Author's note: Thank you everyone who read the prologue, I'm glad to know I caught some of y'alls attention. Here's for chapter 1, you'll finally get through that first side.

Now, one quick note in case you're still traumatized by 13 Reasons Why, because I know that that's the type of show/story that people either love or absolutely hate: this fic is about how people changed Leonard's life. You'll have to read to figure out if it was for better or for worse, but if you've been paying close attention to the show(s) you're watching I bet you already know the answer *wink wink*

Thanks again to Kita (crazygirlne) for looking over this chapter and making it intelligible.

And please, let me know what you think at the end of the chapter! I hope I'll see you all soon with Side B! x


Chapter 1: Tape 1, Side A

Ready, Mr. Rory?

Mick Rory was first. Mr. Snart's lifelong friend. Out of all the acquaintances Martin Stein shared with Leonard Snart, Mr. Rory was the only one he was sure would be in these tapes when he started to listen.

To be honest, Stein had no idea what he himself had to do with Mr. Snart's little stunt, but he was curious enough to find out.

A sound very similar to a chuckle filled his ears. It was so foreign coming from Snart that the professor frowned.

You know, until we arrived at the Waverider, I only ever remember the guards at juvie calling you 'Mr. Rory.' You'd stand there with your back straight and your head high after witnessing or doing something reckless, and the guards would try to break you.

"Mr. Rory! Do you happen to know who set Mr. Flores's bed on fire with him in it?"

"Not a clue, sir."

You never broke. Unbendable, was what the other boys called you. Nothing and no one could make you do something if you didn't want to do it. I was there for a couple of hours and already had heard a lot about you. 'Unbendable Mick burned his house down with his family inside,' they gossiped. 'Don't look him in the eye, kid. He doesn't like anyone.'

Well, you liked me. Or at least you pitied me, I could never figure it out. Until this day, I don't know what moved you.

I traced down all of the things that led me to where I am right now, and they took me back to that day. My first day of juvie.

Some of you already know this story.

Sara hit pause and looked around her room. Laurel's apartment in Star City still felt so foreign for her, even though it was one of her favorite places in the world and she'd been living here for a couple of months already. Those tapes came to her during a lull and shook her world.

After everything, she didn't think she'd hear Leonard's voice again.

She got up and opened the closet door. On the top shelf there was a bag she had packed at the Waverider and hadn't dared unpack yet. She wasn't ready for it, but now it was time. Sara hooked the Walkman on her belt and reached out for the bag, pulling it out with little difficulty. There wasn't much in there, just a few gun parts and a couple of jackets that didn't belong to her.

Sara opened the zipper. The first thing on top of the contents was one of Kendra's jackets, Sara's favorite out of all of Hawkgirl's outfits. It was cashmere in a soft yellow shade, and it still smelled like Kendra. It was different from the black jacket under it that Sara would wear every now and then, when nights would get too cold no matter how Gideon's calefaction system worked.

Putting aside Kendra's jacket, Sara reached for the other one. The material was a lot heavier and much warmer, made to keep the temperature inside. It sort of saved her life once. On automatic, she put the jacket on, knocking her earbuds off in the process. That little drop brought her back to her body, for before it felt like she was suspending above it all, out of control of her movements.

The jacket was still too big, the sleeves still too long. Sara didn't know why she thought something would have changed. Not even the smell of ice was different, even though it was certainly fainter. She snaked her arms through the hem of the sleeves and folded the extremities twice in order for her fingers to show up, and then she put the earbuds back on.

There was a reason she was dragged to that bag, to that jacket. Sara unhooked the Walkman from her belt and pushed aside the dust encrusted between the buttons. She was lucky Laurel still had it in a box in her office. The colorful Walkman filled with pink stickers brought back memories of Spice Girls songs at the top of their lungs. Sara was always Posh, and Laurel was always Ginger.

Ginger had been the first to leave. If Sara remembered right, it devastated Laurel more than when Justin Timberlake left the N'Sync years later, and N'Sync was a Big Deal for the sisters.

know this story. The story of the first time I thought I would really die.

She was wearing the same jacket from when she first heard that story. Leonard's jacket that she took from his room after the Oculus and cried with on her way home, hoping to tell her sister about the man who put her first so many times.

Her sister had not been home at the time. She wouldn't ever be home again.

Sara had still yet to tell someone about him.

I was easily one of the smallest and skinniest kids at juvie. I know you all saw me as this marvelous self, but yes, there was a time when 14-year-old Leonard Snart didn't stand as a threat. Embarrassing much, huh? I was doomed to be one of those kids, you know? The one that takes daily beatings and has to do things for the older boys.

And those boys wanted to let me know right away.

Now, I'm sure some of you watched enough movies to understand that the correctional system resembles a mafia in many ways, and yes, it does mean that a lot of things go down with the lights off.

I invite you to take a moment to think about it from my point of view now. One of my oldest memories, if not the very first I can remember, is about Lewis teaching me how to disable a safe alarm. I was about four, I believe, and if my mind is not playing tricks with me, those were the only times he held me as if he cared about me.

See, it was after the emerald. Remember, Jax? After that, nothing was the same.

Like that damn Drake song that the kid likes to listen to on repeat.

Mick, I think you were the only person I met that never went out of your way to impress your father. From what you told me over thirty years, I gather that you didn't want to listen to him, didn't want to make him proud, didn't nothing. All you've ever wanted was a way out. But me, I wanted to impress Lewis, for most of my life. Even when the days were bad and he was worse, part of me believed that if I did what he wanted me to do right, then we'd be alright.

So I guess you can imagine how frightened I was when I screwed that bank robbery and the cops arrived. You can imagine how terrifying it was to sit in front of the judge and hear my sentence with only Mother and Grandpa to back me up, the dread running in my veins as I had to strip down my clothes in exchange for that hideous uniform.

I knew I was easy prey. I've known all along, walking those corridors, being set in the bunker with six other boys all bigger than me. You were one of them, Mick, casually flicking a lighter. You smelled of cigarettes, and I remember relating the smell with danger. Unbendable Mick set his house on fire.

The only vacant bed was under yours, and it only took them the seconds I needed to put my things on top of the naked mattress to gang up around me. There were five of them, but in my mind it always felt like more. I keep having to go back to that moment when I first entered the room and I counted. Two, four, six. Three bunks, one single bed. Why is there a single bed?

I asked you that, remember? You grunted an answer that I couldn't make out, and I let it be.

Kicks and punches were things I was used to, but never that many from so many people. I knew how to turn and twist to take Lewis' blows with less impact, but every time I twisted and turned from one of them, there was another waiting on the other side.

I thought I was going to die before I saw the shiv.

I knew I was going to die when I saw the shiv.

'Well, that's something Lewis never dared,' I remember thinking. I raised my hand to wipe the blood from a cut on my forehead when the metal of the shiv caught on the outside light, and because my arm was raised, my left side was exposed.

In those split seconds, I did some math. If I slid from the bed to the floor, what would be worse – taking that shiv on my shoulder or being kicked to death? I had less than a moment to choose the way I wanted to die, and surprisingly enough, my mind went home.

Well… Lisa wouldn't say it was surprising, right, Sis?

Thing was, I thought 'But what about Mother and the baby? Who's gonna help her protect little Lisa?' And that is the only explanation I have for pushing one of those bullies away. I remember I left a handprint in blood on his white tee and how it stunned me. I don't know why it stunned me; blood wasn't a new concept.

Perhaps it had been the action that brought that air of shock to my extremities. Middle school game: never have I ever pushed back. If you push back, there are consequences. Bad ones, in the form of sharp, dirty shivs.

Until you jumped from your bed, kicking Shiv Guy right on the chest in the process. I had never seen anyone move like that in my life, Mick, breaking some bones with ease, pushing heads against beds, kicking at knees and daring them to continue without saying a word.

They were terrified of you, those guys, and they all cowered in one of the bunks. It was such a ridiculous sight, six big guys overwhelmed with fear of one dude. Not just one dude, but Unbendable Mick.

You didn't speak much, but you offered the top bunk to me and helped clean the cut on my forehead before the next patrol came and took me to the infirmary along with the other hurt. No one said it had been you who broke their bones.

Top bunk meant leadership on any normal day, but it was never a normal day when you were involved. Offering the top bunk to me meant that you had my back.

You didn't even know me. Do you have any idea what it meant to me?

No one ever had had my back before until you came along.

I think…

Leonard went silent for a while. Long enough for Jax to look over from where he was polishing his tools to the old boom box in his garage. Long enough to think over all the times they took Mick for granted the past months and how it screwed them over.

Mick was a man of many layers and thick skull, and the only one who knew how to handle him was Snart.

Jax missed the old man.

I think that's when I decided that I should watch your back too. And probably, in the meantime, I thought that you needed me more than I needed you.

You are one reckless fellow, Mick, and more than once I had to take over in order to keep us alive. So unbendable that I had to walk around you in order to get us somewhere.

Like I said, you never did or did not do something if you didn't want to. And after we became partners again, with our shiny new guns and brand new nicknames, it was hard to visualize a future you weren't part of, so I had to find a way to bring you with me to this ship. I had to find a way to make you stay in this ship.

Believe me, I know I did it wrong in 2046. I often took your loyalty for granted when I shouldn't have, and it became stronger than me, this need of having you around.

By trying to keep you close, I pushed you away. Betrayed you, even.

I hurt you and hurt myself, and for that we were almost irreparably broken.

I don't know, maybe we're broken still.

Today, you came over and you brought me a beer, complained about the weird sexual tension between Raymond, Kendra and Other Carter, and we joked about that time in 1994 when you dated that Ramona girl from Keystone and how she was constantly jealous of me.

Did it feel forced, the way we laughed? I hope not.

Things are going to shit, Mick, and I've had this list ready for a while now, but that chat… it brought me to the fabrication room to ask Gideon to make me a K7 recorder and some K7 tapes.

It all circles back to you, my old friend.

It was you who showed me the value of friendship and partnership and team. You showed me, even if unintentionally, that there's more.

And it was because of you, mostly, that I started believing that I could have more. Not be more, you heard correctly. Being more was someone else's idea, and his time will come soon, fear not.

That's right, Mick, I could have more. Every day of those thirty years with us meeting and falling apart over and over like opposing magnets I concluded that it was a possibility, but it was just on that day that I had to take you out of the ship and deal with it that I understood the consequences of taking it too far.

I'm sorry, my friend, I really am. But believe me when I tell you that you can have more, too. Hell, part of me thinks that you already know that, but you still might think you're not worth it.

You're worth it, Mick. Tell him, guys. You all know.

They don't. They have no idea. Why would they?

Sitting on the floor of their old apartment – the same from that time in 1994, when he dated Crazy Ramona – Mick looked over the window. This apartment was the only place he knew that still had a K7 player. It also was the place where he had hidden his Chronos suit. The place where maybe, just maybe, he and Leonard had had something else, and where they partially raised little Lisa.

Or don't you?

Stick around, Mick. There's more for you any moment, I promise.