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robininthelabyrinth · 7 years ago

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Fic: Makers of History (Ao3) Fandom: DC Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart, Mick Rory & Georgie Washington

Summary: Mick has enough of the Legends and decides to quit mid-mission to stay with someone who actually appreciates him.

Someone like - Georgie Washington.

(AU of 'Turncoat' where Mick stays in the American Revolution instead)

A/N: 100% inspired by an excellent idea by @jq-piccadilly, who is ALSO writing her own version of something similar which is going to be awesome - so everyone should go encourage her :D

also note the alternate fic style tag. this is written like a textbook.

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"I must say, I'm sorry to see you go," Georgie comments after releasing Mick from the hug. "We can always use good men such as yourself."

Mick frowns.

It's been so long since he's heard a kind word, and from the same sort of sneaky planner as Len used to be - so long since he's been anything but a burden, that he's been wanted - it's nice. He'd forgotten how nice.

"You know what," he says on an impulse. "Why not?"

"What?" Sara says blankly.

"Lemme get my stuff," Mick tells Georgie, who beams. "I'll be right back."

"Splendid!"

Mick turns and goes for the ship.

"What, what's going on?" Ray asks, jogging to catch up. He'd had to come see Georgie once before they left. "What did you mean?"

"Can I borrow your shrink tech for a bit?" Mick asks instead. "I need a way to carry shit, since there's gonna be more fighting before we get to stop. Gideon!"

"Yes, Mr. Rory?"

"I need books on early American history - military, political, biographical, whatnot, if you've got 'em, I want 'em - and print 'em on dyslexic-friendly paper, will ya? I need 'em in a single fake-book, make it look like the Bible to any eyes but mine. Make it run on - hmm - bit of Haircut's dwarfstar, and gimme a solar powered charger just in case."

"Will do, Mr. Rory," Gideon chirps.

"What are you doing?!" Ray exclaims.

"Throw in some maps," Mick says, ignoring him. "Natural resources, land prices around this period - horse racing win tallies, if we've got 'em. Standard staying kit, you know what I mean."

"Certainly, Mr. Rory."

"You can't possibly mean to stay," Stein says from the door.

"Gonna need cash," Mick continues. "Put all the shiny shit I have in my room in a chest with a loop on the end, so I can put it on a chain once it's shrunk, and toss in a few handfuls of pieces of eight or silver dollars to make up the rest. Oh, and some decent guns masked to look like era-appropriate pistols."

"Might I also suggest items to be used for cleanliness, Mr. Rory?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, lay in a supply. Especially flea repellant, that shit's not on."

"The effects on the timeline -" Stein adds.

"I'll be good, professor," Mick says. "Relax."

"Shall I include your audiobooks?" Gideon asks.

"My shrink's stuff? Yeah, might as well. Make 'em earmuffs."

"Excellent suggestion, Mr. Rory."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Sara says. "Mick's not leaving."

"Yeah, I am," Mick says. "Haircut, can I borrow that shrink thing you've got? I know you made a duplicate. I wanna shrink it all down to something I can carry."

"Uh, sure," Ray says, looking dazed. "But -"

"I'll also borrow your thingumajig for summoning the Waverider," Mick assures him. "Don't think I'll use it, but, y'know, just in case. Oh, Gideon - I want a full set of vacs before I go, and some of those future pills against malaria and cholera and shit like that."

"I'm including a full spectrum of medications, disguised in time-appropriate containers, with a guide on how to use them," Gideon reports. "I'll update your vaccinations if you'll just swing through the med bay before you go."

"Good luck, man," Jax says.

"Thanks," Mick tells him. He always did like Jax.

"Stop talking like he's going!" Sara shouts. "He's not going!"

Mick snorts, drawing her attention.

"Blondie," he says gently, pulling out Kronos' pulse rifle from where he'd shoved it behind his cabinet. "I'd like to try to see you stop me."

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The original origins of Michael "Mick" Rory remain shrouded in mystery. According to one primary source, he once informed a sitting room that he was born 'out west', undoubtedly referring to one of the remote outposts of one of the colonies, although we have uncovered no information as to which one.

His name (and nickname) suggest an Irish ancestry, but Mr. Rory does not appear to have been a devout Catholic. On the contrary, his regular habit of telling bawdy jokes in the morning got him expelled from more than one church later in life, and no historian has adequately determined what denomination or ethnicity he belonged to, only that he was most likely Irish but possibly some generations removed from Ireland, as no one ever commented on him having an accent.

Any information about his family life, education, or, indeed, youthful career have sadly been lost to history. Indeed, Mick Rory appears to have sprung, as if fully formed, to join Washington in crossing the Delaware.

An extraordinarily tall man for the era - 6'2", the same height as George Washington, himself a famously tall figure - Mick Rory's close association with the General led to the two of them being called 'the Titans': a fearsome and intimidating duo, and the sight of Mr. Rory standing at Washington's back was (reportedly) enough to convince several individuals of wavering loyalty to throw their support to the rebellion's cause. Indeed, unlike General Washington, Mr. Rory was not only tall, but reportedly very burly as well. The diaries of various soldiers that accompanied them spoke of his fondness for engaging in arm-wrestling, in which he virtually never lost, and of various feats of strength that were even more impressive given that at the time of the Revolution he was already in his early forties.

Mr. Rory's manner was generally coarse and his manners have been called "shockingly base", but by all accounts he was possessed of incredible wit and dry humor. He was rarely without a sly quip or, worse, a terrible pun at hand; Benjamin Franklin called him "a Menace at a Funeral" for his pithy manner and willingness to make jokes regardless of the solemnity of any given occasion. He was very popular with the common soldiers as a result. This helped him successfully win their allegiance when Washington fell ill, ensuring that Washington's plan was carried forth as originally planned rather than the deviations suggested by some of the main staff; military historians by and large agree that (based on what we now know of British troop deployment) the deviations would have resulted in large scale battles the Continental Army was ill-equipped to face. It is also agreed that Mr. Rory's skill in artillery (specifically, in the setting of explosions) was invaluable in aiding Washington in winning the war.

Despite his rough manner, few men made the mistake of thinking that Mr. Rory's manner meant that he was stupid, or at least they rarely made it twice. Mr. Rory had an extremely facile brain: slow to stir, but once stirred, fearsome in his intensity. He displayed an advance grasp of mathematics, astronavigation, physics and chemistry on numerous occasions, and although he often forgot common words (a trait commented on by numerous contemporaries, some kindly, others less so, and one which modern historians have suggested to be a form of aphasia), his ability to predict the actions of other people was well recognized as being little short of uncanny. Yet despite clearly being educated in numerous subjects, Mr. Rory refused to explain the nature of his schooling and possessed what all agreed was a common (some even said ill-bred) accent. There were suggestions that he was the illegitimate son of some rich baron, but Mr. Rory's only recorded hint on the subject was to say that his parents were very much married, and that he was the son of a farmer even though he knew nothing of farming himself; this implies some split between his family (of whom he almost never spoke) and him at a young age.

Some hint to Mr. Rory's background can be found in a series of letters from John Adams to his wife, in which he wrote, "that Man which at Regular intervals accompanies the General has Revealed himself a son of the Sea, rather than any Colony; he owns No Land nor Property of his own, but is of Very Great Wealth regardless, owning as he does a chest filled with silver and gold, which Some say is the Lost Treasure of the dreadful pirates that once Ruled the territory of New Providence Island, some Fifty Years ago. Indeed, the Man - who signs as M. Rory and who possesses an Appalling handwriting that speaks of a youthful weakening of the Eye - proudly Proclaims skills which no gentle Man would ever admit. I know this only because it became very Useful when the door to the assembly Hall was inadvertently Locked and we feared we would have Break it in order to Enter once more to Proceed upon our new Nation's business."

By this we can understand a number of the rumors that encircled this mysterious and under-recognized historical figure. Unlike some of the wilder tales concerning some of our other founding fathers (Hamilton's history in the Caribbean, or Lafayette's supposed need to cross-dress to escape France), this story is lent some credence from the fact that Mr. Rory's lock-picking abilities (referred to obliquely by John Adams above, and mentioned repeatedly by his cousin Samuel Adams, another good friend of Mr. Rory) were referenced in numerous sources. He is said to have kept lock-picks in his hat, so as better have access to them whenever he needed them - one source even reported (albeit by hearsay) that he used them to escape when he was at one point captured by the British, after requesting that his hat be returned to him as his final request.

Yet that was not the only suggestion we have of a potentially infamous past. Multiple sources speak admiringly of Mr. Rory's extraordinary talent with firearms. One newspaper at the time referred to him in exalting tones as "He Who Never Misses and Never Misfires!" Indeed, Mr. Rory notoriously kept a pair of dueling pistols from which he could fire very nearly as effectively as a rifle, and which he swore would never misfire. Stories abound of the instance in which Mr. Hamilton impetuously challenged Mr. Rory to a duel, but Mr. Rory first requested that he be permitted to demonstrate his shooting talents, performing such tricks as shooting a moving target and putting out the center of a playing card. This display was so impressive that Mr. Hamilton retracted his challenge at once and the two became fine friends after that point. One source claims that Mr. Rory attributed his skills from having once been in a circus, but no other sources make any such mention and (given the scarcity of circuses as we now know them in that era) no historian has given any credence to such allegations.

We also have some hints of a prior tragedy in Mr. Rory's life. For the short period in which he appears in historical manuscripts, Mr. Rory was never recorded as married. Although he had a reputation as a ladies' man in words - many women would flock to parties in which he was rumored to attend in order to be scandalized by his coarse ideas of what constituted a compliment - Mr. Rory was equally notorious for his lack of affairs, a state which he ascribed to an ongoing state of mourning for a woman called Lenore. The diary of Martha Washington reports that when Mr. Rory became seriously drunk (as opposed to merely mildly intoxicated), he would speak of her as his partner in all things, a brilliant woman with an icy demeanor that perfectly balanced out his own fiery temper, and called her the greatest planner and finest hero he'd ever known. Sadly, Mr. Rory (who many historians believe to have been dyslexic due to the references to the weakness of his eyes accompanied by the fact that no one ever referred to him wearing spectacles) did not keep a diary of his own, so the identity of this romantic Lenore has remained as mysterious as the rest of his past. It is, however, undeniable that Mr. Rory established a reputation as a man who was virtually incorruptible when it came to the approaches of women.

His opinions were no less shockingly modern than his language. Perhaps unsurprisingly given his admiration of his lost Lenore (some historians suggest that Mr. Rory's story, despite the relative anonymity that surrounded him after his death, was the inspiration of Edgar Allen Poe's poem, the Raven, but many others disagree), Mr. Rory's views on women were extremely progressive for his era. He was one of the few men who suggested - quite seriously, by all accounts - that women be given the right to vote, equal to men, and he advocated passionately and successfully for more equal divorce laws and inheritance rights for widows and female children. He also established the first shelter in America explicitly devoted to women suffering from domestic violence and fleeing, sometimes with their children, from their husbands. Although many of his contemporaries objected, arguing that married women were not being abused but merely disciplined, Mr. Rory produced two sets of arguments which in the end permitted his shelter (the Shoshana House, named, he claimed, after the mother of his beloved Lenore, a childhood victim of an abusive father) to flourish. The first argument related to a long-buried reference to the Roman republic, establishing that the tradition of the pater familias was accompanied by a fierce disdain of any many who beat his wife and that such a man was ostracized for his actions - such an argument carried significant weight with many of Mr. Rory's contemporaries, many of whom hoped to model their fledging republic after the great Greek and Roman republics of old. The second argument, although less eloquent, may have also been more immediately effective in preserving his project: when his plans for the building were rebuffed upon revelation, Mr. Rory apparently challenged any who objected to the purpose of his charity to "fight me". Accompanied by Mr. Rory's height, strength, and notorious skill at arms, this may have encouraged people not to object too vociferously to the project, which continued to flourish after his death.

Women's rights were not the only realm in which Mr. Rory was progressive. A landless but wealthy man, with the air of a pirate and the tricks that (to quote John Adams) no gentleman would admit, appearing out of nowhere to save General Washington's life, unsurprisingly caused some consternation among the wealthy landowners of the South - consternation that was only worsened by the fact that from his very first appearance, Mr. Rory was an avid (some say rabid) abolitionist, referring to slavery in a speech transcribed and published by one newspaper as a blot on America's record, an injustice and hypocrisy against the principles that America purported to represent, and likely to be the cause of a terrible cataclysm that would rip the nation in two when the abolitionists and slave-owners finally "had it out", as Mr. Rory colorfully described. This prescient view of the future, sadly, did not convince many at the time, but it is said to be due to Mr. Rory's influence that General Washington freed all his slaves within his own lifetime, rather than at his death as he'd previously planned. Many of the freed slaves continued to work on Washington's home, receiving a wage that they were permitted to use however they saw fit.

Some historians even point to Mr. Rory as the cause of Washington's later split with Jefferson, a slave-owner who favored releasing slaves upon the death of the owner; however, numerous anecdotes suggest that Washington's opposition to Jefferson was ideological, not personal, and would have happened regardless. That being said, Mr. Rory was in fact banned from Monticello after he notoriously called Jefferson a "liver-bellied coward who rapes his dead wife's half-sister and enslaves his children by her to hide the proof", which many historians believe to be the only time Jefferson's association with Sally Hemmings (which many modern day scholars view as rape, rather than a consensual or "mistress" relationship as it was viewed in previous generations) was ever publically called out. Unsurprisingly, Jefferson refused to have anything to do with Mr. Rory after that point, despite their agreement on other points of reform.

One area in which Mr. Rory was particularly involved was his passionate support for the reform of the criminal justice system. Although not all of his ideas were adopted - many of which were deemed so radical that they were censored from publication - he is responsible for ensuring that provisions that preserved the rights of incarcerated individuals, including the right to regular communication (a first amendment right which has since been interpreted as outlawing solitary imprisonment for longer than two weeks) and of appeal. He also championed an early version of the concept of structural inequality, claiming that the protection afforded by the provision of a local twelve-man jury (stalwart of the British system of law) was useless if the selection of the defendants was perverted to begin with. The inclusion of the phrase "or prosecution" in the Fourth Amendment outlawing "cruel and unusual punishment" is popularly ascribed to Mr. Rory; the phrase lay dormant for centuries, only to be seized upon by the Warren Court in the civil rights era as the vehicle to defeat racial bias in prosecutorial discretion and, more recently, as a vehicle to implement protections against systematic discrimination in the prison system and gerrymandering generally.

Aside from his often controversial political views, Mr. Rory was often noted to have a convivial and charming personality, despite his occasional bouts of moodiness and depression, and also despite a temper that could reliably be roused against individuals who irritated him - luckily for those around him, that temper was easily restrained by someone he trusted, usually Washington, keeping a level head. Though when Washington was truly incensed, Mr. Rory's fury was well-nigh unstoppable.

Last, but certainly not least, Mr. Rory had one particularly notable characteristic: he was a pyromaniac. Although it was not characterized as such at the time, the medical term not yet being coined, Mr. Rory's tendency to dissociate while staring at flames was widely noted, and he often lit candles or matches even during the day - an eccentricity that, if not for his great wealth, might have been ruinously expensive. He notoriously torched a number of British forts during the war and some of his critics snidely accused him of various arsons thereafter, accusations that never failed to amuse him - though they had a tendency to enrage his host.

His host, of course, being his good friend George Washington, his eternal advocate and close friend - and, to everyone's amusement, the man whom Mr. Rory never failingly referred to as "Georgie", no matter how solemn the situation. Several records of Washington's inauguration indicate that shortly after the solemn ceremony was done, Mr. Rory slapped Washington on the back and proclaimed, "I told ya you could do it, Georgie!", and this was not the only such incident. Mr. Rory first appeared, as we have said, in the crossing of the Delaware and remained a close confidant of Washington thereafter, Washington stating on a number of occasion that Mr. Rory had saved his life and had given him a good tongue-lashing about not letting cultural preconceptions get in the way of victory at the same time. Mr. Rory was separated from Washington a few times, when he led bands of his own - he preferred covert missions with small teams to leading his own squadron, as his colleague Hamilton longed to do - but after the end of the war, Washington invited him to stay with him at Mount Vernon, and Mr. Rory did so.

Once at Mount Vernon, Mr. Rory made several investments in land and stock which turned out quite well for him, as well as a surprisingly series of victories at the Newmarket Courses, the oldest of the new nation's horse racing tracks. His wealth, so supplemented, was spent primarily on charitable acts thereafter - the aforementioned shelter for women and children, several schools of fine quality that accepted only orphans and other impoverished children, and so on. Interestingly enough, he gave almost none of his wealth to the church, refusing to identify which denomination he belong - stating only that the God he believed in was good enough to share and share alike, leading to suppositions that he was a Quaker or a Lutheran, or possibly some other sect. One historian has proposed that as a pyromaniac, Mr. Rory might have developed a personal spiritualism set around fire, which would match certain of his statements, but this theory has not 'caught fire' with certain historians.

Little is know of his interactions at the Constitutional Convention, there at Washington's side as always, other than what has already been discussed, but he was an avid Federalist who blasted Jefferson's Republicans as longing to return the nation to an agrarian paradise that had never existed. He also strongly supported Hamilton's proposal of a national bank, although (perhaps strangely) he did support the location of the new capital on the Potomac instead of in a northern city. His comment, made to a local newspaper, at the time of the selection of the plot of what would later be called Washington D.C. was that it was only fitting that "the Swamp of Politics should be given a Swamp of Its Own."

Of his later years, little has been said. Mr. Rory retained his extraordinary vitality and health, hardly even seeming to age, and he continued to pick fights like a common sailor in the dockyard taverns long after he had been recognized as a great man and his portrait painted, to have a place of honor at Mount Vernon. He stood by Washington through the Revolutionary War, and again during the Whiskey Rebellion. No cause of death has ever been identified, although one very strange story appears in the diary of Martha Washington.

She writes that in 1797, shortly after Washington's retirement to Mount Vernon, a retirement which Mr. Rory - ever loyal - joined and even assisted in preparing for by helping set up a distillery on Mount Vernon, the first batch of spirits being produced in February of that year, Mr. Rory began to act increasingly unusually. He would often sit alone; this was not unusual during his depressive periods, but was now accompanied by an aggressive desire for privacy. He also developed a habit of speaking to the air as though carrying on a conversation. He became excited and enthusiastic in a way which Washington commented he had never seen before despite their friendship of now over twenty years running.

And then, Martha records, one day he came out from his room with tears of joy in his eyes, grasping Washington by the hands and telling him that his "Lenny" (undoubtedly a reference to his much-beloved Lenore) was coming to fetch him and insisting he had always known that death would be no impediment to their partnership. The Washingtons naturally became extremely concerned, particularly as in regards to Mr. Rory's mental state, but Mr. Rory assured him that he was very happy to be going and would hear no word against it. He then proceeded to pack up his most precious belongings, distributed the remainder, embraced Washington and wished him well, and then walked out of Mount Vernon for the last time. He was never seen again thereafter, not in any historical record that we have been able to locate.

With that fascinating exit - one of which has launched a dozen ghost stories, with locals claiming that they could on dark nights still see a big man and an equally tall woman, almost mannish in her slenderness, walk hand-in-hand into the sky and disappear into a shower of blue sparks - Mick Rory walks out of the narrative, on his own terms, just as he had every other aspect of his life.

His statute still stands in Washington D.C. today, and although he is one of our lesser known Founding Fathers, never having held formal political office, it is my belief that this man has had tremendous impact on the shape of our nation -

('The Stalwart: The Strange Life of Mick Rory, Washington's Best Friend', a thesis paper by F. Smoak, Starling State University)

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"Oh my god, we've ruined history," Nate moans.

"You're kidding, right?" Jax says. "This is awesome."

"He changed the Constitution, Jax!" Sara hisses. "He knew he was supposed to lay low and he changed. The. Constitution!"

"Yeah, for the better," Jax shoots back. "So what's the big deal?"

"I must admit the anti-gerrymandering laws seem very useful," Stein says.

"Plus the systemic bias in prisons thing!"

"Guys!" Sara holds up her hands. "We're supposed to keep the timeline intact, remember?"

"We were originally recruited to help Rip change the timeline by killing Savage before his family died," Jax replies, unimpressed. "Remember?"

Sara pauses. "Well, yeah, I mean, I guess..."

"I can't believe I'm friends with a Founding Father!" Ray says cheerfully, not for the first time. "This is so cool!"

"They're just men," Amaya reminds him, also not for the first time, but she's smiling over at the corner where Mick and the now-resurrected Leonard Snart are talking, still hand-in-hand and each refusing to let go.

"Twenty years," Mick is saying.

"You did good," Len replies, shaking his head. "Besides, it gave you time to work out the remainder of that brainwashing from the Time Masters, didn't it?"

"Twenty. Goddamn. Years. Lenny. If my exposure to the Oculus during my time as a bounty hunter hadn't had those side effects about my aging - or lack thereof - then -"

"Yeah, well, it did. As it did to me."

Mick snorts. "Still, twenty years..."

"Hey," Len says. "I told you I was always coming back for you. I never said when."

"Asshole."

"Pyro."

"Thief."

"Husband."

"Ghost."

"Founding Father."

Mick grins. "Okay," he says. "Guilty on all counts."

#dccoldwave #mick rory #George washington #leonard snart #my fic

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