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Before everything fell apart that night Sara was sucked up into the sky in 1977 London, she had lived through weeks without seeing Ava, but it wasn’t so hard for her. In the League, they were trained to fight in a blindfold for weeks not only to prepare for circumstances in which they could not rely on their vision, but also to learn how to redirect their focus to their other senses, a skill that would come in handy in their missions later on.
Regaining consciousness without her sight felt a lot like those days back in the League, except the afferents from her other senses did not send shivers up her spine, but rather comforting warmth, radiating from her chest like bright, non-scorching sunlight. Every touch, every kiss, every conversation with Ava, taken in only through her other senses, was amplified tenfold, far beyond her already heightened senses as an assassin. It was a new way of seeing—rather, sensing Ava, of knowing that it was her Ava on the other end.
In those weeks, Sara had memorized Ava to the smallest details beyond what she used to be able to see—the invisible ridges in the outer cartilage of her ears, the subtle variations in her sweet scent throughout the day, the way her pattern of breathing changed when Sara knew she caught her attention, the unique taste of whisky in her mouth when they’d realized there were better ways to spend the night than just drinking in the parlour, the nearby warmth of her body that Sara could feel even without touching, and the lack of it when Ava had left briefly to go to the bathroom. She knew Ava better than she had ever known, and that seemed to be one good thing that came out of seeing Atropos’ true form.
Which was why Sara did not understand what her body was doing: following a figure in the darkness on a foreign planet, a figure that looked like Ava but could not have been her Ava by any logic. She blamed it on the severe pain and altered sensorium from getting stung by Amelia Earhart—or another alien that looked like her , she thought. Deep inside, she knew it wasn’t just Earhart’s venom that made her body act against her will, but it wasn’t something she was ready to admit.
She was following this figure that seemed to glitch before her eyes against her better judgment, well aware that it meant she had to leave Gary, the only person she could trust at least half-heartedly on this planet. “Rule number one, isolate your targets,” she told Spartacus the other day, but the advice now sounded ridiculous in her head as she allowed herself to be isolated from her only ally, turning herself into an easy target by whatever was luring her into the woods. Despite her gut sending signals about everything wrong with what she was doing, she continued following the figure without hesitation.
Because it was so easy to think that that was her Ava, so tempting to give in to her body’s call to collapse believing she’d fall into the arms of someone she trusted her life with. But this wasn’t her Ava. She trusted the legends, but realistically, there was no way her team would’ve found her this quickly—not without figuring out how to let them know where she was, or without geniuses like Stein and Ray who could whip up a device to pinpoint her exact location.
But she had been in pain for a few hours now, her body growing cold and numb in a futile attempt to dampen the pain. She was exhausted, and she just wanted to convince herself that it really was her Ava, her other side , right in front of her.
“Where are we, babe?” she uttered.
As the woman gestured to a secret passage without saying anything, she transiently snapped back to an almost perfect state of consciousness. She knew something was wrong, that her current state was clouding her perception.
The same way she had been with Ava all those weeks before they destroyed the Loom of Fate, she took her sense of sight to the backseat and focused on the afferents from her other senses, confirming what she already knew about this woman before her.
She knew what she had to do. She had to let her assassin instincts kick in faster than she could spare this individual wearing the face of the woman she was going to spend the rest of her life with—this… AVA clone.
She didn’t think she had to face another one of these since they found out Ava was a clone three years ago. After all, Vancouver 2213 had been designated a “no-fly zone” by the Time Bureau —, she thought before realizing that it had been over a year since the Time Bureau was shut down.
“After you.” Sara said, already playing out her next move in mind.
As soon as the clone obliged, she took advantage of the opening to gain the upper hand, choking the woman that looked exactly like her Ava.
“You think I don’t know my own Ava?” she uttered with seething anger in an unrestrained voice that burned her throat, ruthlessly taking down the mindless clone in one fell swoop.
She was reminded of the time she was in Ava’s purgatory, tasked to pick from a wide variety of AVAs that would suit her needs. She knew none of those AVAs were her Ava, but this time was different. This time, the AVAs were real , existing beyond Ava’s insecurities, and she had no idea how they ended up on this strange planet.
But she knew she was running out of time to process all of that. Right now, she needed answers, and wherever this secret passage led to probably had it.
In the midst of excruciating pain, her consciousness barely hanging on, and everything else in between that made absolutely no sense since she woke up in an alien spaceship, there was one thing she became certain of.
There was not a chance she wouldn’t recognize her own Ava.
Sara was still in a lot of pain, every ounce of strength being replaced by a corresponding ounce of anger by the second. Her vision had been reduced to a small area at the center of the field while everything else around it became blurry. It was getting harder to focus mentally, and her mind kept drifting elsewhere against her will.
As she traversed the secret passage the AVA clone led her to, she vaguely recognized how similarly built it was to the alien spaceship she and Gary had crashed into Pliny X19. It reminded her of what Ray said years ago when they were trying to escape from the Dominators who abducted them, how certain principles of design are universal , but immediately letting go of the unimportant thought and redirecting her focus on what was ahead.
Confusion flooded her as she stumbled through the main hallway, greeted by what sounded like David freaking Bowie singing a song she’s never heard before. Maybe it’s an aberration caused by one of those aliens I threw into the temporal zone , she thought briefly.
With her severely limited vision, she tried to take in the sight of the room containing a wide variety of objects that certainly did not fit into a single interior design style. She recognized a few pieces, like the air plant in a small spherical glass terrarium similar to what they had back in the Waverider galley, and a metal sculpture resembling a dandelion seed head, almost identical to what she had found in the cargo bay and decided to put on display in her own room. She was even more puzzled when her eyes darted to a neatly set table for two, as if whoever lived in this place was expecting a visitor.
She immediately shifted whatever was left of her focus to a man with his hair held up in a bun standing with his back facing her, preoccupied with something she could not recognize.
“You wouldn’t happen to be missing an AVA clone from your dinner party, would you?” she taunted to catch his attention.
The man turned around to face her holding what looked like a terrarium, Sara no longer giving a damn about how peculiar that was in the context of a dinner party. She tried to take in the features of this man with a full beard, somewhat similar to Vandal Savage’s.
The man finally spoke, more confidently than Sara had expected for someone who should have been surprised by her sneaking into his place without warning.
“The infamous Sara Lance. I’ve been waiting... a long time for you.” he uttered with a deep, relaxed voice.
Sara was astonished, failing to understand how this man from this strange planet knew exactly who she was. It did not make sense, until she realized that this might be the “power hungry space lord” Gary was talking about earlier on the alien spaceship, the one who hired them to abduct her. The way he spoke gave her the idea that he had been planning her abduction for a while now. Whether or not the involvement of AVA clones was coincidental was still a mystery, one that she could not even think of right now.
Because right now, her mind was preoccupied by cutthroat anger for a reason she could not readily pinpoint, owing to the fact that practically nothing about her entire situation made sense. Her anger sent involuntary but calculated electric shocks throughout her body, causing only specific muscle groups to twitch, like she could pounce anytime if only she had her full strength.
This man took Sara away not only at a time she was about to propose to Ava, but also no more than a day since she had been able to revel in the sight of the love of her life again (outside that fake TV reality, that is).
Whoever this man was, he’s probably up to no good, but this was no longer just about stopping another villain’s plan.
This was personal.