I really can't stand the idea of only seeing past!Snart in future episodes of Legends of Tomorrow. But then I starting thinking...
Just a one-shot to explore the idea. Not related to the "If I Never" 'verse.
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"We need a thief for this one," Mick Rory tells Hunter, not two weeks into their new mission.
It has the virtue of being true. Oh, Hunter moans and Hunter complains, and Hunter wants to know why Killer and Pyro alone ... and maybe one of the new people ... aren't enough to figure out how to acquire a certain artifact. But, eventually, Hunter gives in.
This time, Rory requests a drop-off in early June 2015 in Central City, during a time he knows he was out of the city for several months but Snart was not. He goes alone. Sara simply doesn't have the heart for it. Not yet.
He tracks down his former boss and partner, and offers him a very lucrative deal to help plan a rather unique job. Snart eyes him with skepticism, but the challenge of the game ... and the money ... pique his interest.
It's actually good working with the asshole again. And Snart is, after all, very, very good at what he does: With his plans if not his presence, the heist ... in 2075 ... goes down without a hitch.
Even Rip concedes it wasn't a bad idea.
When they go back to 2015 a few weeks later, in late June, to hire Snart to help plan a job that will actually take place in 1974 (although he doesn't know that), Mick convinces Sara to tag along.
"This is a mistake," she tells him outside the bar. "I don't know if I want to see him. This isn't the person I knew."
"No. But it will be. Come on, Blondie, I could use the backup."
Snart doesn't take much convincing to accept the job this time, but he keeps glancing over Mick's shoulder at the woman who'd followed him in the door. She's keeping her distance, watching them both across the crowded room with a complicated expression on her face.
"Who's the blonde?"
"A friend and a real badass. You'd like her."
"Hmm." Snart personifies noncommittal.
But he also can't take his eyes off her.
The next time (mid-July 2015, a heist in 1930), Sara and Snart actually speak. Mick keeps his distance this time, watching as they both lean in over the plans for the museum and exchange words he can't quite hear. But Sara doesn't slap him, either, so it can't have gone that badly.
In fact, in the days that follow, with a "what the hell" sort of air, she starts flirting madly with Snart as they argue over logistics and squabble about the lack of modern security protocols. The crook is nonplussed for a time, then starts to give as good as he gets.
It doesn't go beyond that, this trip. But the job, again, goes off without a hitch.
By their return to early August 2015, (to plan a kidnapping in the current timeline's 2028) the team sort of considers Snart a strange sort of auxiliary member, albeit one who doesn't travel on the Waverider and has not ... yet? ... met most of the others.
They do take Jax with them this time, though, partly because he's bored and partly because his mechanical expertise may come in handy. The kid obviously takes note of the immediate and palpable tension between past Snart and current Sara, but is wise enough to merely raise his eyebrows at Mick.
They grow up so fast, he thinks.
The tension boils over eventually, though, and at one point he returns to grab the blueprints left on a desk in the safe house they're using, only to find that he's interrupting a full-on make-out session between his two best friends. Finally.
Leonard Snart is, after all, one hell of a thief.
And Sara Lance is far too cognizant of second chances to let this one slip past.
The next job actually is in 2015, in late August in National City. They have a need for certain plans for a certain bit of technology created by a local entrepreneur.
Which means that, one plane ticket later, Leonard Snart is actually physically working with the team again.
Stein, Rip, and the new folks stay on the ship, but Ray gets to go along this time. Everyone warns him to keep his mouth shut, which he does - but he grins at Snart the whole time, leading to a high degree of suspicion on the crook's part. Jax goes along to babysit him.
If Snart's surprised that the five of them work together like an oddly well-oiled machine, he doesn't show it. He does make a quip about hiring Ray and Jax at the end of the caper, though, and Ray is ridiculously happy about this, for which Mick and Jax mock him mercilessly.
Snart has a hotel room in National City. Sara exchanges a wordless glance with Mick, and she doesn't go back to the ship that night.
Second chances.
Rip blows a fuse. Mick lays him out on the floor with one (fairly pulled) punch.
They never speak of it again.
The last time they go to Central City, in early October 2015, Hunter gives him one of the amnesia pills, with strict instructions to make sure Snart takes it. The timeline, Mr. Rory, you understand.
Oh, he understands protecting the timeline. That's why he pockets the pill.
And he spills (some of) the beans about time travel.
"Listen," he tells his skeptical friend, "in a few months, a Brit in a brown coat is going to offer you a job with this ... team. You have to take it, no matter how stupid you think it sounds at first. And you need to take ... me ... with you, although I'm not going to remember any of this.
"But I need you to remember something. Protect that team. Even if it's from me. Especially if it's from me. Some things have to happen."
He pauses. What the hell. "And ... well, always make sure you have an escape plan. Especially at the Vanishing Point. You're going to need it. OK?"
Then he leaves Snart and Sara to their bittersweet goodbyes, and he heads back to the ship.
Because these three things Mick Rory knows for certain:
In early 2016, Leonard Snart will make an abrupt and uncharacteristic decision, and choose to go on a time ship to save the world.
On that time ship, he will immediately gravitate to Sara Lance, with a heat in his eyes and an understanding of her nature that (at the time) stuns his oldest friend and partner.
And he'll listen to his partner. He'll come to care about that team, and that mission, so much that he'll later sacrifice himself to save them. (And, not so coincidentally, to ensure that Mick and Sara, especially, stay alive to later return to 2015 and set this whole thing in motion.)
And it may have taken him a while to figure it out, but Mick Rory, who has been Heatwave, who has been Chronos, knows why.
Now, he's just waiting on that escape plan.