myheadisaprison | Ray Palmer | Legends of Tomorrow

From:

Sara is probably the easiest person to find on the ship at, almost, any given time. She can most frequently be found exactly where Ray has found her now. Leaned back in her chair in her office, contemplating a world of things no one would ever truly be able to guess. Except maybe right now, it might be an easy guess that the events surrounding the Death Totem might be at the top of her list and the front of her mind.

It is certainly on Ray's.

He made a promise, and he didn't keep it. And maybe, with those bare bone words and explanations, someone might just scoff and call him a Boy Scout and tell him he needs to not beat himself up over it. But... it matters. On the surface of...Ray doesn't like breaking promises. But also, further than that, too.

He's been lingering in the doorway for more seconds than he should, without speaking or doing anything at all to make his presence known. Maybe it's because the topic is hard. Maybe it's because it's more than a little scary to be on the receiving end of a no-restraint, no-holds-barred, you're-standing-in-my-way-and-I-need-you-out-of-it version of Sara Lance.

But suddenly, like he only just remembered that he had to form words to make any conversation happen, he clears his throat. "Um, Sara, do you-- have a second?" There isn't even long enough of a pause for her to answer before he barrels into another remark, hands moving awkwardly to point somewhere over his shoulder, somewhere just not here, as he adds: "If you're busy, I can come back later, or..."

From:

strongerthanyouknow

The ceiling. Sara's staring at the ceiling. It doesn't change. She doesn't change. Everything is alive and electric under her skin. In the way where a bottle of whiskey is nothing. It's not even a passing breeze. It's that feeling when your foot falls asleep, and if you don't move, the feeling only continues to double and triple, crackles like it's becoming a ticklet that is actually a forest fire, growing further up your skin. Blood flow fading from it. Away and away.

She's like that. She doesn't move, but the thing racing and pacing and shaking at the bars of her veins isn't a loss of blood.

Sara blinks at her name, her shoulders stiffening a little when she sees Ray's face -- and she didn't even hear him coming. She's just. She has to get this back under her skin. She has to focus. Even if she already doesn't want to look back at Ray, even in the same exact second that she's making herself. Demanding it of herself. Unflinching. Exactly now. He looks fine. But he isn't. Can't be. And she knows whose fault that is. Even as he's rambling. Clearing his throat. Taking his usual time to get something out his mouth.

Sara doesn't move. Nothing more than her head, than her eyes following him. The slightest of reorientation from focus above to focus forward. Breathes even when her chest freezes again. "It's fine." She's fine. She can do this. "What can I help you with?"

Edited Date: 2018-11-22 04:44 am (UTC)

From:

insignificantatom

"Oh. Nothing. I mean- not like that." He shakes his head and eases a little further into the room, "I just wanted to talk to you." he finds a chair and practically folds into it, back against the back of the chair, then shifting because that doesn't feel right, leaning over his knees instead.

Starting. The beginning. That may always be the hardest parts of talks like these. Once they get going, the words tend to all flow one right after the other into an ocean of explanations or declarations. But it's the first few that are always the hardest to figure out. "I don't want you to...blame yourself for...what happened. To me." He wants to look to down, fidget and be every ounce as nervous as he feels right now, but he resists it. He never looks away from her. "Is that...too much to ask?"

From:

strongerthanyouknow

Sara's shoulders round a little more, like she was almost going to move, even though she wasn't. Her eyes narrowing in something that was laudable contempt and clearly, warily confusion. The word all but bites her with the force of itself in her head. Slams the back of her teeth with the kind of punch only Mick, out of their crew, could do from a simple standstill to an obliterating violence.

Not that he would. Not that even Mick was like her in this. She made him look tame,
even walking around with a near fist full of fire at almost all times now.

It's chewing glass not to spit it out. That answer. That impossibility. It's writ large on every cell of her. Every thought. Every single second of looking at him in that chair. Somehow, she doesn't know how she considers it any kind of escape to have swallowed down, when what comes out inside is so much more still and yet so much more invasive that his implication and request ever could have been. When she knows why he's here, suddenly. Arms on his knees. Appeal in his warbling tone.

"That's not something you need to worry about, Ray." That was on her. No matter what he said.

What she said. What she wished. What she thought. How much it turned her stomach. Remorse was not an excuse she was allowed to even consider. She'd read through Gideon's report on the state he'd been brought into the med bay. How many of his bones had been broken, and how she'd basically left him for dead on the floor of his own lab. She'd read through every single necessary checkup that had happened after it was done. Then, she'd had Gideon pull up every single piece of footage, and she'd watched all of it. After what she'd done, and after where she'd gone.

After the Totem finally came off and went back in its box. After John. Ava.
She knew where the blame lay. There was no question of that at all.

You were born to weild the Death Totem.

Edited Date: 2018-11-22 05:44 am (UTC)

From:

insignificantatom

He watches her, eyes never leaving her and that is the absolute most specific choice not to look down. Because he isn't stupid, and he knows this has already started eating her alive from the inside, no matter what front or mask she is wearing. The second she came back truly to herself, and knew everything she had done, it had already started.

"I know that it was you... I know that the totem pulled all of the darkest parts of you to the surface and... I'm not going to say that it wasn't you, because I know that isn't true. But... it isn't all of you, Sara. It was just one part, railroading the show and not letting the other parts of you have their say."

He slips.
And he hates himself for it.
It's only a second or two, that his gaze drops to his fingers twisting idly together between his knees. But it's there and he hates it.

From:

strongerthanyouknow

He's really the worst liar among them, Ray Palmer.

Ray, who is staring at her like he can make it part of his will. Just looking at her. Like it's a mission. Not a choice. A point. He can prove if he just tries hard enough. Ray, who can't keep his gaze as unwavering as Sara refuses any other option that to have, looking down to his hands. Because that's not who Ray is. The man who who can erase the man he is for the missiion.

Ray, telling her it isn't not-who-she is (I know that wasn't you, Sara), that isn't all of her, like he missed every bit of what they all know to be true, have been hearing for months now. Totems only enhance the true nature of the bearers. And not even that. Not only that.

It's not like Time Masters revealing that every choice of her life was manipulated to happen the way it did, or the Spear of Destiny telling her that everything she went through -- The Gambit, Lian Yu, The League, her own death and resurrection -- was all leading to this one moment, to being able to be strong enough to choose what the universe needed over all else in existence, especially herself. It was so much more.

You were born to weild the Death Totem.

Born. Born to wield the Death Totem. Born. Born. Born.

That who she is, what, wasn't made by Ivo, or the League, or The Pit.
It was there when she was born. It was there in her, at her first breath.
She was only ever going to come to this.

Be this.

"That's not good enough. You all could have died."
Maybe even should have. Maybe she can't even explain how they aren't.

...despite all it's failings.

Ray Palmer | Legends of Tomorrow

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