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I've kind of been wanting this conversation between Mick & Martin since the finale, though I admit that my initial concept of it was a bit less ... confrontational. Heh. Might I reiterate that both Martin and Ray between them have the survival instincts of particularly antsy lemmings?
Title: A Verbal Exchange of Views
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Characters/Pairings: Martin Stein, Mick Rory, Ray Palmer, Sara Lance, Jefferson Jackson, Rip Hunter, with Leonard Snart looming in the background. Mick & Martin, Mick & Ray, Mick & Len, Martin & Jax, Martin & Ronnie
Summary: Future fic, set post-Finale and specifically post-"Destiny". When Ray gets injured on a mission, Mick takes rather violent issue with his cavalier attitude to his own safety. The team intervenes, and Martin takes Mick aside to ... have a word with him. In anger, yes, but he does understand as well
Wordcount: 4352
Warnings/Notes: Post-finale, spoilers, canonical character death. Future fic, post-mission, injury, overreaction, grief/mourning, loss, confrontations, anger, understanding, hurt/comfort, friendship, partnership, team
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: A Verbal Exchange of Views
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Characters/Pairings: Martin Stein, Mick Rory, Ray Palmer, Sara Lance, Jefferson Jackson, Rip Hunter, with Leonard Snart looming in the background. Mick & Martin, Mick & Ray, Mick & Len, Martin & Jax, Martin & Ronnie
Summary: Future fic, set post-Finale and specifically post-"Destiny". When Ray gets injured on a mission, Mick takes rather violent issue with his cavalier attitude to his own safety. The team intervenes, and Martin takes Mick aside to ... have a word with him. In anger, yes, but he does understand as well
Wordcount: 4352
Warnings/Notes: Post-finale, spoilers, canonical character death. Future fic, post-mission, injury, overreaction, grief/mourning, loss, confrontations, anger, understanding, hurt/comfort, friendship, partnership, team
Disclaimer: Not mine
A Verbal Exchange of Views
Though the mission hadn't exactly been the most successful venture on their part (though, it had to be said, it had still been very far from the least), it was still something of a shock when a so-far silent Mick Rory turned around, entirely unprompted, and picked a battered, shockily smiling Ray Palmer up by the neck and shove him up against the wall. Martin flinched in shock, along with more or less everyone else, though several of them started forwards quite a bit before he managed it. It hardly made sense, that was all. Of all of them, they'd thought Mr Rory had gotten quite attached to Mr Palmer.
Raymond, for his part, grunted in pained dismay, his eyes wide and stunned as his back hit the wall, his hands instinctively locking around Rory's wrist. He struggled, trying to pull back enough to get a question out, to figure out what was going on.
"Mi-Mick, what ...?"
"Don't you ever do that again," Rory growled, very slowly and deliberately. Sara had reached them by this time, had a knife at his throat already, but he ignored that completely. His focus was entirely on the man pinned beneath his hand. "You hear me? You do something that stupid again, I'm kicking you off this ship, I don't care what anyone has to say. Got no use for a man who can't look out for himself. Never did."
... Ah, Martin thought distantly. He caught the echoing realisation on several other faces, Jefferson and Ms Lance most prominently. The newcomer, Mr Tyler, not quite so much. The rest of them, those who had been there, they caught on rather quickly.
It didn't look like Raymond had. Not the same way. His expression went startled and remorseful, a man flinching purely from a threat and a criticism, and he seemed to curl into himself. He stopped fighting, his hands falling slack around Rory's arm. He didn't get it, or only partly. Martin could see that. Raymond took that criticism and the threat behind it in large part at face value. He'd always been inclined to that, their Mr Palmer. It was his own faults he was always fastest to accept, even knowing everyone else's.
"... You stupid son of a bitch," Sara whispered, low and grieving and aggravated into Mick's ear. The man didn't so much as flinch. "You stupid son of a bitch, you think this is the way to handle this?"
"Mr Rory," Captain Hunter started, moving towards him with an expression of pained sympathy and no little guilt on his face. A semi-perpetual guilt, really. He tended towards that as easily as Raymond did. "Sara's right, this isn't ..."
"You got an opinion, Captain," Rory cut him off, turning his head to glare at him. "'Cause I think I already told you I don't give a crap what anyone has to say."
"Yeah?" Sara hissed, bringing the knife higher up under his chin. "You care what anyone does either? 'Cause if you don't let him go in the next two seconds ..."
"Sara!" Raymond cut in, trying to put on a half-smile, taking his hands off Rory's arm to look over at her worriedly. "Sara, it's okay, don't ... It's fine, I ..."
"Shut up, Haircut," Mick growled, ignoring the bead of blood at his throat from Sara's blade in response, and quite abruptly Martin had had enough. So much more than enough, and only more so for knowing exactly what this was. Better perhaps than anyone else in this room. He felt something inside him, a deep, abiding anger, and saw Jefferson glance over at him in startled worry for it. He ignored that. There was enough to be doing without that.
"That," he said, quietly and viciously enough that almost everyone looked at him, "will be quite enough, Mr Rory. I'm sure Mr Palmer more than gets your point. If you'd be kind enough to let him go so that Jefferson can bring him down to the medical bay and get some treatment for those injuries that seem to upset you so much, perhaps you and I might have a word. In private?"
Possibly it was only that it came from such an unexpected quarter, given that Martin wasn't generally prone to wading into other people's arguments when he managed to start enough of his own, but Mick actually paused at that. He let Raymond go and turned towards Martin, shouldering Sara and her knife to one side with frankly a rather suicidal lack of concern. Raymond hastily grabbed her as Mick knocked her into range, trying to keep her from killing a man who'd only a moment ago had him by the neck. At the sight of it, Martin felt his expression solidify, nothing but scathing contempt in spite of a much more complicated internal reaction. Rory raised an eyebrow at that. He seemed to find it darkly, happily amusing.
"Got something to say, Professor?" he asked, baring his teeth in something that might only loosely be called a smile. "What makes you think I'll listen to you any faster than anyone else?"
Martin arched his own eyebrow in return. "I'm sure I can come up with a reason," he said icily. Temper always took him this way. It wasn't healthy, particularly not when faced with an angry, grieving pyromaniac, but he'd never been able to help it, nor particularly inclined to try. He lifted his chin and held Rory's gaze, pointedly refusing to look anywhere else. "Jefferson, Miss Lance, if you could escort Raymond to the medical bay? And everyone else, if you would kindly leave the pair of us alone. Mr Rory and I need to have a discussion."
"Grey, I'm not so sure that's a good idea," Jefferson started worriedly. Rory interrupted him.
"Go on, kid," he said, laconic and sneering and calm. "Didn't you hear the Professor? Me and him gotta have a word together."
"... Martin," Captain Hunter started in his turn, and Martin switched his glare abruptly from Rory to him instead, as he hadn't quite been able to towards Jefferson. Rip shut up, rearing his head back a little in aggravated dismay. Martin decided to feel guilty about that later. For the moment, he simply contented himself with a growled:
"Now, if you all wouldn't mind. Thank you."
Rory laughed, a harsh bark of amusement that did nothing to ease anyone's expressions or concerns, but apparently no one was in the mood to contend with both Rory and Martin in a snarling temper. Perhaps, too, enough of them had enough of an idea what was going on to realise that he was probably the best equipped to handle it. Provided he didn't manage to provoke Rory into breaking his neck or something first, of course, but Martin had never been one to let little things like that stop him. He was far too angry right now, and too deeply, desperately familiar with what Mick was going through, to be bothered worrying.
The team filed out, slowly and stiffly and angrily, and in Raymond's case more than a little bewilderedly, and before long Martin was left alone with only a heartbroken, violently inclined arsonist for company.
Well then. He had asked for it, hadn't he? And likely deserved it too.
"So," Mick said quietly, once the last of them had left, looking at him with that dark, angry amusement on his face. "Whatcha got, Professor? Looks like quite a temper you got going over there."
Martin only looked at him for a minute or so. He had a reason, he wasn't doing it only to be annoying. He needed to breathe for a second. He needed to calm down, needed to throttle the anger back a notch. This would go nowhere fast if he didn't, and he wasn't Leonard Snart, to solve problems between them with a therapeutic and highly dangerous bout of violence. As angry as he was right now, Martin was far from the expert there, and would only harm both of them. He wasn't Leonard Snart. No one was. Therein, naturally, lay the problem.
"... You realise berating him won't make him any more likely to be careful, don't you?" he said at last, moving away from Mick a bit, heading over to prop himself against a bulkhead. He looked back in time to see Mick snarl in disgust, turning away as though he'd been expecting, hoping for something else. Something angry, something cathartic. Something vicious and snarling and mean. Well, all right then. While he might not be Leonard Snart, couldn't offer the same kind of physical catharsis, Martin certainly could provide that. Metaphorically speaking, he knew just exactly where to land the first punch. "Neither will threatening him make him any less likely to die as Leonard did."
He said it with every malice. He said it hard and fast and utterly without mercy, and Mick Rory froze instantly and violently in his tracks. His face, when he looked back at Martin, was wide-eyed and pale, and Martin didn't know if he'd ever seen either such pain or such murder there before. Some bit of him, some part that did vaguely remember caution, quailed slightly at it. As ever, Martin ignored that part, shoved it pointedly to one side.
"You asked me if I had something to say," he went on softly, as Mick turned all the way back towards him in slow, monumentally-building fury. "I do, Mr Rory, I most certainly do. Your anger isn't going to save Raymond. Believe me when I say that your guilt and your grief are going to do nothing but hurt him. What you're doing now, what you are trying to do, it's going to do nothing but cause that man pain. I don't think you want that. If you wanted to hurt him, you wouldn't need to try and save him in the first place."
"... What do you know about it?" Mick rasped. Very quietly, the same sort of quiet Martin had interrupted with earlier. The same sort of fury. "You think you know something, Professor? You think you got a right to talk about it?"
He came closer. Slowly, deliberately, with the threat of violence so very prominently inside of it. He hemmed Martin in against the bulkhead. Martin did nothing save raise his chin once more.
"I think I have a better right than anyone else on this ship," he said, quietly and almost gently now. Softly, because he knew. Better than anyone. He really did. "Not because of what I lost in Leonard, or might stand to lose in Raymond. There are others with far more right to concern there than I. But you, Mr Rory. You, I have a lot in common with. I know what you're doing, I know why, and I know exactly why it isn't going to work. I'd rather spare us that, if I can. You, myself, and Mr Palmer as well. I'd rather spare us a repeat of my mistakes."
Mick stared at him. Almost bewildered, the lethal fury dimmed behind a puzzlement, a confusion for the approach. He shook his head, glaring down at Martin.
"Your mistakes?" he repeated. "You and me, we got nothing in common, old man. Made that pretty clear a few times now. What have your mistakes got to do with it?"
Martin grimaced. That ... was probably fair. No one liked to face their darker sides. No one liked to admit their commonalities with those they thought ... thought were beneath them. And they had tended to think of Mick Rory as less than them, didn't they. They had tended to think the worst. For good reason, sometimes. For very much less so at others.
"... I think we have rather more in common than I would sometimes like to admit," he said finally, and Mick actually leaned back a little in surprise. Martin shook his head, grimaced around the guilt of it and then laid that aside. "Maybe we've more in common than either of us would like. I'm certain I'm not the happiest companion either at times. But ... it was something else that I was referring to, Mr Rory. I think you know that too. There is a certain, rather relevant experience that you and I both have in common."
Mick did know. He knew, he'd known all along. Martin thought he might have wanted it acknowledged, to have allowed this conversation in the first place, but the same time he so very much didn't. Didn't want it out there, didn't want to face it. He'd tried to deflect it, tried to turn it away. But they were too far gone now for Martin to allow that. That flinch in Raymond's eyes, that acceptance of fault. Oh yes, they were much too far gone for that.
"I know what it's like to have lost a partner, Mr Rory," he said softly, while Mick turned his head and tried not to listen. "More than that. I know what it's like to watch them die and know that it should have been you. I know what it's like when it's your plan, your idea, and somehow they're the ones who die for it. I know what it's like to live with that, and I know ... I know what it's like to find someone else afterwards. Another partner, someone good and young and decent and so ... so much better than you. Someone so much better than you deserve, and as prone to ... to self-sacrifice as the first. I know all about that, Mr Rory. I know exactly how much anger and terror and guilt that experience can produce."
Mick shook his head. Leaned all the way back, backed off a step or two. Martin simply followed him. There was no threat to his motion, not as there had been in Mick's, but he rather thought the other man would have preferred if there had. Unfortunately, that wasn't the kind of catharsis Martin was equipped to provide. He could only offer what he himself had experienced, and hope that it would somehow be enough.
"... It's not going to help," he said, fumbling a little with how much he meant it, how awkwardly and painfully he'd learned it. "Trying to drive them away, to put them in a box and keep them safe, it's not going to work. They're not going to let it. They're heroes in their own right, they make choices in their own right, they're not going to stop saving us just because they think we don't like them anymore. Or because we're miserable bastards who don't deserve it, either. The only thing you're going to accomplish like this is to make him doubt how much you care, and that is hardly likely to make him any less reckless. That can't be what you want."
"Who says I want anything?" Mick interrupted abruptly. Angrily again, hiding behind it again. He didn't threaten this time, though. He turned away instead, tried to walk away, turned back with a stubborn lack of emotion on his face. "Who says I care? Maybe I'm just sick and tired of waiting for him to get himself killed. He tries it often enough. Maybe I've just gotten bored of it."
Martin gave him an eloquent look for that. "Yes," he said snippily. "I'm sure boredom is what inspired you to ignore a knife at your throat in order to drive the point home. His life does not in any way mean more to you than your own. Clearly."
"Maybe it shouldn't," Mick snapped back, angrily and genuinely enough that Martin faltered at it. He blinked at the man, and Mick angrily looked away. "It don't mean nothing to him," he carried on, stiff and quiet and mean. "Don't mean anything to him, why should it mean something to me? He was going to let himself die back there, too. That's why I ... Guess we played roulette for it, me and him and Len. Len cheated. Len won. I saved Ray and he saved me, and now Boy Scout in there keeps trying to--"
He cut off, the anger choking him, trying to swallow it back down inside of him. Martin stared at him. That was ... that was somewhat different. That was ... not quite the concern he had expected. But then, their situations had never been wholly analogous. Jefferson had had no part in Ronald's death, had been nowhere in the vicinity of it. Mick and Raymond and Leonard had been just a little bit more complicated.
"... Then," he started, slowly and carefully. "Then perhaps you have as much in common with Raymond as you do with me. Perhaps we have all been spared when by rights we should not have been. Perhaps we must all ... find a way to live with the knowledge of that. Without ... without causing each other any more pain than we can help?"
Spoken as though Martin had any idea how to accomplish that, even still, but they had to start somewhere, didn't they? Martin had hurt Jefferson enough already with his own guilt. It had been Raymond who pointed that out, who'd gotten up the nerve to try. Martin had no wish to see him now on the other side of it, to see him and Mick continue Martin's mistakes. Raymond wouldn't see it that way, necessarily, wouldn't think to apply it to himself, but that was all the more reason to keep it from happening. They were ... they should be past this. They had endured enough and overcome enough to have figured this out by now.
Mick Rory turned to look at him, though. That humour in his face again, that tired and weary sort of amusement. "You gonna tell that to him, too?" he asked quietly. Pointedly. "I'm not the one tryna get killed out there. Maybe I oughta be. Any one of us oughta end up dead, still should be me. He's the one trying, though. You gonna get mad at him too?"
Martin winced. "I don't think he's actively trying to die," he said carefully. "Mr Palmer may be a little laissez faire with his own safety, but I don't think he's suicidal. He simply ... values his own life rather less than those around him, that's all."
Which didn't necessarily sound all that much better now that he said it out loud, but still. There was still a difference between that and actively trying to get killed, and it would have to be good enough to start with.
"So, kinda like you, then," Mick pointed out softly, and he was nearly smiling about it when Martin looked at him. An odd, half-way sort of smile, a crooked thing that looked nearly fond. Because yes, Mick Rory had absolutely no care for the rest of them at all. Most certainly not. Not an inkling of it at all.
"I'm not ..." Martin started, and then had to give up a bit. Working it out, a base calculus of who on board the ship deserved to survive more than who, Martin could hardly deny that he'd rate himself somewhere near the bottom, if not actually at it. He was old, for a start. He'd already had as much of a life as anyone could ask for. And if there was even a suggestion that Jefferson would be served by it ...
"... All right," he agreed, half-smiling a little himself. "So perhaps it might be a better idea to have Jefferson talk to Mr Palmer instead. You and I attempting it would be the blind leading the blind I realise that. And since we do actually want him to come out of this less unfortunate than before ..." He shook his head. "Yes, you have a point. A confrontation might suffice to wake you or I up, Mr Rory, but I think Mr Palmer may require a little more consideration."
Mick raised his eyebrows. "Was that what this was?" he asked mildly. "You figured you'd pick a fight to wake me up?" Martin only looked at him.
"Do you plan to deny you were spoiling for one?" he asked, equally light. "As I said, Mr Rory, you and I do have a few things in common. Sometimes we both require some ... external venting of our emotions before we may ... think rationally about the problem. And while I cannot offer you a physical expression of anger of the kind you might prefer, on a verbal field I am more than capable of trading blows with anyone."
Mick snorted mightily at that. He shook his head, staring at Martin in something like amazement. "Yeah?" he said. "And what would you have done if I had decided on a ... a 'physical expression of anger'?"
Martin shrugged. "I presume I would have woken up sometime rather later with a very large headache and an equally large feeling of annoyed futility." He shook his head at Mick's expression, something between amusement and exasperation. It was a familiar one, that. "You are hardly the worst thing I've ever picked a fight with, Mr Rory. For a start, I'm fairly sure that you do not, in fact, want me dead, at least most of the time, and are therefore unlikely to, say, smash every bone in my face and neck with an axe given to you by Josef Stalin."
Mick blinked at him for that. Opened his mouth to ask about it. Martin waved him hastily away.
"Vandal Savage," he explained, waving one hand dismissively. "The man had a definite dramatic flair, I'll give him that. An excellent line in threats. And to be fair I wasn't exactly in a mood to be cooperative. I would almost congratulate him for having the cold-bloodedness to stick to his planned schedule in the face of it."
Mick stared at him some more. Vaguely incredulous, now, with a certain amount of exasperated despair. "... What is it with me?" he asked blankly. "Why do I always get the mouthy little shits? You, and Haircut, and ... Oughta tie the lot of you up in tape and stash you somewhere for your own good." He snorted faintly. "Maybe the kid'll help me. Jax. Bet you drive that poor bastard up the wall too."
".. Quite probably," Martin admitted. With a soft tone, a bit of a return to their previous topic of conversation. "He puts up with a lot from me, my partner. Far more than he should have to. I suppose it's to his credit that he still stands by me regardless."
It struck home, if more gently than his previous belabourings of the point. Mick sighed heavily at him, a growl of annoyance in his throat, but he nodded after a moment.
"I'll go easy on 'im," he said, holding up a hand rapidly to make sure Martin knew it didn't mean more than it did. "Not sayin' he's my partner or anything, and not saying I care about him either. But yeah, okay. I'll go easy on the little punk the next time he decides to be stupid."
Martin bit his lip hastily. "... Thank you," he managed, after a tiny second. "I'm sure ... I'm Mr Palmer will be very grateful. Might I ... also suggest perhaps apologising for this ..." He trailed off, Mr Rory's expression entirely illustrative of his views on that. "Ah. Perhaps not. Though, you know, it probably would help ...?"
"Don't need no help," Mick growled pointedly. "He'll figure it out or he won't. Got nothing to do with me either way."
... Right, Martin thought. Naturally, yes. Absolutely that was going to work. Maybe he had better have a talk with Raymond himself later on. Or have Jefferson have one, which might well be both wiser and safer in the long run.
"Don't even think about it," Mick said, looking right at him, and Martin twitched upright, trying to affect an unconspiratorial air. He gathered it didn't exactly pass muster. "I mean it, Professor. You ain't exactly got the best track record for meddling, pickin' a fight with me aside. Leave it. We'll sort it out or we won't. That's on us, not on you. Keep yer paws out of it."
Martin ... grimaced faintly. That wasn't exactly an accusation without merit either, at least when it came to personal problems. He could ... He could wait and see how it was going, at least. He could wait until it started to go bad again and anything he did could hardly make things much worse. Which was a wonderfully optimistic plan, but howandever. Right, yes. Fair enough.
"I'll keep out of it," he said, holding up his hands in agreement. "My word on it, Mr Rory. At least unless intervention becomes ... rather more pressingly required. At that point, I'm afraid, all bets are off."
Mick squinted at him for a second, deciding if he objected to that or not, but then after that second he seemed to shrug faintly to himself. "Fair enough," he decided in his turn. "Guess I can't knock you for lookin' out for the bastard." A pause, and then a smile. "Been nice talking with ya, Professor. Nice 'confrontation' we had here. Might try it more often."
Martin blinked a bit, and snorted. "At your service, Mr Rory," he said wryly. "If you ever need to pick a fight with someone, rest assured I will be happy to oblige."
Mick grinned faintly. "Noticed that," he agreed, turning finally to leave. Possibly, hopefully, perhaps even to go and have a less violent conversation with someone who undoubtedly needed it. "See ya around. Oh, and Professor?"
He paused, looking back at Martin, something odd in his expression, and Martin blinked curiously at him. "Yes, Mr Rory?" he asked.
"... Don't want you dead," Mick said at last, with a strange amount of care, looking at Martin head on. "Not just most of the time. Don't want you dead at all."
And oh. Oh. From Mick Rory, that ... Martin did understand what that meant, from a man of Mr Rory's calibre. He understood it very well indeed.
"Nor I you, Mr Rory," he said, meaning it surprisingly fervently. "Nor I you."
Though the mission hadn't exactly been the most successful venture on their part (though, it had to be said, it had still been very far from the least), it was still something of a shock when a so-far silent Mick Rory turned around, entirely unprompted, and picked a battered, shockily smiling Ray Palmer up by the neck and shove him up against the wall. Martin flinched in shock, along with more or less everyone else, though several of them started forwards quite a bit before he managed it. It hardly made sense, that was all. Of all of them, they'd thought Mr Rory had gotten quite attached to Mr Palmer.
Raymond, for his part, grunted in pained dismay, his eyes wide and stunned as his back hit the wall, his hands instinctively locking around Rory's wrist. He struggled, trying to pull back enough to get a question out, to figure out what was going on.
"Mi-Mick, what ...?"
"Don't you ever do that again," Rory growled, very slowly and deliberately. Sara had reached them by this time, had a knife at his throat already, but he ignored that completely. His focus was entirely on the man pinned beneath his hand. "You hear me? You do something that stupid again, I'm kicking you off this ship, I don't care what anyone has to say. Got no use for a man who can't look out for himself. Never did."
... Ah, Martin thought distantly. He caught the echoing realisation on several other faces, Jefferson and Ms Lance most prominently. The newcomer, Mr Tyler, not quite so much. The rest of them, those who had been there, they caught on rather quickly.
It didn't look like Raymond had. Not the same way. His expression went startled and remorseful, a man flinching purely from a threat and a criticism, and he seemed to curl into himself. He stopped fighting, his hands falling slack around Rory's arm. He didn't get it, or only partly. Martin could see that. Raymond took that criticism and the threat behind it in large part at face value. He'd always been inclined to that, their Mr Palmer. It was his own faults he was always fastest to accept, even knowing everyone else's.
"... You stupid son of a bitch," Sara whispered, low and grieving and aggravated into Mick's ear. The man didn't so much as flinch. "You stupid son of a bitch, you think this is the way to handle this?"
"Mr Rory," Captain Hunter started, moving towards him with an expression of pained sympathy and no little guilt on his face. A semi-perpetual guilt, really. He tended towards that as easily as Raymond did. "Sara's right, this isn't ..."
"You got an opinion, Captain," Rory cut him off, turning his head to glare at him. "'Cause I think I already told you I don't give a crap what anyone has to say."
"Yeah?" Sara hissed, bringing the knife higher up under his chin. "You care what anyone does either? 'Cause if you don't let him go in the next two seconds ..."
"Sara!" Raymond cut in, trying to put on a half-smile, taking his hands off Rory's arm to look over at her worriedly. "Sara, it's okay, don't ... It's fine, I ..."
"Shut up, Haircut," Mick growled, ignoring the bead of blood at his throat from Sara's blade in response, and quite abruptly Martin had had enough. So much more than enough, and only more so for knowing exactly what this was. Better perhaps than anyone else in this room. He felt something inside him, a deep, abiding anger, and saw Jefferson glance over at him in startled worry for it. He ignored that. There was enough to be doing without that.
"That," he said, quietly and viciously enough that almost everyone looked at him, "will be quite enough, Mr Rory. I'm sure Mr Palmer more than gets your point. If you'd be kind enough to let him go so that Jefferson can bring him down to the medical bay and get some treatment for those injuries that seem to upset you so much, perhaps you and I might have a word. In private?"
Possibly it was only that it came from such an unexpected quarter, given that Martin wasn't generally prone to wading into other people's arguments when he managed to start enough of his own, but Mick actually paused at that. He let Raymond go and turned towards Martin, shouldering Sara and her knife to one side with frankly a rather suicidal lack of concern. Raymond hastily grabbed her as Mick knocked her into range, trying to keep her from killing a man who'd only a moment ago had him by the neck. At the sight of it, Martin felt his expression solidify, nothing but scathing contempt in spite of a much more complicated internal reaction. Rory raised an eyebrow at that. He seemed to find it darkly, happily amusing.
"Got something to say, Professor?" he asked, baring his teeth in something that might only loosely be called a smile. "What makes you think I'll listen to you any faster than anyone else?"
Martin arched his own eyebrow in return. "I'm sure I can come up with a reason," he said icily. Temper always took him this way. It wasn't healthy, particularly not when faced with an angry, grieving pyromaniac, but he'd never been able to help it, nor particularly inclined to try. He lifted his chin and held Rory's gaze, pointedly refusing to look anywhere else. "Jefferson, Miss Lance, if you could escort Raymond to the medical bay? And everyone else, if you would kindly leave the pair of us alone. Mr Rory and I need to have a discussion."
"Grey, I'm not so sure that's a good idea," Jefferson started worriedly. Rory interrupted him.
"Go on, kid," he said, laconic and sneering and calm. "Didn't you hear the Professor? Me and him gotta have a word together."
"... Martin," Captain Hunter started in his turn, and Martin switched his glare abruptly from Rory to him instead, as he hadn't quite been able to towards Jefferson. Rip shut up, rearing his head back a little in aggravated dismay. Martin decided to feel guilty about that later. For the moment, he simply contented himself with a growled:
"Now, if you all wouldn't mind. Thank you."
Rory laughed, a harsh bark of amusement that did nothing to ease anyone's expressions or concerns, but apparently no one was in the mood to contend with both Rory and Martin in a snarling temper. Perhaps, too, enough of them had enough of an idea what was going on to realise that he was probably the best equipped to handle it. Provided he didn't manage to provoke Rory into breaking his neck or something first, of course, but Martin had never been one to let little things like that stop him. He was far too angry right now, and too deeply, desperately familiar with what Mick was going through, to be bothered worrying.
The team filed out, slowly and stiffly and angrily, and in Raymond's case more than a little bewilderedly, and before long Martin was left alone with only a heartbroken, violently inclined arsonist for company.
Well then. He had asked for it, hadn't he? And likely deserved it too.
"So," Mick said quietly, once the last of them had left, looking at him with that dark, angry amusement on his face. "Whatcha got, Professor? Looks like quite a temper you got going over there."
Martin only looked at him for a minute or so. He had a reason, he wasn't doing it only to be annoying. He needed to breathe for a second. He needed to calm down, needed to throttle the anger back a notch. This would go nowhere fast if he didn't, and he wasn't Leonard Snart, to solve problems between them with a therapeutic and highly dangerous bout of violence. As angry as he was right now, Martin was far from the expert there, and would only harm both of them. He wasn't Leonard Snart. No one was. Therein, naturally, lay the problem.
"... You realise berating him won't make him any more likely to be careful, don't you?" he said at last, moving away from Mick a bit, heading over to prop himself against a bulkhead. He looked back in time to see Mick snarl in disgust, turning away as though he'd been expecting, hoping for something else. Something angry, something cathartic. Something vicious and snarling and mean. Well, all right then. While he might not be Leonard Snart, couldn't offer the same kind of physical catharsis, Martin certainly could provide that. Metaphorically speaking, he knew just exactly where to land the first punch. "Neither will threatening him make him any less likely to die as Leonard did."
He said it with every malice. He said it hard and fast and utterly without mercy, and Mick Rory froze instantly and violently in his tracks. His face, when he looked back at Martin, was wide-eyed and pale, and Martin didn't know if he'd ever seen either such pain or such murder there before. Some bit of him, some part that did vaguely remember caution, quailed slightly at it. As ever, Martin ignored that part, shoved it pointedly to one side.
"You asked me if I had something to say," he went on softly, as Mick turned all the way back towards him in slow, monumentally-building fury. "I do, Mr Rory, I most certainly do. Your anger isn't going to save Raymond. Believe me when I say that your guilt and your grief are going to do nothing but hurt him. What you're doing now, what you are trying to do, it's going to do nothing but cause that man pain. I don't think you want that. If you wanted to hurt him, you wouldn't need to try and save him in the first place."
"... What do you know about it?" Mick rasped. Very quietly, the same sort of quiet Martin had interrupted with earlier. The same sort of fury. "You think you know something, Professor? You think you got a right to talk about it?"
He came closer. Slowly, deliberately, with the threat of violence so very prominently inside of it. He hemmed Martin in against the bulkhead. Martin did nothing save raise his chin once more.
"I think I have a better right than anyone else on this ship," he said, quietly and almost gently now. Softly, because he knew. Better than anyone. He really did. "Not because of what I lost in Leonard, or might stand to lose in Raymond. There are others with far more right to concern there than I. But you, Mr Rory. You, I have a lot in common with. I know what you're doing, I know why, and I know exactly why it isn't going to work. I'd rather spare us that, if I can. You, myself, and Mr Palmer as well. I'd rather spare us a repeat of my mistakes."
Mick stared at him. Almost bewildered, the lethal fury dimmed behind a puzzlement, a confusion for the approach. He shook his head, glaring down at Martin.
"Your mistakes?" he repeated. "You and me, we got nothing in common, old man. Made that pretty clear a few times now. What have your mistakes got to do with it?"
Martin grimaced. That ... was probably fair. No one liked to face their darker sides. No one liked to admit their commonalities with those they thought ... thought were beneath them. And they had tended to think of Mick Rory as less than them, didn't they. They had tended to think the worst. For good reason, sometimes. For very much less so at others.
"... I think we have rather more in common than I would sometimes like to admit," he said finally, and Mick actually leaned back a little in surprise. Martin shook his head, grimaced around the guilt of it and then laid that aside. "Maybe we've more in common than either of us would like. I'm certain I'm not the happiest companion either at times. But ... it was something else that I was referring to, Mr Rory. I think you know that too. There is a certain, rather relevant experience that you and I both have in common."
Mick did know. He knew, he'd known all along. Martin thought he might have wanted it acknowledged, to have allowed this conversation in the first place, but the same time he so very much didn't. Didn't want it out there, didn't want to face it. He'd tried to deflect it, tried to turn it away. But they were too far gone now for Martin to allow that. That flinch in Raymond's eyes, that acceptance of fault. Oh yes, they were much too far gone for that.
"I know what it's like to have lost a partner, Mr Rory," he said softly, while Mick turned his head and tried not to listen. "More than that. I know what it's like to watch them die and know that it should have been you. I know what it's like when it's your plan, your idea, and somehow they're the ones who die for it. I know what it's like to live with that, and I know ... I know what it's like to find someone else afterwards. Another partner, someone good and young and decent and so ... so much better than you. Someone so much better than you deserve, and as prone to ... to self-sacrifice as the first. I know all about that, Mr Rory. I know exactly how much anger and terror and guilt that experience can produce."
Mick shook his head. Leaned all the way back, backed off a step or two. Martin simply followed him. There was no threat to his motion, not as there had been in Mick's, but he rather thought the other man would have preferred if there had. Unfortunately, that wasn't the kind of catharsis Martin was equipped to provide. He could only offer what he himself had experienced, and hope that it would somehow be enough.
"... It's not going to help," he said, fumbling a little with how much he meant it, how awkwardly and painfully he'd learned it. "Trying to drive them away, to put them in a box and keep them safe, it's not going to work. They're not going to let it. They're heroes in their own right, they make choices in their own right, they're not going to stop saving us just because they think we don't like them anymore. Or because we're miserable bastards who don't deserve it, either. The only thing you're going to accomplish like this is to make him doubt how much you care, and that is hardly likely to make him any less reckless. That can't be what you want."
"Who says I want anything?" Mick interrupted abruptly. Angrily again, hiding behind it again. He didn't threaten this time, though. He turned away instead, tried to walk away, turned back with a stubborn lack of emotion on his face. "Who says I care? Maybe I'm just sick and tired of waiting for him to get himself killed. He tries it often enough. Maybe I've just gotten bored of it."
Martin gave him an eloquent look for that. "Yes," he said snippily. "I'm sure boredom is what inspired you to ignore a knife at your throat in order to drive the point home. His life does not in any way mean more to you than your own. Clearly."
"Maybe it shouldn't," Mick snapped back, angrily and genuinely enough that Martin faltered at it. He blinked at the man, and Mick angrily looked away. "It don't mean nothing to him," he carried on, stiff and quiet and mean. "Don't mean anything to him, why should it mean something to me? He was going to let himself die back there, too. That's why I ... Guess we played roulette for it, me and him and Len. Len cheated. Len won. I saved Ray and he saved me, and now Boy Scout in there keeps trying to--"
He cut off, the anger choking him, trying to swallow it back down inside of him. Martin stared at him. That was ... that was somewhat different. That was ... not quite the concern he had expected. But then, their situations had never been wholly analogous. Jefferson had had no part in Ronald's death, had been nowhere in the vicinity of it. Mick and Raymond and Leonard had been just a little bit more complicated.
"... Then," he started, slowly and carefully. "Then perhaps you have as much in common with Raymond as you do with me. Perhaps we have all been spared when by rights we should not have been. Perhaps we must all ... find a way to live with the knowledge of that. Without ... without causing each other any more pain than we can help?"
Spoken as though Martin had any idea how to accomplish that, even still, but they had to start somewhere, didn't they? Martin had hurt Jefferson enough already with his own guilt. It had been Raymond who pointed that out, who'd gotten up the nerve to try. Martin had no wish to see him now on the other side of it, to see him and Mick continue Martin's mistakes. Raymond wouldn't see it that way, necessarily, wouldn't think to apply it to himself, but that was all the more reason to keep it from happening. They were ... they should be past this. They had endured enough and overcome enough to have figured this out by now.
Mick Rory turned to look at him, though. That humour in his face again, that tired and weary sort of amusement. "You gonna tell that to him, too?" he asked quietly. Pointedly. "I'm not the one tryna get killed out there. Maybe I oughta be. Any one of us oughta end up dead, still should be me. He's the one trying, though. You gonna get mad at him too?"
Martin winced. "I don't think he's actively trying to die," he said carefully. "Mr Palmer may be a little laissez faire with his own safety, but I don't think he's suicidal. He simply ... values his own life rather less than those around him, that's all."
Which didn't necessarily sound all that much better now that he said it out loud, but still. There was still a difference between that and actively trying to get killed, and it would have to be good enough to start with.
"So, kinda like you, then," Mick pointed out softly, and he was nearly smiling about it when Martin looked at him. An odd, half-way sort of smile, a crooked thing that looked nearly fond. Because yes, Mick Rory had absolutely no care for the rest of them at all. Most certainly not. Not an inkling of it at all.
"I'm not ..." Martin started, and then had to give up a bit. Working it out, a base calculus of who on board the ship deserved to survive more than who, Martin could hardly deny that he'd rate himself somewhere near the bottom, if not actually at it. He was old, for a start. He'd already had as much of a life as anyone could ask for. And if there was even a suggestion that Jefferson would be served by it ...
"... All right," he agreed, half-smiling a little himself. "So perhaps it might be a better idea to have Jefferson talk to Mr Palmer instead. You and I attempting it would be the blind leading the blind I realise that. And since we do actually want him to come out of this less unfortunate than before ..." He shook his head. "Yes, you have a point. A confrontation might suffice to wake you or I up, Mr Rory, but I think Mr Palmer may require a little more consideration."
Mick raised his eyebrows. "Was that what this was?" he asked mildly. "You figured you'd pick a fight to wake me up?" Martin only looked at him.
"Do you plan to deny you were spoiling for one?" he asked, equally light. "As I said, Mr Rory, you and I do have a few things in common. Sometimes we both require some ... external venting of our emotions before we may ... think rationally about the problem. And while I cannot offer you a physical expression of anger of the kind you might prefer, on a verbal field I am more than capable of trading blows with anyone."
Mick snorted mightily at that. He shook his head, staring at Martin in something like amazement. "Yeah?" he said. "And what would you have done if I had decided on a ... a 'physical expression of anger'?"
Martin shrugged. "I presume I would have woken up sometime rather later with a very large headache and an equally large feeling of annoyed futility." He shook his head at Mick's expression, something between amusement and exasperation. It was a familiar one, that. "You are hardly the worst thing I've ever picked a fight with, Mr Rory. For a start, I'm fairly sure that you do not, in fact, want me dead, at least most of the time, and are therefore unlikely to, say, smash every bone in my face and neck with an axe given to you by Josef Stalin."
Mick blinked at him for that. Opened his mouth to ask about it. Martin waved him hastily away.
"Vandal Savage," he explained, waving one hand dismissively. "The man had a definite dramatic flair, I'll give him that. An excellent line in threats. And to be fair I wasn't exactly in a mood to be cooperative. I would almost congratulate him for having the cold-bloodedness to stick to his planned schedule in the face of it."
Mick stared at him some more. Vaguely incredulous, now, with a certain amount of exasperated despair. "... What is it with me?" he asked blankly. "Why do I always get the mouthy little shits? You, and Haircut, and ... Oughta tie the lot of you up in tape and stash you somewhere for your own good." He snorted faintly. "Maybe the kid'll help me. Jax. Bet you drive that poor bastard up the wall too."
".. Quite probably," Martin admitted. With a soft tone, a bit of a return to their previous topic of conversation. "He puts up with a lot from me, my partner. Far more than he should have to. I suppose it's to his credit that he still stands by me regardless."
It struck home, if more gently than his previous belabourings of the point. Mick sighed heavily at him, a growl of annoyance in his throat, but he nodded after a moment.
"I'll go easy on 'im," he said, holding up a hand rapidly to make sure Martin knew it didn't mean more than it did. "Not sayin' he's my partner or anything, and not saying I care about him either. But yeah, okay. I'll go easy on the little punk the next time he decides to be stupid."
Martin bit his lip hastily. "... Thank you," he managed, after a tiny second. "I'm sure ... I'm Mr Palmer will be very grateful. Might I ... also suggest perhaps apologising for this ..." He trailed off, Mr Rory's expression entirely illustrative of his views on that. "Ah. Perhaps not. Though, you know, it probably would help ...?"
"Don't need no help," Mick growled pointedly. "He'll figure it out or he won't. Got nothing to do with me either way."
... Right, Martin thought. Naturally, yes. Absolutely that was going to work. Maybe he had better have a talk with Raymond himself later on. Or have Jefferson have one, which might well be both wiser and safer in the long run.
"Don't even think about it," Mick said, looking right at him, and Martin twitched upright, trying to affect an unconspiratorial air. He gathered it didn't exactly pass muster. "I mean it, Professor. You ain't exactly got the best track record for meddling, pickin' a fight with me aside. Leave it. We'll sort it out or we won't. That's on us, not on you. Keep yer paws out of it."
Martin ... grimaced faintly. That wasn't exactly an accusation without merit either, at least when it came to personal problems. He could ... He could wait and see how it was going, at least. He could wait until it started to go bad again and anything he did could hardly make things much worse. Which was a wonderfully optimistic plan, but howandever. Right, yes. Fair enough.
"I'll keep out of it," he said, holding up his hands in agreement. "My word on it, Mr Rory. At least unless intervention becomes ... rather more pressingly required. At that point, I'm afraid, all bets are off."
Mick squinted at him for a second, deciding if he objected to that or not, but then after that second he seemed to shrug faintly to himself. "Fair enough," he decided in his turn. "Guess I can't knock you for lookin' out for the bastard." A pause, and then a smile. "Been nice talking with ya, Professor. Nice 'confrontation' we had here. Might try it more often."
Martin blinked a bit, and snorted. "At your service, Mr Rory," he said wryly. "If you ever need to pick a fight with someone, rest assured I will be happy to oblige."
Mick grinned faintly. "Noticed that," he agreed, turning finally to leave. Possibly, hopefully, perhaps even to go and have a less violent conversation with someone who undoubtedly needed it. "See ya around. Oh, and Professor?"
He paused, looking back at Martin, something odd in his expression, and Martin blinked curiously at him. "Yes, Mr Rory?" he asked.
"... Don't want you dead," Mick said at last, with a strange amount of care, looking at Martin head on. "Not just most of the time. Don't want you dead at all."
And oh. Oh. From Mick Rory, that ... Martin did understand what that meant, from a man of Mr Rory's calibre. He understood it very well indeed.
"Nor I you, Mr Rory," he said, meaning it surprisingly fervently. "Nor I you."
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