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Ray meets his daughter somewhere between East Berlin, 1962, and Memphis in 1954. He’s never been to Memphis yet. He’ll meet Elvis there in a few days. First, he meets Ruth. And just as quickly, he forgets her.
Wait, back up. Everything’s out of order. (Time travel is confusing.)
Blackbeard, 1700s, Bahamas, Earth totem. Pirates. Kidnapped. Nora. East Berlin in the 60s. Time stones are not bulletproof. Cold fusion, torture is not the answer, torture is not the answer—the hammer hits the table. (Why does Nora keep smacking him?) I was supposed to have you home by now. Damien Darhk lets his daughter fall: his life over hers. The totem turns. There’s a hole in the Berlin wall. (Oops.)
He’s back on the Waverider. Things are not quite as he left them, but there are dishes to do, so everything else can wait. (Except Ruth, but he hasn’t quite met her yet. We’re almost there.) Now that we're up to speed and in the right order:
She appears in a swirling cloud of purple smoke. He’s in the kitchen, stirring that cup of coffee with grass-fed butter, dishes eagerly awaiting him in the sink, and a few of his teammates are scattered around the room in the aftermath of lunch. Ava’s at the table, attempting to fill out a mission report with Sara and Nate on either side of her, tossing almonds at each other to catch in their mouths. Sara hasn’t missed a single one; Nate hasn’t caught any. Zari’s lounged sideways in an armchair, knees hooked over the armrest, still in her pajamas despite the early-afternoon hour. Mick is drinking beer in the corner, as is his way.
She appears in the dead center of the room, little shimmers of violet lingering in her dark hair. The last of them fade and left behind is a small girl blinking owlishly, standing strangely still for a child so young. There are barrettes with little stars holding her hair away from her eyes. Light-up sneakers and a windbreaker zipped to her chin. Ray’s first thought is that she looks so very familiar; he must have met her before. Those eyes, he knows those eyes. His second thought is of 2017, of an insane asylum and a frightened girl, of a coffee shop and a demon, and that this kid looks just like that girl, just like—
“Nora?”
Her head tilts. No, this isn’t Nora; there’s something slightly different about the shape of her nose, the curve of her forehead, the way her eyebrows furrow together as she breaks free of whatever confusion or surprise was holding her so still and reaches out, stumbling over herself as she barrels into him. “Daddy!”
It’s solely instinct that has him extending his arms out to catch her as she crashes against his legs, not even tall enough to reach his waist. She can’t possibly be any older than five. He is certain he does not have a daughter. Nevertheless, there’s one here who says he does, and she’s got her chin tilted all the way back to look at him as she holds up her arms, making grabby hands, and he realizes she wants to be picked up. Awkwardly, he bends down, lifts her up, and she settles on his hip like she’s been doing so her whole life. (Perhaps she has, he thinks. Perhaps time is acting out of order again. It’s been doing that a lot lately.)
She’s staring at him, wide blinking eyes—still Nora’s eyes. Ray tries, and tries a little harder, to just see grey. Some random grey, one he didn’t just spend a few days getting to know, gazing into more than he should’ve with the enemy. (An enemy who, for a little while, didn’t feel like one. She grabbed his hand and clutched the time stone and suddenly they were in a bathtub in East Berlin and he was tripping over the shower curtain, hitting his head on the bar, and they bickered but it was different. She was different. Maybe he was different, too.
But then her father found them, and they were enemies again.)
“Daddy?”
He’s pulled back into the world, back into the present—a loaded word for a time traveler to use, when he thinks about it—and tells himself that the world is full of grey-eyed people. And then he realizes: he doesn’t care. Something inside him just knows: this is his daughter, looking at him like it doesn’t even scare her that she’s appeared in a strange place in a cloud of smoke because he’s here and holding on, and it really doesn’t matter where she came from.
Well, of course it matters, but not right now. Not in a way that changes how his chest expands when she smiles, teeth a little crooked, tag sticking up out of her jacket, bent back against the hood. Ruth Palmer, in handwriting he doesn’t recognize. His daughter’s name is Ruth. (His grandmother’s name was Ruth.)
What does a person say when confronted with their child from the future? His stomach flips.
“Hi,” he says, suddenly feeling more awkward than he has ever before. But she just giggles, echoing him: “Hi,” and wiggling like she’s changed her mind and wants to be put down. It’s only once she’s back on the ground and he looks up that he realizes he’s got four people staring at him. (Mick still has his head back and his eyes closed, completely uninterested [or possibly asleep]—an emotion Ray is incapable of fathoming, considering that his world has just flipped on its head, but we must digress.)
He clears his throat in an attempt to also clear his head. His eyes follow Ruth as she bounces over to Zari and clambers up onto her lap, onto the poor chair barely big enough for one, given the way Zari’s sprawled across it. He watches, rather frozen in place, as Zari attempts to haul herself into a more sitting position before the child lands on top of her with a quiet oof.
“Careful, Ruth,” he says weakly, and she shoots him a dazzling, unchastised smile. Sara catches his eye and mouths Ruth? so he reaches back to pull the tag of his sweater up from the collar and gestures to it. She nods like she understands, even though he’s never been more confused in his entire life.
“Um, hey,” Zari says, having rather unexpectedly found herself in a staring contest with a small child. “Ruth, was it?”
She looks affronted. Looks down at Zari like nobody has ever said anything more ridiculous, and says: “No, Aunt Zee-Zee.”
Aunt Zee-Zee? Ray thinks. Next to him, Sara snorts, and Nate, fist still full of almonds, says quietly: “That is so cute, oh my god.” (Zari glares at them both, but her expression softens when she looks back at Ruth and he figures she doesn’t actually hate the nickname.
It is pretty cute, after all.)
His daughter (his daughter!) taps Zari on the chest twice and says: “Aunt Zee-Zee,” and then taps her own chest and says: “Roo.”
“I thought her name was Ruth?” Ava says, still holding her pen, but her hand is limp and there’s a streak of black ink across the paper. The girl looks at her, tilts her head, and says: “Only when I’m bad.”
“Right. And the rest of the time, you’re . . . Roo?”
“Like from Winnie the Pooh!” Ruth agrees cheerfully.
“You’re the baby kangaroo?” Nate asks, (only sort of rhetorically), to no answer.
Ray looks back at the armchair, at Zari awkwardly holding herself up on her elbows, braced on one arm of the chair, and Ruth plopped happily on her stomach. She’s got her hands cupped together like she’s hiding something inside, holding them out to Zari as if to show her what.
“I gotta show you my trick,” she says, waving her hands dangerously close to Zari’s nose. “I’ve been pra’ticing.”
To her credit, Zari does an excellent job rolling with the punches. “Alright, show me whatcha got,” she says. Ruth’s nod is one of intense determination. Her nose scrunches up and her eyebrows furrow, and her shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath.
Then, her hands glow. It’s a soft, shimmery purple, just like the cloud she appeared in, and when her hands fall open, Ray watches something appear in her palms, piece by piece, like atoms are being pulled out of thin air to build it together. When the glow fades, there’s a donut sitting in her hands, held out to Zari like she’s presenting her with something priceless. Magic. His daughter has magic.
Ruth giggles at Zari’s expression: wide-eyed and slack-jawed, gaze darting between the donut and Ruth’s face like she’s not sure which should take precedence: her love for donuts or the display of magic. The donut wins, but as she reaches for it, Sara snips: “Zari, no,” in the tone one would use to scold a misbehaving cat, and she retracts her hand with a disgruntled huff.
“Ray,” Sara starts, her voice uneasy, and he interrupts because he doesn’t want to hear her say it: “I know.”
They’ve been fighting magic for months. Magic has nearly killed them all a dozen times over; magic held him up by the throat yesterday. It makes sense this would alarm her. But Ruth is just a little girl— his little girl—and none of what they’ve been suffering is her fault.
“She might not be real.” Ava’s words are slow and careful, like she’s trying to keep her voice steady. “She could be a trick, some type of trap.”
“Seems pretty real to me,” Zari says, but her eyes are still jumping between Ruth and the donut, and Ray wonders briefly which she’s talking about. When Ruth moves to scramble off her lap, the donut falls and she frantically reaches out to catch it. (And Sara is no longer looking at her, so she shrinks low in her chair and takes a huge, quiet bite.)
Suddenly Ruth is back in front of him, holding up her arms, and he knows what to do this time. He heaves her into the air and she settles on his hip, burying her fingers in the soft wool of his sweater. She is real. She must be real. Her breath is warm on the side of his face as she whispers loudly against his ear: “Why does Aunt Ava think I’m tricky?”
It’s quite possibly the biggest failure of a whisper he’s ever heard, and everyone else definitely hears it as well. (Somewhere off to the right, Aunt Ava sputters at the way Ruth has named her.) Sara pushes back her chair and stands, her fingers grazing Ava’s shoulder as she moves gracefully around the table to come stand in front of them, clasping her hands together.
“Aunt Ava’s just being silly,” she says, offering Ruth a bright—and fairly forced—smile. Glancing up at the ceiling, she prompts: “Gideon?”
“On it, Captain,” Gideon says, her smooth, monotonous voice filling the room. After a brief silence in which Ruth begins to rub her thumb up and down his cheek through his stubble like his face is one of those double-sided sequin pillows, reminding him that he really needs to shave, Gideon returns. “Ruth Palmer is no trick, Captain Lance. She is very real—born in late 2021 in Ivy Town, where she lives with Dr. Palmer and her mother, along with a cat and a younger brother.”
Ray’s heart skips in his chest. This is real; Ruth is real. In less than four years, he’s going to be a father. Living in the town that raised him, creating a family of his own.
“Fucking hell,” Sara mutters, swiping her hand over her face. Ruth leans dangerously forward with a cupped palm outstretched: “Swear quarter, Aunt Sara.”
The fearless Captain of the Waverider stops in her tracks and Ray watches her brain reboot itself, completely confused at the notion of a small child asking her for a quarter like there’s a swear jar on their ship. She blinks. Her hands hover awkwardly in the air as if she intended to pat down her pockets to see if she might have a stray quarter, but thought better of it.
“I’ve gotcha covered, don’t worry,” Nate says, leaning back in his chair to rummage deep into the pockets of his jeans before triumphantly pulling out a coin and tossing it to Sara, who, upon catching it, makes a weird face and mutters: “Is there melted chocolate on this?”
Nate shrugs, and she just sighs and hands it over to Ruth, who turns the quarter over in her palm happily and clutches it against her chest.
“Spend it wisely,” Nate says, and she nods sagely, tells him: “Gumball machine.” Her voice is so solemn, so serious, that Ray almost chokes on the laugh that bubbles up in his throat. There’s so much warmth in his chest that he worries he might explode from the pressure of it all against his ribcage, straining against the confines of his heart like he can’t fit all the love inside. His daughter smiles down at her quarter before pushing it into the pocket of her jacket and tapping his shoulder.
“Daddy, where’d Mommy go?”
“Oh, yeah, great question,” Zari says, tipping sideways as she hauls herself up from her chair and nearly falling on the floor. “Who’s her mom? I bet that’s where she gets her magic.”
Sara snaps a finger and points at Zari: “Yes. Hey, Gideon—”
“I’m sorry, Captain, but I’m afraid it goes against my protocol to reveal too much information about the futures of the Waverider’s crew.”
“We’ll have to forget this anyway,” Ava bargains. “I have a memory flasher—every agent does.”
Silence. Ruth goes limp against his side, head drooping against his shoulder, and he runs a hand up and down her back as she sighs: “Daddy, I’m hungry. Goldfishes?”
“I’ve got a jumbo-size box of the rainbow ones,” he tells her, carrying her over to the cupboards and sitting her down on the counter. For a moment, the room is weirdly quiet as he digs into the back of the tallest cupboard, the one no one else can reach, for his giant box of goldfish. (His one unhealthy indulgence.)
“So, Roo,” Zari says, leaning against the fridge as he fills a snack bowl and passes it to his (future) daughter. “Cool magic trick. Excellent donut.”
Ruth sits up straight, preening, but the gesture is slightly undermined by her cheeks puffed out with goldfish. It’s utterly adorable, and Ray swears he can feel his heart exploding like little fireworks in his chest.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?”
It’s like sliding one of those fancy dimmer light switches to full blast. Ruth beams, her smile a bit goldfish-y, and wiggles in place, kicking her legs back and forth. She holds out the bowl to Zari, offering her some of her snack. Surprised, Zari glances at the crackers, makes an eh, why not face, and grabs a few, shoveling them into her mouth.
“Mommy’s teaching me,” Ruth says cheerfully. “It’s hard ‘cause her magic’s different now and she can’t jus’ show me, but she’s really patient even though I’m not good yet. Seamus would be way better than me ‘cause he learns fast except he’s not interested in magic, but it’s okay ‘cause he knows a lot about dinosaurs.”
Ray blinks. Gideon had said Ruth had a brother. He has a son. (Not yet, he reminds himself. In a few years. Not yet.)
“Seamus is your brother?” Sara asks. As she approaches the counter to snag his goldfish box, one of Nate’s missed almonds crunches under her shoe. Ruth nods—“we’re going to the dinosaur museum for his birthday!”
One of her barrettes is falling loose. Shoving his nerves back as far as they’ll go, Ray reaches out to undo it, and she goes still to let him brush her hair back from her face and push the clip back into place. The little star on top glitters at him.
“What do you mean, her magic is different?” Ava’s voice drips with hesitance and wariness, but Ruth seems unconcerned. She just shrugs. “She’s a fairy godmother, now. Her magic’s only for wishes.”
“I’m sorry—fairy godmother?”
Through a mouthful of goldfish, Ruth says: “She doesn’t get wings, though.”
“Sure,” Sara says, like everything is totally and completely normal. She glances over at Ray. “You don’t happen to know any fairies, do you?”
“Mommy’s not actually a fairy, Aunt Sara.” Ruth’s expression twists like it’s totally ludicrous to suggest such a thing. “She just has a pretty fairytale dress and a wand and took the curse so she could save Aunt Mona. Can I have more goldfish, please?”
Hands working separately from his—deeply overwhelmed—brain, Ray takes the box back from Sara to refill her bowl. (And, for his sanity, ignores Nate as he quips: “She wears a fairytale dress as a part of her job. I’m sorry but that is so on-brand for you, Ray.”)
“Thank you, Daddy.”
“So,” Zari says, clearing her throat. “What’s your mom’s name?”
After rolling with their ignorance for so long, Ruth finally pauses, looking confused. She lowers her bowl, held between both hands, to her lap. “Are we playing a pretending game?” She asks. “I don’t know the rules.”
There it is, Ray thinks. Finally, she’s realized something is wrong and doesn’t know what to make of it. He wishes he could pull a page from the book of his future self, who knows how to be this girl’s father and would know what to say. He’d have an explanation for why everybody’s asking questions they should know the answers to.
“No, sweetheart,” he says, trying to keep the shakiness of his heartbeat out of his voice. She’s started tugging on the zipper of her jacket, so he reaches out to help her pull it off. (Her t-shirt underneath is covered with stylized ocean creatures: little whales swimming across the cotton, jellyfish shooting down her sleeves, an octopus on her shoulder, tentacles curling by her collar. Clearly, she’s a marine biologist in the making.) “There’s no game.”
Ray pauses, cupping the side of her face and brushing loose flyaways off her forehead as a way to bide himself a few seconds to come up with something to say. She blinks up at him, all big grey eyes, wide and wondering, as he just looks at her. This little girl, this marvelous and shining glimpse of a life waiting for him, meets his gaze and he can hardly believe that in only a few years, he’ll get to be her father. The thought of admitting to her that he doesn’t know her yet makes him feel ill. Still, he has to say something.
“Have you ever heard of time travel, Roo?” He tries, and she nods, shooting him a look that screams ‘duh.’ (Deep breath, Ray, he thinks. You can do this.) “Well, it seems you’ve had a bit of a run-in with it. And here, in my time, you haven’t been born yet. We’re very happy to see you, but there are some things about your life that we don’t know because they haven’t happened yet.”
“Oh,” Ruth says, staring down at a single green goldfish clutched between her thumb and forefinger. She scratches at it with her nail and it cracks under the pressure, crumbling into her palm. (That moment of silence, he thinks, is one of the most stressful moments he has lived thus far.) “Has Mommy not been born yet, too? Is that why Aunt Zee-Zee keeps asking about her?”
“That’s . . . a really complicated thing to ask a time traveler, kid,” Sara says, her voice the slightest bit strangled, like she’s trying not to laugh. Zari, who has, in fact, not been born yet in his time, pushes herself away from the fridge with her elbow and suddenly her gaze on Ruth is incredibly heavy, and Ray’s stomach climbs up into his throat. Somehow, he already knows what question she’s going to ask, and she looks like she already knows what the answer will be. He studies her face and something sharp and anxious spins in his stomach. (He refuses to call it hope.)
Ray remembers his first thought when Ruth appeared: She looks like Nora. Shiny dark hair, clear grey eyes, the subtle arch of her brow. The same small dimple in her chin; the same straight curve of her jaw.
She looks like Nora, he’d thought. She still does. He’s been trying not to think about it. (He’s been failing at not thinking about it.)
Zari opens her mouth and he knows what she’s going to say. After all, they were the ones who sat with Nora at that coffee shop in 2017, played Heads Up and saw her smile. A smile that, however brief, was so much like Ruth’s is. He catches her gaze and knows he isn’t the only one who thought Nora when she first arrived.
“About your mom, Roo,” Zari starts, cautious but gentle, “is her name Nora—do people call her Nora?”
The room goes silent. Ava stops tapping her pen anxiously against the table; Sara’s breath hitches; Nate’s chair falls back onto four legs from where he’d been tipping it back on two. Shifting her weight on the counter, Ruth looks up at him, and he knows. Without a doubt, he knows that she is his daughter, and that she’s Nora’s, too. He doesn’t mind. (Perhaps he’s even a bit pleased, though he’s definitely not going to say so out loud.)
The familiar whoosh of a time courier portal sounds across the room, right where Ruth had first appeared. He turns just in time to see it finish opening, to see a blur of soft blue and shiny, dark hair fly through.
“Mommy!”
Goldfish slosh sideways in the bowl, close to spilling over the edge, and he just barely catches it as it tips out of her hands. Ruth is stretching out her arms, dangerously close to tipping off the counter, and Ray awkwardly hovers, ready to catch her should she fall. Everyone had been loitering around the counter before, but now, as the blur heads straight for them, they scatter like waving a hand through smoke.
It’s Nora. He recognizes her almost in slow motion. She comes into focus as she slows down, nearing the counter, and suddenly she’s less than a foot away from him, scooping Ruth off the counter into her arms and he sees her standing before him like he’s seeing her for the first time. By and large, she looks the same as she did yesterday. Or several years ago. (Everything’s in the wrong order, again.)
But there are differences, small things like the faint wrinkles around her eyes and the length of her hair, cut just below her shoulders in waves that seem to glitter in the light, that he suddenly has to fight the urge to reach out and touch. She seems softer in baby blue.
He remembers only a few days ago, how she stood in front of him in that warehouse, frustrated and hurt that her father didn’t trust her, and he’d realized that she wasn’t actually all that scary. Suddenly, those dark clothes had just seemed like playing pretend. (Dressing in black is basically a Bad Guy requirement, and being just barely over five feet tall with a glare that said ‘disgruntled and occasionally hostile house cat’ more than it did ‘vessel to an ancient time demon,’ she needed all the help she could get.)
This Nora seems warmer, less weighed down by the gravity of her own existence. (He imagines the knowledge that you are being raised for sacrifice would not be so easy to bear.)
Her palm cradles the back of Ruth’s head, fingers curling into her dark hair, and there, glinting off the kitchen light from her fourth finger—wedding rings. Two thin, silver bands slotting perfectly together; a glittering diamond. His heart sputters in his chest and sure, his present is her past and it’s kind of a battlefield at the moment, but she’s also his future. And it looks wonderful.
Ruth is like magic. (No pun intended. Well. Pun mildly intended.) She’s bright and happy and she likes goldfish and her hair clips have stars on them. She smiles and it’s like nothing bad can happen. She has a little brother who loves dinosaurs. She’s his.
His and Nora’s. He’s going to marry Nora.
“Ray? You okay?”
He blinks. She’s standing in front of him, head just slightly tilted toward Ruth, who’s perched on her hip and slumped, boneless, against her side like she’d done to him earlier. Her face is buried against Nora’s collarbone, fingers curled into the billowy fabric of her blouse.
Worry shines in Nora’s eyes—concern laced into the clear grey of her irises. For the first time, he allows himself to think: Wow, she’s really pretty.
“I’m okay,” he says, voice airy like he’s not completely there inside his own words. “You’re really pretty.”
Ah, rats. He did not mean to say that. (Somewhere nearby, Ava makes a strangled noise and Zari chokes on a laugh—very rude of her to find amusement in his suffering.)
Smooth, Ray, he thinks.
But Nora just laughs, bright and shiny like fairy bells or the stars, sparkling off the water from a new-moon sky. She is beautiful and suddenly it is incredibly easy to imagine falling in love with her. (It probably wouldn’t take very long.)
Still, he feels his cheeks flush, and when her laughter fades, she presses her lips together in an upside-down smile that says she’s trying not to start laughing again. His heart expands so far that his chest aches with the effort of containing it.
“So,” Sara starts, shifting into her ‘I’m the Captain and I Mean Business’ pose: arms crossed, stance wide. “Your kid time traveled into our kitchen. Why?”
It’s a question, but only grammatically. Really, it’s a demand for information.
“My best guess? She wasn’t doing so hot in hide-and-seek, and tried to use magic.” Nora looks down at her daughter, traces of mild amusement flickering across her expression. “Am I close?”
Unintelligibly, Ruth mumbles into her shirt.
“I can’t hear you, kangaroo,” Nora says.
(“Kangaroo,” Nate whispers, terribly unquietly, stressing the word so hard his voice sounds strangled. “Because of Roo. That is so cute.”
“No, it isn’t.” Ava whacks his shoulder and he whines pathetically, considering he’s literally made of steel.
“Sorry, babe, but it definitely is,” Sara says. Ray ignores them all, far too hypnotized by his future wife and daughter.)
Ruth’s face slowly emerges from Nora’s collarbone, and the hair on the side of her head is all tousled from being pressed against her shoulder. With a gentle, light touch, Nora brushes it out and tucks it behind her ear.
“I couldn’t find Daddy,” Ruth grumbles, her bottom lip jutting out in a dramatically grumpy pout. “I only tried to use magic a little bit.”
“Well, you’ll be happy to hear that I found him behind the couch, and now he’s having a hard time finding your brother.”
Ruth perks up, squirming a little in her mother’s arms. “I can help! Seamus always goes in the hamper.” Nora’s lips quirk up before she straightens her face.
“I’m sure he’d appreciate your help. But no magic, okay? You could get hurt.” Her hand moves up to brush against Ruth’s cheek, her thumb stroking at the skin over her temple. After trailing the tips of her fingers down her hairline, Nora tips her head forward to bump her forehead against Ruth’s. She murmurs: “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” Ruth says, sweet and sincere.
“It’s alright, baby. We’ll just be more careful from now on, yeah?”
Nodding seriously, Ruth says: “I promise,” before reaching out to press her thumbs to the corners of Nora’s mouth and pushes up, trying to make a smile. “No worries, Mommy. I found Daddy and I got goldfish and a swear quarter ‘cause Aunt Sara said ‘fucking hell.’”
From just behind Ray’s shoulder, Zari barks a laugh. Sara makes a choked sound of distress, and Nora just blinks, eyes wide and startled.
“I love this kid,” Zari says, and when Ray turns to glance at her, she’s grinning.
“I love you too, Aunt Zee-Zee,” Ruth beams. After a brief pause, she starts to wriggle. “Down now, please. Gotta find Seamus.”
Nora bends to set Ruth down, and after pressing a messy kiss to her mother’s cheek, the girl darts off toward the still-open portal, her light-up sneakers shining off the floor. With a sigh, Nora calls after her: “Don’t check the hamper first! Let your father keep some of his dignity.”
Turning back to them as Ruth disappears through the portal, she reaches for a flasher sticking out of her pocket that he hadn’t noticed before. She takes a deep breath, like she’s not particularly enthused about this part, and says: “Who wants to go first?”
“Not it,” Nate says immediately, raising his hands in a ‘no, thank you’ gesture and stepping back. Sara steps forward; “I’ll go.”
She reaches for Nora’s wrist and drags it up until the flasher is level with her face, and moves closer until it touches her forehead. She presses the button herself, and the flash of light can barely be seen with it pressed against her skin. Stumbling back a step, hand falling away from Nora’s wrist, Sara blinks a few times and her brow furrows in confusion. Ava reaches out to her, gently taking her by the shoulders and leading her to sit down at the table in the chair she’d been in earlier, before everything.
“What happened?” Sara asks, dropping into the seat, letting Ava move her.
“Nothing special. Don’t worry about it,” Ava says. “Look, almonds—why don’t you throw some at Nate? I bet he can’t catch them.”
Sara’s eyes widen and she pulls the half-empty bowl toward her on the table. With Sara still a bit dazed but occupied, Ava crosses the dining area toward Nora. Smoothing out the nonexistent wrinkles on her pantsuit slacks, she says: “Okay, wipe my memory.”
The overhead glow of the kitchen light catches and glitters on Nora’s hair as she nods. The silky fabric of her blouse flows like rippling water, moving with her body as she reaches out, aiming the flasher at Ava.
Ava blinks, the past few minutes gone. Zari. Nate. Mick is left alone, as he is, in fact, asleep. (But Ray does delicately extract the beer bottle from his hand lest it slip and smash on the floor. Mick snorts and his head lolls to the side, but he doesn’t wake.)
“And then there were two.”
Nora’s voice is soft and warm. Ray turns back and she’s standing near the portal with the flasher in one hand, the other tucked into a deep pants pocket. The same soft shade of blue as her blouse and the same lightweight linen, he’d first thought she was wearing a dress. She’s just as pretty as he remembered her being, but she’s alive in a way that his Nora isn’t. (Not his Nora, obviously. The version of Nora from his time, that’s all. Present-day Nora. Whatever. Shut up.)
Holding up the flasher, she asks, in a kind voice that suggests she knows he isn’t ready: “You ready?”
He nods. “Yeah. Yes. Not really, actually. But yes. Wipe my memory.”
She approaches him silently and slowly—like one might approach a skittish animal in flight-mode. He’s expecting her to hold up the flasher and be done with it, but she doesn’t, and he thinks he should’ve known better than to think she would. Instead, she slips her hand into his and squeezes and he feels a spark—
(“When I gave her the time stone, our hands touched and I felt a spark,” he will tell Zari soon, and she’ll make a depressing metaphor about Nora being a unicorn who will eat him alive, but that’s not for a while yet. First, he has to forget his future and then, in the semblance of peace in the aftermath of the war, he will feel that spark again and think it’s the first time, but it’ll feel familiar, and he won’t remember why.
But that’s all out of order. None of it’s happened yet and there are a few more months to wait through. Then, a few more years until Ruth. For now, though—)
Her skin is soft and warm against his. She smiles and the corners of her eyes crinkle.
“How long do I have to wait?” He asks.
“Not long. And you’ll keep busy.”
All he can do is nod. He’s not ready to forget—he’s always been so unlucky in love, and the knowledge of what’s waiting for him is like a beacon in the dark. But he focuses his attention on the warmth of her hand and the soft grey of her eyes, so bright and clear with love, and swallows the nerves that sit like a stone in his throat.
As though she can sense the feeling of unreadiness in his chest, Nora tilts her head, gesturing toward the portal, and says: “Right through there, my husband is playing hide-and-seek with our children, and he is you. This isn’t goodbye. You’ll see me soon.”
There’s nothing he can think of to say, so he just nods again and glances down at their clasped hands, squeezing gently before letting go.
Nora’s arm wavers as she holds the flasher up to his forehead, and Ray’s last thought before the past hour fades away is that he can’t wait to fall in love with her.