Set after season 1, when the Legends have their new lineup and mission and Snart is, somehow, a member of the Legion of Doom.
I have to dedicate this one to the Angst Queens, FreyReh and AgentMaryMargaretSkitz. It's all your fault! :)
With many thanks to LarielRomeniel for the beta.
I promise I'll go right back to angst with happier endings. But this "what if" got into my head and wouldn't leave. I'm sorry.
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She doesn't even go along on the mission that changes everything.
"Snart's down!"
"What?" Rip yells from across the bridge, where he's listening in on the comms. "Dr. Palmer..."
"It wasn't one of us!" Ray yells back, a slight note of hysteria in his voice. "I think we interrupted a...a disagreement or something! Merlyn shot him right as we busted down the door!"
"Bloody..." The captain is caught speechless for a second, then runs a hand through his hair in consternation. "Merlyn's gone? The others?"
"Yes! Except for Snart...Rip, he's in bad shape."
There's a burst of angry profanity from Mick in the background, and the sound of Amaya's voice saying words that the team on the Waverider can't quite hear.
"Get him back here," the captain says finally. "Directly. Maybe...Gideon..."
The static and chaos cut off as he shuts off the broadcasting feed from the comms, then lifts his head and meets Sara's eyes across the bridge for a long, silent heartbeat.
They both know what this could mean. She stares back in silence, urging herself to calm, throttling down the urge to yell, scream, cry…
Rip shakes his head as if to break out of his own thoughts, then lifts his voice as he hops down from the captain's chair, addressing the ship's AI as he breaks into a jog for the hatch. "Gideon, we have an incoming patient for the medbay, possibly critical. Please pull...pull Mr.'s Snart's medical records from 2016; at least you'll have a baseline of sorts." At the AI's affirmative, he halts for a moment, looks back at her.
"At least they were able to act quickly," he offers her, then hesitates. "Maybe we'll be lucky, for once."
And then the captain leaves, raising his voice again as he runs to request the assistance of Jax and Heywood at the hatch and Stein in the medbay.
And she's still standing there.
Frozen.
…...
They're not lucky.
He's taken three arrows to the chest and abdomen at relatively close range. Merlyn had surprised him, she thinks. There's no sign that he had so much as a chance to dodge or block...just wham. Wham. Wham.
He shouldn't be alive at all, and it's a testament to the speed of Ray's flight and the ship's medical technology that he is. Still, Gideon reports, in a very somber tone, that the prognosis is nothing less than dire.
The AI won't tell them the odds. Sara, closing her eyes, reflects that that can't be a good sign.
Once the adrenaline dies down, the reality begins to sink in for all of them. They'd discussed it, somewhat, after first learning that the 2013 version of their one-time teammate and friend was working with their enemies.
The 2013 version must live so that the 2016 version could become a hero and a Legend, Rip had told them, impressing upon each of them the necessity of avoiding any confrontation with him. None of them ever stopped to think about the danger from the Legion itself.
She shouldhave, she tells herself. She, of all people, should have.
When...if...his heart stops beating, the timeline will reset itself. And not one of them can be sure how it will settle.
Mick, his voice hollow, notes that he won't know them at all in a new timeline. There's no way he'd have gone off playing the hero through time and space, not without Snart talking him into it, not even if he'd somehow been asked. If so, he says, he likely laughed in Rip's face.
"I'll probably have bought it by that point, anyway" he says, eyes distant, ignoring Ray's sudden protest to the contrary. "I was pulling time in Iron Heights in 2013. When I got out, I was...well, even more of an asshole than before. And without the boss..."
And with no Snart and no Mick, Ray comments quietly, he'll die at the Oculus.
"That's if we even get there!" Jax chimes in suddenly. "Don't you remember..."
And the anecdotes begin to spill out, a trickle, then a flood.
"He got there right in time in 1975..."
"He made me go find you guys in 2046..."
"He shot that guy who was going to kill Stein in the Old West..."
Time after time after time. Story after story. There are, Sara supposes, worse eulogies.
She remains silent, but she thinks about her own stories…and, eyeing Rip, she wonders if she'll kill Stein in Russia after all. If so, it's certainly possible Jax will be dead too. Or would the team even go to Russia at all?
There's no telling. And all they can do is wait.
…...….
In all the examination of the day's events and the horrific ramifications for their lives and their mission, it's far too easy to lose sight of the fact that, in the medbay, the man in question is somehow holding on.
She hesitates at the door, seeing Mick standing by the bedside, but he turns away from his old friend as she enters, meeting her eyes briefly and shaking his head as he walks by her. Not good.
She reaches out and grabs his hand as he walks past, squeezing once, hard. A goodbye. He squeezes back, but doesn't look at her, and keeps walking.
The medical equipment is beeping slowly, too slowly, and when she takes a look at the monitors, she bites her lip. Let the others hope. She's known better from the moment she saw him in Ray's frantic grasp, ragdoll-limp and unresponsive.
She takes a deep breath, then forces herself to look again at 2013 Leonard, lying in the bed still and silent above all those futile bandages wrapped around his chest.
The widow's peak is identical, the eyebrows, the nose, the mouth. She hesitates, then reaches out and gently cradles the side of his face with one hand, running her thumb down his jawline, feeling the stubble there.
For a moment, she considers kissing him. But this isn't a fairy tale.
And he's not going to wake up.
She closes her eyes, then takes another breath and opens them. In all the chaos, she notices with a pang, no one had taken the time to clean his own blood off his arms and hands. It looks like he's been bathing in the stuff.
After a moment, she rises and goes to the sink, running a basin of warm water and finding a soft cloth. Returning to his side, she picks up a hand and goes to work, wiping the dried blood from wrists and hands and long fingers, working it out from nails and creases and so many small scars.
Gradually, the water turns a particular shade of rusty red-brown. She continues to work. It's futile. It is, ultimately, absolutely meaningless. But it gives her something to do beside think of every little smile, every moment, every conversation and card game and shared drink and "Sara, don't do it!" and "About you?" and "Me and you."
As she finishes, carefully drying his hands, dumping the bloody water and returning to carefully lace the fingers of one hand with his, she wonders.
Had Merlyn planned this, this erasure of time? Had he been acting on orders? Had he been simply ridding himself of a rival within the Legion? Or had Len...Snart...Captain Cold...Leonardrefused to go along with some plot, stuck by the code she knows he has? She'd like to think so.
She'll never, ever know. And soon, she won't even know she doesn't know.
In a very real way, she thinks with a touch of gallows humor, the Dark Archer is killing her again, right now. Three arrows, again, right to the heart. Because a Sara Lance who never knew Leonard Snart will not be the same person.
For better or for worse. It will, she thinks, be the latter.
She lifts his cool hand to her lips, and waits for the world to end.