Things feel like they'll be forever, but they won't

[bringstheheat]

There's an odd lightness in Mick's chest when he wakes. A feeling of contentment.

Mick Rory is happy.
It's not a feeling he has ever been used to.
Because something always came to take it away. Shatter it. Burn it to ash.
Monsters like him don't get happy endings.

But damn if he isn't going to hold on to it for as long as he can.

He's still oddly at war with himself as he showers, dresses and heads off in search of Sara. Mick swore to himself he would be up front with her. Honest.
So it's time to talk about last night.
About Leonard warm and secure in his arms.

Comments

[strongerthanyouknow]

Sara nods, saying simply, "Good," before taking a drink.

That at least comes as nothing of a surprise, given Leonard was clear enough on that. Leonard, who came in all but bouncing and asking that question, that then tumbled in every other direction. They were domino's she wasn't sure she wanted to even scatter like steps in her head over. Every direction at a touch. It's easier to not do that.

Easier to just cock her head to the side and say, "Nice to know some things never change."

[bringstheheat]

Ah.
So Lenny had been by. Not that it comes as much of a shock to Mick as he tips back his drink.

"Mhm. Some things have changed though."
Like him. And her.
The two of them.

[strongerthanyouknow]

"Maybe." Sara set the cup on the thigh still on the chair.

She studied him, not sure whether she was looking for something, or whether she was trying not to find something else. Just in the way he was sitting, the way he was looking at her. The way he looked like he did every day.Except not, too. More relaxed. He was. Even worried.

Sara leaned her head back, looking up. "Did it help?"

Option A, Option B, Option C. It was like that cup game on street corners the world over. You could point and your could ask. Make all of it the right thing. Didn't promise that it wouldn't turn up in the other two places while you weren't looking at their hands.

[bringstheheat]

God they were bad at this. At talking. A word here and there and they were getting nowhere.

"Yeah, yeah it did." A glance down at his glass before raising his eyes to her. Honesty, he reminds himself. No ducking this. "I kissed him."

"Slept with him." And even though Lenny couldn't remember his past, nothing had felt so right in recent memory. Lenny didn't have the memories, but he had the feelings, the instincts, everything that had been him.

[strongerthanyouknow]

She meant Leonard. But she's not clarifying.
There's really no point given what he does say.


Maybe what comes isn't what either of them expects to. Isn't any of the three she keeps holding like cards to choose from. Sara's brow wrinkles and lifts, with a speculative tint to her expression. "So, you're the reason he kissed me?"

It's so much more facetious than serious when she's tipping her glass and her forehead at him. But the irony of those words coming out, makes her think about it all as this suddenly strange, domino chain on delay, only finally hitting the last wall. She kissed Mick; Mick kissed Leonard; Leonard kissed her.

[bringstheheat]

Eyebrows loft at that. Huh. Not something he saw coming, even if he probably should have. Mick shrugs. "Dunno. Makes sense that he did though."

And it does. Lenny was remembering feelings far ahead of facts and frankly.. Mick was okay with that. Facts meant history, meant years of pain and damage.

"You don't.." he squints, still trying to learn those little cues, those tells. "You don't seem all that pissed about it." About the kiss. About him and Lenny.

[strongerthanyouknow]

It does make sense.
She doesn't know if she likes or dislikes that.
She's not sure she really wants to work it out either.

It just is. Sort of the same way it just is, when her head tips to a side, lips pressing for a moment, before, saying. "Would it help any of this somehow if I yelled and threw my glass at you?"

Would it help to know she still can't forget what she did to his face. That she can still see it. That she's never ever ever allowed to do that again. That it chills her, even just right now, to remember she did. Could. Can. Not cocky, arrogant, tiny girl against a brick house, most a decade trained assassin against a brawler, bragging in a flaunted, half flirted, joke. Bloody proof. Past, present, and future tense.

She knows how slippery that slide is. How easy it was that night.
She may not know a lot of things about all of this,
but she knows angry shouldn't an open door.






Not that that entirely worked all night. But alone with it was different.

[bringstheheat]

An annoyed look at the snark. Mick is trying to work all of this out in his head. Trying to be better than he had been before. Trying to be better for both of them. "No," he answers. Because it wouldn't be better or easier.

They'd had enough anger and distance between them the last year and a half. He didn't want to go back to that ever again.

Sara had to have known, on some level, what might happen if Leonard came to him. He huffs. Scratches his nose. "But I wanted to tell you. No hiding. No lying." Open. Even in his stilted, awkward attempts at communication.

He was trying. Always trying, no matter how difficult or how stupid it made him feel.

[strongerthanyouknow]

A response comes, and then it goes. And another, and it does, too. Neither of them is entirely something anyone would call appropriate, one slightly petty and the other sharply pointed, and she doesn't want either, and he doesn't deserve either, and even if he does, they do, she doesn't want it.

Does want to choose that, and so she doesn't. Waits for.

"He seemed--" The pause that happens between her second and third word, the way it makes her eyes drift down, it's not hesitation. Nothing like avoidance. It's something far more. It smoothes the line of her lips and it does things she wasn't even could be done anymore to the space inside her heart: both what it is, and that she's giving it to Mick. "--happy when he came in."

Intense. Manic. Demanding. "More him. Even like this."

Even just sitting. More at ease. Whatever else. She didn't begrudge those.

[bringstheheat]

"He is," he agrees quietly.

Mick still hasn't learned all of her tells. What the quirk of lips mean, the shifting in a seat or the restless drum of fingers can tell him. He can tell when she's overthinking things, but as a rule that's pretty much a constant these days. Since they found Leonard. Since he woke up.

"He might not remember, but it's still him. How he feels."

[strongerthanyouknow]

It's just the littlest bit easier this way, and she doesn't know if it counts as cheating. Sara's not certain she cares if it is or isn't as she drinks another swallow of the whiskey. There are too many conflicts with everything that comes to mind, and some of it has to bend, because other parts of it she's not willing to let just stop. She's not sure she could.

Happy. She rested the glass against her mouth, before lowering it.
(You have to come back, she'd so idiotically ended up blurting out.)

Happy, and yet with so much to learn, and so much to lose, and Leonard had to remember the worst of everything to get himself and them back, which seemed like a fucked up deal. Except the idea he'd never really get it, never look at them right, was worse. "We never do anything easy around here, do we?"

[bringstheheat]

And that's the bitch of it right there.
To come back, to be Leonard again, he'd have to remember all of that pain, all of that damage. The walls would slam back into place. No more easy smiles. Mick would have to go back to being careful again. A double edged sword if there ever was one.

But the decision isn't his. Or anyone's for that matter.

A hum into his glass. "Ain't that what it means to be a Legend?" Because it does. Never do anything the easy way. To fix things you have to break them.
Like Leonard.

Hell, to fix the two of them they had both been forced to break. Shatter apart before finding their way back to this.

"He's the most stubborn son of a bitch on the planet. He'll fight his way back, even through his past."

[strongerthanyouknow]

Sara nods and she leans her head back against the chair looking up.

She doesn't doubt that part. Leonard is strong. Stubborn. He was always more than he even wanted to believe, and maybe that had been true even at end, but he'd still done it. That was what made a Legend, too. Like Mick had, eventually, in the other world. And Sara had, when she was the last person standing with The Spear in her hand.

It absolutely what it is to be a Legend. What would any of they give to forget that weight even for a minute? How many times would they be asked and pressed and to say no and pushed no and no each time? The Dominators, and Merlyn, and The Spear. Always no. Always to say no to easier. To less pain. To more happiness.

The selfishness that wants back the man she fell in love,
the knowledge that he'd always choose to be himself instead of that;


the part of her that absolutely hates having to give all of it back,
want to make it better than that, for him, for Mick, for everyone on this ship.
Just because she can't actually do it doesn't mean it hasn't taken root in her, too.



And that's it, too -- being a Legend -- wanting least of all to give up that tiny thing right at the bottom,
the good they fought and bled to find, in each other, in this team, and most of all in themselves.


It was the worst part to lose.

[bringstheheat]

Mick.. has never been good with words. Ever. Written or spoken, anymore they still get jumbled up in his head. Don't come out right. He can't offer Sara any words of wisdom or even consolation because he doesn't have them.

All he has is himself. All he can offer her is himself. The certainty that he will never leave her side again.

Sara fought and won against her bloodlust, against her years as an assassin. Leonard became a hero. Died to save the people he loved most. Mick? Mick was so far behind on the journey to be a better man some days it felt laughable.
But he got up every morning and he fought for it because that's what he does. He fights. Fights to earn what he's got rather than simply stealing it.

A swallow of whiskey.
Another.

He can't offer her the right words or any kind of a solution. But he can offer her a distraction. A way to jar her out of her thoughts.

"Maybe we should rob a bank."

Does this icon say everything already?

[strongerthanyouknow]

Sara's gaze shifts back down, and then to a side at him.

That icon needs to be named "... Mick. No."

[bringstheheat]

"I'm serious."

Sort of. He thinks. Fuck it, if she's not going to stop him he's going to talk this out. Mick leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Think about it. Lenny and me have been robbing places for years. Give him a heist. Give him something to plan and execute and see if that'll shake something loose."

Sigh.
Damn he hates this 'good guy' crap.

"I ain't saying we keep the money."

Default Dubious Captain Face is Default and Dubious

[strongerthanyouknow]

There's a faint snort at the end, as that whole idea just puts some kind of a pin in it. When Sara's trying to figure out whether she's going to half roll her eyes at that, after enough understanding with that, and just as much what where why how that came around and about as a thought from where they'd been a few seconds ago. Or Mick had been.

"You want me to find a bank--" Sara sits up slightly, mirroring just barely. "--somewhere in space and time--" Seeing as their options were not small when it came to anything around here, or how specific they had to be with them. "--so that Leonard, who can't remember his name without being told it--" Though this point is already known enough, it's a basis. A base. "--can see if he remembers how to crack a safe?"

[bringstheheat]

His nose wrinkles. "Gideon could fabricate any kind of safe we wanted." And in truth it isn't a bad idea. He'll file that one away for later.

"I'm talking about giving him the plans, letting him set the job, then run it. Like the old days. Hell, you could probably even get Red in on it." Something familiar, something Leonard lived for. The job. The chase, the rush of getting away.

"It could kick something loose. Help him remember."

[strongerthanyouknow]

She's not considering it. She's not.
(They've done crazier things, haven't they?

No, no, no, no. That is a slippery pitfall path.)

Sara's eyes narrow, touching the one thing they truly have between them and that Mick has even when Mick of all people would like to ignore anything and everything in priority to Leonard. But Mick is one of the reason she is who she is now, that she can do everything she can do now, knows how to do her job and what to try and be better than all their predecessors for. Rip may have started it but it was the Mick Rory on the other side of Chronos that finished those lessons as slight and scant as they were.

She has to ask. She has to be the Captain. "And the timeline?"

[bringstheheat]

She hasn't shut him down yet.
But he doesn't expect her to, he doesn't expect her to tell him to go away, have a drink or ten and only call him up when things needed to be hit or set on fire.

Mick gets to his feet, considering the drift of the timeline, his eyes going a little glassy.

"Apocalypse events." The drink is set down and his fingertips move on the screen, calling one up. "All life ends, no abberations, no changes to the timeline. It just stops. Don't have to be huge, a volcano, hurricane, fire." He can find them easy enough, a few options for them to consider.

"Mob banks are good too, can't exactly call the cops when they get hit."

[strongerthanyouknow]

She hates the sense behind it. The ease with which a few seconds of thinking lands on those first two words. People forget that Mick spent lifetimes being trained by the Timemasters. Yeah, tortured and brainwashed, too, but trained. She only has to think about it for a second and hates that it makes sense.

Because even questioning it in her head butts right up against the one truism she has left from Rip: time wants to happen. It's why so many of the smallest hiccups fixed themselves without prodding. Time wants to happen. Endings, beginnings, middles. All of it. Wants to happen.

"I don't like it."

She likes less that he's not wrong.

[bringstheheat]

Mick rolls a shoulder as if it doesn't matter in the slightest which way she tilts on the idea. "Don't have to like it. Didn't say we had to do it either." But he knows Lenny, he knows those innate things about him that could help shake memories free.

"We got him back. That's what matters."

If he was really bent on a heist, he could always take the jump ship and rob a bank or two with Lenny, but he's not going to. No more taking off on his own. They're a crew and he's not breaking that apart for anything.