About a week ago, I wrote this piece for Tales of the Assassin and the Crook: Volume 2 on AO3. I posted it on there and Tumblr, and the response I got was pretty crazy. This piece is actually responsible for me getting banned from writing it for a week by some other authors (It's a very long story). But I felt like I should put this one up here.

So enjoy! And have some tissues ready if need be. And don't listen to 'See You Again' while reading this. Or do. It's up to you.

When they first got Leonard Snart back after the Legion of Doom, the team aboard the Waverider learned that their adversaries had discovered him in the temporal zone floating about. They weren't sure how long he had been there for, or it if had any effects on him in any way. But Leonard seemed to be fine, aside from being a bit more resilient to effects of time travel. So nothing was thought to be wrong with him.

At least not for the first few years.

It was maybe three years after his rescue that they saw he wasn't aging. He looked exactly the same since the Oculus. There were no new gray hairs, no new wrinkles. Time had frozen for him, and made him immortal. No one knew how immortal he was, but they didn't want to test it. He was fine as he was, saying that it would allow him more years to spend with the people he loved.

"You just want to see me become a wrinkly old hag," Sara had teased when he said this.

"You'll be a beautiful wrinkly old hag," was his response.

His situation was nice at first. It meant that he could still stay in the game, fighting on the side of heroes (something he would never believe he had come to). No early retirement for him. He could keep up with Sara (or at least the same as he had always been able to) and later on their children. Things didn't seem so bad.

Then the years started to go by. Everyone around Leonard slowly grew older and showed their age while he stayed the same. He saw the new wrinkles on Mick's face, and thought how he should have had them too by now. Lisa was starting to look more and more like she was his twin rather than his little sister. Sara had her wrinkles as well, and silver started to thread her hair. Soon she had more than he did. Every photo that was taken with him in had everyone else around him older with him unchanged among them.

The blessing was fast becoming a curse.

Mick died in a blaze of glory, sacrificing himself for other. That was when it hit Leonard that he was going to have to watch everyone he loved die. At the funeral for his best friend, he could see all the other attendants he knew were now more aged than they had been when he first met them. Leonard would have to be there for all their funerals, just like he was there for Mick's.

Watching his children grow up wasn't easy, but not aging alongside Sara somehow made it even harder. She got to a point where they both looked the same age, and then kept going. Leonard watched helplessly as she had more gray than he did, and had to hang up her bo staff one day. Their daughter took it up, and started to patrol the streets instead with her father.

People started to assume Lisa was the older sister between the two of them. After Leonard's ID went under scrutiny one day, he and Sara realized that this was another problem. People were starting to notice he hadn't changed. Sooner or later, things were going to get problematic. So they left Central City and moved to Coast City. Sara joked around that they could retire by the beach. Leonard had laughed, but it only solidified the understanding that he had come to that he would have to be the one to bury her.

A lot more people went before Sara. Oliver, Felicity, John, Lyla, Curtis. Raymond was the next to die of the original Waveider team after Stein and Mick, and the world seemed a little more darker without him. Barry Allen, Jesse Wells, and Wally West were aging slower than they should thanks to the Speed Force, but they would die one day. The original heroes were dying one by one, and soon it would be only him who remained to watch over the next generation.

Rip visited him from time to time. The Time Master was older and older with each visit. One day, the visits stopped altogether.

Sara died when she was seventy nine. People had started to mistake them for mother and son rather than husband and wife. In the funeral, Leonard looked at his children and saw that they now were his age or older. He would have to watch them die too. He would be standing over their graves just like he stood over their mother's.

After Lisa died, he moved back to Central City under a false name. He spent time monitoring the new team of heroes that had taken over the city. His grandchildren were among them. Jax, who helped them out too, was now an old man, but Leonard still called him 'kid' for old time's sake. Technically, he was older than him, even if he didn't look it. The two became good friends, and remembered the days of the past together. He was the last remaining tie Leonard had to the original Waverider team.

Jax died, and only Leonard remained of the original heroes. After the funeral, he visited the other graves of his friends and family. He spent a lot of time at Mick, Lisa, and Sara's graves. They should have been the ones standing by his grave, not the other way around.

Time went on, and he moved from city to city across the world. He still visited his children and grandchildren. The worst visit was his last to his daughter before she passed. Monica had smiled and said he looked like her father. He was there when they all died, and he watched as they were buried. Some people sought him out, hearing tales of one man who was there before the Justice League and was able to live forever. Leonard would tell them about the first superheroes and they would listen. They would leave and set out on their own paths. And then he would be alone again.

Immortality wasn't living forever. It was everyone else dying. Watching everyone he loved grow old and die while he stayed the same forever.

So if any of you want to hurt me after doing this, I can tell you I completely understand. I cried writing this.

(But I am posting some happy CC stuff, so look forward for that!)