This is definitely the longest chapter I've written for this fic yet. And with that, I've come to the end of chapters that were already written before I posted the previous one (okay, so that was only this one and Len's). I'm very nearly done with the next chapter, though.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow. Or NCIS.

WORD COUNT: 2225

"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough." – Frank Crane

"What is your name?"

They've been asking him that same damn question for so long. He can't remember how many times.

When he woke up in the Time Masters' infirmary, he thought he'd been saved. The last thing he remembered before that was staring down a big-ass wolf that had been eyeing him like he was easy prey. And he had been easy prey, because he hadn't had anything to eat in days, possibly weeks; even the rats were too fast for him to catch, by then. The Time Masters had apparently stumbled across him on a mission and saved his ass. It didn't even occur to him, when he first got that explanation, that it made no sense for them to be out on a mission in the middle of fucking nowhere. They'd known when and where to find him, somehow.

The electric shock courses through his body, just like it does whenever he doesn't give them the answer they want. They know the name he was born with, but they don't care about that; they want him to take on a new name.

"What is your name?"

"Heatwave," he growls, using the nickname that Cisco Ramon kid came up with. He has to admit it isn't all that bad.

He grits his teeth as they shock him again. He doesn't know how long this has been going on. He's starting to just not care. He doesn't know when it will end, either. They have to get bored of this eventually, right? Before he decides he can't take anymore?

Or after?

There's no other way this can end. Nobody's coming to stop it. Those bastards just abandoned him in the middle of nowhere. Snart just abandoned him in the middle of nowhere, their years of partnership – almost thirty of them – meaning nothing now that he has a shiny new team. They can all go screw themselves.

But that doesn't mean he wants to become what they want him to become. Then he'd be the guy that shot at his own past self. How stupid is that?

"What is your name?" Shock. "What is your name?" Shock. "What is your name?" Shock.

He's starting to wonder if he should just give them the answer they want. He could lie. It's not like he has some moralistic issue with lying. He knows what his name really is; he could tell one little lie if it would just make this stop.

"What is your name?"

"Chronos."

Friday, April 14th, 1871, 12:40am

NIGHT TWENTY-FOUR ON THE WAVERIDER

Eyes snapped open, a hand moved automatically to the knife he always kept at his waist. It had been drilled into him to always carry some sort of weapon on him, though he'd chosen a knife before he'd completely lost himself, due to Gibbs's Rule Number Nine: 'Never go anywhere without a knife.'

Yes, the career criminal/pyromaniac was an NCIS fan, though he wasn't as willing to admit to that as he was to his love for ninjas.

He didn't recognise his surroundings at first. It had been lifetimes since he'd been in this place. But it came back to him: this was his room on the Waverider. The one he'd chosen when he'd first boarded this tub. It was his space. And, more importantly, it was empty except for him.

Michael 'Mick' Rory sighed and relaxed back down on his bed. This was only his eighth night back on the Waverider, and the fourth one in his own room. He was still getting used to it, to the point that he hadn't slept a full night since being captured in Nanda Parbat. He briefly considered taking Gideon up on her offer to prescribe him a sleep aide, but dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it had appeared. He wasn't going to go crawling to the AI for help. What he really needed was a good, strong drink. Maybe he'd bump into Sara, since her sleep schedule was about as irregular as his own, and they'd have another drinking contest. That would put him to sleep, though maybe faster than his pride would let him admit.

The prospect of booze propelled him to get out of bed and make his way to the bridge, where he planned to break into the alcohol stash Rip had hidden in his office. He and Snart had found it their second night on this mission, and until they'd had their falling-out in 2046, they would routinely break in and have a drink.

Thinking of that still brought a conflicting mix of feelings to the surface. He was still pissed that Snart had chosen these people they barely knew over him. He was still furious at Snart for knocking him over the head not once, not twice, but three times (Rule Number Forty-Two!). But at the same time, his old partner had charged through Nanda Parbat with a freshly severed limb and, at the end of it, had insisted on letting Mick live, even after Mick had threatened Lisa's life. And he'd walked into Mick's cage even after that and had basically offered himself up as a sacrifice, because he had to have known that he couldn't win in a fistfight. Was that for Mick's sake? For Lisa's sake? For both their sakes?

Speak of the devil. Mick passed the galley door and spotted Snart, leaning against the counter with the bar in between him and the door and drinking from a glass tumbler, filled with an amber liquid that presumably came from the liquor bottle by his right elbow. He froze mid-sip when he caught sight of Mick, then slowly set it down. The awkward silence stretched between the two ex-partners for several seconds, then Snart finally broke it. "Want one?" He turned the bottle to display its label; Mick recognised it as being very high-end, and very expensive.

Deciding that he wasn't going to pass up a taste of that, Mick nodded but didn't say anything. Snart silently reached up and got another glass out of the cupboard, setting it and the bottle on the bar and sliding them both over for Mick to catch, which he did easily. The act of pouring it out gave him an excuse not to say anything right away, but it was Snart again who broke the silence.

"So… know anything useful about this Pilgrim chick?"

Mick sighed, though he was grateful that Snart had picked a safe topic to fill the silence. Well, safe-ish. "Mostly through reputation. She hasn't failed to follow through on an assignment, and time-travel assassinations are harder to handle than normal ones. The Time Masters don't want to disturb the timeline any more than necessary, so she has only one shot to take out her target. She can't jump back a week earlier and try again, or anything like that."

Snart narrowed his eyes. "I'm guessing the same restrictions apply to us?" he asked, "We have only one shot to rescue our younger selves?"

"Right in one." He took a deep, slow sip of his drink (you didn't just chug liquor of this quality). "She's just as dangerous as Sara in hand-to-hand, if not more. And she's got something else up her sleeve… No one's sure what it is, except the highest-ranking Time Masters and her targets. The first bunch keeps their mouths shut, and her targets don't exactly get a chance to tell any tales."

That brought a frown to the master thief's face. Three decades of working with him was more enough for Mick to know how much Snart hated wild cards. He preferred to have all the possible factors accounted for, all possible outcomes thought out and ranked in order of likelihood, with back-up plans and adjustments ready for each of them. "Doesn't sound like the Time Masters like to share, not even amongst each other."

"The Pilgrim is only sent after the worst of the worst, and some are ex-Time Masters like Rip, or have had some other involvement with them. Telling everyone whatever it is that she does would take away her best advantage over them."

"Makes sense." There was another long, awkward silence between the two of them. Mick turned his focus back to his drink. Rip really did have all the good stuff when it came to his alcohol stash. "I shouldn't have let them get to you."

Mick snapped his gaze back to Snart, but his old partner's eyes were fixed on his near-empty glass as if he were addressing it.

"Leaving you in that forest… I shouldn't have done that. I should've found another way to…" He sighed. "I don't know."

"You could have picked my side over the team."

That got Snart's attention. "You know I don't turn my back on my crew," he snapped, "I don't know what it was that made you do it, but I kept my promises."

"To who? To the asshole who lied to us just to get us onto this tub in the first place?"

"Last time I checked, we didn't join up because of that 'Legends' crap he was selling."

"No, we joined up for the score. But that changed, didn't it?" His frustration was bubbling up towards the surface. "Your priorities changed. It stopped being about the score for you. And don't give me that bullshit about wanting the rep of having killed Savage. You know what I think? I think you let this team get under your skin."

Snart glared at him, but the fact that he didn't immediately protest spoke volumes. "I'll give you one thing: my priorities have changed. I want Savage dead because he killed a member of my crew, and I have no intention of letting him or anyone else take out another. And for the record, that still includes you."

Mick eyed him over the rim of his glass. "Which does?"

"Both sides. I could've let you kill the team alongside the space pirates, and I could've let the team kill you at Nanda Parbat. Hell, I could've killed you during the fight with the pirates when you nearly killed Sara. But I didn't. And it's not because I didn't have the guts to. It's because you've been part of my crew for too long for me to just throw you away."

This was new. Mick had never seen Snart being so… open about why he did what he did.

Snart himself seemed to realise this, as he fell silent again, his lips pressed into a thin line.

"You really did plan on coming back for me?"

"Yes. Like I said in Russia: it's you and me. That hadn't changed, Mick. There's just more people added on, now."

That brought a smirk to Mick's face. "Like Sara? I still stand by what I said about you two in 2046."

"And that's still bullshit," Snart growled, "Sara's a teammate, maybe even an actual friend, but nothing more."

Yeah, that was the real bullshit. Even after spending lifetimes with the Time Masters, Mick still firmly believed that Snart was falling for the blonde ex-assassin. "If you say so." He all but drained the rest of his glass. "So are we good?"

Snart stared at him. "You gonna threaten my sister again?"

Mick winced. Yeah, that was a line he couldn't believe he'd crossed. "No."

"Then we're good." He threw a half-smirk in Mick's direction, and held out his almost-empty glass. Mick clinked his own against it, and both men threw back the last of their drinks.

"That's good stuff," Mick commented, "Hunter shouldn't leave it sitting in a cupboard."

"Now that's an unforgivable crime," Snart agreed. He put his glass in the sink and circled around the bar. "Better get some rest. If the Pilgrim's even half as dangerous as you said, we're going to need it."

Mick took the bottle with him, following Snart down the hall to the barracks. Their rooms were right next to each other, which had made for some tense and awkward moments over the past few days and that week before he… left. "Hey, Lenny," he called, just as Snart was disappearing into his own room, "Let me know when you pull your head out of your ass about Sara."

"Fuck you, Mick." And he flipped the pyro off and vanished behind his door.

Mick smirked, taking a swig of liquor straight out of the bottle. Yeah, his partner was still in denial. Maybe he should talk to Kendra about that. She seemed like the type who'd be willing to play matchmaker…

And this is where the co-conspiring between Mick and Kendra mentioned in 'Green-Eyed Monster' first developed.

I just thought it would be funny for Mick to be an NCIS fan, partly just as an excuse to mention Gibbs's Rules. Mick also likes Number Six: 'Never say you're sorry; it's a sign of weakness' (he did say he didn't do 'sorry' back in 'Blood Ties'), Number Sixteen: 'If someone thinks they have the upper hand, break it', and Number Forty-Two: 'Never accept an apology from someone who sucker-punched you.'

In case you haven't noticed by now, in my world, the team did not spend five months on the Waverider. With their mission being so urgent, and the team always seeming to be in a race against the clock to get things done despite having a time machine, and the fact that quite a few episodes pick up where the previous one left off, it's just not possible. Also, saying that the time between January and May is five months doesn't quite make any sense - January is Month 1 and May is Month 5. 5 minus 1 equals FOUR. Maybe they could stretch it if it was early Jan to late May, but I tend to take airdates into account, and that doesn't fit. Then again, since when has time on the Arrowverse made a lot of sense?

Next week is Jax! Stay tuned!

Spectre