A/N: Written for Day 2 of dctvgen's Gen Valentine's event over on tumblr and the prompt "domestic". Spoilers up to S4 overall for characters. Warning for canonical character death mentioned and some grief/mourning included.
This started out as a 'Legends do their favourite (or least hated) chores' fic but ended up about 80% angst and maybe 20% sort of good feels. Hope it's enjoyed anyhow. :) Two more chapters to be posted across the next week. Thanks to unwittingcatalyst for betareading.
For Ray, most of his best ideas come to him when he does the dishes. There's something about the repetitiveness that sets him at ease, allows his mind to relax as he scrubs the brush on a pan or wipes a cloth over a plate. Everything is okay when you're doing the dishes. The task has an order to it, so the world feels like it has an order to it.
Washing dishes gave him his first feeling of responsibility when his parents divorced. At the time he was sure it was all about needing to step up, to help as much as humanly possible so his mom wasn't so stressed by the changes going on. He wanted to be better. He didn't see how much it was he didn't want to be a burden like he'd felt he might be, how much it was a comfort to him as their lives changed drastically.
As he got older, and busier, he'd realized it made more sense to pay others to do his chores – it was more efficient. Paying other people to do what they were good at, better than him at, made sense too. He paid well above average because he could and because he valued what they were doing for him, freeing up his time for other things he was better at. But he always asked them to leave the dishes for him to do.
He needed something for himself, a reminder of his life before he became a billionaire. It hadn't felt real at times, this other person the media and his employees saw when they looked at him. He didn't feel different, still himself, but with more money, more possibilities opened up in front of him. Somehow he knew better who he was when his hands were warmed by the water and his mind whirling in the background, silently connecting the dots until it reached a new conclusion.
Things have changed so much since then. No real amount of money in his name. His name not even his anymore when he goes back to his 'real life' – Ray Palmer is still dead according to the paperwork. He's found a different path now, but he still needs something to stay the same. Even with the chore-wheel, the equitable division of tasks that doesn't entirely work out in practice, Ray still looks forward to doing the dishes. That's the task the others tend to 'forget' to do more often than not and he is pretty sure he knows why. Honestly, he's grateful for it. Times change; this feeling he has, as he steeps his thoughts in a sinkful of crockery and cutlery, doesn't. It isn't just the water that warms him through.
For the longest time, Zari ignores Ray's chore-wheel. It's not that she doesn't appreciate organization, it's just tedious being told what to do, as if she can't organize herself. They're adults, they'll deal with everything in their own time. Except some of them apparently don't. Maybe they do need help, but she resists because...reasons. She dismisses it as nothing. A quirk of Ray's that is an irritation despite his genuine desire to be helpful that starts to become endearing.
She doesn't like to think about how she can't let this place be somewhere she cares about. This place that's too shiny and new, never truly run down. The cleaner and tidier it is, the starker the difference. She's lived in a lot of places. A lot of would-be homes. Shelters from the storm of angry ARGUS agents forever on their tail.
She's left a lot of places behind. Places that were ramshackle, falling apart, barely possible to inhabit, yet they made it work. No one ever had much. Possessions got abandoned because your life and your freedom was often the only important thing you could take with you in a hurry – that was what you fought for. She still remembers each space she once called hers, can picture the trinkets she gave up when they ran – most only little things she could do without. A good proportion were stolen from other people's lives. Sneaking those away from their owners felt like taking back part of the lives they were denied. Others were gifts, carefully carved or constructed, welded or woven – they were masterpieces of care and creativity. Unique, but they rarely got to keep those for any length of time. Those she missed the most. Those she missed more because as time went on she had nothing left of the people they left behind too.
Her mother taught her and Behrad to sew, so they could make do and mend, stretch their clothes out longer. What Zari liked best about that skill was she could make what they needed. She'd designed a roll-up pack. Everything she owned, everything she didn't want to do without, had a spot. She'd roll it out, and it made wherever she was hers. Her home was in it and she could swipe it back in an instant. ARGUS didn't get to take it away from her after that. A short-lived victory. ARGUS simply took other things from her.
Now she's living on the Waverider and she could have literally anything she wants. All it requires is the notion, a few words spoken to Gideon and a quick walk to collect what's produced. It doesn't make her feel better though, to be able to have anything. Because it's anything except what she really wants – to change time, to bring them back. She sleeps there, eats there, is there with the Legends but she doesn't get past unrolling her pack, metaphorically.
Until Gideon runs her through her own simulator, tearing the people and the ship away from her, over and over again. Every inch of those easy comforts burned away with the whole team. After that, she recognizes it can be home, no matter how new and shiny it is. It's the people who make it home, they are what she connects to, but she allows herself to care more about the place too. There's the lingering fear it will be taken away from her, but it's hers while she's here.
It's hers. Finally, she feels like she can belong here. The fight is out there but it isn't immediate anymore. So she takes pride in fixing the ship and even finds it satisfying to dust the tech, ensuring it's left in good working order for the next person. For her, at least for a while, because she gets to have this. She gets to be safe, to have space to breathe.
Mick pays absolutely no attention to Haircut's paltry chore-wheel. Not when he first comes aboard. It's pointless. It's more rules he has no interest in. But the wheel of fate spins. Mick goes away, another choice he didn't get to make. Enter Chronos, till he's shaken out of that illusion, till he finds his core – the thing he's grasped so tightly inside to stop it slipping away.
When he comes back to the ship he still doesn't pay much attention to Ray's chore-wheel. He doesn't mindlessly obey, had enough of that for a lifetime or five, but it's there pinned to the wall. A tiny meaningless detail that strangely reassures him. He's really here. He's back.
After Len...the wheel sits untended. Frozen in time. Ray's diligently printed script is mocking him with the full complement of names. Leonard, it says. Another frigging reminder of how his partner found another place for himself amongst these do-gooders. Got himself killed. Just so they could do whatever they want to, not that he doesn't appreciate freewill. The cost is what is getting to him. Of all the things Len stole, stealing away himself was the quickest, the hardest, the most harrowing because what he took was priceless and irreplaceable. But all Mick knows right away in the anger and the emptiness, the words come much, much later. The wheel isn't updated until Nate joins them. Replaced, completely new design. Less of reminder, Haircut's smart in a lot of ways.
Mick still doesn't do what the wheel says, probably won't ever. Sometimes he cooks. Sometimes he cleans. What he likes the best is what he chooses to do. Ray might think the chore-wheel is a joke to him, like it was to some of the others. Ray likes his rules, his routine. Mick doesn't, he has a flow.
These days, he writes until the words stick in his throat and then he eats and then he has to do something else, like those plate cleaners. He feels itchy at the thought of being told to do it, too many bad memories of being forced to do things that were too hard at the time and no help. Too many memories of doing without thinking. Now he does what he needs to, what he wants to, when he wants to. He contributes on his terms and it's clearly good enough. There's a disapproving look here and there, but they don't shout anymore, they don't kick him off the ship. They accept what he can give.
Kendra is pretty used to setting up shop, making a new place her home. She remembers doing it in dozens of lifetimes, sometimes dozens in one lifetime. She's learned to be prepared. Every day she remembers more, the simplest things bringing flashbacks to a life a decade ago, a century ago. The curve of a piece of furniture in a film, the fit of the historical costume she has to wear as she smooths the fabric down, the smell that hits her nostrils as they walk past a restaurant in another time period. Her head is full of too many memories to consciously recall at once. They surface in moments, small remembrances of another person she once was.
What she cherishes here and now is the new. The things she hasn't done before. She tries to pick new skills to learn. Sometimes she remembers halfway through - the muscles finding it all too easy. Oh, she's done this before...when she was Susanna, when she was Lauren, when she was Vic. It's hard to find something to surprise herself, something she isn't already good at from years of experience that bubbles up once she begins.
She likes almost anything that she hasn't done before. The best bets are things that didn't even exist in any of her other lives. New books are a blessing. There's no point trying the classics. Gideon gives her recommendations and the occasional book from the future to supplement her favorites. Cisco also keeps her well-stocked with books from other universes, including so many from Earth-42 where her favorite author isn't dead like here.
New recipes are a joy to her. Fusion food a fresh take she adores because the chances are so incredibly low she's made any of it, tasted any of it, quite like that anyway. She bakes up a storm between missions, letting the sense memory settle in. Mixing dough is a well-known process, but that is a comfort when she knows the results will be something else. What she's looking for every time is a memory kept to this life. A new taste, like a new line read, a new page in her story that's for her alone.
He watches them.
Their steps creeping across the deck in a crisis.
Their casual route from A to B, the ease of the day to day.
Their lazy sprawl, a lack of momentum, on rainy days. Paused in positions: drinking, eating, grinning. Growing into themselves as they relax.
He watches them.
He watches himself.
A smirk follows a passive mask.
A thoughtful stare at the ceiling, alone, facial expressions less considered then.
A smile just for himself in the bathroom as he hums a tune, skimming around the edge of the tub with the shower head to rinse it off. Seeing the job through to the end. A better time shared unknowingly with himself: the observer he has become, observing what he took from the time he had.
It happens, is happening, will happen. It isn't over like he thought it would be.
He sees every day of their lives. He sees them like ghosts wandering the ship. Their lives condensing down for him. Seeing every similar movement in the way they do what they always do. Echoes of every version of his team, his friends, his family, superimposed. Traces of the years on their faces, marks of achievement, resistance.
Watching the blur of their many versions reach for the same mug they always do. A comfort in knowing there is a plan, the plan goes off without a hitch, the plan is there for the future.
They live. They live in the small moments as much as the large ones.
The small moments multiply, the small moments solidify into clearer than ever pictures.
The clack of Mick at his typewriter counting out every word.
The graceful swish of Sara's staff as she practices her stances in the cargo bay.
The rhythm Ray has as he measures with precision the ingredients for his morning coffee and adds them with a flourish he can never resist, a well-worn motion.
It washes over him in every moment, the infinite slices of their lives simply witnessed.
No strings on him. No strings on them. He watches, the way it was meant to be.