Authors' Note: Greetings, and welcome to a Snart-filled adventure by Jael K and Pir8grl! This work features two DCTV canon Snarts, and two original Snarts. You may wish to read Jae lK's "Len Snart" series, and Pir8grl's "What a Wonderful World," and "A Universal Constant."
The title and quoted lyrics are from "The Parting Glass."
A huge thank you to LarielRomeniel!
The Vanishing Point
Leonard Snart, former architect, now time traveler, blinked, and found himself sitting at a bar. Which made exactly no sense whatsoever. He'd been aboard a timeship, traveling through the temporal zone. And although his understanding of all that was still a bit shaky, he did know that instantaneous travel between a timeship and a...bar...was impossible. Ish. In theory.
A little farther down, there was a shape behind the bar, but it was dark enough at that end of this mystery establishment that Leonard couldn't make more than that out. Although there was a low background hum of voices, none of the other patrons were particularly distinct. It was unnerving, to put it mildly.
"Welcome to the Vanishing Point," the bartender drawled without bothering to turn around, his voice sounding oddly familiar. "I'm guessing you could use a little something to calm your nerves?"
"Coffee, black," Leonard replied, adjusting his glasses. "And what kind of name is 'Vanishing Point?' "
"Don't blame me, I didn't choose it. That's what this place was called long before me, and I'm sure long after. Besides, you're ordering coffee in a bar. Who are you to judge?"
And then the bartender finally turned, moving toward him, and Leonard wished he'd ordered something stronger. With a knowing smirk, the bartender flourished a bottle of brandy.
"Please." He watched while the bartender added a generous splash of liquor to the cup. "Who...really, who are you?"
"Name's Leonard Snart, but I'm guessing you already figured that out." The other man, close to his perfect double, he thought, lifted both eyebrows. "And it's not just this bar that's called the Vanishing Point -"
"This is the place outside of time and space," Leonard said a bit numbly, taking a swig of his boozy coffee, "where the Time Masters used to manipulate history...until..."
"Yeah. Until me." The other man's steady expression confirmed that he's the Snart that Sara had lost before Leonard...well, before he'd ever met her.
"But how did I get here? Unless...I hit my head, didn't I? I've got a concussion. Gideon -"
"Sorry, pal." The-original?-Leonard actually did look sorry, leaning on the bar and studying him."You're not aboard the Waverider, and Gideon can't hear you. Outside time and space, remember?"
Leonard blinked. Again. He'd faced quite a few challenges to the accepted order of the universe lately. What was one more?
"Well, if I'm not concussed, how did I get here?" he returned with more verve than he once would have managed, he thought. He credits knowing Sara. Both of them he's met.
The bartender uncapped a bottle of beer and took a thoughtful sip. "People find this place when they need to."
"Not me, mirrorverse Snart," a third, eerily similar, voice informed them, and Leonard looked over, unnerved yet again. "The only place I need to find right now is the fabrication room." The third Snart had oddly incongruous bare arms and a stubborn expression as he regarded them in return. "I've gotta be dreaming. But I've got a date and none of this...this...Bizarro World stuff is going to mess it up this time!"
The bartender rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, you're not doing so bad, loverboy," he replied, setting a draft beer in front of the newcomer, who eyed it dubiously.
"This is more of that multiverse crap that Ray loves to babble about, isn't it?" Leonard asked, taking a gulp of his coffee, then holding out the mug and gesturing towards the bottle of brandy. "Just how many of us are there?"
"Fifty-three," another version of his own voice informed him smoothly. "As I'm sure Raymond has explained, there are 53 different Earths. You three come from fairly similar versions. I come from the version from hell." The man in the parka with a ridiculously fuzzy hood studied him a moment before nodding. "I'm Leo, by the way."
"Leonard."
"Call me Len," the bare-armed Snart informed them."Makes it easier to keep track." He eyed the bartender curiously. The bartender just smirked at him. "Huh. You're the first one, aren't you? You're...him. The first Leonard Snart to set foot on the Waverider. The one who died."
"Wait - that happened on ...well, not my Earth, obviously, but the one I ended up on," Leonard said, a little bewildered, looking at the other men.
"Like the man said, some of the earths are very similar," the bartender said. He studied Leonard. "I thought you were the educated one among us?"
Leonard gave him a flat look in return."I have degrees in architecture and structural engineering," he said drily, taking another drink of spiked coffee. "It's not a whole helluva a lot of help with all this."
Leo, who'd been hanging back and observing the trio of doppelgangers with the air of a man who made a habit and an occupation out of such careful observation, moved forward then, studying the bespectacled Snart a moment before dropping onto a barstool next to him.
"And still, I take it, you're on the Waverider. So why do you stay?" he asked intently. "Why not just let them return you to your own world, where everything is all tidy and familiar?"
"Because…" Leonard shoved his glasses askew to rub at one eye.
"Because your Earth's version of a certain brilliantly badass blonde is dead," the bartender said shrewdly, resting his arms on the bar and leaning forward. "You got to know two of her. I think I'm envious," he added softly.
"She does get under your skin," Len acknowledged, holding up the beer he'd finally accepted, a haze of ice climbing the glass' sides even as the frost also encases his hand and the other Snarts stare. "Doesn't she? Mm. There never was a Sara Lance on my Earth, that I can tell. One reason I'm in no hurry at all to return." A shadow crosses his face. "At all."
Leo looked thoughtful. "I never knew the Earth-X version of Sara Lance. She died -"
"Was murdered," the bartender corrected harshly.
Leo shut his eyes momentarily. "Just so." He tipped his head slightly. "I met your Sara, though. She is an amazing person."
"Who I would very much like to get back to," Len interjected,toasting him with the frosty beer. "How can we do that? I…"
"You want to get back to your own Sara-just not one from your Earth. You never met mine," the bartender said witheringly.
"How do you know?" Leonard asked curiously.
"I know."
"I think I have a headache."
"That's what you get for drinking black coffee in the middle of the night," Leo replied sagely, a slight smile at the corners of his month. He was, he thought, quite pleased to have his own beloved to go back to, no matter how rough the world to which he was returning.
"You're one to talk," Len replied with a snort, eyeing the tall glass that was drizzled with chocolate and crowned with whipped cream.
"What is that?" Leonard asked.
"Something we don't have the ingredients for on my Earth. Much obliged," Leo added, with a small salute to the bartender, who shrugged.
"I still don't understand what any of us are doing here," Leonard said, rather insistently- and perhaps a little plaintively.
"Like I said...people find this place when they need to," the bartender commented.
"And like I said," Len reiterated, just a touch pugnaciously, "the only thing I need is waiting for me on the Waverider, and she'll be pissed if she thinks I stood her up."
"Well, we certainly wouldn't want that," the bartender drawled. He straightened up a bit as a tiny, pudgy, white creature waddled tipsily along the bartop, finally toppling into a tray of maraschino cherries with a squeal. He tracked its movements, then resumed his slouch once he was sure the silly little thing was safe.
Leonard was looking a bit wild about the eyes at this point.
"You look a bit out of your element, friend," Leo observed, sipping his chocolate concoction through a straw."Talk about it? Good to have these things out."
Leonard looked into the depths of his coffee. As usual, no profound answers came floating to the top. "I'm not a hero, unlike the rest of you."
"Hey! Hero ain't on my resume," the bartender said sharply.
"That's not what I've heard, pal," Len replied with just a touch of snark, holding out his glass for a refill. "Although I think I'd add 'idiot' to the list, given the mess you left for any other interested Snart that might show up…"
"I told you, not my Earth…"
"The term I've heard is 'legend,'" Leo pointed out rather meticulously, perhaps trying to distract the others.
The bartender huffed impatiently and grabbed a towel to wipe down the bar. Leonard took a sip of his mostly brandy and looked around. Oddly, no other patrons seemed in need of the bartender's services, and the shapes outside their little circle remained indistinct.
Leo looked over at him thoughtfully. "But what is it that you were trying to say?"
"I'm not a hero or a fighter or an adventurer."
"But you fell for Sara Lance-a Sara Lance-who is all of the above."
Leonard nodded a bit glumly.
Len smirked at him, apparently quite willing to be friendly now that he'd been assured the Sara he knew and the Sara that Leonard knew were different people. "It's all good, buddy. You just need to up your game."
"No, actually, he doesn't," Leo returned, eyeing the apparently meta Snart perceptively. "Did you? Or did you need to learn to be yourself? I suspect the latter."
The other man lost the smirk, looking thoughtful for a moment.
"Score to the man in the parka," the bartender said, nodding to Leo. "Loving the extra-fuzzy hood, by the way." He turned his attention back to Leonard. "Something you want to remember, my learned friend-no one makes Sara Lance do anything she doesn't want." The shadow of a smile crossed his face. "At least, not in terms of who she spends her free time with."
Leonard studied him. "Meaning what, exactly?"
"Meaning, if she didn't want to be with you, you'd know it." The smile grew. "Possibly in the form of bruises, if you'd gotten too pesky."
"I would never -"
Len snorted, grinning bartender leveled one long finger at him. "Not helping."
"One thing I think what we can all agree on," Leo drawled thoughtfully, "is that people-even formerly dead former assassins-maybe especially formerly dead former assassins--are complex." He tipped his head to the three of them, feeling a little smug about his own happily married status. "Yes, Sara is a natural leader, and an expert tactician and fighter, but she's also a very lovely woman. If all she wanted was a sparring partner or another super-heroic type, she knows where to find people like that. She chose you."
Leonard just stared at him. Leo stared right back.
"Look, friend, I'm not your competition,"he added after a moment, in case it needed to be said.
"You seem awfully...invested," Len observed, raising his eyebrows.
Leo shrugged. "I spent some time on the Waverider and got to know the Legends. Sara's an amazingly strong woman, but she's been through a lot, lost a lot. She deserves to find someone who makes her happy."
"What about you?" the bartender asked curiously.
A soft, secretive smile played over Leo's features. "I was already head over heels in love with someone else before I ever met Sara. Speaking of which, as enjoyable as all this has been, I'd really like to get back to him."
Leo looked up then, and whatever seemed to be obscuring the other patrons seemed to thin for a moment. Across the room, he saw a very handsome man, dressed in the sort of greatcoat that the Allies used to favor...back when there had been Allies. With him was a second man, dressed in some sort of blue uniform, liberally trimmed with gold braid and shiny buttons. He turned, and Leo found himself looking at the face of a younger Ray Terrill. Or his doppelganger.
Leo blinked-and they were gone. He abruptly pushed his glass away.
Somewhere, in the background of the bar, the music changes to something vaguely familiar, vaguely Celtic, the singer's voice rising with it.
"Oh, all the money that e'er I spent...I spent it in good company…"
Len and the Snart with glasses-just Leonard-noticed the motion. "You all right there?" Len asked quietly, sitting his own glass down, tone belying a true concern behind the snarky mask.
"I am." Leo paused. "Have you two...seen anything odd in here?" He rolled his eyes as they both snorted. "Anything odder?"
Leonard turned to scan the room as best he could. "No, but it's not particularly easy to tell. I...what's that?"
Amid the indistinct swirl of patrons in the pub, one suddenly stood out in sharp relief. Tan trench coat, rumpled white shirt, and red tie hanging at half-mast. He grinned around the lit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
"And all the harm that e'er I done...alas, it was to none by me…"
Multiple Snarts grimaced at the cloud of smoke. The bartender rather pointedly held out an ashtray.
"Constantine," he said, by way of greeting, tone unreadable.
Len's head jerked up and he frowned at the newcomer, as if he recognized the name. Leonard, who'd actually been starting to like this cocky version of himself with the metahuman powers, studied him curiously. Leo's face was simply watchful.
The newcomer grinned, even as he let a slightly lascivious and admiring gaze sweep over the four of them. "No worries, lads, I'm here to take you all home."
The bartender glared at him, but stillfilled a glass with stout and sent it sliding down the bar. Constantine caught it and took a long drink as the other three Snarts stared at him.
"And all I've done for want of wit...to memory now I can't recall…"
"The fact is," he said after a moment, wiping his mouth, "you didn't find this place because you needed to, you found it because he needed you to." He pointed at the bartender. "As a result, I've got two different versions of Sara Lance looking for her boyfriend, and a fellow with superpowers looking for his husband. I don't think I need to tell you who I'm more afraid of."
"I don't need anyone," the bartender replied automatically, folding his arms as his doppelgangers stared at him.
"Oh, don't gimme that." Constantine smirked at him. "You needed to know that she's all right. Nothin' wrong with that. An' don't give me that cold and heartless crap, neither. You, sir-you stood up in the one place in the universe where free will existed, and you chose to lay down your life so that your friends could escape, and live free. Greater love no man hath."
Constantine raised his glass and locked eyes with the bartender until the other man acknowledged his words with a slight nod.
"So fill to me the parting glass...good night and joy be with you all…"
"So," he said quietly, with the faintest hint of hope in his tone. "You'll be taking all of us home?"
A shadow crossed the warlock's face. "Ah. I might have misspoken. Not you, I'm afraid. Not yet, anyway."
A corner of the bartender's mouth twitched, but he kept on resolutely wiping down the bar.
"Now, me, mate, I'm always gonna be in favor of giving us mere mortals our free will," the other man continued breezily. "I know an angel with different views on the subject, but that's another story. But the unfortunate fact is, free will comes at a price. You blew a hole in the fabric of reality -"
"And someone has to guard that hole until it heals."
"They have angels where you come from?" Leonard whispered to Len and Leo.
"Not that sort," Len admitted, "though I ain't precisely the sort who hangs out with the holy types."
"Oh, all the comrades that e'er I've had...are sorry for my going away…"
Leo sighed to himself. "We could have used some angels," he said quietly. "Too many devils on my world." The other two men gave him sympathetic looks, and Len pushed a bottle of booze his way.
"Aye," Constantine told the bartender, ignoring the others. "And knowin' what I know of you, I'm guessin' there's not many you'd trust with that job."
The bartender looked down. "No," he muttered, finally.
"It's not forever, mate."
The bartender nodded, eyes distant.
"Any message you want me to deliver?" Constantine asked sympathetically, moving closer so the others couldn't quite hear him.
The bartender glanced at the meta and the-architect? Seriously? They actually seemed to be chatting companionably now, with the other man-Leo-listening in with amusement.
"And all the sweethearts that e'er I've kissed...would wish me one more day to stay…"
"Do they make...her...happy?" he asked in a low tone. "Those two?"
"Aye, mate, they do."
"Then don't say anything to her-to their Saras. Let them all have that."
"You're a better man than I am, Leonard Snart," Constantine said admiringly. "And what about your Sara? Back on Earth-1?"
The bartender's knuckles turned white from gripping his towel. "You know Sara -pretty much any Sara-is as stubborn as they come. If she thinks there's a chance, she'll rip apart time and space...I can't…"
"You let me worry about stubborn timeship captains, mate." Constantine's eyes were kind. "I can keep her from ripping apart reality to get back to you. But I think you deserve a bit of hope, too."
"But since it falls unto my lot...that I should rise and you should not…"
Earth-1 Leonard Snart stared at him a moment, then sighed.
"Tell her...tell her I owe her a dance...whenever she wants to collect," he said quietly. "And...there was a certain challenge stated, last time we spoke. I haven't forgotten."
Constantine gave him a sad smile. "Will do, handsome. And now…" He swept around with a dramatic flourish to regard the other three Snarts, who were watching him in return with, respectively, melancholy amusement (Leo), distrustful amusement (Len) and confused amusement (Leonard). "Come on, boys. Let's get you home."
The trio stood with alacrity. "Are we…" Leonard cleared his throat. "Are we going to remember this?"
"I'll gently rise, and I'll softly call...good night and joy be with you all…"
"Maybe in your dreams, cutie." Constantine winked as the bespectacled man blushed. "Ah, I do like a guy with glasses. Seriously, though, conscious minds don't tend to remember this sort of thing. You might dream about it, some nights."
Leonard nodded, then they all started to file after Constantine as he started into the swirling crowd. Leo, bringing up the rear, stopped for just a moment, though, right before he entered the haze, and turned.
"Good luck," he told the bartender quietly.
The other man gazed at him, then smiled just a little. "You too," he said, raising his beer again. "And...maybe one of these days, I'll see you 'round."
"Good night and joy be with you all…"