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Come Thursday night, Amaya finds herself walking down the hallway with a bowl of popcorn and a bag of sour gummy worms (she can’t help but wonder what her old JSA comrades would say about the drastic changes to her diet). As she makes her way towards Mick’s room, she almost runs right into Ray, but catches herself in time to stop the collision.
“Hey Amaya!” he says, perky as ever, tossing a screwdriver from hand to hand. He cocks his head and squints, glancing at the food. “Late-night snack?”
She shrugs, casually. “I was craving junk food. Sue me.” Okay, so it’s sort of a lie, but it’s not because she’s embarrassed about spending time with Mick. She just doesn’t want Ray trying to crash their movie night, like Nate almost did.
“Right . . . so what are you doing here? ‘Cause your room is in the other corridor, which is closer to the galley anyway, so—“
“I needed to go to the bathroom,” she lies, cutting him off. Ray’s face twists in confusion again.
“But isn’t there one in the other ha—” he trails off, noticing her glare, and shakes his head. “Never mind. Good night.”
“Night,” Amaya mutters, watching him brush past her and into his own room. She waits until the door closes before heading toward’s Mick’s quarters. Honestly, she’s not sure what Ray thinks is going on, but to be honest, she doesn’t really care. This is the Legends, not the JSA. Who she spends time with is her business and no one else’s.
She raises her fist to knock, still clutching the bag of brightly-colored candy in her fingers. But she hesitates, hearing Mick’s voice behind the door, growling at someone.
“Leave me alone,” he snarls. There’s a brief pause, as if he’s listening to something. Amaya almost wonders if he’s on one of those mobile phones her new friends are always using. But they’re stuck in the temporal zone (meaning there’s no way he’d get service). “I don’t need advice from a dead guy.”
Another pause, this one a little longer. Then: “Oh, right, like you’re one to talk. I saw you, practically hanging of Sara’s every word, finding any excuse to be around her.” She can hear him pacing in the pause between his words. “That’s not why you blew up. You blew up because you wouldn’t let me stick around to finish the fucking job.” Silence. “Well, what if I do?” A beat. “That’s not why I’m doing this. I’m not the hero.” A pause. “I wasn’t even supposed to be here, Rip said it himself.”
Who’s he talking to? Amaya wonders, remembering him in the galley, telling someone to shut up, even though there was no one else there before she showed up. Is he seeing people, people that aren’t there? Or does he have some sort of communication device she doesn’t know about?
Whatever the case, Mick’s . . . Mick. He’s guarded in his own way, hiding whatever he’s going through by playing tough and playing dumb. She’s trying to get past those layers, but something tells Amaya that if she outright asks what’s going on, he’s not going to give her a straight answer. So she’ll let it be, for now. When something happens once, it’s a simple occurrence; twice, a coincidence; three times, a pattern. If she hears him talking to no one again, then she’ll bring it up. (Besides, right now, none of it makes any sense. Advice from a dead guy? And what job is Mick talking about?)
Brushing those thoughts aside, she knocks on the door. A few seconds later, Mick opens it a crack, a frown on his face.
“Whaddaya doing?” he grunts staring at her. Amaya pushes past him and into the room, almost as if she owns the place, and sits down on the couch.
“It’s movie night,” she says, tossing the sour gummy worms at him. He catches them with ease.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he mutters. “I don’t have any flicks for tonight.”
“That’s alright,” she says. “I actually have an idea of my own. It’s something I saw before I came aboard the Waverider, and I’m willing to bet you’ve never seen it. Besides, you’ve chosen the last three movie nights, so I’m due for a turn.”
Mick grumbles under his breath, but turns off the lights and takes a seat next to her anyway. Amaya smiles, leaning into him and breathing in his familiar scent, smoke mixed with a whiff of alcohol (this time it’s scotch, from their last trip to the fifties).
“Gideon, play The Wizard of Oz,” she says with a sly grin. Mick just stares at her as if she just announced a desire to shave her head and paint her skin bright green.
“You’re kidding,” he mutters, grabbing popcorn with a gloved fist. “There is no way—”
“It’s got fireballs and flying monkeys . . .”
“Sold.”
As the movie begins in black-and-white, Amaya thinks back to when she saw it for the first time. It was back in her rookie days in the JSA, when she didn’t quite fit in (both in terms of the team and as a new American citizen). In a rare break from training, her teammates took her to see the flick after they found out she’d never been to a movie theater before. Amaya chuckles, remembering how, for weeks afterward, Hank went around belting out tunes from the musical (one time he actually blew their cover with a particularly boisterous rendition of “We’re Off To See The Wizard”).
While the music was fun, it wasn’t the best part of the film to Amaya. What she loved was how Dorothy’s world lit up when she found Oz, the fairytale land she’d been dreaming of. Amaya loved how bright and colorful the set was, from the corny yellow-brick road to the beaming, bright emerald city.
In a way, the JSA’s mission started out as Amaya’s Oz, exciting and terrifying all at once. Zambesi was Kansas, always in the back of her mind. With every mission she went on, she held onto it, telling herself that every trip she went on, every task she took upon herself, it was just bringing her closer to the day when she’d go back home.
And then Amaya met the Legends, and she’d realized that as crazy as her life had been before, it was nothing compared to what this team did on a daily basis. The Waverider was the new yellow brick road, with all of time serving as Oz. Guess that means the speedster is like “the Wizard”, in a way. I can’t go home until I find him, Amaya muses.
She pushes those thoughts away during the film, focusing instead on Mick and his hilarious reactions to every little thing that happens.
“Why didn’t she just give up the slippers? What’s the worst that witch could do with a pair of fancy shoes?”
“What are these people on? Because I’d like some.”
“It wasn’t even real? Are you fucking kidding me with this?”
When the movie ends, she glances up at Mick with a smile.
“Favorite part?” she asks. He tilts his head, considering the question.
“Probably both scenes where Dorothy killed the witches. That was pretty cool.”
“Thanks for sticking it out. I figured this wasn’t your sort of movie, but you still watched the whole thing, albeit with some grumbling.
He snorts. “Don’t make a big deal out of it. I just didn’t have anything better to do.”
Amaya rolls her eyes at the lie. Classic Mick, pretending not to care. “You know, I’ve figured you out.”
“You already said that once, sweetheart,” he mutters, his warm breath tickling her hair.. “What’s your theory this time?”
“When I was watching the movie, I tried to match up characters with people on the ship. But then I realized something. The Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion . . . they’re all you. You don’t have a fancy PhD or textbook knowledge, but you’re cleverer than you let on. You act like all you care about is yourself, but you keep looking out for the rest of us. And for all your talk about saving your own skin, you’re always putting yourself in harm’s way.”
“Getting sappy on me again?” he mutters, looking away from her.
“What I’m saying is, you belong here, on this team,” she says, turning to jab him in the chest with a finger. “You have just as much right to be here as anyone else. And . . . as crazy as my life has been since you guys landed in 1941, I’m glad to have met you. Especially you.”
For once, Mick doesn’t say anything. He reaches slowly to touch her hand, which is still pointing at him. He gently removes it from his chest, and runs his hand over her harm to rest her shoulder, sending goosebumps down her skin. He inches closer, at the same time pulling Amaya towards him. Even that small, methodical movement has her heart beating out of its chest. She closes her eyes for a second, before opening them to look into his soft, brown irises. She's so close she can almost taste him . . .
So, naturally, that’s when Sara has to call over the monitor system: “All hands on deck, we have a new aberration in Victorian London, and it’s urgent!”
They pull apart without thinking or saying anything, shocked into action by the alarm. Mick walks over to turn on the lights and grabs his gun. He’s almost at the door when he turns back to look at Amaya. Then he walks quickly across the room, and tosses her a large, thick suede jacket from his closet.
“It’s a cold city,” he mutters, before abruptly leaving. As Amaya stands, she slips the gift on, over her tank top, smiling in spite of herself.
When she walks out the door, she runs into Ray again. He just stares at her, his mouth hanging open like he’s seen something even more incredible than zombies, time travel, or superheroes. Amaya just smirks and makes her way to the bridge, hearing Ray gulp in the background.
Get over it, she thinks to herself. You’re not in Kansas anymore.