let's just go somewhere. Get a drink?"

"The last thing I need is to be even less steady on my feet," said Rip.

"You're fine on your feet."

"On the ship, I'm fine on my feet… Now," said Rip. There had definitely been an adjustment period where he'd been tentative and occasionally tripped over his own toes. "I know this environment, all the corridors and obstacles, even without the sensor net."

"I see," said Ray. There was a pause while Ray considered what to say next. "You can't stay on the ship forever."

Rip gave a reluctant nod. "I know. I'm just not ready yet."

"Rip, the longer you leave it, the worse it's going to get," said Ray, taking a step closer to the former Time Master. "Come on, it's a nice day, and you're sort of home."

"1990s London is not home. The Waverider is home, Ray," said Rip, quietly.

Ray smiled a small smile at Rip. "I know."

He really understood what Rip meant, and how vulnerable he was feeling. He couldn't see trouble coming anymore. The sensor net stopped him from bumping into things but it wasn't the same as a pair of eyes. On the Waverider, he was safely wrapped in metal, with Gideon keeping him informed of what was going on and he had the monitors that they'd set up for him. Outside, the real world had none of those things.

"But," said Ray. "I kind of fancy one of those martinis they do at that bar in Soho we went to during the mission."

"We could sit in the parlour and drink my whiskey instead," pointed out Rip.

"I'm really not a whiskey person," said Ray.

"Yes, I got that from when you nearly choked on my good scotch the other day," said Rip. He let out a long sigh. "Fine, we can go out for a drink."

"Awesome," said Ray. "Let me grab my jacket."

Rip nodded. "I just need to get something from my quarters and I'll meet you at the hatch."

Ray wasn't sure what that might be, but he went to his own quarters and picked up his jacket, pocketing the Atom suit at the same time. Rip was waiting for him when he reached the exit hatch. He was wearing dark glasses and carrying a white cane.

"Stylish," said Ray.

"Hardly," said Rip, "but I prefer not to scare people, and given the era, the prop is necessary." Rip's eyes still bore scars from his torture and subsequent treatment to restore what sight they could.

"You'd be better wearing the glasses," said Ray. "At least you can see colours and shapes."

"I'll be fine, I've got my sensor net," said Rip, indicating his coat which now had the sensors incorporated into its fabric.

"Come on then," said Ray, hitting the door sensor. He walked down the ramp and out into the sunshine.

Rip hesitated, looking back into the Waverider. For a moment, Ray thought that he'd turn back and he wasn't going to come after all, but then he seemed to pull himself together, take a deep breath, and he followed Ray out of the ship. He put the cane's tip on the ground in front of him and tapped as he walked. Ray was somewhat sad that Rip was having to put on this charade, but it would have looked quite strange to see a blind person navigating confidently on his own.

"I'm fine, Ray," said Rip.

"I didn't say you weren't," said Ray.

"No, but you're watching me," said Rip. "I'm not going to break, Ray, and you got me off the ship, so mission accomplished."

"I'm just worried," said Ray. "You've been through a lot and this has got to be hard."

Rip nodded. "Of course it's hard, Ray. This isn't how I saw my life going, any of it, but there are worse things than being blind. I can live with this and I will. You've already helped me immensely by allowing me more freedom of movement and independence than I would have had otherwise, and we could still yet find some miracle cure. It is unlikely, I admit, but we're time travellers, so anything is possible. Now, I'm afraid signposts are my nemesis, so perhaps you could lead me in the right direction for this bar?"

"Oh, yeah, right. This way," said Ray.

They walked through the streets of London and Ray described to Rip what he was seeing. Before long they had moved out of the park where they'd landed the Waverider and into the tall buildings of the city. The bar was reasonably close and did fantastic drinks. They both ignored the couple who stared at Rip's cane and dark glasses as if they'd never seen a blind man before. They'd actually managed to attract very little attention and Ray was quite glad of that. Rip talked about ways that their current mission could have gone better, not lecturing as he'd done in the past, but observing ways that the team could be more efficient, and Ray discussed new sensor net upgrades.

"I find myself somewhat disappointed that blindness doesn't lead to superhuman improvements in my hearing or other senses. Pop culture led me to believe that was a foregone conclusion," said Rip.

Ray laughed at that. He was beginning to realise that, although dry, Rip did have a well-tuned sense of humour. He only ever showed it to those closest to him, and Ray was proud to number himself amongst those people now.

Their chat was interrupted by Rip's com beeping and then Sara yelling at him.

"Where the hell are you?" asked Sara.

"At a bar in Soho," replied Rip. "You'll have to ask Ray for the address."

Ray realised that neither of them had thought to let Sara know where they were going and he winced at the telling off they were about to get.

"I've been worried sick. I came looking for you and all Gideon knew was that you'd left the ship. You need to keep me informed if you're going out," said Sara.

"I'm with Ray, everything is fine, Sara," replied Rip.

"Not the point," replied Sara. "What were you thinking?"

"That I'm a grown man who can do what he likes?" suggested Rip, his tone teasing rather than confrontational. They knew that Sara could be protective and she'd been worried, but this was the kind of thing where Rip needed his independence. Sara wouldn't have been concerned before Rip had lost his sight.

"It was my fault," said Ray. "I just thought it would be nice to get off the ship for a bit."

There was a loud sigh from the other end of the com. "It was a good idea, Ray, but next time… just let me know where you are."

"Want to come and join us?" asked Rip. "I'm sure we could arrange a bar fight for you."

"You're already in trouble, Hunter, so I wouldn't keep digging if I was you," said Sara. Rip let out an amused half-laugh at that.

"But sure, give me the address," said Sara.

They did and about twenty minutes later the rest of the crew barrelled into the bar, ordering all manner of drinks in a rather raucous fashion. Rip sighed, Ray laughed and Sara put out her flaming Sambuca, then downed it in one go as she took a seat at their table.

"This was a quiet bar a moment ago," said Rip. "I was quite enjoying myself."

"And now you're not?" asked Sara. "We should be offended."

"That wasn't what I meant," said Rip.

"At least you're off the ship, which is a step in the right direction," said Sara. "We were getting a little concerned."

"Really? There was no need," said Rip.

"I don't know," said Ray. "You still have some pretty bad days."

"And I expect I will continue to have them for a while," replied Rip. "But it is getting better, mainly thanks to you lot and your persistent attempts to annoy me back to good mental health."

"We do our best," said Sara. "You have seemed a little brighter lately."

Rip nodded. "I've found myself rather enjoying my new role in the team, even if it has been something of an adjustment."

"I was wondering," said Sara. "Don't you kind of resent us? I mean we got back everything that we lost because of the Spear. You're the only one who didn't get to have your life back."

Rip's head snapped around towards Sara. "Why would I ever resent you? I made the decision knowing the consequences. It would have been an unconscionable betrayal of my friends to let you die, and I couldn't do that. Besides, time needs the Legends. Our last mission resulted in countless lives saved. It was worth every time I've bumped into a piece of furniture and every sleepless night. Given the choice, I would do exactly the same thing again."

"It isn't exactly fair though," said Ray. They'd never talked properly about this.

"I didn't get the impression that the Spear was interested in fair," said Rip, taking a sip of his drink. "In many ways, it was lucky that it was me that used the Spear. I shudder to think what it might have demanded from the rest of you. But this was fitting. I was the guardian of the Spear, and I failed in my duty. It was only right that I should be the one to set things straight and that I should pay a price for my failure."

Sara was shaking her head. "You didn't fail. I had no idea that's how you thought of this."

"What was it, if not my failure to protect the Spear, that led to all of this? I should have found a way to destroy it, just as Thawne planned to. I made a mistake and I paid for it. I'm lucky that the Spear only wanted my eyesight and not my life. That's all there is to it," said Rip.

"There's a bit more to it than that," said Ray. "The Legion of Doom didn't have to do this. This is their fault not yours."

"There will always be bad men trying to do bad things, Ray," said Rip. "It's our responsibility to stop them."

"That we can agree on, but you don't get to take all the blame," said Ray. "We failed to get the blood of Christ and destroy the Spear when we had the chance."

"Hey, there's plenty of blame to go around," said Sara, starting on a beer that Mick plonked down on the table for their Captain. "I didn't make the best decisions either."

Everyone stared at their drinks for a moment, before Ray shook his head.

"This is all too depressing. I didn't bring Rip out to make him more miserable. We're all alive and the Spear is gone. Let's celebrate," said Ray.

Rip's eyebrows raised. "Well, when you put it that way…"

Mick returned with more beers. "You lot look like you're attending a funeral," he proclaimed.

"Yeah, we're done being serious," said Sara. "Team Legends haven't had a drunken night out in a while. Let's drink."

That was the start of an epic Legends bar crawl around the pubs and clubs of Soho, that Rip did not want to go on, but they dragged him along anyway. By the end of the evening, everyone was happily drunk, including Rip, and Ray had discovered that alcohol screwed with the signals from the sensor net to Rip's brain in the same way that it screwed with his inner ear's perception of which way was up. At which point, Ray decided to take Rip back to the ship because he was wobbling and bumping into things. They supported each other all the way back to the Waverider, stumbling through the corridors and into Rip's quarters, where they both collapsed on the bed and had to disentangle their arms and legs from one another.

"We are going to pay for this in the morning," said Ray.

"Oh yes, I imagine we'll have the mother of all hangovers," said Rip. "Luckily Gideon has good painkillers."

"That was fun, though," said Ray. "Did I dream Mick singing karaoke?"

"Unfortunately not," replied Rip.

"Well, at least I'm not going mad," said Ray. There was silence for a moment as both men failed to move and Ray tried to work out if he could get back to his quarters without falling over or throwing up on the floor. He decided it wasn't worth trying.

"Ray," said Rip, slightly muffled by a pillow. "You know you saved my life?"

"Did I?" asked Ray. The room was spinning just a little.

"Yes, I'd have given up in that cell if it hadn't been for you," said Rip.

Ray frowned. "Nah, you're the immovable object. I remember. Too stubborn to die or give Thawne what he wanted."

"I nearly gave up. I was close. But you kept telling me those stories of how the Atom had saved the day and I couldn't give up when you reminded me of your own heroism every night. Even when I could hardly think straight, I could hear you voice," said Rip. "You helped me hang on."

"Hey, I wasn't going to leave you there alone. Even Janitor Ray wouldn't do that," said Ray.

"You have a good heart, Ray," said Rip, "don't ever change." Rip closed his eyes, clearly heading towards sleep.

"Hey, Rip, you saved me too," said Ray. "You reminded me who I was. You helped me build the transreality multiplexer. You reminded me that I really am a hero."

"Not a hero," mumbled Rip, sparking the beginnings of disappointment in Ray's chest before Rip continued. "You're a Legend."

Ray smiled. "Yeah, it's so much better than being just a hero."

AN2: I hope you've enjoyed this foray into AU Doomworld. I'm debating writing a sequel to this one because I like the idea of blind-ninja Rip, acting as mission control while the Legends get themselves into trouble. However, after all this torture, I think I might try something a bit more fluffy for my next fic.

AN3: I love reviews. They keep me writing. So, press the button and let me know what you thought of all this.