Len drops himself on his kingsize bed and lets out a sigh. Today was another good day for the Legion. They'd managed to wreak havoc in 1943, just enough to let the nazi's win World War Two. It would keep the Legends busy for a while, while they could start executing their actual plan, which was to meet up with Vandal Savage in 2166 and bring him back to 2016, where they would devise a plan to take over the world.
It's a cliché bad guy thing to do, he knows, to take over the world, and he didn't even necessarily have his reasons for wanting it, but the pay was good, and Merlyn, Darhk and Thawne pretty much let him do whatever he wanted, which was a comfortable change.
His life with the Legion of Doom - as they like to call themselves - is pretty good. He has money now, and he gets to rob banks whenever he wants. It's not perfect, but it's all he needs.
His period with team Legends turns out to be rather helpful at times, especially when they have to take on either Mick or Sara, who he got to know best.
He doesn't miss them, not one bit.
After the Oculus exploded, he was scattered across time and was eventually pieced back together by the Legion of Doom. His precious Legends team, who he had hoped would come save them, were nowhere in sight. They'd left him, and he was angry.
When the Legion told him about how they'd replaced him, he was hurt. How could they have done this to him?
After a while, he learned that the Legends never really cared for him. They just used him, that's what they'd done. But you don't mess with Leonard Snart and come out unscathered. So he's going to make them pay.
He's about to turn around and go to sleep, when there's a knock on his door. He knots his eyebrows together in confusion. It was about one am. Why would anyone knock on the door at this hour?
He lays still for a couple of minutes and listens, but the knocking continues. Eventually, it becomes so loud that he's scared he might scare the neighbours. He might be a supervillain now, but he still lives in the city and he still has neighbours who definitely don't like it when they're woken up at one am because of someone knocking on Len's door.
With a sigh, he climbs out of bed and pulls on some jeans before staggering towards the door.
He opens up and leans towards the doorway, peering into the darkness. There doesn't seem to be anyone there. He is about to close the door, when he hears a little cough come from below. Confused, he glances down and sees a young girl sitting on his doorstep.
"Excuse me sir," she looks up, "You're Leonard Snart?"
Len gets only more confused. What the hell is this little girl doing on his doorstep in the middle of the night, and how does she know his name? "Um, yes, I am." he stammers.
"Great!" The little girl skips past him into the hallway, and is well on her way to the kitchen before he can even call her back. Letting out a sigh, he closes the door and follows the girl to the kitchen.
"What are you doing here?" he drawls.
She opens up a few cabinets, searching the shelves until she finds what she's looking for. She opens up the cookie jar (god knows why Len even has a cookie jar) and begins to munch on a cookie. "I'm delivering a message." she says.
"What kind of message?" he asks her, while he's searching for the light switch. Something about this girl - other than the fact that she appeared in the middle of the night and entered his house like it was no problem - was bothering him, he just couldn't explain the tingly feeling he got whenever he was around her.
Got it. He flicks the switch and the kitchen fills with light. He turns back to the girl and he sucks in a breath. Now that he sees her face, her entire face, not a shadow hidden by her hair, he recognises her in an instant.
Sure, she's younger now, and he hadn't even recognised her voice, but he would recognise those brown curls and soft brown eyes anywhere.
In front of him, in some weird impossible way, is sitting the younger version of his sister, Lisa.
She continues munching on the cookie, as if nothing had just happened and as if Leonard isn't staring at her in complete disbelief.
"I'm here to tell you about your past."
Len shakes his head, trying to get rid of the image of her. This must be a dream.
"Oh, shaking your head won't get rid of me. And this is not a dream. It's real, Lenny," she pauses, then frowns, "Well, as real as you could say a ghost is, really. How real is a ghost?"
Len is still standing next to the light switch, blinking. "You're a- You're a what?"
"I'm a ghost!" the girl tells him excitedly, while she wipes cookie crumbs off her face. She can't be older than ten, Len guesses. He shakes his head. It doesn't matter how old she is, because she's not real. She's not here. Whatever is going on in his head needs to stop.
"I'm not in your head," the girl says, as if she can read his mind. "I'm here to show you the past. See, over the course of the next days, you will be visited by three ghosts. The Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Future. They will all show you something, and hopefully you'll learn from them." she explains to him as if it's the most ordinary case of the world.
"And what if I don't? Come with you, I mean." he leans his head back against the wall and lets out a sigh. This is so not how he expected his friday night to go.
"You have no choice."
Before Len is able to ask what she means by that, he feels a tug in his stomach and when he opens his eyes again, he's not at home. He recognises where he is, though. He's at his father's house, and judging by the small christmas tree in the corner, he guesses it's christmas evening.
He hears the front door close and turns around to find his younger self standing there. "I, um, I can explain." Len begins, but his younger self doesn't seem to notice him at all. In fact, he walks right past older Len, and doesn't even hear him.
"Oh right, I forgot to tell you that, they can't see or hear you. You're just a ghost, like me." Younger Lisa tells him.
Meanwhile younger Len is standing by the christmas tree and uncovers a few wrapped gifts from his bag and places them under the tiny christmas tree. Older Len follows his younger self up the staircase, into Lisa's bedroom. In the pink bedroom in the corner is an old, creaky twin bed in which a young Lisa - the same age as the ghost - is sleeping peacefully.
Younger Len sits on the edge of her bed and gently rubs her cheek. She stirs a little at the touch, but continues sleeping.
Downstairs, a door slams closed, followed by loud footsteps, signaling that their father was home, and that he was not in a good mood.
Young Len lets out a sigh and leaves the bedroom to go downstairs, closing the door softly behind him. Older Len follows him back downstairs.
"What's this?" Lewis Snart points towards the stack of presents under the tiny christmas tree.
"It's just some christmas presents, I thought it would be nice for Lisa to -" Young Leonard answers his father while keeping his eyes to the ground.
Suddenly, waves of memory hit Older Leonard and he remembers this one night that the Ghost has decided to show him. "No," he stammers back. "Bring me back."
Young Lisa shakes her head. "You've hidden these memories for far too long, Lenny." she tilts her head and smiles that innocent smile of hers, that she would always use on her brother whenever there was something she wanted. It was many years later, but he still couldn't resist that face.
"Fine." He sighs, and sits down on the couch and leans back. "But I don't have to pay attention."
Even though they're ghosts, he can feel the couch budge a little when Lisa joins him. "But then you'd not learn what the meaning is of all of this."
"The meaning of this? You mean of revisiting possibly one of the worst christmases I ever had? Surely it's to spread the christmas spirit." he drawls.
In front of them, the conversation between father and son has escalated. Lewis Snart is now yelling at his son, while Lisa, who was woken by the commotion, comes downstairs.
"It's not to show you any christmas spirit, I know we never really had any of that growing up," Her eyes are focused on her hands, which are in her lap. "I know you tried to give that to me anyways. This is why I'm showing you. You might not think of yourself as a hero, but you're a hero to me." She looks directly at him when she says those last words, and he can tell by her eyes that she's being sincere.
Lewis Snart raises his voice at his daughter, yelling at her to go back to bed. Her little body is trembling and she's visibly terrified of her father. When she doesn't move fast enough, he raises his hand in the air, but young Leonard is there to catch his arm. Their father turns to him, his eyes full of rage.
Older Leonard can only watch, feeling completely helpless. He cursed the Ghost that held the shape of his little sister. What's the point of showing this? Of remembering all of the hurt?
Young Len stands in front of Lisa and gestures for her to go upstairs. The girl instantly obliges to her brother and runs up the stairs. Len follows her, but not before being punched square in the jaw by their intoxicated father. He runs up the stairs after Lisa, pushes her into her bedroom and closes the door behind them. He moves her closet in front of the door so that they're both locked in. He immediately reaches out to her and wraps her arms around her. Her entire body is trembling, and there are tears streaming down her face. They can hear their father pounding on the door.
"Shhh," he whispers in her hair, "I'm gonna protect you, okay?"
She nods. He knows it's a useless promise, because he can't protect her from their father all the time, but he'll try to as much as he can.
Older Leonard Snart is sitting in the corner of young Lisa's bedroom, watching them. He remembers this night more and more now, the way their father yelled at them, the way Lisa trembled when he held her. It breaks his heart.
Young Leonard Snart does the only thing he can think of at that moment to get them out of the situation, without considering the possible repercussions of his actions. He just needed to get Lisa out of there, that was all that mattered. She deserved one safe, happy christmas. He reaches in his pocket and calls the one person in this damn town that he can trust.
"Yeah?" the rough voice on the other side of the line answers.
"Mick, I need you to get us out of here."
There's silence for a few seconds, then the sound of someone grabbing their coat. "I'm on my way." He says and hangs up.
Leonard lets out a sigh of relief and kisses the top of his sisters head. "It's gonna be okay." he tells her, even though he's not entirely sure of that.
Older Len is staring at them in disbelief. This is not how he remembered this night going. In his memory, they stay locked in Lisa's room throughout the entire night, he eventually managing to calm her down enough so she could sleep. The next morning they emerged and went downstairs, only to find their father passed out on the couch. He didn't remember a thing from the night before.
This version of the story, however, is completely new to him.
He turns towards the Ghost of Christmas Past, or his sister, or whatever he was supposed to call her. "This isn't what happened."
She looks at him and raises an eyebrow. "Is it?" She hops down from the desk she'd been sitting on, "After you were retrieved from the timeline, you were missing a lot of memories. They are still coming back to you, I know that. Isn't it possible that some of the memories you've been remembering are fake?"
He shakes his head. "No, it's impossible. How would I even know the difference?"
"I think you can tell," she says, "you just won't admit it to yourself that you might have been wrong."
The front door opens and they can hear loud footsteps, followed by someone clumbsily running down the stairs. Younger Leonard lets out a sigh of relief. Lewis had followed the sound of Mick entering and gone downstairs to check, just as Len expected. Meaning that they had time to get out of there.
He moves the desk away from the door, lifts his sister, who is still trembling and on the verge of tears, up and carries her down the stairs.
Older Len follows them down the stairs with a pained look on his face.
Len makes eye contact with Mick across the room and the two immediately spread the tasks. Mick walks past Lewis towards the tiny christmas tree and grabs all of the gifts Len had bought for his sister. Len walks towards the kitchen, grabs a pack of chocolate chip cookies, Lisa's favourite, and a few other foods, before he turns back to his friend, Lisa still sitting on Leonard's back, leaning against him, her hands trembling.
The two men walk out the door, without saying another word to the corrupt cop standing in the living room, speechless, and slam the door closed.
And just like that, Older Len is back in his own apartment, in 2016, in his kitchen in the middle of the night.