Ray Palmer

It was supposed to be a quick test flight. In, out, no big deal! At least, that’s what Ray told himself as he adjusted the dials on the A.T.O.M. suit but, one miscalculation in the time navigation matrix later, and he was... definitely not in the right year. The skyline was different. His comms were dead and judging by the flip phones in everyone’s hands, he’d overshot by at least a decade.

Panic wasn’t his style, but he couldn’t exactly just wait around for the Waverider to find him. If he was here, then YN was here too! Younger, maybe, but still... themselves. Ray’s memory flickered back to a conversation they’d had, the one where they’d mentioned their college days with a wistful smile. That was his only lead.

So, armed with nothing but a suit that was glitching between “fully functional” and “won’t stop shrinking random objects” and his unshakable optimism, Ray set out for the campus. He stuck out like a sore thumb, a man in a tailored suit, awkwardly wandering past dorms with a notebook full of calculations and muttering about “temporal drift.”

Students gave him curious looks, some amused, others suspicious but Ray barely noticed. Somewhere among these old brick buildings and buzzing lecture halls was YN and if finding them meant crashing a chemistry lab, pretending to be a guest lecturer, or awkwardly asking strangers if they knew them, well... Ray Palmer had never been afraid of a little embarrassment. After all, saving the future was important but finding them? That felt even more urgent. Ray had been pacing the quad for hours, pretending to check the “guest lecture schedule” on a crumpled flyer just so he wouldn’t look completely lost. The A.T.O.M. suit’s comms were still fried, his shrinking tech kept zapping stray pencils into oblivion, and he was starting to wonder if he’d gotten the year wrong entirely. Then he saw them. They were sitting cross-legged on the grass with a stack of textbooks beside them, scribbling in the margins while sipping something from a paper cup. The sight hit him like a time jump without a landing pad, the same way they tilted their head when reading, the same half-smile when they figured something out.

“Okay... don’t be weird,” Ray muttered to himself, taking a steadying breath. He started across the lawn, only to immediately trip over the lip of the sidewalk. His coffee-less hand windmilled, his other clutching the glitching notebook.

YN looked up at the noise, brow furrowing as they took him in, the stranger in a suit, looking wildly out of place among hoodie-wearing students.

“Uh... hi,” Ray said, giving a sheepish wave. “I’m... new here. Not in the student way, more in the... I got very lost on my way to a physics conference and somehow ended up in your quad way.”

Their lips twitched like they were holding back a laugh. “That’s... oddly specific.”

Ray brightened instantly. “Good! Specific is my brand also, um... would you happen to know where the physics department is? Also, possibly where a guy could get... directions to, uh, the entire future?” YN blinked, the corners of their mouth tugging upward despite themselves. “The entire future? That’s... a pretty big ask. We don’t exactly keep that in the campus lost-and-found.” Ray’s grin widened. “That’s okay. I’m good with directions. Well—” he hesitated, glancing down at the glitching notebook in his hands as if it might contradict him— “I’m usually good with directions.”

They tilted their head. “And yet you ended up in the middle of our quad with no coffee and no backpack.”

“Right, well, my backpack... exploded.” The words slipped out before he could stop them. “Not like a dangerous explosion, more of a—” He mimed something fizzing and poofing into nothing. “—a spontaneous, um, relocation of contents.”

Their eyebrows shot up. “Sounds... safe.”

“Oh, incredibly. I’m still working on the, uh, containment settings.” His gaze flickered to their books. “You’re into... chemistry?”

“Materials Science.” They corrected. “But we still deal with explosions. Sometimes on purpose.”

Ray’s eyes lit up like he’d just found the winning lottery number. “That’s amazing. You have no idea how useful—uh, I mean, interesting that is. I’d love to hear more about it. Hypothetically. Over coffee. Which I’ll absolutely pay for as soon as I find a working... debit card.”

They laughed, shaking their head. “You’re either the worst con artist I’ve ever met, or—” their gaze lingered on him a moment longer “—the most entertaining one.”

Ray pressed a hand to his chest. “I promise, I am terrible at crime. I’m much better at saving people. And... asking very important questions.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

He smiled softly, something almost vulnerable slipping past his usual cheer. “Like... how to get to someone you’ve been looking for a very long time.”