Issue 1 Downtime

After being lead to one of the empty rooms Sara sighs and puts Pancake-Will down.

Taliesin followed her in. "Well, this is the FOURTH secret base you've encountered so far. Got a ranking?" he chuckled, ruefully.

"I liked the ones I didn't have to carry Will into. You know, by comparison."

"A fair point," he said, sighing, sitting down on the bed.

"He hasn't shown any signs of getting better since he got warmer..."

"Well--we stopped. Maybe if we kept going..." he said, carefully.

"Please tell me you're kidding..."

"Well, I'm...NOT kidding..." he said, with a half smile. "That's close, right?"

"No. Just... no. You don't even know if it'll do anything."

"No, I don't, you're right.

But if my theory is correct, he's reacting to pleasant things, things he enjoys, thinks he wants more of, on a very instinctual level. Maybe if there was a way to inject puns directly into his mass, I'd suggest that, or somehow to surround him with the camaraderie of friends or a good musical or just not having to have lived and watched his daughter grow up in a hellhole for the past 18 years, or the feeling of not watching his wife die, then yeah, I'd suggest those things, right into his core.

I don't happen to have those things lying around."

"I'll find another way to help him. And if I have to carry him back to the past for it. It may not seem that way to you, but I'm not cheating on him."

"It's not cheating...he'd be right there, the entire time."

"And the messed up thing is you think that makes it better somehow."

"In what way is that worse?" he said, honestly confused.

"Just forget about it." she sighs, too emotionally exhausted to even get angry.

"Look, if this was all some plot to get in bed with you, I'd go "Oh, I totally know what will fix this".

I'm just trying to help, Sara..."

"I know...

I just can't do it."

"Tell me about that," he said, patting the bed next to him.

"You're not the Will I know. You're like... a disturbingly familiar stranger. Does that make any sense?"

"It does. It does.

And you're not the Sara I last knew. You're a figment from a long forgotten dream.

I understand. I promised you I'd never do anything to make you uncomfortable, and nothing is worth breaking that promise. Nothing," he said, glancing at Will.

"I never should have ended up here. It's cruel to you. And this would just make it worse..."

"Wait, wait, how is this at all YOUR fault?" he said, puzzled. "No, no, no, this is NINA's fault. Not yours. Not his. Not mine. All we can do from here is make it better."

"I meant here in this time. I don't even want to think about Nina..."

"Sara, it's not cruel that you ended up here. It's life, that's all it is. Life throws curveballs at you. Life gets you lemons, you make lemonade.

Getting to see you one last time is worth how much it will hurt when you leave again. If you leave again."

"I don't know what we'll do if there isn't a way back..."

"You are more than welcome to stay with me and Robbie. Will, too, if he ever recovers--even if he only recovers partway, to, like, where he understands his name or something. You're still Robin's mom and my wife, even if we're not the ones your used to. It's what families do."

"He'll get better. Somehow." she says, pushing yet another thing she doesn't want to think about to the back of her mind.

"My offer still stands," he said, after a moment.

"Or we could try the serum. Or I could try absorbing him and seeing how that works."

"Give him time. He already surprised you. Maybe he can do it again."

"Or maybe time will cause whatever this to be permanently damaging.

I don't think I could break out of this without help."

"God damnit, Nina..." she whispers out a curse, trying to blink away her tears before they really get going.

"I know--

Promise me one thing; you won't let NINA continue her experiments. Do 'em yourself, if the two of you want to find out more information, just don't let it fall into Nina's hands."

"You really think I'd even let her get near him after what she did to him?"

"No, but HE might," he said, stretching an arm to bring Will over to the two of them, laying him across both of their laps, and then putting one arm around Sara's shoulders. "That's why he's got you. A guardian angel, watching out for him."

"That does sound better than 'baby-sitter'." she jokes weakly with a sniff.

"Or 'science project and researcher'," he smiled, shifting a hand to cotton as a sort of handkerchief, drying Sara's eyes.

"If he ever comes out of this and gets back to normal..." she says, putting a hand on the 'Will-blanket' lieing across her lap.

"You make a great team. For some reason, you didn't decide to use him for any of your PhD work, but if you had wanted to...I mean, wow. Your brain, and his... resiliency.

All you've got to do is use that brain to help him get out of this," he smiled.

"Is he... were you... really that naive?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I kinda was. You always pulled my bacon out of the fire, though," he smiled, absentmindedly rubbing Will with his other hand.