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Mick never pretended that he was okay after Snart died. He'd given into the rage, the sadness, the guilt, the very moment he woke up in the MedBay, roaring all his frustration out as he threw the metal trolley next to him into the wall, letting the medical stuff fly everywhere.
The only thing that had stopped him was the other person in the room, sitting on the other futon, still in that ridiculous armored suit with his helmet in his hands, looking at him and his rampage with the most broken expression Mick had ever seen on his face.
“I'm sorry, Mick,” Ray had choked out quietly, “it should have been me.”
Mick hadn't known what to say to that. So all he had done was growl and leave the MedBay.
There was no denying that Snart’s absence left a deep, deep void in his life. A vacant space right next to him as if it was almost tangible enough to touch. And God, did Mick miss him. And when Hunter had abandoned them back in 2016, he was at a loss of what to do.
Then he found himself asking Snart what he should do.
It was ironic, in a way, since one of the main reasons they fell apart on this time traveling journey was Mick telling Snart exactly the opposite of what he was doing now.
“You're not the boss of me!”
And yet here he was, seeking guidance from a man long gone. If he had spared it more thought, then Mick might have realized that it never was about Snart being his boss. It was about him being his anchor, being his guide. A steady constant leading his uncontrollable fire through his life. Now that was gone, and Mick almost hated how much he wanted it back.
But he knew Snart. Knew how he acted, how he thought. And in his mind he could see, could hear, could imagine clearly what he would have said had he been here.
“You need someone to keep you in check, Mick.”
And Snart was right, as he always was, even if he was just a figment of imagination inside his head.
So Mick put away the now ownerless cold gun, keeping it safe, and made his way back to Central City. He had a new partner to find.
After he found someone, he found himself asking the pretend-Snart in his mind again, asking if this guy was the right one.
All he got were a scoff and a bitter, “You insult me.”
But Mick was still mad at Snart for dying, so he ignored the uneasy feeling in his stomach and went on a job with the guy he'd picked.
It didn't go well.
With a snarl he burned the unfitting man and took back what he had come to think of as part of Snart. The only part he had left, minus the ring he now wore around his neck. The part that needed to be passed down to someone who was fitting, so Mick could fill the hole that had been left behind, so Mick could have his anchor back.
So he kept looking.
Days passed and he still didn't have a new partner. Each one he found was met with a scowl from his imaginary Snart, which he promptly ignored only to be proven wrong when the job goes bad.
By the fifth man Mick burned, he was growing more tired than anything.
Then Ray Palmer showed up and led him back to the Waverider.
Mick didn't bother imagining what Snart might have said to him as he followed the rest of the team onto the ship. The team was a constant, sure, a very unstable one, but an ongoing presence nonetheless. They would do. For now.
And besides, now he had the chance to burn the one responsible for the hole in the first place.
Burning Savage and seeing Snart again - younger, but alive - made the pain more bearable. And Mick latched on to the temporary anchor the team provided and spent the next few months following their lead.
It wasn't like he had anything to go back to in 2016.
(A voice at the back of his mind that sounded like Snart reminded him of one thing. But Mick didn't have the courage to face that, and so he tuned it out completely.)
Six months later the team - the Legends, that's what they call themselves now, apparently - went to 1942 and everything went to hell.
He woke up in the MedBay with an alarming sense of deja vu, but before he could scramble up to see whether or not Hunter had done what he thought he might have, whether he did the same thing as Snart, a vaguely familiar face and added pressure to his arm stopped him.
The historian and the Green Arrow had questions, and Mick answered them the best he could - with the help of lots and lots of beer. All the while he can't help the bitter feeling in his chest. He had thought he'd found his new constant, the people that would keep him in check, in the Legends, but now there was no team left.
But then the historian offered to help find them, and Mick had never agreed to accept help this fast before in his life.
The pretty new guy did as he promised. He brought the team back together, well, most of the team. The loss of Hunter changed things, but Mick stubbornly chose to stay with the team. They were still his anchor. Not his partner, not even close, but they could do the job.
Then one person in particular started to do most of the job.
Mick hadn't meant to start caring for Ray, but he knew what he had meant to Snart, as much as his dead partner hadn't wanted to admit it. And as he spent more time with the idiot scientist, he came to see what Snart had meant to him. The lost looks of deep sadness whenever they mentioned Snart. The way he sometimes stared at an empty chair on the bridge. The slightly quickening of strides when they would walk past Snart’s old room. And Mick understood, because those are the same things he did, or wanted to do, but he was a lot better at hiding them than Ray ever would be.
And suddenly what Ray had said to him back in the MedBay when he first woke up, his efforts back then to help Mick, to try and offer comfort, the “look out for each other” line, things Mick had dismissed as Ray being his overbearingly friendly self, all made a lot more sense.
And as Ray had said, Snart would have wanted them to look after each other.
So, whether Ray knew it or not, Mick let him get closer than he ever allowed the others to, and slowly the focus of his anchor shifted from the entire team to just him.
Then Ray lost his suit.
And suddenly his anchor was wavering. Losing its steadiness in the turmoil of emotions and self-doubt that Ray tried desperately to hide, but Mick felt it. And he didn't know what to do, because he was never good at this sort of thing, at comforting others, and while he and Snart had always been used to taking care of their emotional troubles through simply not taking care of them at all and instead taking upon silent sparring, he knew this wouldn't work with Ray. And he was terrified he'd lose his anchor again without ever truly having it.
Mick didn't realize the answer was right in front of his nose until he was lying in the MedBay yet again, the threat of becoming a walking dead waiting right around the corner and he was reaching out desperately to Ray, begging him to fix him.
As Ray worked at a vaccine and Professor mumbled in almost delirious panic in the background, Mick ran how he had acted through his mind, and he was stunned to find the same kind of trust he now had in Ray that he only ever had in Snart.
Mick knew that he had found his new partner.
And when Ray approached him with the injection, Mick reached out again, to declare this trust, to reaffirm his thoughts, using the name that Snart had always used to call him as a way of asking for his approval.
“I'm counting on you,” he said.
Then the next thing he knew, he had Professor pinned under him in a rather compromising position.
Later on, Mick went back to his room and dug out the case he had tucked the cold gun away in. He knew what he had to do.
Briefly, he let himself imagine Snart here, lounging on one of the chairs with his feet propped up on the table in an angle that only he would find comfortable, watching him closely as Mick ran his hand over the part of him he'd left behind.
“It's Ray,” Mick said simply, “What do you think?”
A snort, and a smirk.
“It's about damn time.”
Ray had learned that one of the most terrifying things he could ever experience was waking up somewhere with no recollection of how he got there and the last thing he could remember was trying to save someone else.
The first time it happened was in 2014, and he hadn't even remembered what had happened when he first woke up on a bed in Starling General, only a deep sense that something was wrong.
Then he remembered, and his whole world caved down on him as he cried himself to exhaustion, passing out again while still whispering Anna’s name, wishing he had been the one with his neck snapped instead.
Ray vowed he would never let himself fall into that situation again. Would never let that scenario be possible again. He worked hard to prevent it, and as time went by he thought he had succeeded, for now. All throughout creating the ATOM suit, meeting Felicity, meeting Team Arrow, shrinking himself, getting captured by HIVE, to meeting Rip Hunter and the rest of the team, that situation never happened again.
Until the Oculus.
He woke up in the MedBay, still wearing the ATOM suit, and the dread in his stomach pooled over to the rest of his body as he scrambled up, remembering what had happened before he lost consciousness.
He saw Mick on the futon next to his, and for a split second he dared to hope that everything was alright.
But the sense of wrong was still there.
Then Mick woke up, roaring and destructive and furious and Ray realized with a sinking stomach the only thing that could have happened to make Mick react this way.
Then the realization truly hit and he could feel his heart tear itself apart, tears pooling in his eyes as he watched Mick destroy the trolley, hitting it against the wall repeatedly and only stopping when he seemed to notice Ray for the first time.
The only thing Ray could do was choke out an apology, and he couldn't really blame Mick when he turned around and stormed out the door without replying.
He had failed. Again. It was supposed to be him, Ray was the one that that was supposed to die. Hell, it was even agreed by fate this time, and yet he still woke up alive somewhere else. And someone he loved had paid the price, his price, for him. Again.
And he loved Leonard, Ray realized. It came to him slowly, after falling out with Kendra, until he found himself unconsciously gravitating towards Leonard whenever they were in the same room. But he never acted on it, because he didn't know how, didn't know if Leonard would even give him the chance.
Well, now he would never find out.
When Rip left them in 2016, Ray dragged himself back to his empty apartment and cried himself to sleep again.
The next morning he almost couldn't get out of bed. Leonard had died in his place, a debt he could never repay but would do in a heartbeat if ever given the chance. He wished Leonard hadn't done it. He wished Mick hadn't knocked him out.
Mick.
He remembered the rage Mick had shown in the MedBay, and suddenly he felt horrible. What was his pain compared to Mick’s? Mick had lost his partner, his best friend, one of the most important people, if not the most important person in his life, and all Ray had lost was a crush that was probably never meant to be.
With newfound determination he pulled himself out of bed, got dressed, slipped on an optimistic mask, and went out to find Mick.
He had to take care of him. Had to help him heal. It was what Leonard would have wanted. It was the least Ray could do to atone for his survival.
Things were slow but there was progress. Over time he liked to think he at least had a mutual understanding with Mick. He wouldn't say they were close, but they had saved each other more times than he could count between all the missions they went on. That had to count for something, right?
Even throughout all the other things that happened, the six months of correcting Aberrations, going to 1942, getting stranded with dinosaurs, losing Rip, getting two new members, Ray thought things went along well.
Then he lost the ATOM suit.
And his mind was spiraling, because now he'd lost the only thing that made him valuable to the team, the only thing that made him a hero, the only thing he could use to protect the team. Protect Mick. He couldn't fulfill his debt to Leonard anymore, and that honestly tore up him more than everything else combined.
And then Mick got himself infected with a zombie virus, of all things, and Ray was given one last chance to prove himself useful. He couldn't screw this up.
And yet he woke up on the MedBay futon again, with his last memory being him trying to spray the vaccine on Mick.
He jolted up from the bed, breathing hard and sharp and fast as his mind kicked into overdrive, and the only thing he could think of was no, not again, not again not again not again please-
“Whoa, whoa! Ray! Calm down!”
Ray heard the familiar voice but couldn't place it, but still he reached out blindly and latched onto the first warm body he came into contact with, pulling it close as he tried to speak.
All he could get out was, “Mick, Mick-”
“-is fine! Gideon gave him a full checkup and he's clean now. He went back to his room to rest. Your vaccine worked!”
The words processed all too slowly in his mind, but when they finally sunk in he gasped, closing his eyes as he tried to control his breathing.
When he opened his eyes again, two concerned eyes were staring back at him.
“Nate?” Ray finally recognized who they belonged to, and Nate let out a sigh of relief as he nodded, “Yeah, yeah, it's me. Hey, it's okay. Everything's okay now.”
Ray swallowed and let himself fall back on the futon, only slightly cushioned by Nate as the younger man scrambled to slow his sudden fall. Indescribable relief flooded through him and sapped all his strength, leaving him exhausted even though he had just been unconscious.
Hours later Ray finally found the strength to walk, and the first thing he did was go find Mick, with a stop to the galley to make a sandwich as a get-well-soon gift. And with each step closer to Mick's room, he could feel a crippling sense of inadequacy snare his soul again.
In the end, he hadn't done anything. Sure, he'd made the vaccine, but it had failed the first time, and he hadn't been able to cure Mick. It was Martin who had done it, despite his irrational fear. He had promised Mick he'd cure him, and he had failed.
Maybe the sandwich could work as an apology, too. He would just offer it to him and leave.
But then Mick asked him what was wrong and he caved.
Ray was nowhere near prepared for what happened next.
And there he stood, stunned speechless as Mick offered him the weapon he never thought he'd see again. He knew, had known that Mick had it, but never imagined that he'd get to see it, much less hold it.
He swallowed thickly as he took hold of it, and the familiar whirring of the core turning on brought an uncontrollable smile on his face, as he was reminded of the man this gun had belonged to, and he let out a soft, “Cool.”
Then reality came crashing down and the smile dropped off his face.
“I can't accept this,” he whispered. Mick didn't react, and Ray looked up at him after a second of silence.
“This…this was Leonard’s- Snart’s- and I can't- I'm not-”
Not worthy. Wasn't right. Shouldn't be trusted with such a symbolic part of the man who’d died because of him. Shouldn't take away from Mick one of the last things he had to remember Leonard by. Shouldn't butt in on the trust and bond those two had with each other. Didn't have the right.
But his voice broke and he couldn't continue, couldn't tell Mick everything he wanted to say, and suddenly he couldn't look at Mick anymore, and Ray could only bow his head and move his eyes to the floor as he silently powered down the cold gun and offered it back.
“Ray.”
The sound of his name made him start, and he snapped his head up to face Mick again. He didn't expect the gentleness in his eyes, and the softness of his expression that Ray had never seen on his face before.
Mick reached out and pushed the cold gun in his hands towards his chest, until the barrel was resting directly above his heart.
“Take it.”
Ray felt torn. “But, but I-”
“He'd want you to have it.”
And just like that Ray felt his world implode again.
But this time, it was beautiful, colorful, vibrant and he could barely hold back the tears of gratitude.
“I…thank you.”
All Mick did was pat him on the shoulder, and he went back to his seat and his beer. But to Ray it meant the world.
That night he lay in his bed, with the cold gun right next to his pillow, and Ray stared at it, still reeling from the tremendous act of trust he had been shown.
Ray would do everything, anything, to make sure Mick wouldn't come to regret it.
For now, he leaned his forehead against the barrel of the gun, the closest he would ever get to be with the man he had lost before he had a chance to love, and Ray smiled through wet cheeks as he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
The End