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ccficwithapic · 8 years ago

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Just In Case

Title: Just In Case

Author: @misscrazyfangirl321

Companion pic: Untitled @definitelytenrose

Theme: “And sometimes, against all odds, against all logic, we hope.” -Anonymous

Keywords: Aftershock, Grasp, Capsule, Blunt

Rating: G

Genre and warnings: General, Romance, Soulmate AU, No Warnings

Characters: Sara Lance, Leonard Snart, Lisa Snart, Mick Rory, Amaya Jiwe, Ray Palmer (mentioned)

Word count: 2502 words.

Notes: Two days late, but posted! Thank you so much for all of your patience, @ccficwithapic! Life has been a little much lately, but I finally managed to finish this! :)

***

He’s seventeen years old the first time it happens.

Fresh out of Juvie, no idea where his next meal is coming from, just trying to get home to see his sister, when all of the sudden, a sharp pain runs up his leg. An uncomfortable sensation bubbles up in his knee, as if something was crawling out of it.

He ducks into the nearest store, hands shaking, and rolls up his pant leg.

Rose buds.

Four of them, scattered across his knee, all a pale pink shade.

Cautiously, as though he expects them to vanish, he reaches out, brushing his finger over a single bud.

Impossible.

He doesn’t have a soulmate. If he did, the buds would have come up long before. Only injuries to children can cause them, and he’s far too old and damaged to have a toddler as a soulmate.

Still, they don’t go anywhere, and he’s too distracted by thoughts of Lisa to dwell on it for long. (He has to wonder about her poor soulmate. They must look like a flower garden, from all the tragedies Leonard couldn’t save her from.)

(Distantly, he wonders what his own soulmate looks like, but he forces the thought away. Time for that later.)

The buds fall off within a couple of days, but new ones keep blooming. His soulmate is a reckless child, it seems; his elbows and knees are forever dusted with pale pink buds. Still, there’s not a single orchid on him, so at least his soulmate is happy.

He’s glad someone is.

The flowers are as reassuring as they are worrying: They mean that somewhere out there, someone exists who won’t hurt Leonard. They also mean that somewhere out there, someone exists that Leonard can hurt.

He tries to grasp the first thought tightly, to hold it in his chest during the worst days. When his father’s shouts seem to echo through his mind, taunting him at every turn, he traces the latest blooms, reminding himself that it’ll all be over one day.

When he turns twenty-six, that hope turns bitter.

Lisa lives with him now, and things are so much better than they were, but he doesn’t exactly have a steady job. He tries, of course. The last thing he wants is to end up following in his father’s footsteps, but people aren’t eager to hire ex-cons, and he has to feed Lisa somehow.

Every time, he promises himself that it will be the last heist, and every time, he knows it’s a lie.

The reality of what he’s becoming wears heavy on him, and he knows he’s suffering for it. He’s constantly on edge, ready to snap at the slightest inconvenience, but he keeps that frustration aimed at his crew.

At least, until today.

Lisa’s going on about how hungry she is, and he hates it, wishes he could feed her, but the latest heist left him with nothing but a pinky ring to show for it, and her voice grates on him. Every word reminds him of how he’s failing her, and eventually, it all bubbles up.

“Enough!” He shouts, and Lisa goes stock still. Her face pales, expression going blank, and he thinks he’s going to be sick. He yelled at her. His beautiful, precious baby sister… He yelled at her. She’s scared of him.

Does she see their father when she looks at him? Because he knows that’s all he’ll see in the mirror tonight.

“Lisa…” His voice shakes, and he hates that, but it seems to get through to her. She blinks, and her posture relaxes a bit, though it’s nowhere near what it was.

“It’s fine,” she assures him, and his mother’s voice echoes in his mind, telling him not to get between her and his father. It’s fine, Leo.

No, it isn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and she takes a tentative step forward. Touch has never been something they share, not really, but her hand on his shoulder steadies him. She trusts him enough to let him close.

He’ll never break that trust again.

(As for his soulmate, he hopes he never meets them. If he can hurt Lisa, the one good thing in his life, then this young soul tied to his doesn’t stand a chance.)

This isn’t what he meant.

He stares at his reflection in disbelief, starting to reach for a bloom, but pausing halfway. This isn’t possible. This isn’t supposed to happen.

Of course, he isn’t naïve. More and more blooms have been covering him lately, and some aren’t roses. Orchids blooming behind his ear, a white carnation growing from his heart… His soulmate has been through it lately.

Still, it wasn’t supposed to turn into… This.

All the other blooms are gone now, fallen to the floor, replaced with three light purple flowers, centered around his chest. They’re deceptively beautiful, as if to hide the depth of their meaning.

His soulmate is dead. Shot, if he were to guess. Those blooms are fairly centralized around the heart. (Someone killed his soulmate, and an irrational part of him wants to track them down, to make them pay a price they’ll never forget, but he knows that isn’t possible. He can’t begin to know how to find them. So he clamps down the feelings, throws himself into the next heist, and tries to forget all about the deadly nightshade rooted deep inside him.)

(When they fall off a year later, he stares at them in awe and confusion. Has he darkened his soul so much that not even the dead deserve the punishment of him, or has the impossible somehow happened? He doesn’t know, but he keeps the flowers tucked away in his coat. Just in case.)

The Canary is his soulmate.

Sara Lance.

He wonders right from the start, when he sees the bright yellow flower poking out from behind her ear. (“A tansy,” the Ramon kid had told him once, struggling to keep a brave face. “It means my soulmate-your sister-was abused.” He could have killed him for the pity in his eyes, but he didn’t, and he thinks he deserves a prize for that.)

He wonders, but she unknowingly confirms it. “Actually, I was dead for a year.”

What are the odds, right? He’s never been a big believer in coincidences, and he highly doubts there’s anyone else out there with such a record. The dead don’t come back. Except, apparently, when they do.

The words are on the tip of his tongue a hundred times. In the car after the bar fight, when she holds the gun on Stein, and even when she asks about his feelings. (About Mick, but he can’t help but wish they were talking about his feelings for her, if only because they aren’t as complicated. He likes her, a lot. No muss, no fuss. No history of friendship and betrayal. Just soulmates.)

She isn’t a helpless child anymore, and he knows it, but he can’t stop seeing his sister’s hurt in his mind’s eye, can’t stop thinking he’ll let Sara down the same way. So he bites his tongue, and never acknowledges the obvious.

Sometimes, he wonders if she knows, but not enough to open the can of worms asking would require.

Still, when she shares a secret grin with him after a successful prank on Ray, or pats his leg in mock comfort after he loses a game of gin, he has to wonder if there’s something to this whole soulmate thing.

Of course it blows up in his face.

Of course it does.

Isn’t this how he’s always known this would end?

Her eyes water, not with hurt, but with anger, staring back defiantly past his gun. The gun he’s holding on her, the gun he can’t seem to lower, even as he instinctively steps back from her. A bloom pokes up from the neckline of her shirt, dark and solid.

Anemone.

Loss of hope.

He knows he’s staring, and of course she notices, so she follows his gaze down. Her lips press together in a firm line, eyes flashing in warning.

“My eyes are up here,” she bites out, and Gideon interrupts before he can think of a response.

What is he supposed to say, anyway?

He makes one stop before coming to her room, slipping something into his pocket. This is long overdue, and he knows it. Hopefully it isn’t too late.

She barely even acknowledges him when he walks in, and he can’t exactly blame her. No matter. He’s a master at pretending everything is normal.

“I was going to apologize for pulling a gun on you, but apparently, I was just following a script.”

She raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Doesn’t make you any less of a jerk.”

Not even a glance accompanies her blunt words, and he grimaces. Of course she isn’t going to make this easy. Why should she?

“Guilty.”

Finally, she looks at him, expression unreadable.

If he wasn’t so sure of how this is all going to end, he would leave, would give her time to process, to forgive him in her own time. (Or not, if that’s what she chose. He wouldn’t blame her for that, either.)

But he feels Alexa in his bones, and there’s no going back now.

“A bunch of idiots with a machine were never my idea of destiny.”

She considers his words, sitting up and meeting his eyes. “Never took you as a fan of fate.”

Fair. Shrugging, he takes a step toward her, and when she doesn’t recoil, another.

“I’m not, normally. But every rule has an exception, and all that.”

A smirk tugs at her lips, and he swallows a sigh of relief. Amusement dances in her eyes as she asks, “And what’s yours?”

Here it is.

“Soulmates.” Her eyebrows fly up, and he deliberately looks away, reaching into his pocket and drawing something out.

He’s looked at this bloom a hundred times, and he knows every inch of it by heart. Still, he twirls it in his fingers, giving it time to sink in. She isn’t breathing when he meets her eyes again, just staring at the flower in disbelief.

“It’s been almost two years since this bloomed, and almost a year since it fell off.” He drags out each word, studying her carefully.

“So?” Her voice is eerily calm, as if they’re just discussing the weather.

“So…” This isn’t exactly his area of expertise. His father taught him long ago what heartfelt words were worth, but he knows Sara deserves every single one, so he tries. “I guess… Being on this ship, travelling through time… I’ve started to wonder what the future might hold for me. And you.” He holds out the flower as he finishes. “And me and you.”

She plucks the flower from his hand, rolling her eyes. Her brush-off doesn’t honestly feel like much of one-he is a master thief, after all-and he knows she just wants a little more time.

Time he’s sure they don’t have.

Still, she takes the flower, and that’s enough for him.

The Oculus is supposed to be the end. He’s supposed to go out a hero, his soulmate’s kiss still burned on his lips, and fade into the forgotten pages of history.

He isn’t supposed to wake up on the floor of the Waverider, aching all over, but so painfully alive that he doesn’t mind.

“Snart?” A familiar voice, maybe Jax, rings out above his head, and he blinks, trying to focus his vision. “What the-“

“Don’t move.” There’s a knife to his throat, and for half a second, he relaxes, a smile tugging at his lips. It may be strange, equating a knife with safety, but he and Sara have never been exactly normal. Except… That isn’t Sara’s voice, he realizes belatedly, as the knife presses closer to his skin. A woman’s, certainly, but not Sara’s.

“Not moving,” he answers easily, gaze darting around the room. Ray stands next to a strange man, grinning wildly. (The stranger, Len can’t help but notice, looks anything but pleased.) Mick is unnervingly expressionless as he stares, in a way he’s never been. He’s learned control, it seems, and looks better off for it.

Pride wells up in Leonard, but it’s tempered by the knife at his neck, and the lack of Sara around him.

“Mick, a little help here?” The arsonist glances at the others, looking for something. Len isn’t sure what.

“We see him too, Mick,” the voice from behind him assures, unspeakably softer now.

See him too? Why wouldn’t they? Unless…

“How long have I been gone?”

Silence and uneasy stares meet his question, and impatience bubbles up inside him. “How long?”

“Two years.”

Her voice is clear and firm, and everyone goes silent. He tilts his head at far to the side as he dares, barely catching a glimpse of her, but it’s enough.

“Sara…”

She ignores him, addressing the ceiling. “Gideon?”

The others stare at her like she’s grown a third head, and he can’t for the life of him figure out why. The AI’s voice cuts in, and he focuses on that. “This is the Leonard Snart we lost at the Oculus,” she confirms.

“How is he alive?” Someone-Ray?-asks. It doesn’t matter. Leonard is done listening.

“I don’t know,” Gideon admits finally, and Len suspects she doesn’t like that, but he has his own concerns.

“Want to let me go now?”

The knife falls away, and a dark hand reaches out to pull him up. “I’m sorry,” the unfamiliar woman says, but there’s no regret in her eyes. Only curiosity, and a bit of distrust.

He likes her.

It’s a wild day, full of questions without answers, hugs Leonard can’t escape, (though he doesn’t try as hard as he once would have,) and impossible stories.

The Dominators.

The Legion of Doom.

Dinosaurs.

He’s missed a lot.

It’s late when he finally manages to get away, and he considers going to lay down, but without even consciously making the decision, he finds himself in front of Sara’s door instead.

She left it open, and she’s sprawled across her bed in an all-too-familiar pose. For him, it’s only been hours since their last conversation here. For her, it’s been years.

His brain hurts a bit at the thought of it.

The room is much the same, but over in the corner, there’s a pile of nightshade. Dozens and dozens of blooms, so bright and fresh they must have just fallen off.

In her hand, there’s another. More pale, more worn, and impossibly familiar. Every word he plans to say falls away, replaced by a soft, ‘You kept it?”

After everything he did. After all the times he hurt her, whether he meant to or not.

She grins, rolling on her side to face him, and he takes a tentative step toward her, hope pounding at his chest for the first time in longer than he cares to admit.

“Just in case.”

#CCFicWithAPic #submission: fic #submission

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ccficwithapic · 8 years ago

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Daydream Believer

This is going with a pic done by the amazing juliakaze! Our story is about Sara coming to terms with Leonard’s death, or not so much.

It can also be read on A03, right here:

http://archiveofourown.org/works/11797644

———————————————————

“Just do it.”

The words were still ringing in Sara’s head even hours after they had been spoken. She knew, of course, when she kissed him that it would be the only chance she would ever get. That’s why she did it. There had been so much that she wanted to tell him, so much that she should’ve said earlier when he came to her room with a half-ass apology for pulling his gun on her and, to get off the topic, tried to get to her trash talk about Rip’s plan. When that didn’t work he had approached her, leaning down against her bed and avoiding her eyes until he got to the words “me and you” and then it was like he needed to look at her. She had remained stoic. She didn’t let him know that her heart at had sped up from the moment he started talking about the future, how she had felt where the conversation might be heading. Her heart jumped when he mentioned “me and you” but she had never let him see. It hadn’t been the right time. They still had a mission to complete, an Oculus to destroy, and a warlord to kill. After all that was done then they would be able to think about their futures, both separately and together.

Only now they can’t.

“Sara, please report to the bridge.” Rip’s voice came through on the comm in her ear like a knife, cutting through the heavy air of her dark bedroom.

She sniffled and wiped a hand over her eyes, brushing away the last of her tears before she reached up and tapped her finger against her earpiece.

“Coming,” she responded, and she knew that her voice wasn’t as steady as it could be, but if Rip noticed he didn’t say anything.

In truth, she was the first one to leave. The Waverider was flying away, and yeah, she was as pissed as anyone that Rip lied to them, again, and brought them back five months later than he promised he would. But you know what? She didn’t care. She wasn’t exactly in the mood to fight another losing battle, which every battle of the team’s seems to be. So she was the first to walk out of the empty lot, pulling out her phone not even halfway across and calling Laurel.

No answer.

She growled at the phone and sent a text, telling her sister that she’s back and asking where she was. She then called Ollie, her dad, Thea, Dig, Felicity, and still came up with a whole lot of nothing. Laurel still hadn’t answered her text either, and she didn’t want to text bomb everybody because then she would just get a lot of angry responses. So she went to Laurel’s apartment and knocked on the door, no answer.

“Laurel?” She called, knocking again, but still nothing. She tried turning the knob then, only to find that it wouldn’t turn and the door was locked. “Laurel where are you?” She muttered as she turned away from the door, off to try the one place where she could almost always find someone.

It wasn’t a long walk to the bunker, but it felt like it took her forever. As she boarded the secret elevator and punched the cracked button that any more normal person would believe to be broken, Sara found herself anxiously rocking her weight from her heels to her toes. She needed somebody to be down there, anybody.

“Hello?” She called when the doors opened to an empty looking bunker, “Hello?” There was still no answer, but walking further into the room she caught a sight of movement out of the corner of her eye, and a smile lit up her face when she saw her father staring at her from the monitors in surprise. “Dad,” she breathed it like a sigh of relief, utterly happy to see him, and for the first time in over twelve hours images of Leonard’s regretful eyes weren’t flashing at the forefront of her mind. She ran up and hugged her father, explaining that she had just returned and already searched for everyone else only to come up empty.

But the way he was looking at her, his eyes holding a mix of relief and sadness, it made her gut twist.

“It’s uh Damian Darhk, he’s causing problems.” He told her, which seemed about right.

“Oh, good to know nothing’s changed in five months.” It was just an observation, a casual comment, but her father was still looking at her with his lips parted and his whole body stiff. “Dad?” she asked and he looked away, “What’s wrong? You ok?”

He looked at her again, breathing heavy like he was fighting off tears and his eyes warning her that he, somehow, was about to break her heart.

“No baby,” he said it firmly, like he was forcing himself to start the hardest conversation he would ever have in his life.

“You’re starting to scare me,” she said it with a smile, almost a laugh, because damn it her heart has already been broken once in the past twenty-four hours and she’s not sure what she’ll do if her own father manages to somehow shatter it again.

His breathing got heavier, tears threatening to spill out his eyes and it knocked the warning, denial-filled smile, right off her face.

“Damian Darhk was in prison and he escaped, and everyone tried to… stop him. But… your sister… honey she um…” He didn’t look like he could finish, but he didn’t have to. Sara was already shaking her head, tears glassing over her red eyes as her heart sunk into her stomach.

“No,” she said, “Dad no.” She was in denial, she knew it, but what he was saying just couldn’t be true. She lost Leonard just last night. She never got to tell him that how much she loved him, they never got to talk about that future. The universe has never been her friend, but to rip Laurel from her only mere hours after Leonard? It sure felt like the Time Masters were still in control.

“I’m sorry baby,” her father whispered.

“No,” she denied again, he tried to hug her and at first she shoved him off. “No!” “No, you don’t understand!” Her mind screamed as her body lost its battle and succumbed to the embrace of her father, fat tears soaking through his stiff shirt. “No I… I need her! Leonard’s dead! I loved him and now he’s gone and… and I don’t know how to do this without Laurel!”

She let out a loud, almost feral cry at her thoughts, thoughts that she could never say aloud to her father. He held her tighter, whispering to her that he had her and that he was sorry and that he misses her too.

At the end of the day, when Savage was dead three times over and the timeline needed somebody to keep protecting it, Sara got back onto the Waverider.

She couldn’t save Leonard, and she couldn’t save Laurel, but she could honor both their memories by being the hero they had both known she could be.

Rex Tyler showed up that first night that they got back on the ship and warned them to never go to New York 1942, less they all had a death wish, so they decided to avoid that time and place. They had other matters to attend to anyway, constantly, so unless something seriously wrong showed up in New York 1942 they weren’t risking their necks. Instead they traveled all over history fixing aberration after aberration, keeping the timeline as intact as possible.

It was a good distraction for Sara. Everywhere she went she wore Laurel’s necklace

and Leonard’s ring, something Mick had given to her not long after he died, claiming “he had a thing for you Blondie, and besides, I’ve got his gun. He would’ve wanted you to have something.” She didn’t protest after that, something about the broken look in Mick’s half-guarded eyes keeping her from doing anything more than nodding mutely.

Every night when she went to bed she thought about them, Leonard and Laurel. For weeks she would cry for them and she would dream about them returning. It was mostly Leonard who she dreamed of, because as much as she missed Laurel her sister at least had a grave. She never wanted them coming back in the way that she did, even if the pit weren’t destroyed, and so that combined with the injuries she had heard about made Laurel’s death a little bit easier to accept.

But Leonard was another story.

She would walk the halls of the ship daydreaming, her mind playing out scenarios where he rounded the corner just ahead of her with that snarky smirk on his face, a deck of cards shuffling between his hands, and that drawl asking if she’s missed him. Sometimes, when she was running behind the others with getting changed for battle, she half-expected to hear a knock on her door followed by “you coming, assassin?”

She knew it was delusional, or at the very least wishful thinking, but Laurel was stabbed to death; their friends and family buried her. But Leonard? He died in a time bomb, no body recovered. She knows it’s all a desperate hope, but the timeline is a very tricky thing, after all, so a deep and very desperate part of her holds onto these fantasies, to the hope that Leonard isn’t really gone.

As the months go on, that hope grows harder to hold on to.

They go everywhere from San Francisco 2121 to Venice 1401, and in each stop they make Sara keeps an eye or an ear out for the sight of his black jacket, or the sound of his drawling voice. Her mind tells her that it’s impossible, that Leonard Snart is dead and he can never come back.

Her scars tell a different story.

The three red blobs lined in a perfect vertical row on her chest serve as a permanent reminder that nothing is impossible, no matter how many days pass proving her mind right. Then the day finally comes when they need to travel to New York 1942, and Rex was right, it’s a complete disaster. So they’re literally putting themselves in front of a nuclear bomb ready to die when Rip has one last trick up his sleeve and when Sara opens her eyes she’s standing knee deep in a pile of snow seeping through the fabric of her pants. Perfect.

She eventually realizes that she’s in Salem 1693, because Rip just loves stranding her in times and places where she does not fit in. The people give her strange looks from the start, because apparently it’s highly unusual here for a woman to show up alone and wearing jeans and a simple t-shirt. However the local innkeeper took pity on her since she was soaked from head to toe thanks to the snow and let her warm up by the fire, while his wife found her some dry clothes. She decided to stick around for a while because maybe, just maybe, Rip was coming back for her and he probably wouldn’t appreciate having to go all the way to Nanda Parbat again. She didn’t feel much like going through League training for a third time, anyway. So one night she found herself in the tavern, sitting at the bar nursing her drink and trying to ignore the woman sitting next to her, who had come in nearly two hours ago with a husband that has long abandoned her in favor of drunkenly trading stories with his friends at a nearby table.

“You are brave,” the woman finally squeaked just as Sara took a sip of her drink, which isn’t half bad for the 17th century. “Very few ladies come to these places without a husband, and many who I know only take a drink when at home.”

“Well I don’t have a husband,” She said, turning on her stool and when she did she saw the woman’s eyes flick embarrassingly from her breasts to meet her eyes, and she smirked; this could be fun. “And I’m working here in exchange for a room, not alcohol, so I don’t have much of a choice now do I?” She said, “Besides,” she gestured over to the table of drunken men, who seemed to have started an arm wrestling tournament. “I’m not afraid of these jokers.” The woman looked an odd mix of concerned and impressed at the statement, with some hesitance added in when Sara held out her hand. “I’m Sara,” she introduced herself.

The woman continued to look at her offered hand as if she were poisonous for a moment, before finally accepting it.

“I’m Daisy.”

She and Daisy ended up talking for the better part of an hour, and every time that Sara caught her new friend looking at her in a way that a woman in this century was not supposed to look at another, she smiled to herself. It didn’t help any that Daisy’s husband and his friends left the tavern without her, promising they’d be back but it was beyond obvious that they wouldn’t. So there was Daisy, terrified to walk the streets alone at night to return home and Sara living right upstairs and with maybe just enough alcohol in her system to make her realize how long it’s been since she had a good fling. She was polite, of course, and asked Daisy at least three times over if she were sure about staying the night, and three times over again when staying the night very quickly turned into something other than sleeping.

She saw Daisy once more after that, but after the second time Daisy began to fear that her husband was getting suspicious and she wanted to break it off. Sara didn’t necessarily agree with the idea, but she respected it. She let the dark haired woman know that if she ever changed her mind, she would know where to find her. As the weeks went on and winter began turning to spring, a very familiar sense of Rip’s not coming back began to settle over Sara and she began to feel that she might end up permanently stuck here; not that she was going to officially make that call until more than two years went by. Anyway, she slept with three more women in the time that she was waiting for Rip. She wasn’t deaf to the whispers about her starting to fly around town, and she certainly felt it when some asshole threw a rock at her when her back was turned.

It should also be noted that the asshole certainly felt it when she whipped around and broke his nose.

It probably didn’t help her reputation that she never slept with a man. A woman in this time who slept around was known as a lot of things, but nothing would ever be done with her if she slept with men. But Sara never found a man with whom she wanted to sleep, and to be honest, every time even a good looking and respectful one looked her way all she could hear ringing in her head was echoes of “me and you.”

Actually, it wasn’t just when the men flirted with her that she thought of Leonard. She would be going about her housekeeping job at the inn, daydreaming the entire time about possibly opening a door to find him waiting for her. She would walk through the local market place and envision him leaning casually against one of the stalls, here to collect her for Rip. Every time that a fight broke out in the bar she would listen to the bartender explain what he saw, hoping that the instigator might be a stranger from the future gorgeous blue eyes and an unmistakable drawl.

To be blunt, Sara missed Leonard and she was sleeping with women to try and forget it.

Eventually she was arrested under suspicion of witchcraft, thrown in jail where she may or may not have hooked up with her cellmate, and marched out to be hanged. She wasn’t scared, since fighting her way out of this was going to be easier than the 1975 rent-a-thugs. All this meant was that it was time to move on from Salem.

Everything in her escape was going perfect, better than expected even, when she heard her name from behind her and took the stranger down.

Only to find herself looking at Ray, Mick, and some new guy groaning in pain on the ground.

They brought her back to the Waverider, and in light of discovering that everyone had been time scattered a part of her almost really believed that she might find Leonard waiting at the entrance, arms folded over his chest with false judgment while the proud smirk tugging at his lips would betray it. When she boarded the ship she found Jax and Stein, but no Leonard, and no Rip.

They went back to 1942 and quickly realized that without Rip they need a new Captain. So now they’re being led by Martin, who really has no idea what he’s doing, and their new teammate is a guy who has worked in an office all his life yet is asking her where he could find a gun and insisting he can take care of himself.

“Not out here you can’t.” She tells him; doubtful he could take care of himself anywhere. “Out here, even the strongest and the bravest of us die.”

“Like Captain Hunter,” he says, it’s not a question to him, and so she doesn’t tell him no. She can’t bring herself to say it out loud, to say the words “Leonard Snart died,” so she doesn’t.

At the end of the day she becomes the Captain.

It’s another distraction from her daydreams; a responsibility to keep the team alive. She learns pretty quickly what that means, just HOW often they are all ready to make the ultimate sacrifice should the need ever arise and that it’s her job to make sure it never does. She takes to it well, she thinks. Even when she’s up late at night in the library doing research and her mind begins to wander, imagining a certain crook sneaking up behind her and whispering in her ear that she should get some sleep. She still watches for him with every landing, still hopes that the Oculus could’ve launched him out of the time stream into some random place that they’ll eventually come across.

He’s not the one they run into.

It’s normal mission tracking the Legion, until they come across Rip. He has no idea who they are, thinks his name is Phil and that he’s a film student, and it’s a reality check for Sara. As he stands in the office of the ship with her, not remembering anything about it at all, it’s enough for her to want to tear her hair out. It’s enough that she wants to scream, to throw things, to lose control. What if Leonard is alive somewhere? What if they find him and he’s like this? What if by the time they get to him he has no idea who they are? For the first time it really starts to it her that it’s been close to a year since the Oculus, at least, and though each passing day only enforces the idea that he’s dead, what if he really isn’t? Whenever he is he’ll have given into time drift by now. They could find him and he’d have forgotten all of them. He wouldn’t remember her. Who’s to say he hasn’t met someone else by now and started that future he had once offered her? The thought is enough to make her stomach turn.

The day only gets worse when the Legion takes Rip.

Sara goes down into the cargo hold and sits down on a crate, what they have of the spear in her hands. Her chest feels heavy with grief, with guilt, but she can’t bring herself to cry. This used to be Snart’s hideaway, the place where he would come to think. Briefly she envisions him propped up against the wall opposite her, bouncing his little toy ball against her crate asking how long she plans on sulking in self-pity. When she hears footsteps she almost thinks her daydreams have driven her crazy, but it’s only Jax.

“You couldn’t have got him, you know that right?” He asks her.

“Yeah,” she knows he’s right, and that’s what hurts. She couldn’t have gotten Rip. She couldn’t do anything. She was there but her hands were tied and there was nothing she could do.

Just like Leonard.

They got Rip back eventually, after he killed her and Stein and Gideon just barely managed to bring her back. His return came with intel; he knew the Legion’s home base.

The Vanishing Point.

Traveling through time is something that Sara does on a daily basis, but returning to The Oculus chamber was the first instance when she felt she was truly stepping back in time. Everything was dark, broken, and so much eerier than it had seemed the first time they were here. Damaged pipes and pieces of walls lay scattered on the ground, wires dangled from the ceiling with the occasional sparks flying out of a still blinking light. Then there’s The Oculus, the actual bomb that took Leonard from them. It’s gone, whatever is left buried under a pile of concrete rubble. Mick momentarily abandons his post as look out to stand before it and Sara can’t blame him, in fact it takes nearly all her self control to keep herself from running up the ramp and shoving the rubble to the side in search of a body. Now more than ever, her mind is lost in a haze of dreams. A part of her actually begins to believe that maybe, just maybe, Snart will emerge from the shadows and ask them why they took so damn long coming back. But as the seconds ticked by Sara’s hope faded, and her brain reminded her that even in this place such dreams simply aren’t logical. So she pulls Mick away, because they have a mission to complete, and she can’t stand to be in this room anymore.

“Do you think this is what Snart wants?” She yelled at him, probably a little harsher than she should have. “You waiting around so that you get caught?” Yeah, she was definitely harsher than she should’ve been. But she can’t help it, his words are echoing through her ears.

“Get him out of here!” He gave her one job, get Mick out of here, and even if it’s already done she’s going to do it again

As they leave, her following Mick, she wipes at the moisture in her eyes when he isn’t looking and can’t help but turn her head back at the chamber one last time, scanning again for any sight of him.

“Leonard,” She wonders desperately, “Where are you?”

It doesn’t hit her right away when the answer to her question come in the form of his past self showing up with the Legion. She had a lot going on, after all, like The Spear of Destiny and a whole other version of the team showing up from a future where they failed. This was all followed by Rip leaving and time literally breaking, so yeah, she was decently distracted. But that first night that she went to sleep in broken LA the aftershock of seeing his past self hit her.

He had been there. His past self had been there and they didn’t do anything to stop his future from happening. They just returned him to the timeline and wiped his memories; no warning that he should bring a clamp or something with him the day of The Oculus or anything. They were just letting time play out the way it was intended and Sara wanted to scream. It wasn’t fair. They should’ve warned him, they could’ve saved him, but they didn’t.

The days in LA passed eventfully to say the least, and soon those days turned to weeks, and the weeks to months. It was always in the back of her mind to keep her senses peeled for Leonard, an instinct at this point. Every time they ran into new people she would look among them for a lost crook, but of course he was never there. A part of her almost wanted to accept his death at this point, but at the end of each day she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Finally, after nearly five months in LA, a tree came down on the Waverider in the middle of the night. The damage wasn’t bad, the ship has certainly taken much worse, but it still needed to be dealt with so she joined Jax, Mick, Ray, and Amaya up on the roof the next morning. They cut up the tree into pieces and bit-by-bit they were shoving it off the roof. They were making slow progress, but it was coming along. They had dismantled most of the tree by now and were just trying to figure out how to get some of the heavier pieces down without them damaging the Waverider any more in the process.

“You guys need a hand?”

Sara froze at the sound of the voice.

“No,” she thought to herself, it just couldn’t be. She wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to look, but she had to, especially when she saw the others all looking at the ground with open jaws.

He was there.

Dark jeans and matching jacket, exactly what he had been wearing when the Oculus blew.

“Snart?” Ray whispered.

“Is it really him?” Amaya asked skeptically, voicing what they were all thinking.

It was him.

The group of them climbed down from the roof and after talking to him they realized that it really was their Leonard, and not just some grandiose illusion. From what they figured he had been stranded in the time stream after The Oculus and when time broke he crashed here with everything else. Sara just couldn’t believe it, that she had actually been right. All this time, he was alive somewhere.

“Hey,” his voice brought her away from her charts and maps in the library that night, after everyone else had gone to bed, and she looked up to see a sight she had only imagined so many times in the past year.

“Hey,” she smiled and he came into the room, stopping just behind her and glancing briefly at her current map before his eyes flicked back to her.

“I’ve missed a lot.” He stated it simply; she nodded.

“If it’s any consolation, we’ve missed you.” She said and a small grin crossed his features.

He was closer to her now, leaning down until he was just a lips distance away and Sara didn’t stop stretching her body up until she felt the familiar taste of him on her mouth. He kissed her back, hands settling on her waist to turn her to face him properly, her arms winding their way up and around his neck when he did. They didn’t pull apart until the need for air started to become a serious issue, and even with the lip contact broken they still rested their heads together, smiling at each other like teenagers.

“So… do you want to see about that future?” He asked and she actually giggled at the question before pulling him back to her for another kiss.

“Of course.”

#CCFicWithAPic #submission: fic #submission

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