When You Let Him Go
One-shot
They let him go.
Lisa cried, clinging to Mick's chest like he was the only thing holding her up. Maybe she was. He was all she had left now.
"It's for the best, isn't it?" Ray asked, eyes wide and sad as he looked at each of them. He looked at them like he wanted someone to have another idea, some solution other than this.
"It has to be," Rip said, staring out across the park, and Ray's face fell.
"But if we just worked on it a little longer-"
"His brain couldn't handle being in stasis any longer," Stein sighed. "We had already pushed it too far."
"We couldn't do anything," Sara murmured, but they still heard her over the sound of Lisa's sobbing. "Dhark scrambled his head too much and he was already messed up from the Oculus."
Jax clenched his fists, jaw set. "We just got him back." He threw a hand out towards Mick and Lisa. "They just… It's not fair."
"Nothing is, kid," Mick muttered. He pulled back from Lisa enough to wipe the moisture off her cheeks. "If this is what's gonna keep him alive-"
"But you lose him," Jax said. "Again."
"You think he doesn't know that?" Lisa snapped, glaring with red eyes. "You lost a teammate. I lost my brother. Mick lost his husband-"
Nate's eyes went wide. "You were married?" he squawked.
Amaya walked closer to them both, one hand on Mick's arm and the other on Lisa's. "I'm sorry," she told them softly. "If we could have saved him…"
Mick nodded and swallowed thickly. "Yeah. We know."
They stopped talking and turned their eyes towards the bench on the other side of the Commons where he sat, glasses perched on his nose and a book in his lap.
Leonard Rory never looked up.
In the end, Stein hadn't been too far off. Snart had merged with the Oculus in the explosion, blown to pieces throughout time. Lost. Broken. Eobard had found the pieces one by one and let Dhark put them back together like a perverse Doctor Frankenstein. Fragments of one Leonard shoved into the head of a Snart Barry's Flashpoint had created; a version that never joined the Waverider.
It went wrong so fast. Two timelines in one person's head, combined with someone that had merged with the Oculus…
Dhark's magic could barely keep him stable enough to be of any use.
They hadn't known. If they had, they wouldn't have broken the connection as carelessly as they did, but they'd gotten ahead of themselves, sure that breaking it would end the brainwashing. They'd saved Rip and he was okay afterward.
All Len did was scream.
He screamed for days.
"I can see everything, Mickey," Len said, pupils blown. He laughed, so unhinged that they all flinched, and let his head fall back. "Everything's burning. I'm burning." He raised his head again and smiled. "Do you like it?"
They'd never seen Mick cry before.
They could have gone forever without seeing that.
Mick disappeared when Gideon medicated Len into a coma. He came back days later with bags under his eyes and a flash drive in his hand, shouldering past them as he made his way to the console. He looked like he hadn't slept since before he left, not that he'd slept much since they got Snart back.
"What is that?" Nate asked as Mick plugged it into Gideon's mainframe.
"Ginny," he said hoarsely. "It's the operating system from my ship."
Nate blinked. "Your ship?"
Mick's hands curled into fists, but he didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. A face appeared in the center of the console, as devoid of features as Gideon, but dark gray where Gideon was white.
"Hello, Chronos," it greeted primly.
Everybody went stiff.
"Chronos?" Rip stepped forward, cheeks already flushed red as the anger rose in him. "You brought that on board?"
"Gideon's outdated," Mick snapped. "She hasn't been updated since you went rogue."
"That doesn't explain-"
"Gideon doesn't have any information about the Oculus except what we found out when it blew. Ginny does." He turned back to the console, arms shaking as he leaned on them. "Are there any reports about the Oculus bonding with someone?"
"Successfully, no. All attempts resulted in failure," Ginny answered simply. "Attempts ceased when they realized the human brain can't handle the strain."
"Did they know how to take it out?"
"No. All candidates expired too quickly for an attempt to be made."
"Their bodies gave out?" Ray asked, voice soft.
"No," Ginny said. "They burned."
No one said anything for a long time after Ginny mapped out the failed experiments. Pictures. Videos. Ray went completely gray while they watched a man slowly lose his mind and by the time his eyes lit up to an eerie blue, Jax had joined him.
The man died crying for his mother and Sara's fist hit the wall.
"We can't stop it?" Stein asked, sounding choked. "There has to be some kind of extraction-"
"Those people had a piece of it in their heads," Mick said roughly. "Snart absorbed the entire fucking thing."
Amaya laid a hand on Mick's shoulder. "We don't know that-"
"He had his hand in it. We're lucky he's not dead already." Mick swallowed thickly and stood, typing something into the console that made the projection disappear. They all sighed, relieved.
"Those people went insane within days," Sara tried. "He's-"
"You heard him before," Nate said carefully. "He's not exactly sane."
"But he lasted."
"Because Dhark was controlling him," Rip said, "but it wouldn't have held forever. In the end, Mr. Snart was less of a secret weapon and more of a liability."
"So what? We just let him die?" Jax asked, angry. "Again?"
"We may not have a choice."
Mick didn't sleep. He bent over the console late at night instead, head cradled in his hands as a cup of coffee cooled next to him. He wanted a beer, but he stuck with caffeine and hoped it gave him a clearer head. "Run it again."
"The results are the same," Ginny reported after a minute. "Leonard Snart still dies."
"Run it again," he growled. "Talk to me when you have a better answer."
"Mick." Amaya came up behind him and placed herself at his side. "You need to get some sleep."
"I'm fine."
"You're exhausted," she corrected. "I know you care about him, but this isn't doing any good."
"Neither's doing nothing." He hit a couple buttons and the image of a brain appeared on the projector. "He's in a coma and his brain's lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. It doesn't matter that we've got him knocked out. He's still dying."
"You're sure?"
"Not the first time docs have wanted to check out his brain," Mick muttered. "He was always smart, but this isn't normal. It's what happened to the others."
"You know a lot about it, don't you?" she asked, curious.
He grunted and let his head drop forward so he didn't have to look at the projection anymore. "Most of the Time Masters didn't know the Oculus even existed. Hunters had to."
"The records said the bounty hunters were the first people they experimented with," she remembered, voice soft and sympathetic. "You all knew?"
"We knew what we were told," Mick muttered, "too damn brainwashed to give a shit that they were turning us into lab rats."
"Why would they use the hunters, though?" she asked. "They needed you-"
"They could make more of us whenever they wanted. All they had to do was nab some asshole they could break."
"They didn't break you."
Mick snorted, but he didn't correct her. He started typing again. "Go to bed. They wanna jump in the morning."
"You need to sleep too."
The live feed of the med bay appeared and he stared at the image of Len lying on the bed. "I'll sleep after I fix him."
Neither of them said that he might not be able to.
"His brain is dying," Ray murmured, horrified, as they pulled up the latest scans. He wasn't wrong. The image that had been lit up before was starting to show dark spots.
"The more accurate assessment would be that his brain is beginning to burn," Gideon said, bluntly. Everybody cringed.
Mick dropped into a chair like his legs couldn't hold him up. "How long?"
"Approximately seventy-two hours," Ginny responded. "If you would like to be generous."
"But he's in stasis," Stein argued, adjusting his glasses as if it would change the results on the new scan.
"Doesn't look like it matters, Gray," Jax said as his voice cracked.
Mick hung his head. "We gotta do it."
"That was a last resort." Sara shook her head, gnawing at her bottom lip. "We don't even know if it would work. If he remembered-"
"He'll die either way," Rip sighed. "The rush of everything coming back would be too much."
"So we find another way!"
"There is no other way, Sara." He looked to each of them like he was apologizing until his eyes fell on Mick. "Mr. Rory, I'll let you make the call."
For a long minute, Mick didn't say anything. He kept his eyes trained on the floor, shoulders hunched and hands folded in front of him so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. Finally, he swallowed. "Do it."
No one mentioned that he sounded like something in him was dying. They didn't look at him. They couldn't.
"I'll… Uh… I'll call his sister," Nate offered, out of place as his friends began to mourn someone he and Amaya had never truly met. No one argued, unwilling to be the ones to tell Lisa they hadn't been able to fix her brother after they'd left her hoping for weeks.
Amaya sank into the chair next to Mick and reached for his hand. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
Eyes shining, Mick let out a ragged breath. "No."
They did it anyway.
They walked back to the Waverider with heavy hearts. Lisa stumbled along with Mick, too hysterical to hold herself up, and no one tried to tell her it was going to be okay. She'd just lost her brother again and for the second time, she didn't get a grave to mourn him at. Leonard Snart was dead, sealed away by old Time Master methods.
They left Leonard Rory in Boston, flush with implanted memories and a life that was more lie than truth. Still, they'd watched him weave a silver dollar between his fingers while he read, fidgeting as much as Snart always did. Some things couldn't be erased.
They just hoped he stayed safe.
"The house you set him up in is nice," Sara told Mick gently that night when she slipped into his room and he passed her the bottle of Jack.
"Was ours," Mick muttered. "Bought it with a couple of aliases after we…" He stopped, twisting the ring that had appeared on his left hand after they returned to the Waverider. It was a twin to the one Leonard used to wear. "Doesn't matter."
"Yes, it does." She reached out to touch his wrist, closer and more understanding than the two of them had been in a while. "You did the right thing."
"Thought you didn't want me to do it."
"I didn't." She sighed. "I thought if we could save him…"
"Fixing him wouldn't have meant we could save your sister."
She flinched at the words, but she didn't say he was wrong. "I know. But he was a friend too. If I could have saved him just for that, I would have."
He nodded and took the bottle from her.
Mick stayed for two more years, going through the motions and pretending that he wasn't stealing the jump ship to go watch Len. Privately, Stein questioned his coping mechanisms, but they were all guilty of sneaking away whenever they dropped back into the present.
Len had a boyfriend one visit and Mick growled for a week.
The guy was gone the next time they dropped by Boston and no one wanted to ask if they'd simply broken up or if he'd gone up in flames.
When he said he was leaving, no one was surprised. They'd seen the writing on the walls when Mick told Rip to wipe Snart's memories. He'd continued on with the team in Len's memory when he was dead and he'd stayed when he wasn't, but his heart hadn't been in it for a long time.
They met his announcement with sad smiles and Sara disappeared into Rip's office. She came back with a heavy envelope that she pressed into his hands.
"We figured," she told him as her sad smile shifted to something more encouraging. "Cisco wiped your criminal record, same way they did with Snart's before. There's nothing on you and that," she gestured down at the envelope, "has a new alias. Everything you'll need."
"There are keys in there, too," Ray added. "We got you a house."
"Raymond paid for it," Stein confessed. "But we assisted in picking it out."
"We built a big fire pit in the backyard," Jax said. "It's legal, too."
"Barely," Nate chuckled. "I don't think any fire chief would approve of one you can fit a couch into."
"It's on the same block as Leonard," Amaya told him, her voice softer than the others. She shared the same smile the others did, proud at what they'd set up for their friend, but the sadness was there too. Nate squeezed her hand like he understood and she turned a thankful look towards him.
"There's a beacon for the Waverider in there as well," Rip said as stiff as ever. "If you ever want to return."
Mick grunted and put the envelope down before he unhooked his gun from its thigh holster. "Think I'm gonna hang this up," he told them as he handed it to Sara. "Don't feel much like getting tempted and it's not gonna blend in too well out there."
"You're going straight?" Nate asked, surprised.
"Never was much for straight," Mick huffed with a little smile.
Nate's cheeks went pink. "I meant-"
"I know what you meant." He shook his head. "It's already risky with me going back. I'm not about to start up with the old crap. If he remembers anything…" He didn't finish the sentence, but the reminder hung heavy in the room. "S'better this way. The kid'll probably be happy to get that back anyway."
Sara hummed. "I'll be sure to give it to Cisco."
"The beacon will also work as a communication device," Stein said.
"So you can stay in touch," Jax finished. "We wanna know how it goes."
Mick let his lips curve up into a little smile. "This one isn't going to blow up, is it?"
"That happened one time!"
He left days later, a bag waiting by his feet as he endured the goodbye hugs. Ray blubbered and Mick bit back every grumble that tried to work its way up his throat.
Sara went last, holding on a little too tight before she stepped back and gave him a weak smile. "We want wedding invitations," she told him firmly. "I'm sure you can come up with a cover story for us."
The team gave him the bare bones of a new life, but Mick spent the first few months shaping the rest of it. He found a therapist he lied to about his past and told the truth to about his urges. A restaurant hired him for their kitchen. He rescued a pitbull that acted more like a lap cat than an actual dog and named her Killer in a fit of irony.
He didn't approach Len for months.
Killer took the choice out of his hands one day in August and slipped under the gate, utterly ignoring him as she bolted down the street. He caught up with her in front of a house he tried hard not to look at whenever he passed it.
The little shit smiled at him from where she was sitting next to Len on the front steps, happy and panting as the other man scratched behind her ears.
"I take it she's yours?" Leonard asked with an amused chuckle.
Mick froze, a rock in his throat as he stared at his old partner. "Yeah," he said stiffly. "You the one she sneaks off to every time she gets out?"
Len hummed. "You might want to secure her better. Not everybody likes finding a pitbull sleeping on their porch."
Len did. He knew he did. The guy had always been a sucker for animals. Mick might have let him have a couple if Len had been even moderately capable of remembering to feed himself, let alone a pet.
"She digs," he said uselessly as he moved forward to hook Killer's collar on again. He wrapped the leash firmly around his hand and clicked his tongue at her. She didn't look at him, content with the way Len was still petting her. Traitor.
Len shook his head, still smiling something that looked too familiar. "She's smart."
"She's a pain in my ass."
"Aren't the smart ones always?"
Killer turned running to Leonard's a habit.
He grumbled about it, but he still gave her the bacon off his plate in the mornings.
Len—"Call me Len. I hate Leonard."—came over a few days before Christmas with a bottle of Jack for Mick and an extra gift for Killer. He put a rawhide bone on the floor next to a little mouse with a bell in it.
The dog picked the fucking cat toy and Mick wondered if she was determined to drive him crazy.
Still, it made Len laugh a deep belly laugh that Mick had only heard a few times in his life.
"I think you like her more than you like me," Mick muttered. Len looked at him, mouth open to reply, and stopped. Everything went quiet except for Killer's happy panting as she kicked that stupid mouse toy around the room. Mick's breath caught in his throat, old fears kicking into overdrive. "What is it?"
Len shook himself out of whatever made him pause and gave a breathy little chuckle. "Nothing. You just reminded me of someone."
Mick let out a breath and tried to keep the sadness out of his smile. "Yeah. You too."
"Do you think he remembers anything?" Sara asked, voice gravelly through the tiny speaker in the beacon-turned-communicator.
"He'd be dead if he did."
She hummed. "Just be careful. And tell us how the date goes. Ray's sending Lisa updates."
They fucked after the first date, but neither one of them had ever been one for traditional. Seemed like the new version of Len wasn't much different with the way he pulled Mick to his bed or the way he trembled at every touch.
"The scars," Len started afterward as he pulled the sheet up and tucked it under his arm pits, "they're…"
"We all got 'em," Mick said easily as he shrugged a scarred shoulder. He could see Len trying to fumble for a story to explain a roadmap of marks Mick had become familiar with over the years. The marks from Lewis. The ones from jail and jobs gone wrong. The scattered burn marks from when he got too close to one of Mick's fires. He didn't want to hear a fake story about how he got one when he could remember most of the real ones.
"You're not big on life stories, are you?"
"Are you?" Mick returned like it was an answer on its own.
"No," Len said before he kissed him again.
He always remembered Snart. A new life and new aliases didn't mean that he'd forget thirty years with him just because he was playing house with an altered version. He still saw Snart in Len, caught glimpses of him in the way his fingers twitched and in the Central City slums accent he'd never be able to shake. He saw it in the stupid movie references and the way Len said his name.
It still hurt, but he made peace with it. There wasn't much of a choice otherwise.
The team visited randomly, one or two dropping in to meet Len all over again. It was as much looking for some kind of closure as it was them testing the memory blocks. Nothing ever slipped. Len never remembered.
Lisa visited around Christmas, Cisco at her side, and Mick introduced her as his sister. He choked on the word, but Len didn't notice. He stared at Lisa a second too long and they all tensed, waiting for it to go to hell, but Len shook her hand and said it was nice to meet her.
Lisa broke down in tears when Len went home later and cried the rest of the night.
"Are you ever going to ask him?" Sara asked as she reached out to finger the old ring Mick had shifted to his right hand the day he left the Waverider two years ago.
He grunted and looked down at the gaudy ring that had never really looked like a wedding band. Thankfully, he thought. Len had never questioned the ring, no matter how much he played with it whenever he had a hold of Mick's hand.
"Soon," he told her.
She smiled. "We still want invites."
Leonard Rory and Michael Wynters got married on a hot day in August.
Lisa got her brother back and Mick found the strength to take off his old ring. He put it beside the one Snart had slipped in his pocket at the Oculus and let him go.
The End