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They have survived worse than this. Made it through way worse situations and came back out of it. Alive, still breathing, heart beating in their chests. They had had whole universes between them and still they got to each other in the end. Got out of that hole with a future on their ring fingers.
A prison cell is, comparatively speaking, no big deal. Shouldn't be, anyways. But they aren’t together and all Sara seems to be able to focus on is that fact. That she isn’t breathing in close proximity to Ava and can’t hear the sheep from the neighboring house of theirs bleaking her awake every morning, her wife’s scent still in her nose. She cannot even hear Gideon waking her up in the mornings or anyone else from the team reaching out to her for help. How should they be able to? Whatever Sara had planned, it had landed them separated from each other, staring at stone walls. For a place that was supposedly available to highly technological advances it did awfully look like your typical standard prison cell. The ones your imagination came up with, whenever you read about prison cells in medieval times.
She didn’t like to entertain the thought that not only were the legends kept in separate cells but separated timelines as well. It didn’t do her any good to think of Ava in some clean room with blinding white walls – the whole scenery was too familiar to what the Ava clones lived in (she tried her hardest not to think of Ava being kept in exactly such a cell in that timeline, with other Avas keeping her guard).
Something in her stomach kicked out and almost instinctively she looked at the white thin line on her ring finger. They took her engagement ring with them, looked at it like it’d be something extremely disgusting, and discarded it. Locked it away somewhere, if luck was on Sara’s side for once in her life; fed it to the flames, if her life followed its natural way of throwing stones in her way. It had been something out of her control, yet she still could not stop the guilt churning at her insides. She felt like she’d betrayed Ava. Gave up proof of her wife existing in her life with no real fight behind it. As if Ava Sharpe’s marks on her could be erased that easily. Still, it was something she could’ve touched, held onto when breathing became a little too hard, despite herself. Now there was just this white line of skin where the sun hadn’t kissed it and even the tan contrasting it slowly began to fade away, with the way no sunlight reached her and all. At least the kicks were still going strong. They were comforting in the great scheme of things. A reminder that their future was still going strong and was still about to happen. Inside her, her daughter kept fighting and if she did, who was to say that Sara couldn’t either? Admittedly, not as effectively as usual, really, with the nausea and everything that came alongside that weird alien-pregnancy, but she could at the very least still use her brain for plotting.
~~~
Nine months. Nine months in this prison cell. Nine months without hearing anything from her team. No rescue mission on their way and nothing but futile tries to assemble one on her side of the door.
Time is going astray when you can't tell what time of the day it is – being the mother of an alien child, whose birth doesn't follow any Earthian rules, makes this worse. Nine months in this prison cell that might have been no nine months at all. Sara is going into labor and she can't even calculate if her baby is a summer child.
~~~
It takes some time for the guard to get noticed. Takes some time for Sara to sort out her thoughts well enough for her to see anything other than Ava’s back walking away from her, leaving her, walking further and further and further away. It is what she deserves for not being able to look after their daughter. To fuck up badly enough for her flesh to be torn open and her future being ripped out of her. It’s only fair for Ava to leave her, should she ever actually get far enough to get out of this stone box.
“Are you Sara Lance?” The guard tries again. Sara actually does hear him this time; flinches at the voice, picks at the wound across her stomach. There’s dried blood under her fingernails from the countless other times she has done this by now. Picking the cut apart at its ends. Someone should tell her that opening it won’t do her any good. She cannot squish her daughter back into her belly, cannot protect her through layers of skin. She is out there now, somewhere. They didn’t even ask her for any name suggestions. Simply took her away from her without her even knowing and expected her to be okay with that. That she’d just move on from that. Her kid’s somewhere out there, nameless, on enemies’ ground. With nothing from her family accompanying her. Sara feels sick at just the thought of that.
“Sara Lance?” The guard tries again, Sara just looks at him. Stares through him, at the door behind him. Her one way ticket to get out of here. Her one way ticket to get to Ava, to go get her daughter, the rest of the team.
“Your son is okay, Mrs. Lance. Thought you should know. I know my mum would freak out, if she didn't know how I’d be,” His voice drowns out into the background. Her son is okay. Her son!
She actually looks at the guard this time – blue eyes meeting green – and nods. Just once. She heard him. Her son is okay. No daughter. Son.
For the first time in what feels like ages, she smiles. It’s a weak one, but it still exists. If only for a fleeting moment.