Hi, guys! I have some exciting news! I've been nominated for the Captain Canary Fanfiction and Visual Art Awards 2016 on Tumblr! My fic 'How Far Would You Go?' is up for 'Best Short One-Shot', 'Dear Lisa' for 'Best Canon-Compliant Fiction', and I'm also up for 'Best Leonard Author'. Voting begins at noon on Oct 4 (CDT) and ends at midnight on Oct 10 (also CDT). Please vote for me!
So, this is just something I've been working on for the past week, filling in the gaps between Sara knocking Mick out in Nanda Parbat and everyone discussing what to do with him later.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow.
WORD COUNT: 3479
Saturday, March 19th, 1960
Most of the Waverider crew could be frustratingly inobservant at times. For example, after the revelation that Chronos and their former teammate Mick Rory were one and the same, it took them a while to notice what was wrong with the teammate who had come charging in to inform them of that fact.
It was, somewhat predictably, Sara who noticed it first. "Oh my God… Snart, your hand!"
Her cry of surprise drew everyone else's attention to the fact that Snart was still leaning against the wall like it was the only thing keeping him up, his face twisted in pain as he cradled the frostbitten stump that was now his right arm.
"Good God," Stein gasped as he and Jax separated, "Did Mr. Rory do this?"
"No," Snart growled, "I just couldn't get out of these cuffs otherwise." He nodded down at the set of futuristic restraints still dangling from his left wrist.
Everyone on the team seemed to be at a loss for words as they processed the fact that he'd done that to himself. Rip shook it off first. "Ms. Saunders, if you could please escort Mr. Snart back to the Waverider? He'll need that treated in the Med Bay immediately. Mr. Jackson, Dr. Palmer, and Professor Stein, I'd suggest taking Mr. Rory to the high-security brig before he awakens." He paused and turned to Ra's al Ghul, who was watching them silently with remarkable calm for someone who'd just witnessed a superhero battle in his own home. "If that's alright with you, of course." They were in the master assassin's domain, after all, and still surrounded by his people.
Ra's eyed Mick's unconscious form. "Well, that all depends," he said evenly, "Who is this man to you?"
Rip stared down at Mick sadly. "Mr. Rory was a member of our team, until he betrayed us, sold us out to our enemies for his own gain. As Chronos…" He took the helmet from Jax. "He has been hunting us relentlessly on behalf of another group of enemies. During one battle, Ms. Saunders's son was caught in the crossfire and killed." Behind him, Kendra's breath hitched at the reminder of her loss.
The Demon's Head nodded. "Then his crimes against you outweigh his crimes against the League. I will leave his fate in your hands."
Rip and his team thought that to be a bit odd, as Chronos had killed many League assassins in the past five minutes, but they weren't about to push their luck by questioning it. Everyone who'd been given instructions snapped to. While Jax, Ray, and Stein gathered to discuss how to drag Rory back to the Waverider, Kendra approached Snart. "Here, let's get you to Gideon." She reached out to help him stand, but he lurched away, swaying on his feet without the wall to support him.
"I ran all the way here, didn't I?" he grunted through clenched teeth. Kendra looked at him with concern and faint skepticism, but didn't argue, simply following behind him as he staggered back down the hall. "I don't need you following me," he snapped after a few steps.
"Do you know where we parked the Waverider?"
"…No."
They continued like that for a couple minutes, Kendra noticing all the while that Snart's steps were becoming slower and shakier, until he stumbled around a corner and bumped into the wall, accidentally slamming his injured arm into the stone. A normal response would probably be a long, loud scream of agony, but Snart only let out a choked, pained gasp before dropping to his knees.
"Snart!" Kendra knelt in front of him, which gave her a full view of how all colour had drained from his face and how he was biting down hard on his lower lip and taking short, shallow breaths through his nose.
She also saw one tear of pain leaking from the eyes that he had screwed shut, but knowing his personality, she immediately decided to pretend she hadn't. This was the man who'd kept a perfectly blank face after coming back from killing – well, supposedly killing his best friend, and then locked himself in his room for the rest of the night. Unlike Jax, she always knew he'd felt something about having to do that, but obviously didn't feel like sharing that something with the rest of the team.
"Okay, that's it." She reached out and gently took his left arm with the intent of helping him stand.
Or at least she tried to. As soon as she touched him, Snart flinched violently, twisting around and pressing his back against the wall, and the look in his eyes reminded Kendra of a trapped animal.
Shocked at his reaction, Kendra retracted her hand. Snart had been notably avoidant of physical contact in general on the Waverider, but this was by far more extreme than anything she'd seen from him. Taking a deep breath, she tried to approach the problem from a different angle. "Okay, look: you're not going to be able to get back to the ship on your own now that the adrenaline is wearing off. So either you let me help you walk back, or I wait until you pass out and carry you the rest of the way."
He glared at her, but appeared to accept the less embarrassing option, as he took a deep breath of his own and visibly forced himself to relax before nodding. Slowly, the two of them maneuvered into a position where Snart was leaning on Kendra with his left arm slung over her shoulders while she reached around behind him to support his injured right arm. By then, the other guys had nearly caught up to them; Firestorm and Ray each had one of Mick's arms over their shoulders and were dragging him down the hall.
"You guys alright?" Ray called a little breathlessly. Kendra didn't blame him; Rory was a big, heavily-muscled man, and that armour on its own looked heavy.
"We're fine," she responded. If Snart was already having issues with needing one helper, she doubted he wouldn't protest even further at the very suggestion of needing two or more. The thief in question kept his eyes on the wall, refusing to look at his old friend.
Eventually, they all got outside, passing by the bodies of many dead assassins that Chronos had killed on his way in. "Guess you didn't face much resistance getting in after him, huh?" Ray commented.
"Not really," Snart confirmed, "Aside from nearly tripping over the ones rudely lying in the middle of the hall. Good thing, too, since I had to- dammit!" He stopped abruptly, pulling Kendra up short and forcing the others to halt behind them.
"What?" Firestorm asked.
"I had to leave the Cold Gun on Mick's ship. Needed my one good hand free." He glanced down. "And I left my damn shoe there, too." The others blinked and looked down, and sure enough, Snart's right boot was also missing.
"Why…"
Snart winced. "Had to get… creative… with pulling the trigger."
Firestorm grimaced. "Well, where's the ship? Once we've got Rory secured, Gray and I can fly over and get your stuff."
"I can go and show-"
"No," Kendra interrupted, "You're going straight to the Waverider, no detours!"
Firestorm kept to their word. As soon as Rory was stripped of his armour and sealed in the high-security brig on the lowest level of the ship, the two-in-one metahuman took off in the direction Snart had indicated.
Meanwhile, Kendra took Snart up to the Med Bay. Throughout the trip, he'd gradually been leaning on her more and more heavily, to the point that by the time they reached the room in question, she was supporting practically all his weight. She all but dragged him to the bed closest to the door and eased him into it. Maybe it was the different lighting, but he looked even paler, his eyes only barely staying open. Despite that, he'd shut down into a blank expression, completely stone-faced. It occurred to Kendra that the man had a disturbingly high tolerance for pain; if the injury hadn't been so horrifically severe, would he have even shown any pain at all?
What little tension in his body that hadn't been robbed by exhaustion was eased when Kendra put the IV cuff on his left wrist and Gideon began to fill his system with some presumably powerful painkillers. And possibly a sedative, because his eyes fluttered shut and his breathing finally evened out.
Kendra followed Gideon's instructions treating and wrapping the frostbitten stump. While doing so, she was forced to half-remove his leather jacket and pull his sleeve back; something just above his elbow caught his attention. It was a small patch of scar tissue, a circular burn mark on his bicep. A curious look revealed a few more further up the arm, but she didn't dare go further. Despite having no experience with this sort of thing (at least not in this life), Kendra noted that they were all about the size of a typical cigarette, and that they were very old. Adding to that her limited knowledge of Snart's family background, well… it didn't pain a pretty picture.
Disturbed by her find, Kendra finished treating the wound and got a sling out for later, leaving it on a nearby table, then left to change out of her Hawkgirl uniform after Gideon took care of the cut on her shoulder.
Chronos's ship was dark and creepy, the lights on low as Jax and Stein navigated their way through it. Thankfully the layout was similar enough to that of the Waverider that they were able to find the bridge without any trouble, but Snart had never mentioned where on the ship he'd left his things.
"Should we split up?" Jax suggested hesitantly.
Stein frowned. "No, I don't think that's the best idea. There may be a chance of some security measures…" He trailed off as he spotted something amiss. A second entrance to the right of the one they'd come through, leading further into the ship, had two handrails, one on either side. The one on the left-hand side was damaged, the pieces that attached it to the wall broken and bent.
Jax, upon noticing, walked up to it and tugged on one piece, noting that he was able to move it a bit. "Now that's just shoddy craftsmanship."
"They're all bent away from the bridge," Stein murmured, following the trail with his eyes until he spotted something on the floor at the end of the hall.
It was Snart's Cold Gun, with his discarded boot lying nearby. Around the corner was a wall lined with weapons, and scattered on the floor were several shards of ice, at least at first glance.
"Oh God," Jax gasped, "Tell me that's not…" A wave of nausea came over both halves of Firestorm, both their own and each other's over their psychic link. Jax gagged and looked away from the frozen chunks of human flesh while Stein tried to maintain calm, deep breaths.
"Let's just take Mr. Snart's belongings and get back to the Waverider," the professor suggested.
Jax wasted no time scooping up the boot and the Cold Gun and making tracks for the exit, Stein right on his heels. But as they were exiting the bridge, something happened. The ship's engines started up, causing the whole thing to shudder under their feet. "What's going on?!" Jax cried.
"Emergency Protocol N-52," an accented, masculine voice sounded out of thin air, "I am programmed to direct the ship to retreat to the Temporal Zone twenty minutes after the death or capture of Chronos until he summons it again."
"That must be this ship's equivalent to Gideon," Stein presumed.
"Yeah, no shit!" Jax gasped, "And it's trying to kidnap us!"
The two of them clasped hands and merged into Firestorm. The burning man ran back onto the bridge and charged at the window. He crashed through the reinforced glass and flew away from the ship just in time to avoid an unplanned trip to the Temporal Zone.
When Leonard first started to wake up, he thought it had all been just a dream. That Chronos hijacking the Waverider and turning out to be his best friend had all been a nightmare, conjured up by his own doubts about leaving Mick behind.
Then he was greeted with the ceiling of the Med Bay when he opened his eyes. And then he glanced down at himself to try and figure out what was wrong enough with him for him to be there in the first place, and his attention was immediately drawn to his heavily bandaged right arm. And the distinct lack of anything even remotely hand-shaped at the end.
And it all came back.
Fuck.
Leonard sighed and shut his eyes, wondering how in the hell things had gotten so fucked up in less than two weeks. Of course, it'd been a lot longer than that for Mick. Lifetimes, he'd said.
The door to the Med Bay swished open, and a certain blonde ex-assassin wandered in, dressed in grey sweats. Then again, the last time he recalled seeing her, she'd been wearing the same dark garb as the other assassins, sans hood and mask, so he wasn't sure if the 'ex' was accurate anymore or not. The thought concerned him more than he expected.
"It lives," Sara deadpanned, "You look like shit."
"Thanks," he drawled sarcastically, "How long was I out?"
"Not even an hour. Kendra said you passed out after getting here – that, or Gideon drugged you."
"I did administer a sedative upon Mr. Snart's arrival," Gideon confirmed, "However, I only gave him enough to keep him unconscious for ten minutes, had he not been also suffering from exhaustion and mild shock. I recommend that Mr. Snart stay in the Med Bay overnight for continued observation, and there is additional treatment that will require Captain Hunter's assistance."
Leonard scowled at the ceiling. "I'll take the extra treatment if it helps, but I don't need you babysitting me," he growled, "I can sleep the rest off in my own room." Because he was bone-tired, and he'd rather just admit it than try to act like he wasn't and end up passing out or something, like Kendra had said earlier. And his own room provided more privacy than the Med Bay. "What's everyone else up to?"
"Well," Sara answered, "Rip's making sure Ray and the others have Rory properly secured, but everyone else has mostly just been hanging around waiting for you to wake up. They've obviously got a few questions about Rory not being as dead as they thought."
Leonard huffed. "If they're going to give me a hard time for not killing him after two full days of giving me shit for supposedly killing him, I'll pass, thanks."
"I think it's the part where you didn't tell anyone you didn't kill him that's got them annoyed."
"But not you." He'd noticed that Sara hadn't shown any surprise at Mick being alive since she'd walked in. Right after he was revealed as Chronos didn't count; he'd been even more shocked than her when discovering that little factoid.
She looked at him seriously. "I know what it looks like, having to kill someone close to you. What it feels like. I knew you didn't do it the moment I laid eyes on you after you came back."
"Figures the ex-assassin would be the only one to clue in. It is still ex-assassin, right?"
Sara looked down at her shoes in shame. "I thought you guys were all dead," she said softly, "I thought we were going to be stuck there forever. Where else in 1958 would a woman who didn't want to be a housewife fit in?"
She had a very good point. He'd heard her ranting about the sexist doctors at the asylum constantly coming on to the nurses, and most of the nurses not only taking it, but welcoming their advances in hopes of getting married. It reminded him of the concept of women only going to university to find an educated husband, because that was all that mattered for women in the 50s.
"That, and it must've been nauseating, playing third wheel to the happy couple."
"Ugh," Sara groaned, "Don't even get me started." But she kept staring at the floor. "I guess you were wrong, though."
"About what?"
"About me. In Russia. When you said being a killer wasn't me anymore."
"Sara…"
"Ten weeks. Just ten weeks in another time period, and I went back to killing people. Rip went on about something called 'Time Drift', and even Ra's al Ghul said the League wasn't the place for me, but…"
"Sara." She finally looked up at him. "If you really were nothing more than a cold-blooded killer, you wouldn't be agonising over your decision right now. You did what you had to do to survive."
She didn't look totally convinced, but she'd lost a bit of that haunted expression, looking less like the Sara he'd met on the rooftop and more like the one he'd been playing cards with three days ago. So, progress.
He sighed. "Exactly how long was it? For you?"
"Two years. Well, three days shy of that, but… yeah."
Any further discussion on the matter was interrupted by Gideon. "Captain Hunter is requesting that all available members of the crew report to the lower-level brig for a team meeting."
"Probably wants to discuss what to do with Mick," Leonard reasoned, sitting up and swinging his legs around to slide off the 'bed'.
"Mr. Snart, when the Captain said 'all available members of the crew', he meant-"
"Not me? Like Hell. Like Sara said, everyone wants answers, right? So I'm going."
If the AI could sigh, Leonard was sure she would have. "Very well. But you are to report straight back here afterwards for the additional treatment."
"Fine." Leonard wasn't sure what else could be done about his hand, but if it helped in any way, he'd take it. He tried to get up, but was hampered by the IV cuff on his left wrist. Leonard went to pull it off, only to be faced with another problem: he had no right hand with which to perform the ridiculously simple task.
That was when the long-term consequences of his actions finally hit him. Unless he got some kind of futuristic prosthesis, he'd be doomed to live the rest of his life like this. And there was no way any tech, even from the future, could fully replace his hand; he'd still be limited in what he could do with it.
He didn't even notice that Sara had gotten closer until her hands came into his field of vision (which said something about both her skills and the kind of day he was having – he was normally much more aware of his surroundings). He jerked his head up to meet her eyes; she was looking at him with a mix of sadness and empathy, but thankfully no pity. Because of that, he nodded and consented to letting her remove the cuff for him.
"Guess I should start getting used to this," he muttered, "not being able to do most things by myself." And if he sounded bitter about it, he didn't really care, because he was, and he had every right to be.
"I wouldn't sound so hopeless just yet," Sara told him, "I don't know what this 'additional treatment' is going to do, but I do know that the man stubborn enough to charge through Nanda Parbat with a freshly-severed limb isn't going to just roll over and let this beat him."
It may not have completely erased his doubts, but it was encouraging, because that much was true. As if he'd ever let a single setback defeat him. So with that in mind, he shrugged his jacket back on with a smirk and followed Sara out of the Med Bay, ready to face the music.
THE END
Yeah… it's not going to be a pretty picture when those frozen bits thaw out.
The name of the AI on Mick's ship is Gabriel, but I will happily take suggestions for the name of the ship itself.
I figured someone had to do something about a time ship just sitting outside 1960 Nanda Parbat, and a pre-programmed retreat seemed like a sensible idea – in the whole, twisted, 'our-soldiers-are-expendable-pawns' type of way the Time Masters are.
Also, see if you can spot the 'Legend of Korra' quote.