Deserey and Ray had calmed down by the time they had gotten back to the ship, fortunately for their three companions. Rip had also called the rest of the team back to the ship to regroup while Gideon analysed the goop from the meteorite the five had found, which allowed the hyper duo a bit more time to recollect themselves.

It wasn't long before the five of them could hear Sara, Jax, and Stein returning. The trio seemed to be in the midst of a disagreement, as they entered the bridge.

"Seeing white picket fences and perfect houses," Stein was saying, "it's enough to make one nostalgic." He was dressed in a fancy tailored suit, along with a black neck tie and a name tag tangling from his shirt collar. His hair was neatly combed, unlike any other time before. (At least there was one good thing about the fifties, right? It got the professor to comb his unruly grey hair.)

"Or nauseated," Sara scoffed. She leaned on the back of one of the chairs. The assassin's blond hair was pinned up in one of those old nurses hats, the kind that were a little more square than normal hats. Her white nurses gown was a little too snug in some places and a bit too short in other places. It looked more like a slutty Halloween costume than a proper uniform. (The sort that Deserey would never let her daughter wear in a million years.) When the skirt rose up, Sara scowled and tugged it down again. She didn't strike Deserey as the conservative type when it came to clothing, but Dez guessed it must have been pretty irritating to work with that small ass thing.

"Oh come on, Miss Lance," Stein said, folding his arms. "Even someone as jaded as yourself can't deny how idyllic this time is."

Jax made a face, as he took a seat in the chair Sara was leaning on. He was dressed in more casual clothing, but Deserey still thought the outfit was pretty ugly. White slacks, holy jeans, a very, very loud and orange shirt. "Yeah," he muttered, "if you're white."

Deserey nodded in agreement, but she didn't say anything. She figured it was best for everyone if she stayed out of conversations like these. Every time she engaged in something like this she went flying off the handle in a red hot rage. (Vaguely, she wondered who could throw worse temper tantrums. Her or Heatwave?) Curses would be sworn. F bombs would be dropped. Asses would be kicked. Nothing angered her more than discrimination and ignorant morons. She hated mistreatment. Not even just towards minorities like herself, Sara, and Jax. Towards anyone. (Why were they called minorities anyway? Were they really that less than? Maybe Deserey but Jax and Sara?) It wasn't right. Wasn't fair. And no one seemed to give a damn about it. Why couldn't people just be people and be left alone?

Feeling her blood boil at the mere thought, Deserey mentally smacked the mosquito that was her depression away. She had only just gotten out of her bad mood from the night before. She didn't need to go falling in again. Not just now anyway. Not with everyone standing here.

Today is a good day, she reminded herself. Today is a good day.

It was something she had learned to do over the years from one of the many therapists she had gone to see. Something about chanting positive things to yourself was suppose to help. Trick your brain into thinking your in a good mood or something. It didn't always help, but sometimes Deserey found herself trying anyway.

"And straight," Sara added. "And male. And --"

Deserey groaned inwardly. She wished that they would just shut up about it already. The 1950s was a terrible place for anyone who didn't fit the mold society had created for them. That's the way it had always been and always would be through out history. End of story. Did it really need a discussion? There was no point in bitching and moaning about all the thing that were wrong in the world, because they would never ever change. (Deserey knew that sounded pretty hypocritical, considering she spent a great deal of her time whining about her problems, but she didn't really care at the moment.)

Stein cut her off with a wave of his hand, frowning deeply. "Yes," he admitted. "I see you're point..."

Jax shrugged. "Even if this town wasn't full of small minded idiots, it would still be creepy as hell." He looked around the room, glancing at the other seriously. "I use to watch these movies with my mom, and they all started out in places like this. First, it's all perfect and then, boom!" He moved his hands in an outward motion for dramatics. "Some alien monster beast, like those hawk things, start killing people on lovers lane."

Deserey shrugged, happy for the change of topic. She pushed off the class wall of the parlour, where she had been standing, and walked over to meet the trio at the center of the room. "You actually might not be that far off, Jax," she said. "We found an alien thingy in the woods that might be the cause of these hawk people."

Jax gestured at her, like she had just proven his point. Sara made a cooing noise, teasing the youngster.

"Anyway," Leonard said, already sounding bored. "What did you losers find?"

"Losers?" Sara huffed.

"Losers," he nodded.

She rolled her eyes, before encountering her adventures at the asylum. "Stein and I found some files that might help connect the dots."

Jax stood up, informing everyone of his own adventures. "I ran into one of the teens from the accident, Betty, at a diner. I'm going out with her tonight to see if she knows anything."

Sara snapped her fingers, remembering something else. "Also, one of the nurses gave me a tour. She seemed to be afraid of Dr. Nox's secret ward, Hall H. Which is where, I'm guessing, Savage is conducting his little experiments."

Ray sat forward, looking intrigued now. "So, we know for a fact that it's Savage doing the experiments, now?"

Sara nodded curtly. "Well, I saw a picture with his face on it, so I'm pretty sure he's behind all this. He's --"

"Dr. Nox," Kendra interrupted, as she and Carter entered the room. She smiled sheepishly, as everyone turned to look at her, surprised. Deserey was about to ask how she knew that, when she hurriedly continued, "Sorry, I heard you talking from down the hall. Anyway, turns out Savage is our new neighbor."

"That's...awkward," Deserey mumbled. Jax nodded in agreement. Rip nodded to the parlour, before slowly moving into the little office. Everyone followed him inside, except for Mick, who leaned in the doorway, beer in hand. Deserey frowned at the sight. How was he always able to sneak off to get food and come back without her noticing? He was like a ninja or something.

Kendra stood with her back to the wall, playing with her frilly, pink skirt awkwardly. "Savage didn't seem to recognize us, which means he won't try to kill us."

Sara stole Rip's chair, and Deserey sat in her lap, leaving the captain to stand next to them, as they listened to the hawks' part of the story. The two soul mates explained how they had moved in with ease (other than the small minded real state agent). They were just taking a look around the house, when Savage (or Curtis Nox, as he was known here) showed up at their door, inviting them to a party, which Dez found to be both polite and suspicious.

Carter nodded in agreement. The fifties tux oddly suited him well, making him look neat and tidy. "He can't steal our powers before we've discovered them," he added.

Rip nodded, moving to stand by the little decorative table at the center of the office. "Savage is going to be busy with this little cocktail party." He glanced over at Carter and Kendra. "Whilst you two investigate, Sara and Professor Stein will look into what exactly Savage is doing in his restricted ward. Perhaps, you can figure out how he is using this substance to create these...hawk people."

"Which, by the way, Captain, I have just finished analyzing," Gideon spoke up, her voice ringing throughout the speakers over head. "It appears the substance from the meteorite hails from the planet Thanagar."

"Thanagar?" Carter asked, frowning curiously, like the word made any sense what so ever.

Deserey blinked. "So it really was aliens? Wow. Okay." She nodded slowly, trying to get her head around that. "I'm still getting use to metas and time travel. Seriously. What's next? The multi verse?"

Stein cleared his throat awkward. He fiddled with his glasses for a moment, before speaking. "Actually --"

Dez cut him off with a scoff. She stared at him with wide eyes. "I was joking!" she yelped. "Are you for real?"

The professor nodded. "Yes, I am 'for real'." he told her, making air quotes as he mocked her last sentence. "In fact, the Harrison Wells we met at Star Labs was actually from Earth Two."

Deserey shook her head in wonderment. "Wow...Just...wow..."

~

Later that evening, when the hawks had left for the party with their serial killer and Sara and the Professor had gone for their stake out and Jax had prepared for his fake out make out, Deserey found herself sitting in her room. She had just gotten out of the shower, so she had a towel wrapped over her head, but she had slipped on some comfy pajamas. It was strange, the way the water made her feel at ease. Maybe that's why she had always found such solace at the beach. (At least she had before the Particle Accelerator ruined it for her...)

Deserey eyed the sketch pad sitting on her nightstand next to her bed. She hadn't touched the thing since she had boarded the Waverider. Carefully, Dez picked it up, along with a pencil. Slowly, she flipped through the pages, smiling when she past the ones with the Legends and her family. When she found an empty page, she began to draw.

She started with the basic outline -- the sun, the horizon, clouds. Then she added a few lines in the sky, indicating the birds flying through the air. She drew the lines of the sand, adding an umbrella and a few trees on its surface; after that came the detailing and shading. The whole thing took, at least, five hours. The pencil lead had gotten her fingers messy again, but she didn't mind very much.

Deserey kept erasing and redrawing every detail of the picture, until she was satisfied with the way that it looked. (And satisfaction seemed to be an impossible feet.) She probably would have been at the sketch pad for the rest of the night, if she hadn't heard Ray knocking at her door. (And she knew it was Ray, because he was the only one left on the ship who was polite enough to knock.)

"It's open," she called out to him, stretching as she sat up. Her body was stiff from being hunched over for the past five hours. She cringed, moving her neck and shoulders around, as Ray stepped into the room.

He grinned, as she rolled her shoulders a few times before setting the sketch pad off to the side. She stood, finally, taking the towel off her head, her hair being thoroughly dry after all that time. "Hey," he said. "Sorry to bother you. I just wanted to let you know that Cisco sent the design for your suit, so now all we have to do is have Gideon fabricate it."

"Really?" Deserey said. "That was fast." She hadn't been expecting to get the results back that soon. It had only been two days after all.

Ray shrugged. "Fast is kind of the only way they do things at Star Labs."

Deserey snorted. "I bet the speed puns are non stop too, huh?"

"Uh, kinda," Ray admitted. "One time Felicity and I -- Felicity is my ex, by the way -- went over there to help them with this bee problem..." He trailed off, frowning thoughtfully, before contiuing in rambles. "Well, actually we went over there to see if they could help me fix the Atom suit. It was still in the early stages, and I was having trouble keeping it up in the air. And the bees weren't really bees. They were robots. Which were being controlled by a crazy meta chick. Who apparently liked bees."

She stared back at him, completely lost. He grinned sheepishly, seeing that he was losing her. "Anyway, when we went there the speed puns never stopped coming. But it's really fun, making puns."

Deserey smiled lightly. She wondered if he was always such a rambling, awkward mess. "Well, maybe we should start making tiny puns. And sand puns."

Ray nodded in agreement. "And Leonard can make ice puns. Well, he sort of already does that. And Mick and Firestorm can make heat puns. And, um, Kendra, Carter, and Sara can make...uh..."

"Bird puns?" Deserey supplied. She remembered someone -- she couldn't recall who -- had told her that all their codenames were the names of birds. Hawkgirl. Hawkman. White Canary. "And Rip?"

"Time puns?" Ray suggested.

"Beautiful. Now...to get them to make those puns..."

"That's going to be a hard task with some of them. Especially Rip and Sara."

"Agreed."

She played with the knots in her damp hair, frowning at them. Her hair was always an unruly mess. Especially when she had just gotten out of the shower. No amount of brushing could tame it. It was nothing more than a disgusting mess, like dirt on the bottom of someone's shoe.

So, what ever solitude and peace she had felt previously had vanished instantly at the sight of it. She found it hard to believe that Ray wasn't scowling in disgust, the way everyone else would have. The way so many people have throughout her entire life. It was a wonder he didn't comment on the way the tangles made her look like she had just gone through a wood chipper, the way all those kids back in her childhood home did.

Then again, Ray was much too nice to say anything of the sort. Though, she was willing to bet that he was still thinking it.

Deserey turned her attention away from her hair, grabbing her sand bag, which she had left sitting at the foot of her bed. It's a good day, she tried telling herself. It's a good day.

"I need to get more sand," she said, peering into the bag. "I ran out in that last fight, and I didn't even realize it."

"Oh," Ray said. "Well you can't be Sandstorm without sand. Let's go find a beach or something." He was grinning excitedly at the idea, but Deserey stared at him apprehensively. She was a black, bisexual woman, and this was the 1950s. Going anywhere near Harmony Falls would mean putting a target on her back. She didn't need that. She was already struggling with the past as it was, she didn't need some old farts digging up the things she'd been trying to bury for so long.

The only reason she had left the ship before was because she had gotten excited at the prospect of a monster hunt. Besides, that had been in the woods. Not the town. There wasn't anyone else, except for the other Legends, then. In the town there would be thousands of bigots, racists, and homophobes. Deserey was just not in the mood to deal with all their crap tonight.

Ray frowned, clearly not understanding any of this. He was a rich white boy with a super suit. Deserey doubted he had ever experienced any of these issues first hand. Sure, he might have known they were wrong, and he may even get offended on behalf of his friends, when the more obvious scenes of bigotry arose; but it would never hit him as hard. It would never be as personal to him.

"Ray," Deserey said, slowly. "There is a reason I didn't jump at the chance to help the others search for Savage or raid an insane asylum. And that's because I refuse to subject myself to the hostile environment of the '50s."

For a moment he looked confused, before a light lit up in his eyes, as he finally understood what she was talking about. "Oh," he said, sounding a bit disappointed. "Well, yeah. But... I mean, you shouldn't worry about a bunch of small minded people. You have super powers! You're way cooler than they are!"

Deserey rolled her eyes. She had always expecting he'd start saying things like that, but it didn't make it any less annoying now that he actually had started doing it.
"Ray --"

"If you let them scare you into hiding away, then they're just getting what they want. You're a person too. You have every right to exist, just like them. If they don't like it, if they don't want to get to know who you really are, then that's there problem. They're missing out," Ray ranted. "Also, it's time travel. You have to check every place out at least once."

She sighed. "If I say yes, will you stop with all your optimistic pep talks?"

"Maybe. Probably not, but maybe," Ray grinned.

She rolled her eyes again, but this time she smiled a little. It was nice having a friend like him. Annoying. But also nice. "Fine," Dez relented. "But if anything goes wrong, I'm throwing you under the bus."

"Eh," he shrugged. "Fair enough."

I really wanted to finish the '50s stuff this chapter, but I've been at my mom's, and her tvs are more complicated than my dad's. Plus, the computer is in the kitchen, and since it's a desk top I can't move it so...eh.

But that's fine. I'll just finish it up in the next chapter or two. We'll get some bonding with Ray and Dez... It'll be great. Then we can move on to some of the things I have planned, which will either make the LoT plot better or twice as complicated. I'll let y'all decide when the time comes. Hopefully you think it's better, because I've been trying but... 🤷🏻

Also, sorry it took a bit to update. I know it's just been a few days, but I was updating every day and then... it stopped. So, sorry. (Though I did tell you not to expect regular updates at some point, I think. Still I feel bad...)

I planned on updating last night, but I had some emotional turmoil and family issues to deal with so... (But luckily everything worked out, and you have an update now so yay!)

Aaannnd one more thing, because I'm trash. Sorry if you've been stalking my notification board and you're seeing this twice, but...like I said I am trash. So. If y'all like my junk, and you wanna see what my brain comes up with when I try to be original... You can check out my og works account elsie-the-dweeb

If you like supernatural/super powered X-Men type junk, there's something just like that!

^^^ See? Beautiful isn't it? Doesn't it look oh so intriguing?

And if you like elements -- earth fire, water, air -- and junk like Avatar the Last Air Bender then you might enjoy this piece:

Annd -- last one. Promise. --- if you enjoy the Arthurian Legends -- Merlin, Lancelot, Excalibur -- then maybe you might like this new (hopefully new) take I've spun around it!

Alright. That's it. I'm done shoving my work down your throats. 😂

If you want feel free to check them out, if you haven't already. Hope you enjoy. But if you just totally hate me for shoving it in your faces and don't want to read them... That is perfectly fine too. I'm just trash begging to be noticed. 😂😂

Okay. Welp. Lemme know if you see any major errors in the comments!

Ps: Oh! Almost forgot! Here's the drawing Dezzy did. (Disclaimer: I didn't draw it. I just edited an image from google with pics art)