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A bit of emotional fluff and love because I love these three so much.
Title: My Husband The Superhero
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (2014)
Characters/Pairings: Jefferson "Jax" Jackson, Clarissa Stein, Martin is there in spirit. Martin/Clarissa, Martin & Jax, Jax & Clarissa
Summary: Clarissa and Jax, and that conversation they had before staging that intervention in the finale. Jax fills Clarissa in on a lot of things, and Clarissa in her turn lets him know certain facts about her husband and why she loves him before she gives them her blessing to go gallivanting off through time and space
Wordcount: 3938
Warnings/Notes: Missing scene, Season Finale. Conversations, revelations, humour, love, pain, missing persons, loss, reunions, adventure, hope, heroism, friendship, marriage, partnership, hopeful ending
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: My Husband The Superhero
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (2014)
Characters/Pairings: Jefferson "Jax" Jackson, Clarissa Stein, Martin is there in spirit. Martin/Clarissa, Martin & Jax, Jax & Clarissa
Summary: Clarissa and Jax, and that conversation they had before staging that intervention in the finale. Jax fills Clarissa in on a lot of things, and Clarissa in her turn lets him know certain facts about her husband and why she loves him before she gives them her blessing to go gallivanting off through time and space
Wordcount: 3938
Warnings/Notes: Missing scene, Season Finale. Conversations, revelations, humour, love, pain, missing persons, loss, reunions, adventure, hope, heroism, friendship, marriage, partnership, hopeful ending
Disclaimer: Not mine
My Husband The Superhero
"So there we are in this cell, right? Me and Rip and Captain Baxter, and Mick's doing who knows what, and the rest of the team are dying over on the Waverider, and it all looks hopeless, right? That's it, that's the end. And then, out of the blue, the cell door opens. We don't know what we're expecting, more time pirates, what, and then ... there's Grey. Standing there, all kitted out like one of the pirates, looking all smug and happy at us."
Clarissa laughed helplessly. She couldn't help it, she couldn't believe it. "What, Martin?" she asked, almost incredulously. "My Martin? Took on a ship full of ... of time pirates?"
It wasn't that she didn't believe in her husband, you understand, she knew he done some truly incredible things since he'd become a superhero, but this wasn't Firestorm. This wasn't superheroics, this was just Martin, her absent-minded, easily-flustered husband, running around space and time rescuing people from pirates all by his lonesome. It was ... it was a little incredible, you had to admit.
But Jax just laughed, shaking his head in pure, delighted earnestness. "Hell yeah," he said, grinning over at her. "He was running around sabotaging weapons systems and mugging time pirates for their gear like it was nothing. And that ain't even the best part. When he opens the door, when he lets us out, you know what he says? He says: 'Now, who would care to join me in a daring escape?' I'm not kidding. Man, it was the best thing."
He was so animated, describing it. Waving his hands in the air, grinning fit to burst. So happy and enthusiastic, so proud and so fond. It was such a wonderful sight. It was so clear how much he loved her husband, how much delight he took in his partner's exploits. It was so wonderful to see that for Martin. God knew he wasn't the easiest person to get attached to, Clarissa knew that better than most. Yet clearly someone other than her had managed now.
"And, you know," Jax was continuing, half to himself, still lost and grinning in the memories. "I was gonna poke fun at him a bit for the space ranger thing? He was so adorable, he was all excited, but then, man, he owned that. Space Ranger Stein, liberator of the Acheron! No way in hell anyone was gonna make fun of him after that."
Clarissa spluttered, almost coughing tea down her sweater, and Jax blinked over at her in startled concern. Clarissa waved a hand at him, waving him away while she got her breath back, the coughs half-giggles even as it stood.
"Space ranger?" she asked, after a moment, and Jax ducked sheepishly, shy and defensive on her husband's behalf, and by god Clarissa wasn't sure if she'd ever loved anybody more than in that moment. She shook her head, in a haze of delighted disbelief. "He always did love those stories. I suppose I just never imagined that he would get the chance to live one ..."
Jax looked at her then. His smile faded, something much more serious slipping across his face. Clarissa blinked at him, and he seemed to gear up for something, to set his face and make certain to say it right.
"He was meant for this," he said, leaning forward towards her across the coffee table. "You should see him out there, ma'am. I'm not joking, it's ... he's different, you know? He's bigger and he's better. The things we do, it's more than just fighting time pirates. We're helping save time, we're helping save the world, and that ain't even the least of it. Everywhere we go, everywhere we end up, he's out there in the middle of it. He's trying to ... trying to fix things, trying to help people. You don't know, he gets in so much trouble. We ain't even meant to be doing half this shit. But Grey, he's just ... 'I'm saving this kid' or 'we're evacuating these refugees', and people tell him no, and he just ... does it anyway. An' it works, and we help people, and it's ... it's something else. It feels like something we're meant to do, you know what I mean? It feels like something we were born for."
Clarissa stared at him. He looked ... he looked so fierce, suddenly. So sure and so determined. One thing she'd known from the start was that Jefferson Jackson was a very vibrant, passionate young man, and this ... this was certainly proof of that. She hadn't seen such a stubborn, passionate determination since ... well. Since Martin.
"... You believe that, don't you," she said quietly. Not a question, not really. She was in no doubt whatsoever. Just ... an acknowledgement. He nodded fiercely.
"Getting on that ship was the best thing I ever did," he said, with absolute honesty. "I told him that. Grey. I meant it. We're doing things out there that we would never have the chance to do anywhere else. We're changing things, we're fixing things. That means something to me. It means something to him too. I know it does. I wanna go back out there. I want him to come with me."
Clarissa blinked, frowned. "You say that like you think he won't," she said slowly. In some confusion, in some disbelief, because Martin ...
He did want to go back out there. She'd known it from the moment he'd come back. Oh, he tried not to show it. For her sake, for five months of absence where none had been planned, none had been expected, for the memory of another absence, a year where he might have been alive or dead and was in fact some halfway thing between the two, lost in another man's body and slowing burning to death. He'd been so guilty when he come back this time, so flushed and so ashamed. So he tried to act like he wouldn't be leaving again. He tried to act like it didn't matter to him. But it did. She could see it in every breath he took. He could never lie to her for long. She knew he wanted to go back. And in all their twenty eight years of marriage, Martin had never once been less than stubborn. She'd thought it was only a matter of time.
But Jax wasn't looking at her like it was. There was a thread of desperation in him, a thread of fear, as though he thought Martin genuinely was going to stay here. As though he thought her husband, his partner, would honestly turn his back on all they had done and become and choose to stay here and potter around in retirement instead.
Not that she wouldn't want him to, of course, not that she would mind having some time with her husband with him disappearing for months and years at a stretch, but ...
"Why do you think he's not going to come?" she asked, leaning forward herself and resting her mug on the table. "He was so determined last time, after you all came back. He wanted to finish the mission, and nothing was going to stop him. Why do you think it's different now?"
Jax grimaced faintly. "That was different," he said. "We had Kendra to rescue then, yeah? We had a job to do, and a timeline to save. I mean, he could argue that we were needed, not just wanted. But this time ... It's just us, you know? Nobody's dying, at least not yet, we don't know for sure some lunatic's gonna blow up all of time if we don't go. There's no ... there's no reason. No excuse. It's like he thinks he can't justify it to himself."
Clarissa blinked. "In my experience," she said wryly, "my husband has never really needed much of an excuse to do what he wants to do. Once he's made up his mind, it doesn't matter how flimsy a thing it is, there's no stopping him. And ... he does want this. Like you said, I know he does. I can see it in him every moment. He feels it just as strongly as you do. You're right. It's something he was meant for. I don't think he'll turn his back on that. I know my husband, Mr Jackson. I don't think he'll be able to."
And honestly, she did mean that. Martin had never in his life been able to resist the lure of anything that truly fascinated him. He was worse than a magpie. The first hint of something shiny and he was away. Add in something that actually mattered as well, something that helped people and stood for something and genuinely mattered, and her husband would not be moved from it with a nuclear bomb. Quite possibly literally, these days. Jax had to know that too. He'd surely seen enough of it.
Yet he didn't look reassured. Not even a little bit. Clarissa found herself frowning in earnest now.
"This time might be different," Jax said, looking tired and hesitant. "Look, I ... I don't know how much he might have told you, but I think we scared him. You and me, I mean. Some stuff happened, and I think maybe it scared him so much that he doesn't want to let it happen again."
Clarissa looked at him sideways. "What kind of 'stuff'?" she asked warily. "Because I don't know if you noticed this, but I wasn't on this trip of yours. How could I have scared him?"
Jax grimaced faintly. "Um," he said. "Well, uh. We kind of ... we almost erased your marriage from the timeline? That kinda happened. And a few other things, and we almost died a few times, and there was the whole part where we were five months late, and ... and basically he's almost lost you like a whole bunch of times? Not like you dying or anything, but ... like you never knew him. Like he'd come back and you'd look at him, and you wouldn't know who he was. That scared him. I felt it. That scared him so much."
Her hand pressed against her mouth. She hadn't meant it to, hadn't consciously moved it at all. She didn't ... All those five months, she'd been afraid she'd lost him. Again. She'd been afraid she'd lost him all over again, and there'd been parts of the night where no amount of telling herself that he'd just ... lost track of things again, done something funny with time travel and gotten lost on the way back or something, none of that helped. She'd been terrified she'd lost him, but ... but this was a whole different level. This was ... never having known him? Her Martin? Never having ... not just lost him, but having lost all those years as well, all those memories, those ...
God, it was a horrifying thought. A terrifying one, just for her, and she knew Martin ... He'd lived it once before. Something like it. He'd come to her in Ronald's body, lost and confused and not knowing what was happening to him, and she hadn't known him. She hadn't recognised him, she'd been scared of him, she'd turned him away. He'd already lived it once. He already knew what it was like for her to look at him and have no idea who he was.
"... And you?" she asked, after a very long few moments. Because she needed to think of something else, she needed to have a different horror to focus on. Her voice shook anyway. Her hand trembled where it was cupped across her face. "How ... how did you scare him?"
Jax looked away. "I almost died," he said, sort of flat and careful and tired. "I don't just mean like, I had a near miss, I mean I was dying. Actually dying. He had to knock me out and hijack a timeship and send me through the timestream to fix it. Which, you know, I'm guessing the rest of the team weren't that happy about either. He seriously snuck up on me and stabbed me in the neck with a sedative and sent me back to 2016 to save my life. Don't ever turn your back on Grey when he's trying to save you. Man gets ruthless."
He looked up, trying to smile about it, trying to turn it aside a little bit, but it didn't last very long. It faded away, and there was just a tired young man looking at her. One who had faced his own death, one who had faced her husband's reaction to same. Clarissa only looked at him. She offered a pale, trembling sort of smile of her own.
"Grey gets weird about me dying," Jax said softly. "Guess you know that. Makes him think of ..."
"Ronnie," Clarissa agreed gently. "Yes, I know. He wasn't ... He felt Ronnie leaving him. He didn't ... he couldn't tell me too much, he couldn't talk about it for very long. But he felt it happening. It ... hurt him very deeply."
"Yeah," Jax said, soft and tired. "Yeah, it did. I know that. I've felt that. It's getting deeper, you know? I can feel him so much these days, way more than I used to. I know what it did to him. And I know ... I know how scared he is now. You and me, he's afraid for us. He's afraid of losing us. That's why he doesn't want to go. He's scared that if we go out there again, either me or him ain't coming back, and either way he loses one of us. He can't do that again. That's why he's too scared to move."
He paused for a second, licked his lips as though gathering his courage up again, and then he sat forward all the way, leaned practically off the edge of his seat, his expression so fierce and so determined as he looked at her.
"He can't do that," he said, trying to be careful, all but shaking with the strength of it anyway. "He can't live like that. I know him. Okay? I know him now, I know how much more than this he's capable of. I don't want him to sit here and be afraid. That's not what we're for. I've seen him ... I've seen him spit in the face of torturers and, and figure out how to save the world, and decide to save like a thousand people from a giant robot and get stabbed for his troubles and still be telling me to help them even while he's bleeding. Me and him, we can do so much. And he loves you, and I know he doesn't want to lose you, and ... and maybe you don't want to lose him, maybe you think I'm being so selfish over here, maybe you think--"
"I don't," Clarissa said. Quiet and sudden and abrupt, dropping down across his stumbling speech like a steel trap. She shook her head, looking at him strangely, feeling the blank, firm truth of it in her head. "I don't think that. I don't."
Jax froze. He looked at her, half desperate and half terrified. He looked at her with the same shame her husband did, the same fear and the same conviction that he had let her down, and underneath it ... the same need to have done it anyway. The same belief, the same passion, fervent and sure. Looking at him, seeing him sitting there, arguing so ferociously on her husband's behalf, she felt ... she wasn't sure what. Something. Some strange mix of love and terror and power. A sort of desperate compassion, the love that had led her to choose Martin above all others, the love that had given her the strength to stand beside him through years of distance and projects and work and tragedies, through the FIRESTORM project, through the particle accelerator, through a year of loss and empty spaces, through Firestorm itself. Through Ronnie, and Jax, and five missing months, and everything else besides. She ... she loved him. She always had, not even in spite of all of that, but almost because of it. Her husband, her brave, passionate, amazingly foolish husband. She had always loved him, adored him every moment of their lives. And Jax, Jefferson Jackson, he was no different. He was ...
He was such a fierce, earnest, passionate young man. He was just like her Martin. All he wanted was to help people, to build something that mattered, to stand up and do something that wouldn't fade away. She couldn't help but love him too. How could anyone not? He was, quite simply, one of the most beautiful people she had ever met.
"... You're not selfish," she said quietly. Smiling crookedly, leaning over to grip his hands across the coffee table, holding them earnest and gentle. "Neither of you, though Martin does have his moments. He tends to leap before he looks, he doesn't always think it through. He can be selfish. But I ... I married him knowing that. I was never afraid of that part of him. I think I might even have admired it, a little. Just that ... that passion and that need to act. And you, you have that too, and you're right. You are right. You shouldn't hide that away, you shouldn't let him sit in fear and pretend it doesn't exist. That's not who you are, either of you, and it's not ... it's not the man I married. It's not my Martin. I don't think either of us should stand for that."
He blinked at her. Just ... just stared, this stunned, amazed expression on his face. It took him a second to scrape some words together again, and when he managed there was this ... this quiet amazement, this appreciation, that warmed Clarissa all the way through.
"You know, I could always feel the way he loved you," he said, an odd, distracted smile on his face. "I could feel that, I never had to wonder about it. I always knew he loved you. Gotta say, some moments it's real easy to see why."
And good gracious. Good gracious indeed. He was far too young and far too beautiful to be saying things like that. Or rather, Clarissa was far too old and far too married to be hearing them. He was practically her son, that most certainly wasn't fair. Honestly. Martin had no right to go around finding such ... such amazingly wonderful partners. That wasn't even the slightest bit fair.
"... Are you really sure you're okay with this?" Jax went on, after a second for Clarissa to wake up from her daze a bit. He looked at her, all wry and serious and earnest once again, gripping her hands in his. "Because he's not wrong, you know. We almost died, we almost died a lot. It ain't exactly safe out there, and Grey tends not to be too careful about it either. I mean, he yells at me for being reckless, but I ain't even done half the shit he has. We go out there, there really is a chance we're not coming back. You sure you're okay with that?"
Clarissa laughed, a breathless little huff of air. "Of course I'm not all right with it," she said, and shook her head when his expression fell. "I don't mean you shouldn't go, I don't mean that. But I'm not all right with the thought of you dying. Either of you. Of course I'm not okay with that. That doesn't mean I think I should stop you. You are ..." She bit her lip, hefted his hands in hers. "You're so brave, the both of you. You're both so brave, and you're doing something that matters, and however terrified it makes me, I know better than to stop you. I know better than to want to."
She paused, to take a breath, to get it back. To think about it, to think how to phrase it. Jax held onto her through it. He held her hands and watched her so carefully, so gently.
"I have ..." she started, slow and careful. "I've almost lost Martin so many times. I know what it feels like, I know how terrible it is. But I ... I also know what it's like to listen to stories of him saving the world. You know? I know what it's like to hear about him pulling people from a cell, or rescuing refugees, or saving a timeship. I know what it's like to have an earnest, heroic young man come in here and tell me that's what my husband does, what he is. That ... that does mean something to me. To know that ... what I've seen in him all these years is now something other people can see too. To know that he's become part of something ... bigger and better than anything he's had before. I don't want to lose him, Jax, I never want that, but I don't want him to fade again either. I know what he is, what he can be, I always have. I want him to go out and be it. I want him to come home and know that ... that he did everything he could, and more than anyone could ever ask of him."
Jax opened his mouth. Closed it again helplessly after a second, shook his head in blank amazement all over again. Honestly, they were very fragile, her husband and his partner. They were so easily flustered, the pair of them.
"... You know he doesn't deserve you, right?" the young man asked eventually. "Like damn. I know he loves you more than anything, but I sure as hell don't know how he deserved you."
Clarissa snorted at that. "Oh, bullshit," she said, and laughed at the way he stared at her. "No one ever deserved me, Mr Jackson. Not from the day I was born. It was never a matter of deserving, it was a matter of wanting. Martin was what I wanted, so Martin was what I got. The fact that he got me too in exchange was, frankly, not the point."
He blinked at her for a second, and then he smiled, slow and wide and disbelieving. "Mrs Stein," he said, entirely seriously. "You are the boss."
Clarissa grinned at him. "Yes, I am," she said happily, before sobering a little bit. Only a little. They'd passed the painful parts already. "And, speaking as the boss, you're right. I love my husband to pieces and I'm always glad to have him near, but he's going to drive himself to distraction trying to sit here when he knows everything that's out there and everything he could be doing about it. I am not an object, I am not an excuse, I'm not going to let him tear himself to pieces out of fear for me. No. No, Mr Jackson, you know what? I think it's time for you and I to stage an intervention."
He grinned at her, her husband's brave, earnest, impossibly wonderful partner. "Hell yeah," he said, grinning at her like she'd hung the moon. "Count me in for that!"
Clarissa laughed with him, and let go of his hands to reach over and pat his cheek. "Absolutely," she said lightly, giving him a little wink. "After all, we cannot deprive the universe of Space Ranger Stein, liberator of the Acheron, can we?"
Jax blinked at her, and ruefully shook his head. "Man," he said. "Grey is so going to kill me for that one. You're gonna tease him about that for the rest of his life, aren't you?"
"Yes," Clarissa said cheerfully. "Oh yes, my dear, yes I am!"
A/N: Looking back on it, Jax is honestly right. The amount of shit he gets into can't be anything close to the amount Martin gets into. Anyone who thinks Martin is the level-headed, responsible one in their partnership clearly has never seen the man, you know, kidnap his partner, or run into an irradiated chamber, or hijack a timeship to use as an impromptu refugee transport straight off the cuff. Heh.
"So there we are in this cell, right? Me and Rip and Captain Baxter, and Mick's doing who knows what, and the rest of the team are dying over on the Waverider, and it all looks hopeless, right? That's it, that's the end. And then, out of the blue, the cell door opens. We don't know what we're expecting, more time pirates, what, and then ... there's Grey. Standing there, all kitted out like one of the pirates, looking all smug and happy at us."
Clarissa laughed helplessly. She couldn't help it, she couldn't believe it. "What, Martin?" she asked, almost incredulously. "My Martin? Took on a ship full of ... of time pirates?"
It wasn't that she didn't believe in her husband, you understand, she knew he done some truly incredible things since he'd become a superhero, but this wasn't Firestorm. This wasn't superheroics, this was just Martin, her absent-minded, easily-flustered husband, running around space and time rescuing people from pirates all by his lonesome. It was ... it was a little incredible, you had to admit.
But Jax just laughed, shaking his head in pure, delighted earnestness. "Hell yeah," he said, grinning over at her. "He was running around sabotaging weapons systems and mugging time pirates for their gear like it was nothing. And that ain't even the best part. When he opens the door, when he lets us out, you know what he says? He says: 'Now, who would care to join me in a daring escape?' I'm not kidding. Man, it was the best thing."
He was so animated, describing it. Waving his hands in the air, grinning fit to burst. So happy and enthusiastic, so proud and so fond. It was such a wonderful sight. It was so clear how much he loved her husband, how much delight he took in his partner's exploits. It was so wonderful to see that for Martin. God knew he wasn't the easiest person to get attached to, Clarissa knew that better than most. Yet clearly someone other than her had managed now.
"And, you know," Jax was continuing, half to himself, still lost and grinning in the memories. "I was gonna poke fun at him a bit for the space ranger thing? He was so adorable, he was all excited, but then, man, he owned that. Space Ranger Stein, liberator of the Acheron! No way in hell anyone was gonna make fun of him after that."
Clarissa spluttered, almost coughing tea down her sweater, and Jax blinked over at her in startled concern. Clarissa waved a hand at him, waving him away while she got her breath back, the coughs half-giggles even as it stood.
"Space ranger?" she asked, after a moment, and Jax ducked sheepishly, shy and defensive on her husband's behalf, and by god Clarissa wasn't sure if she'd ever loved anybody more than in that moment. She shook her head, in a haze of delighted disbelief. "He always did love those stories. I suppose I just never imagined that he would get the chance to live one ..."
Jax looked at her then. His smile faded, something much more serious slipping across his face. Clarissa blinked at him, and he seemed to gear up for something, to set his face and make certain to say it right.
"He was meant for this," he said, leaning forward towards her across the coffee table. "You should see him out there, ma'am. I'm not joking, it's ... he's different, you know? He's bigger and he's better. The things we do, it's more than just fighting time pirates. We're helping save time, we're helping save the world, and that ain't even the least of it. Everywhere we go, everywhere we end up, he's out there in the middle of it. He's trying to ... trying to fix things, trying to help people. You don't know, he gets in so much trouble. We ain't even meant to be doing half this shit. But Grey, he's just ... 'I'm saving this kid' or 'we're evacuating these refugees', and people tell him no, and he just ... does it anyway. An' it works, and we help people, and it's ... it's something else. It feels like something we're meant to do, you know what I mean? It feels like something we were born for."
Clarissa stared at him. He looked ... he looked so fierce, suddenly. So sure and so determined. One thing she'd known from the start was that Jefferson Jackson was a very vibrant, passionate young man, and this ... this was certainly proof of that. She hadn't seen such a stubborn, passionate determination since ... well. Since Martin.
"... You believe that, don't you," she said quietly. Not a question, not really. She was in no doubt whatsoever. Just ... an acknowledgement. He nodded fiercely.
"Getting on that ship was the best thing I ever did," he said, with absolute honesty. "I told him that. Grey. I meant it. We're doing things out there that we would never have the chance to do anywhere else. We're changing things, we're fixing things. That means something to me. It means something to him too. I know it does. I wanna go back out there. I want him to come with me."
Clarissa blinked, frowned. "You say that like you think he won't," she said slowly. In some confusion, in some disbelief, because Martin ...
He did want to go back out there. She'd known it from the moment he'd come back. Oh, he tried not to show it. For her sake, for five months of absence where none had been planned, none had been expected, for the memory of another absence, a year where he might have been alive or dead and was in fact some halfway thing between the two, lost in another man's body and slowing burning to death. He'd been so guilty when he come back this time, so flushed and so ashamed. So he tried to act like he wouldn't be leaving again. He tried to act like it didn't matter to him. But it did. She could see it in every breath he took. He could never lie to her for long. She knew he wanted to go back. And in all their twenty eight years of marriage, Martin had never once been less than stubborn. She'd thought it was only a matter of time.
But Jax wasn't looking at her like it was. There was a thread of desperation in him, a thread of fear, as though he thought Martin genuinely was going to stay here. As though he thought her husband, his partner, would honestly turn his back on all they had done and become and choose to stay here and potter around in retirement instead.
Not that she wouldn't want him to, of course, not that she would mind having some time with her husband with him disappearing for months and years at a stretch, but ...
"Why do you think he's not going to come?" she asked, leaning forward herself and resting her mug on the table. "He was so determined last time, after you all came back. He wanted to finish the mission, and nothing was going to stop him. Why do you think it's different now?"
Jax grimaced faintly. "That was different," he said. "We had Kendra to rescue then, yeah? We had a job to do, and a timeline to save. I mean, he could argue that we were needed, not just wanted. But this time ... It's just us, you know? Nobody's dying, at least not yet, we don't know for sure some lunatic's gonna blow up all of time if we don't go. There's no ... there's no reason. No excuse. It's like he thinks he can't justify it to himself."
Clarissa blinked. "In my experience," she said wryly, "my husband has never really needed much of an excuse to do what he wants to do. Once he's made up his mind, it doesn't matter how flimsy a thing it is, there's no stopping him. And ... he does want this. Like you said, I know he does. I can see it in him every moment. He feels it just as strongly as you do. You're right. It's something he was meant for. I don't think he'll turn his back on that. I know my husband, Mr Jackson. I don't think he'll be able to."
And honestly, she did mean that. Martin had never in his life been able to resist the lure of anything that truly fascinated him. He was worse than a magpie. The first hint of something shiny and he was away. Add in something that actually mattered as well, something that helped people and stood for something and genuinely mattered, and her husband would not be moved from it with a nuclear bomb. Quite possibly literally, these days. Jax had to know that too. He'd surely seen enough of it.
Yet he didn't look reassured. Not even a little bit. Clarissa found herself frowning in earnest now.
"This time might be different," Jax said, looking tired and hesitant. "Look, I ... I don't know how much he might have told you, but I think we scared him. You and me, I mean. Some stuff happened, and I think maybe it scared him so much that he doesn't want to let it happen again."
Clarissa looked at him sideways. "What kind of 'stuff'?" she asked warily. "Because I don't know if you noticed this, but I wasn't on this trip of yours. How could I have scared him?"
Jax grimaced faintly. "Um," he said. "Well, uh. We kind of ... we almost erased your marriage from the timeline? That kinda happened. And a few other things, and we almost died a few times, and there was the whole part where we were five months late, and ... and basically he's almost lost you like a whole bunch of times? Not like you dying or anything, but ... like you never knew him. Like he'd come back and you'd look at him, and you wouldn't know who he was. That scared him. I felt it. That scared him so much."
Her hand pressed against her mouth. She hadn't meant it to, hadn't consciously moved it at all. She didn't ... All those five months, she'd been afraid she'd lost him. Again. She'd been afraid she'd lost him all over again, and there'd been parts of the night where no amount of telling herself that he'd just ... lost track of things again, done something funny with time travel and gotten lost on the way back or something, none of that helped. She'd been terrified she'd lost him, but ... but this was a whole different level. This was ... never having known him? Her Martin? Never having ... not just lost him, but having lost all those years as well, all those memories, those ...
God, it was a horrifying thought. A terrifying one, just for her, and she knew Martin ... He'd lived it once before. Something like it. He'd come to her in Ronald's body, lost and confused and not knowing what was happening to him, and she hadn't known him. She hadn't recognised him, she'd been scared of him, she'd turned him away. He'd already lived it once. He already knew what it was like for her to look at him and have no idea who he was.
"... And you?" she asked, after a very long few moments. Because she needed to think of something else, she needed to have a different horror to focus on. Her voice shook anyway. Her hand trembled where it was cupped across her face. "How ... how did you scare him?"
Jax looked away. "I almost died," he said, sort of flat and careful and tired. "I don't just mean like, I had a near miss, I mean I was dying. Actually dying. He had to knock me out and hijack a timeship and send me through the timestream to fix it. Which, you know, I'm guessing the rest of the team weren't that happy about either. He seriously snuck up on me and stabbed me in the neck with a sedative and sent me back to 2016 to save my life. Don't ever turn your back on Grey when he's trying to save you. Man gets ruthless."
He looked up, trying to smile about it, trying to turn it aside a little bit, but it didn't last very long. It faded away, and there was just a tired young man looking at her. One who had faced his own death, one who had faced her husband's reaction to same. Clarissa only looked at him. She offered a pale, trembling sort of smile of her own.
"Grey gets weird about me dying," Jax said softly. "Guess you know that. Makes him think of ..."
"Ronnie," Clarissa agreed gently. "Yes, I know. He wasn't ... He felt Ronnie leaving him. He didn't ... he couldn't tell me too much, he couldn't talk about it for very long. But he felt it happening. It ... hurt him very deeply."
"Yeah," Jax said, soft and tired. "Yeah, it did. I know that. I've felt that. It's getting deeper, you know? I can feel him so much these days, way more than I used to. I know what it did to him. And I know ... I know how scared he is now. You and me, he's afraid for us. He's afraid of losing us. That's why he doesn't want to go. He's scared that if we go out there again, either me or him ain't coming back, and either way he loses one of us. He can't do that again. That's why he's too scared to move."
He paused for a second, licked his lips as though gathering his courage up again, and then he sat forward all the way, leaned practically off the edge of his seat, his expression so fierce and so determined as he looked at her.
"He can't do that," he said, trying to be careful, all but shaking with the strength of it anyway. "He can't live like that. I know him. Okay? I know him now, I know how much more than this he's capable of. I don't want him to sit here and be afraid. That's not what we're for. I've seen him ... I've seen him spit in the face of torturers and, and figure out how to save the world, and decide to save like a thousand people from a giant robot and get stabbed for his troubles and still be telling me to help them even while he's bleeding. Me and him, we can do so much. And he loves you, and I know he doesn't want to lose you, and ... and maybe you don't want to lose him, maybe you think I'm being so selfish over here, maybe you think--"
"I don't," Clarissa said. Quiet and sudden and abrupt, dropping down across his stumbling speech like a steel trap. She shook her head, looking at him strangely, feeling the blank, firm truth of it in her head. "I don't think that. I don't."
Jax froze. He looked at her, half desperate and half terrified. He looked at her with the same shame her husband did, the same fear and the same conviction that he had let her down, and underneath it ... the same need to have done it anyway. The same belief, the same passion, fervent and sure. Looking at him, seeing him sitting there, arguing so ferociously on her husband's behalf, she felt ... she wasn't sure what. Something. Some strange mix of love and terror and power. A sort of desperate compassion, the love that had led her to choose Martin above all others, the love that had given her the strength to stand beside him through years of distance and projects and work and tragedies, through the FIRESTORM project, through the particle accelerator, through a year of loss and empty spaces, through Firestorm itself. Through Ronnie, and Jax, and five missing months, and everything else besides. She ... she loved him. She always had, not even in spite of all of that, but almost because of it. Her husband, her brave, passionate, amazingly foolish husband. She had always loved him, adored him every moment of their lives. And Jax, Jefferson Jackson, he was no different. He was ...
He was such a fierce, earnest, passionate young man. He was just like her Martin. All he wanted was to help people, to build something that mattered, to stand up and do something that wouldn't fade away. She couldn't help but love him too. How could anyone not? He was, quite simply, one of the most beautiful people she had ever met.
"... You're not selfish," she said quietly. Smiling crookedly, leaning over to grip his hands across the coffee table, holding them earnest and gentle. "Neither of you, though Martin does have his moments. He tends to leap before he looks, he doesn't always think it through. He can be selfish. But I ... I married him knowing that. I was never afraid of that part of him. I think I might even have admired it, a little. Just that ... that passion and that need to act. And you, you have that too, and you're right. You are right. You shouldn't hide that away, you shouldn't let him sit in fear and pretend it doesn't exist. That's not who you are, either of you, and it's not ... it's not the man I married. It's not my Martin. I don't think either of us should stand for that."
He blinked at her. Just ... just stared, this stunned, amazed expression on his face. It took him a second to scrape some words together again, and when he managed there was this ... this quiet amazement, this appreciation, that warmed Clarissa all the way through.
"You know, I could always feel the way he loved you," he said, an odd, distracted smile on his face. "I could feel that, I never had to wonder about it. I always knew he loved you. Gotta say, some moments it's real easy to see why."
And good gracious. Good gracious indeed. He was far too young and far too beautiful to be saying things like that. Or rather, Clarissa was far too old and far too married to be hearing them. He was practically her son, that most certainly wasn't fair. Honestly. Martin had no right to go around finding such ... such amazingly wonderful partners. That wasn't even the slightest bit fair.
"... Are you really sure you're okay with this?" Jax went on, after a second for Clarissa to wake up from her daze a bit. He looked at her, all wry and serious and earnest once again, gripping her hands in his. "Because he's not wrong, you know. We almost died, we almost died a lot. It ain't exactly safe out there, and Grey tends not to be too careful about it either. I mean, he yells at me for being reckless, but I ain't even done half the shit he has. We go out there, there really is a chance we're not coming back. You sure you're okay with that?"
Clarissa laughed, a breathless little huff of air. "Of course I'm not all right with it," she said, and shook her head when his expression fell. "I don't mean you shouldn't go, I don't mean that. But I'm not all right with the thought of you dying. Either of you. Of course I'm not okay with that. That doesn't mean I think I should stop you. You are ..." She bit her lip, hefted his hands in hers. "You're so brave, the both of you. You're both so brave, and you're doing something that matters, and however terrified it makes me, I know better than to stop you. I know better than to want to."
She paused, to take a breath, to get it back. To think about it, to think how to phrase it. Jax held onto her through it. He held her hands and watched her so carefully, so gently.
"I have ..." she started, slow and careful. "I've almost lost Martin so many times. I know what it feels like, I know how terrible it is. But I ... I also know what it's like to listen to stories of him saving the world. You know? I know what it's like to hear about him pulling people from a cell, or rescuing refugees, or saving a timeship. I know what it's like to have an earnest, heroic young man come in here and tell me that's what my husband does, what he is. That ... that does mean something to me. To know that ... what I've seen in him all these years is now something other people can see too. To know that he's become part of something ... bigger and better than anything he's had before. I don't want to lose him, Jax, I never want that, but I don't want him to fade again either. I know what he is, what he can be, I always have. I want him to go out and be it. I want him to come home and know that ... that he did everything he could, and more than anyone could ever ask of him."
Jax opened his mouth. Closed it again helplessly after a second, shook his head in blank amazement all over again. Honestly, they were very fragile, her husband and his partner. They were so easily flustered, the pair of them.
"... You know he doesn't deserve you, right?" the young man asked eventually. "Like damn. I know he loves you more than anything, but I sure as hell don't know how he deserved you."
Clarissa snorted at that. "Oh, bullshit," she said, and laughed at the way he stared at her. "No one ever deserved me, Mr Jackson. Not from the day I was born. It was never a matter of deserving, it was a matter of wanting. Martin was what I wanted, so Martin was what I got. The fact that he got me too in exchange was, frankly, not the point."
He blinked at her for a second, and then he smiled, slow and wide and disbelieving. "Mrs Stein," he said, entirely seriously. "You are the boss."
Clarissa grinned at him. "Yes, I am," she said happily, before sobering a little bit. Only a little. They'd passed the painful parts already. "And, speaking as the boss, you're right. I love my husband to pieces and I'm always glad to have him near, but he's going to drive himself to distraction trying to sit here when he knows everything that's out there and everything he could be doing about it. I am not an object, I am not an excuse, I'm not going to let him tear himself to pieces out of fear for me. No. No, Mr Jackson, you know what? I think it's time for you and I to stage an intervention."
He grinned at her, her husband's brave, earnest, impossibly wonderful partner. "Hell yeah," he said, grinning at her like she'd hung the moon. "Count me in for that!"
Clarissa laughed with him, and let go of his hands to reach over and pat his cheek. "Absolutely," she said lightly, giving him a little wink. "After all, we cannot deprive the universe of Space Ranger Stein, liberator of the Acheron, can we?"
Jax blinked at her, and ruefully shook his head. "Man," he said. "Grey is so going to kill me for that one. You're gonna tease him about that for the rest of his life, aren't you?"
"Yes," Clarissa said cheerfully. "Oh yes, my dear, yes I am!"
A/N: Looking back on it, Jax is honestly right. The amount of shit he gets into can't be anything close to the amount Martin gets into. Anyone who thinks Martin is the level-headed, responsible one in their partnership clearly has never seen the man, you know, kidnap his partner, or run into an irradiated chamber, or hijack a timeship to use as an impromptu refugee transport straight off the cuff. Heh.
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