Central City – 1993

"Leonard."

She was awake. Probably not for very long.

"Leonard."

It had been almost a week since she was hospitalized, since she collapsed in the kitchen. There wasn't much time left – a few days, maybe even less – so the doctors let them camp out in her room until then.

He's been sleeping pretty terribly, though, and it's starting to show.

"Leonard, honey, come here."

It's too much work to continue pretending that he's asleep, so he gives up before she asks him a fourth time, gingerly sitting up and walking up to the bed.

"You alright? Do you need anything?"

He couldn't recall the last time he'd seen Elizabeth walking without some sort of aid, or the last time she'd been able to keep down a full meal. Now, in the dim light of her hospital room, his stepmother looked unexpectedly peaceful, smiling knowingly up at him with exhausted eyes.

"I'm alright, Leonard. Just feeling a little lonely, is all."

He wasn't stupid enough to believe that, but he'd rather die than press her for the truth.

"Where's your father?"

"Out."

"Ah."

She looked at him for a long second before looking past him, at the two lumps huddled together under the blankets. The smaller one, face smashed into her favourite stuffed giraffe, shifted a little before going still, and he was oddly grateful that there was no one else here to see Elizabeth like this. His father – his father wouldn't have appreciated this moment, this precious moment, in the same way, if at all.

"…I'm glad you're here, Leonard."

"Me, too."

He couldn't meet her gaze, staring resolutely at the sheets folded around her and gripping the railing as tightly as he could. It was just another goodbye to say, he tried to tell himself, just another person who had to leave them behind with Lewis.

"Take care of my baby girl, please."

It was – it was obvious that she thought this was the last time she'd ever be able to ask anything of him. Elizabeth had stopped pretending a long time ago, at least to him, that the treatments and the tests were going to save her. He wondered, briefly and with burning eyes, if she had always known that this was how it would go.

"Elizabeth, I-"

He went quiet as her frail hand wrapped around his, squeezing tightly and smiling brightly at him. It was impossible how serene she looked, how at peace she seemed with this awful situation.

"Take care of her for me, won't you?"

He'd broken a lot of promises in his life. He'd never been the person that she would like him to be, and she'd never been the person that he expected. But as Leonard Snart stared down at his dying stepmother, at a woman he had not been prepared for, three days before her death, he swore to himself that he would not break this promise.

It hit him, then, that he didn't want to say goodbye.

"I will."


me, staring at this work of mine that hasn't been updated in over a year: alright time to get off your nonsense and get this shit done

me, tossing this chapter at you all before i can talk myself out of it: dont mind me