fandom: dc's legends of tomorrow (college hockey au)
wc: 970
a/n: i know this is the only fictober ive posted dont yell at me ok. i have been very slowly writing a college hockey au... also i guess i write avalance now! so this is a part of my and if i every post the full thing on ao3 ill come back and link it. this is stupid and thats ok! also i dont know jack shit about hockey
cw: mentions of violence typical to hockey and also canon
If Sara Lance had a time machine, she would go back in time four years, and decline the opportunity to play Division 1 college hockey.
Hell, she’d go back in time fifteen years, and pick a different sport to commit her life to altogether. She was pretty good at Taekwondo when she was seven. She could do that instead.
Since Sara doesn't have a time machine, she’s now the very accomplished captain of the Starling City University’s women’s hockey team- and is breaking up a fight between two eighteen year old defencewomen on a Tuesday night. It’s significantly running down the clock on their allotted practice time. Plus, she has a lab report to do tonight, and four pages of physics homework.
Ava eventually gets involved too, and by the time they wrestle Spooner and Astra away from each other, the men’s team has started to arrive, for their allotted practice time.
Sara cuts her losses and dismisses her girls, before skating across the rink to say hello to the guys.
-
“I can’t do this anymore,” Sara says, dropping her bag and sitting down at the cafe table Nate and Ray were already at. Nate slides a coffee cup toward her without even looking up from his textbook. It’s her usual order, which Sara’s grateful for, considering it’s about eight in the morning.
“You want to look at my report?” Ray grimaces.
“I mostly finished mine,” Sara shakes her head. “Can you check it, though?” She never turned down the chance for Ray to glance over her homework, especially for organic chemistry. The three of them sit silently for a few minutes while Sara downs coffee like her life depends on it.
“What can’t you do anymore,” Nate says, finally looking up from his book- a reading about what seemed to be vikings, from Sara’s upside-down vantage point.
“Hockey,” she replies. “I’m quitting, dropping out, and becoming a stripper.”
“Oof,” Nate grimaces. “New defense, still?”
“Yes,” she groans. “I have tried everything, and they just won’t stop fighting. How are they supposed to be the killer defense pair I need them to be if they can’t stop trying to scalp each other on the ice?”
“Yikes,” Ray makes a face, passing her notebook back. He’d made a few small notes in pencil in the margins of her lab report.
“I just don’t know what to do anymore,” she says. “I have other shit to worry about, but we need to win these next two games, or there’s no way I have any chance of a future after May.”
“Sorry I don’t have much advice,” Ray says, voice sympathetic. Ray was the mostly spineless captain of the men’s team, but that worked for them. And when it didn’t he’d pull Sara in to give the guys a shout-down.
“Have you tried swapping them?” Nate asks, sipping his own coffee.
“That’s the thing,” Sara says. “I don’t really have any subs for defense.”
“No, I mean,” Nate sits up. “Who are your forwards?”
“Me, Ava, and Amaya,” Sara lists.
Nate nods. “And the two new girls-”
“Spooner and Astra,” she cuts in.
“Are defense. So why don’t you swap them for a game? Have you, or Ava, or Amaya play defense and one of the new girls on offense?” Nate explains, gesturing.
“That could work!” Ray says brightly, and Nate fist-bumps him.
Sara frowns. “It might,” she admits. “I’ve tried everything else. And y’know what,” she smiles, sitting up. “It’s only my entire future as an athlete on the line. Why not?”
-
“Sara, you can’t be serious,” Ava says, flatly.
“Sure I am,” Sara smiles.
“Sara, we have a game Friday,” Ava frowns. “And you want to switch the positions of your starters?”
“We've tried everything else!” Sara groans. “Last week Spooner almost broke Astra’s nose, Ava.”
“So bench them!” Ava says. “They're liabilities.”
“We both know I can't afford to do that,” Sara shakes her head, sitting down on the locker room bench. “They're both amazing players. I just wish they could work together.”
“So let me get this straight,” Ava sighs. “You want me to play defense this week.”
“And for Astra to be on my left. Who knows, maybe she'll like being a forward,” Sara thinks out loud, starting to shove one foot into a skate.
“I don't think this is gonna work,” Ava says. She's always been a very point-blank kind of girl- which is one of the things Sara loves most about her.
“Trust me,” Sara takes her hand. “This will work. It has to.”
“Okay,” Ava sighs again. “We can try it.”
“Thank you, babe,” Sara leans over and puts her head on Ava’s shoulder.
“If Spooner breaks my nose I'm out,” Ava says, and Sara can't help but laugh. “No, seriously!”
“Okay, fine,” Sara says, still laughing. “I just really need us to win this game,” she says after a moment, more quietly.
“I know,” Ava squeezes her hand. “I know this isn't what you want to hear but…” she pauses. “Maybe it won't be the end of the world if you don't get drafted. There's always other opportunities.”
Sara swallows. She isn't sure how to explain to her girlfriend that it does kind of feel like the end of the world. The idea of never playing hockey again after the spring, not really, terrifies her. Going pro has been what she's been working towards for almost eight years of her life. The thought of throwing in the towel after eight years of pain, sweat, and tears feels like giving up on her life.
“Yeah,” Sara finally says. “I guess.”
Ava leans over and kisses her, short and sweet. “I'm gonna go stretch,” she says, standing and heading to the door.
Sara sighs, bends down, and finishes lacing her skates. One day at a time.
i do think ava spent much of s4 in meetings with hank and other higher ups discussing budget and advocating for the legends to recieve funding whilst sara's blowing up her phone like 'babe you have to portal over we've just met a guy named Roland the Farter and you would not Believe what he can do'
i think after beebo day, ava remains weirdly susceptible to timeline changes. like after they leave the legends, she's chatting to sara and sara is like wait what?? who did you say was president?? and ava is like lex luthor?? and sara is like. i have to make a call.
also. i think when sara starts hanging out more at ava's house she's like. never give the legends your address. and ava's like okay?? but she forgets and gives nate her address so he can get his historian hunks magazine delivered (history articles for the beefy man)
and then one day she comes home to find mick in the bath (he wanted a bath and the waverider bathroom was busy), zari in her fridge (gideon cut off her snack supply because she messed with her wiring) and ray is setting up a rocket in the garden (last time he did it on the waverider there was a fire) and sara and nate are watching a movie and ava is like?? how did this happen?? and sara is like i warned u!!
i have a headcanon that due to the League, sara has incredible reaction times, strength and short term focus, therefore making her truly amazing at fairground games, and the legends walk around the fair with a huge amount of giant teddies, which they give away to any kids they see, but they do keep a few. ava keeps a tiny cat plush on her desk at work. a giant dinosaur lives in the engine room. gary keeps a unicorn as a form of exposure therapy.
rating how easy ava and sara find things in the real world:
grocery shopping: ava hates going because it's a sensory overload, and sara is overwhelmed by the crazy amounts of choice and new items because she hasn't gone to a grocery shop regularly since like, 2007. ava adds a line item on their budget for 'snacks sara just Had to try'
cooking: the food fabricator meant neither of them really cooked for years, and they'd mostly forgotten how to, so gideon signs them up for a bunch of cooking classes of various cuisines. they improve, but still have mac and cheese at least three times a week. the baby couldn't care less
cleaning: ava's stress cleaning ramps up to 1000 before the baby arrives and sara can see her face in every reflective surface. she calms down over time but the legends are always Very careful to use coasters when they come over
driving a car: much like riding a bike, driving is something sara never truly forgot, but was definitly super rusty. on more than one occasion she asked gideon to set a course, and once, when sleep deprived, pushed the gearstick straight forward like she was punching it and crashed into her own garage
putting together furniture: when putting together the furniture for the baby's room ava bursts into tears because before they were in the ikea purgatory she could have never imagined they'd end up here and it then takes them 5 hours and lots of hugs to get it done
free time: neither ava or sara have relaxed since they joined the waverider and they have no idea how to start, so they take suggestions from the legends. one weekend they go axe throwing with the baby in a baby carrier on sara's chest. eventually, they settle on hiking.
i truly believe sara passed the time at sink shower and stuff by stealing, and her tiny apartment was full of stolen towels, napkins, coasters, toiletries and kitchenware. she even got a whole knife block out once. at some point she had enough so started stealing for the rest of the legends, started mailing cute candles and bath sets to her mom, and takes a load of stuff back to the waverider until it ends up in her house with ava, until ava learns it was stolen and is Appalled. but its a goddamn good bath towel so she lets it slide
I was thinking today about how completely unrealistic the Astra runs for President prediction was and the more I think about it, a lot of the other predictions don't add up. I'm going to go through in the order they were in the episode.
(She may not have been purposefully lying but she definitely just showed them whatever Chat GPT popped out.)
Zari: Seems plausible on the surface, but I have some concerns.
Her award show dress is UGLY. The red color is pretty but the orangey overlay ruins it. The ruching is in the worst possible place and makes her look larger than she is right through the middle. The bottom is kind of wrinkled. And then she has really small, understated jewelry and her hair up, so there's nothing interesting at all going on in the shoulder/neck region. Zari dresses better than that.
She makes billions with her cosmetics company. Despite the fact that we have repeatedly been told throughout the show that she is terrible at selling cosmetics. Her lip kits don't even sell. Everybody has lips! Her perfume destroys people's sense of smell.
Audible lipstick. Not a thing anyone wants. Not a thing that makes any sense. Evil Gideon is making this stuff up. And yes, it's the future, but nothing we've seen of the 2040s on Legends really looks all that much more technologically advanced than what we have now.
EG fails to consider that Zari has grown as a person since whatever info she has in her files, which is the whole reason Zari is upset about the prediction. It's plausible that she would go back to her career as it was, but she cares about people now. She would absolutely be doing some sort of philanthropy.
She's so pretty. But also, I'm not 100% convinced that that even is a dress because it looks like they may have just shoved a piece of fabric at her and said "here, hold this under your arms."
Behrad:
Totally plausible that he could become famous, either for his talent or via his connections, but he has never wanted to be famous. You expect me to believe that the man who hid in bed to avoid imaginary TV cameras is going to purposefully go into a career of being on camera?
He can't account for his whereabouts for several years of his adult life. He is not passing a background check to become a children's performer.
His record is called "Grey Hound to the Moon." Which is great, except that both the bus company and the dog spell it Greyhound. One word.
Avalance:
Knowing what we know now about Sara's biology, this is plausible.
But I feel like they might run into some issues trying to sign their kid up for school when one of them is legally dead and the other was never legally born.
Do kids get to do video calls from camp these days? I don't know. I am old. I had to bring quarters to the designated calling home payphones at a predetermined time to talk to my parents.
Gwyn:
He knows too much. They can't send him back to the 1920s. All of the Legends are aberrations waiting to happen, but sending anyone to the past is a no-no.
If they are going to send him back, wouldn't it make more sense to send him back to New York? Since that's where he last was?
Nate:
He has to somehow convince someone to publish a book about how time travel is real. Nate Heywood. Who you may recall from that controversial fake documentary about time travel a few years back. He seems like a reliable source.
You don't grow a hideous beard over the Heywood jawline. You just don't.
His TV interview is totally bogus. Nate knows how to schmooze. He's not going to be all "I can't answer your simple question about what time travel feels like because you must first read all 500 pages of my book."
"I never said that out loud before but that is the title I picked out." Gideon can literally monitor your dreams, dude. I know that she's never personally kidnapped you and put you into a time loop, but she knows things.
Astra:
Remember how she couldn't find a job in season 6? Because she's legally dead and legally still a child? She also has no education, no work experience, and a grand total of like 6 people who can vouch for her existence. She is a mess. No idea if she's legally eligible to run.
And she definitely wouldn't win, given that all of the above would definitely come out. She also doesn't look her legal age (which barely makes her old enough to qualify), she's terrible at keeping her temper, and she's literally a witch.
Also, she runs in 2040. We know for a fact that Dwayne Johnson is the President in 2045. So at best, she gets 1 term.
That wig is preposterous.
Spooner:
Again, she definitely knows too much to go back to the 1920s.
Everyone is already suspicious of Gloria Cruz. You don't think they're going to have questions when her daughter goes missing and then some 20-something shows up out of nowhere?
They are not running an apothecary. They are getting burned at the stake.
for the next crossover so many of the arrowverse have kids they delegate a few ppl to run a creche for all the babys and they pick ava (sensible) mick (good with kids) and gary (get him out of the way). mick is just chilling, three babies on his lap, william is pissed he's in with the babies bcos he's the only teenager and gary has started a whole imaginary world with the soft toys. ava is stood there, holding her baby texting sara like you better beat this alien invasion fast because it is Too loud and there are Too many babies here
i think the legends wld do that trend where u get ur friends embarrasing t-shirts / phone cases before u go on holiday but they do it before a crossover and sara gets photographed beating up an alien wearing a t-shirt which says "looking for hot milfs in your area". it becomes a meme.
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