Part three of four! Sorry for the delay; the next (and last) will be posted very soon.
With thanks again at LarielRomeniel for the beta!
...
For a while, they sit in silence.
Rip closes his eyes and leans his head back onto the wall. It's funny. Even after so many years, it's still amazing how simply being in this time period can bring the memories back. The smells. (Some good, many bad.) The sounds, the voices. Even some of the tastes. (He can still taste the first spice-cake he'll buy with his ill-gotten gains in the morning.) It's nostalgic and it's painful, and he both wants to leave immediately and wants to linger a bit.
Of course, the knowledge of what his...situation...was right now remains hanging over him like a cloud, a constant aggravating worry. His younger self is in pain now, in this timeline, hungry, increasingly desperate...
"Sooooo, where is little Michael Hunter right now?"
Goddamn Snart and his perception. Annoyance makes his tone sharp...sharper than usual.
"That is none of your business."
"No?" Rip can see the dim shape of the other man shift against the other wall. "You know an awful lot about the rest of us. We don't know so much about you. Seems only fair."
"What makes you think I know so much about you?"
The motion seems to be a shrug. "Don't you? Had to look us up to make sure it was safe to dangle the 'legends' lure in front of us. Which means, of course, that we weren't. Legends, of course."
Will he never live that down?
"That doesn't mean I looked at your pasts, beyond basic abilities and what anyone in 2016 could find out. Why did you think I would? Because youwould?"
The quality of the silence tells him that he's scored a palpable hit. In all fairness, though, he admits: "I did have Gideon look each of you up, so that she was aware and could inform me of any...potential issues in certain times. That's her job, after all."
"Hmm." Then, flatly, "Like the reasons behind a certain pit stop in 1975?"
Ah. "Like that, yes."
"You knew it wouldn't work." Again, the flat tone.
"Mr. Snart, I didn't even know of your...jaunt...until well after the fact. When Mr. Jefferson told me, actually...and before you say anything, know that it was because he was actually concerned about you. Thought you might have damaged your own timeline and would 'pop' out of existence, or something."
"But Gideon knew. What I was going to try to do."
"I'm sure she suspected."
"And yet she didn't try to stop me. She knew it wasn't going to work."
"Mr. Snart, sometimes lessons have to be learned the hard way."
It isn't until much later that he'll put the pieces together behind the reasons for the other man's abrupt movement, something that actually looks like the start of a lunge although Snart arrests the motion nearly immediately.
He doesn't bother, however, to halt his words. "High and mighty Time Masters," comes the drawl, low and vicious. "Can't be bothered to care about improving the life of one 'nothing' family."
It stings. Partly because those Time Masters are gone. Partly because those Time Masters did save him.
Eventually.
He doesn't respond, not at first. Snart doesn't seem inclined to pursue his bitter words. They sit in silence, again, until...
"I'm on my way toward starving to death right now."
He can see Snart turn his head in the direction of the words, but the other man says nothing.
"I'd been on my own for a good five years at this point," Rip continues, staring at the ceiling. "Ran away from the Foundling Hospital not too far from here, actually. I was about 5 then, and a right cocky little bastard. Thought the freedom of the streets was better than learning ropework and gardening, and gruel and bread and boiled meat for meals."
Was that the ghost of a chuckle? He frowns. But when there's nothing else, he continues.
"Ran with a gang at first. They'll take in the lil' ones … small hands can get in and out of pockets easily, and if they get caught .. well, it's more effective when they snivel. By the time I was 8, though, I was mostly on my own, and not doing badly, really.
"Then about, oh, two weeks ago, I was a little too confident."
He subsides. The silence stretches.
Why on earth is the Time Master telling him this?
OK, Leonard Snart thinks, so he'd actually asked. That doesn't mean he believed for a moment the man would actually tellhim anything about his past.
But now, he'll admit it: he's curious.
"So, what happened?"
He suppresses annoyance when the other man smiles a little, the expression apparent in his voice when he speaks again.
"Well, thought they had to take the piss outta me, didn't they?" The accent, gone briefly as they were beyond the hearing of others, is back and the tiniest bit thicker. "I was showin' them up. Takin' … taking their marks. There were six of them; I'm actually a little surprised I got away alive.
"But they hurt me, they did. Broke my arm. I probably had a concussion, looking back at it. Definitely in full-mourning … errr, two black eyes, that means. Pathetic, really."
He doesn't want to feel sympathy for Rip Hunter. Sympathy for anyone, really, hadn't been in his wheelhouse for a very long time.
But he does.
Because he's been there. He's had a broken arm and two black eyes at once – although he was 12 at the time, and they'd been dealt by one man alone. He's felt the burn of hunger in his belly, too, although it's never gotten close to true starvation for him.
"Hard to stay … unobtrusive … when you've had the shit kicked out of you," he drawls before he even realizes he's going to offer commiseration. "People … watch you differently."
He sees Hunter's nod in the darkness.
"Yes. Well. I laid low for as long as I could, but I eventually had to venture out or else. Had no luck at all for two nights in a row. Well, I was dizzy and I looked a nightmare … probably could have gotten a few pence begging, but ... too much pride, you know."
Oh, he knows.
"Third night I'm pretty sure I was dizzy from hunger as well," Hunter continues, but there's suddenly a hint of … avarice? Well, well... in his tone. "But there he was. This toff, a real gin bottle, out in the Whitechapel night like he was walking the streets of Piccadilly. Couldn't put one foot straight in front of the other, even with a cane. It was easy work to lift off him ...and when I got a look at his purse after, he'd apparently been carrying his entire life savings on him.
"I'd never been in the cream like that before. I got some real food and a bit of a better hidey hole until I could walk straight again myself, even got an old saw-bones to look at the arm … although they later had to re-break it at the Refuge anyway. Still, that fellow probably saved my life."
Snart thinks about the odd expression he's seen on the other man's face a few times today. "And that was around now?"
"Oh, it was tonight." He can hear the wry note in Hunter's voice. "They make us piece together our own timeline at the Refuge, as soon as we can, so we know what and when to avoid when we're actually Time Masters ourselves. I really shouldn't be here. But, well..."
The reminder of the Time Masters … and all their actions … makes Snart's voice sharp again. "So how long did it take before they actually deigned to 'rescue' you?"
He can hear the frown in Hunter's voice. "A few weeks. Tried to lift off another toff … and next thing you know, I'm waking up on a ship not unlike Gideon, on the way to the Refuge. You know something of the rest."
"Why you?"
"I haven't the foggiest notion, Mr. Snart. I was like any other urchin on the London streets. I had a somewhat odd token from before the Foundling Hospital, but … well, it's not important."
The tone is dismissive, and abruptly, it rekindles the rage he'd felt earlier.
"So the playing-god thing, it's just random then," he drawls coldly. "Anyone else can just starve. Or get beaten to death."
He sees Hunter's shadow stiffen, hears the lecturing Time-Master note come back into his tone. "Mr. Snart, the timeline..."
"The timeline? I thought they were just doing whatever they wanted. Pulling strings."
Hunter's tone is defensive. "They thought they were doing the right thing..."
But the crook is on a roll, bitterness seeping from every word. "You want people to be heroes? The Time Masters could have been heroes. Instead they tinkered just because they could. And I couldn't even make one lousy change to improve my baby sister's life.
"I've been called a villain in my day, Rip. But they, they were villains. Not some sort of saviors."
He's expecting a reaction; he's been pushing for it out of sheer obstinacy and anger and frustration. He's not expecting quite what he gets.
In a heartbeat, Hunter is on his feet, looming over him, and the words are spilling out of the Brit, colored with anger and pain and, that's a large share of rage.
"They were my saviors and they weremy family and now they are gone," the former Time Master hisses at him. "Because of you."
Hunter takes a shaky sort of breath.
"Gone. All of them. And it's entirely possible that my Miranda, my Jonas, weren't even saved, despite all that. And yet here youare, back again, with a second chance, and that is something none of them got! So don't you talk to me about who deserves what, Mr. Snart. Because you sure as hell didn't deserve it. Not if they didn't."
Rip regrets the words almost immediately.
Not because they're not true. They are, and they're been percolating around in his head since the day the Oculus wellspring exploded. He knows they're unfair, which is why he's never articulated them, tried to even keep the shadow of them from coloring his actions.
But now...there they are.
From what he can see of Snart's face, it is … carefully blank. Which is not at all the sort of response he'd expected.
"I believe," the other man says finally, "that the whole thing was youridea."
"It was."
"And Palmer was going to blow it up first."
"He was."
"Until Mick took it over. And then me."
"All true."
Snart waits. Rip sighs, then sinks back down to the floor.
"I did not," he says, "say that it was fair. And I apologize."
He sees the criminal shrug, a little.
"Why?" comes the drawl. "It's true enough. I blew up the Oculus. I...got sent back, although I still have no idea why.
"But you do realize," he continues, still in that oddly careful tone, "that when I stuck my hand into that thing, I thought it was likely to mean you could save your family."
Rip stares through the darkened room at him.
"Actually," he says finally, "no, I didn't. I did not realize that was...an aspect of your decision."
He sees a motion that might be another shrug.
"Well," Snart says, "it might have worked, right? You said it's still possible...now. Seems like you loved your kid. World needs more of that."
Sincerity from Leonard Snart. The world has surely come to an end.
They sit in silence for some time. It's close to time to leave their hiding spot, Rip thinks, but he's still a trifle preoccupied by the accusations and confessions they've both been throwing around.
"Why do you dislike me so much, Mr. Snart?" he says suddenly. "I know that we are, shall we say, intrinsically different people. But sometimes it seems above and beyond."
"I don't think we have that much time," comes the drawl, back to its normal insouciance.
Hunter snorts, the sound not without amusement. "Try me."
Silence.
"Sara," the other man says finally, simply.
Not what Rip was expecting. "Beg pardon?"
He can hear anger seeping back into the words. "Russia in 1986. You told her to kill Stein. Do you...you had to have known what that would do to her. And I'll be the first one to say that sometimes you have to use the tools you have at your disposal, but that would have brokenher, Rip." His voice is tense, clipped in a way that's a startling contract to the usual drawl. "It would have destroyed her. You knew she was trying to leave that behind her, but you tried to push her back into it anyway.
"It was the first time I could see just how much you considered her...us pawns. And forgive me," the words are rife with sarcasm, "if I have a hard time forgiving or forgetting that."
Rip just stares.
"It wasyou," he says finally. "She said she 'had a little help,' but I didn't think...but why?"
His eyes have adjusted to the dark enough that he can see the other man's shrug.
But that's OK, because he's still turning over Snart's prior words, and the emotion layered over them. And the pieces, now, are so clear and unmistakable that he can't believe...
"You dolove her," he blurts out. "You might have even have started to back then, if you knew her that well."
Snart looks toward him. Looks away. His lack of a...Snart-like comeback, Rip thinks, illustrates the truth of the words far better than a verbal confirmation ever could.
For his own part, he's facing down his own rather poor assumption: that the newfound relationship between his two team members was simply a more...physical...thing rather than one of more complicated emotions.
That is, apparently, patently untrue, and seemingly always has been.
And it seems he owes another explanation.
"It was a mistake," he says. "And ultimately, I was thrilled to see that she didn't listen to me. I got a little too...wrapped up in the Time Master thing to see the people within the timeline. Is that what you want me to say? That was theirdownfall, in so many ways. We...we will have to do better.
"But don't you pretend, Mr. Snart, that you didn't have your own changes over the past six months. Because the Leonard Snart I met in Central City wouldn't have given a rat's ass about the soul of one lost assassin...or about whether my son might possibly be saved."
He stares at Snart. Snart just stares back.
But he doesn't deny it, either.
Finally, Rip climbs to his feel, straightening his coat, checking his hat, disarming the moment.
"Time to go, I think," he whispers to the other man. "One thing an adulthood spent as a Time Master doeslend is a decent sense of time passed. The museum should be safely closed by now."
Snart rises with alacrity, pushing himself to his feet with the cane. "Oh, goodie," he says, drily. "No more feelings."
But for all that, the two men share a smile as Rip unlocks the door and they both step out into the hallway with its dim electric lights.
Showtime.
The hallways are dim and silent. But nearly immediately, something makes the hairs on the back of Snart's neck rise.
It's not quite Alexa material. But it's nothing to ignore, either.
"There's something off," he hisses to Hunter, stopping at the base of the first flight of stairs. "Something...I don't know. But something."
The Time Master sighs, but stops as well.
"Well, the quicker we do this and get out, the better," he hisses back.
It's true. But if he can't trust his instincts, what can he trust?
"Just be on guard," he says, asperity in his tone. "There's something going on."
Hunter frowns, presumably at the order, but nods once and starts to climb. Snarts stands for another few seconds, frowning to himself, then shakes his head and follows.
He'll give Hunter this: the other man can move quietly enough. They slink through the galleries, moving through the shadows thrown by Roman mausoleum fragments and ancient Egyptian sculpture and other priceless artifacts, until they're finally closing in on their goal.
And that's when Hunter finally stops in his tracks. For echoing from up ahead are the unmistaken, if indistinct, sound of voices.
"Guards, I presume," he mutters after a moment. "They'll move on."
"Mmmm," is Snart's only comment. "Told you so" would not be productive.
Moving slowly through a display of Assyrian sculpture, they approach the series of long galleries that run along the museum's front.
"...said we could take whatever we could carry, as long as we get the other job done."
"It's too bad they moved all the gemstones to the new one..."
A noise of agreement. "Can you just see us running down Bloomsbury with one of these heads here tucked under our arms?"
They're here to steal from the British Museum.
But apparently others have the same idea tonight.