Series: Part 1 of In The Time Of Our Lives

This Is Where The Chapter Ends
One-shot

They moved forward, same as they always had. Rip left on a journey of his own that was as much of a goodbye as it wasn't. Dhark went back to his time. They said tense goodbyes to a past version of Snart—one they couldn't fathom would grow into the one they knew—and Mick dropped him off. Destinies and timelines and Sara rejoined them on the bridge, staring at the little cliques that had formed and at Mick sitting on his own with a beer in his hand. They were separate, she realized, drifted apart and closing ranks when they were supposed to work together.

"We're going to be a better team," she promised, face determined, "a stronger team."

They all stared at her, surprised by the sudden outburst, but Mick was the one that gave a quiet snort. She didn't think she could blame him for the disbelief. They'd all made mistakes that helped to get them where they were. Things they should have done differently.

"We are," she said, firm, "and it's about damn time we started acting like it."

They got the dinosaurs back to their own time with a complicated trip that made sure the asteroid hit when it should have. Nate almost got eaten. Amaya kept making friends with dinosaurs.

They caught Hitler plotting an escape to God-knows-where the day he was supposed to have died. Mick took the gun from Sara's hand and gave her an understanding look. He was the one that staged it, quiet and methodical in a way they hadn't thought he could be, and she approached him as he washed his hands clean later.

"You didn't have to-"

"Didn't do it for you," he said gruffly, but she thought it was half a lie. "I don't like Nazis."

"None of us do."

His lips quirked up in a sad smile. "Snart was Jewish."

It was on the tip of her tongue to remind him that Stein was too, but they both knew the professor never would have had the stomach to do what Mick did. She could see his own hands shaking as he dried them off and wondered if he'd had the stomach for it, himself.

"I saw him eat bacon before," she said instead.

Mick barked out a laugh. "I never said he was a good Jew."

"How are you doing?" Amaya asked softly one night as they sat around the dinner table. "Your sister..."

Sara pulled in a breath and took a minute to think before she answered, "I'm okay." The words came softly, but they felt honest. She'd never get over losing Laurel, but she'd made her peace as much as she ever would. "And who knows? Us Lances don't seem to stay dead," she joked with a watery laugh.

"You could have brought her back with the spear," Ray said.

"We all could have brought people back," she reminded him. Hers weren't the only eyes that slid towards Mick for a moment. "We've all lost people, but there's some stuff you can't change."

"They wouldn't be the same," Nate agreed at a whisper as his fingers brushed against the spot his dog tags used to hang.

Amaya reached over and squeezed his hand. "We did the right thing," she told them all. "We can still remember them, though."

They did. Sara talked about Laurel that night, fork traded out for scotch as they lingered at the table. She told stories about their lives before the Gambit, when their lives had been easier and before death and resurrection forced its way in.

"I made a fool of myself," Ray confessed when he told them how he met Anna. "I still can't believe she went out with me again."

"How did you and Snart meet?" Nate asked Mick later, after the conversation lulled and they were all feeling the warmth the scotch had spread through their bodies.

Mick stiffened and shook his head. "Not tonight," he said, voice rough.

"Okay." Nate gave him a small smile. "Whenever you're ready."

"What are you doing?" Nate asked one day when he and Ray walked into the cargo bay to find Mick bent over his gun.

"It caught a bullet," Mick grumbled, frowning as he grabbed the soldering tool. "Took out the temp cap." Without it, the whole thing would burn up and probably take him along with it.

"You want me to look at it?" Ray offered. "I can fix it."

"I've got it."

"The circuitry-"

"Snart made sure I learned every inch of this thing," he said and nodded towards the case that held his partner's old cold gun. "Who do you think fixed that thing? I know what I'm doing."

Ray's cheeks went pink, somewhere between embarrassed and guilty. Nate put a hand on his shoulder. "You want us to grab you anything?"

"A beer."

They split a six-pack and shared the cargo bay as Mick repaired on his gun, Ray worked on his suit, and Nate peeked over shoulders to learn about the mechanics.

The talks became habit, people jumping forward with stories once a week as they crowded around the table. Sometimes, they had alcohol to push their voices on. Other times, they were stone cold sober and talking just to get something off their chest.

Mick abandoned his beer and traded it out for an old Bic lighter one night. He flicked it over and over, but fire never sparked and Sara wondered if it was more out of nerves than a need for the flame. "I knew Snart for thirty years," he muttered eventually.

"That long?" Jax asked, surprised.

Mick hummed. "He was fourteen," he said and snorted. "Looked like he was twelve."

Sara smiled, remembering the story Snart had told her back when they were freezing, but she kept her mouth shut. It was the first time Mick had talked about him, the first time any of them had properly spoken about the thief. They'd refrained with quiet looks, hesitant to mention anything that might bring up bad memories for Mick. If he was ready to talk about it, they were ready to listen, same as they had with everyone else.

"Where'd you meet?" Amaya asked, a soft encouragement to keep going.

"Juvie. He took the fall for a job his old man screwed up. Guards shoved him in with me." He chuckled fondly. "Told him to keep his head down. Didn't. Took him an hour before he pissed someone off and almost got himself shivved."

"You saved him," Sara murmured.

Mick nodded. "Beat 'em back and told him to stick close the rest of his sentence." His eyes went sad and he put down the lighter so he could rub his hand over his face. "He just wanted to get back to his sister," he mumbled, but they all felt the weight behind it.

Snart wasn't going home to his sister now. He never was.

They stayed silent the rest of the night, but Jax passed around a bottle in quiet memory.

"Is this yours?" Nate asked Sara. "Amaya said it's not hers."

Sara glanced over and smiled sadly at the ring in Nate's hand. "It was Snart's."

Nate looked down at it, wide-eyed and a little panicked. "Oh. It was... I mean, it was on the floor."

"He gave it to Mick," Ray said as he looked up from the readings he was going over. "Before he... I think Mick keeps it on him."

Nate closed his hand around it. "I'll give it back to him."

"I think he's in the engine room," Ray offered. "Jax asked for some help with the cooling unit."

Nate found him down there, Henley draped over a railing as he worked in his wife beater. His burn scars stood out, marring his arms and shoulders, and Nate found himself staring for a moment. He'd never seen them properly before.

"You need something, Pretty?" Mick asked, looking annoyed as he grabbed a screwdriver.

"I... Yeah. I found this. Ray said it was yours," he stammered as he held out the ring.

Mick looked startled, free hand moving to his chest, and swore. "The chain broke," he muttered to himself before he took it. "Thanks."

"It's funny," he said, awkward, as he watched Mick drag his thumb over the ring's pattern. "I thought it was a wedding ring when I first saw it."

"It was," Mick mumbled with a weight that made Nate's breath stop and Jax's eyes go wide.

"You two were..." Jax trailed off, hand waving vaguely.

Mick nodded and bit his lip.

They didn't ask any more questions, but Nate asked Sara later if they'd known. Her eyes went wide, face guilty, and she whispered that they didn't before she rushed out of the room.

Mick told them about it that night after Stein finished his story about a disastrous Thanksgiving with Clarissa's family. He kept the ring in his hand, rolling it between his fingers as he talked about Snart grabbing the pair in the middle of a heist that had gone bad and holding onto them until Snart got shot and proposed in a mess of half-drunken mumbles as Mick fished the slug from his leg.

"He was the biggest drama queen," Mick snorted. "Rings were ugly as shit, but he liked that gaudy crap."

"I would have expected him to do something more controlled if he was going to propose," Jax admitted with a laugh.

"Didn't think he wanted to. We weren't monogamous," he said and cast a knowing look at Sara that made her stiffen. "Weren't after we tied the knot either."

"You weren't?"

"Gave each other veto power, but I only used it when he started flirting with Harley."

"Harley Quinn?" Jax sputtered.

Mick smirked. "That's why I vetoed it."

Sara laughed softly, wringing her hands under the table until Mick leaned over and whispered, "I didn't veto you. We're cool."

She relaxed and started laughing in earnest when Mick added that she probably would have liked Snart and his kilts.

"His what?"

They stopped in 2012 to handle an aberration and Mick slipped away with Amaya by his side. She followed him, a quiet support, and didn't ask where they were going until he'd stopped around the corner from a dilapidated clinic on the edge of Hub City.

"I'm not going in," he told her when she kept walking.

"Why are we here?" she asked, but answered her own question when she saw Leonard Snart walk out. She reached for Mick's hand. "Do you want to talk to him?"

He shook his head. "I'm in there," he said with a short nod towards the building. "Len... He screwed up the plans on a job. Fire started and I got distracted."

"Your burns..."

He hummed, eyes stuck on Snart as he stumbled, hands gripping the brick until he tumbled to the ground. He was crying, Mick realized with a jolt. Completely losing it on a public street and not caring about the looks being thrown his way. Everything clicked into place like a punch to the gut. "He blamed himself," he said. "I thought he left because I picked the fire over him." His eyes burned.

"Mick?"

"I lost two years with him because he thought I was mad. I wasn't."

Amaya hugged him and it wasn't until she brushed her hand over his cheek that he realized he was crying.

He skipped dinner that night, locked away in the room that was Snart's before it was his, because he couldn't deal with someone else living there.

No one bothered him.

"Are you okay?" Sara asked the next day when she sat next to him, staring out at a time that wasn't theirs.

He let out a shaky breath and raised his beer to his lips like it was answer enough.

She nodded and laid her hand on his knee, quiet until Stein came over. "Yeah?"

The professor cleared his throat, nervous and awkward. He was the only one Mick was still on uneven ground with as the team came back together. Disagreements and egos and too many things for Mick to give a crap about. He didn't need them to all be friends. Some days, he wasn't even sure if he was staying.

"Amaya made dinner," Stein said, hands flailing without something to do. He shoved them in his pockets. "It's a nice night. Raymond and Nate dragged back a few couches they found at a junk yard."

Sara frowned. "Okay?"

Stein glanced at Mick and offered a smile like it was supposed to be a peace offering. "We thought we could make a bonfire. You seem to be the expert."

Mick snorted. "Gonna trust the pyro with the lighter fluid?"

"Yes," the professor said after a second of hesitation. "I believe Jefferson had Gideon supply the necessary ingredients for s'mores."

He could have said no, could have contented himself with beers and time alone while the team did whatever the hell they wanted to do, but he thought of a room that was his and wasn't at the same time and of the deafening silence it offered. Something tightened in his chest. He couldn't sit there with ghosts for company again.

"They better not be leather," he said as he stood. "Smells like crap when it burns."

The End