Hello and Happy Father's Day to any dads out there! Here's a fic for the holiday, for my favourite character and his messed-up family.
DISLCAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow or any other Arrowverse elements.
WORD COUNT: 1411
Leonard Snart had a love-hate relationship with Father's Day. It started shortly after he turned nine years old. June 21st, 1981. It was the first Father's Day since Dad got out of prison. While Dad was away, he made cards in class like all the other kids, and Mom would mail them to Iron Heights every year, but he was pretty excited to finally have his father home for the holiday. By that age, they'd stopped making crafts in class, but he'd worked very hard on his card at home. Dad had been getting angry over small things since he got back, and Leo had hoped that this would lift his spirits. For one day, he'd thought it had worked. Dad had smiled and thanked him for the card, and had been very pleased when Mom made all his favourites for dinner that night. But the next morning, Leo found his card in the trash, and when he'd asked his father about it, all he got in return was a smack across the face and an accusation of being self-centred and unappreciative. It was just a stupid piece of paper, and not a real gift that Lewis could actually use.
Since then, Leonard made sure to save up to buy actual things to give his Dad for Father's Day, but it never satisfied the old man.
On Father's Day 1989 (June 18th), Leonard had been seventeen for barely two weeks, and Dad had been in prison for six days. He never bothered to get the old man a present, and Lisa wasn't yet three years old. They couldn't afford it, anyway. Mom had left when Lisa was fifteen months old, and Gramps had passed away last year; Leonard had to drop out of high school with only a few weeks left in his junior year and get a job washing dishes and busing tables at a local diner in order to convince Social Services that he could take care of Lisa despite not yet being eighteen.
Over the next few years, Lisa started making cards for Father's Day in class. Leonard couldn't bring himself to shatter the illusion that their father would appreciate them, and he sent her cards off to Iron Heights just like Mom had done when he was little. What really surprised him, though, was in 1991, when the little four-year-old had presented him with a second card. He wasn't her dad, but he was working hard to fill that role. Mick, when he found out, had teased him, but Leonard had proudly stuck it on the fridge next to her finger paintings. It was the first time in a long time that the holiday meant something good.
Lewis found out when he got back in 1994. He'd been back for a few months, and though he'd taken a few swings at Leonard when his son did or said something he didn't like (which happened increasingly often), he hadn't raised a hand to the innocent little girl living with them. Then Father's Day had come, and Lisa had presented them both with cards. She'd put a lot more work into Leonard's, because she barely remembered Lewis as it was, and it showed. What Lewis did next was something his children would always remember. His fist swung out and crashed into her face before Leonard could do anything. It broke her little heart that day, and three of Leonard's ribs when he retaliated. The sight of the bruise on his baby sister's face was more painful than his own injuries.
Leonard went to prison for real for the first time when Lisa was twelve, exactly five years after their father was released. He didn't get any cards the first year, but he suspected that Lewis had scared her out of doing so, and didn't feel any resentment or hurt towards his sister. The second Father's Day during his incarceration, he got a card, delivered by Lisa's math teacher, the one teacher who didn't look down on Lisa for her family history. She would've sent an actual present, but feared that it wouldn't get by the prison's screening procedure. When he was released three years later, his baby sister had blossomed into a beautiful teenager, who welcomed him home with tears and hugs. She'd had it hard, living with their father without his protection; she had some new scars, but like Leonard, she was smart, and had learned how to avoid Lewis's anger as much as possible.
The last time Leonard and Lisa had to deal with Lewis on Father's Day was in 2003, because he went away for felony murder three days later. By then, at thirty-one and almost-seventeen, they'd stopped with the homemade cards and gifts; they bought him a six-pack of beer each (well, Leonard bought them, and Lisa would pay him back for half of them) to get him off their backs about gifts and spent the day at Mick's. To this day, Leonard wondered if it was all that beer that was partly to blame for the shoddy plan that landed Lewis in jail. If for once, their forced gifts to him wound up helping them instead.
As the years went by, they stopped celebrating Father's Day, because Lisa didn't need her big brother to play dad anymore. But he kept every one of the cards she'd made for him, since she was four years old, in a scrapbook dedicated to her childhood (their little secret, because no one else needed to know he had a sentimental side).
As Father's Day 2016 approached, however, Lisa was not looking forward to it at all. Mick had come back last month after he and Lenny disappeared back in January, and told her about the time-traveling mission to kill some immortal freak she'd never heard of. About how Lenny had sacrificed himself to return free will to the world, or something like that. She didn't really understand it. All she knew was that her big brother wasn't coming back.
Reading his journal helped. Mick had presented it to her after it'd been found in his room on the time ship, and she'd learned about what her brother had gone through. She was furious with Mick when she learned about Chronos, but after reading about what the Time Masters had done to him, and hearing some stories from Mick himself, she'd forgiven him. Lisa also came to peace with the people Lenny had died to save, after getting to know them through his recollections. She met them in person at Saints and Sinners, where they and some friends of the Flash had gathered to honour Lenny's memory.
Then a miracle occurred. Rip Hunter, who had been trying to figure out how to reorganise the Time Masters and fix what the old regime had broken, suddenly went on a trip to the near future and came back with startling news. Lenny hadn't died, but had been blasted to another time. The future versions of his team had managed to contact Hunter and get him to bring Lenny back to where (make that when) he belonged. Lisa made him the first Father's Day card he'd gotten in years, and his new friends hadn't mocked him; Jax even gave a card to Professor Stein, who'd become the closest thing he had to a father figure over the course of their partnership.
In 2017, Leonard had an interesting conversation with Sara Lance's father. After they'd been engaged for a few months, he'd insisted on paying for half of her Father's Day gift to Quentin Lance. To thank him for raising the amazing woman he'd fallen head over heels for.
Three months after Father's Day 2018, the day before their nine-month wedding anniversary, the couple announced that they would be adding to the Snart-Lance family. Laurel Lisa and Michael Quentin Snart would be born the following March, and in June, Sara happily presented Len with a Father's Day card, 'signed' with the twins' handprints.
Father's Day once again meant something good for the Snart family.
So yeah, Michael and Laurie from 'Detour' are Captain Canary's kids! I have basic plans for other fics in this series, but aside from 'Dear Lisa', there won't be anything new for a while.