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I'm new to this fandom and these shows, but I've just watched my way through a significant portion of both of them, and I have so many feelings about Firestorm and Martin Stein and Jax and Ronnie and the connection that comes from the fusion and how many people seem to want to pervert or damage it and how much bad bloody luck they've all had. Mostly Martin, since he's had to survive all of it. I have ... I have a lot of feelings?
Title: Soul Marks
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (2014)
Characters/Pairings: Jefferson 'Jax' Jackson, Martin Stein, discussion of Ronnie Raymond, Valentina Vostok and Henry Hewitt. Jax & Martin, Ronnie & Martin
Summary: After the events of the gulag in 1986, Martin Stein now has a mark on either arm telling him his partner is coming for him, even if one of those partners is now gone. Jax finds him lost in grief and contemplation of that, and together they work their way through it to a deeper understanding of their partnership.
Wordcount: 3902
Warnings/Notes: Aftermath of Ep 1x05. Aftermath of torture, grief, canonical character death, survivor guilt, telepathic/soul bond, scars, marks, emotional h/c, partnership, protectiveness, friendship/love, hopeful ending
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Soul Marks
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (2014)
Characters/Pairings: Jefferson 'Jax' Jackson, Martin Stein, discussion of Ronnie Raymond, Valentina Vostok and Henry Hewitt. Jax & Martin, Ronnie & Martin
Summary: After the events of the gulag in 1986, Martin Stein now has a mark on either arm telling him his partner is coming for him, even if one of those partners is now gone. Jax finds him lost in grief and contemplation of that, and together they work their way through it to a deeper understanding of their partnership.
Wordcount: 3902
Warnings/Notes: Aftermath of Ep 1x05. Aftermath of torture, grief, canonical character death, survivor guilt, telepathic/soul bond, scars, marks, emotional h/c, partnership, protectiveness, friendship/love, hopeful ending
Disclaimer: Not mine
Soul Marks
He found the Professor in the kitchen. This time of the ‘night’, what would have been the small hours back home, it was almost always deserted. The kind of place somebody could go if they wanted to be alone, but not alone alone. The kind of place where you felt like somebody could wander in, but you wouldn’t have to do anything about them when they did.
Yeah. Gray was in a hell of a mood, apparently. Jax had felt it like a tug on his chest, a bundle of somebody else’s hurt and confusion and melancholy. His partner felt … lost. Felt it so strong it was like an ache. No way Jax could ignore that. Not anymore.
Stein didn’t look up at him when he slipped into the room. It didn’t look like Stein had noticed him, too caught up in his own head to realise there was anybody else there. Not too weird, maybe, except that the Professor was usually conscious of Jax even if he wasn’t of anybody else. They could feel each other coming. Jax was still deciding if that was a perk or a serious downside to their partnership, but it had been true for months. It wasn’t like Stein not to notice him.
It’d been like that for a while, though. Gray’d been having these sort of moods ever since the gulag. In the small hours, mostly. Jax hadn’t really noticed at first. He was usually asleep around this time if he had the opportunity, so it’d mostly filtered in through his dreams more than anything, and Jax had enough reasons of his own to be having nightmares about 1986. It had taken him a while and a couple of late nights to realise that not all of those feelings were his own. Though he probably should have noticed sooner. His own feelings in those dreams tended to be terror, anger, grief and determination. Angry, savage things. The Professor’s feelings were all … quieter. More muted. Dread and pain, guilt and horror. A strange, detached grief that Jax didn’t understand at all. Stein’s emotions regarding what had happened to him were so much paler and stickier than Jax’ own. He should probably have recognised them sooner.
It was just that Stein had been feeling them at the time, too. He’d been feeling them in the gulag, and Jax had felt him feeling them, the whole time they were trying to rescue him, and so they’d been built into Jax’ nightmares too. He remembered the feel of them, remembered what they meant and what they’d come from, and so it had been hard … it’d been hard to figure out which ones were his memory of Stein then, and which ones were coming from Stein now.
The gulag had done a number of them both. Jax hadn’t even been there, and it had done a number on him. That was … another of the facets of their partnership that he still wasn’t sure was a downside or not. Feeling somebody else’s pain. Knowing that if it happened to one of them it happened to both. That was probably a bad thing, but …
But it gave him the chance to try and help. It gave him a way to try and help, a way to know when help was so badly needed, and Jax couldn’t help but be glad of that. He wanted to help people. He’d always wanted that. And Stein … Gray was something special to him.
He was sitting hunched over at the table, now. Gray. He was leaning forward, his head bowed and his expression vacant, with his arms on the table in front of him. Sleeves rolled up, hands linked, palms upturned. The forearms bared, turned back towards Stein so he could look at them, though right now he didn't look to be seeing much of anything at all. Jax paused in the doorway, swallowing suddenly. He knew what he was looking at now. He knew what he was seeing here.
The words looked different on somebody else’s arms. Not all of them were his. The ones on the right, yeah. “We’re coming”, carved by Kendra’s rapid, shaking hand. They were redder than his were now, more stark against the Professor’s paler skin. The word on the other arm, though, the one carved into the left … that was older. Scarred over. Whiter. More jagged. That one had no match on Jax’ skin. It’d belonged to another partner.
They looked so strange together. Left and right, white and red, “where” and “we’re coming”. Demands and reassurances. Scars, from wounds etched into other people’s skin. Shit. Shit, the sight of them knocked him for a loop. Just the sight. Like a sucker punch to the chest. No wonder Gray was feeling strange.
Jax drifted over to him. He was feeling a little odd himself, a little strange and a little distant, and he didn’t manage to speak before his hand found its way to Stein’s left shoulder. The Professor didn’t startle, though. Something rolled through him, something Jax could feel under his own skin, and when he looked up at Jax there was only welcome and a vague surprise in his expression. Like he hadn’t felt Jax coming until he was already there, but he was happy to see him regardless.
“Jefferson,” he said, twitching a little as he came out of his fugue, unlinking his hands to he could reach up and push his glasses further up his nose. Right hand. The red words flexed along his forearm as it went past. Jax stared at them. “Are you … are you all right, dear boy? It’s a little late for you, isn’t it?”
Jax … Jax could have answered that. Was going to, opened his mouth on autopilot. The words died in his throat. The other ones, the ones etched into Gray’s skin, pushed them all the way back down. Stein was stirring himself, trying to make his way back to normal, but Jax had only just arrived here, only just made it to this strange mood, and he wasn’t able to come back out of it yet. Not without … not without asking. Not without trying to make it make sense.
So he reached out, instead. He reached down to brush his fingers carefully over the words. Not his ones. The older one, the white marks on Stein’s left arm. He touched them carefully with just the tips of his fingers, and the Professor went perfectly still beneath his hand.
“… I felt you,” Jax told him quietly. Trying to explain, or start to. “I felt you … feelin’ something. Needing something. I felt something lost and … and strange, and I came looking for you, and then … I didn’t realise you were looking at these. I didn’t … I never saw them before, you know? You never showed me. They look … they look different from what I expected.”
The Professor looked down at his hands. There was something on his face. Not a smile, but not anything else either. That strange feeling was back in Jax’ chest. That stretched, odd grief. Stein splayed both his palms, the tendons running back along his arms. Bringing the words up. Making them stand, bright and jagged against his skin.
“I'm not sure what you were expecting, then,” he said, huffing faintly. “You did the latter one yourself. I'd have thought you knew what it looked like.”
“It’s different on you,” Jax answered back. Equally quiet. “It’s different when … I put those words on my arm. I asked Kendra to do that. That’s on me. It’s different when it’s you, when it’s words I put there on your—It just seemed like a way to reach you back then. You told me about Ronnie. I was scared and it made sense at the time. But looking at it … It looks different, Gray. It feels different. I don’t know what to do with that.”
Gray looked up at him then. Startled, his expression softening, his eyes wide with concern. His right hand came up, the one with Jax’ words on it, reaching out as though trying to comfort. The sight might as well have ripped Jax’ heart out of his chest.
“You … You can’t think I blame you? Or that I …” Stein shook his head rapidly. “Jefferson. I needed that message. You have … You have no idea how much I needed it just then. To know that someone was coming was … Not to mention what you did to yourself in the process. If I have ever seemed less than grateful for …”
“I don't mean it like that,” Jax interrupted, squeezing the Professor’s shoulder gently, trying to pull him to a halt. “I don't need thanking for that. I’m glad you got out, Gray. I am so glad about that, you have no idea. I could feel you starting to give up, and I couldn’t let that happen. Not to you. I don’t feel bad about that. It’s just … I don’t know, man. Me writing words on your skin. Ronnie writing words on your skin. It made sense at the time, but now that I’m lookin’ at it … There’s something wrong with it, that's all. It feels … heavy. Like it meant something I didn’t understand at the time. Does that make sense at all?”
And oh god, the grief that rolled through Stein at that. The wave of it, the raw, aching tumble in his chest. Jax staggered a bit. He clung to the man’s shoulder like a lifeline. He'd felt this before, knew it for what it was, but it'd never been so jagged before. Never so right there and up front. This was ... this was a late night feeling. One of the ones Gray tried to keep until Jax was too asleep to feel it. The Professor reached across, gripped his left forearm with his right hand. Pressed it tight down over the mark.
Ronnie. Always Ronnie. And Jax had an idea why, now, had an idea what it would be like to feel someone who'd been a part of you just ... fall away and be gone. He'd almost lost Gray, almost had him taken away, Jax knew now. He had nightmares now. He knew what that might feel like.
"... I wondered, you know," Stein said quietly. Looking down again, watching his own white knuckles clenched over Ronnie's mark. Avoiding Jax for the minute. "I wondered if you ... why you chose the arm you did. Your right arm, you'd have had to have had help. Awkward for a right-handed man. It's why Ronnie chose the left. He was ... in something of a hurry. Trying to get it done before anyone stopped him. You ... Were you trying to avoid it? His ... mark?"
Jax blinked at him. He didn't ...
"I don't know," he said, after a second. "Honest, Gray, I don't know. Maybe you told me which arm he picked. Maybe I just wanted Kendra to do the cutting instead of me. But I ... It didn't feel right, to have it on the left arm. I don't know if I remembered, if I knew which one he'd used, if I was even thinking about that, but ... I just went with what felt right."
Or rather, he'd gone with what felt least wrong. Thinking about it now, if he'd used the left, if he'd carved over Ronnie's mark accidentally, erased it or cut in over it ... Even just the thought of it sent a shudder through him, an instinctive surge of wrongness. It was bad enough cutting the Professor at all, bad enough seeing his own mark etched into somebody else's skin, but knowing he'd wiped out somebody else's mark at the same time, wiped out ... that kind of history, that kind of connection ...
He'd always known he was a replacement. In so many ways, the fact that Ronnie had come first had informed so much about their partnership. He'd come in because Ronnie's death had literally almost killed Stein, because they'd been bonded that close and that deep that the loss of one of them had nearly physically destroyed the other. Stein had been dying when Jax met him. He'd been dying, and he'd been willing to let Jax go, he'd been trying to protect everyone around him, and when Jax had come back Gray had thanked him like Jax had done something special. Like deciding not to let somebody die if you could help it was a weird and special decision to have made. Ronnie hadn't had a choice, and Ronnie had died. Jax had had a choice, he'd put himself at risk for Gray, and he was only now realising just how fucking hard that decision had actually struck Stein. How fiercely and jaggedly protective it had made him.
And that was why ... that was why Jax had never really been jealous. Not of Ronnie. The thing between Stein and Ronnie had been something else, something forced and chosen and sacrificed for, something awful that they had made into something good between them. It had been so big and so important, and when it had been taken away Stein had needed somebody to help him. To keep him safe, to keep him alive. He'd let Jax be that person. Not easily, not graciously, Professor Stein wouldn't know gracious if it up and kicked him in the face, but he'd let Jax in. He'd let Jax be part of him, let Jax save him. Back then, from the sickness Ronnie's loss had caused, and in the gulag too. He'd trusted Jax to come for him, he'd reached out and let Jax pull him free of that bitch. All that prickly, grumpy, hard-assed stubbornness, he'd used it to reach out and keep Jax safe, to keep them alive until Jax could save him back. That was something else, man. That was something as strong and as important as Ronnie'd had. Jax couldn't ever be jealous of him.
He couldn't destroy what Stein and Ronnie had had. He didn't want to, he didn't ever want to hurt Stein that way. And maybe that was why he'd picked the other arm. Back then, when he was running on terror and adrenalin and just doing whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe that was why he'd picked the right. So that Stein could keep the left too, so that he could hang onto the word that he was hunched over even now, clutching like it was so much more and so much heavier than just a message at the right time.
His words, written on his own arm and carved into somebody else's skin. Ronnie's word, written on an arm that nobody would ever see again, and only their echo on that other skin remaining. Shit. Goddamnit, Gray.
"... I wouldn't have wiped him out," he said. He reached out, gripped both of Stein's shoulders, turned him gently to try and face him. "This is ... This whole thing is weird, man, I've no idea what I'm doing, and words on someone's skin, carving your skin with mine, it's all ... But I wouldn't have wiped him out. I wouldn't have done that. Not to him, and not to you."
Stein closed his eyes. Dropped his chin onto his chest, breathed out a wet and shaking breath. Jax felt it. He felt the knot of grief and gratitude and desperate confusion in the man's chest, felt the raw relief and the tinge of shame, and the bright, shining love that he felt for Jax himself. Sucker punch. Right under the breast bone. It was all Jax could do to keep them standing.
"It's, ah. It's a little strange to be holding on to something like that," Stein admitted, struggling for composure as he raised his chin once more. "I know that. Something you both ... mutilated yourself for. Phantom wounds. But you ... You both came. For me. Every time I was taken. One of you came. They're not ... They don't feel like scars. They feel like promises. Ones that I ... That I never gave back, and that I ..."
His voice broke, and so did Jax. Entirely on instinct, he reached out pulled the man into his chest, tugged him close into a breathless hug. Not all the way in. Not Firestorm. That was what this was coming out of, that connection was what this was from, but this was a simpler sort of holding. This wasn't about the superhero. This was just about them. This was about Jax and this stubborn-ass, stupid old man who kept trying to die for him.
"... You just got captured first, okay?" he whispered, holding Gray in close. "It's not your fault. You just keep getting hurt, man. It's not on you that you spend way too much of your time getting kidnapped by the military or forcibly absorbed by crazy scientists, that everybody thinks they can use you if they just keep hold of you long enough. Whole damn world wants a piece of you, Gray. That's why you need somebody. Me and Ronnie. That's why you needed us."
"It shouldn't be," Stein snapped fiercely, stiff and rigid in Jax' arms. "It shouldn't ... You shouldn't have to answer for what happens to me. Neither of you. You shouldn't have to--"
"I wanted to help people," Jax interrupted firmly. "That's why I signed on for this gig, that's what you all offered me way back at the start. The chance to be part of something, and the chance to help people. I want that, and I want to help you. You don't ... Do you have any idea how scared I've been, man? Do you've any idea how many times you get hurt? You were dying when I met you, and you've been kidnapped and tortured twice, and you almost got locked up inside some crazy chick's head and made to kill people until you blew yourself up, and there's part of me that keeps thinking about what's-his-name, Hewitt, at the start, how he didn't give two shits about you and how he wanted what she wanted, and he had the splicer. If he'd been compatible with you, if he'd gotten you ... I said you thought of me like a life-support system, and I know, I know, I was wrong about that, but those people? Hewitt and Vostok? They think of you like a battery. Something they just plug in and use until it runs down. All these people want a part of you, Gray. I've had you in my head, in my chest, you're part of me, and all these people want to hurt you. You know how much that scares me? You know how much I need to keep you safe? This goes both ways, man. Wanting to protect each other. That's what partnership means."
Stein went very still. He breathed, very carefully, the feel of him in Jax' head a shaking wall of pain and confusion and slow, cautious, dawning understanding. He trembled, but there was a feeling in their heads of something locking on, bearing down, bringing that fierce, defiant stubbornness to bear. He looked up at Jax, and Jax looked down at him, and there was a feeling of some quiet, immutable decision being made.
"I won't survive it again," Stein told him quietly. "I won't outlast another one. If you die, Jefferson, one way or another I will be coming with you. I'm not moving on and leaving one of you behind again."
Jax set his jaw, and nodded. "Okay," he said, because there wasn't a lot else to say. He could feel the truth of it. He could feel how much and how immovably Stein really meant it. So he agreed, because there wasn't a whole lot else to do. "So I won't die. Yeah? I don't die, and you don't die, and nobody has to leave anybody. We protect each other, we watch out for each other, and everything's all right. Okay?"
Gray pursed his lips, that strange not-smile, but he nodded after a minute. He let himself slump, leaning into the hug at last, and nodded his head against Jax' chest.
"For better or for worse, then," he said, and Jax could feel the smile more than see it. "I rather fear you've gotten the worst of this deal, Mr Jackson, but I would have to be a very great fool indeed not to take it. You are ... you are a truly excellent young man to be partnered with."
Jax shook his head, the grin bright and rueful on his face. "Back at ya," he said. "Well, minus the young part anyway. You're all right, Gray. You're a stubborn-ass old man, and you backseat drive like a bitch, but you're all right."
Stein snorted. "If you think I'm the only stubborn one in this partnership, my boy, you clearly haven't been paying attention."
Jax shrugged at that. "Yeah, well. Gotta keep up with you, don't I?" He paused, sobering a little bit, and tugged the man in tight again. "You gotta slow down a bit too, though. At least for a while, I mean. Don't ... Try not to get kidnapped again for a while, will ya? Two promises is enough. Two marks. If nothing else, man, I think you've run out of arms."
He put the humour into it on purpose. He wanted to make it light to disguise the way they both shuddered, words and skin and pain and promises. Run out of arms and run out of lives, and next time they might not ... So, yeah. Put some laughing into it, make like the inside of both their arms didn't seem to burn at the thought of it, a flare like Firestorm beneath their skin. Not again. Not for a while. They had enough nightmares as it stood, just with "where" and "we're coming". Let it wait a while, huh, before they had to find somewhere else to write more words.
"I would be ... very happy to oblige you on that, I assure you, Jefferson," Stein said. Pulling back, stepping away, a wry and tiny smile on his face. "I'm not sure it's entirely up to me, given previous history, but for my part at least, I would quite happily agree to that."
He looked up at Jax, that little smile on his face, all tired and rumpled in the small hours of the ship. There was a peace in him now, a calmness instead of the jagged grief and confusion of before. It was just for now, Jax got that. Gray wasn't ever going to forget Ronnie, and he wasn't ever getting away from the words written in his skin, the circumstances that had caused them. Everybody wanted a piece of them, and a lot of them took pieces away trying to get it. But right now, just for now, some bit of Stein was at peace. Some bit of him was calm, and wry, and hopeful in the face of the future. Some bit of him was here, with Jax, and happy about it. That was good enough to be going on with. That was good enough for anybody.
"Yeah, I know," Jax told him, a bit wry and rueful himself. "Tell you what, let's just take it a day at a time, all right? And, ah. Stay away from crazy Russian ladies, how about that?"
"An excellent idea, Mr Jackson. A most excellent idea indeed."
A/N: I hope I haven't missed anything too big from bouncing around both canons a bit. I'm also not sure if Stein actually still has Ronnie's mark, since I don't remember seeing it, but Jax' definitely lasted all through the episode, and they actually did use different arms, I double checked that, so I thought I'd run with it?
He found the Professor in the kitchen. This time of the ‘night’, what would have been the small hours back home, it was almost always deserted. The kind of place somebody could go if they wanted to be alone, but not alone alone. The kind of place where you felt like somebody could wander in, but you wouldn’t have to do anything about them when they did.
Yeah. Gray was in a hell of a mood, apparently. Jax had felt it like a tug on his chest, a bundle of somebody else’s hurt and confusion and melancholy. His partner felt … lost. Felt it so strong it was like an ache. No way Jax could ignore that. Not anymore.
Stein didn’t look up at him when he slipped into the room. It didn’t look like Stein had noticed him, too caught up in his own head to realise there was anybody else there. Not too weird, maybe, except that the Professor was usually conscious of Jax even if he wasn’t of anybody else. They could feel each other coming. Jax was still deciding if that was a perk or a serious downside to their partnership, but it had been true for months. It wasn’t like Stein not to notice him.
It’d been like that for a while, though. Gray’d been having these sort of moods ever since the gulag. In the small hours, mostly. Jax hadn’t really noticed at first. He was usually asleep around this time if he had the opportunity, so it’d mostly filtered in through his dreams more than anything, and Jax had enough reasons of his own to be having nightmares about 1986. It had taken him a while and a couple of late nights to realise that not all of those feelings were his own. Though he probably should have noticed sooner. His own feelings in those dreams tended to be terror, anger, grief and determination. Angry, savage things. The Professor’s feelings were all … quieter. More muted. Dread and pain, guilt and horror. A strange, detached grief that Jax didn’t understand at all. Stein’s emotions regarding what had happened to him were so much paler and stickier than Jax’ own. He should probably have recognised them sooner.
It was just that Stein had been feeling them at the time, too. He’d been feeling them in the gulag, and Jax had felt him feeling them, the whole time they were trying to rescue him, and so they’d been built into Jax’ nightmares too. He remembered the feel of them, remembered what they meant and what they’d come from, and so it had been hard … it’d been hard to figure out which ones were his memory of Stein then, and which ones were coming from Stein now.
The gulag had done a number of them both. Jax hadn’t even been there, and it had done a number on him. That was … another of the facets of their partnership that he still wasn’t sure was a downside or not. Feeling somebody else’s pain. Knowing that if it happened to one of them it happened to both. That was probably a bad thing, but …
But it gave him the chance to try and help. It gave him a way to try and help, a way to know when help was so badly needed, and Jax couldn’t help but be glad of that. He wanted to help people. He’d always wanted that. And Stein … Gray was something special to him.
He was sitting hunched over at the table, now. Gray. He was leaning forward, his head bowed and his expression vacant, with his arms on the table in front of him. Sleeves rolled up, hands linked, palms upturned. The forearms bared, turned back towards Stein so he could look at them, though right now he didn't look to be seeing much of anything at all. Jax paused in the doorway, swallowing suddenly. He knew what he was looking at now. He knew what he was seeing here.
The words looked different on somebody else’s arms. Not all of them were his. The ones on the right, yeah. “We’re coming”, carved by Kendra’s rapid, shaking hand. They were redder than his were now, more stark against the Professor’s paler skin. The word on the other arm, though, the one carved into the left … that was older. Scarred over. Whiter. More jagged. That one had no match on Jax’ skin. It’d belonged to another partner.
They looked so strange together. Left and right, white and red, “where” and “we’re coming”. Demands and reassurances. Scars, from wounds etched into other people’s skin. Shit. Shit, the sight of them knocked him for a loop. Just the sight. Like a sucker punch to the chest. No wonder Gray was feeling strange.
Jax drifted over to him. He was feeling a little odd himself, a little strange and a little distant, and he didn’t manage to speak before his hand found its way to Stein’s left shoulder. The Professor didn’t startle, though. Something rolled through him, something Jax could feel under his own skin, and when he looked up at Jax there was only welcome and a vague surprise in his expression. Like he hadn’t felt Jax coming until he was already there, but he was happy to see him regardless.
“Jefferson,” he said, twitching a little as he came out of his fugue, unlinking his hands to he could reach up and push his glasses further up his nose. Right hand. The red words flexed along his forearm as it went past. Jax stared at them. “Are you … are you all right, dear boy? It’s a little late for you, isn’t it?”
Jax … Jax could have answered that. Was going to, opened his mouth on autopilot. The words died in his throat. The other ones, the ones etched into Gray’s skin, pushed them all the way back down. Stein was stirring himself, trying to make his way back to normal, but Jax had only just arrived here, only just made it to this strange mood, and he wasn’t able to come back out of it yet. Not without … not without asking. Not without trying to make it make sense.
So he reached out, instead. He reached down to brush his fingers carefully over the words. Not his ones. The older one, the white marks on Stein’s left arm. He touched them carefully with just the tips of his fingers, and the Professor went perfectly still beneath his hand.
“… I felt you,” Jax told him quietly. Trying to explain, or start to. “I felt you … feelin’ something. Needing something. I felt something lost and … and strange, and I came looking for you, and then … I didn’t realise you were looking at these. I didn’t … I never saw them before, you know? You never showed me. They look … they look different from what I expected.”
The Professor looked down at his hands. There was something on his face. Not a smile, but not anything else either. That strange feeling was back in Jax’ chest. That stretched, odd grief. Stein splayed both his palms, the tendons running back along his arms. Bringing the words up. Making them stand, bright and jagged against his skin.
“I'm not sure what you were expecting, then,” he said, huffing faintly. “You did the latter one yourself. I'd have thought you knew what it looked like.”
“It’s different on you,” Jax answered back. Equally quiet. “It’s different when … I put those words on my arm. I asked Kendra to do that. That’s on me. It’s different when it’s you, when it’s words I put there on your—It just seemed like a way to reach you back then. You told me about Ronnie. I was scared and it made sense at the time. But looking at it … It looks different, Gray. It feels different. I don’t know what to do with that.”
Gray looked up at him then. Startled, his expression softening, his eyes wide with concern. His right hand came up, the one with Jax’ words on it, reaching out as though trying to comfort. The sight might as well have ripped Jax’ heart out of his chest.
“You … You can’t think I blame you? Or that I …” Stein shook his head rapidly. “Jefferson. I needed that message. You have … You have no idea how much I needed it just then. To know that someone was coming was … Not to mention what you did to yourself in the process. If I have ever seemed less than grateful for …”
“I don't mean it like that,” Jax interrupted, squeezing the Professor’s shoulder gently, trying to pull him to a halt. “I don't need thanking for that. I’m glad you got out, Gray. I am so glad about that, you have no idea. I could feel you starting to give up, and I couldn’t let that happen. Not to you. I don’t feel bad about that. It’s just … I don’t know, man. Me writing words on your skin. Ronnie writing words on your skin. It made sense at the time, but now that I’m lookin’ at it … There’s something wrong with it, that's all. It feels … heavy. Like it meant something I didn’t understand at the time. Does that make sense at all?”
And oh god, the grief that rolled through Stein at that. The wave of it, the raw, aching tumble in his chest. Jax staggered a bit. He clung to the man’s shoulder like a lifeline. He'd felt this before, knew it for what it was, but it'd never been so jagged before. Never so right there and up front. This was ... this was a late night feeling. One of the ones Gray tried to keep until Jax was too asleep to feel it. The Professor reached across, gripped his left forearm with his right hand. Pressed it tight down over the mark.
Ronnie. Always Ronnie. And Jax had an idea why, now, had an idea what it would be like to feel someone who'd been a part of you just ... fall away and be gone. He'd almost lost Gray, almost had him taken away, Jax knew now. He had nightmares now. He knew what that might feel like.
"... I wondered, you know," Stein said quietly. Looking down again, watching his own white knuckles clenched over Ronnie's mark. Avoiding Jax for the minute. "I wondered if you ... why you chose the arm you did. Your right arm, you'd have had to have had help. Awkward for a right-handed man. It's why Ronnie chose the left. He was ... in something of a hurry. Trying to get it done before anyone stopped him. You ... Were you trying to avoid it? His ... mark?"
Jax blinked at him. He didn't ...
"I don't know," he said, after a second. "Honest, Gray, I don't know. Maybe you told me which arm he picked. Maybe I just wanted Kendra to do the cutting instead of me. But I ... It didn't feel right, to have it on the left arm. I don't know if I remembered, if I knew which one he'd used, if I was even thinking about that, but ... I just went with what felt right."
Or rather, he'd gone with what felt least wrong. Thinking about it now, if he'd used the left, if he'd carved over Ronnie's mark accidentally, erased it or cut in over it ... Even just the thought of it sent a shudder through him, an instinctive surge of wrongness. It was bad enough cutting the Professor at all, bad enough seeing his own mark etched into somebody else's skin, but knowing he'd wiped out somebody else's mark at the same time, wiped out ... that kind of history, that kind of connection ...
He'd always known he was a replacement. In so many ways, the fact that Ronnie had come first had informed so much about their partnership. He'd come in because Ronnie's death had literally almost killed Stein, because they'd been bonded that close and that deep that the loss of one of them had nearly physically destroyed the other. Stein had been dying when Jax met him. He'd been dying, and he'd been willing to let Jax go, he'd been trying to protect everyone around him, and when Jax had come back Gray had thanked him like Jax had done something special. Like deciding not to let somebody die if you could help it was a weird and special decision to have made. Ronnie hadn't had a choice, and Ronnie had died. Jax had had a choice, he'd put himself at risk for Gray, and he was only now realising just how fucking hard that decision had actually struck Stein. How fiercely and jaggedly protective it had made him.
And that was why ... that was why Jax had never really been jealous. Not of Ronnie. The thing between Stein and Ronnie had been something else, something forced and chosen and sacrificed for, something awful that they had made into something good between them. It had been so big and so important, and when it had been taken away Stein had needed somebody to help him. To keep him safe, to keep him alive. He'd let Jax be that person. Not easily, not graciously, Professor Stein wouldn't know gracious if it up and kicked him in the face, but he'd let Jax in. He'd let Jax be part of him, let Jax save him. Back then, from the sickness Ronnie's loss had caused, and in the gulag too. He'd trusted Jax to come for him, he'd reached out and let Jax pull him free of that bitch. All that prickly, grumpy, hard-assed stubbornness, he'd used it to reach out and keep Jax safe, to keep them alive until Jax could save him back. That was something else, man. That was something as strong and as important as Ronnie'd had. Jax couldn't ever be jealous of him.
He couldn't destroy what Stein and Ronnie had had. He didn't want to, he didn't ever want to hurt Stein that way. And maybe that was why he'd picked the other arm. Back then, when he was running on terror and adrenalin and just doing whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe that was why he'd picked the right. So that Stein could keep the left too, so that he could hang onto the word that he was hunched over even now, clutching like it was so much more and so much heavier than just a message at the right time.
His words, written on his own arm and carved into somebody else's skin. Ronnie's word, written on an arm that nobody would ever see again, and only their echo on that other skin remaining. Shit. Goddamnit, Gray.
"... I wouldn't have wiped him out," he said. He reached out, gripped both of Stein's shoulders, turned him gently to try and face him. "This is ... This whole thing is weird, man, I've no idea what I'm doing, and words on someone's skin, carving your skin with mine, it's all ... But I wouldn't have wiped him out. I wouldn't have done that. Not to him, and not to you."
Stein closed his eyes. Dropped his chin onto his chest, breathed out a wet and shaking breath. Jax felt it. He felt the knot of grief and gratitude and desperate confusion in the man's chest, felt the raw relief and the tinge of shame, and the bright, shining love that he felt for Jax himself. Sucker punch. Right under the breast bone. It was all Jax could do to keep them standing.
"It's, ah. It's a little strange to be holding on to something like that," Stein admitted, struggling for composure as he raised his chin once more. "I know that. Something you both ... mutilated yourself for. Phantom wounds. But you ... You both came. For me. Every time I was taken. One of you came. They're not ... They don't feel like scars. They feel like promises. Ones that I ... That I never gave back, and that I ..."
His voice broke, and so did Jax. Entirely on instinct, he reached out pulled the man into his chest, tugged him close into a breathless hug. Not all the way in. Not Firestorm. That was what this was coming out of, that connection was what this was from, but this was a simpler sort of holding. This wasn't about the superhero. This was just about them. This was about Jax and this stubborn-ass, stupid old man who kept trying to die for him.
"... You just got captured first, okay?" he whispered, holding Gray in close. "It's not your fault. You just keep getting hurt, man. It's not on you that you spend way too much of your time getting kidnapped by the military or forcibly absorbed by crazy scientists, that everybody thinks they can use you if they just keep hold of you long enough. Whole damn world wants a piece of you, Gray. That's why you need somebody. Me and Ronnie. That's why you needed us."
"It shouldn't be," Stein snapped fiercely, stiff and rigid in Jax' arms. "It shouldn't ... You shouldn't have to answer for what happens to me. Neither of you. You shouldn't have to--"
"I wanted to help people," Jax interrupted firmly. "That's why I signed on for this gig, that's what you all offered me way back at the start. The chance to be part of something, and the chance to help people. I want that, and I want to help you. You don't ... Do you have any idea how scared I've been, man? Do you've any idea how many times you get hurt? You were dying when I met you, and you've been kidnapped and tortured twice, and you almost got locked up inside some crazy chick's head and made to kill people until you blew yourself up, and there's part of me that keeps thinking about what's-his-name, Hewitt, at the start, how he didn't give two shits about you and how he wanted what she wanted, and he had the splicer. If he'd been compatible with you, if he'd gotten you ... I said you thought of me like a life-support system, and I know, I know, I was wrong about that, but those people? Hewitt and Vostok? They think of you like a battery. Something they just plug in and use until it runs down. All these people want a part of you, Gray. I've had you in my head, in my chest, you're part of me, and all these people want to hurt you. You know how much that scares me? You know how much I need to keep you safe? This goes both ways, man. Wanting to protect each other. That's what partnership means."
Stein went very still. He breathed, very carefully, the feel of him in Jax' head a shaking wall of pain and confusion and slow, cautious, dawning understanding. He trembled, but there was a feeling in their heads of something locking on, bearing down, bringing that fierce, defiant stubbornness to bear. He looked up at Jax, and Jax looked down at him, and there was a feeling of some quiet, immutable decision being made.
"I won't survive it again," Stein told him quietly. "I won't outlast another one. If you die, Jefferson, one way or another I will be coming with you. I'm not moving on and leaving one of you behind again."
Jax set his jaw, and nodded. "Okay," he said, because there wasn't a lot else to say. He could feel the truth of it. He could feel how much and how immovably Stein really meant it. So he agreed, because there wasn't a whole lot else to do. "So I won't die. Yeah? I don't die, and you don't die, and nobody has to leave anybody. We protect each other, we watch out for each other, and everything's all right. Okay?"
Gray pursed his lips, that strange not-smile, but he nodded after a minute. He let himself slump, leaning into the hug at last, and nodded his head against Jax' chest.
"For better or for worse, then," he said, and Jax could feel the smile more than see it. "I rather fear you've gotten the worst of this deal, Mr Jackson, but I would have to be a very great fool indeed not to take it. You are ... you are a truly excellent young man to be partnered with."
Jax shook his head, the grin bright and rueful on his face. "Back at ya," he said. "Well, minus the young part anyway. You're all right, Gray. You're a stubborn-ass old man, and you backseat drive like a bitch, but you're all right."
Stein snorted. "If you think I'm the only stubborn one in this partnership, my boy, you clearly haven't been paying attention."
Jax shrugged at that. "Yeah, well. Gotta keep up with you, don't I?" He paused, sobering a little bit, and tugged the man in tight again. "You gotta slow down a bit too, though. At least for a while, I mean. Don't ... Try not to get kidnapped again for a while, will ya? Two promises is enough. Two marks. If nothing else, man, I think you've run out of arms."
He put the humour into it on purpose. He wanted to make it light to disguise the way they both shuddered, words and skin and pain and promises. Run out of arms and run out of lives, and next time they might not ... So, yeah. Put some laughing into it, make like the inside of both their arms didn't seem to burn at the thought of it, a flare like Firestorm beneath their skin. Not again. Not for a while. They had enough nightmares as it stood, just with "where" and "we're coming". Let it wait a while, huh, before they had to find somewhere else to write more words.
"I would be ... very happy to oblige you on that, I assure you, Jefferson," Stein said. Pulling back, stepping away, a wry and tiny smile on his face. "I'm not sure it's entirely up to me, given previous history, but for my part at least, I would quite happily agree to that."
He looked up at Jax, that little smile on his face, all tired and rumpled in the small hours of the ship. There was a peace in him now, a calmness instead of the jagged grief and confusion of before. It was just for now, Jax got that. Gray wasn't ever going to forget Ronnie, and he wasn't ever getting away from the words written in his skin, the circumstances that had caused them. Everybody wanted a piece of them, and a lot of them took pieces away trying to get it. But right now, just for now, some bit of Stein was at peace. Some bit of him was calm, and wry, and hopeful in the face of the future. Some bit of him was here, with Jax, and happy about it. That was good enough to be going on with. That was good enough for anybody.
"Yeah, I know," Jax told him, a bit wry and rueful himself. "Tell you what, let's just take it a day at a time, all right? And, ah. Stay away from crazy Russian ladies, how about that?"
"An excellent idea, Mr Jackson. A most excellent idea indeed."
A/N: I hope I haven't missed anything too big from bouncing around both canons a bit. I'm also not sure if Stein actually still has Ronnie's mark, since I don't remember seeing it, but Jax' definitely lasted all through the episode, and they actually did use different arms, I double checked that, so I thought I'd run with it?
