Needless to say, the new seasons of "The Flash" and "Legends of Tomorrow" contradict my plotline completely. But since they didn't elect to give us Snart back, I think we'll have to go with this outcome instead. I like the idea of reuniting the team, not splitting it up further for six months (even if Mick did finally make it to Aruba).
She sometimes felt like an outsider when it came to the hero community. Not always, but sometimes. Iris was the last to learn Barry's secret even though they grew up together. She didn't have superpowers or combat training beyond what her father taught her to deal with bullies and pushy dates. And she wasn't a scientific genius. She contributed to the team, but she wasn't like the others.
That left her feeling a little like she didn't belong on the Waverider. Iris knew them from the whole alien invasion affair and the afterparty, but she wasn't close enough to really know any of them properly. Not like Barry and even Cisco did. She recognized names and faces with the exception of the man in the brown coat who might be the previously-missing Captain Rip Hunter. But she couldn't remember really having a conversation with any of them before. And now wasn't exactly ideal for small talk.
Ironically enough, before today, she'd had more contact with Snart than the others. They at least exchanged a few snarky comments when he broke into the house.
So Iris sat on the floor next to Barry, her fingers intertwined with his as if he might still vanish once more. The tension in the room was palpable. And there was not a thing she could say to improve things. But she did notice when the young man, Jax, visibly relaxed.
"Gideon told us to head this way," said Nate as he and Amaya unexpectedly entered the bridge. "Have you heard anything yet?"
"No, but Grey isn't as stressed now," Jax said. "I guess we'll hear some news soon. Especially if Gideon is gathering us together."
Iris took that as a signal to stand up. The others were quick to follow her example, climbing to their feet. No one said another word until Stein and Rip arrived a few minutes later.
"Is everyone present?" asked Rip.
"We are now," Sara said, coming up behind them and entering the bridge. "How are they?"
"Do you want the good news or bad news first?" asked Stein.
Both men looked tired and strained as they prepared to deliver their update. Of course, everyone looked tired. Stress could be exhausting.
"Both Mr. Rory and Mr. Snart are in serious condition," Rip said slowly. "They were exposed to temperatures that no human was meant to survive. Even Gideon can't fix it instantly."
"Hypothermia, frostbite, and all the damage that goes with it," said Stein. "Mr. Snart was colder on arrival, but Mr. Rory ended up with worse frostbite before Gideon could stop the progression. They aren't doing well."
"But they are both alive," Rip said. "Once their body temperatures began rising, Gideon managed to detect weak brainwaves. First for Mr. Snart and then Mr. Rory. Everything else can be stabilized and repaired later as long as the brain activity is preserved."
"So they're going to be all right," said Sara.
"They'll need some time. Gideon can't repair the damage until they are closer to normal temperature," Stein said. "But yes, it would seem that the two of them managed to survive being exposed to absolute zero."
Immediately the atmosphere on the Waverider brightened. Iris could see their shoulders relax and hope eased back into their expressions. Sara closed her eyes momentarily and breathed out, unable to hide her relief. Ray's grin beamed. Amaya's smile wasn't as intense, but equally happy by the comforting news. Even Barry looked a little lighter.
"So what do we do next?" asked Cisco.
Shrugging tiredly, Rip said, "At the moment, all we can do is wait. When they are warmed up enough, they'll need some work from the cellular regenerator. Mr. Rory more so than his partner, if only somewhat. Other than that, all we can do is wait until they can wake up." He looked towards Barry. "I'm afraid we have an issue about getting the three of you home. Traveling through time is rough on the human body, especially when injured or ill. Traveling through time while the timestream is broken is even worse. We cannot risk it right now. The Waverider can't go anywhere or it'll kill them."
"There's the other timeship," suggested Nate. "The one that Rory brought them in."
"We're not leaving yet," Barry said. "I can't go back until they're awake. Until we're certain they're all right."
"They are your teammates, but they were Heat Wave and Captain Cold first," said Cisco. "We've known them longer. They fought the Flash several times and kidnapped me long before you guys brought them onboard. Turns out we're a little invested in the well-being of our former villains."
"Then we'll open up and setup a few of our extra rooms," said Sara finally. "You can stay here however long necessary." Glancing around the room, she said, "And while we are all worried, we're not all going to crowd into medbay the whole time. We'd go crazy while keeping an eye on them. Only one or two at a time. We can watch them in shifts."
With that, she apparently volunteered for the first shift because she abruptly left the bridge. Iris couldn't blame her. Especially based on what Mick said before. Iris would be the first person there if it was Barry in medbay instead.
"I suppose… I could use the time to study the equation that Mr. Rory left us," Stein said awkwardly. "Perhaps I could refine it further. Maybe even make it more accurate. Or at least learn something useful from it."
"And I can finish the rest of the repairs," said Jax.
"I thought we fixed it," said Nate.
"The Waverider can fly and travel through time. That doesn't mean everything is fixed. The last couple of days have been rough on the timeship."
"Do you need any help?" asked Iris, not wanting to feel useless. "I don't know anything about timeships, but… I can try."
Jax smiled and shook his head.
"Nah, I've got it. The distraction will do me some good."
"And just in case anyone gets any ideas," added Rip, "no studying the time drive. You lot already cause enough chaos to the timestream without inventing the technology to time travel early."
Holding his arms out to his sides, Cisco said, "Okay, first? Evil Harrison Wells or Thawne or whatever already had me help with a time travel orb thing. So I have at least some idea. And second, if you plan to keep me from all the cool tech, what do you expect me to do while we hang around here?"
"Well, maybe you could help fix this."
They turned back toward the doorway to see Ray returning with something in his arms. Iris didn't even remember him stepping out. But she did notice the expression of absolute horror on Cisco's face. He was staring at Ray like the man was carrying the murdered body of Cisco's first-born child.
"What… what did you do?" Cisco asked, voice strained as his hands reached out desperately. "What did you do to my Cold Gun?"
Cringing in embarrassment, Ray said, "I had to use it to defuse an explosion in Washington D.C. and that fried all the inner components. After that, it felt wrong trying to experiment with repairs."
"And what do you mean 'your' Cold Gun? Didn't it belong to Snart?" asked Nate.
Holding the damaged weapon to his chest protectively, Cisco said, "And Barry wears the suit. That doesn't mean it isn't mine. If I created it, then it's still mine."
"Rule one for any true inventor," Ray confirmed with a solemn nod. "But I've got to know. Do you think you can fix it? I really don't want to explain to Snart that I fried the Cold Gun, even for a good cause."
Iris didn't blame the man. She couldn't imagine that conversation going well at all.
"If your fabrication room can replicate the replacement parts necessary, I should be able to fix this," said Cisco, looking over the weapon. "It'll make a nice 'welcome back' present for Captain Cold when he wakes up."
When Amaya walked into medbay carrying a bowl of vegetable soup, she knew convincing their captain to take a proper break from her vigil was a lost cause. For all her talk about taking shifts, it turned out to be more accurate to say that occasionally someone else stayed with Sara. She'd barely left the room since everything started.
"I thought you might be hungry," said Amaya gently.
Sara looked up at her with a hint of relief. She'd dragged one of the sturdy silver containers from the cargo bay in to serve as an impromptu bench. For a while, she'd had her knives out on the extra space to sharpen them, but she'd put them away hours ago. The container was shoved into the perfect position to let her sit next to Snart's still figure and yet remain out of the way it someone needed to access him or the equipment. Amaya also noticed she was close enough to reach out and touch him, though she currently refrained from doing so.
"Thank you," Sara said, accepting the offered bowl. "I didn't realize it was getting so late."
"Time does strange things when you are consumed with worry and your own thoughts," said Amaya. "May I join you?"
Sara skootched over a little so that Amaya could sit down next to her on the container. The two women stayed there in silence for several minutes, the only noise being the machinery in the room and the clink of the spoon.
Both men looked at least a little better than before, wrapped in gray fabric and silvery blankets with blue lights dancing over them. Their limbs were no longer frozen in awkward positions and instead rested in more natural ones. And the frost and condensation was gone.
But their skin tones didn't look healthy, too pale and gray. The cellular regenerator was currently directed towards Snart, though it clearly spent time being used on both. And while Amaya was not an expert on the equipment or what it all meant, she'd learned enough since she left her native time period to decipher the displays. Everything was still too low.
The temperatures were too cold. Snart's heart was beating slowly and his breathing was even more spaced out. Mick, on the other hand, seemed to be dependent on Gideon for both. While Snart now had the normal cuff on him, Mick was still connected to the one that vanished under his blanket to his chest. Even with the confirmation that he was alive, Mick looked so much like a corpse that it made Amaya's heart clench.
"I've been helping Gideon with the cellular regenerator," Sara said gradually. "She's been working on them gradually. The worst of the frostbite, or at least the most dangerous, has been addressed. Fixing the limbs wasn't exactly pleasant to watch, but that's finished. Mick still has a lot of damage left, so Gideon is keeping his temperature lower to give us more time to work on it. His lungs are healed though. Len is almost finished. A few more minutes with the cellular regenerator and then it'll just be a matter of waiting for him to warm up slowly enough not to put him into shock."
Amaya carefully listened to her summary and tried to use the information to reassure herself. Mick was on the mend. Both of them were.
"You and Gideon have been talking quite a lot," said Amaya quietly.
"Not much else to do in here while waiting," she admitted, taking another bite of the vegetable soup. "And knowing seems to help."
Not wanting to overstep and yet feeling confident of the truth, Amaya asked, "You care for him. Leonard Snart."
Sara stiffened, but didn't immediately answer. She just kept staring forward. She kept staring at the unconscious thief.
"He was a friend," she said eventually. "A good friend and a better man than he would ever admit. Of course I care for him."
"That's not what I mean."
The Justice Society didn't encourage fraternization within the ranks, regardless of how she and Rex ended up. But she knew the Legends weren't as strict. And Amaya could recognize the facts. The evidenced was etched into the blonde woman's face. She couldn't hide her emotions.
"You love him," said Amaya, deciding to risk a little more.
"I never got the chance to love Len. Not really," she admitted softly. "The Oculus happened before we took the chance."
"And Thawne took Rex before we could retire and be together. Just because we never acted on our feelings before that happened doesn't mean those feelings didn't exist," said Amaya gently.
Sara turned toward her, pity in her eyes. Even after so much time on the Waverider, the loss still hurt. Amaya could tell that Rex's death would always hurt at least a little. Losing the man that she loved and watching their planned future together slip away broke her heart. But she was healing. Amaya could move on from that loss and be happy.
"There is nothing as tragic as thinking about what might have been," said Amaya. "It has taught me not to let those precious opportunities pass me by. We have to be brave and take risks for what we want." Moving cautiously, she gently reached out and squeezed Sara's shoulder comfortingly. "You have a second chance. And you are no coward."
Sara looked down briefly at the hand on her shoulder. Then she turned back towards the silent thief. The two women returned to their earlier silence as they watched over their teammates.
Death was colder than he expected.
That was his first hazy and disjointed thought as his mind dragged itself slowly out of the murky depths. Not that he normally minded the cold. He preferred it to being too hot. But this time, the cold was too much even for him. He felt himself shaking even as his body seemed too tired to do so. It almost reminded him of when he and Sara nearly froze to death when the Waverider was damaged.
But that was in the past. They survived that. So what happened?
Right. The Vanishing Point. The Oculus. Sara. A kiss. A green light.
That was why he was dead.
Almost without meaning to, Leonard's eyes cracked open. The light was dimmed enough not to cause him any pain. He could, however, recognize the ceiling of medbay.
Whatever death should be, Leonard didn't think it was supposed to include the Waverider. Not unless it involved listening to Ray cheerfully lecture on the development of his suit for all eternity. He wasn't deluded enough to think that whatever awaited him would be pleasant. More likely he'd end up trapped with his father for all time, unable to escape or avoid his wrath. The medbay seemed a bit underwhelming in comparison.
Blinking and groggy, Leonard began to notice a few more hints of his surroundings. There was a weird shiny blanket wrapped around his shivering body. It wasn't made of fabric, but something else. Plastic, maybe? His mind couldn't seem to focus enough to identify it properly. And even if he couldn't see them, the clothes felt strange and unfamiliar. His sluggish thoughts couldn't concentrate much more than that.
One particularly violent shiver shifted his head to the right slightly. Then he stiffened as much as the involuntary shaking would allow. The effort felt exhausting, but Leonard managed to turn his head the rest of the way and properly see what he'd glimpsed.
Perched on a storage container, her legs drawn up and her head resting on her knees, was Sara. Asleep, but definitely with him. Her blonde hair and her knees hid most of face. He wished he could brush it back and see her better. But he didn't have the strength to try and he didn't want to risk a knife to the throat if he woke her. Assassin training made her twitchy if surprised.
Well, if she was here with him, then he wasn't dead. He was actually alive and on the Waverider. Against all odds, Leonard did the crazy hero thing and didn't die.
After this was over and they finished dealing with Savage, no one better tell Barry. Leonard didn't want to face his cheerful smile, boundless optimism, and the proud "I told you so" from the Flash.
Another particularly strong shiver ran up his spine. He couldn't stop shaking. Why was he so cold? What happened? How did he get back on the Waverider? Why didn't he die when the Oculus exploded?
And there was something else. Large sections of his body felt uncomfortable and tingling, a bit like when his foot fell asleep. Similar, but not quite. But he remembered the sensation from when he regrew his lost hand. Strong futuristic painkillers combined with newly-regrown nerves since they apparently tended to be overly sensitive for a while. He didn't know how much ended up being healed, but it seemed more extensive than just his hand this time. Last time it took almost a full day for it to completely fade away. Hopefully that meant he hadn't been out of it very long.
While he didn't particularly feel comfortable staying in medbay any longer than necessary, Leonard barely had the strength to move his head. Getting up wasn't really an option. But it was safe here. He… trusted these people. All of them. So if the shivering would allow him, maybe he should try getting some more rest.
"Welcome back, Mr. Snart."
The voice was pitched low, probably to avoid waking the assassin. But Leonard recognized it even before he shifted his gaze slightly to the doorway. Rip Hunter stood there, his expression somewhere between his perpetual annoyance at things not going as expected and relief. A little more surprising was the lack of his normal brown coat. Instead, he wore a thick navy bathrobe and slippers while his hair looked more ruffled than normal.
If Leonard had to take a guess, Rip ordered Gideon to inform him if he woke up. And that clearly led to her dragging the man out of bed in his pajamas.
"I should have known you'd wake up in the middle of the night," Rip continued quietly, stepping into the room properly. "Anything else would be too simple. You probably have some questions. You've missed quite a bit."
Opening his mouth to ask how much he could have possibly missed, he could only produce a dry rasp. He stopped the attempt before he could devolve into coughing, something he suspected would make him miserable. Rip gave him a sympathetic nod.
"I'd go get you some water to drink, but you'd probably fall back asleep before I returned," he said. He glanced at the display somewhere behind Leonard's head. "Your body temperature is still on the low side and you're going to be tired for a while."
He could have figured that much out from the shivering and the overall grogginess. Couldn't the man actually say something useful? Or get him the water anyway? This was probably Rip's method of preventing snide remarks.
"Well, there's no easy way to explain this," Rip said. "For the past ten months, we thought you were dead."
Leonard couldn't completely hide his shock. Ten months? He couldn't seem to wrap his mind around it. But exhaustion and painkillers might have something to do with it. His thoughts weren't the most coherent and focused overall.
"You succeeded in destroying the Oculus. There's not much left of the Time Masters. Certainly not as an organization," he continued. "We killed Savage and rescued our remaining teammates. Ms. Saunders and Mr. Hall have since returned to their own time to live without the threat of Savage murdering them. The others elected to remain on board and help protect time. We also gained two more recruits in recent months. I'm sure you'll meet them soon enough."
He paused briefly, making Leonard narrow his eyes. Rip was hiding something. Again. Leonard wasn't exactly surprised. The man was practically allergic to telling the full truth. But Leonard didn't have the energy to tease out the answers just yet.
"We've had some difficulties lately," Rip admitted. "Which, with this team, is not that great of a surprise. There was a group of individuals who tried to remake all of reality in their best interest. The short version is that we stopped them, but shattered the timestream in the process. But there was an unexpected side effect to that disaster that provided the opportunity to recover you."
Yep. He was definitely hiding a lot of details. But Rip at least gave him the general outline of events. He could drag out the rest of the story later, whenever Leonard actually had the energy to put the effort into it. He barely had the energy to resist the pull of unconsciousness. For now, it was enough to know Savage was dead, the Time Masters were gone, and the team was fine. Sara was clearly all right, after all. She would probably wake up stiff from her awkward position, but she was alive and unharmed even through the ten months that he missed.
As Rip looked at the display again, Leonard took another brief glance at the sleeping woman beside him. Even with her hair blocking her face from view, he could tell that her slumber was uneasy. He could only guess how long she sat there watching over him before succumbing to sleep. But even as he tried to imagine what his supposed death must have done to her, Leonard wasn't so distracted that he didn't notice Rip looking past him to the other side of the room with the same concerned expression.
He didn't have the strength to sit up, but he could at least try turning his head. He'd already managed it once. And between the shivering, the exhaustion, and the painkillers adding an extra layer of murkiness to his coordination, the fact he accomplished it at all was a miracle. But he put in the effort. And when his head turned, he realized that Rip had been hiding something major.
For a moment, Leonard's tired and admittedly drug-addled brain wondered if he'd hit Mick too hard at the Vanishing Point. Then he remembered that it was ten months ago that he punched Mick. Something else must be the reason for his partner lying in the neighboring chair, looking a lot like a baked potato wrapped in aluminum foil.
Leonard's fuzzy mind tried to race, though it ended up more of a clumsy stumble. What happened to him? Why didn't Rip say anything? How badly hurt was Mick? This was more than just unconsciousness. He was paler than he should be. And he was too still, too much like that night where he dragged his limp partner out of the burning building until sirens and his refusal to watch the self-destructive behavior any longer drove Leonard off. He could practically smell the blackened flesh again.
And was Mick breathing? He couldn't tell. He couldn't see his chest moving, but twin tubes vanished under the silver blanket. What was wrong with him?
He chose to stay behind to destroy the Oculus so no one else would die. Not Ray like he was destined to. Not Sara like she would have undoubtedly tried. And definitely not Mick, his hand already on the switch before Leonard took his place. His partner was supposed to be fine. This wasn't right.
"Easy, Mr. Snart," said Rip quietly. "Calm down."
Leonard knew that, even in his groggy state, he didn't react too much even while his thoughts stumbled out of control. He'd spent his entire life concealing and controlling his feelings. It ensured he could make decisions with a cool head and that he didn't expose vulnerabilities to those who would take advantage. And if even his own father would use any weakness against him, the rest of the world certainly would. He always kept a firm rein on his emotions. But it was hard to hide his reaction when Gideon was displaying his heart rate.
"I promise Mr. Rory is alive and recovering," continued Rip. "He's just taking a little longer than you are. Gideon is letting the cold work for us to give him time to gradually adjust. He ended up with worse frostbite and we need to avoid causing shock. But he's already improving."
"He has improved enough that it might be advisable to switch to the more standard cuff version of the medical infusion device, Captain Hunter," Gideon stated, the volume of her voice turned down low to match the rest of the conversation.
Leonard tried to stay awake as Rip moved around to the other side of the room. But he'd hit the end of his stamina. His eyes slid shut before he even noticed. Apparently shivering wouldn't be enough to keep him conscious and worrying over his partner burned up the last of his energy. Resistance was futile.
Maybe when he woke up again, he'd actually be recovered enough to ask a few questions.
Captain Cold is awake. Briefly. That's always a good sign. Maybe next time he'll be able to actually comment on the situation. He'll just need to warm up a bit more and get a little more sleep.
…It makes me miss him on the show even more.