Hello, all! Here's new story in the 'Long Way Home' series! Chronologically, this is after 'Detour' and 'Father's Day', set around September 2016.
DISLCAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow
WORD COUNT: 5516
It wasn't supposed to go this way, but one could suppose that the team's lucky streak was bound to run out at some point. Since the destruction of the Oculus, their missions had been going a lot more smoothly without the Time Masters' meddling. Maybe they'd become overconfident because of that.
They'd learned that Jon Valor, as well as some other time pirates, had escaped the Time Masters' prison, and had been tracked to Keystone City on June 9th, 1989. More specifically, to a high-end charity gala for the KCPD, which would be robbed that night, putting one man in the hospital and causing serious embarrassment for the department. To add to the coincidence, Lewis Snart would be arrested three days later for the robbery, and would give up all his accomplices in order to get a deal for a shorter sentence. It would force a seventeen-year-old Leonard Snart to drop out of high school to take care of his baby sister.
It took some arguing, but Rip eventually agreed to let Len and Sara go undercover at the gala as married couple Nicholas and Denise Morgan, since Valor never encountered the two of them during the Acheron Incident and therefore wouldn't recognise them. The plan was to get in, find Valor, and quietly apprehend him before the robbery could take place.
Both Len and Sara did excellently mingling with the guests. They pretended to be from Hub City, with Gideon feeding bits of information to them from her database to decrease the chances of them getting caught in a lie. The problem was that their time was running out, and they were unable to find Valor.
"Raymond, are you sure you can't see him?" Len hissed over the communicator.
Ray, who was shrunk down and sticking close to the ceiling to avoid being spotted and getting a bird's-eye view of the room, sighed. "I'm sure. He was by the chocolate fountain ten minutes ago while that chatty lady was holding you guys up, but I lost sight of him."
"There's a chocolate fountain?" Jax asked, "Damn. Wish I was in there."
"We're not here for the food," Sara reminded them, tossing Len an annoyed glare as he unrepentantly popped a chocolate-covered strawberry into his mouth, "We don't have much time before-"
BANG!
A gunshot rang throughout the hall, causing them to instinctively duck and scaring all the normal citizenry. Sara and Len immediately began to look around for the source of the sound, as did the cops in the crowd.
The hall in which the gala was being held had only two exits; three men in black turtlenecks and ski masks entered from each, waving handguns.
"Everyone freeze!" one shouted, "Get down on the ground! NOW!" Multiple curses were muttered over the line from various teammates. Len and Sara exchanged a look before co-operating – for now. "Now, we're going to come to you one at a time, and you're going to hand over all your valuables. Wallets, purses, jewellery, all of it. And if anyone tries to be a hero, well… it would be a shame to get blood all over this nice marble floor."
"Careful," Len murmured, "The guy who got put in the hospital was one of six who tried to play hero, remember? We have no idea when the wild cards are going to strike."
The Crook and the Assassin stayed on the floor and waited their turn, all while observing the situation. Two thieves went around, one holding a black duffel bag into which guests were depositing their valuables, while the other kept his gun on them. The remaining four spaced themselves evenly around the room.
"If I could get behind one of them…" Ray was muttering.
"Don't," Sara hissed, "Remember, they're not going to get away with it. Don't mess with that!"
The two thieves going around the room eventually came to Len and Sara. "Come on," the second one growled, pointing his weapon at Sara's face, "Get up."
Sara played the frightened damsel in distress, clinging to Len's arm and partially hiding behind him. Len glared at the guy with the weapon as he slowly took off his Rolex (also Gideon-created) and handed over the wallet that only contained his fake ID and a few fake credit cards and cash. However, his attention was quickly drawn to the man holding the bag. He was still wearing his ski mask, but Len would know those eyes anywhere.
It was his father standing across from him, glaring at him with hate in his eyes. For a second Len thought Lewis might recognise him as an older version of his teenaged son, but then he remembered his visit in 1975. He wanted to kill the old man all over again. It was 1989, so Lisa not being born was no longer a risk. If Lewis died here, the Snart siblings would never have to deal with him anymore. Lisa wouldn't have any of those scars.
"Hand that over!" Gun-Waver growled, pointing at Sara's necklace. She removed the heavy piece of jewellery with shaking hands (she really was a good actress). But Lewis didn't even break his gaze with Len.
Suddenly, half a dozen men sprang up and jumped at each of the masked men. Sara pulled Len away from the fight in front of them. Shouts echoed off the walls until a gunshot rang out and one of the would-be heroes by the east wall dropped to the ground, a pool of blood quickly forming around his leg.
"Screw this!" the leader growled, "Let's just take what we've got and get the hell out of here! NOW!"
Gun-Waver and the other three all fought off their attackers and bolted towards the exit, but Lewis, after bashing his opponent over the head with the butt of the gun, pointed the weapon at Sara. "You!" he growled, nodding at Len, "Get over here!"
Len and Sara exchanged glances. She shook her head slightly, but they both knew that Lewis could shoot before they managed to try anything. Knowing Lewis's temper, Len made his decision quickly: he stepped forward and allowed his father to grab his arm, spin him around, and jab the gun under his chin, so they were in a similar position to when Valentina Vostok took him hostage in Russia. "You're coming with me," Lewis growled into Len's ear.
Len heard Rip telling Sara to stand by and Ray to follow as Lewis led him down the exit hall, where a white utility van was waiting.
"What the hell?!" one of the other thieves asked angrily, "What are you doing?!"
"I got us a hostage, you have a problem with that?!"
"You bet I have a problem with that!" another one snarled, identified by his voice as the leader, "A hostage was never part of the plan!"
"Neither was getting jumped by the marks! Besides, I've got a beef with this one."
"You grabbed someone who knows you?!" Sirens could be heard in the distance. "Aw, forget it! Get him inside!"
Len felt the muzzle of the gun move away from his neck as Lewis shoved him towards the van. He did not, however, have any intentions of going in there. He swung his fist into the leader's nose, then spun and kicked Lewis in the knee. He would have done more, but one of the others must have gotten behind him, because something hard hit the back of his skull. His vision blurred and he dropped like a stone.
Two sets of hands grabbed his arms and hauled him into the van. Len was too busy trying not to throw up to fight back. It took a couple minutes for his head to stop spinning, but he immediately assessed his situation.
Two men in the front, the other four with him in the back, including Lewis, who kept his gun and his glare on Len. The others were arguing; the leader had pulled his ski mask up far enough to expose his bloody nose.
"This is going to be trouble," he was saying, "What the hell were you thinking?!"
"Oh, shove it! By the time I'm through with him, he won't be able to tell the cops anything, and as long as we've got him, they won't come near us!"
The van was too cramped; there was no way he'd be able to fight in such a small space. He'd need to wait until they opened the doors.
"Snart?" Ray's voice sounded over his comm, "Can you hear me? I'm hiding in a corner of the van. Touch your head if you can hear me."
Len slowly reached for his throbbing head, but Lewis growled at him: "Don't even try!"
"Okay, close enough. I'm guessing you want to wait until you can get out of the van before you make your move. I've got your back."
So now it was a waiting game.
"What did he do to you, anyway?" one of the other thieves asked, "Just so that if this goes south, we know why."
Lewis jabbed the gun in Len's direction. "This sonuvabitch got me put in prison. I had a good plan to boost the Maximillian Emerald, perfectly laid out. Then he shows up in my house with it, says he's saved me from being arrested. Two days later, I get pinched. I wouldn't've gone to prison if it weren't for this bastard."
Len rolled his eyes. "You wouldn't know a perfect plan if it smacked you in the face, Lewis," he growled.
Lewis swung and hit Len in the temple with the barrel of his gun, making him see stars. "Did I give you permission to talk?!"
Len groaned, feeling something warm and wet trickling down the side of his face. "D'you treat everyone like that, or just me and your family?"
"Shut the hell up!" Lewis turned off the safety on his gun, but thankfully the leader saw it.
"Hey! You do not get to bring a hostage along without my say-so and then kill him before we can use him!"
"And no shooting inside my van!" the driver (Len knew his name was Franklin Kelly) added.
"Tell me, Lewis, how much do you remember about that week?" Len continued, "I finished the job quicker and cleaner than you ever could, and gave you a chance. It's not my fault you went and fucked it up by picking the wrong fence!"
"SHUT THE HELL UP!" Now Lewis stood up and, despite his injured knee, kicked Leonard in the face, knocking him back into the wall of the van. He drove the steel toe of his boot into his chest three times more until Len managed to grab his foot and shove it back. Lewis, balanced on his bad leg, fell backward and crashed into the opposite wall, though Len was certain it had something to do with the little burst of light that flew from a shadowed corner of the van and struck the back of that knee. Thankfully, Len seemed to be the only one who noticed, as the others were all focused on him and Lewis. The other three in the back jumped into action, one holding Len down while the other two restrained an enraged Lewis.
Before anything else could happen, there was a loud clattering noise and the whole van seemed to shake. "What was that?!" the leader yelled. The van's engine suddenly shut off, and the driver cursed before slamming on the brakes. "Kelly!"
"It's not me!" Kelly argued.
From the roof, more of the clattering noise – now obvious as footsteps on the van's roof – moved towards the back. A shot rang out, but not from a regular gun. It sounded like something closer to Rip's laser revolver, and for a second, Len thought that backup had arrived.
Instead, the back doors were wrenched open to reveal Jon Valor, still decked out in the very nice tux he'd worn to the gala, who held up a device in his left hand that flashed brightly, blinding everyone inside the vehicle.
Len's vision had blurred to the point that couldn't see anything more than vague shapes and colours, but at least this wasn't the same kind of device Rip might use, because he hadn't been knocked unconscious. His head spun from the multiple blows, and he had enough familiarity with what a broken rib felt like to know he had at least two. He could hear the sounds of the other men shouting "I can't see!" and scrambling around, and cried out involuntarily when someone briefly stepped on his left arm hard.
"Len!" he heard Sara cry out over the communicator, "Len, what's happening?!"
But it was Raymond who answered. "Valor's here! He used some kind of device to blind everyone! Well, everyone but me, see, I made this modification to-"
"Shut up and do something!" Len growled, "I can't see a damn thing!"
He heard the sound of Ray's suit whirring as he grew back to normal size and, presumably, began to do battle with Valor. "We're on our way!" Rip called.
Len felt his way along the side of the van, towards the exit. More than once, he was shoved by the other, scrambling men. As he blinked, his vision began to clear. He could make out people-shaped blurs now. Keeping his balance while walking was a bit difficult; he clung to the door after making it outside the van.
When a hand roughly grabbed his left arm, causing a new burst of pain from that limb, he flinched and grabbed it, wanting whoever it was to let go. It was one of the thieves; the texture of the shirt matched that of their 'uniforms', and his own teammates knew better than to just grab him like that. A fist to his face, slamming into his right eye socket, just confirmed that the person wasn't a friendly.
With all the blows he'd taken to the head by now, Len was mildly surprised that he hadn't been knocked out by that punch. He did, however, collapse facedown on the pavement, groaning as a boot to the shoulder rolled him onto his back. The masked man came into view; he ripped off his mask to reveal the fuzzy features of Lewis Snart. His gun was pointed right at Len's chest. He seemed to be ignoring the rest of the chaos erupting around him.
"You ruined my life," the older man growled, "Now you're gonna pay."
BANG!
The gunshot was deafening. Len felt the impact first, right in the centre of his torso. Then the pain arrived. He'd been shot before, but this was different. He couldn't even try to breathe without a new stab of pain that seemed to radiate throughout his whole body. Breathing itself was becoming a chore for other reasons, too; he could taste the blood in his mouth, and it wasn't from any of his earlier blows the face. His vision began to blur again, as his father's silhouette moved away. It then occurred to him that he might be dying.
The irony was not lost on him. He shot and killed his father and now, thanks to time-travel, his father had shot and killed him.
"Len!"
Sara's voice came to him out of the gloom, full of fear. She sounded so far away, and he couldn't help but remember the engine room during the original Acheron Incident.
"What's it like, dying?"
She'd told him that it was lonely. "Like everyone I loved was a million miles away." He was feeling that, now. He'd never thought he'd mind dying alone, until now.
"Len, please, don't die on me again! LEN!"
His eyes had drifted shut by the time Sara reached his side, but he was still weakly coughing up blood as he tried to breathe. "Len, please," she begged, "don't die on me again!" Her boyfriend didn't respond, lying limply in a growing pool of his own blood. "LEN!"
Mick appeared at her side. "We gotta get him to Gideon." Without waiting for her response, he holstered the Heat Gun and scooped Len up bridal-style.
Ray and Firestorm approached, an unconscious and bound Jon Valor slung over Ray's shoulder. "Shit!" Jax gasped when he saw all the blood.
It took a reminder of time-sensitivity to convince Mick to let Ray fly with Len to the Waverider while the pyro and the ex-assassin followed on foot with their captive. The six thieves, even the one who'd shot Len, had fled while the Ray was busy dealing with Valor, before the rest of the team had showed up. Sara wanted to track them down and kill every last one of them, but the need to know if Len would be okay trumped that.
Rip was waiting to bring Valor to the brig so that Mick and Sara could go straight to the Med Bay. What greeted them was a sound that no one ever wants to hear: the heart monitor flat-lining.
"No!" Sara gasped, clutching Mick's arm for support.
Stein followed Gideon's prompting and got out the defibrillator. Sara's heart was in her mouth as Len's body jerked bonelessly under the shock, but the long beep from the heart monitor didn't stop. Gideon increased the charge and Stein shocked him again; no luck. Sara couldn't watch him die; she ran over to Len's side and took his blood-smeared hand.
"Len, listen to me! You are too stubborn to give up like this! Come back to me!"
She was forced to let go as Stein and Gideon shocked him for a third time. This time, his heart resumed beating, a steady beep from the monitor suddenly becoming the sweetest sound in the world. Sara grasped his hand again and finally let out the tears she'd been holding back since she heard the gunshot from two blocks away.
His senses came back to him one by one.
It was the steady beeping noise that he was first aware of. It was annoying. He wanted to go back to the darkness and the quiet.
Then it was the pain. The dull ache in his chest and head. And the strange, floaty feeling he'd come to associate with pain meds. He was lying on his back on a somewhat uncomfortable surface. There was something on his face and around his head, right wrist, and left hand.
Next was the smell of antiseptic, as well as blood, sweat, and some sort of perfume. None of those seemed to fit together.
His throat was dry, and his mouth tasted like blood. Why?
It took a while before he was able to open his left eye; his right felt swollen shut. Bright white light nearly blinded him. He blinked a few times before he could recognise the ceiling of the Waverider's Med Bay. That explained the beeping noise and the antiseptic smell.
Len tried to recall what had happened to land him in here this time. His memories were fuzzy: strawberries and chocolate, blinding light, and a gunshot. Nothing else came to mind. So instead, he tried to find clues from his current situation. His vision seemed slightly distorted, and he realised that a transparent oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth was in his way. He was lying on one of the Med Bay's chair/bed things, propped up at an angle at which he could see heavy bandages wrapped tightly around his torso, a cast on his left arm, a blanket over his lower body, and bruises all over the exposed skin of his bare arms.
That worried him more than it would other people. He didn't like it when others saw his scars, though he'd become a master of putting up with that discomfort in juvie and prison, where showering with other inmates was inevitable. But there were only two people he allowed to see them: Mick and, more recently, Sara. Lisa knew they were there, but he didn't like to remind her of how many wounds he'd received that had been meant for her.
However, that worry only bothered him for a few seconds, because then he noticed something else. Sara was curled up in a chair on his left, loosely holding his hand, in a dark blue ball gown, her hair and makeup messed up.
He remembered the gala, now. How beautiful Sara had looked when she'd stepped out of the fabrication room. How they'd been searching for Jon Valor in 1989 and had gotten interrupted by Len's own father and his cohorts. How Lewis had taken him hostage and beaten him up in the van before shooting him.
He lifted his free hand to his chest, where he knew the bullet had pierced his body. He remembered the pain, he remembered being unable to breathe, and he remembered sincerely believing that he was going to die. He also remembered Sara's voice begging him not to die on her again.
She must have not left his side since he was brought in here, if she was still in that dress. How long had it been? Len was torn between needing to know and wanting to let her get her sleep. This wasn't fair to her, he thought. She'd already lost him once. They'd had a serious conversation about going on missions, about the risk. But they'd both agreed that they would be living lives of danger and risk either way, so at least they would stick together to look out for each other.
The quiet swishing noise pulled his attention to the Med Bay door opening on his right; Rip Hunter walked in, wearing the same expression as when he'd come to pick Len up from 2024, once he got over his shock over the fact that Len was alive at all. It was one of sheer relief, like a portion of the perpetually-heavy weight on his shoulder had been lifted. "Mr. Snart," he breathed, keeping his voice down so as to try and not wake Sara, "Thank goodness. We thought we'd lost you for good this time."
Len gave him a tired half-smile. "Again?"
Rip responded with a weary half-smile of his own. "Do you remember what happened?"
"Mostly, I think. I remember the gala, and when Dad and his crew showed up. Then they shoved me into a van and Dad tried to kill me."
"Your father?" Rip looked worried, "He didn't recognise you as his son, did he?"
"No, but that time I stole an emerald during 1975, I gave it to him. Tried to keep him from going to prison for stealing it like he did originally. He tried to fence it to an undercover cop and got pinched, anyway." Rip frowned, having not been told originally about why Len had stolen the emerald and what he'd done with it. "So now, apparently he blames that failure on me – on the guy who gave him the emerald, I mean."
"Was he… Was he the one who shot you?"
Len frowned. "Yeah. Ironic, right? I shot him, he shoots me. At least he didn't kill me."
But something about Rip's facial reaction to that statement had Len concerned. It was a worrying combination of 'I know something you don't know', 'Maybe it's better if you don't know', and 'Oh God, how do I tell him?'.
"Rip? Is there something I should know?"
It was Gideon who spilled the beans, showing some of the insensitivity that just came with being an AI and not a human. "Mr. Snart, during your emergency surgery, your heart stopped for a total of 32.1 seconds. It took three attempts with a defibrillator to restart it."
Len wasn't sure how to respond to that. He'd been dead for 32.1 seconds. That amount of time had nothing on Sara's full year six feet under, but the fact remained that he'd died.
Beside him, he was dimly aware of the beeping of his heart monitor speeding up. Rip was watching him carefully. "Mr. Snart…"
"Anything else?" If there was any other bad news, he wanted to get it over with.
Again, Gideon was the one to respond. "You suffered a mild concussion from multiple blows to the head, a broken left ulna, and two broken ribs. As for the gunshot wound, the bullet pierced your right lung and caused severe bleeding, causing you to nearly drown in the blood, which is what caused your heart to fail. You were unconscious for approximately twenty-one hours. I was able to repair the majority of the damage from the bullet wound, and accelerate the healing of the broken bones."
It was all broken down so clinically, so factually. Normally Len took refuge in facts: 120 seconds until an alarm is going to sound, 146 seconds until police can arrive, etc. They were steady factors that allowed him to construct his plans and backup plans. But these facts only hammered in how closely he'd come to dying – permanently. Drowning in his own blood was certainly off his list of ways he might want to go. Not that he'd really even started to compose such a list, but if he ever got around to it, that and getting blown up would not be on it.
Sara was told that Len had woken up while she was still asleep, and she was quite angry that no one had woken her up, but Gideon and Rip both insisted that she needed her rest, and that Len had agreed. They told her she should count herself lucky that Rip didn't stun her with that stupid flashing device and forcibly take her to her room.
Mick would usually sit with her, though he would be the one to go and get their meals, and had been doing so when Len had first woken up. By the time he'd returned, Gideon had given him another dose of morphine after determining that he was okay to go back to sleep despite the mild concussion. He grumbled at the Time Master and the AI, but took his seat on the other side of his partner's bed and waited for Len to wake up again.
The rest of the team came in periodically to check in on Len's condition, but did their best to not be nuisances, knowing that Mick and Sara were in no mood for their patience to be tested. Ray was beside himself with guilt, lamenting that he could have helped Len if he hadn't been so distracted by Valor.
Five hours after he first regained consciousness, Len started to wake up again. Sara noticed it first, saw his eyes opening. He blinked slowly at the ceiling, before closing his eyes again with a sigh.
"Len?"
The eyes snapped open again, darting to the side and finding hers almost immediately. "Sara," he breathed, getting Mick's attention.
She squeezed the hand she was still holding, trying not to cry in relief; she'd cried enough in the past twenty-six hours. "Welcome back," she said shakily, "I'd ask how you're feeling, but…"
"You already have a good idea," he finished, "Gideon said I had broken ribs, a broken arm, and a concussion on top of the gunshot wound. I feel like crap, what else?"
"What the hell happened?" Mick asked, speaking and getting Len's attention for the first time, "When we got there, the crew'd run off, Palmer was finishing up with Valor, and you were bleeding on the pavement."
Len winced. "Dad recognised me from when I visited in 1975, but thankfully not as an older version of his own kid. He blamed me for him getting put in prison for the emerald heist, even if it was his own screw-up that got him caught. So he tried to beat the crap out of me in the van, and then he shot me when everything really went to hell."
Sara couldn't quite understand it. Lewis had tried to kill his own son. Sure, he didn't know it was his own son he was dealing with, but still…
"Ironic, huh?" Len continued, "I kill my father, and then he kills me." He apparently noticed the surprise on her face. "Gideon told me that, too. I was dead for more than thirty seconds. Were you…"
Sara suppressed a shiver at the memory. For half a minute, her boyfriend had been dead in front of her. "Yes. We got to the Med Bay just when you flatlined. It took Gideon and Stein three tries to restart your heart."
He weakly squeezed her hand back as well as he could with that arm in a cast. "I'm sorry you had to see that," he whispered.
"You couldn't have predicted this," she reminded him, "And it's not like you actually went and tried to get yourself shot."
"No, but I guess I could've been less… confrontational with my father, and maybe I wouldn't have pissed him off so badly."
"Please," Mick snorted, "You know better than anyone else that it doesn't take much to provoke that bastard's temper."
It was true; if anyone knew Lewis Snart's temper, it would be his children. Len had spent most of his childhood as a human punching bag, and most of Lisa's as a human shield.
It took another twenty-four hours before Gideon cleared Len to leave the Med Bay, with strict instructions to take it easy. At the moment, he and Sara were in 'their' room (technically, they still had separate quarters, but Sara tended to spend more time in his room rather than her own), lying side by side on his bed (Len refused to call it 'cuddling', even if there really wasn't anything else to call it). His arm and ribs had healed thanks to Gideon's intervention, and his concussion was gone. The gunshot wound was mostly healed, but still very sore, so that meant nothing too strenuous.
He was currently in a loose black t-shirt (Sara had expressed surprise that he owned something with short sleeves) and grey sleep pants while Sara wore dark green boyshorts and one of his other shirts. She traced one of the scars on his left arm with her finger. It had taken them two months just to get to this point: one month for him to be comfortable with her seeing his scars (her showing him her own had helped), and another for her to be able to touch them. Even Mick and Lisa weren't able to get that close unless he was covered.
"Are you going to sleep tonight?" she asked softly. He'd been having nightmares on and off since the Oculus Incident, sometimes of the things he'd seen while being tossed through the time stream, sometimes of the explosion itself, though older events sometimes resurfaced in his dreams as well. Since being shot by his own father, though, he'd had two different nightmares based on the event: one in which Lewis had gone home and shot his teenage self and two-year-old Lisa, and one in which Sara had been shot in the alley instead of him, and had died in his arms.
Sometimes he tried to avoid them by going all night without sleeping, but the human body could only go so long without sleep.
Len sighed. "I know I need to deal with it at some point. But… you know how it is."
"Yeah." She had just as many nightmares as him on a regular basis. "I'll stay up with you, if you want."
"You don't have to do that." He smirked. "I do get cranky eventually when I don't get enough sleep. You'll need a full night's rest to deal with sleep-deprived me later."
Sara sighed and pressed a soft kiss to the same scar she'd been tracing, causing a shiver to run through his body. "I'm staying here," she compromised, as if they hadn't been sleeping in the same bed practically since he'd returned from 2024, "You don't need to wake up alone."
THE END