In which I give Len yet another reason to hate me as an author...
*Ahem*
In which the Legion of Doom recruits a young Leonard Snart, long before the particle accelerator explosion, the metahumans, the time travel, etc.
I wanted to get my version uploaded before he actually shows up again on Legends and we find out for certain what version of Captain Cold is working for the Legion... just because I was curious how any of my totally random theories might compare to canon.
Told from Malcolm Merlyn's perspective (entirely by accident!)
OOC Serious Business.
This is a random fic; this means it is only meant to explore only a very small element of what may be a much larger story elsewhere, or it has nothing to do with anything else... or both. Certain details will be explained in other fics where relevant.
All characters copyright to DC, CW, etc.
Edit: whoops! One reviewer kindly pointed out that I had named Malcolm "Al Sahim" when that was actually Ollie's League name; the fic has since been corrected. Thank you for the correction, SeaSpectre160. :)
Some slight modifications made to take canon into account. Case in point, Eobard Thawne being the supposed "leader" of the Legion (original version portrayed Darkh as the leader, though as far as his "ownership" of Len, he still is in charge), as well as the fact that the season's version of Darkh is from before he got the idol... and in particular, trying to give a better sense of how the Legion's time travel affects Darkh's control over Len (basically Len is stuck on the slow path as per details in chapter two, while the Legion still jumps around in time as per show's canon and drops in occasionally so Darkh can reinforce the magic controlling Len).
Undisclosed location, Circa December, 2002
The three men snuck down the darkened halls, watching, wary for anyone—or anything—prepared to jump out at them. None of them spoke, none willing to make their presence known to whatever called this place a home.
Until Malcolm Merlyn, the assassin Al Sa-her, felt something brush against him. He yelped and immediately loosed an arrow at his attacker.
Eobard Thawne echoed that yelp and dodged away from the arrow aimed at him, allowing it to speed right at the third member of their group.
Damien Darkh held up a single hand, and the arrow behind him stopped mid-flight, a mere breath away from striking him in the back.
Malcolm shook when he realized he'd just attacked his own team. "Damn it, Thawne! Either quit vibrating or get the hell off me!" He shook off the speedster who was trying to cling to his arm again, though in this place, he'd just as soon be the one clinging to the others.
"I can't help it," Eobard whined. "This place gives me the creeps!"
Malcolm nodded his agreement. "I always thought it was an urban legend," he admitted. "Even in my worst nightmares, even after Nanda Parbat, I could never imagine..." He shuddered again. "What are we even doing here, Darkh?"
"We are here to collect something that belongs to me," Damien replied.
"His sanity?" Eobard muttered.
"You won't find that in this place," Malcolm replied.
"I don't think you could find it any place," Eobard said.
Malcolm shrugged.
"Cute," Damien said. "But no. My property was stolen from me twenty years ago, and this is my best chance to get it back."
"So why don't I just go back twenty years and collect your property then?" Eobard asked. "For all we know, I might be the one who stole it from you; sure beats wandering around here..."
But Damien shook his head. "I'm afraid that wouldn't be a good idea," he said. "The League was responsible for this theft, you see, and I've learned that this property is particularly sensitive to changes in the timeline."
Malcolm gave Eobard a puzzled look, but the time-traveling speedster was just as clueless. "So what are we looking for?" the assassin finally asked.
"Not what," Damien corrected. "Who." He ignored the panicked looks the other two gave him. "Ah, here we are," he said, finally stopping in front of a locked door. "Gentleman, if you would give me a moment..." He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them again. "Now nobody will know we're here."
"I thought you did that already," Eobard muttered.
Malcolm rolled his eyes. For a time traveler, the so-called leader of their group could be clueless about the people he'd recruited. Of course Damien wouldn't waste his magic on something that complicated if he didn't need to, not when he had yet to acquire the idol that strengthened him.
"No, before I made it so that nobody would notice us," Damien corrected. "Effectively making us invisible is more difficult, which is why I had to wait until now to do so. So if you gentleman would please keep your mouths shut so I can keep us invisible...? Thank you."
The door clicked open, and Damien entered. Malcolm and Eobard were as afraid as ever, but they both decided that they'd rather be close to the relative protection of Damien's magic than avoid whatever was on the other side of that door, and they quickly followed. The door clicked shut behind them.
What they found inside was... anticlimactic, to say the least. There was a man there, chained to a sad excuse for a bed, muzzled and wearing cuffs that vaguely resembled boxing mitts, but the man was so still he could almost have passed for a corpse. Malcolm resisted the urge to check him for a pulse, unwilling to risk breaking Damien's magic with so small an interaction. Only the rise and fall of the man's chest and the occasional blink of his eyes proved he lived, but there was no life in those eyes.
Malcolm's eyes followed a single tube from one of the cuffs to what was unmistakably an IV drip, and he understood. "He's being drugged," he said. "Very heavily sedated. He wouldn't notice us even without your magic."
"You would think that, wouldn't you?" Damien asked. "But Mr. Leonard Snart here has an eidetic memory. Even if he is not now aware of our presence he would remember us later, and I would prefer to maintain some control over the situation."
Malcolm nodded, but he couldn't pretend to understand. Damien had never been one for sharing secrets, though to be fair, none of them were. He would just have to hope that whatever Damien had planned wouldn't end poorly for him... or for this Leonard if the sudden greed in Eobard's eyes meant anything.
Voices approached from outside the room, and Damien gestured for the other two to back away. Three people, nurses by their uniforms, entered the room and eyed Leonard warily before approaching him. The two men loosened a single restraint, giving them enough slack to roll the drugged man onto his side. The woman approached with a syringe, and bent down to inject the contents directly into Leonard's spine.
Leonard sprang into action before the needle could even brush his skin. He used what little slack he could find in his restraints, pulling his head one way and then snapping back to connect with one of his captors in the span of less than a second. He didn't have enough room to do any real damage, but the syringe went flying and landed somewhere near the hidden trio.
"Shit!" the woman growled, as she and the other two nurses struggled with him. "That last dose should have put him into a coma for weeks; nobody develops a resistance that quickly!"
"He does," one of the men replied. "Why do you think the boss is so—damn it!—so interested in him?"
Malcolm watched, not Leonard's thrashing or the nurses' efforts to contain him, but the man's eyes. There was no madness in those eyes, none of the wildness the assassin might expect in someone prone to such random outbursts.
Instead there was terror... and despair. That lifeless shell had been an act; Leonard was clearly fully aware of his surroundings and was trying desperately to protect himself from whatever torture these people might inflict on him—and if the rumors of this place were true, "torture" it probably was no matter how they tried to dress it up.
But he had just as clearly given up hope long ago of doing any such thing. He was fighting a losing battle, and he knew it. He continued to fight out of habit, not to stop that pain, but to delay it as long as he could.
Which, as it happened, was not very long at all. It might have been whatever he was drugged with, it might have been his injuries, it might have been the nurses piling on top of him and holding him down.
Or it might have been any combination of the three. In less than a minute the nurses had driven Leonard back down to the bed, and all he'd accomplished was to hurt himself. Malcolm could see several places where the man was bleeding, one from where the IV had pulled out of his arm, and far too many from where his thrashing had opened up sores he'd developed under the pressure of the restraints.
Leonard collapsed, his resistance gone, and he wept.
Malcolm looked away quickly before he could betray his thoughts. His hood kept the speedster from seeing his expression, but who knew how far Damien's magic went? He didn't trust Damien—or Eobard, either—not to use it against him if they suspected he felt any sympathy for the young man.
"Get the syringe," the woman snapped at the younger of the other two nurses.
"But..." the man spluttered. "But if I move..."
"He's not going to try anything again so soon," the woman replied. "Get it!"
The man nodded. He released his grip on Leonard's head, took two hesitant steps away, and when he saw that Leonard was still not moving, he rushed after the syringe.
Damien canceled the magic keeping him invisible and stepped on the syringe just as the nurse bent down to retrieve it.
"Uh..." the nurse said, staring up at the three figures who had appeared out of thin air.
Damien ignored him and focused on the other two nurses. "Sir," he said, "madam. I'm afraid Mr. Snart will no longer require your services."
The other two nurses barely gave the new arrivals a glance. "One of the freaks playing tricks again," the other man grumbled.
Damien frowned at the two of them. "I'm sorry, perhaps I didn't make myself very clear," he said. "I meant for you to release him." He waited only ten seconds longer; when the two still ignored him, he shook his head. "Mr. Merlyn, if you please..."
Twang! Thump. The man fell off the bed, an arrow sprouting from his side. The woman finally twisted around to look at the intruders, just in time to see Malcolm loose another arrow. Twang! Thump. The second arrow struck her in the chest and flipped her off the bed as well.
Leonard didn't even react to their absence.
Damien finally spared a glance for the third nurse. "Go," he ordered. "Find your boss and tell him Damien Darkh wants to see him."
The nurse gave a jerky nod and scrambled to his feet to run out of the room.
"Would you prefer to kill him once he's delivered his message?" Damien asked Eobard.
The speedster shivered. "Nah, I think I'll stick around and watch the fireworks."
"You mean you don't want to go out there by yourself," Malcolm said.
"That, too." Eobard shivered. "Uh... Darkh? What are you doing to him?"
Damien was sitting on the bed and examining Leonard's restraints. "Hmm..." He scowled, and touched a single cuff; the cuff fell away, revealing the raw skin underneath. Damien touched another restraint, then another and another. Each one released at his touch, and Damien's scowl deepened at the sight of the infected sores.
The door opened, admitting a man with a face that looked like it had lost a fight with a meat grinder. His uniform marked him as a doctor.
Damien paused, his hand almost touching the muzzle. "Take care of him, I said," he said without even turning around to look at the doctor. "Prime condition, I said. Restored, I said. I believe those were my exact words."
"Mr. D-Darkh," the doctor stammered. "I c-can explain."
Damien spun around to pin the doctor with a glare. "Does that look restored to you?" he snarled. He held up one hand, freezing the doctor in place.
"The treatments you ord...urk!" the doctor gasped past the magic holding him still. "He's... he gets violent."
Malcolm rolled his eyes.
"We can't release him," the doctor continued. "Not even to treat him. We can't. If he gets loose, gets even a little slack, he just attacks us. I had to protect my employees."
"That's why you sedate him, you idiot!" Damien snapped. "Why I have to waste my power to fix your incompetence—"
"Sedatives don't work on him!" the doctor protested. "Not for long. He just shrugs them off like they're nothing. Look... Mr. Darkh, I'd been giving him curare." Malcolm tightened his grip on his bow at that statement. "It's been working, it's the only thing he seems to respond to, but just barely. It's only enough for quick treatments. The next day... we have to fight with him all over again. It happens every time."
Damien shook his head. "You should've told me about this from the beginning," he said. "Maybe then you would've had the chance to fix it. But now...? Now, you get a head start before I ask my speedster to kill you. In five..." He released the magic holding the doctor in place.
"Mr. Darkh, please!"
"Four."
"If you would let me explain—"
"Three."
"There's been a new development—"
"Two."
"Mick Rory was here—"
"O—What? Here? When?"
"A few days ago," the doctor said. "He showed up... right after you left. Had this huge group with him. I don't know who they were, but three of them could've passed for members of the Justice Society. Sixty years ago they could." He began giggling hysterically. "He looked different... older. But it was him. And he recognized me straight off."
"Do you know why he was here?" Damien asked. He glanced behind him at Leonard, still lying prone, before returning his glare to the doctor.
The doctor shook his head. "No idea, but it wasn't for my patient. Oh, Mr. Rory was pissed when he found out I was working for... working here. But none of them tried to do anything with him."
"Hmm..." Damien turned to look over his shoulder at Malcolm and Eobard. "What do you gentlemen think?"
"I think he's had more than five seconds," Malcolm replied.
Damien nodded. "Agreed. Mr. Thawne... would you mind doing it a bit slower this time? I'd like him to feel it."
The doctor's face fell, and he rushed for the door.
"I think I can manage that," Eobard said with a grin. He let the doctor set one foot into the hallway before plunging a hand into his back.
Malcolm looked away. He didn't want to know what the speedster was shredding to produce those screams.
"Now, where was I?" Damien said. "Ah, yes. Mr. Snart, if you would sit up for a moment please? I know you can move."
Leonard slowly pushed himself up off the bed, not even giving the loosened restraints a second glance. His eyes darted from one person to the next, lingered on the three corpses for a moment, then dropped to the floor without meeting anyone's gaze. He huddled on the bed, shaking, his arms wrapped around his knees and his shoulders hunched in a poor attempt to protect himself from attack.
"Better," Damien said. He reached to touch the muzzle.
Leonard flinched, but he didn't try to escape. A whimper escaped his throat when Damien removed the muzzle.
"Would you like to get out of here, Mr. Snart?"
Leonard's only reaction to the question was to shake more violently. Tears continued to stream from his eyes.
Damien frowned.
"I'd wager someone's already tried tricking him with an offer like that," Malcolm said.
"So would I," Damien replied. "Look at me, Mr. Snart." Leonard lifted his gaze, hesitantly, to meet Damien's. "I have a job for you, a very important job. But you need to come with us to do it. Now I ask you again, do you want to get out of here?"
Leonard nodded.
"Good. But first..." Damien allowed his gaze to flick over Leonard's sores. "It looks like I'll have to do something about those if you're to be of any use. I'd like you to sleep for a while."
Leonard whimpered again, and he jerked back from Damien's raised hand. But whatever Leonard's defense against the drugs might've been, it was no match for Damien's magic. Malcolm stepped forward quickly to catch the young man before he could topple off the bed.
"Um..." Malcolm shifted the young man in his arms as he considered his options. A fireman's carry would probably be the easiest way to deal with him, but was likely to exacerbate any injuries Leonard might have sustained besides the sores. Granted, if Damien could heal him it shouldn't matter, but...
Eobard jerked his head at the door. "They left a gurney right outside," he said.
—FLASH SIDEWAYS: LEGION—
Malcolm squinted at the unexpected sunlight and rearranged his hood to protect his eyes. That place had been so dark inside he'd nearly forgotten it was the middle of the day.
"Don't everybody help all at once," he grumbled as he followed the other two and pushed the gurney towards Damien's private jet.
—FLASH SIDEWAYS: LEGION—
Leonard remained in the magically-induced coma for three days before Damien pronounced him fit to wander the safe house.
It took only one day more before he was forced to wander; he refused to touch any food they put in front of him, even if he watched them taste it first, and following through on a threat to force-feed him only led to him vomiting it back up the moment their backs were turned. Only when he was permitted to prepare his own food did he show even a hint of an appetite, but his visible ribcage was evidence of just how much that appetite needed to improve.
He barely spoke to any them, always giving short and quiet answers when he was addressed directly, but he never initiated conversation. And he flinched every time one of them so much as looked in his direction. Eobard's tendency to interrogate him, and the speedster's irritation when Leonard couldn't give the answers he wanted, didn't help matters.
"Let me get this straight," Eobard growled. "You have an eidetic memory. But you still don't have a clue why you ended up in that place?"
Leonard hunched down more and more with every word, and he shook his head without making a sound. He'd been in the safe house for nearly three weeks now, and they had just stepped in briefly so Damien could reinforce the magic over him... magic that, from the Legion's perspective, had first been cast only three days ago. And Damien had still given no hint of what he wanted with the young man.
"Would you just drop it already?" Malcolm snapped. What was Eobard's problem, anyway? He'd had some weird obsession ever since Damien had mentioned that the kid—Kid? He's nearly my age, he corrected himself—had this so-called perfect memory. "Have you forgotten he's supposed to be recovering from that? It doesn't help for you to keep harping on it all the time."
Eobard scowled.
"Can you blame him?" Damien asked before the speedster could think of a retort. "You speedsters... so impatient. You think everything has to move at your pace. But I'd want to block it out, too, if my best friend left me to rot in that place."
"Mick?" Leonard's voice sounded like a croak rather than his usual whispers.
Malcolm stared at him; this was the first time the young man had spoken—the first he'd uttered a single word—without one of them addressing him directly.
Damien's eyes were wide. "Oh, dear," he said. "I didn't... did I say that out loud?"
"What did you say about Mick?" Leonard asked.
"I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Snart," Damien said. "I didn't mean to upset you."
"What did you say about Mick?" Leonard asked again, his voice rising an octave as he began to panic.
"Mr. Snart, please," Damien said. "You're still unwell; you need to calm down. You need to rest."
"But... but you said..."
"Sleep," Damien ordered. Leonard flinched away from the upraised hand, but once again, Malcolm was scrambling to catch the younger man before he fell.
—FLASH SIDEWAYS: LEGION—
"I can't believe we're wasting so much time on this sniveling coward," Eobard said.
"Mr. Thawne, you didn't want to be in that place for a few minutes... with my magic to protect you," Damien said with entirely too much patience. "How well do you think you'd cope after being trapped there for a few years?"
"Uh..."
"No, Mr. Snart is adept at quick recoveries," Damien continued. "Well, 'quick' being a relative term given that particular trauma. Once he has accepted that we have rescued him from that place, he will have no difficulty contributing to our little fellowship."
"Then we can finally find out what he did with... whatever he helped the League steal from you?" Malcolm guessed.
Damien frowned for a moment. Then he smiled. "I'm sorry, Mr. Merlyn... I thought you understood. Mr. Snart didn't steal my property, he is my property."
Malcolm's mouth dropped open. "I'm sorry, what?" he managed to say.
"Has been ever since I arranged for his father to get out of prison," Damien explained, "after the idiot stole that ridiculous emerald. Him and his sister both, but she hasn't proven to be nearly as interesting."
Malcolm shook his head. "No. No, no, no, I am not working with... with someone who belongs in that place."
Damien merely lifted one eyebrow. "If that's really how you feel, I suppose I can allow you to say your final farewells to Tommy."
Malcolm felt a chill go down his spine.
"He doesn't belong there, anyway," Eobard said. "Not if what Darkh said about him having an eidetic memory is true. Sensitive to changes in the timeline, right?" Damien nodded.
Malcolm shook his head. "What is that supposed to mean?" he asked.
Eobard smirked. "You got someone like me changing history, someone like him is still going to remember the original timeline." He shrugged. "In theory, anyway. Nobody really knows how someone like that would be affected. But if it's true... well, with nobody to know what he's going through, those memories are going to look an awful lot like hallucinations. He probably got stuck in there because nobody knew what else to do with him."
"That's why you've been so fixated on him," Malcolm realized. "You're trying to figure out if those theories are true?"
Eobard nodded. "And that'd be a lot easier if I had any idea what landed him in there in the first place."
"Don't forget, Mr. Snart belongs to me," Damien said. "Once I am done with him, you may study him to your heart's content. But until then, you will not do anything to him that interferes with my plans, is that understood?"
Eobard shivered and nodded again.
"So... What do we do when Mr. 'eidetic memory' finally remembers what happened and figures out you lied to him?" Malcolm asked. "About his friend leaving him there, I mean?"
"Oh, that's the beauty of it," Damien replied. "I didn't lie to him. Stretched the truth, certainly, but I didn't say anything that wasn't already technically true. See, Mr. Rory did leave him there... not willingly, but Mr. Snart doesn't need to know that. That's what I love about manipulating people like him; he's so suspicious, so willing to believe that even the people he should trust are prepared to betray him the first chance they get... well, all I did was reinforce that suspicion."
"I'm surprised you didn't try to convince him his sister was in on it," Eobard muttered.
"Baby steps, Mr. Thawne, baby steps. He needs to be ready to believe it."
Timing:
From Len's perspective, this takes place mid-"What Could Have Been," a prequel fic to Flash Sideways.
From the Legion's perspective, this takes place during or after Season 2 of Legends of Tomorrow.
From the Legends' perspective, this takes place during my fic "League of MacGuffins," the sequel to "Majummed."
Linked fics:
Why Len is in "that place" is hinted at in Flash Sideways, and will be explained in greater detail in the prequel fic What Could Have Been. (Where "that place" even is will also be given in WCHB.)
Parts of this chapter, albeit told from Len's perspective, may also be recreated in WCHB. Depends on how well I can give that perspective given his current mental condition.
Mick Rory et al's appearance in "that place" was supposed to be given in League of MacGuffins. Chapter two of this very fic changes this point, thanks to Len deciding mid-draft that his presence in chapter two is at a different stage of the same timeline instead of an alternate timeline. So now his presence in "that place" is due to him paying a visit in chapter two.
Why Mick didn't do anything to rescue Len is given in Flash Sideways, as the team knows (by that point in either story) that the consequences of changing Len's personal history could be far more dangerous than the very thing they're trying to rescue him from. (He is, however, responsible for the doctor looking like he lost a fight with a meat grinder.)
That nonsense about Len "belonging" to Damien was given (via a nightmare from Lewis' perspective) in Confessions.
Oh, and those restraints? I have it that Len isn't exactly shy about fighting dirty if he's desperate, so he's probably bitten several of the employees before they decided to put a muzzle on him (scratched, too, thus the cuffs vaguely resembling boxing mitts). Everything else is just the fact that he fights them pretty much any time he's given enough slack to do so, which is why he'd been allowed to develop some nasty bedsores.
Next chapter, we have what was originally meant to be a different version of Len: a Flashpoint-resurrected Leonard Snart in a timeline where the Legends don't remember him being part of their team, but thanks to his eidetic memory (as per the Flash Sideways theory), Len does.
Instead of being from an alternate timeline, however, he decided that the next chapter merely takes place at a later stage of the same timeline as chapter one... the Flashpoint resurrection and changes in memory still hold true.
Also I have no clue why Len is resistant to the sedatives. I had a reason for it, but I don't remember what that reason was (it wasn't to pile cruelty on top of cruelty, though adding the curare certainly did that); it was something to do with my version of his background, an actual defensive mechanism.
And since I have plot-relevant reasons in other fics that certain drugs have to work on him, I'm even more confused...