starlaboratories | {When everything is burnt to ash, rise like a phoenix from the rubble

{When everything is burnt to ash, rise like a phoenix from the rubble

[This is Becky Rory. She's a DCtv cast OC. Yeah, that Rory. Mick's kid sister. What info I have available on here is here, but basically she's a scrapper and has issues with assholes, authority, and fire. Until she settles, her stuff will likely be smacked behind a cut-tag because the Rory family history ain't exactly pretty. Don't engage if any of my warning labels could squick you if it came up in a thread, plz.]

The thing about waking up in a lab somewhere when the last thing she remembered was all ash, flame, and smoke, is that she never really expected to wake up at all. And that alone was terrifying. The fact that the room she was in was full of screens and monitors and various strange, foreign equipment that looks like something out of a James Cameron movie just made it about twenty times worse.

The petite blonde, who seemed covered from head to toe in soot, with singed jean shorts and a ripped white tank top that with frayed edges pushes herself slowly to her feet to get a better look around the place. She has no idea where she is, or how she got here, but she's determined to find some answers.

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She spins on her heel and stares at the stranger addressing her by an all-too personal nickname. Well, that's instantly got her hackles raised, eyes scanning anything nearby she could use as a weapon, or exits she could dart to if she needed. "Who told you you're allowed to call me that?" She demands, her voice a sharp whip-snap in the air between them. She's having none of your shit, crazy man.

His expression shifts into something softer, something strained. So long without her. Blaming himself for her death.

"Because it's me Becks. It's Mickey." And if his voice is rough with emotion, no one else will know save his partner in the corridor. Keeping watch while he talks to his baby sister.

"It's me."

"Bullshit." She's not about to believe that, least of all just because he says so. He looks nothing like her brother. Her arms fold over her chest, challenging him. "Prove it." Mostly, she's buying time. She just needs to figure out the best way to dodge around him and out that door.

Of course he doesn't look like her brother.
It's been more than thirty years.

"Lizzie's family. They were your safe place when the old man had too much to drink and was beating on anyone that got too close." A pause as he tries to remember. "You used to read to me because the words would get all jumbled in my head."

Her tongue presses against the inside of her cheek as she considers it. Anyone might have been able to figure out the Johnsons. But the other part...

No.

She's not letting herself fall for this. It's a trap, somehow, she's sure of it. "Yeah, well--" She casually steps her way around the desk in the corner. Something between them made her feel a little safer, even if she can tell just by looking at him that little desk wouldn't stop him if he really wanted to do something.

"That's not good enough." She shrugs. She at least closer to the door now.

Like he can't see what she's got in mind.
Mick can still read his baby sister. A vague smirk as he watches her edge towards the door, knowing his partner isn't far. "So then ask me something, Becks. Something only your brother would know."

She hesitates, almost frozen at the question, because now that she's on the spot, it's nearly impossible to think of what she could ask that would prove it. "My sixth birthday. What'd'ju get me?" No way a fake could know something like that, right?

"I made you a little wooden bird Spent most of my nights carving it, sneaking into the barn early to sand it down before the old man got up. He would've whipped me good for getting into his tools. But you were so happy to have it."

Because she was his fierce baby sister. Mick would have done anything for her.

Becky stands, rooted to the spot as he recounts that little story. Mick had always been good with working with his hands, and he'd made her the bird because of her obsession with the song Freebird. She sang it all the time when she was little, and talked often about wishing she could be a bird and fly far, far away from home.

She still can't really believe it, that this giant mountain of a man is her brother. There's a swirl of confusion as she tries to make all of this make sense. But she can't, because nothing is adding up.

"How are you...how can you be Mickey?"

She wanted to fly away and Mick would have given anything at all to be able to give that to her. To escape the farm, their family, the endless stream of crap that was their lives.

"It's been no time for you. Been more than thirty years for me Becks. Time and space.. fold in a little weird around here." And of all the people they could grab, they brought in Mick's little sister.

"Thirty ye..." She trails off, mid-word, frowning, confused. "That doesn't make sense." She shakes her head a little. None of this does. She steps back a little until her back hits the wall and she slides down to the floor in a heap. None of it makes sense. Nothing adds up. It all just sounds so crazy.

Maybe that's it.
Maybe by some utterly insane chance, she lived and now she's lost her entire mind to some over-the-top sci-fi delusion in her head.

Becky isn't sure. But nothing else makes any more sense than that, so why not that?

"Time travel doesn't make sense," he promises. And Mick moves closer because all he wants to do is wrap his hands aroud hers, draw his baby sister into his arms and hold her.

"Becks. It's me. It's Mickey. I'm here, I'm real. I promise."

Knees drawn up to her chest, she rests her chin on top of them, arms folded around her legs, staring up at him. "But I died... didn't I? H-how...?" Is this possible. Is she here. Does she not have any signs of the damage, besides her clothes being singed and soot everywhere.

He can't look away, even if hearing her ask that is like a lance to the chest, piercing him through with guilt and grief. Tearing open scars that he had thought long healed over, leaving him raw and bloody.

"Yeah. Yeah you did. It was.. it was me. My fault. It was my fault Becks. My fault."

"What do you mean?!" She yells at him, choking on a sob. Maybe everything is catching starring to catch up, because her chest is tight and she feels a little like the room is spinning.

Mick looks down at his hands. Heavy and covered with scars. So much damn blood on them.

"The fire that night." His eyes close. "It was my fault. It got away from me and I didn't.. I didn't mean for it to happen. I was just a dumb kid."

"No," she sobs, burying her face in the fold of her arms across her knees. She can't accept that. It was a freak accident. Faulty wiring her old man fucked up. Something. Anything that was this.

Mick has never wished to trade places with anyone more than in this moment. To trade his life for Becky's. To spare his sister all of this. But he can't. Sara had taught him that much. He had to keep going forward. Be better. Try.

That doesn't stop the crushing pain, the way his heart is shattering into a million pieces, guilt swallowing him whole.

He can't touch her.
Doesn't dare.
He lost that right a long time ago.

But he also doesn't run.

She can't reconcile it-- the overprotective nature of the brother she remembers and him, accident or not, being the reason she can still taste smoke and ash on the back of tongue. Like everything else about these last few minutes, none of it makes sense.

She stays where she is, sobbing into the tops of her knees for a long while. But eventually, the sobs slow and the tears dry and she looks up at him again. There's this raw guilt painted across his features that's painful to even look at. But the longer she stares, the more she can see it, those little traces of who he was when she knew him still etched into the features of this man she doesn't recognize. "...Mickey...?" she questions cautiously, pushing herself to her feet again.

And if a few tears track silently down his face while his baby sister sobs, Mick won't even wipe them away. He's frozen. Rooted to the spot.

All your fault.
All your fault.
She loved you.
You killed her.

Monster
Monster
Monster

No. He deserves every last damn minute of this. For every time he mentioned the fire like it didn't matter, like he didn't care. Like he was happy his bastard old man and useless mother died. Thinking about that and not the innocent lives he took because he was too fucking slow. Too enamored with the flames to do anything about it.

His jaw works for a moment. Swallowing beyond the lump in his throat. In his chest.

"Yeah Becks. Yeah it's me."

She takes half a step toward him, and then a full step. And the next thing she knows, she s darting over to him, throwing her arms around his neck, clinging tightly to him as more tears start to fall again.

His fault.
The guilt is going to eat him alive.

In fact he's so lost in it that he barely registers Becks throwing her arms around him. Sobbing into his chest. His baby sister. He closes his eyes as his arms fold around her. Lowering his head to breathe in the smell of ash and smoke and her favorite shampoo beneath all of that.

She deserved so much better.
So much.

"'m sorry Becks. 'm so so goddamn sorry."

She just holds onto him until her tears fade away again. She pulls back slowly and swipes both hands under her eyes. Becky has no idea what to say, or what to make of anything happening right now. But she wishes she knew something, anything she could do to help melt away all that guilt on her big brother's face.

Lenny is good with words.
Sara is good with words.

Mick? He doesn't have the first clue what to say to her. She loved him and he was the one responsible for her death. Before she even really got a chance to live.

"I'll get you someplace safe. Somehow."

A true Rory trait: How do words and emotions? Becky isn't any more sure about it than Mickey. "With you." She says, almost instantly, an echo of the little girl clinging to her big brother when Dad got scary. "I'm safest with you."

Sure. He'd just admitted that he was, more or less, the reason she died. But she didn't know that until this moment. She still has a hard time thinking of him as a killer. Her kiler. It doesn't fit her opinion of him, really.

Something they learned well as children. Words and emotions weren't really dealt with in that farmhouse. He rests a hand in her hair, keeping her close when what he should be doing is getting her somewhere safe, somewhere far from him.

"No. No you aren't. You.. Becks I killed you. The fire was my fault. But me and Lenny.. we can take you somewhere else. You can be a free bird like you always wanted."

She leans into him, despite everything that says she should be afraid, all she sees is her big brother. Much bigger than he's supposed to be, but whatever.

"Killed implies murder, which implies intent," she recites at him. "You didn't murder anyone if it was an accident." That was how she would have to separate it, and pin it down, to not cross those wires. She refuses to be afraid of the only family she even has now.

There's a beat.
And a frown.
And she pulls back a little.

"Who's Lenny?"

Of course she's gonna get into details like that and it makes his chest ache. A small smile as he tucks her hair behind her ear. "My partner. My whole damn world. Met him in juvie after the fire and never looked back."

That's right Becky, not only did your brother cause the fire that killed you, he's in love with a guy.

"Total pain in the ass, but you'd like him."

"Partner?" She repeats, squinting up at him. "What's that mean?" The word holds a weight when he says it that she can't quite grasp. She wants to understand, though, which is why she presses.

"Sounds like someone else I know." her lips curl up in a smart-mouth little smirk.

Mick has missed her. Missed the questions, missed that toss of her hair, the way she smirks up at him like she can see right through him. A jerk of his head back towards the corridor where Snart is no doubt lurking.
"It means he's a drama queen and a total pain in my ass."

His smile is small, still wrestling with his grief and his guilt over the entire thing. "But I love him."

She leans around him a little to get a peek into the hallway. "Hey, Mr. Dramaqueen." She calls out behind him, trying to get a rise out of the other man. Either he says something too quietly for her to catch, or he's stubbornly not reacting for the sake of not being called out by a kid. Either way, she'll meet him properly soon enough. Especially if he's so important to Mick.

Her head whips back around at her brother's words. "Love?" Big words from a guy who was never great at them. There's a curiosity there, and some amusement, but nothing like an out-right judgment. Sure, it might be weird, and definitely not at all what she would have pictured for Mick, by any means, but it didn't have to be a bad thing, right?

Mick's ears are far more attuned to those mutters and he just shakes his head fondly. They'll meet soon. Becks was his whole world growing up, just like Lisa had been to Leonard.

A roll of his shoulder, eyes cutting away for a moment because it was still an awkward thing to admit to anyone who wasn't his partner. "Yeah. Lenny's been my rock since juvie. Since.." since the fire. Since he'd lost everything.

"Oh." she blinks. "Wow..." With Mick clearly being so much older, and so much time having passed for him...that's a totally long time for him to have with one person. "Well-- good, then." She wasn't sure what else to say, really.

"Think you can take me somewhere with a shower and new clothes?" She asks, mostly to shift the subject a little. And she could really do with them, too.

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{When everything is burnt to ash, rise like a phoenix from the rubble

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