So this is just a little something to work on when I'm stuck on my various other fics, but I will TRY to update this every Thursday. Keyword being 'try' here. Basically, Leonard keeps a journal throughout the series documenting the events of each episode from his perspective, and writes them as if he's writing letters to his sister. I'm trying not to do the same thing as Joella's 'Tip of the Iceberg' (which is a good fic and I advise you to check it out if you haven't already). Later chapters will probably be shorter than this one; Chapter 2 is done, and it is shorter. Len just has a lot of exposition to get through with this one.

This will be Captain Canary, because Captain Canary is canon as of Ep 15 (still pissed at how that ep ended). One thing I don't like, though, was how it was handled up to that point. It felt like they would drop some hints in a couple episodes and then have absolutely nothing for a few more, and it all felt rather sporadic. I love the ship, but I think the writers could have been a bit more consistent with it so that the developments in their relationship in 'Destiny' didn't feel so rushed, like the writers were trying to squeeze it in after a dry spell in Len/Sara interaction.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow or any of its characters.

WORD COUNT: 2041

Friday, October 17th, 1975

Dear Lisa,

Yeah, I'm not going with the whole 'Dear Diary' crap, but maybe it feels less like I'm writing a diary if I pretend I'm writing letters to you.

So yeah, the date's not wrong, and no, I'm not writing this as some super-genius three-year-old. You see, two days ago, I was knocking over the CC Bullion Exchange with Mick, and as we were making our getaway, we nearly ran over some lunatic who stood in the middle of the street and knocked us out with some freaky flashing thing. The next thing I knew, we were waking up on a rooftop with six other people. One of them was Martin Stein, that professor who was thought to be killed in the PA explosion but turned out to be alive. He's also a friend of the Flash – I sometimes cased STAR Labs when I got bored last summer and saw him going in and out of there a lot. Then there were two people in bronze armor who looked kind of like those pictures on the internet of people with wings flying around St. Roch, and that Ray Palmer guy from Star City. He also was thought to be dead in an explosion and turned up alive.

Basically, we were surrounded by heroes. The flying girl even said she and her boyfriend knew the Flash and the Green Arrow.

Point is, we then got approached by some guy in a trench coat – the same nutjob we nearly turned into roadkill – who said he was from the future, and he went on into a spiel about how some guy called Savage was going to take over the world 150 years from now and he wanted our help to stop him.

I told him there was no way I was joining up with a bunch of heroes, but then he told us we would be famous legends, or something like that. Palmer seemed to be sold by that, the idiot. Mick and I walked away, and it sounded like one of the others was going to do the same – smart kid.

Then I got to thinking. We were being given a chance to travel through time. All I could think about was the sort of opportunities that could give us. Where we could go, what we could steal. I told Mick just that, and we decided we were on board after all, and we'd probably get to kick a lot of ass along the way.

Confession: that's not the only reason I decided to go. It's just the only one I told Mick. The Flash once visited me in prison after I iced Dad. He told me that I didn't have to let my past define me, and that I could do better. Dad's gone. Half the reason I became a criminal was to prove that I was better at it than he was, but look how that turned out. He's dead now, and he went out knowing that I cooperated with a hero. Maybe I want to be more than just some low-life crook people look down their noses at. Maybe I want to be remembered for something else.

I really have no clue.

Well, now that the introspective crap is out of the way, back down to business.

We showed up at an empty parking lot. I honestly wasn't sure where to go, since I never bothered to look at the address Rip (the time-traveller) gave Stein before I left. I had to stake out STAR Labs and spotted Palmer leaving – probably saying goodbye to his pals there – and we followed him. The looks on their faces when we actually showed up were kind of hysterical. And we weren't the ones who showed up with an unconscious guy in the car. Apparently the kid who was planning on turning Rip down was partnered with Stein in some way, and the old man actually roofied him to bring him along. Mick's still bugging him for a sample.

I figure I should give you a cast of characters at this point.

You know me and Mick, two master criminals with fire and ice guns.

Stein and the kid – Jax – are apparently that 'Burning Man' who appeared in the tabloids last year – sorry, Stein was. Seems it takes two of them merging into what he calls 'Firestorm', and Jax is his second other half. The first one died closing that big black hole last May, and was married to Caitlin from STAR Labs. Small world. Stein comes off as stuffy and arrogant – we're going to have some problems there. From my first impression, Jax is alright, but I've barely known any of these people a day.

Palmer's got some high-tech suit he built himself that lets him fly around and shrink and shoot lasers. This is what happens when billionaire techies get bored, I guess. He's one of those overenthusiastic, optimistic people that remind you of a puppy dog. The annoying kind of puppy dog that won't shut up. Two minutes in his presence and I wanted to ice him, but his brains could be useful.

As for the bird people, they're not actually dating. Or they are. It's really hard to tell. They're sort of as old as Savage (who is apparently immortal and 4000 years old), except while he can't die, they reincarnate over and over and he kills them over and over. He's killed them 206 times. The guy, Carter, joined because he wants it to stop at 206, and he figures having a team will tip the scales. Kendra thinks joining this gig will make it 207, and I guess they had a big fight over it and Carter won. She was not pleased to be there. Carter said he remembers all 4000 years of his past lives, and how he and Kendra are soulmates. Kendra barely remembers any of it, and only met Carter and started remembering 2 months ago, and I think his 'soulmate' talk kind of creeps her out a bit.

And then there's Sara. Looked like an ordinary girl at first. From what she and Palmer were talking about before Stein showed up – yes, I was eavesdropping, what else would you expect? – she's been trained as an assassin, so she's not just a pretty face. Then she told me later that she was dead for a year. And no, she didn't tell me how the hell she came back, but she did call me out for staring at her ass. What can I say? She's got a good one.

If you actually wind up reading this, Lisa, don't smack me. This wasn't actually meant for your eyes. So stay out of my journals. I know where you hide yours.

And then we have Rip. I really don't like him, for reasons I'll go into later.

He showed us his huge time ship, which looked like something off an episode of Star Trek. Then he took us to St. Roch in 1975 and then told us about the side-effects of time travel, which include nausea (Mick threw up), vertigo (Palmer face-planted into the floor right in front of me), temporary blindness (Stein), and bleeding behind the eyeballs (thankfully none of that happened on this trip). The rest of us just got mild headaches and were disoriented for a minute or two. And this was a 'short' jump of about 40 years.

And just when I thought we'd be having some fun, Rip went and benched me, Mick, and Sara, because he didn't need crooks or killers yet. He took the rest to talk to some historian who knew a ton about Savage and was going to die soon so that they couldn't change his actions so drastically it could alter time. Stein called it brilliant, Kendra called it depressing. I'm with Bird Girl on this one, but if Rip wants to be all anal about the timeline, it is the most practical route.

So I was stuck on some time ship with Mick and Sara and Jax, who stayed behind out of protest, and would rather hang with a couple of criminals than the guy who roofied him. Can't blame him there. Maybe he figured that since Sara has history with the other hero types, he'd be safe with her there. The ship has TV, but there was nothing good on, so Sara suggested we go get a drink. We ditched Jax – he's underage anyway, and we don't exactly have the resources to make him a fake ID – and found a dive bar. Although it turned out that the ID thing might not have been an issue, because nobody asked us for any, which is a good thing because Mick and I weren't carrying any and Sara's lists her as being born in '87. As in 12 years from now. But Jax is young enough that he still might've been carded.

Then things finally got fun. Sara was on the dance floor for less than five seconds before some moron came up and propositioned her. Didn't even bother to keep his voice down. Sure, I wasn't being all that subtle about continuing to stare at her ass, but I just look, I don't touch unless invited, especially not when dealing with an assassin. The idiot called her a bitch when she turned him down and grabbed her arm, so she broke his wrist. That was badass, plain and simple. A halfway-intelligent person would walk away, but he just smashed a beer bottle and came after her with that, right in the middle of the bar, so she beat the crap out of him and five of his buddies before they stopped coming at her one at a time. Then she invited me and Mick to join in and we trashed them. I've been in plenty of bar fights before, but this one was the most fun by far.

After the fight was over, we jacked a car for the hell of it – turns out pre-assassin Sara was a bit of a delinquent herself – and headed back, and that was where the fun ended. We got back to the ship to find some guy in sci-fi armor shooting at the others, so Mick sideswiped him with the car and we covered everyone as we got on the ship and got the hell out of there. Kendra and Carter tried to bring the historian along (Stein said they were the guy's parents in a past life – again, small world), but he got shot and later died in the ship's infirmary.

Now we get to the reason why I don't like Rip. Turns out he lied to us. The organization he works for didn't send him to recruit us and stop Savage. They told him to do nothing, so he stole the time ship and did it himself, so they sent their bounty hunter after us. That part doesn't bother me so much, but then he admitted that we were never going to be legends; he picked the 8 of us because if we got killed on this crazy mission, history wouldn't be screwed up because we were insignificant to it. We're just expendable cannon fodder. I get why he's pissed at Savage, because the jackass apparently killed Rip's wife and kid, but I won't be used like that.

At that point, I was ready to pack up and go home. Then Sara made an excellent point. She said that we were on a mission to take down an immortal psychopath and change history, so why couldn't we change our own role in history?

So I decided to stay on. And somehow so did Mick. If history wants to call us insignificant, we'll flip history off and prove that we're not.

And so that's Len's perspective of Pilot, Part 1. Check back next week for part 2!

Spectre, out.