icarus_chained (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
icarus_chained) wrote2016-06-08 09:04 pm
icarus_chained) wrote2016-06-08 09:04 pm
Entry tags:
Rip Hunter Fic
Well, Rip & Martin, and Rip struggling to deal with things a bit.
Title: Promises to Keep and Miles to Go Before I Sleep
Rating: Mature
Fandom: Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Characters/Pairings: Rip Hunter, Martin Stein. Rip & Martin, Rip/Miranda & Jonas, Martin/Clarissa, Team
Summary: When the team returns to the Waverider to start a new mission, Rip has ... some trouble coming to terms with what he has done, what he has lost, and what he has gained. Martin trying to thank him for a promise kept both does and does not help. He needs them now. The team. He's not sure how to deal with that
Wordcount: 2964
Warnings/Notes: Post-finale, aftermath. Canonical character deaths, grief, obsession, acceptance, guilt, despair, friendship, gratitude, hope, moving on
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Promises to Keep and Miles to Go Before I Sleep
Rating: Mature
Fandom: Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Characters/Pairings: Rip Hunter, Martin Stein. Rip & Martin, Rip/Miranda & Jonas, Martin/Clarissa, Team
Summary: When the team returns to the Waverider to start a new mission, Rip has ... some trouble coming to terms with what he has done, what he has lost, and what he has gained. Martin trying to thank him for a promise kept both does and does not help. He needs them now. The team. He's not sure how to deal with that
Wordcount: 2964
Warnings/Notes: Post-finale, aftermath. Canonical character deaths, grief, obsession, acceptance, guilt, despair, friendship, gratitude, hope, moving on
Disclaimer: Not mine
Promises to Keep and Miles to Go Before I Sleep
Martin: When we left 2016, I just assumed I would return to the exact moment I left, that Clarissa wouldn't even know I was gone. So I didn't say goodbye. And now I fear I will never have that chance.
Rip: You will. Look, I've told you before that I'm not going to risk your marriage in order to save my wife. I promise you, Martin.
Martin: ... Thank you.
--- Rip & Martin, "Last Refuge"
Promises to Keep and Miles to Go Before I Sleep
The ship was full again. Slightly less so than before, of course, but ... still. It had a crew once more, as noisy and as aggravating and as ill-considered as ever. Not just himself and Gideon and the empty echoing of corridors. That was ...
He hadn't thought he'd get so attached to it. He hadn't realised until they were gone and left him with no way to be sure how many, if any, would be coming back. The ship was so silent without them. Gideon tried, bless her, she tried to remind him that someone else was there, another being, another intelligence, but ... but it wasn't the same. It just wasn't the same as a crew, as a team. He hadn't noticed it, hadn't felt it happening until far too late, but at some point in this endless, desperate mess of a mission, he'd become ... accustomed to them. Attached. Perhaps even dependant on them. Without Jonas and Miranda to return to, he felt ... empty in their absence. Bereft.
Not that he'd ever say that, of course. Absolutely not. Rip Hunter, ex-Time Master, Captain of the Waverider, it would be ... it would be beneath him. Foolish of him. It would ... Oh, there'd be no point, anyway. They'd come for another run, that didn't mean anything. Might not mean anything. Just ... something to pass the time. Something to do, something to be. Who else had a timeship available, hmm? It didn't mean anything. It wasn't worth mentioning.
Instinctively, by force of habit, he found himself moving towards the hologram projector. Towards the ... the message. He caught himself. He paused before he activated it. Made himself stop, rested splayed, empty fingers on the desk instead. They trembled slightly. He held them there until they were still again.
He should stop. He knew that. He should stop ... stop watching it, over and over again. Stop listening to it, stop dreaming of it, stop ... obsessing. Hoping. Failing. It was nothing now. Just another echo, an empty one. There were only so many times a man could fail before he had to just ... accept when things were impossible. Accept that they were over, accept that they were lost, accept that even with time travel, even with a timeship, sometimes there was simply no more going back. They wouldn't want this. His family. Miranda never would have. He'd known that, he thought. Somewhere in the back of his head, all the way along, he'd known that she wouldn't want it. Not for herself, anyway. For Jonas, maybe. For Jonas she would have wanted him to try. But not like this. Not so long and so uselessly. Not at so very high a price. Not so cruelly and so callously and selling so many as he went.
Though he had ... remembered that by the end. Not in time, perhaps. Not in time to save Snart or prevent ... prevent what had almost happened to Jax, what he had allowed to happen to Jax. He had remembered so slowly and too late. He only had to hope that she'd forgive him for that, when he found her again. When he found some sun too late to pull out of, and made his way to their side once more. He had to hope that Snart would forgive him too.
It had been Snart, in the end. Jax and Snart, those two. It had been different with Carter, it hadn't felt so ... so personal a fault. Savage's war with Kendra and Carter had been millennia in the making, his own vendetta only a footnote and a manipulated companion to it. Carter had been a briefly-known brother in arms, fallen in a mutual cause, and destined to be born again regardless. But Jax. Snart. Jax had been his fault, completely and entirely his fault, and while Snart had made his own decisions right up until the very end, while he had died in a very real sense to wrest those decisions back from all who would take them from him, he still never would have been there if not for Rip. He would never have had to make that choice, had Rip not brought him to the time and the place and the circumstance.
She would have hated that, he thought tiredly, feeling tears prickle at his eyelids. Grief, and shame. Miranda would have hated the thing, the person he had become. She would have hated Garib. She'd always ... she'd always thought they should be better than the Time Masters. That he should have. It was what she'd said she loved. Passion, compassion, mercy. The desire to help, to feel and to act and not just ... go through the motions. That's why she'd wanted it to be him that remained. Because she thought ... that he'd manage that better, that he wouldn't grow cold as she'd been afraid she would have. She'd thought his passion would keep him from becoming callous.
Look how well he'd honoured her, in the end. About as well as he'd saved her. About as well as he'd kept anyone safe.
He curled his hand into a fist on the tabletop. He stooped above it, braced himself and bowed his head. It was stupid, wasn't it? All the silence and safety of an empty ship, he'd never felt anything, never wept. Only now, when there was noise and life and companions carrying their own grief around him, only now did he decide to cry. Just as soon as he had someone to hide it from. How perfectly fitting of him. How wonderfully annoying.
"... Captain Hunter? Rip?" came a soft, hesitant voice behind him, as perfectly timed as anything in life, and Rip near choked on sudden, dark amusement. Truly, no better timing in the world.
But at least it had been Martin. Not Mick or Jax or Sara, none of whom he could face right now. Mick and Jax for guilt, and Sara for the strength and horror of her grief, such a perfect echo of his own. And also guilt. Let us never be without that. Martin at least was ... Martin didn't hate him, anyway. He thought. Not even for Jax' sake. He'd wondered about that. Not asked. He was tired of tempting fate.
Martin moved closer when he didn't quite manage to answer in time. Came around behind him, around the table, stooping a little to see Rip's face and catch his eye, his expression holding nothing but concern. Rip managed to straighten, in the face of it. He couldn't hide the redness of his eyes, but he managed to raise his chin, flatten his tone and brazen it out. Attempt to, anyway. As uselessly as anything else. He doubted there was anyone on the ship or in the universe to match Martin Stein for stubbornness when pushed.
"Martin," he acknowledged, inclining his head and folding his hand into a fist before it could move towards his face and try to clean it. "I'm sorry, I ... I was distracted. Was there something I can do for you?"
Martin blinked at him a bit, a vaguely incredulous expression drifting across his face. "... Nothing that cannot wait," he said, as if it had been a very stupid question and a very obvious answer. He shook his head, twitching slightly towards Rip in concern. "Are you all right? Is something wrong, has something happened?"
And that was odd, wasn't it. Martin was usually kind enough to ignore Rip's more obvious distresses. But perhaps their leaving and returning had changed something for more than just Rip. Perhaps it had ... meant something, to come back for some kinder and more nebulous aim than a vengeance and an obsession.
Or perhaps it was only that Rip was being far too obvious right now for even kindest of distractions.
Either way, he had very little answer for the man. "Nothing happened," he said, entirely honestly. Nothing had. Nothing new. These were old sins, old shames and old griefs. There was nothing in them to have brought him to this now, and nothing in them that he could hope to explain, even to a potentially sympathetic audience. And Martin was, usually. As blunt about it as a hammer, but there had always been a degree of compassion in him that Rip had perhaps ... gone out of his way to keep. To try and preserve, even when it was so very ill-deserved. He shook his head now. "It's nothing, Martin. A ... a strange mood, I don't know. It's nothing. What ... What can I do for you?"
Martin frowned at him for that. He narrowed his eyes and studied Rip, one hand tapping gently on the table. Rip couldn't help but notice how close it lay to the projector. He didn't twitch. He very carefully made sure that he didn't.
"... I came here to ... say something to you," Martin said at last, slowly and cautiously and watching Rip with careful, worried eyes. "I'm not sure now is the time, however. I'm not sure it would be wise. I don't think you need any ... anyone else's feelings to worry about at the moment. Perhaps ... perhaps later?"
He tapped his hand against the table again, a decisive little trip-trap, and turned as if to go. To be ... merciful, to be kind, to leave Rip and his sudden fit of grief in peace. It was a stiff, uncomfortable gesture, kindly meant, and quite suddenly Rip could not bear it. He couldn't bear more silence. He couldn't bear more emptiness. Anything, any pain, any savagery in the world, just not that. No more of that. Please. He hadn't realised just how fearful of it he'd become, until the ship rang empty, and there was nothing left to return to.
"Don't go," he said, rather suddenly and harshly to judge by how Martin flinched. Rip echoed it, twitched his head in return, but he followed Martin regardless. He reached out as though to stop the man before he could leave. Martin didn't go. Martin turned to him, and Rip fumbled for some vague species of explanation. "That is, um. I'm ... I don't need you to leave. Please. Tell me ... what it was you wanted to say?"
Say ... say anything, call him an idiot and a bastard, put a knife to his neck, demand a change of course, announce that someone had stolen the jumpship or set the Waverider partially on fire. Anything, anything at all. He needed it, suddenly. He needed some ... some force beyond himself, some desperate, angry mess of a thing to be involved in. Some person other than him, some worry and some aim beyond his own grief.
He needed a team. He wanted them. He wanted them so badly and so desperately and so selfishly. He hadn't realised until they were gone. He'd come to need them so much more than he'd ever planned on or wanted to happen.
Fortunately, perhaps. For all the world. Otherwise he really might have become Garib, a long time ago, and never again looked back.
Martin hesitated still. Out of concern, Rip saw. Out of compassion and awkwardness and a genuine need not to cause any more pain. He was like that, Martin. Him and Ray and Jax in particular. The perfect consciences for a man who feared he may have lost his own. There was never any doubt, where Martin was concerned. The surety of what needed to be done burned brighter in him than any atomic flame of Firestorm's. And Rip saw it again now. He saw Martin firm his jaw, set his face and straighten his spine and say what needed saying regardless of what it would cost them. It was a breathtaking thing, Martin's morality. It was a terrible, aggravating, wonderful thing. Rip didn't know what he would do without it.
"I wanted to say thank you," Martin said quietly, with the terrible, careful air of a man who fears he is about to stab someone. "I meant to before, but ... things happened. I ... owe you a thanks. You ... You made me a promise, you see. You made it to me several times. You ... promised me that I would see my wife again."
He paused. He stopped, pain and gentleness and despair, and Rip knew why he had. He knew what his own face must look like here, a hollow emptiness in his head and his breath frozen in his chest. Because he remembered that promise, yes. He remembered it. A wife. A promise not to sacrifice a wife for a wife. Not to make ... not to make Martin endure as he had endured. He remembered that. The hologram projector lay behind him, an empty echo. He remembered.
And Martin could see it, of course. Martin so clearly grieved for it, for him. So much compassion. So much of it, so many of them. A thank you. As though Rip deserved a thank you. After all that he had done and failed to do. Yet Martin was inexorable. That, too, could always be relied upon. More stubborn than all the world, and as endlessly, terribly firm in the face of torment.
"... You kept your promise, Captain," he said, very softly, while Rip closed his eyes in blind anguish. "At every turn, you kept it. You brought me home to my wife. I know how much that cost you. I wanted, needed, to say thank you for that. And ... to say that I am sorry. For what you have lost. For ... for promises that no one kept to you."
And it was odd, it was so strange, but it was the sun that Rip remembered then. Just the ... the feeling of it. The burning and the quiet, and the hollow, empty peace. The feeling of them reaching towards him. His wife and his son. The knowledge that he could go to them. That he could reach out and touch them and never be parted from them again. A promise. A promise that ... could never be broken. Never. They were always waiting there. In that one place, they could never be taken again.
And that ... had been why he returned. A promise that couldn't be broken, and Gideon's voice behind him. Another being, another intelligence. One to preserve and to do right by. And behind her, behind them both, the team. Wanting him to live. Even Mick Rory, even the man he had left to die and to be tortured, telling him he didn't want to lose another friend. These ... people, these shapes and these presences and these voices, that belonged inside his ship. Something to return to, while his family waited somewhere that could not be destroyed.
Team. Family. Friends. Something to come back to and keep promises to. Yes.
He opened his eyes again. Found a, a smile, a real one, something like one. Small, and soft, and genuine. Martin looked at him with worry. With guilt and fear and grief, and none of it necessary. Not anymore. Rip smiled at him, reached out and rested a careful hand on his friend's shoulder.
"I'm glad that you were reunited with your wife, Martin," he said. "I'm glad that one of us was. I would never have forgiven myself if I had cost you that as well."
Martin grimaced faintly. "It wouldn't have been your fault," he said. "I came on this mission. I brought Jefferson along with me. Those were my choices, my fault, not his or yours either. You've gone out of your way to preserve my marriage, maybe more than I ever have. Whatever might have happened, it wouldn't have been your fault. But ... thank you, for ensuring that it didn't. Thank you for helping save what matters to me. It was ... the act of a good friend."
Rip bit his lip, feeling his eyes well up again unwillingly. He could hear Sara's voice in his head, feel again the wave of her grief. Thank you for helping save what matters to me. But that ... that was different. Sara already had a darkness in her, a Garib waiting to happen, and Laurel was already dead. Clarissa hadn't been. He hadn't had to trade Martin himself to preserve her, hadn't had to make that choice. Time wanted to happen. He knew so well how terrible someone could become in the aftermath. He couldn't trade Sara for her sister. As selfish as it was, he couldn't bear it.
And he hadn't time to think of that now. This was not the place, this was not the person. That was a different shame, and Martin had no part of it. Martin, for once and maybe alone of all this crew, Rip had managed not to hurt. Had even managed to help, or at least undo what damage he might have done him. More or less. Five months out, but still. Martin was looking at him, calmly and compassionately, with his own grief and his own shame inside of it. Martin was ... a fearsome, terrible thing, a terrible conscience to have to face, but he was also a balm. He was ... a friend. A very gentle, compassionate friend. He had offered Rip a thank you. At this moment, with this particular friend, there was only one appropriate answer to that.
"... You're welcome," he said, looking at Martin with as much of a smile as he could manage. "It was ... less and more selfish a thing you might imagine, Martin, but you're welcome for it. Always. It ... It is a promise that I hope to always keep."
Let one of them go home to a living wife, after all. In the end, if there was any mercy at all, let just one of them have that to return to.
And if it could only be one, among them two, perhaps Martin wasn't the wrong choice at all.
A/N: I know Rip is a complicated figure for a lot of people, and when he almost got Jax killed I definitely did want to punch him in the face (priorities, I have them), but he has ... he has been through a lot. He's lost just about everything he could conceivably lose of his life before the team, bar Gideon and the Waverider, been betrayed as thoroughly and as comprehensively as possible by the organisation he gave his life to serve, and been unable to save that which was most important to him in all the world. He's done a lot of terrible things while he's struggled through his mire of grief and hatred, but he has come through it. He has fought his way out almost to the other side, and largely because of the team. I just ... I just kinda think sometimes he needs a hug?
Also, Martin is a terrible thing to have to face when your life's been torn apart and rebuilt around you. Only more so, probably, when he's trying to be gentle about it.
Martin: When we left 2016, I just assumed I would return to the exact moment I left, that Clarissa wouldn't even know I was gone. So I didn't say goodbye. And now I fear I will never have that chance.
Rip: You will. Look, I've told you before that I'm not going to risk your marriage in order to save my wife. I promise you, Martin.
Martin: ... Thank you.
--- Rip & Martin, "Last Refuge"
Promises to Keep and Miles to Go Before I Sleep
The ship was full again. Slightly less so than before, of course, but ... still. It had a crew once more, as noisy and as aggravating and as ill-considered as ever. Not just himself and Gideon and the empty echoing of corridors. That was ...
He hadn't thought he'd get so attached to it. He hadn't realised until they were gone and left him with no way to be sure how many, if any, would be coming back. The ship was so silent without them. Gideon tried, bless her, she tried to remind him that someone else was there, another being, another intelligence, but ... but it wasn't the same. It just wasn't the same as a crew, as a team. He hadn't noticed it, hadn't felt it happening until far too late, but at some point in this endless, desperate mess of a mission, he'd become ... accustomed to them. Attached. Perhaps even dependant on them. Without Jonas and Miranda to return to, he felt ... empty in their absence. Bereft.
Not that he'd ever say that, of course. Absolutely not. Rip Hunter, ex-Time Master, Captain of the Waverider, it would be ... it would be beneath him. Foolish of him. It would ... Oh, there'd be no point, anyway. They'd come for another run, that didn't mean anything. Might not mean anything. Just ... something to pass the time. Something to do, something to be. Who else had a timeship available, hmm? It didn't mean anything. It wasn't worth mentioning.
Instinctively, by force of habit, he found himself moving towards the hologram projector. Towards the ... the message. He caught himself. He paused before he activated it. Made himself stop, rested splayed, empty fingers on the desk instead. They trembled slightly. He held them there until they were still again.
He should stop. He knew that. He should stop ... stop watching it, over and over again. Stop listening to it, stop dreaming of it, stop ... obsessing. Hoping. Failing. It was nothing now. Just another echo, an empty one. There were only so many times a man could fail before he had to just ... accept when things were impossible. Accept that they were over, accept that they were lost, accept that even with time travel, even with a timeship, sometimes there was simply no more going back. They wouldn't want this. His family. Miranda never would have. He'd known that, he thought. Somewhere in the back of his head, all the way along, he'd known that she wouldn't want it. Not for herself, anyway. For Jonas, maybe. For Jonas she would have wanted him to try. But not like this. Not so long and so uselessly. Not at so very high a price. Not so cruelly and so callously and selling so many as he went.
Though he had ... remembered that by the end. Not in time, perhaps. Not in time to save Snart or prevent ... prevent what had almost happened to Jax, what he had allowed to happen to Jax. He had remembered so slowly and too late. He only had to hope that she'd forgive him for that, when he found her again. When he found some sun too late to pull out of, and made his way to their side once more. He had to hope that Snart would forgive him too.
It had been Snart, in the end. Jax and Snart, those two. It had been different with Carter, it hadn't felt so ... so personal a fault. Savage's war with Kendra and Carter had been millennia in the making, his own vendetta only a footnote and a manipulated companion to it. Carter had been a briefly-known brother in arms, fallen in a mutual cause, and destined to be born again regardless. But Jax. Snart. Jax had been his fault, completely and entirely his fault, and while Snart had made his own decisions right up until the very end, while he had died in a very real sense to wrest those decisions back from all who would take them from him, he still never would have been there if not for Rip. He would never have had to make that choice, had Rip not brought him to the time and the place and the circumstance.
She would have hated that, he thought tiredly, feeling tears prickle at his eyelids. Grief, and shame. Miranda would have hated the thing, the person he had become. She would have hated Garib. She'd always ... she'd always thought they should be better than the Time Masters. That he should have. It was what she'd said she loved. Passion, compassion, mercy. The desire to help, to feel and to act and not just ... go through the motions. That's why she'd wanted it to be him that remained. Because she thought ... that he'd manage that better, that he wouldn't grow cold as she'd been afraid she would have. She'd thought his passion would keep him from becoming callous.
Look how well he'd honoured her, in the end. About as well as he'd saved her. About as well as he'd kept anyone safe.
He curled his hand into a fist on the tabletop. He stooped above it, braced himself and bowed his head. It was stupid, wasn't it? All the silence and safety of an empty ship, he'd never felt anything, never wept. Only now, when there was noise and life and companions carrying their own grief around him, only now did he decide to cry. Just as soon as he had someone to hide it from. How perfectly fitting of him. How wonderfully annoying.
"... Captain Hunter? Rip?" came a soft, hesitant voice behind him, as perfectly timed as anything in life, and Rip near choked on sudden, dark amusement. Truly, no better timing in the world.
But at least it had been Martin. Not Mick or Jax or Sara, none of whom he could face right now. Mick and Jax for guilt, and Sara for the strength and horror of her grief, such a perfect echo of his own. And also guilt. Let us never be without that. Martin at least was ... Martin didn't hate him, anyway. He thought. Not even for Jax' sake. He'd wondered about that. Not asked. He was tired of tempting fate.
Martin moved closer when he didn't quite manage to answer in time. Came around behind him, around the table, stooping a little to see Rip's face and catch his eye, his expression holding nothing but concern. Rip managed to straighten, in the face of it. He couldn't hide the redness of his eyes, but he managed to raise his chin, flatten his tone and brazen it out. Attempt to, anyway. As uselessly as anything else. He doubted there was anyone on the ship or in the universe to match Martin Stein for stubbornness when pushed.
"Martin," he acknowledged, inclining his head and folding his hand into a fist before it could move towards his face and try to clean it. "I'm sorry, I ... I was distracted. Was there something I can do for you?"
Martin blinked at him a bit, a vaguely incredulous expression drifting across his face. "... Nothing that cannot wait," he said, as if it had been a very stupid question and a very obvious answer. He shook his head, twitching slightly towards Rip in concern. "Are you all right? Is something wrong, has something happened?"
And that was odd, wasn't it. Martin was usually kind enough to ignore Rip's more obvious distresses. But perhaps their leaving and returning had changed something for more than just Rip. Perhaps it had ... meant something, to come back for some kinder and more nebulous aim than a vengeance and an obsession.
Or perhaps it was only that Rip was being far too obvious right now for even kindest of distractions.
Either way, he had very little answer for the man. "Nothing happened," he said, entirely honestly. Nothing had. Nothing new. These were old sins, old shames and old griefs. There was nothing in them to have brought him to this now, and nothing in them that he could hope to explain, even to a potentially sympathetic audience. And Martin was, usually. As blunt about it as a hammer, but there had always been a degree of compassion in him that Rip had perhaps ... gone out of his way to keep. To try and preserve, even when it was so very ill-deserved. He shook his head now. "It's nothing, Martin. A ... a strange mood, I don't know. It's nothing. What ... What can I do for you?"
Martin frowned at him for that. He narrowed his eyes and studied Rip, one hand tapping gently on the table. Rip couldn't help but notice how close it lay to the projector. He didn't twitch. He very carefully made sure that he didn't.
"... I came here to ... say something to you," Martin said at last, slowly and cautiously and watching Rip with careful, worried eyes. "I'm not sure now is the time, however. I'm not sure it would be wise. I don't think you need any ... anyone else's feelings to worry about at the moment. Perhaps ... perhaps later?"
He tapped his hand against the table again, a decisive little trip-trap, and turned as if to go. To be ... merciful, to be kind, to leave Rip and his sudden fit of grief in peace. It was a stiff, uncomfortable gesture, kindly meant, and quite suddenly Rip could not bear it. He couldn't bear more silence. He couldn't bear more emptiness. Anything, any pain, any savagery in the world, just not that. No more of that. Please. He hadn't realised just how fearful of it he'd become, until the ship rang empty, and there was nothing left to return to.
"Don't go," he said, rather suddenly and harshly to judge by how Martin flinched. Rip echoed it, twitched his head in return, but he followed Martin regardless. He reached out as though to stop the man before he could leave. Martin didn't go. Martin turned to him, and Rip fumbled for some vague species of explanation. "That is, um. I'm ... I don't need you to leave. Please. Tell me ... what it was you wanted to say?"
Say ... say anything, call him an idiot and a bastard, put a knife to his neck, demand a change of course, announce that someone had stolen the jumpship or set the Waverider partially on fire. Anything, anything at all. He needed it, suddenly. He needed some ... some force beyond himself, some desperate, angry mess of a thing to be involved in. Some person other than him, some worry and some aim beyond his own grief.
He needed a team. He wanted them. He wanted them so badly and so desperately and so selfishly. He hadn't realised until they were gone. He'd come to need them so much more than he'd ever planned on or wanted to happen.
Fortunately, perhaps. For all the world. Otherwise he really might have become Garib, a long time ago, and never again looked back.
Martin hesitated still. Out of concern, Rip saw. Out of compassion and awkwardness and a genuine need not to cause any more pain. He was like that, Martin. Him and Ray and Jax in particular. The perfect consciences for a man who feared he may have lost his own. There was never any doubt, where Martin was concerned. The surety of what needed to be done burned brighter in him than any atomic flame of Firestorm's. And Rip saw it again now. He saw Martin firm his jaw, set his face and straighten his spine and say what needed saying regardless of what it would cost them. It was a breathtaking thing, Martin's morality. It was a terrible, aggravating, wonderful thing. Rip didn't know what he would do without it.
"I wanted to say thank you," Martin said quietly, with the terrible, careful air of a man who fears he is about to stab someone. "I meant to before, but ... things happened. I ... owe you a thanks. You ... You made me a promise, you see. You made it to me several times. You ... promised me that I would see my wife again."
He paused. He stopped, pain and gentleness and despair, and Rip knew why he had. He knew what his own face must look like here, a hollow emptiness in his head and his breath frozen in his chest. Because he remembered that promise, yes. He remembered it. A wife. A promise not to sacrifice a wife for a wife. Not to make ... not to make Martin endure as he had endured. He remembered that. The hologram projector lay behind him, an empty echo. He remembered.
And Martin could see it, of course. Martin so clearly grieved for it, for him. So much compassion. So much of it, so many of them. A thank you. As though Rip deserved a thank you. After all that he had done and failed to do. Yet Martin was inexorable. That, too, could always be relied upon. More stubborn than all the world, and as endlessly, terribly firm in the face of torment.
"... You kept your promise, Captain," he said, very softly, while Rip closed his eyes in blind anguish. "At every turn, you kept it. You brought me home to my wife. I know how much that cost you. I wanted, needed, to say thank you for that. And ... to say that I am sorry. For what you have lost. For ... for promises that no one kept to you."
And it was odd, it was so strange, but it was the sun that Rip remembered then. Just the ... the feeling of it. The burning and the quiet, and the hollow, empty peace. The feeling of them reaching towards him. His wife and his son. The knowledge that he could go to them. That he could reach out and touch them and never be parted from them again. A promise. A promise that ... could never be broken. Never. They were always waiting there. In that one place, they could never be taken again.
And that ... had been why he returned. A promise that couldn't be broken, and Gideon's voice behind him. Another being, another intelligence. One to preserve and to do right by. And behind her, behind them both, the team. Wanting him to live. Even Mick Rory, even the man he had left to die and to be tortured, telling him he didn't want to lose another friend. These ... people, these shapes and these presences and these voices, that belonged inside his ship. Something to return to, while his family waited somewhere that could not be destroyed.
Team. Family. Friends. Something to come back to and keep promises to. Yes.
He opened his eyes again. Found a, a smile, a real one, something like one. Small, and soft, and genuine. Martin looked at him with worry. With guilt and fear and grief, and none of it necessary. Not anymore. Rip smiled at him, reached out and rested a careful hand on his friend's shoulder.
"I'm glad that you were reunited with your wife, Martin," he said. "I'm glad that one of us was. I would never have forgiven myself if I had cost you that as well."
Martin grimaced faintly. "It wouldn't have been your fault," he said. "I came on this mission. I brought Jefferson along with me. Those were my choices, my fault, not his or yours either. You've gone out of your way to preserve my marriage, maybe more than I ever have. Whatever might have happened, it wouldn't have been your fault. But ... thank you, for ensuring that it didn't. Thank you for helping save what matters to me. It was ... the act of a good friend."
Rip bit his lip, feeling his eyes well up again unwillingly. He could hear Sara's voice in his head, feel again the wave of her grief. Thank you for helping save what matters to me. But that ... that was different. Sara already had a darkness in her, a Garib waiting to happen, and Laurel was already dead. Clarissa hadn't been. He hadn't had to trade Martin himself to preserve her, hadn't had to make that choice. Time wanted to happen. He knew so well how terrible someone could become in the aftermath. He couldn't trade Sara for her sister. As selfish as it was, he couldn't bear it.
And he hadn't time to think of that now. This was not the place, this was not the person. That was a different shame, and Martin had no part of it. Martin, for once and maybe alone of all this crew, Rip had managed not to hurt. Had even managed to help, or at least undo what damage he might have done him. More or less. Five months out, but still. Martin was looking at him, calmly and compassionately, with his own grief and his own shame inside of it. Martin was ... a fearsome, terrible thing, a terrible conscience to have to face, but he was also a balm. He was ... a friend. A very gentle, compassionate friend. He had offered Rip a thank you. At this moment, with this particular friend, there was only one appropriate answer to that.
"... You're welcome," he said, looking at Martin with as much of a smile as he could manage. "It was ... less and more selfish a thing you might imagine, Martin, but you're welcome for it. Always. It ... It is a promise that I hope to always keep."
Let one of them go home to a living wife, after all. In the end, if there was any mercy at all, let just one of them have that to return to.
And if it could only be one, among them two, perhaps Martin wasn't the wrong choice at all.
A/N: I know Rip is a complicated figure for a lot of people, and when he almost got Jax killed I definitely did want to punch him in the face (priorities, I have them), but he has ... he has been through a lot. He's lost just about everything he could conceivably lose of his life before the team, bar Gideon and the Waverider, been betrayed as thoroughly and as comprehensively as possible by the organisation he gave his life to serve, and been unable to save that which was most important to him in all the world. He's done a lot of terrible things while he's struggled through his mire of grief and hatred, but he has come through it. He has fought his way out almost to the other side, and largely because of the team. I just ... I just kinda think sometimes he needs a hug?
Also, Martin is a terrible thing to have to face when your life's been torn apart and rebuilt around you. Only more so, probably, when he's trying to be gentle about it.