The first part can be placed anywhere between 5x05 and 5x09 'What We Leave Behind'. The last can be placed shortly before 7x12 'Emerald Archer'. This would be why Rory didn't pick up Team Arrow's calls in that episode. Everything else is in between 5x12 and 7x12.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own 'Arrow' or any of the characters therein.
WORD COUNT: 2825
Sometimes, Rory Regan still felt a bit like an outsider on the team. Oliver, Felicity, and John had been doing this together for years, and while Curtis was still considered one of the 'newbies' like him, he'd been helping the team on a part-time techie basis for a year before committing himself to the cause full-time, which gave him a much stronger connection to them; at times, it felt like he was the only one of the rookies that Oliver was willing to take any sort of advice from. And Rene and Evelyn, although they were new to the team, had been born and raised in this city, and had voluntarily jumped into the vigilante lifestyle, going solo for months before being recruited.
And Rory? Rory was the guy who grew up in a small town that, while it had its fair share of problems, was considerably more peaceful than Star City. The guy who had been living a perfectly normal life, and would have continued doing so, until a bomb fell out of the sky and wiped out everything and everyone but him. The guy who only survived because his father gave up the one thing that he could use to save himself and instead saved Rory with it.
And yes, Rory was aware that some of the others had similar 'origin stories', as Curtis put it, but when you put him next to the others, even Felicity, Rory still couldn't help but feel that he was the odd one out.
One time he felt this way was when, during one training session, the others had somehow gotten into a 'compare the scar' pseudo-competition. Oliver had the others all beat, hands down, but John and Rene had both been in the military, and a life of vigilantism had added a few more to all of them. Curtis complained about how hard it was to hide the wound on his back from Tobias Church's throwing knife – and the scar it left behind – from his husband, and even Felicity had proudly tugged her shirt collar to the side to show off the scar from that time she took a bullet for Sara Lance, the original Canary.
Rory had taken dozens of bullets for all of them in the past week alone, but the Rags had ensured that they never left a mark on him. The closest thing he had was a faint white line on the side of his left wrist, the worst of where his friend's pet rabbit had scratched him when he was ten (the rest of the long scratch hadn't even been deep enough to leave a scar).
The others had mostly been polite enough to try and hide how unimpressive that was when he reluctantly told them (Rene had rolled his eyes before he'd caught Evelyn's glare), and Felicity had winced in sympathy before trying to point out the scar on the inside of her mouth from a wisdom tooth extraction gone somewhat awry.
It was funny, really, how three months of vigilantism hadn't left a single scar on his body, yet it was only after he left Team Arrow that they started piling up.
The first was the one that alerted him to the fact that something was very wrong with his Rags, even beyond what he'd already known. To be fair, the warning signs had been there for a while, but he hadn't grasped them until after the fact. While he was once able to go almost a week with no sleep (something he'd been thankful for, as nightmares of Genesis Day plagued him more often than not), now he could barely stay awake after twelve hours. He'd thought it was just a side-effect of very suddenly losing the energy boost the Rags had given him.
He'd been right, but he'd had no idea just how right he'd been.
Not long after he'd left Star City, he'd gotten an email from Felicity. Apparently, Team Arrow knew a professional exorcist, demonologist, and… master of the dark arts? Whatever he was, he had provided them with the names of some magical artifact experts to forward on to Rory. Hopefully, one of them could help Rory figure out what the hell was going on with the Rags, and if (or, hopefully, how) he could fix the problem.
Unfortunately, one of them happened to live deep in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, Rory was actually a pretty decent outdoorsman, thanks to his dad. He was by no means a hunter, but he could read a map, pitch a tent, build a fire, and take care of himself in the woods without any of the amateurish mistakes that might lead to getting lost, coming down with hypothermia, or accidentally attracting a bear to his tent.
So, he'd loaded himself up with camping equipment and headed out there. The trip would take long enough that he would have to stop for the night, so about an hour before sunset, Rory stopped and found a spot to set up his small tent and a fire.
It was then that disaster struck.
He'd just gotten the fire really going, and when he got up to grab something out of his food pack, he accidentally knocked over the bag that he'd kept the Rags in.
Rory had the habit of taking the Rags out and just staring at them, as if the answer would just suddenly come to him – it never did, of course. So, the top of the bag was unzipped, and when it fell over, the left sleeve slipped out and flopped into the fire.
Rory heard the soft thump and whipped around – Star City had taught him the hard way not to ignore any semi-suspicious sound coming from behind him – and immediately dashed back over to pull it out. The end of the sleeve was already in flames, so Rory hastily batted them out.
That was when the pain hit him. Rory looked down in horror at the angry, red burn engulfing his entire left hand, blisters already forming.
He'd been using his right hand to get rid of the flames, so why was his left hand burnt?
Rory treated his hand as well as he could with the supplies in his First Aid kit, and thought long and hard about what to do next. Since he was closer to the expert he'd been seeking out than to the nearest piece of civilisation, Rory decided to keep going and hope that the man would have something else to help deal with the burn and the pain.
He arrived there the following day, almost two hours later than expected, as he had struggled to pack everything up with only one functioning hand and very little sleep due to the pain. As luck would have it, while the strange, reclusive man had been unaware of how to fix the problem with the Rags, he was able to shed some light on the full extent of said problem.
It was worse than Rory had thought. There was still a little bit of magic left within the Rags, which actually made sense; they were over three thousand years old, so how else could he have stood up and walked (okay, been half-carried) out of that hanger without them disintegrating into dust before he'd made it halfway to the door? However, that magic had still needed a power source, so it had latched onto the only thing that it had already been connected to:
Rory.
Apparently, every living thing had a… life force, or something like that, sustaining it. And the Rags were leeching off of his to remain in one piece. It was a reversal of their usual connection; instead of Rory gaining power from the Rags (hence his lowered need for sleep), they were now drawing power from him. It would take many years, but eventually, they would drain him dry, killing him.
On top of that, instead of protecting him from damage, the Rags were now projecting any damage done to them onto him, which was why his hand was burned and the sleeve, upon inspection, was only slightly charred, a condition remedied by simply brushing the charring right off.
The man had given him something for the burns, and had showed him a route that would be a lot easier and quicker than the path he'd taken there. He'd also given him a list of contacts that expanded Rory's options.
The burns had eventually healed, but the scarring remained; a reminder of just how much danger he was in.
Rory was a lot more careful with the Rags, after that. He kept them zipped up tightly in their bag, and kept that bag on him at all times. The only times he took them out were when he was letting the various magic consultants examine them. Still, it wasn't always enough to protect them (or him).
Because not all of the consultants were trustworthy. Rory woke up in his motel room one night to discover the last man he'd spoken to, bent over his scant luggage and trying to steal the Rags out of their bag. Rory had, of course, fought back, using what little Oliver and Dig had managed to teach him before he'd left Team Arrow. Luckily, the would-be thief was more skilled in studying magic academically than in using it in an actual fight.
However, the bastard nearly won when he grabbed a hold of the sleeve – the right one, this time – and yanked hard.
The ripping sound was quickly covered up by Rory's cry of pain as a burst of agony erupted across his right shoulder. After the motel staff who came running at the noise pulled them apart, the head housekeeper – apparently the only employee with an up-to-date First Aid certification – checked out the cut. It was deep, and needed stitches, but what disturbed Rory even more was that it matched the tear in the Rags perfectly.
After a long night dealing with the police (which ended up being somewhat pointless when the would-be thief escaped his holding cell with no explanation – Rory was privately certain that it was magic), Rory slept in way past check-out time. He barely even noticed the front desk manager giving him a break and not charging him for the extra time due to the break-in, because he was more occupied with wondering at the fact that the tear in the Rags had (literally) magically mended itself overnight.
The tear in his actual shoulder wasn't so quick to heal, and it left an angry, red scar behind. Yet a reminder that he needed to be more careful, in more ways than one.
The third incident was definitely the most violent one. It had been nearly two years since he'd left Team Arrow, and the small amount of combat skills he'd gained in those three months had gotten rusty. He was so close, though. He'd found an actual, promising lead into getting the Rags' powers back, and saving himself from a slow, lingering death. However, that would have to wait until his latest helper got back from some trip to South America, so until then, he was keeping himself busy.
Even without his Rags, Rory still wanted to help. He may have been forced to leave the vigilante life (because there was no way he was skilled enough to do it without the Rags and their powers), but he could find other ways to help people. When he wasn't following the leads that Felicity had given him, he was volunteering with food banks and homeless shelters in whatever city or town he happened to be in at the time. Even with his strength and energy gradually starting to fade, he kept at it, in between whatever work he could get while moving from town to town (while he had enough money, between what Dad had left him, some unexpected insurance payouts, and his own savings, he didn't want to run the risk of running out).
He'd been on his way back from the latest shelter to his current lodgings when it happened. Just as he was passing by an alley, someone had grabbed him from behind and thrown him into said alley, knocking the wind out of him.
"Hello, Ragman," an unfamiliar voice breathed into his ear as a heavy weight pressed down on his back, "You have something I want."
Rory felt his blood run cold. His attacker knew who he was. He tried to push himself up and throw the other man off, but he was still working on getting the air back into his lungs. For the moment, he didn't have the physical strength to fight back.
He could feel the tugging on the straps of the bag that he kept on his person at all times, the bag that carried his Rags.
No.
No, he couldn't let this man take them!
Rory struggled, trying to shove himself upward or roll out himself out from under the other man. He couldn't; there was too much weight on him, so he cast around for something to help him.
Half of a broken bottle was lying just within reach of his left arm; the whole alley was littered with glass shards, to the point that Rory was quite lucky that he hadn't gotten impaled, or anything. He stretched one arm out, grabbing the top half of the bottle from the broken end – as it was the end closer to him. One point sliced into his palm, but it was the pain in his left shoulder, right where his neck met his collarbone, that got his attention.
There was a ripping sound coming from above him. His attacker was destroying the Rags! Now Rory was absolutely desperate, so as soon as he had the bottle oriented properly in his hand, he reached up and back, stabbing wildly with it.
A shout of pain and the feeling of his makeshift weapon jerking on impact with something told him that he'd hit his mark, but by that point, the ever-lengthening cut had already gone more than halfway across the back of his neck.
His attacker jerked back, shifting his weight back far enough that Rory was able to push himself up and shove the bastard off him. Rory landed a kick to the man's face before fully scrambling to his feet and trying to run away, fresh blood still running down his back and the bag with his Rags clutched in one hand.
But he didn't get very far. He'd barely gotten three steps away before a blow to the back of his knees brought him down again, but he didn't land on his face this time. A strong grip on the hair on the back of his head stopped him short of that, ripping out a few hairs in the process.
"Why'd you do that?" the attacker asked menacingly, "I just want a souvenir."
Then the man's knee slammed into Rory's face, and everything went black.
He woke up in the hospital a whole week later. The doctors told him that he'd needed dozens of stitches and a blood transfusion (thankfully he had a common enough blood type), since the deep laceration now went all the way around the base of his neck. Sure enough, when Rory had asked to see his personal effects, he found that the hood and mask of the Rags had been completely ripped off and were now missing.
Rory hadn't been able to give any extra information to the police when they interviewed him about the mugging that Rory suspected was not a normal mugging. He did, however, get far more information when he was finally able to check his phone and respond to the dozens of missed calls and texts from pretty much the entirety of Team Arrow (despite the team being allegedly disbanded in the wake of Oliver's arrest last spring). Apparently, some nutjob calling himself Chimera had been running around Star City, attacking vigilantes and stealing their masks as some sort of tribute to vigilantes. Apparently, he'd gone after Rory and some girl called Huntress as 'test runs' of sorts, before moving on to Star, and the team had panicked when they'd found the masks in question and neither Rory nor Huntress had responded to their calls.
Thankfully, Dinah was able to have Rory's hood released from evidence and sent back to him, and even more thankfully, once he got it back, it also magically grafted itself back onto the rest of the Rags overnight (although he was practically comatose for twelve hours as the magic required drained him even more).
But the scarring around the base of his neck would never fade. Even when he finally found a method for re-powering the Rags and carried said method out, that scar would remain, along with the other two, as a reminder of the unwanted consequences of his actions.
The next Whumptober fic is the second half of 'No Such Thing as Overkill', and it may be released a week from Friday, on May 15th. However, this one has really been fighting me, so I may not be able to deliver on it when I want to. This will set back all the planned Whumptober entries back by at least one week, if that ends up being the case.