#some people think he's just there as a boytoy others have seen him rip assassins in half before they even move towards jadus

[eorzeashan]

*thinks about Emperor Jadus* I feel like Eight would be secretly pissed if that happened. or maybe not pissed, since it used to be Jadus' dream and all... but he'd be so disappointed lolol

Jadus: the Empire calls for my return.

Eight, sighing: y e a h... slouches

[in-tua-deep]

tua rewatch with the roommate

Episode five

Oh fuck the “I found you. all your bodies.” scene

“We died?” “Horribly.” throwback to the ben convo o o f

“If perfectly arranged under rubble and otherwise unharmed counts as ‘horribly”’  - roommate

I like that Diego says he’s going to kill Hazel and Cha-Cha like it’s a challenge?? lol five doesn’t care if they live or die he only cares if u do you big dumbass

“Well I know none of the main characters die bc there’s a season 2... and i’m pretty sure they’re all in s2... like all of the family?”

I mean luther is kind of valid for being frustrated that five didn’t share about the apocalypse but also like,,, the first person five told about it (Vanya) suggested he might be insane. so. i can understand some reluctance on his part on top of the whole “the last time my siblings fought this the Whole World Died Including Them i would like them as far away from apocalypse stuff as possible”

okay okay so five says “they turned me into the perfect instrument” so do y’all think that implies experimentation like in the comics or ????

all i can think about during the kennedy scene though is my high school history teacher. he went over the assassination in intimate detail and i’m pretty sure he was writing a book about it and everything. mr. hansen if you’re out there - 

i like feral beard five more than mustache five tbh if i’m picking 

“Someone ELSE shot the president? Was he supposed to shoot kennedy or was he supposed to kill the person who shot kennedy?” - Roommate

love that five tells luther to grow up over murder,,, though to be valid pretty sure they did actually murder people as kids SO. grow down?

fuck i love mary,, will you love me like you loved me in the january rain??? just shoot me in the heart

GOD rob is such a good actor

“wait a second... how is he wearing pants?” oh roommate you have a big storm coming

i have some serious questions about the commission and their methods of communication. where do?? the tubes come from? where do they go after?

Allison: i have a bad feeling [about leonard]

where are these instincts for everything else tho??? her marriage?

“Vanya. she really is trying to look out for you. i really would trust her. you could invite her to come along so she can see he’s perfectly fine??” - Roommate, whose instincts regarding not trusting leonard-harold are spot on

apparently my roommate knows people who put salt in their coffee. i have. so many questions.

“That’s suspicious?? that’s suspicious right?? did he do that? is he a secret serial killer? is he a FUCKING secret serial killer?” roommate when they talk about helen cho going missing

“What do you mean stop showing up it’s been like. a day” - I mean. the roommate has a point. 

Klaus’s depression bath is a mood :(

did klaus put eye shadow on before his bath or did he get his hands on eye shadow in vietnam?? the questions that will never be answered

Five is so enthusiastic about having someone who understands... he doesn’t even notice absolutely Not Being In The Mood,, klaus is grieving and five is just like !!! where did you go!!!! like it was a vacation

klaus: yeah i’m ten months older now. when i’m done being depressed i will lord that over diego for the rest of our natural lives.

does five write in all caps all the time?? why? 

roommate: I wonder what the upper size limit on the knives her can use. like is it machete length? forearm length? what are the limits on his powers. if he sharpened a very sharp mechanical pencil could he use it? if he sharpened a piece of the chandelier? at what point does something become a knife?

me: could he hurl mia (my cat)? mia and her knife feet?

allison also writes in all caps to write leonard’s address

we stan agnes and hazel in this household

“I never said we didn’t !! i just thought she was just a random extra in the first episode and every time we cut away i think that’s the last we’ve seen of her” - roommate because i keep saying that this is an agnes stan household

“OH THERE’S THE PATCHWORK COAT i was afraid it didn’t come back” - okay though good question he definitely didn’t have the coat on the bus. what is it with klaus and his magically appearing coat????

oh :(  oh klaus :(  every time klaus is sad i am also sad :(

honestly a family conversation IS the threat in this family

god though this random vet in this bar is actually an asshole though like. klaus doesn’t owe him shit. klaus served. he’s clearly having a moment with the photo. that could have been a family member or something who died i don’t even know

agnes: i’m a twitcher :)

“like a twitch streamer?” -Roommate

PLEASE give me twitch streamer!Agnes au

look i just enjoy hazel and agnes

roommate: honey you’re too young for her

me: NO DON’T BE MEAN TO THEM,,, agnes deserves a boytoy

“does diego drive a manual?” my roommate once again focusing on things that i do not

five: i have to find the people whose deaths could save the timeline

my roommate: is it agnes?? is he going to kill agnes????

i’m still laughing about that fact that luther is holding dolores.... over the fire escape... she couldn’t drop that far lads

luther’s dumb sometimes but he does have some nice heart to hearts with his brother,,,, honestly he and five get along pretty well in the early episodes. kindred spirits. body dysmorphia and isolation squad.

my roommate has to keep remembering social media doesn’t exist in this universe

i am still confused as to why

that won’t stop me from giving everyone iphones and youtube accounts in my aus though

diego can curve ANYTHING he throws, usually knives, according to cha-cha’s research. but that doesn’t explain the spoilers i have seen about s2 sO

Klaus: You also told me that licking a nine volt battery would give me pubes

HOW DID I FORGET THAT LINE

oh diego got a bullet graze forgot about that as well?? does he ever get like. medical attention for that? diego?????

it really has been like. maybe two days since helen cho died. is no one??? concerned????? they just immediately jump into replacing her??????????????????? hellO? 

“very clear camera angles to show that this actress did not actually play the violin for this role” - i mean that’s fair but ellen is trying rip

me: who’s your favorite character so far?  roommate: that’s a tricky question. klaus is very entertaining to watch. allison is the most reasonable and i’m very interested to know, well, she seems like the best combination of reasonable and has the least selfish intentions. diego and luther i feel like are both good in a bland way in that they’re both doing good in the best way they can which usually involves punching people. five is fun. five is very fun. five is as fun to watch as klaus, they’re both very fun actors to watch on screen. they’re more expressive than diego and luther tend to be.  me: so which is your favorite?????  roommate: first instinct says allison, though she probably has the least dynamic or interesting arc so far

are hazel and cha-cha the best because their victims never see them coming?? like. they aren’t really THAT competent.

“I do LOVE the aesthetic of an ice cream truck playing ride of the valkyries” - my roommate is valid

“LOVE the hypersaturated background in this scene. it’s more fun that having it be desaturated.”

five looks so baby in this scene with the handler :(

still unsure where five got that handgun but i’m vibing

hate when she touches his face !! awful!!!

the handler’s little “all of them??” like yeAH ALL OF THEM even though they irritate the living FUCK out of each other. siblings man

ben gets shotgun for the getaway !!! go ben!

“I’m starting to think... given how space and reality seemed to be warping during her playing... that her medication... isn’t for anxiety...” - oh, oh roommate

ah i blocked out the leonard vanya make out as well

“DIDN’T YOU MEET HIM TWO DAYS AGO?” - yeah i feel u roommate

yup there’s helen’s body

“CSI call crime scene investigation - that’s going to start to smell real soon”

pogo: and you understand that the children can never know

me: actually pogo fuck you

and that’s episode 5 everyone thank you and goodnight

episode six

i do love a good flashback to klaus

klaus: sees a shirtless soldier and instantly falls in love

they don’T EVEN QUESTION HIM just “KATZ GET THIS MAN A PAIR OF PANTS” and they go with it?? he just APPEARED and they don’t even care

klaus was really just vibing in the 60s huh

wait this is like 1962 or 63 right

when does s2 take place?? also the 60s right???

didn’t kennedy die in 1963 i feel like what i know about s2 contradicts that date but i could have sworn they said a round trip to 1963??????

luther is SUCH A MOOD in the family briefing.

“aww he’s a bad liar” - roommate

“I realize that [the umbrella] was necessary for the title drop but where the fuck did that come from”

@ the handler please stop touching five,,, but also five has such. non reactions to her touching him. which worries me. like she grabs his shoulder walking alongside him and he doesn’t even look at her

why are there gas masks in the briefcase room...

can you IMAGINE if your boss toted a child into the room and introduced him as the Legendary Time Travelling Assassin that the whole office had a betting pool over who would die that one time and is Definitely approaching 60 not 13... and then called him LEADERSHIP MATERIAL. implying that this child will probably get a promotion before you do?? can you IMAGINE?

“again... two days ago...” roommate about leonard and vanya

vanya really chose literally just the worst time to come back to the academy huh

okay but vanya going off?? valid, but also,, i mean. it IS their dads fault that they don’t have any relationship with vanya?

luther: it’s about the moon  roommate: critical role moon theory

hey like. how did the family get together in the first timeline holy fuck. it’s hard enough to get them together when they Literally Know The World Is Going To End

so remember diego getting grazed with a bullet yeah well he has a sling on now which makes sense!! and yet. when five got grazed by a bullet he SLAPS A BANDAID ON IT. someone please address this.

five is such an asshole coworker i love it

i wonder if dot is a mother. or just a nice coworker. she keeps trying to talk to him and invite him to lunch aww

i wonder if it’s purposeful on the handler’s part to call him “mr. five” instead of “mr. hargreeves” to like... further isolate him from his family? by removing his last name they’re sort of removing his ties to his siblings considering it’s not like they’re related by blood

forgot how much i hate the bathroom scene !! wow !! hate it so much!!! there’s so many violations of social etiquette in such a short scene! it’s so deeply uncomfortable!

luther: stop it pogo! you know everything our dad did

i am remembering once again how much i hate pogo all over again!! reginald literally locked klaus in a mausoleum!! he abused the kids! pogo didn’t even speak up about sending luther to the MOON,,, oh luther :(

he just learned his dad exiled him for no reason he has lots of rights his entire world view was just shattered wow i am like infinitely more sympathetic to luther on the second watch

“I knew allison and luther was a thing. you told me allison and luther was a weird thing. still not a fan.” - my very valid roommate

they could have made the fort so much more sibling-y instead of romantic and it would have been so much better honestly

oh dave :(

“I wonder who her primary care physician is and if she can find out what that medication was...” roommate i wish i knew

“I’m trying to decide if he knew ahead to time to try and get at her specifically or like... i don’t know when he took the figurine I was like ‘doesn’t he own an antique shop is he there to steal antiques from the family home’.” roommate on leonard

forgot the handler gifted five a suit. also don’t like that. don’t like her talk about his body and everything either.

“is it too much to ask to give him two outfits? one he can wear now and one with the new body?” - roommate

honestly with hazel’s talk on budget cuts i’m not surprised he only gets one suit

STOP TOUCHING HIS FACE,,,, HANDLER. STOP TOUCHING HIS FACE

five and his sweet tooth. don’t take the candy five. come on. what did your father TEACH YOU. honestly reggie probably was like “let them get kidnapped it will probably teach them a life lesson”

“there were like... villages that needed rebuilding after disasters. he could have been sending these packages to legit lunar research facilities. legit facilities would have adored to have that information.” 

okay but people KNEW he was on the moon. cha-cha mentioned it. it was in vanya’s book. why were scientists not knocking down reginald’s door demanding the research??? if i was a moon scientist i would have the mansion staked out trying to demand info jesus

“love his eye fluttering in the way of ‘oh shit i got something in my eye i can’t break character scene is still going scene is stILL GOING’“ - hilarious observations from the allison luther fort scene 2.0: grown up version that gets erased

did they just leave the fort up all those years. did no one USE the green house??? did grace lovingly work around it all that time?

oh :(  dave :(

grace is capable of lying and pogo is a shadowy motherfucker

“okay now that they’re actually putting it into the plot i understand why you don’t think he’s trustworthy but you really got on my back about that”

in my defense i just hate him tbh i did not like him when he first showed up and i never particularly liked him tbh

allison: i think you’re the only person who knows who i am and likes me anyway

me, remembering the theory that allison rumored luther to love her: HMMMMMM

okay but i think the luther and allison dance scene is fucking HILARIOUS. absolutely ridiculous. i mean i hate that it’s incest but also the fucking LIGHTS DESCENDING. the RANDOM WARDROBE CHANGE. 

roommate likes the green underskirt thing under allison’s random dance dress

are they just doing this in public???

ugh. the kiss. ugh. erased that from my memory as well

“they clearly want romance in this show but they painted themselves into a corner with the siblings thing” - roommate

five and his fucking STAPLERS isn’t this the second time he’s knocked someone out with a stapler?? the bank robber and now gloria??

five please your siblings were finally doing some decent work on their own issues :/

five is the kind of dramatic as fuck entrances 

“love how he just grabs [allison’s] coffee. kid needs a coffee after all that.” - roommate

five actually does a good job of rallying the siblings though?? they just broke the fuck up in the og timeline

“something tells me that harold jenkins might be leonard”

oh roommate

episode seven

uh oh harold was born

i feel vaguely bad for him

“me the night before a convention” - roommate on harold’s tape and cosplay and everything

okay but how did reginald even KNOW harold jenkins had no powers?? did he? keep tabs on all the forty some kids not just the seven he kept?

but also why the fuck are these people laughing at An Actual Child fuck all of them honestly

“did HE kill hargreeves?? I mean. he’s got motive.” - roommate

harold really said “i think my superpower is actually this hammer motherfucker”

how did he get twelve years?? was he tried as an adult?? was he in juvie? how old WAS he

twelve years ago... they’re 29 soooo seventeen? he did NOT look seventeen? he was NOT seventeen in that flashback what???

roommate theorizes that harold ran off after the murder and committed petty crimes until caught and tried for murder when he was seventeen so was maybe 13 in the flashback

okay so i looked up the timeline and he got out in 2014 or something so he was like 13 in the flashback which makes SO much more sense honestly but also what the FUCK was he doing for five years

“he’s actually laying out all the facts as he knows them and I appreciate that.” -roommate about five briefing the team

five?? the only member of the family with communication skills? it’s? somehow more likely than you think?

“allison’s pants that she’s wearing now are the most perfectly tailored things i’ve ever seen. not even a wrinkle when she’s standing still. do you know how hard that is to do?” again my roommate noticing the things i absolutely do not

five. five. you have a GUT WOUND and also jumped a BUNCH OF TIMES. you are not blinking into the police station and getting the file. you need some SLEEP. and REST. and WOUND CARE FIVE FOR FUCK’S SAKE. you still have a GUNSHOT GRAZE on your upper arm and a SLICE on your wrist from DIGGING OUT A TRACKER. FIVE.

diego wants to be batman SO BAD.

five crossing his arms and Not Uncrossing Them because he’s literally HOLDING HIMSELF TOGETHER.

wow luther is really handling this so much worse in this timeline rip

luther is losing validity points for CHOKING KLAUS i knew this happened but i didn’t remember how awful it was !!! bad and terrible! and luther is very drunk and very sad and very angry. oh. he’s saying he never left the house and never had friends for nothing :(

klaus had the realization that reggie was an asshole YEARS ago and he’s just kind of like “aww. luther :(” 

klaus is trying so hard

“Klaus has had the most heart to hearts with the most siblings honestly.” - roommate

allison at the beginning making her laugh in the office with the EYES, five on the steps of meritech, diego after the vet bar, luther on the couch...

wow cha cha really thought hazel was talking about how meaningful his partnership was with her when he was talking about agNES

five limping up the lawn and staggering up the stairs and clinging to the rails baBY SIT DOWN. YOU ARE BLEEDING.

“inspiring leadership” “one of the greats” what a sibling moment honestly.

five really said “i think i will pass the fuck out now”

five really said “hey i am literally willing to die for this mission because this mission is the safety and lives of my entire family and i love you guys :(”

except he doesn’t because five is decent at information sharing but getting feelings out of him feels like pulling teeth at times smh

is leonard trying to vicariously live his “normal child born on the umbrella academy day discovers they have had powers the WHOLE TIME” dream through vanya??

we yell about how leonard and vanya have known each other for like a week but i mean same for hazel and agnes!! he’s literally asking her to run away with him and she says yes !!!!! agnes is here for the romantic adventure with this man she’s really living her first hot girl summer and living for it

“she’s having her own little rom com! she thinks she’s living in a rom com not a dark sci fi!” - roommate accurate as usual

she just called ben the emotional support ghost and i mean... she ain’t wrong

honestly klaus should have just left luther to his rave, he didn’t get to party in his teens or during his college years or anything

i do appreciate the viking yell of “B R O T H E R” that luther greets klaus with though because that’s exactly how i greet my own siblings whenever i see them

oh klaus :(

oh klaus :(

he’s having war flashbacks, cravings, is in withdrawal, AND experiencing sensory overload while reliving one of the more traumatizing moment of his life

oh klaus :(

five in a bed for the second time of the season which is nice for him. if only the first time wasn’t because he passed out drunk and the second time wasn’t because of a whole shrapnel wound. i am now that captain of the Let Five Sleep brigade holy SHIT like at least they imply that the others sleep five is just feral and ready to go at all times

are the police allowed to just. remove someone’s arm sling? is that permitted? his arm could be fucked up? i mean. it is? he was shot?

“I saw everything my brothers and sister could do ruin their lives” VANYA some REALIZATION up in here,,,, admitting that the umbrella academy wasn’t exactly a desirable place to be is actually some real growth for her and leonard just fucking shuts her down? fuck that man

VANYA SEE THE RED FLAGS FOR WHAT THEY ARE COME ON

oh klaus :(  oh luther :(  oh :(

“love his corset side pants, like benedict from violet evergarden” - on the topic of Klaus’s pants

“I made everyone else so I must have made you” says god except for the fact that the kids just... surprise popped up instead of coming about the natural way. maybe god DIDN’T made them????????

oh klaus :(  prepare for disappointment :(

oh i didn’t notice the photos of the umbrella academy in the barbershop the first time i watched this

so klaus gives an age for the mausoleum... thirteen... do you think that was before or after five left? statistically it’s probably after bc it was only a couple of months after they turned thirteen that five vanished

Klaus’s “we were just kids” breaks my heart every time

if i was one of reggie’s kids i would have just not gone to the funeral. rip to the hargreeves kids but i’m different

he doesn’t even call klaus klaus in death, he still calls klaus number four. fuck that man.

“i was gonna say i’d have been very very surprised if they kept him dead” - roommate on klaus waking up

“Five bucks says he set these guys up to try and get something out of her” - the roommate being very perceptive

cha cha is VERY rude to my girl agnes

honestly why DIDN’T hazel just kill cha cha after her whole speech and threats about killing agnes slowly in front of him???? like he literally watched her try to kill him as well

why wasn’t diego arrested in the original day that wasn’t actually?? he was being considered already. he still left the house, albeit with grace instead of allison. why wasn’t he arrested then???????? 

roommate thinks it’s interesting how committed the show is to their old timey shit. she used a nicer words like anachronisms but the point is: w h y

are these episodes even longer than i remember?? holy SHIT

[stillthewordgirl]

LOT/CC fic: All Stories, in the End

Mick knows that stories can't really fix things. They can't bring people back, and they can't mend broken hearts. Or can they?  (Captain Canary and platonic Coldwave)

So, today is my three-year ficaversary for Legends! This fandom has been so wonderful to me and brought me so many new friends-and got me back into writing fiction, which has had excellent repercussions in many ways-even professionally. In honor of the anniversary, here's a little tribute to stories and their power. Hope you enjoy it!

So many thanks, as usual, to LarielRomeniel for the beta and to Pir8grl for being a great sounding board!

Can also be read be here at AO3 and here at FF.net. Please be aware that it’s divided into two parts on those websites, but both are posted.

We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It's a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it's true, but then so's everything.” 

― Charles de Lint 

 Once, Rick had resented the pirate queen who’d drawn his partner, his friend, his blood brother, into this mad quest.

To be honest, she hadn’t been a pirate queen at the time. And she hadn’t been trying to lure him, either. She’d been a pretty face and an untold story when she’d joined the rest of the old captain’s motley crew of hand-picked losers. But Rick had seen the light of curiosity in Sean’s eyes when he looked at her, and he should have known then.

This wasn’t going to go the way he thought it was going to go.

Mick sighed and put down the papers he’d taken from their locked box in his room on the Waverider. There was a reason he’d put this story away unfinished. More than one reason, really.

But today, Haircut had actually brought up Snart while they were all sitting in the galley, telling his new squeeze Spooky Girl about the lost Legends—one of the lost Legends—and it’d stirred up all sorts of memories.

Not for just Mick, either. He’d been looking at Blondie when Haircut had dropped the name “Snart,” and he’d seen the stillness in her that was more telling than even a flinch. It was what Blondie did when she was holding back a flinch, really. Mick had seen the lines of pain around her eyes, and he saw her look away quickly, rising to her feet when it became apparent the oblivious Ray wasn’t going to leave off his story.

He’d thought about stopping her as she swiftly left the room, then thought about following her. But Sara had been a bit—touchy? probably wasn’t very healthy to be calling a former assassin ‘touchy,’ even in his own thoughts—since she’d split with Bureau Chick, and maybe she needed the space. Mick let her go.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t think about it. And when he’d returned to his room, he’d pulled out this story, rereading it with the usual feeling of somewhat awkward regret.

Sean Lance had a reputation some might call cold. Icy, even. He’d built that reputation very carefully over his lifetime. Being cold and careful kept you safe. He was even cold with Rick Mor, his partner in crime and the closest thing he had to a best friend. Rick had led the same sort of life he had. He was pretty sure the other man understood.

But. Lara.

The blond badass hadn’t been anything he’d planned on. Certainly, he hadn’t planned on falling for her. That was stupid. That kind of shit didn’t happen in real life.

But ….she’d worked her way under his skin somehow. Made him want to be a better person—and wasn’t that a riot?

Mick sighed again. It’s not like he’d known for a fact that Snart had that kind of…feelings…about Blondie. But he’d put the pieces together, from both before and after Snart had…after the Oculus, and goddamned if it didn’t all fit. Snart deciding to go all hero-like (which probably had a good bit to do with Allen, too), choosing the team over Mick (who was willing to admit, now, that his actions on the Acheron had been pretty damned stupid) and then…and then…

And Blondie’s reaction, afterward. It wasn’t like Mick really wanted to…oh, sit shiva, for Len and everything that entailed. But especially after Savage was toast (literally, a thought which still gave him some satisfaction), he might have liked to sit down with a drink and a friend…someone else who’d known Snart…and remembered, just a little.

But Sara had avoided the topic like the fuckin’ plague, and she’d also gone from someone who seemed kinda uncertain about hooking up with anyone to flinging herself at any woman who seemed the least bit interested. Never guys, although Mick knew she liked guys too, and that was maybe a little telling in its own right.

Just because Mick never liked to talk about feelings didn’t mean he didn’t understand them in his own way. In others, anyway.

Lara Sahfer knew she was the deadliest person on this ship. That went without question. Far deadlier than the priestess and her boytoy. Deadlier than the alchemist and his apprentice. Deadlier than the eager crusader or their hapless captain.

And deadlier than the clever thief and his partner.

The partner was dangerous, but she knew the type. He was content to let his friend be the brains of their team. But the intriguing Sean Lance…

She didn’t know what to make of him.

Though she did know he kept watching her ass given the merest opportunity.

If Mick was being honest with himself (and he tried to be, these days), he’d started putting this thing down on paper first because he could see Blondie struggling and couldn’t figure out how to manage the words to talk to her about Snart—even if she’d let him.

And in stories, you could give someone—more than one someone—the happy ending they didn’t get in real life. Maybe someday, Sara would even be ready to read it.

Then all sorts of shit had happened, and Mick had stopped writing again. He’d been stuck at the bottom of the ocean for years, even if it didn’t seem like so long. And then Ghost Snart—who hadn’t been real, but who had seemed real at the time—had showed up and snarked off about even the hint of the feelings Mick was starting to acknowledge.

And then, that asshole in the Legion (well, more of an asshole than real Snart—he was still convinced that Legion Snart hadn’t been real Snart) had showed up. And Mick decided, painfully, that he wasn’t ready to write about even fictionalized Len for a while.

He locked the pages away, taking the lockbox with him when Rip had taken the Waverider back—and bringing it back with him when they’d stolen the ship in return. He added a few more bits and pieces here and there—especially, with a certain grumpy annoyance, when he sensed Sara’s interest in Bureau Chick, who really couldn’t be more different from Len. (It’d felt like a betrayal in a way, though he’d never tell her that. Snart was gone.)

And then there was Leo. Leo, who merrily flirted with Sara (and just about everyone else). Leo, who everyone seemed to like. Personable Leo, the hugger, who was the only Snart the newbies had ever met. And it seemed like everyone but him forgot about real Snart just a little bit more.

He quietly tucked the pages away and hadn’t taken them out since. Until today.

The voyage had lots of ups and downs. Rick knew that; hell, he’d caused a lot of them. He’d committed mutiny against the captain himself when the man had thrown his own lack of status on the ship and elsewhere back in his face. And he’d paid for that, paid more than a lot of those fools would ever know.

But the thing he regretted most was that it’d cost him Sean’s friendship.

Oh, he’d been angry first. Enraged, even. That bastard had hauled him out of the pirate haven where they could have been kings, just because the captain and Lara were in trouble. And then he’d chosen the crew instead of Rick in the mutiny. Because of Lara, Rick thought. And then Sean had marooned him on that desert island and left him behind.

It’d taken time and distance to see things clearly again.

By then, it was too late.

Snart had definitely had a thing for Sara—Mick had known the man long enough and well enough to have seen him show interest in men, women, and folks who mighta been either or both, though Len had always been real quiet about any lovers he took. Still, he knew the signs.

But that hadn’t gone how Mick thought, either. He'd figured the two of them would have a fling. Get it outta their systems. Snart didn’t have a heart any more than Mick did, and it wasn’t like he and Sara were gonna fall for each other or something. That was story shit.

Mick looked down at the pages in front of him and sighed yet again.

Instead, Snart had circled around Blondie like he was planning a heist, careful and curious, and Blondie had reacted much the same way. They’d started spending time together, playing cards, and while Mick had wondered what was going on there a few times, he hadn’t asked. Even when Snart had gone back to get Sara in Russia, even when he’d insisted on saving her and Rip in Star City, and, yeah, even when he’d iced Mick in the engine room.

A few days back, Mick had overheard Zari and Charlie talking about Sara and Bureau Chick, about how (they thought) Sara’s tendency to happily break rules and apologize later, if at all, had finally taken a toll on the two and led to the breakup, along with Sara’s resistance to becoming more…domesticated.

Snart wouldn’t have tried to change her. Snart had liked her just the way she was.

Sean couldn’t help being fascinated by the assassin the captain had recruited. OK, she was gorgeous, attractive in a way that seemed designed to appeal to his sense of danger, and he wouldn’t have minded having some sort of a fling with her. But flings were all he did, these days, and dipping a toe (so to speak) into those particularly dangerous waters while on this ship seemed like a bad idea.

But that didn’t keep him from watching. Or them from playing cards. Or talking. Or watching each other’s back. Or...

Oh, hell.

There were a lot of reasons Mick himself wasn’t fond of Bureau Chick. (He knew perfectly well what her name was, he just liked to pretend otherwise.) But her attempts at changing who Blondie was…well, Mick had had too many people trying to change him to what they wanted him to be over the years. People who generally didn’t get what’d made him who he was. He didn’t take kindly to it.

And he didn’t take kindly to it happening to his friends, either.

Oh, sure, he’d changed, by this point. But he’d chosen to change, himself. It was different.

Now that Bureau Chick was out of the picture…

Mick sighed, putting a hand down on the partially written story. Snart was still dead. Nothing would change that. Ever.

No matter how much he tried to fix things in a stupid story.

Lara had been through a lot in the past few years. She wasn’t looking for a lover, or even a fling. She hadn’t been down that particular road since before she’d died and come back, and she wasn’t ready for it now. Maybe she never would be.

But. Sean.

The thief didn’t seem to care that she’d killed for hire. Didn’t seem scared of her bloodlust or intimidated by her history. He just seemed intrigued. And, somehow, he had an uncanny sense of why she wanted to be...better. She got the feeling that he did, too.

She wasn’t scared of anything. But...

She thought maybe she should be scared of this. Not because it was bad.

Because it could be all too good.

Mick had just pulled out the pages of another story, his latest sci-fi epic, the one he’d asked New Girl to read sometime soon, when Gideon’s voice echoed through the ship.

“Captain Lance would like everyone on the bridge,” she announced, sounding just a little harried. That wasn’t good. “Immediately.”

Then the ship shook. That definitely wasn’t good. Mick cursed, dropping the pages on the desk and turning for the door.

He didn’t even consider that he’d left the other story out, too.

It was quite a bit later when Zari wandered into the room, smiling a bit as the door slid open to admit her, per Mick’s orders. She was glad he’d come to trust her that much. She didn’t think Mick trusted many, and it felt like a rare and rather precious accolade.

Even if it was mostly so she could play editor.

The unexplained temporal storm earlier still had the ship in disarray, but there wasn’t really anything she could do about that at the moment. Mick and Sara and Ray were going over temporal data that was nonsense to her and the others were dealing with some variety of seasickness. Time sickness. Whatever. It’d been caused by the ship’s motion through the storm, so close enough. Zari had tried, but poor Charlie, who’d had a really bad reaction to it, had refused any help at all, locking herself in her room and snarling through the door.

Zari hummed to herself as she looked over Mick’s desk and the old typewriter he still insisted on using. There were a few different piles of papers, but they’d been knocked around a bit by the turbulence. Looked like one had slid to the side, and another toward the front of the desk. Which one had Mick had in mind?

The one at the front caught her eye, so she picked it up, gathering the pages into a pile, turning to find a seat amidst the clutter of the room and settling in to read.

Once, Rick had resented the pirate queen...

The cult that’d started this whole damned thing had them again, even after all the crew’s plans and attempts to change things. They had Rick, minions strapping him down into a chair while one of the cult leaders—the one who’d broken him the first time—stared at him thoughtfully. Rick stared back, determined not to show any fear.

Maybe, he thought, even as the manacles closed around his wrists, Sean and Lara had gotten away. They’d been holed up again, like they did sometimes. Neither of them was stupid. They might have gotten away.

Gods, he hoped they’d gotten away.

Zari had completely lost track of time when Mick came through the door and stopped, acknowledging her presence with a grunt. She blinked, slowly coming back to reality as he ambled toward the desk and gave it a cursory look—before suddenly freezing and then spinning to stare at her. And the pages she was reading.

“You can’t read that,” Mick told her abruptly, something odd in his tone, even as Zari tightened her grip on the papers involuntarily. He sounded almost...upset. Embarrassed? Mick?

“It was right on your desk. I thought it was what you wanted me to read.” She studied him, then looked back down at the story, letting out a long breath. She liked Mick’s writing, but she’d really been caught up in this one.

“Mick, this is great,” she told him, lifting her eyes again and giving the pages a shake for emphasis. “You’ve got this...this incredible romance going on between these awesome, real, flawed characters, the thief and the assassin, and this amazing...platonic soulmates thing with the male protagonist and his friend at the same time.” She shook her head, impressed. “And you don’t see enough of that in fiction, especially in cases where the romantic relationship doesn’t eclipse the platonic one and they’re both good stories on their own. It’s great.”

Mick stared at her, expression still opaque. Zari stared back a moment, then rifled through the papers. Now that she was near the end, she didn’t think there was enough...yes, it just left off there, right in the middle of a scene.

“You need to finish it,” she insisted. “And there are a few places you just fade to black...and I want to see how it ends!”

But he turned away then, toward the desk, shoulders set.

“I can’t,” he said, tossing the words back over his shoulder at her. “He died.” A pause. “The end.”

Zari blinked again. “Who? Rick? Sean? You can’t...”

But her voice trailed off as she saw Mick leaning on his desk, hands gripping the wood and knuckles white, staring at his typewriter like it’d hurt him. But it hadn’t; she had, somehow, by sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong, even though she hadn’t meant to. So, after another minute, she got to her feet, quietly putting the pages down where she’d been sitting and taking a step toward the door.

Mick didn’t move.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. And left.

The others had decided to destroy the cult, and possibly the island it claimed as its base as well. Sean couldn’t say he was surprised. He wasn’t fond at all of how much power the group claimed, far more than they’d originally suspected. And now that they knew the cult was supporting the warlord they’d vowed to stop, it was necessary if they ever wanted to complete that mission.

Still, he could see Lara watching him out of the corner of her eye as all the others chimed in, agreeing to this plan. Even Rick was in—though, of course, he had more reason than most to hate the cult.

“We set out on this mission to stop Vindictus and save the world. To become legends and change our fates,” the crusader, Edmund, said earnestly. “That mission hasn't changed.”

Sean made a scoffing noise. “This is madness,” he said, glancing around at all of them before letting his gaze light on Lara—and an almost-smile touch his mouth. “I like it.”

She smiled back at him.

Behind her, Rick rolled his eyes. But the other man was smiling too.

He died.

Zari frowned to herself as she strolled the corridors of the ship, pondering Mick’s reaction and his words. Given that no main character had died yet in that story, it was apparent that the tale must have been based on a true one. But...

She stopped dead in her tracks.

Lara, assassin turned (at some point) pirate queen. Sean, the thief. Rick, his friend and partner.

Oh.

It seemed to fit. She only knew the sketchiest bits of what the Legends had been up to when their original captain had first recruited them, but she should have figured this out sooner. The power of Mick’s tale had obfuscated the reality behind it. And she knew almost nothing about Leonard, Mick’s former partner, just that Mick missed him and that he’d died, doing something that had saved the world.

Had he and Sara really been a thing? Almost a thing? Zari nibbled her lip, thinking. She didn’t think she’d heard Sara so much as mention his name. Ever. Which...actually did point more toward some powerful feelings there rather than the opposite.

Zari thought for a few more minutes. Then she turned toward the bridge.

Lara knew that Rick had taken refuge in one of his hidey holes in a cargo bay, probably drinking his way through more of the captain’s rum. She’d figured Sean was with him.

Which was fine. Really. After the thief pulled a gun on her after the cult members had taken their friends, she wasn’t sure she really wanted to talk to him. Oh, she could have had that gun away from him in a heartbeat, and he’d backed down awfully quickly, given how stubborn she knew he was, but it was the principle of the thing.

She’d been furious. And heartbroken, though she wasn’t ready to tell anyone that and probably never would be. She’d thought they were friends, at least. Maybe...maybe skirting around something more?

But he wasn’t in the cargo bay with Rick, after all, as it turned out. He was here. At her cabin door. Now. Looking at her with eyes that had a veneer of his habitual attitude over even more uncertainty. It probably said something, too, that she recognized that.

Sean cleared his throat. “Hi,” he managed. “Can I come in?”

Lara leaned on the doorway and glared at him. “What do you want?”

“To talk.” A look from under lowered lashes. Damn him. “And apologize.”

“You could do that right here.”

“Mmm.” He glanced away. “Maybe I want to say more than that.”

She shouldn’t let him in. She should shut the door in his handsome face. She should...

Lara stepped back, letting him in.

Sara was sitting in the captain’s chair. Oh, there was no particular flying to be done right now, but she wasn’t in the mood to go back to her quarters. Her empty quarters, with no sign of Ava in them. More evidence that she’d fucked up for real this time.

Or not. Frankly, Sara kept waffling between anger and annoyance at the other woman’s conviction that Sara needed to change and grief over the loss of someone else she'd cared for. OK, loved. Sure, Ava was back in the Bureau offices, healthy and fine compared to some of the people Sara had lost, but Sara had lost her regardless.

Or maybe she’d never really had her to begin with. Had they both been operating under false pretenses? Ava, thinking Sara would settle and become a good little soldier, or wife, or both? Sara, thinking that Ava would stop wanting her to? Would stop wanting to make her over in a different image?

Sara wasn’t sure how long she’d been there, slumped in the chair with her jaw in her hand, eyes closed, thoughts and feelings circling in her head, when she heard the footstep. Closer than she’d usually let someone get, but she’d let her guard down, knowing that Gideon would warn her if it wasn’t a friend.

“What’s up, Z?” she asked, seeing Zari there, watching her with a rather enigmatic expression. “Everything OK?”

The other woman shrugged, moving closer and studying Sara as if seeing her in a new light. Sara was just about to ask again when Zari glanced away, nodded to herself, and looked back.

“Who was Leonard Snart?” she asked, point blank.

Sara was pretty sure she didn’t move, but for a moment, she almost felt like she’d reeled. “What?”

“Mick’s old partner.” Z tilted her head. “One of the original members of the Legends, right? But no one ever talks about him. Why is that?”

Get him out of here.

No.

Just do it.

Sara swallowed. “He died,” she said abruptly, knowing her voice sounded harsh. “What’s there to talk about?”

“Other people have too, died or left, and the team talks about them.”

“Why are you asking this now?” Sara’s hands tightened on the arms of the chair. “Mick...”

Zari seemed to consider. She looked a little like she regretted bringing this up, but she was too stubborn to back down now. Sara knew that well. “He wrote something about him. Snart. Well, you and Snart.”

“Me and...Snart.” She should say there was no “her and Snart.” She should.

“I wasn’t meant to read it, but I didn’t know that. And the story just...ended. And when I asked, Mick said he died.”

What on earth could Mick have written? How would he even have known...?

...what the future might hold for me...and you...and me and you.

Zari’s eyes are direct. “Did you love him?”

I might have.

“I don’t want to talk about this now.” Her broken edges and Leonard’s, they’d somehow fit together.

“Sara...”

“Don’t push it, Z.”

The bomb in the center of the island wasn’t working right. Someone needed to hold the button down for the connection to be made, for it to blow the whole thing to kingdom come.

The crusader had been going to do it. But he was the sort of guy the world needed, one able and willing to help people, to fix things that needed fixing. Not like Rick, with all his damages. It’d been an easy decision to knock the other man out and take his place. And the captain—pragmatic, despite all his fine talk—hadn’t hesitated to take Edmund and leave Rick there, hand on the bomb, considering his fate.

But then:

“Rick!”

After Zari left, Mick had stayed in his room for a while, stewing, discontented and angry at the memories. He didn’t blame her—he'd left the damned story out, after all, and she didn’t know enough about what had happened to connect the dots right away. But, still, it’d been a stupid thing to write down in the first place.

With most books, anyway, writing things didn’t make them come true.

After a while, he left the room, trying to pretend nothing had happened. He had dinner with Haircut in the galley. He worked out a bit in the training room. He watched an episode of “The X-Files" with Charlie, who’d laughed so hard at the show’s version of shapeshifters that she’d nearly gotten sick again.

Then he’d slowly sauntered back to his room, wondering if he should go find New Girl and apologize.

But there was someone else in his room.

Blondie was sitting in one of the chairs, knees pulled up to her chin, a posture that looked more vulnerable than nearly anything he’d seen from her in a long time. She looked up as he entered, and he was startled to see red-rimmed eyes—and a sheaf of papers in her hand.

Damnit. He’d left that locked up again. Honest, he had.

Mick looked back at Sara, who smiled a little at him.

“I did learn how to pick locks,” she murmured. “It wasn’t hard to find.”

“New Girl.”

“Sort of. She said you wrote something about...about Leonard. And me. I didn’t realize what it was. And I shouldn’t have gone into your things, but I. Well.” She looked down at the pages. “I wasn’t at my best. I’m sorry, Mick.”

Mick dragged in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. They’ve been through too much together to let this get to him, especially since it’s so unusual. “S’OK.” He took a seat himself, watching her.

Sara met his eyes, then glanced away. She looked at the pages again and the quiet drew out.

Then: “This is really how you saw...it? Us?”

Her and Snart, she meant. Mick hesitated.

“Saw what could have been,” he said finally. “Was I wrong?”

A long silence.

“No,” Sara admitted. “No. I think...I think we could have been something...something really good. If we’d had more time. Isn’t that how it goes?” Her fingers contracted, wrinkling the papers, but then she smoothed them out, handing them back to him. “And you knew Leonard longer than I did, better than I did. If this is what you saw...”

“Eh. In some ways, I knew him better. People change.”

“True.” Sara sighed, getting up from the chair. “I’m sorry, Mick,” she said again. “I shouldn’t have just come in here and rummaging around. That was beyond rude. I just...needed to see...”

She shook her head, as if trying to get a grip, then gave him an arch look. “No sex scenes though, I noticed.”

Mick could actually feel his face heat. “That woulda been way too weird.”

Sara laughed a bit evilly—and a bit sadly, which was an odd mix. But still, she just patted his arm again, sighed, and hurried out the door.

Mick watched her go. He looked down at the pages in his hands, then put them down on the desk and studied them for a long moment.

Then he fed a clean piece of paper into his typewriter, nodded to himself, and started to type.

Time to give those losers—all of them—a happy ending.

You could do that, in stories.

About three months later, Waverider time

“Heard you been writing again. Since I...well.”

The words were casually said, in the usual drawl, but Mick could hear a number of things in them. Regret, for having been gone. A pleased attention, because Snart had always accepted his writing in a way others hadn’t. Amusement, probably because New Girl had almost certainly been the one to tell him that. And guilt, he thought, for so many reasons.

Snart stood in the doorway to Mick's room and looked around, his expression still and not real informative. But he hadn’t commented on the clutter or anything else, focusing after a moment on the typewriter still sitting on the desk.

Mick nodded, watching his long-lost friend. “I’m doing the final edits on a manuscript that’s goin’ to a publisher,” he volunteered. “Got two other books out, too. Sold pretty well.”

The other man actually smiled.

The temporal storms that had started that day about three months ago had gotten worse and worse, while both the Legends and the Time Bureau had tried to figure out what was causing them and were kept busy trying to clean up their aftermath.

Finally, they’d figured out the storms had been touched off by the deepest part of the time stream trying to rid itself of an irritant, something that shouldn’t be there.

And that irritant had turned out to be Leonard Snart.

The real one. Now back on the Waverider, confirmed by Gideon, whole and healthy—albeit with an uncanny sense for temporal disturbances and a weird ability to reset time a few seconds here and there. They hadn’t quite fully sorted through the repercussions of that power yet.

Snart was...different, now. Apparently, he’d been at least somewhat aware of the passage of time while he was stuck in the...well, Haircut called it a time pearl, a barrier the time stream had formed between itself and the annoyance. It hadn’t felt like three years to him—more of an odd, lengthy waking dream—but it had given him lots of time, he said, to think.

His personality was a step closer to Leo now, in a way, though he was still extremely capable of pointed snark and sass, as Haircut had already found out. But he was also a little less cold, and a great deal more thoughtful in a way that didn’t seem to have much to do with heists. (As far as Mick knew, anyway. Could be both.)

Now, Snart was looking at the manuscript on the desk with a definite glint of curiosity in his eyes. “Yeah?” His hand hovered over the neat stack of papers. “Can I…”

Mick hesitated. And Snart curled his fingers again and withdrew his hand in that smooth way he had, tucking it behind his back and acting like he’d never reached out to begin with.

Classic Snart.

Well, Mick was done with that old dynamic. He’d lost too much, and he’d been so lucky to get some of it back. Abruptly, he reached out too, scooping up the papers and extending them to Snart, who took them with a blink of surprise.

Mick waved a hand at them a bit awkwardly. “Uh,” he said, “that one wasn’t originally for publication. New Girl…Zari…talked me into finishing it and sending it out. And Blondie gave me…permission. Even wrote some bits.”

Snart had frowned, just a little. “Why would Sara have to…”

But he stopped, fingers tightening on the papers. And Mick sighed inwardly.

When they’d pulled Snart from the time stream…time pearl, whatever…there’d been more than one person who’d been intently watching the groggy, dazed crook when he first came face to face with Sara, who’d been staring at him like she was seeing a ghost.

But all they’d gotten was a breathed, barely audible “Sara” from Snart before the man had crumpled and Mick had carried him off to the medbay. Once he’d woken and gotten a clean bill of health, well, it seemed they were rarely in the same place at the same time. In fact, Mick was pretty sure they were avoiding each other.

Which made no sense at all. New Girl agreed.

Well, maybe this will get them to pull their heads out of their asses. Worth the embarrassment for the chance of that.

“You nearly died, you jackass,” Lara whispered to Sean, standing there on the boat with her hands wrapped in his coat, holding him close. Not as close as she’d like, but...even after everything, she knew he still had his lines that were tough to cross, still had his damages, his own rocky shores. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“I couldn’t just let him die.” Sean didn’t seem to mind that she was holding him. In fact, his hands slipped up and around her shoulders, pulling her closer too. His blue eyes looked seriously down into hers, making it hard to breathe.

“Of course you couldn’t.” Lara took a deep breath. “But...”

But then Sean was kissing her, right out on the deck in the open, a kiss that was everything their desperate kiss while he was holding the bomb hadn’t been. A promise, not a farewell; an invitation and a dare. Lara tightened her hold on him and kissed him back, the rest of the world fading around them, focused for once on the here and the now...and just maybe, a little bit on the future.

And if there were a couple of wolf whistles from Rick and the others...well, they just ignored them.

Mick had tried to be unobtrusive about watching the door to Snart’s new room. Fortunately, since it was right down the hall from the galley, he could just lurk in there and listen, occasionally peek outside. He’d been nursing the same beer for a while when New Girl slipped in, too, eyes brightening as she saw him.

“Snart’s reading it?” she whispered. He’d passed on the message through Gideon.

“Yeah.” Mick shifted a bit uncomfortably.

Maybe he shouldn’t have let Sara add the sexier bits. But there was no way in hell he was doin’ it, not with this book, and his publisher expected a certain amount of that. Sara, at least, had seemed to get a kick out of it—just how much of a kick, he’d decided he really didn’t want to know.

He also didn’t think he wanted to know how much of it had really happened—though he suspected, at least, that the kiss at the Oculus/bomb had.

New Girl looked pleased. “This has to be the kick in the ass they both need,” she said.

“ ‘Less we were all wrong.”

“We weren’t. Sara said so. Right?”

“That was before Snart came back.” He thought about it a minute. “Easier to say that when it was just a ‘mighta been’ and not a ‘could really be.’”

New Girl got an odd, considering expression on her face. Mick wondered what—maybe who—she was thinking about. “Yeah,” she acknowledged after a minute. “That’s true. But...”

There was a sound. A door opening. Mick and New Girl—he really should start calling her Zari, he supposed, or Z—exchanged a look, waited a moment, and then peeked out the door.

Snart was headed down the corridor. Toward Sara’s quarters.

Z made a happy sort of humming noise, waiting until Snart turned the corner before stepping out of the galley. Mick followed her as they both slunk down the hall, pausing just before the corner. Close enough to Sara’s doorway.

They heard it slide open.

“Len.” Sara sounded a little surprised. Not unhappy. Thoughtful. Waiting.

“Sara.” Had he really said her name like that before? Ugh. Mick couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed that tone. That was get-a-room territory all on its own.

Another pause. They heard Snart step inside, heard the door close...mostly. It was cracked, just enough to hear what was being said, as long as they snuck a bit closer and the occupant used normal voices. Mick heard Z whisper a “thank you” to Gideon—who, in her usual way, knew perfectly well what was going on around her ship.

“Mick apparently thinks we had some sort of great torrid romance going on,” they heard Snart say to Sara. There was amusement in his voice and Mick breathed out a sigh of relief. So, he wasn’t mad or too embarrassed.

There was amusement in Sara’s voice, too, as she responded. “You read it.”

“Yeah.” A pause. A long one. “He said you did too.” A shorter pause. “Said you even added...a few things.”

Sara’s laugh was low and rippling. Z elbowed Mick, who ignored her.

“Wishful thinking,” the captain said quietly. “I thought you were gone.”

“Hmmmm. I’m back now.” Pause. “Can’t change the earlier story. But maybe could...start a new one?”

Z clapped a hand over her mouth, her grin obvious. She darted a glance at Mick, eyes shining.

“What sort of story, though?” Sara’s tone was teasing...but not without a hint of real question. “Comedy? Adventure?” Pause. “Torrid romance?”

“Well. Kinda partial to the idea of that last, at the moment.” Snart’s own tone was low, a bit rough. “Not too late?”

Z stepped forward, listening intently.

And Gideon firmly slid the door shut the rest of the way.

“Hey!”

“What happens next, Ms. Tomaz, you certainly do not need to be privy to.” Gideon sounded just a little prissy.

“I most certainly do!”

But Mick grinned, reaching out to put a hand on her arm and pull her back toward the galley. He knew Snart, and he knew Sara. And he figured they’d be just fine.

“They gotta write their own story now,” he told her. “Let’s leave ‘em to it.”

“We’re all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?”

— The Doctor