WARNING: There are mentions of abuse, death, blood, and trauma. If you have issues with any of these, turn around now. This is rated T because the forewarned things aren't in major detail.
The first time Leonard dies he's 13 and took a beating meant for his sister from his dad after fucking up a heist and already getting a beer bottle to the back of the head.
Bedb feels it first, like she always does when a warrior's death is about to take place. Her sisters Macha and Nemain appear and the three exchange looks as the person, a young boy barely into his mid-youth, dies.
"He belongs to all three of us." Nemain says quietly, something twisting her mouth that leaves a sour feeling in the other two. Despite being the same, they hated sharing.
"Let us go to him."
Macha takes Bedb's and Nemain's hands and they are gone in a blink. They find the boy beside his body, looking pained and close to tears. There is blood and glass. It is clearly a bedroom meant to be his. He looks up at the small sound that Bedb makes, tensing, ready to attack.
Bedb, with her ability to be kind to the dead, crouches beside him. "What is your name?"
"What's your's?" He demands, glancing at the other two women.
She smiles, it is sharp and dangerous, accentuated by the black ink of her lips. "I am Bedb."
Macha lowers to her knees, reaching out to touch the cooling skin of the boy's vacated body. Her sanguine red nails dance along the new and faded bruises. There are so many and it makes her burn with rage and pity. There is also the hot slice of pride to see such wounds inflicted, something she would never deny delighting in. As she inspects the bloody, glass filled gash on his body's head, she speaks, "You may call me Macha, young man."
"I'm Nemain." The eldest goddess sits cross-legged by the boy, leaning against him so heavily he leans sideways. He flinches away as she lays her head on his shoulder. She presses harder against him until he presses back, making her lips pull in an unpleasant grin. The boy has to pretend he can't feel Macha's phantom touches, can't also feel the heavy weight of the red haired woman beside him.
"Now," Nemain begins.
"Tell us," Macha continues.
"– Your name?" Bedb finishes, a righteous wrath burning her inside out that someone would do this, but she sounds gentle and sweet and just like a teacher who cares.
He looks at them, but seems to look longest at Bebd who had appeared first and seemed the most aware of the fact he just died and couldn't possibly be taking it well, especially when suddenly surrounded by women who look less than human.
"Leonard Snart."
Her sharp smile eases at his name, head tilting in curiosity at this little warrior boy. "How do you feel about the afterlife being full of free food, dancing, and getting to do whatever you want?"
"I'd imagine heaven wouldn't want me." Leonard Snart says, tone shattered and jagged. "And I can't leave my sister."
A dark shadow passes over each woman's face, thinking of the other two present. "You have a sister?" Bedb asks, already looking forward at different possibilities.
Without asking her sisters, Bedb decides on a course of action and leans forward, holding out her hands, palms facing upward and waiting for him to take them. After a few moments of hesitation, he takes her hands and she gives a very gentle squeeze.
"Would you like to stay?" She asks as Macha and Nemain makes sounds of indignation, Namain sitting up straight and Macha pulling away from inspecting the dead body. Both look, however briefly, surprised. Then they are wrathful.
"Labraid would never allow it!"
"He'd strip us of our power!"
"If he tries I'll battle him for his title." Bedb huffs, hardly swayed. "I have no patience for his ilk."
Macha bows her head with gritted teeth and Nemain sniffs but says nothing else, turning to inspect her gritty nails. Bedb looks back to the wary boy.
"Would you like to stay? Macha can heal your body so it is inhabitable again and I can return you." She reaches out, smooths an errant curl back into the messy black mop that makes up Leonard Snart's hair. He finds it soothing. "But only if you truly wish it."
"I want to." Leonard Snart says. "More than anything. Lisa needs me."
"Very well." She looks at Macha, grinning. "Get to work."
The blood covered goddess nods a little, mouth pursed in displeasure. "Alright."
Bedb rolls over onto her stomach, elbows causing her back to bend deliciously down, watching Leonard Snart awaken from his death. He looks down at himself, sees he is in his corporeal form thanks to the bullet cleanly put in his body's skull. He's barely 20 and Lisa is, what? Nearly 10? She clucks her tongue at him and his gaze snaps to her. Fury covers his visage.
"You!" He gets to his feet, wobbling like a newborn doe. She tilts her head, uses one well-manicured, black nail to pick at grime under another.
"Me. Yes." She replies calmly, rolling her body effortlessly into sitting up, legs curled to the side and tucked under her sable gown. "Seems you didn't use your second chance at life very well."
Leonard Snart looks livid. "You said you'd take care of me."
"I said I would return you to your body so you could take care of your sister." She snaps, suddenly twice as angry as him. Her tight control of it is what frightens him and she thinks he should be. She is ageless, something unable to be killed because you cannot kill war without starting another war, she will remain while all else perishes. He is just another cog in the ever changing wheels of the universe, but she is a main gear that, without, all would stop and fall apart. "I thought you would do better. Not get your brain blown all over the floor."
As she motions to the bone bits, gray matter, and growing pool of cooling blood, he winces. "Dad said I had to. For Lisa."
Bedb wishes he was lying to her, but he isn't when she looks into his past, pulling and undoing Fate's threads to read what happened before putting them back very carefully. Not for the first time she wishes she could kill the living, but she can only bring back the dead through reincarnation.
She closes her eyes and looks at what would happen if she brought him back again. For her and her sisters? Nothing good. For Leonard Snart? Better, but still the short straw eventually. The only upside is Lisa would still have her brother and the mafia would be too skittish after his sudden Jesus Christ moment to touch the young man again.
"I will summon Macha to remove the bullet and fix the mess." Bedb sighs.
"She's your..." he hesitates. "Sister?"
She nods. "Yes. All three of us are."
"I looked you up. After dad..." He trails as Bedb calls for Macha across their connection. He switches his thought, back to the beginning. "You're the Morrigan. But you don't look at all alike, save your red hair. And are... nicer than I read you to be."
Bedb smiles kindly at him, reaches out to touch his soft cheek. He shies away, but then moves closer, crouching to her level. She notices that he is surprisingly broad chested for still being a youth. Bedb thinks he'd have been great for the gladiator arena.
"You're warm."
"It is more-ree-ghan, not more-i-gain, and I was alive once, like you." She explains gently. "The Morrígan is a living tripartite of war and death. But we also help keep the balance that the Dagda, Labraid, the Horned God, and Brigid help keep."
She pulls her hand back, dipping her fingers into the cool blood. She rubs it between her fingers, dips back in for more, knows that what she is doing will certainly put her on all of the listed parties "shit list," so to speak.
"I am going to brand you, Leonard Snart." She smirks at him, it is dry as the desert. "You have promise, if you can keep yourself alive long enough."
"What'll the brand do?"
"It will, so to speak, connect you to me. I can come to your aid when you need me and I will, almost, always be there. But only if you go to battle." She rubs her palms together, gets a little more before she speaks again. He lets her, watching with a pale face at the gory scene she presents (but, then again, he is a specter). "No other time can I appear, Leonard Snart. To protect your sister my hands are tied." She holds up her bloody hands. "Will you let me brand you?"
"Yes." He gives a single, decisive nod. He looks terrified of the blood she holds, but manages to keep his stomach. (Bedb almost laughs, realizing she'd forgotten he was dead, however briefly.)
She reaches out, smearing his blood across his cheeks and forehead. Her index fingers coat his eyelids like thick, tacky eye shadow. She drags the flat pad of her thumb over the smooth arch of his nose. Then she cups the under side of his jaw, dragging the blood down his neck, bloody claw marks stark against the pale hollow of his throat. He looks like a scarlet macabre belonging to the Festival of the Dead or New Orleans during a funeral parade. Not a dingy warehouse where the Russian mafia found a man too young to have learned better from a dirty cop who had spent too long in jail and had a crack whore for a step-mother 10 years too long.
She thinks he looks beautiful and if he wasn't just mortal, she may have kissed him. Instead, she uses her thumb to bloody his bottom lip. She thinks of her sisters and how they would hate her for this. But maybe also love her. None of them had rebelled this far outside of using a witch before.
"You belong to Bedb, the prophet goddess of futures that were, are, and will be." She states as Macha manifests at her right shoulder. "In time of trouble, I will come to you as a magpie and I will fight alongside you so you may reach the potential I see at the highest peak of your many future paths."
Macha gasps at the sight of the blood Leonard. "Bedb!"
Bedb grins at Macha. "Hello, darling sister. I need you to rearrange the bone and brain in Leonard Snart's head. Maybe give back the shorn bits of hair blown off."
"We will have words," Macha declares darkly as she moves to fix the body and the youngest of the Morrígan smiles until her sharp teeth show, red hands folded into her lap.
Leonard, traumatized into brief silence by what he let Bedb do, watches numbly until Macha shifts back and Bedb leans over his fixed body. She presses her smooth forehead to his pale, cold one and– like last time– Leonard feels the phantom touch. Her nose touches his as her red thumb presses to the crease of chin and lower lip to crack open his mouth. Leonard's mouth opens too, watching in eternal fascination as this goddess worked. Bedb breaths out, a slow stream that fills his lungs and Leonard snaps his eyes open.
For a moment, he is disoriented. Then he remembers the shouts, hiding, the gun in his face, and then Bedb with her long, ruby hair, fair complexion, and otherworldly glow. He sits up, the phantom feel of cold blood on his face. The back of his head aches. He nearly misses it in the murky moonlight barely coming through old windows, but he sees the feather and lifts it up.
A note is taped to the wide magpie feather: "Remember I am at your call. — B"
Leonard Snart shivers and hopes he doesn't need her.
He's an idiot. Leonard Snart can say that with absolute certainty about himself when giving a self-evaluation.
Him and simple, fire-loving Mick pull a heist. But the thing is they haven't accounted for everything. Not like Leonard kept telling himself to do.
He forces Mick to go on ahead and the man hesitates, not willing to leave his oldest and best partner behind. Like the good dog he is, though, Mick runs.
Leonard Snart turns, shoots at the guards but misses and takes three to the chest and tumbles down into a ditch for his efforts. The guards don't look to see if he's dead or not, figuring three bullets at such a close range would certainly kill him.
36 and dead. Leonard Snart stares at his body and reflects on what an idiot he is. He's sure Mick got away. But here he is dead and alone.
Then he's not.
Bedb is there, dressed in her black gown with its white lace, red hair pulled back in a low ponytail. She clicks her tongue, kneeling at his body's side.
"You certainly do enjoy dying." She stares. "This is your third time, Leonard Snart." She looks at him. "Third time is the charm, or so I've heard. Are you ready to die and stay dead?"
Leonard isn't sure. He hasn't dealt with Lewis to finally, forever, keep Lisa safe. There's also Mick to worry about. Him and Lisa get along like a house on fire but that's just it. A house burns until the foundation collapses and nothing is left but decay and a broken– or dead– family. He kept everything running smoothly in their group, no matter how much he hated Lisa choosing to follow in her big brother's footsteps.
"No."
She clicks her tongue. "I figured."
Bedb stands, looking at his body once more. "Macha refuses to heal you again. I am afraid you'll have to dig them out yourself." She smirks. "Care to wager how much pain you can take?"
He stands too. A cold breeze moves past and it reminds him that, in this form, the blood she bathed his face and neck in is still there. That it will always be there.
"I don't, actually." He tells her as she circles his body, bare, dirty feet giving a distance, echoing crunch. The sound belonged in a horror film and Leonard wonders if this is the actual sound they use.
"Very well." She kneels facing his chest, reaching to place both her hands on his chest. He feels it and sucks in a breath that tastes vaguely of blood. He can see in the shadowy night that she is smirking at his reaction. "There is a boy you will meet in a handful of years. He will be dressed in the blood of war, seeking answers to a murder years before now." She looks up at him. "Don't kill him. He will be helpful in your future and also a great ally, should you pull that proverbial stick from your icy ass."
Leonard glares at her. "I don't–"
"You were so against my help, you were able to thoroughly hide the mental, physical, and soul-connecting fact your were fighting." She snarls suddenly, looking at him with eyes that flash a violent blue, baring her teeth like a feral wolf. Her body coils like a viper, hair seeming darker in her wrath. "Do not lie to a goddess, Leonard Snart. We do not take kindly to it."
His mouth snaps closed with an audible clack. The goddess relaxes, sitting back. Her sable mouth pulls in a relaxed smile. "Good." She jams her thumb into a bullet's rose bud and Leonard forgets he doesn't need to breath since he's dead, the sudden pain too sharp to call something belonging to post death. "You're learning your worth."
Leonard stumbles, collapses to his hands and knees, choking on blood as the goddess messes around with the inside of his body. Then she settles back, hand blood soaked, to admire her work.
"Lovely. You'll be able to walk away from that." Her grin is vicious and Leonard thinks he made a deal with the devil.
"What the fuck did you do?" He gasps on blood and stale air.
"Rearranged the bullet holes. It's interesting how, because it requires me unwinding Fate's smallest threads in that moment each bullet hit, and then weaving everything back together exactly as it should up to this moment, which is why it hurts you so much."
Bedb leans over his body again, pressing their foreheads together once more. She presses her thumb to the dip between lip and chin and breaths life back into him.
He bolts up, scratching at his chest and choking on blood and screams. Leonard rolls over, haggling with death for breath.
Warm hands curl under his arms, helping him up. Bedb's soft laughter fills the little area.
"You humans are such babies over pain. It's refreshing." She helps him up, looking at him with starry eyes and battle-worn lips. She is dressed like the guards that shot him and chased Mick. His stomach turns at the idea, but it's befitting her idle-hands before the killing blow comes. "Your companion is safe, Leonard Snart. Fate saw fit to let you die and him live."
She helps him for a while, humming some ancient tune in a language long lost to history and all but the ageless gods. Then she drops him, suddenly and with a slight shove, nearing the tree line.
"Your companion will be coming by shortly. Be sure to shout. Loudly. Maybe scream."
She turns to leave. Stops suddenly. Bedb does not turn to him as she says, tone light. Her words send further shakes through his body.
"Die again, Leonard Snart, and it will be Labraid coming to take you. He holds no sympathy for plights concerning family." After a pause, she adds with a disturbing amount of cheer that reminds him she is just like her sisters, "Good luck."
"You still have time."
Bedb talks from beside him. He's the only one who can see her.
"No I don't." He tells her seriously.
Bedb smiles sadly at him as Sara Lance comes in and Leonard orders her to take Mick Rory and leave. The goddess finds it heartbreaking and endearing when the assassin and thief share their first and last kiss, as much a farewell to him as it was the missed possibility.
"Labraid will tear you're soul apart and never allow you to be reborn." She tells him. "You still have time. Shove your gun into the Oculus and run."
"Mick has my gun."
She blinks, mildly surprised at her own mistake. "I was not looking at this future. Forgive me."
"Why are you so adamant about saving me, anyway?"
"You remind me of myself and my love for Macha and Nemain. While our love has developed to encompass aspects you would find..." Bedb mulls over her word choice for a long moment, chooses, "unpleasant, we found solace and acceptance. Your fierce love of Lisa and Mick, later Barry and these Legends, reminds me of mine."
Bedb clearly hesitates as the time masters and their guards appear. She presses against his back, sliding her arms around his middle to hug him. The goddess nestles her chin against his shoulder as she says with finality, "I love you for it."
It surprises him and he falters as he bares his teeth at Druce like Bedb had done to him years ago. "There are no strings on me."
There is no body left to Leonard Snart. There is not even a hair for her to keep. Not that it would matter much seeing as she is about to, in the ways of the gods, die. Bedb will become a ghoul like the Twins and she doesn't fancy spending the rest of eternity in Limbo. But that is what happens when you refuse Labraid and the Fates three times. And then hide from them.
Bedb sits cross legged in the tall, browning grass of the land settled into a forever Autumn haze, fog always in the distant but never closer. She waits for Labraid to appear and rip away her powers, giving them to another soul that is better fitting the role as the prophetess of war.
The dry crackle of leaves is sharp in the silent realm, caused by the shuffling of feet. She lifts her head and finds it is Leonard, looking properly disoriented and–
"Is that blood?" She asks in alarm, moving to stand despite knowing that, if Labraid came and she wasn't bowed before him, he wouldn't even wait to pass judgement. He would murder her for her insolence to the old customs immediately.
There is a new hard edge to his eyes, a tilt to his mouth she knows belongs here in the immortal realm. It makes her blood sing and her heart crow. She realizes the blood is old, that it isn't fresh like a living body.
"Is that...?" She trails, thinks on how long she's been here in Limbo, waiting for judgement.
"I may have had a disagreement with your boss." Leonard Snart says with a drawl and a dark smile, showing a little bit of his white, perfect teeth.
Her eyes widen and that singing in her blood runs lower. She shakes with some strange cross between horror, excitement, shock, and arousal.
"You..." Bedb takes a step closer to the thief and Legend. "You killed Labraid?"
"He was planning on destroying my soul and was going to kill you." Leonard shrugged nonchalantly. "I take care of my own."
Her hands tremble and she presses them to her stomach in the hopes it doesn't show just how this fact shakes her foundations. Labraid, her ruling lord and master, is dead. The power and magic that comes with the power automatically goes to his slayer, making Leonard Snart the new god of the underworld and her master.
Bedb stumbles, drops to her knees, and bows. Her red hair, unbound in curling waves, covers her face with the force of her drop, eyes closed and murmuring prayers.
The thief looks briefly alarmed, then it smooths over. "Hey, what are you doing?" He crouches beside her, helping her up.
"You are my lord." She tells him, cold inside. "You are the god of death and the underworld now. As a battle goddess who brings the dead to you, I am your underling."
"You're not my anything." Leonard says with a scoff. "Give me back my life."
She stares at him for a moment, helpless. "I cannot."
"You did before."
"I had a body." She says, shaking her head. "And Macha did the healing. If there is not a body, or a head connected, I cannot do anything."
Leonard Snart looks away from her, tightly coiled rage and despair. She thinks of the kiss Sara Lance and him shared. How she would never be that loved. She closes her eyes.
"I am sorry, Leonard Snart, but this is one thing I cannot prevent." She sighs, looking at him again. "Besides, you now have Labraid's powers and responsibilities. You cannot go back without absolute good reason. Like the plague or a mass suicide. Something where there are large amounts of death but war did not take place."
"I can't just be some god of death." He tells her, scarily calm. "It doesn't work that way."
"It does, actually." Bedb shakes her head. "If a mortal kills a god, they take their role. If a god kills another god, they must find a new host for that power. If a god dies or commits suicide..." She trails off, looking about Limbo. "They become a ghoul with magic. Simple as that."
Leonard Snart scowls. "Alright."
She smiles sadly at him. "Would you like me to give you a, as they say, 'crash course' in being a god?"
"No." He hesitates. No one but his sister and her would have noticed, the goddess having spent years watching the boy develop into a man. "Though I suppose it would help in the long run."
Bedb grins. "I will. Certainly, Leonard Snart."
Post Author Notes: The title is from Sea Wolf's "Dear Fellow Traveler."
About the Story: I wrote this AGES ago. I was just messing around with one idea with a friend and it got out of hand, morphed, and became this weird thing.
So in traditional Irish mythos, the Morrigan is a tripartite battle goddess and is married to the Dagda. In this, the Morrigan is three women (and in this series I'm writing they are married to the Dagda) who are sisters and are definitely screwing each other. When you're immortal being related doesn't matter.
The Twins: Okay so I just call them that. But the Twins are a pair of actual gods. They're Bran and Branwen, twins who canonically die. Branwen of a broken heart because she causes a war and a ton of deaths (but she had an abusive husband and Bran came to save her soooooooo) and Bran died after realizing just how bad he messed everything up by going to war instead of just kidnapping his sister back. In my works I tend to put them in Limbo (the space between the mortal world and the Otherworld) and they're ghouls.
Labraid is actually historically a High King of Ireland but I tend to write him as a mortal-turned-god of death. Plus Arawn (the actual king of the underworld) has his own role.
Now, copy-pasting from my Google Docs:
Morrígan (more-ree-ghan): fate, foretells doom and death in battle
-Badb (badh-uv): 20's, Karen Gillan; "I decide the deaths and watch for rebirths, for I foresee all futures."; Lips the color of death, gown black with white laces and embroidery.
-Macha (ma-cha): 30's, Deborah Ann Woll; "I am the wealth and prosperity of battle."; Red lips, red nails, dress evening grey, red fur reminiscent of a wolf's fur cloak.
-Nemain (nev-in): 40's, Amy Adams; "I am the chaos and banshee of battle."; Nails sharp and gritty, dress dipped in pitch with strokes of charcoal gray, bottom ripped to shreds.