If you had told Eddie he would end up working back at Derry's Diner after nearly ten years he would have called you crazy, and if you'd told him Richie Tozier would still be working there... well, actually that one makes a lot more sense.
It's not just Richie, though. Beverly is the manager now, Mike is cooking, Stan pops in once in a while to do the books, and Bill and Ben are around, too. Everyone is there, back together, and Eddie shouldn't be so horrified by the idea of being back home after disappearing for so long, but it's easy being back.
"I'm only here for a little while to get back on my feet," he'd told Richie when he first entered through the doors.
Richie smiled, that same infuriating smile that had made it near impossible to leave and even harder to return. A sinkhole of a smile that Eddie couldn't step out of and never knew how to survive. "Whatever you say, Eds." Richie said it like Eddie hadn't left them all. Like he hadn't left him.
And he’s going to have to do it again, though he’s not sure he can stomach it, unless... but no, Eddie can’t stay. He absolutely can not stay. No matter how much Richie Tozier makes him want to, his friends make him want to, the feeling of a home settled and secure makes him want to.
Shit. He thinks he might stay.
[happy birthday to @plinys who is truly a light in this fandom and a light in my life. wish i could do more to honor such a queen]
hey friends!! okay since the season premiere bROKE ME and now all i wanna do is talk about darhkatom i was thinking that we should just make the whole “i love ray and nora too much support group” a reality with a group chat. i just wanna chat with all y’all about it so here are the “rules” to be in it
1. reblog this. just so we can get as many people to know about it as possible.
2. take the lil survey above. it’s not like a test we just wanna get to know you guys a little bit first. and no need to sweat it because we are planning on taking as many people as possible. (we may cut it off at like 15-20 though because having like 50 people in there would be chaotic)
okay so that’s what’s what. i’m gonna say that it’s gonna close next monday but once i get a decent amount i’m going to add people in as they sign up.
Happy belated birthday @plinys! Sorry I’m on the late side with this, but I hope you don’t mind my attempt at some role swap Darhkatom.
AO3
The first time he shows up is when Nora Darhk and the other Legends find themselves in Victorian London. While they don’t know his purpose at first, it becomes clear once he helps resurrect Sandy Palmer, a former member of the League of Assassins who nearly destroyed the East Coast in the eighties. When they cross paths again in 1920’s Chicago, they discover that his name is Raymond Palmer, that he’s Sandy’s son, a warlock, and working for Mallus with his mother. Ray also proves to be dangerous when he nearly drains Zoe Ramirez’s life force. The action, along with his affiliation with Mallus, makes him an enemy of the time travelers immediately.
Then a trip to 1991 takes them to a hospital to help an exorcist with a case of supposed demonic possession in a child. Said child turns out to be Ray Palmer, age ten and orphaned in the wake of his mother’s actions. Martina, Zoe, and the exorcist get sent back in time, but Nora and Zari decide to look into young Ray more. They take him out of the hospital to a coffee house (all while marveling to themselves at the peace in the time period compared to the militaristic time they come from) and Nora teaches him how to play rummy. It’s a nice experience until Mallus possesses Ray again, his resurrected mother returns to inform him that it’s his destiny to save her, and Nora and Zari watch as Ray goes back with the head nurse/cultist to the hospital to follow a dark path.
She can’t help but feel awful that she couldn’t save him. She can shrink and shoot lasers and has saved history a few times. Yet Nora can’t save little Ray from his destiny.
~~~
She and the other Legends continue to correct anachronisms and figure out the importance of Zari and Mari McCabe’s totems. Nora keeps up to distract her thoughts from Ray and how the sweet boy grew up into a cold warlock. Ronnie Stein works with her to develop a nanite gun that can stop Ray or Zoe if Mallus tries to take over either of them. It’s untested when she finally ends up using it on Ray to stop him from using the Earth Totem and save Mari and Joey. However, it also starts killing him, which burdens Nora with enough guilt to develop a cure.
Martina Jackson is the first and only one to hear her plan and shakes her head at it.
“You remember what he tried to do to Zoe, Nora,” she tells her as the cure is loaded into a syringe. “Why would you try to save him?”
“Because I think there’s still good in him that survived past 1991,” is her answer before leaving. “Mallus didn’t destroy all of it, Tina. At least I can’t believe he did.”
Miraculously, Martina lets her go back to the island where Sandy is still trying to heal her son. She is immediately suspicious of Nora’s claim that Ray can be saved, but the desperation of a mother to save her child wins out. Nora injects it into his arm and breathes a sigh of relief when Ray stops seizing. The relief is short-lived when Ray cuts off her oxygen and she finds herself kidnapped by the Palmers.
~~~
When Nora wakes again, she’s tied to a chair in a dark room. Ray has Mari’s totem that he took from her in the search for the Earth Totem. Apparently it’s not working for him or something. Amaya McCabe, Mari’s future daughter who lives in the same unfriendly era she and the other Legends hail from, wants it for herself, despite possessing the water totem. However, Sandy cuts the squabble to remind them they need to find a way to restore the Fire Totem they’ve stolen. Despite the pounding headache she has, Nora now realizes why she’s still alive in their custody. They want her to figure out how to fix it.
A visit to a company in Silicon Valley with a side of murder later, Nora is in a makeshift lab to try and repair the broken totem. It isn’t easy trying to figure out how to fix it, but she does get an idea about cold fusion doing the trick. Sandy explains that she did know the scientist who invented cold fusion, except by know, she means assassinated him in 1962. So she knows where to look and is ready to travel back with a time stone.
Then Ray grabs her hand. “Mom, are you sure traveling back into your own timeline is the best idea?”
That stops Sandy. Ray volunteers to go instead, but Sandy shows concern about her son’s safety.
“So I’ll take Darhk with me,” Ray suggests. “She can help me get the formula for it before past you kills the guy.”
Sandy considers this. “Fair enough. But you be careful, Ray. And use protection.”
Nora’s face flushes for a reason she’s not quite sure of until she sees Sandy pass her son a gun.
~~~
Things go to downhill quickly once they get to East Berlin. Once they find the scientist, Ray abandons the plan of getting him to safety first and wants the formula. Nora argues with him about getting the scientist out of danger first. When the man wants to bring a doll to his daughter, it takes up even more time arguing over whether his life is really worth a child’s plaything. By the time they actually are ready to leave, past Sandy arrives and is prepared to murder all of them, including the son she doesn’t know she’ll have later on. Nora manages to knock her out, but it’s not before Sandy breaks Ray’s time stone.
“Now we’re stuck here,” Ray grumbles as they make an escape with the scientist to a safehouse. “We better at least get the formula.”
Nora looks over at him. “You know I have people looking for me, right? We won’t be stuck in this time.”
“And what are they going to do when they see me?” Ray demands. “I guarantee I won’t get the same treatment from them as you.”
He’s right about that.
Nora sighs and runs her hands through her hair. “Look, the least we can do is help this guy get back to his family and get the formula to cold fusion. It’s the right thing to do.”
“Maybe, but I prefer the fast way,” Ray demands, grabbing a hammer and making his way over to the scientist. “Listen up, time to start talking. We need the formula and I’m pretty sure you’d rather have hands than none at all.”
The scientist looks at him, unfazed. “Do what you want. It won’t be the worst thing I’ve been through.”
Nora shudders a little. “What happened to you?”
“I lost my family. They’re all gone. The doll wasn’t for my daughter. It was hers.”
“You lied to us,” Ray snarls.
The scientist levels him with a glare. “I made a decision to try and buy some time. This formula isn’t something I can let fall into the wrong hands.”
Nora watches Ray raise the hammer, but his hand is wavering. She darts out and grabs his wrist, unsure whether he really will let it drop.
“Give us a minute,” she asks before dragging Ray off to the side.
“What was that?” he hisses once they’re out of earshot.
“We can’t torture him,” Nora snaps, her mind all to full of memories of Argus holding cells. “It’s not going to get anything out of him. There has to be another way we can do this.”
Ray folds his arms over his chest. “So what do you suggest we do?”
“For starters, maybe not trying to break his hand,” she mutters, sitting down on a crate. “Um….”
“You don’t have anything, do you?”
“I can’t spit out a solution on the spot, especially for something like this!”
Ray groans. Sitting down makes Nora realize how tall he really is. She knows she’s a good deal shorter than him, but now it’s hard to ignore.
“This was supposed to go without a hitch,” he grumbles. “And here I am, screwing it up. My mom’s gonna be disappointed.”
Nora raises an eyebrow. “It’s not like you didn’t try.”
“That doesn’t matter. She’s still going to see it as a failure. I was eight when she died, and she still sees me as this kid she has to protect. This was my chance to show her that I can handle myself.”
“We still have time, even with your past mom after us,” Nora murmurs, rising to her feet. “We’ll figure this out and get home. Right now, we need to get the formula, but we need to give something to the scientist that he wants.”
“The man lost his family and is living in East Berlin. What can we even do for him?”
The lightbulb goes off in her head. It’s complicated, but better than nothing. “We get him out of here.”
Ray’s eyes widen. “Oh! If we get him out of here, then he’ll talk and give us the formula. It can’t be that hard, right?”
Nora resists the urge to roll her eyes. In her time, travel between states and countries is heavily regulated by Argus. People aren’t sure whether it’s to keep them from getting out or getting in. A divided Berlin will prove to be just as much of a challenge.
“We just have to get him across the border and he’ll talk, right?” Ray grins. She knows he’s her enemy and that he’s nearly killed Zoe once, but that smile is genuine.
“Sure, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that,” she smirks, laying the sarcasm on thick. “We’ll just skip across one of the most heavily guarded borders in all of history. How hard can it be?”
Ray’s smile falters. “That’s sarcasm, isn’t it?”
She’s pretty sure the look she gives him substitutes for a verbal response.
~~~
The longer she spends with Ray, the more Nora starts to get a better idea of who he is now. There is darkness in him, no question about it. Then again, getting possessed by a demon will do that to a person. But she sees a lot more optimism than she expected. He’s certain that their plan will succeed to smuggle themselves over the border. Nora, on the other hand, is chewing the inside of her cheek and wondering where the Legends are.
“I need to ask you a question,” he says as they get in the car.
Nora tugs her coat a little tighter around herself. “What?”
“You’re a time traveler,” Ray shuts the door behind them. “Amaya’s told me all about the time you come from. I know how different it is from mine, how downhill things go.”
Oh, she knows where this is going.
“If the Legends can time travel, why don’t you fix your time? How come none of you are bothering to change your circumstances?”
Nora looks over at him. When Jonas Hunter first recruited her and the others, they had wanted to do that. After she’d nearly erased herself from the timeline, he took the time to explain to them why they couldn’t do that.
“You think we don’t want to?” Nora finally asks. “You think we’re content that there are people back in my time who are living under constant Argus monitoring? I’ll tell you right now that we aren’t. Every Legend on the Waverider has gone through hell because of something we can’t control. Whether it’s having a metagene, the color of their skin, their religion, or their family history, Argus has targeted all of us because we were those things and then tried to defy the system.”
“Then what’s stopping you from changing the system?” Ray challenges.
“Because it’s not that easy,” she sighs. “You know that old movie, Back to the Future?”
He nods. “It’s not that old.”
“Well, it is for me, and it’s banned in the future,” Nora explains. “Zoe’s the one who got us to watch it on the Waverider. When Marty goes to the past and messes with things, he changes his future. At the end of the movie, he wakes up and is trying to figure out what his life is now. That’s sort of what it would be like if we drastically altered the past. Our memories and lives would start changing into something we didn’t recognize. Eventually we’d adapt to it, but we wouldn’t be the same people. And meddling with our own timelines can have dangerous repercussions.”
“So you wouldn’t take the risk?”
“I did,” Nora tucks a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “And if it wasn’t for the others, I would have been erased from the timeline. We can’t fix things for our present, but we don’t do nothing. When we can, we weaken Argus’s control in the 40’s. It’s not much, but eventually a revolution could happen if we keep it up.”
Ray shrugs at this. “Fair enough.”
“My turn now,” Nora turns towards Ray. “Why are you so desperate to make your mother proud?”
“Because I need her to see that I’m not that same lonely kid she left behind when she died.”
Nora pressed her lips together. “And having Mallus possess you makes it worth it?”
“My brother was too weak of a vessel and died when Mallus took control of him. When he possessed me, I didn’t. He saw that I was strong and worthy to be his vessel. Now my mom just needs to see that.”
~~~
They run into problems at the border with the guards and past Sandy before present Sandy makes an entrance and gets them to safety. Ray is furious, gets into an argument with her, and leaves in a huff. Nora takes the time to tell Sandy about what her son had been telling her. It’s just enough to push Sandy to give Nora back her suit and to go after Ray, who managed to get kidnapped by her past self. Nora watches the fight from the top of the roof while trying to help the scientist after past Sandy has shot him. When she looks around to see how things were going, she can’t contain the scream that rips out of her when Ray topples over the edge of the roof.
Then he floats back up, the spirit of an eagle surrounding him signifying the totem is now working for him. Nora watches as Ray attacks and defeats the past version of his mother before her attention is drawn back to the scientist. In his dying breathes, he entrusts her with the cold fusion formula, hidden in the doll the entire time. Ray hears the whole exchange and demands the doll from her.
“Sorry, Ray,” she apologizes before firing her blaster at the Berlin Wall.
Just a big enough event to draw the attention of the Legends and for Joey West-Allen to speed in and rescue her.
Even though Joey gets her out in seconds, Ray’s angry puppy dog look stays with her.
~~~
It’s hard to forget about Ray Palmer. She sees him in her dreams almost every time she sleeps. All this time they thought he was a big bad warlock who was just like his mother. Now she knows he still has the good in him she saw when he was a kid, but the desire to prove himself outweighs it. But maybe she can help bring that good back to the surface. After all, that’s what the Legends did for her. Had Jonas not pulled her out of her Argus cell and brought her on a mission to save time a few years ago, she’d be more cold and bitter.
Eventually, after another dream of Ray, she finds herself in the library. “Gideon?”
“Is there something I can help you with, Ms. Darhk?”
“I need information on Ray Palmer.”
“How much?”
“As much as you can find.”
~~~
The next few days, and a few nights, are spent learning about Ray Palmer. She was a child when he vanished from history. However, she’s betting the date of his disappearance was when he was plucked out of the timeline to resurrect his mother. But Nora finds out about his short-lived business, Palmer Technologies. When she built the ATOM suit, she consulted some old Palmer Tech research documents on power source research from Argus courtesy of a hacker. The small connection makes her smile.
“I hope this research is going to have a good purpose,” a voice calls behind her on the fourth night.
Nora turns to see Zari Tomaz standing in the entryway of the library. “How did you know I was here? I thought you were asleep.”
“Joey saw you sneaking in here the other night and asked me if I knew why.”
Nora presses her lips together. “I’m just trying to find out more about Ray Palmer.”
The other woman’s eyes move towards the screens with information on their adversary and the papers around Nora. “Yeah, but this seems like a lot. It’s excessive, honestly.”
“I got to know him in Berlin. Even with the whole Mallus thing, he’s good deep down. I think he just needs someone to bring it out of him. After all, that’s what you guys did for me.”
Zari shakes her head. “You are very different than Ray, Nora.”
“You didn’t get to stay with him in Berlin for hours.”
That gets an eyebrow raise. “You aren’t falling for him, are you?”
“No,” Nora shakes her head. “I’m not.”
But it’s a lie. She’s not certain how much, but Nora Darhk knows she likes Ray Palmer.
~~~
When she sees Ray again, Mallus’s control over him has grown. Black veins crawl across his skin when they lure him to Detroit 2023 to defeat him with the totems they’ve acquired. Things almost work out, but then Sandy double-crosses them to try and stop Mallus from totally consuming her son. Unfortunately, the act sets off a chain reaction to finally set Mallus free. Nora watches with the rest of the Legends as Ray falls to the ground, his body transforming into that of a demon’s.
She hopes he didn’t suffer too long at least.
~~~
Her regret over not saving Ray eats her up, especially when Jonas nearly dies temporarily scattering Mallus. While Joey hauls him off to the med bay, Nora slips off to where they have Sandy imprisoned to propose an idea of rescuing Ray. Sandy is immediately on board if it means saving her son. With that back-up, Nora prepares the jumpship and they almost sneak out unnoticed.
She does feel a little bad about punching Ronnie. But he’s always been pretty forgiving, so he probably won’t hold it against her very long.
When they make it to 2023, Nora and Sandy have to wait for a little while before they can go after Ray. A shot from the anti-magic gun does the trick, but Mallus still needs a host vessel. Sandy sacrifices herself for her son and tells Nora to get Ray to safety. Ray’s barely conscious as she helps him back to the jumpship. It’s probably for the best so he doesn’t see his mother turn into a demon.
She manages to pilot both of them back to where the Waverider is in the Old West and gets Ray to the med bay in the nick of time. Her hands can’t help but shake as she loads the cure for her weapon into the syringe, hoping she isn’t too late. Thank goodness she isn’t, although it does take a moment for Ray to wake up. As soon as she does, he starts panicking at the change in surroundings.
“Ray, look at me,” she orders. “You’re okay. I’ve got you on the Waverider, and you’re safe.”
“Mom…where is she?”
Nora swallows. “She traded places with you, Ray. She took on the role as the vessel. It was to save you.”
“Is she…”
“She’s gone,” Nora nods. “I’m sorry, Ray.”
“No,” Ray shakes his head. “How could you let that happen to her? Why would you do that?”
He tries to get out of the chair, but Nora wraps her arms around him to push him back down. It’s a struggle, but he’s still weak from what he just went though and stops fighting as grief sets in. In that moment, Nora flashes back to when she found out from a social worker that her parents had been killed and that they were doing something terrible. She knows how it feels to love someone that the rest of the world saw as evil.
When she lets go of him, he’s shaking a little. Nora cups the sides of his face and presses her forehead against his. She feels his hands cover hers and they stay like that for a while. The whole world falls away for just a few minutes.
Then she remembers why they’re in the old West.
~~~
In the end, Mallus is defeated. Joey, Zari, Ronnie, Martina, Zoe, and Mari come together to form a giant Beebo that destroys the demon. Nora watches the spectacle with Ray, Jonas, and Amaya McCabe with amazement. She’s long accepted that time travel can and will get weird. The look on Ray’s face says that he hasn’t gotten to that point yet.
The defeat of the released demon has the Time Bureau coming in to round up the pirates, Romans, and Vikings Mallus brought as his army. It also means that Ray Palmer gets arrested for his crimes in aiding the rise of Mallus. He doesn’t put up a fight when they slap the cuffs on him. The grief of losing his father and knowing he’s going to be imprisoned for a long time have sucked the resistance out of him.
Before she can be brought back to the Bureau’s headquarters, she decides that if she’s going to do something, now is the time.
“Hang on!” she calls, running up to the agents escorting Ray off. “I need to talk to him.”
Ray looks surprised as he turns around. The agents with him share the expression.
“Give me a minute with him alone,” she asks. “It’s not like he’s going anywhere in those handcuffs.”
With that logic, the agents nod and take a few steps back.
“Come to say goodbye?” Ray asks.
“Sort of, but I also have something for you. It was on the jumpship. I know it was your mom’s. After losing her, I thought you want might something to hold onto that you can remember her by.”
“I’m going to be spending a long time in a cell in the Time Bureau. I think I’m going to be remembering her a lot since she’s the reason I’m still alive.”
Nora smiles. “Maybe this will help too.”
She draws a few steps closer to him and passes him Sandy’s time stone.
Ray’s eyes widen. “My mom’s time stone?”
“She died so you could have a second chance, Ray,” Nora tells him. “Second chances are pretty rare, so don’t waste it.”
His eyes meet hers as the agents step forward to take him away. “Thank you, Nora.”
Then a smile comes to his face. It makes hers spread a little bigger.
With Mallus gone from his life, perhaps this second chance will let Ray Palmer show time that he has good inside him. No one needs to find out that she’s the one who gave him that opportunity though.
