Work Text:
Sunday, November 20th, 2016
Most days, he could deal. He couldn’t bring himself to fake a smile, but he could bury himself in his work, whether it was on his projects or his new role on Team Arrow. Sometimes, he could actually manage to forget what happened to him, that nearly everyone he knew growing up was dead and gone. It never lasted more than a few minutes, but those minutes were the closest thing he ever got to being truly happy.
This was not like most days.
To start, he’d been walking from his apartment to the Bunker when he passed one of those electronics stores with a ton of TVs in the window, all playing the same news story about how the six-month anniversary of Genesis Day and the bombing of Havenrock was coming up. That alone was enough to bring it all to the forefront of his mind and keep it there.
Then, he’d passed by a handful of people who were standing on the corner, smoking. Cigarette smoke smelled nothing like a burning nuclear wasteland, but it still made him cough, bringing back the memory of struggling to breathe as he dug himself out of the wreckage of his home and staggered throughout the town – what was left of it – trying to find someone, anyone, who was still alive besides himself.
By the time he got to the Bunker, his hands were trembling, and he was fighting to keep himself from throwing up. Luckily, the place was empty, as it often was when he went there in the middle of the night because he couldn’t sleep and had run out of ways to distract himself. He didn’t want anyone seeing him like this.
For the first half-hour or so, he went through the basic Tai Chi forms he’d learned from a combination of Oliver, Dig, a book he got from the local library, and of course the Internet. It was supposed to help calm his mind (as well as build up his otherwise nonexistent repertoire of fighting techniques), but tonight, it wasn’t helping at all. Echoes of his own screams as he called for his father, friends, and neighbours rang through his head no matter how hard he tried to think about anything else. So, he moved on to the heavy bag, and tried to remember the tips Dig had given him (the ex-soldier had partially taken over his and Curtis’s training since his escape, since he had a lot more patience dealing with trainees who were essentially starting from scratch).
As he was hitting it over and over, his vision blurred, and all he could see were flames. All he could hear was the roaring of the blaze, nearly drowning out the sound of his cries. All he could feel was the burn in his throat and chest as the smoke filled his lungs, and the sharp pain in his hands as he dug through the burning remains of various buildings in search of other survivors.
“Hey!”
He had to find someone. He couldn’t be the only one left alive!
“Yo, Rags!”
He couldn’t breathe, but he had to keep going. Maybe Elise was still alive. Or Truman. He’d even take Jesse being alive, no matter how much of a jackass he was. Or maybe Ty was alive; he did his laundry in his apartment building’s basement in the early hours of the day, when no one else was up. Maybe being below ground had shielded him from the shockwave. But where was it? Every building looked the same, now; the streets were an endless stretch of fire.
“RORY, STOP!”
Hands grabbed him from behind, and he couldn’t help the cry of shock and fear that jumped out of him. He twisted away from them, losing his balance in the process and landing hard on his back.
Rene was standing over him, his arms still outstretched in front of him, a look of concern on his face that Rory had never seen from him before.
What was Rene doing in Havenrock?
“What the hell? What was that?!”
Right. Rene wasn’t in Havenrock. He wasn’t in Havenrock. They were in Star City, in the Arrow Bunker. He was safe. There was no danger.
Except he still couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t he breathe?
He tried to suck some air in, but the pain in his chest only grew worse with every attempt.
“Hey, you alright?” Rene was now down on his knees next to Rory, grabbing him and lifting him up into a sitting position.
Did he look alright?! He was sorely tempted to snap that at Rene, but he was still trying to breathe.
“Okay, okay, uh, let’s try and get that breathing under control. Alright? Now, I want you to picture a candle in front of you. You gotta try and slow your breathing so that you wouldn’t blow it out if it was actually there.”
A candle. Fire. No, no, no fire, please! He shook his head, trying to get Rene to understand, but how could he possibly understand? How could anyone?
“Rags, come on, you can do this.”
“N-no,” he gasped, “No… fire.”
It sounded really pathetic to his ears. He felt pathetic. And his vision was starting to grey out.
“Alright, no fire, got it. Okay, uh… Okay, forget the candle, I want you to picture a square. You can even draw it out on your knee, or something, if that helps. Now, follow the edge of the square in your mind. Breathe in when you go around one corner, and out when you go around the next.”
A square? Really? Well, it wasn’t as bad as fire. So, he did that, the first thing coming to mind, oddly, being an old toy that he’d had as a kid; a little racetrack for his toy cars, shaped as a square with rounded corners. He pictured the little red car with tiny yellow flame decals – that one had always been his favourite, because what six-year-old boy didn’t think flames weren’t cool? – racing around the track, flying around the corners in time with his uncontrollable breaths.
“Alright, now try to slow it down.” Rene’s voice sounded odd, like it was coming from underwater.
Slow it down? How? That little car was spinning around and around, going faster and faster and faster as the fire in his lungs burner hotter and hotter-
Until everything went black.
Rene didn’t know what to do. He sure as hell hadn’t been expecting to find the weird, quiet guy on the team having a full-blown freakout in the Bunker in the middle of the night, but he liked to think that he had a handle on helping someone through a panic attack, or the like. He still had old buddies from his Navy days, despite his dishonourable discharge, and one had struggled with some pretty bad PTSD after returning home, so he’d learned a bunch of techniques to try and deal with hyperventilating. But clearly it hadn’t worked, because eventually Rory’s eyes had rolled back into his head, and he’d gone completely limp. He’d passed out.
So, after placing an only-slightly-frantic phone call to Felicity, Rene had dragged the guy to the bed they had in the Bunker (now starting to understand why they had one down there in the first place) and put him in it. He couldn’t say he managed it in a gentle manner, but Rory was significantly heavier than a sleepy Zoe.
Rory started stirring only a couple minutes later. Rene darted off for a few seconds to grab a water bottle from the mini-fridge (it always helped his friend after panic attacks). By the time he got back, Rory was slowly sitting up and looking around, blinking confusedly. Then his expression changed, and he buried his face in his hands.
“Hey.”
Rory’s head shot up at the sound of Rene’s voice, and his eyes widened in shock. “Rene?”
His voice was raspy, and Rene knew the water would be needed, so he held it out. “How you feeling?”
Rory took the bottle with trembling hands, and struggled to unscrew the cap. “How do you think?” he muttered, his face flushing a bit and refusing to meet Rene’s eyes. “Look, just get it out of the way.”
“Get what out of the way?”
“You telling me I shouldn’t be on the team if I’m having breakdowns like this, what else?”
Rene frowned. “Hey, Rags, I was in the Navy. I know guys who’ve been through hell, and I’m not about to judge, especially when I don’t even know the story.”
Rene was fully aware of the fact that Rory was from the doomed town of Havenrock, and that his father had been killed in the blast. Rory had admitted it about a week after joining the team, after facing their scrutiny regarding why he’d gone on the rampage that had led to his run-in with Team Arrow in the first place. But there was grief, and then there was the trauma of something that someone had actually experienced in-person. Rene was familiar with both, after all.
No, he was pretty sure that something else had happened to Rory. Rene knew a flashback when he saw one; why else would Rory have been crying and clawing at the punching bag, completely unaware of the world around him?
“It doesn’t happen often,” Rory mumbled, having finally broken the seal on the water and taking a long drink before continuing, “I have more good days than bad ones. And this is… definitely one of the worse ones.” He muttered a curse under his breath, grabbing the water bottle back up after it slipped out of his still-trembling hands.
Rene sighed. “Look, you don’t have to talk to me about it if you don’t want to, but Felicity’s on her way.” At Rory’s accusing look – the first time he’d made eye contact since right after Rene came back into the room – he held up his hands defensively. “Hey, you had a flashback and passed out. I called her, because I figured she and Oliver did a check on you like they did on the rest of us, so I guessed she’d know more about whatever was upsetting you.”
Rory sighed heavily. “She’s going to hover over me all day,” he muttered, “Maybe tomorrow, too.” He sighed again, lying back down on the bed tiredly. “This is why I don’t sleep.”
What? “Like, at all?”
“Mostly. It’s a side-effect of the Rags, really, and I still have to sleep maybe once a week. Not that I look forward to it.”
Ah. Nightmares. Yeah, Rene was familiar with those, too. Between Laura and what had happened to his SEAL friends… He sat down at the foot of the bed, tired of standing.
“Felicity and Oliver keep telling me I’m going to be okay, but I don’t know about that. I know I’m not okay.”
There was a long silence that hung in the air. Rene shifted awkwardly on the bed, considering getting up and waiting for Felicity by the elevator. But then Rory spoke again.
“I was there.”
Rene blinked, confused. “What? Where?”
“In Havenrock. I told authorities I’d been out of town on an errand for my Dad when the bomb hit, but that was a lie. I was in Havenrock when it happened.”
Oh, God. Rene had assumed as much as Rory had told the authorities, that he’d been elsewhere when the town had been destroyed. How could he have guessed that?
“The Rags protected me from the nuke, just as they protect me from the lesser stuff.”
The ‘lesser stuff’ being bullets and regular bombs. All incredibly deadly things, yet still considered lesser dangers when compared to a nuclear bomb.
Rory was shaking, his eyes screwed shut, but he kept on going. “My Dad practically shoved them onto me while he still had time. One second, he was there with me, and the next, I was tumbling out of what was left of our house. I don’t even remember digging myself out, but I must have.” The shakes were getting visibly stronger. “What I do remember is stumbling through the streets, screaming out every name I could think of and digging through wreckage, trying to find other survivors. Eventually, the smoke got to be too much, and I had to get out of there. And I was the only one.”
Rene wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Rory was crying, but his teammate had twisted around in the bed and buried his face in the pillow, so he couldn’t actually see any tears.
Damn. He’d figured, from tonight’s events, that Rory had some sort of horror in his background, but he’d never expected anything on that scale.
He heard the ding of the elevator, likely heralding Felicity’s arrival, and stood up. He took two steps towards the main area of the Bunker, then doubled back towards the bed. He gripped Rory’s shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. “Hey, just so you know, I don’t think you should be kicked off the team because of this. We’re all damaged in one way or another, so, if anything, it just proves that you’re one of us.”