for @undirected.

[artificial]

[ it was a risk. they all knew that going in. there was a reason time travelers weren't supposed to cross over with events they were already a part of. but there was no other choice. not really. it was lucky that they all survived the time storm, never mind what came after. it was a little suspicious that nothing other than that seemed to have happened because of the legends' action. the phrase 'waiting for the other shoe to drop' came to mind as gideon monitored the return of leonard snart and damien darhk to their original time periods.

the background process she had categorizing the damage to the waverider from the proximity to the time storm and the use of the spear of destiny completed with a ping as the ship returned to the temporal zone. the results were--incomprehensible. which shouldn't be possible. the lights on the ship flickered. ]

Captain. [ the screens on the bridge turned to static for a moment. ] I seem to be encountering a problem in my core processors.

[ a sensation that fit all the descriptors of vertigo crashed over her. and wasn't that odd? actually feeling things instead of the facsimile of perception that gideon had while in her captain's mind. darkness--something she had always understood but never experienced before--enveloped her. she inhaled. exhaled. felt cool, and hard, and metallic, and skin, and air against her. she inhaled again, shorter and faster this time. part of her that was still embedded in the medbay of the ship and not in the hold told her that she was on the verge of hyperventilation. ]

Captain-- [ her voice wavered and broke for the first time, and gideon heard it echo throughout the speakers on the waverider. ] Rip. [ she was overwhelmed. over-sensitized. stunned. confused. bewildered. scared. she understood now why novelists wrote of feeling a tightening in the throat, a rushing sensation in the veins.

gideon curled up into herself a little more, cupping her hands--she had hands now!--over her ears. ] Cargo bay. [ she bit out, squeezing her eyes shut a little tighter as she focused on nothing but the sensation of breathing. air entering her lungs, her rib cage expanding, two, three, four. the slight whistle of sound as she exhaled, two, three, four, five, six. ]

Comments

[directed]

[He's on the bridge with the rest of the team when--whatever it is hits. There's still so much of this he does not, cannot know, because in best it had only been theory before the Legends took their return trip back to 1916 and violated the first fundamental law of time travel.

"A little suspicious" would have been putting it mildly in Rip's mind; he's spent the whole time waiting for the universe itself to fracture in the aftermath--and now, in a way, it seems to have done just that.

Not that he's aware of the full extent of what's happened yet. All he knows, all any of them know is that Gideon detected a problem of some sort as the monitors filled with static, flickering madly as whatever is happening courses through the ship. Yet the too calm report of an issue in her core processors is followed by something much more concerning, a set of words that has a sense of dread coiling in Rip's gut when he hears them.

Captain, first. And then his name. Rip.

He hadn't even felt panic like that when he realized what the Legends of the future, now erased, must have done.

As soon as she gives him a location Rip is running through the corridors of the ship. Never mind that he doesn't know why she would call him to a specific place; the need in her voice is too evident, and Rip's heart pounds with something far worse than the break-neck pace at which he races.

He's crossed the whole length of the ship in under two minutes. Only when he comes to the cargo bay does he slow, looking up first because that's what he does, what he always does when he speaks to her.]

I'm here-- [And then he hears it. The deliberate sound of someone breathing, curled up in a corner of the room as if she might hide from everything assaulting her among the boxes of technological bits and trinkets. There in case of any emergency, any eventuality they might run into--and yet he doesn't know where to begin when he sees the woman, the very human woman he can't help but recognize immediately.

How could he not, when in the prison of his mind forged by Eobard Thawne, she'd been his only sanctuary?]

Gideon? [He steps closer, but carefully. There's no rational explanation for it, no cause easily defined that could have created this impossible effect. But even as logic would have him deny it, the truth is there before his eyes. She is, and everything from her desperately measured breathing to the protective curl of her body screams that she is afraid.]