A Time For Great Things - Chapter 2
TITLE: A Time For Great Things Chapter 2
Fandom: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow
Category: Adventure, Fix-It
Summary:
“What’s Jurgen’s Ridge?”
“Pray you need never find out.”
Sometimes prayers should not be answered. This is one of those times.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This chapter was finished a lot more quickly than I expected. Future chapters will take more time, because they’re going to take actual research as opposed to plain ol’ imagination. From my initial plotting, I’m expecting 7 chapters total. But I’ve been known to go long!
Many thanks to Jael/stillwordgirl for the beta and for letting me bounce crazy ideas off her.
---
“All possibilities are visible to a man on the Ridge,” Rip told her. “Jurgen saw it all… what was, what is, what could be. All the things that could be, in their infinite combinations.” His voice had dropped to a whisper. “Jurgen’s body was fine, but his mind was broken by all he’d seen. When he was retrieved, he was quite insane.”
Sara’s eyes widened in horror. She could hear Jax take in a shocked breath, and Stein’s hoarse whisper of, “My God.”
“There is no God,” Mick growled. “But there is a hell, and my partner is trapped in it.”
There was a heavy silence on the Waverider’s bridge after that. It hung there for a few moments, until Ray broke it with just one word.
“Baloney.”
Sara turned away from Rip to stare at Ray, who was shaking his head. He wasn’t looking as shocked as Stein and Jax looked, as she felt.
“What do you mean, Haircut?” She could hear the low burn of anger in Mick’s voice behind her.
Ray put his hands up in a placating manner. “We’re all forgetting that we talked to the future Leonard Snart, right after we killed Savage. Did that Leonard Snart seem insane to any of you?” He looked her in the eyes. “What do you think, Sara?”
She thought about the man who’d given her such a devastating, passionate kiss on that rooftop, not so long ago. He was older than the Leonard she’d known, and, even without that kiss, openly affectionate with her and with Mick, as his younger self had never been. “The Leonard you knew missed a lot of opportunities,” he’d told her.
She remembered the look in his eyes after he kissed her. Regret, but for what? Was it for what they had missed before? Or for what she would face to get him back? “It’s not going to be easy for you, but it will be all right.”
She remembered him saying what his younger self had never said. “I love you.”
Tears stung her eyes again at those memories, but she managed to keep her voice steady to say, “He was different. Not… closed off.” She didn’t trust herself to say more.
“Definitely not that,” Ray agreed with an understanding smile.
She blinked away the tears. “But… no. He didn’t seem insane.” She turned to look at Mick and Rip. “And I’ve seen insane more than once.”
Thoughtfully, Stein said, “All Clarissa could talk about was how charming he’d seemed, and how reassuring he was to her about our adventures.”
“I think my mom was crushing on him,” Jax added with a sheepish look. “I’m not sure if it bugs me more that she had a crush, or that it was on Snart.”
Rip cleared his throat. “I have to agree, the man we met that day certainly seemed to be in his right mind. And he pointed us in the right direction to look for him, if he is indeed on Jurgen’s Ridge.”
Sara turned to Mick, who was still glowering. “But you’re not so convinced, are you?”
Mick grabbed the whiskey off the holo table and took a swig. He wiped his mouth and said, “I want to be convinced, Blondie. I remember Rip telling us that blowing the Oculus could have sent ripples through all of time. But I also know what the Time Masters taught me about Jurgen.”
He shook his head. “The Snart we met on the rooftop didn’t seem insane. But you noticed it then: He wasn’t the man we knew. He kissed both of us, in front of everyone.” He shook his head with a little huff. “We were partners for thirty years, and he never did anything like that with me before. And I’m willing to bet he never did with you before either. Showing how he felt was never his thing.”
She sighed and shook her own head. Mick was right; as many times as she’d thought - dreamed - about Leonard’s lips touching her own, it hadn’t happened until she took the initiative at the Oculus. As close as they’d been, he’d always maintained a physical distance, with only a few exceptions that were burned into her memories.
Dammit. The tears were still too close to the surface, and her eyes welled up with regret for lost opportunities.
Silence loomed again. This time, it was Stein who broke it. “Might I suggest that life-threatening events can radically change a person? Make them shed previous inhibitions?” He put a hand on Sara’s shoulder. “We all saw how the future Mr. Snart looked at you on that rooftop, Sara. It was the same way his younger self looked at you when he thought no one was paying attention, long before we ever went to the Vanishing Point.”
This… this was a surprise. “You… saw?”
Stein smiled slightly. “Well, I did. Observation is my business as a scientist, my dear. And I choose to have faith. I believe whatever he is seeing at Jurgen’s Ridge is turning him into the man we met.” He leaned closer, and said more quietly, “The man who is deeply in love with you.”
“I hope you’re right, Professor,” Mick said. He looked down at the deck. “I don’t want to think about his mind being broken. Knowing who he was… who he is… I couldn’t stand it.”
“You resisted becoming Chronos again,” Ray pointed out, prompting Mick to look back up. “You were stubborn enough to hold out against the Time Masters’ conditioning.”
Rip nodded. “I can think of only one person on this team who was… is… more stubborn and more determined than you, Mr. Rory, and that’s Leonard Snart.”
“Snart did freeze off his own hand in Nanda Parbat,” Jax said. “It takes a tough guy to be able to do that.”
“And he did it to keep us from killing you,” Rip added, pointing to Mick. “Mr. Rory, he may never have overtly stated his feelings for you, but at least twice on our journey, he showed them by saving your life, in Nanda Parbat and at the Oculus.”
“Actions speak louder than words,” Ray agreed.
“We have to try,” Jax insisted. “He’d try for us.”
Mick gave it some thought and nodded.
Sara took in a deep breath, trying to calm her roiled emotions. “So, speaking of action, what do we do now? How do we get him back?”
Rip stroked his beard. “Sara, I don’t know. Yet.”
Stein gave her shoulder a squeeze. “But we will figure it out.”
--
Mick had taken the whiskey back to his room. He offered the bottle to Sara when she wandered in and sat next to him on his bed, midway through a sleepless ship’s night.
She tried not to think about the last time she’d shared liquor straight from the bottle, but couldn’t prevent the memory from rising up. It had been with Mick and Leonard, sitting on the bridge drinking Rob Roy’s whiskey while the team debated what to do with Savage. She remembered how Leonard’s hand had lightly brushed against hers as they passed the bottle back and forth, a so-brief touch of skin against skin.
That thought led her to another memory, of the too brief touch of her lips to his. She took another drink and closed her eyes against the tears that threatened again.
“Blondie…”
Her words were choked. “He tried, Mick. You know? He tried to talk to me about the future, and about him and me.”
Mick grunted and took the bottle back for another swig. “Thought he’d come around to that sometime.” He gave a half-hearted smirk when Sara looked over at him. “The Professor’s not the only one who can observe things.”
She wiped at her eyes. “I thought he was just being… him. I didn’t take him seriously.” She laughed bitterly. “Told him if he wanted to steal a kiss, he’d better be one hell of a thief.”
Mick chuckled. “That’s what he liked about you, Blondie. You were a challenge.” She looked at him curiously. “Listen. I watched women and men throw themselves at Lenny and his good looks for years. Usually he ignored ‘em. Sometimes he used ‘em. One time, he got used, but that was when he was still practically a kid. It just taught him to be on his guard.”
He took another drink. “He liked people who forced him to up his game. It’s why the Flash interested him so much. The speedster challenged him to be a better criminal at first. Then Lenny told me the Flash challenged him to be a hero. He laughed about it when he told me, but then we wound up here on the Waverider.”
Mick stretched his arm around Sara’s shoulders. “And then there was you, the woman who’d been dead for a year. Right from Day One, you were a puzzle he wanted to figure out. You impressed the hell out of him in that bar fight, you know. Then you refused to take any crap from him, ever. I could tell he was hooked.” He chuckled softly. “And then your looks were just the icing on the cake for him.”
His mouth curved in a full-on smirk at her widened eyes. “Lenny liked… likes beautiful things. He stole money because it was practical, but he preferred to take jewels and artwork, even if he had to fence ‘em later.” He drank again. “I guess stealing pretty stuff made up for his ugly childhood.”
He offered her the bottle again and squeezed her shoulders. “Don’t you go feeling guilty for pushing back at him. He’s have expected it from you. And if he’d had the time, he’d have found a way to steal that kiss.”
“He didn’t have to,” Sara told him. “I kissed him… right before…”
Mick smiled. “Good for you. And when we get him back, I’ll be sure to pull his head out of his ass so he doesn’t waste any more time.”
Sara shifted to lean against Mick. “If we get him back.”
“We will, Blondie. He already promised.”
--
He was awakened by the sensation of something sharp… make that many sharp somethings… poking his back, his legs, his head. He opened his eyes and pushed himself to a sitting position, hissing when his hands landed on more sharp somethings.
His vision was blurry. He could only make out brightness, mostly white, but with other colors sometimes flashing through.
Flash? Red and yellow…
He shook his head. He could hear…
Feel?
…the words, but couldn’t make any sense from them yet.
He tried to focus on his hands, to see what the sharp somethings had done to them. That was easier. His left hand still had the marks…
Scars…
…that he’d known for so long.
How long?
He didn’t know. Trying to remember… hurt. So he went back to focusing on his hands. The right… it looked a little different. Something was missing.
Ring…
Scars…
Familiar things were gone. But there was no blood from the sharp somethings.
He could feel a tingle on his skin, almost like a burn. But the color and texture of the skin was fine. He knew what burns looked like…
How?
…and he couldn’t see that kind of damage on his palms or his long fingers. He shifted his focus to scan his body. It, too, seemed undamaged, his legs stretched out on a surface of black rocks. Those had to be the sharp somethings that had been poking him.
His vision was beginning to clear. He could see the rock surface rising to his right. And on his left….
A riot of colors streaming by him. As his eyes became more able to focus, he could make out images. People, places. Even sounds. Too many to sort.
And this stream of images was getting closer.
He pushed himself to his feet, a bit unsteadily, and watched the image stream. Definitely getting closer, and some of the images becoming clearer.
People running, crying out in fear.
A burning city.
A mushroom cloud.
It was too much. He turned away from the image stream, only to find it surrounding him, lapping at his knees, his thighs. It was like being caught in a rising river. He needed to get to higher ground.
The slope of black rock rose out of the stream. Climbing it would get him away from the images and give him a chance to think.
To remember who he was, and how he got here.
He took a breath and got ready to climb.
But the images washed over him first.
--
End Note: Yes, I know I’m evil. Please let me know what you think in comments (but you don’t have to tell me I’m evil).
Fandom: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow
Category: Adventure, Fix-It
Summary:
“What’s Jurgen’s Ridge?”
“Pray you need never find out.”
Sometimes prayers should not be answered. This is one of those times.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This chapter was finished a lot more quickly than I expected. Future chapters will take more time, because they’re going to take actual research as opposed to plain ol’ imagination. From my initial plotting, I’m expecting 7 chapters total. But I’ve been known to go long!
Many thanks to Jael/stillwordgirl for the beta and for letting me bounce crazy ideas off her.
---
“All possibilities are visible to a man on the Ridge,” Rip told her. “Jurgen saw it all… what was, what is, what could be. All the things that could be, in their infinite combinations.” His voice had dropped to a whisper. “Jurgen’s body was fine, but his mind was broken by all he’d seen. When he was retrieved, he was quite insane.”
Sara’s eyes widened in horror. She could hear Jax take in a shocked breath, and Stein’s hoarse whisper of, “My God.”
“There is no God,” Mick growled. “But there is a hell, and my partner is trapped in it.”
There was a heavy silence on the Waverider’s bridge after that. It hung there for a few moments, until Ray broke it with just one word.
“Baloney.”
Sara turned away from Rip to stare at Ray, who was shaking his head. He wasn’t looking as shocked as Stein and Jax looked, as she felt.
“What do you mean, Haircut?” She could hear the low burn of anger in Mick’s voice behind her.
Ray put his hands up in a placating manner. “We’re all forgetting that we talked to the future Leonard Snart, right after we killed Savage. Did that Leonard Snart seem insane to any of you?” He looked her in the eyes. “What do you think, Sara?”
She thought about the man who’d given her such a devastating, passionate kiss on that rooftop, not so long ago. He was older than the Leonard she’d known, and, even without that kiss, openly affectionate with her and with Mick, as his younger self had never been. “The Leonard you knew missed a lot of opportunities,” he’d told her.
She remembered the look in his eyes after he kissed her. Regret, but for what? Was it for what they had missed before? Or for what she would face to get him back? “It’s not going to be easy for you, but it will be all right.”
She remembered him saying what his younger self had never said. “I love you.”
Tears stung her eyes again at those memories, but she managed to keep her voice steady to say, “He was different. Not… closed off.” She didn’t trust herself to say more.
“Definitely not that,” Ray agreed with an understanding smile.
She blinked away the tears. “But… no. He didn’t seem insane.” She turned to look at Mick and Rip. “And I’ve seen insane more than once.”
Thoughtfully, Stein said, “All Clarissa could talk about was how charming he’d seemed, and how reassuring he was to her about our adventures.”
“I think my mom was crushing on him,” Jax added with a sheepish look. “I’m not sure if it bugs me more that she had a crush, or that it was on Snart.”
Rip cleared his throat. “I have to agree, the man we met that day certainly seemed to be in his right mind. And he pointed us in the right direction to look for him, if he is indeed on Jurgen’s Ridge.”
Sara turned to Mick, who was still glowering. “But you’re not so convinced, are you?”
Mick grabbed the whiskey off the holo table and took a swig. He wiped his mouth and said, “I want to be convinced, Blondie. I remember Rip telling us that blowing the Oculus could have sent ripples through all of time. But I also know what the Time Masters taught me about Jurgen.”
He shook his head. “The Snart we met on the rooftop didn’t seem insane. But you noticed it then: He wasn’t the man we knew. He kissed both of us, in front of everyone.” He shook his head with a little huff. “We were partners for thirty years, and he never did anything like that with me before. And I’m willing to bet he never did with you before either. Showing how he felt was never his thing.”
She sighed and shook her own head. Mick was right; as many times as she’d thought - dreamed - about Leonard’s lips touching her own, it hadn’t happened until she took the initiative at the Oculus. As close as they’d been, he’d always maintained a physical distance, with only a few exceptions that were burned into her memories.
Dammit. The tears were still too close to the surface, and her eyes welled up with regret for lost opportunities.
Silence loomed again. This time, it was Stein who broke it. “Might I suggest that life-threatening events can radically change a person? Make them shed previous inhibitions?” He put a hand on Sara’s shoulder. “We all saw how the future Mr. Snart looked at you on that rooftop, Sara. It was the same way his younger self looked at you when he thought no one was paying attention, long before we ever went to the Vanishing Point.”
This… this was a surprise. “You… saw?”
Stein smiled slightly. “Well, I did. Observation is my business as a scientist, my dear. And I choose to have faith. I believe whatever he is seeing at Jurgen’s Ridge is turning him into the man we met.” He leaned closer, and said more quietly, “The man who is deeply in love with you.”
“I hope you’re right, Professor,” Mick said. He looked down at the deck. “I don’t want to think about his mind being broken. Knowing who he was… who he is… I couldn’t stand it.”
“You resisted becoming Chronos again,” Ray pointed out, prompting Mick to look back up. “You were stubborn enough to hold out against the Time Masters’ conditioning.”
Rip nodded. “I can think of only one person on this team who was… is… more stubborn and more determined than you, Mr. Rory, and that’s Leonard Snart.”
“Snart did freeze off his own hand in Nanda Parbat,” Jax said. “It takes a tough guy to be able to do that.”
“And he did it to keep us from killing you,” Rip added, pointing to Mick. “Mr. Rory, he may never have overtly stated his feelings for you, but at least twice on our journey, he showed them by saving your life, in Nanda Parbat and at the Oculus.”
“Actions speak louder than words,” Ray agreed.
“We have to try,” Jax insisted. “He’d try for us.”
Mick gave it some thought and nodded.
Sara took in a deep breath, trying to calm her roiled emotions. “So, speaking of action, what do we do now? How do we get him back?”
Rip stroked his beard. “Sara, I don’t know. Yet.”
Stein gave her shoulder a squeeze. “But we will figure it out.”
--
Mick had taken the whiskey back to his room. He offered the bottle to Sara when she wandered in and sat next to him on his bed, midway through a sleepless ship’s night.
She tried not to think about the last time she’d shared liquor straight from the bottle, but couldn’t prevent the memory from rising up. It had been with Mick and Leonard, sitting on the bridge drinking Rob Roy’s whiskey while the team debated what to do with Savage. She remembered how Leonard’s hand had lightly brushed against hers as they passed the bottle back and forth, a so-brief touch of skin against skin.
That thought led her to another memory, of the too brief touch of her lips to his. She took another drink and closed her eyes against the tears that threatened again.
“Blondie…”
Her words were choked. “He tried, Mick. You know? He tried to talk to me about the future, and about him and me.”
Mick grunted and took the bottle back for another swig. “Thought he’d come around to that sometime.” He gave a half-hearted smirk when Sara looked over at him. “The Professor’s not the only one who can observe things.”
She wiped at her eyes. “I thought he was just being… him. I didn’t take him seriously.” She laughed bitterly. “Told him if he wanted to steal a kiss, he’d better be one hell of a thief.”
Mick chuckled. “That’s what he liked about you, Blondie. You were a challenge.” She looked at him curiously. “Listen. I watched women and men throw themselves at Lenny and his good looks for years. Usually he ignored ‘em. Sometimes he used ‘em. One time, he got used, but that was when he was still practically a kid. It just taught him to be on his guard.”
He took another drink. “He liked people who forced him to up his game. It’s why the Flash interested him so much. The speedster challenged him to be a better criminal at first. Then Lenny told me the Flash challenged him to be a hero. He laughed about it when he told me, but then we wound up here on the Waverider.”
Mick stretched his arm around Sara’s shoulders. “And then there was you, the woman who’d been dead for a year. Right from Day One, you were a puzzle he wanted to figure out. You impressed the hell out of him in that bar fight, you know. Then you refused to take any crap from him, ever. I could tell he was hooked.” He chuckled softly. “And then your looks were just the icing on the cake for him.”
His mouth curved in a full-on smirk at her widened eyes. “Lenny liked… likes beautiful things. He stole money because it was practical, but he preferred to take jewels and artwork, even if he had to fence ‘em later.” He drank again. “I guess stealing pretty stuff made up for his ugly childhood.”
He offered her the bottle again and squeezed her shoulders. “Don’t you go feeling guilty for pushing back at him. He’s have expected it from you. And if he’d had the time, he’d have found a way to steal that kiss.”
“He didn’t have to,” Sara told him. “I kissed him… right before…”
Mick smiled. “Good for you. And when we get him back, I’ll be sure to pull his head out of his ass so he doesn’t waste any more time.”
Sara shifted to lean against Mick. “If we get him back.”
“We will, Blondie. He already promised.”
--
He was awakened by the sensation of something sharp… make that many sharp somethings… poking his back, his legs, his head. He opened his eyes and pushed himself to a sitting position, hissing when his hands landed on more sharp somethings.
His vision was blurry. He could only make out brightness, mostly white, but with other colors sometimes flashing through.
Flash? Red and yellow…
He shook his head. He could hear…
Feel?
…the words, but couldn’t make any sense from them yet.
He tried to focus on his hands, to see what the sharp somethings had done to them. That was easier. His left hand still had the marks…
Scars…
…that he’d known for so long.
How long?
He didn’t know. Trying to remember… hurt. So he went back to focusing on his hands. The right… it looked a little different. Something was missing.
Ring…
Scars…
Familiar things were gone. But there was no blood from the sharp somethings.
He could feel a tingle on his skin, almost like a burn. But the color and texture of the skin was fine. He knew what burns looked like…
How?
…and he couldn’t see that kind of damage on his palms or his long fingers. He shifted his focus to scan his body. It, too, seemed undamaged, his legs stretched out on a surface of black rocks. Those had to be the sharp somethings that had been poking him.
His vision was beginning to clear. He could see the rock surface rising to his right. And on his left….
A riot of colors streaming by him. As his eyes became more able to focus, he could make out images. People, places. Even sounds. Too many to sort.
And this stream of images was getting closer.
He pushed himself to his feet, a bit unsteadily, and watched the image stream. Definitely getting closer, and some of the images becoming clearer.
People running, crying out in fear.
A burning city.
A mushroom cloud.
It was too much. He turned away from the image stream, only to find it surrounding him, lapping at his knees, his thighs. It was like being caught in a rising river. He needed to get to higher ground.
The slope of black rock rose out of the stream. Climbing it would get him away from the images and give him a chance to think.
To remember who he was, and how he got here.
He took a breath and got ready to climb.
But the images washed over him first.
--
End Note: Yes, I know I’m evil. Please let me know what you think in comments (but you don’t have to tell me I’m evil).