The amount of time she’d spent with Ray on the Waverider was criminally small. Part of that had to do with being the new person on board during a time when there'd been a lot of transition going on. Of course, there was no such excuse now, and yet she still hadn't connected to Ray like she’d wanted to.

Now was the time to fix that.

She showed up at the door to the lab with Thai food and a bottle of wine, but didn't come inside. "Please tell me you're not in the middle of saving the world in here, because I'm starving and wondering if you've remembered to take a break today."

He hadn't completely forgotten to take a break, Cosmo made certain to remind him about walk times. But he had forgotten about dinner, not Cosmo's, the pup had bowls of wet food, biscuits and water in the lab. So he was well fed and snoozing. It was just the human in the laboratory who needed a refuel. So when Zari breezed by, Raymond's stomach caught the scent of food and rumbled loudly.

"Oh, hi Z." Looking up from the microscope he flashed a brilliant, if a little sheepish, smile. While it was still a little strange seeing this new, colorful, version of his close friend; he still liked Zari and hoped they could become just as close as he was with the original.

"I may have forgotten about eating. But I did take a walk break." Clearing a space on the workbench, he dusted off the spare stool and offered her the seat. "What have you got there? It smells delicious."

Since the invitation was clear and this wasn't one of those science places where food and drink were forbidden, Zari walked right in and set both food and wine down and sat where indicated. "Cashew pad thai and a coconut curry that got rave reviews online. And wine, of course, although now I'm thinking I should have brought water. This isn't going to go straight to your head, is it? I don't think I've ever seen you drunk before. Something tells me you make a really cute drunk, but friends don't let friends science when they've had too much to drink. What are you working on, anyway?"

“That sounds amazing,” Ray rolled his own stool closer as Zari sat, glad she’d decided to interrupt him. Though he wasn’t too sure about the wine, he wasn’t much of a drinker and when she asked if it would go to his head he gave another bashful smile. “Probably, I don’t drink often, but I have plenty of water in the lab if needed.” Pink tinted his cheeks as Zari mused about his cute status and his shoulders lifted in a little shrug. “You’ll have to be the judge of that, but I appreciate you keeping me away from the sciency stuff if I do get tipsy.” Glancing over at the microscope, his expression changed to an almost frown for a second, “I was just checking my nanites. I think some of them have stopped functioning. They weren’t programmed fully and they’ve been in there a while so I guess it’s only natural.”

She started unpacking the food along with a couple of clear plastic cups, because they were going to be so fancy, but she paused to look directly at him. "Nanites?" Her gaze shifted down to his chest, a mix of confusion and curiosity pulling her brows together before it came back up. "Do you have nanites inside you? Why do you have nanites inside you? Did other-me know you have nanites inside you? Are you okay? Are you going to be okay? Do we need to take you to medical?" Zari knew the torrent of questions was too much, but her concern had swiftly morphed into something that clenched at her chest and suddenly made her eyes prickle. Her hand found his forearm and squeezed it with the sudden onset of anxiety. "RayRay, we just lost John. I can't lose you too."

“Yes, nanites, which I engineered myself.” He smiled, aiming for a reassuring one but uncertain if he hit the mark. Especially when she followed up her first question with six more. “No, no, no… I’m okay. I’m fine!” Turning his arm in her grip, he took hold of Zari’s hand in both of his. “Before I joined the Legends, I lived in Starling City. In a classic case of the wrong place at the wrong time, I got shot with an arrow.” He lifted one of his hands and pointed to the place it hit him, “Right here. While they operated on that, I developed a thrombus and the prognosis was brain damage or death. So, nanites. Experimental, but they dispersed the clot and have been hanging out inside me ever since.” Taking a breath, he smiled at her again, “I don’t know if other-you knew or not. I’m sure Gideon did.”

"Oh." She felt a little silly for her outburst, but his hands, or now just the one, felt so reassuring around hers. As though transfixed, she reached out and traced the place he had indicated, lightly, just barely touching the fabric of his shirt. Drawing on the well of her own considerable perseverance, Zari blinked back the threatening tears and gave him a solemn and sincere smile. "That sounds terrifying. The closest I've ever come to getting stabbed was over a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps. Probably a lot less heroic than your story. And a lot less traumatic." With a sigh, she gently pulled her hands away, but it was only so she could finish pouring the wine and plating their food. "I miss Gideon. And Sara and Ava and Nate and Mick and my brother—but you don't know him, do you? You're from before all that. I'd say this was weird, but that's just life aboard the Waverider. What do we know from normal?"

It wasn't the first time someone else had touched the scar, albeit indirectly, but it still sent a strange sensation dancing across his nerves. "Sorry if I scared you. I didn't mean to bring the mood down." The mention of designer labels brought a wince in reaction, he'd witnessed that insanity first hand trying to get some shoes for Anna. There was a reason he'd asked his assistant for help after that. "Thankfully Louboutin isn't my style, so I don't have to run that gauntlet." His smile was a little melancholy at the mention of their crewmates. He missed them all too, especially Nate and Sara. "I miss her too, FRIDAY doesn't have her quirks. You told me a little about Behrad, when we met, but he might be different as the timeline changed. What is he like?" Chuckling then he nodded emphatically, "Weird is our thing. Best to embrace it."

Zari shook her head and patted his shoulder. "I'm an expert in navigating different moods, so don't worry about it at all. I guess I just kind of had a moment." It was easy enough to wave away the blip in their conversation, and she did so by taking up her wine as she crossed her legs and leaned in a bit. "With your… assets, darling, you could absolutely pull off Louboutin." She was teasing of course, but the compliment was nothing but sincere. Superficial, yes, but absolutely and truly meant. It helped take out the slight sting of thinking about Behrad. Zari slowly ate a bit of cheese as she considered her answer. "If you'd asked me this before my last mission, I'd probably tell you that I love my brother, but he's not living up to his potential. That's not really fair, though, since I think I've been using my success and drive as the bar he should be trying to reach, when I should have been letting him live his own life. And he was, with the team, before I wandered on board.

"He doesn't exactly approach life on the same level as most people, and by that I mean he's mastered the precise art of being functionally high all the time. But I saw what he could be if he'd grown up like me, and I didn't like that person. He was cold and callous and entitled and rude. It really made me have to take a hard look in the mirror, y'know? I'm a little glad you don't know me from those early days. I was kind of a brat. I mean, I still have my moments, but I'd like to think I've chilled out a little. Like you said, embrace the weird." She gasped all at once and bounced on her stool. "We should get Legends tattoos!"

If he turned pink at being called cute, then he must have flushed as red as a tomato at the next compliment. "Uh, I, thank you." The spluttered sentence wasn't much of one but his brain was still trying to process being called 'darling' by that teasing voice. So he was quite relieved when Zari began to tell him about her brother. It struck him how much she sounded like he did when he spoke about Sydney, and that maybe he hadn't been fair on his brother either, by setting him against his own standard.

"I think Behrad and my brother, Sydney, would get along. He's not high all the time, but he drifts through life without much direction and always lands on his feet. It used to annoy me, but now, I'm just glad he's doing okay." He gave a little chuckle at her brat comment, "I think I was annoying when I first boarded too. Too eager and ideas above my station. Call it temporary temporal stupidity."

"Tattoos? I'm definitely not sure if I could pull that off." He took a sip of his wine, "Though if we were to get inked what design would it be?"

Making people blush was right up there with reaching a new follower benchmark as far as highlights of Zari's day went. She wasn't bothered by gender, but still respected it. Which was beside the point. If her hand hadn't been occupied with her glass, she would have had her phone out and snapping pictures right that instant. Although technically, she could have used her other, but maybe she was still feeling just a little bit stung by Bucky's reaction to her first post, which in turn made her a bit gunshy.

But she wore her reservation on the inside, while her exterior was all understanding smiles. "I think I heard about that from Sara or maybe Ava? Like you tried to be the captain a couple of times? And wasn't there something about winding up in a future where your brother was running or had run Palmer Tech?" Zari took a sip of her wine, and tried to affect at least a teensy bit of innocence. "Okay, so maybe Gidget's given me some highlights of the Legends' Greatest Hits, pre-me. You have no idea how boring it gets waiting on the bathroom. A girl's gotta have some kind of entertainment. And who designs a ship with a crew of eight to ten with one bathroom. The Time Authority-whatever geniuses were clearly sadists."

She sat back to look at him critically again, her gaze sweeping over him. "Okay, but a few counterpoints: one, have you seen your arms? You could put an entire wall of flash on just your bicep alone, and still have room for our fun new crew tattoo. Two, who says it would have to be anywhere easily visible? It could be a fun surprise for N—someone to find when the fun times start. Three, isn't it nice to think that maybe, just maybe, if we ever get sent back to where we belong, we might possibly have a reminder of where we'd been?" Quality save, Z. Very good. Zari drained her glass, quickly poured another, and then gestured at the various papers sitting around. "Don't you design things too? We should collab! It could be the ship or some kind of combination of all symbols and totems. Something like that."

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Ray rolled his eyes at the thought of Sydney being the ‘Father of Robotics’. “I actually had a minor meltdown at the thought I had ancestors when I didn’t even have a child. Then I worried that I’d missed the birth by being a Legend. But that was a weird timeline which won’t happen now, or hasn’t happened.” He turned his attention to his food for a moment, trying not to think too hard about how he’d lost his company. It shouldn’t be too difficult to rebuild, once he was confirmed as alive again. Hopefully. “The Time Masters only ever assigned one of them to each ship, from what Rip told us. When we met the Acheron, there was only a Captain on board too, no crew. So maybe that’s why they skimped on the bathrooms.”

This time he had a mouthful of pad thai when Zari unleashed her compliment, and he gave her a wide eyed look of embarrassed bewilderment. He really hadn’t thought that Zari saw him that way, not the Z he knew anyway, so this was all a bit strange, nice strange. Not to mention he hadn’t had fun times since Kendra. “A reminder of the experience would be cool.” Ray admitted, gaze lowered to focus on the papers she’d just pointed out. “An outline of the Waverider would be simple enough. But symbols would be a little more personal, if we could decide on what to use for who.”

Turning slightly, Z knocked her knee gently into Ray's leg in silent support and then kept it there. In a weird way, she knew exactly what it was like to have one expectation about her life, only for it to be revealed in dramatic fashion that hers was the reset. Not quite the same, but similarities were there, enough to make her beyond sympathetic. "I'm living proof that time isn't nearly as constant or linear as everyone likes to think. The two of us know that better than most. Does it help to know that you're happy, at least? You seemed to be, at any rate. But I won't say anymore. Spoilers, y'know?"

His reactions to her light flirting were definitely fueling her desire to see more of them. Hell, she wasn't even actively trying, but she was starting to get curious about what that might look like too. But before she could really solidify this novel idea into something actionable, he distracted her with the fantasy tattoo design. "Oooo, yes! Clearly the atom symbol for you. Some kind of canary for Sara. Did you know Ava? I feel like a color coded notebook would be too on the nose, but hilarious. And a dragon or my totem for me, of course." Zari touched the gem at her wrist. "As for Nate—"

A blinding gust of wind exploded through the room, tossing papers and anything else that wasn't nailed down or heavier than a stapler every which way as it howled around and around.

“Thanks, Z.” Ray smiled, taking comfort from her reassuring words as much as the press of her leg against his. He was grateful for both and especially that Zari hadn’t withdrawn the touch. For someone who spent a lot of his life saving other people’s futures, he hadn’t thought much of his own. But if he was happy, then that was all he could ask for. “Oh yes, not too many spoilers. Although I’m not convinced I’d remember when I get back home. Multiverse travel is a new one for me.”

While he pondered the flirtations, it seemed as if Zari did the same, and he wondered if she was just doing it to see his different reactions. Ray didn’t have much time to mull this over before design ideas were being suggested and he pulled a notebook and pencil closer, doodling an atom symbol as it was mentioned. “I know Ava, she’s a little intense, but that’s understandable considering she was literally made to be that way. Do you share your Totem with Behrad?”

The sudden gust of wind made him flinch and he caught hold of his plastic cup so it wouldn’t topple over and spill. “Whoa… are you alright?”

"Ray?" Her voice was the same, but somehow different. Everything else about her had changed, however. Gone was the casual glamor. In its place was red plaid flannel, comfortable jeans, and ass-kicking boots. Her hair was longer too, and pulled into a perfunctory ponytail. She stared around the unfamiliar room with wide, wary eyes. "This doesn't look like the Waverider. Where are we? I've been stuck in the Totem, and couldn't see the outside anymore for weeks. None of the ancestors could."

“Zari?!” Not only was the complete appearance overhaul a bit of a clue as to which version of his friend was now sat before him, but the tone of her voice was too. This was the Z he knew, though he didn’t quite understand exactly how she was there, or what she meant by being inside the Totem. “This isn’t the Waverider… This is my Lab, uh, in New York. You’re- what do you mean you’ve been stuck in the Totem? What happened?” His puzzled expression changed to a smile then and he had to fight not to pull her into a hug. “It’s good to see you, you.”

Out of the corner of her eyes, she could just barely see the tell-tale twitch of Ray's shoulders that meant he'd just talked himself out of throwing his arms around her. She appreciated the restraint, but in this case, she was so relieved to be out of the pretty little waiting room that she was the one who turned and put her arms around his neck to hug him fiercely. "Didn't the other me tell you?" Zari pulled back to look at him, but had taken his hands. "When the team changed my timeline, the Totem treated me, the original me, like I had died. So that meant a one way trip to Club Air. It's a working title, still thinking it over. Anyway, other-me could talk to me in there. Behrad too. And then suddenly I couldn't sense the outside world at all. I know you said New York, but it's—it's not our New York, is it? It feels… off."

When Zari hugged him his hands came up and he held her back just as tightly, feeling as though she needed this as much as he did in that moment. Shaking his head at her question, he curled his fingers around hers, listening to the explanation and trying to wrap his mind around it. There was so much he didn’t know about the mystical side of things, though he wanted to, he wanted to understand it like he understood Quantum Theory, but it was proving to be a little more difficult. “I think she’s been holding back a few ‘spoilers’. I can only remember as far as you all joining Totems to defeat Malice, John had just crashed our vacation in Aruba and then suddenly I was here. But I knew that the timeline changed enough for her to be different to you. I didn’t realise Totems could act that way… Maybe Amaya is inside Mari’s?” He shook his head then because he was dangerously close to going off topic, instead he gave Zari’s hands a little squeeze of reassurance. “We crossed over to another world, Multiverse theory is true, so I guess you couldn’t see outside before because this wasn’t the right world according to the Totem?”

Zari laughed, but it came out a short, bitter sound. "Oh, RayRay, if or when you get back, you are in for one helluva year." She pulled a hand away from Ray's and nearly touched the totem at her wrist, but stopped just short. Her thing with Nate had only happened because Amaya had chosen to stay in her time. It had never occurred to her that her spirit might still be around in some way, like she was. There was something vaguely disconcerting about the idea, but she set it aside for now. It made her reluctant to get any closer than she had to be to her bracelet, however. It looked so small on her wrist, nothing like the necklace she used to wear. "I don't really know how the other totems work, other than they're connected somehow. Malice feels like a lifetime ago. Is anyone else here? Any of our friends?"

“When I get back.” He smiled, feeling momentarily helpless as he thought about what little progress had been made into finding out the inner workings of the portal and how to send those from other worlds home. Watching as Zari stopped herself from touching the Totem, he wondered why for a moment before understanding all at once. She might be sent back inside if she did, unable to see the outside world. He knew how horrible it was to feel trapped, so he didn’t blame her for wanting to prolong her visit for as long as possible. “I suppose short of asking Kuasa and Mari about studying them, we won’t ever really know. Though I think with Mick’s affinity to the Fire Totem it's probably too much like tempting fate bringing it back aboard. John was here for a while, but he disappeared not long ago. Kara and Cisco are around, and J’onn, but I don’t think you’ve met him?”

Zee had to laugh at the memory of Mick Rory with the perfect totem for him, and what a pain it had been to get him to try to use it responsibly. But that was usually all of them at one time or another. So eager to get out there and do good, when most of the time they should have just gotten out of their own way. "Yeah, let's not and say we did, re: the Fire Totem. It would mean bringing Mick and the other Bearers to this place anyway, and all of this already seems like a big enough mess as it is." John had always seemed a little full of himself for Zari's taste, but Z really liked him. That had been difficult—being in love with Nate and giving up her own timeline and life to save him, and then having to watch the woman who had taken over her life slowly falling for the self-proclaimed Master of the Mystic Arts. All while seeing the hurt that Nate tried to hide behind too-bright smiles and plucky determination. She wished he was here now, but also didn't. "No, I don't really remember J'onn, but I remember you and Sara talking about him—and the non-evil Kara. It'll be good to have Cisco around, though. You two can Science together."

Her gaze drifted to the totem again, and she chewed her lip. "I can't stay out here long, but I hate going back and not knowing what's going on." She looked back at Ray and took his hand again. "You'll look out for her, won't you? It doesn't seem fair to ask you, but she's so new to this. She might think she can take on the world, but this one isn't hers. I don't want anything to happen to her. Or to you. You need to take care of each other, RayRay. Promise me?"

“True, and I don’t think they even exist in this world, the Totems that is. Aside from yours, now. They have Infinity Stones, which seem similar, and just as mystical and mysterious.” While Ray would have liked to have more company from back home, specifically their little band of misfits, he wouldn’t really wish unexpected dimension hopping on anyone. “I miss all of them, but I’m okay with them not being here… if that makes sense?” He sighed and pushed his food around on his plate for a moment, not really wanting to admit how lonely he felt at times. Zari, Dragon Girl version, had been much better at fitting in and making friends than he had. Once he’d been to Space and gotten himself in with the science crew he hadn’t really branched out. “I hope so, Cisco’s knowledge and experience travelling between worlds will be invaluable.”

He wondered what made her pause, and then realised. Of course her time outside the Totem would be finite. Holding her hand carefully, he smiled, “Now I know you can’t see out, I’ll tell Z, maybe she can give you updates every so often?” Ray still wasn’t sure how it worked, but hopefully Zari wouldn’t be kept in the dark from now on. “I promise we’ll look after each other. I won’t let anything bad happen to her.”

"Thanks," she whispered right before she pulled him into another hug. "I never did this enough before, and I'm sorry for it. I should have been a better friend." Zee held on to him fiercely, her face tucked into his shoulder. The second after she released the smallest of sighs, that same blast of wind that announced her arrival ushered back her counterpart, who slumped a little against him. "It was her." Zari's voice was barely there, and she didn't pick her head up at all, even buried it deeper into the side of his neck. "It was so dark there. I didn't—I didn't know." Her breath hitched, and she shuddered. "I think something might be wrong, but I don't know what it could be. Just—could you just hold me for a moment? And then I'll—I'll go."

"You're welcome." Ray's smile held the slightest hint of sadness as Zari pulled him into another hug, but he wrapped his arms around her tightly and rolled his stool closer. "You're a great friend, one of the best, actually my first after Gumball, and I love you, so no apologies needed." He held Z just as securely after their switch letting her lean in and giving whatever comfort was needed. Stroking tiny circles on her back, Ray frowned at the words wondering if it was just the change of world affecting the Totem or something more. "She said they lost contact with the outside. We thought it was because this isn't our world. Whatever it is, we can work it out together." Tilting his head, he rested his cheek against her hair, "Of course I'll hold you, anytime you need me to. But you should stay, I can't eat all of this myself, not to mention drink a whole bottle of wine."

She'd very obviously been doing herself a disservice by not getting more quality Ray-hugs before now, but she silently resolved that this wouldn't be the case going forward. A small, wet laugh left her as she leaned away a little and patted at his damp shoulder. Her smile was still sad, but no less meaningful as she turned it on him. "You had me at 'a whole bottle of wine,' darling."