Legends of Tomorrow - Under The Surface (Nora Darhk)

End of 3x12 Ray helps Nora on the beach

Her whole body is wrenched, like something in her cells strains to be free. She has known pain before. Mallus is everything, including pain; Mallus trained the fear of it out of her many moons ago. This is something else, creates a fear unlike anything she has known. Perhaps part of it is due to the way her father looks at her, desperate and still as she gasps for breath. He can't help; she's doomed.

And then Ray is there, looking unchanged by the years, because for him it has been barely any time, barely any difference to his life. He's just as earnest as he kneels in the sand as the day he and Zari broke her free of the asylum. He's here to save her, and she would laugh if she could. Mallus laughs alongside her in her mind, relishing her darkness and taunting the faint vein of hope that remains at the memory. She doesn't need saving by him, he couldn't before, no one could, no one can. He should let her die if he knows what is good for him.

Of course he doesn't, Ray is too good, like an honorable knight. He is ever hopeful, an emotion captured in his response to her as he marvels at her remembering him. As if she could forget. Ray is everything she can never have because she is drowning in the depths of her family's legacy and she is nothing good to his everything light.

Her magic flows again in aching dribs and drabs, and then comes back fully in a flood all at once. She's flush with gratitude as it fills her to the brim again, marking her worth in the world, and she hates the feeling. The joy on his face at seeing her okay is more than she can take. She reaches out to him, to pull at his blood painfully, to show him what it felt like and to teach him his mistake. He shouldn't have returned for her. Mallus knows his threat, then and now, and however bright Ray is, the darkness consumes all.