Archive of Our Own ^beta

Leonard Snart is a son. He is the only thing that matters in his mother‘s miserable life, the one thing that could raise her spirits after a particularly bad day. He is also the cause for many, many of her fears, but he doesn’t know that. What he knows is that she’ll smile when she sees him, pulls him close and read him a bedtime story. He clings onto her words, wondering if one day people will read of him, too.

Leonard Snart is a son. He is his father‘s successor. That’s what his dad tells him – that he wears the family’s name and that counts or something. It’s important and he better not do anything to taint it. Leonard is a Snart and he’s expected to act like one. Bring glory to the family, make sure that what he does counts to something, just like his father and grandfather have done.

Leonard Snart is a brother. At first, when his father brought home his new wife, Leonard hadn’t been very happy with her. One minute, she’d be overly friendly, in the next she would act like he is the devil’s spawn. It’s why he was sure he would never grow to like the child growing inside of her. But as soon as he met Lisa, he knew he was done for. She was so small, so helpless, and something in him snapped, deciding that he will do anything in his power to protect her. The feeling only gets stronger the older they get, when he finds that it might be an impossible task when you really are the devil’s spawn and living under his roof.

Leonard Snart is an accomplice. He has small hands, his father says, and he should put them to good use. Lewis has him study manuals, train with intact cables and scold him every time he would get shocked by the electricity running through them as if the sting wasn’t enough of a punishment. But when it works, his father would praise him, say he had always known Leonard would be useful for something, and it takes months until he learns just what his father means by that.

Leonard Snart is a crook‘s son. That’s what they whisper about on the schoolgrounds. The fact that his father used to be a policeman – until suddenly he wasn’t. Until news broke loose about a big heist, one that failed catastrophically, and how one Lewis Snart had been involved in it. They look at him weird, as if he were the one who was in the museum that night, even though it was one of the times his father would leave him at home rather than use Leonard’s small hands for his benefit. Sometimes, he thinks his father should have taken him; he thinks that maybe it would have worked out if they’d had him on board. While his father is gone, he steals the footprints from the secret hideout the cops hadn’t discovered and studies them, finds the flaws in the plan and decides that one day he will do better.

Leonard Snart is a prisoner. He had overestimated himself, hadn’t considered one thing: his lack of experience. He didn’t think about how while he lies to stick to plans, others may not. He hadn’t thought about security people’s free will, about how they might break the rules they should stick to and time their rounds through the halls differently. But now he knows and won’t ever forget. And he will never forget what it’s like to be a scrawny kid, one that does not just look like they’d be easy to be beaten, but one that actually goes down quickly in a fight. Here, he learns how much it matters to give off an aura, one that tells people to fuck off right away or else he means trouble. And he learns how much it helps to have brawns next to his brains.

Leonard Snart is a part of a duo. Because Mick is more than a stupid bystander like he’d thought he would be. Suddenly, Leonard finds himself toe to toe with someone who has a different way of thinking, but that doesn’t mean it’s worse. It’s a different perspective, one that calls him out and makes him rework his plans to be truly airtight, and he finds himself appreciating it. The same goes for Mick’s humour, dry as it is – so dry that it catches Leonard by surprise more often than not, making him forget about the thick layers he’s put on. Sometimes, when he’s with Mick, he feels like he can let go off plans, at least for the moment and almost enjoy his time.

Leonard Snart is a thief. A good one at that. He is renowned in the scene – other thieves and police alike know his name, know when to expect him. Because soon, Leonard is not just a petty thief; he doesn’t just go for any booty but for the big ones, the shiny ones, the ones that have a value. Ones where he has to prove just how well his brain works, how well he knows people. But then, all of a sudden, he fails to consider the one he thought he knows best. He’s relied on Mick so much, he forgot that they’re not one brain inside two people – Mick’s impulsiveness shouldn’t be a surprise, and yet he is completely dumbfounded when their job literally goes up in flames.

Leonard Snart is a supervillain. After years, there’s finally something to break him out of the lull of robbing banks and ATMs. It’s what he has stuck to after the disaster, easy and boring jobs that give him just enough of an adrenaline spike to keep him going. But suddenly there’s people with superpowers, a hero in their midst who finally looks like a challenge and Leonard cannot resist. Not when things get interesting, when there’s actually something at stake, and the leader of the movement someone who must be putting on as much of a persona as Leonard is. So he decides to amp it up, creates a new one that’s Leonard Snart dialled up to the max, and he enjoys it, even when he finds that he has no clue what he’s in for yet. He can’t wait to find out.

Leonard Snart is a mobster. He knows how the game works, now. Has studied the Flash, memorized every single of his weaknesses and found his genuine good heart to be the worst of them. It’s easy to push the hero once he truly understood him – that it’s not an act but rather the true nature of the man. And as the city spirals with all the powered people, he does what he must – but not without Mick by his side. He could never envision himself at the top of Central without his partner by his side. Together, they take down their families and make their business theirs, all for money and glory, and on the side Leonard learns the Flash’s true identity as if it were a neat party trick that he’ll put to good use. He can never have too many of those up his sleeve, he has come to learn.

He is all that until, suddenly, he is not. Suddenly, time travel is real and there’s an impossible task ahead, and a small voice in his head that sounds too much like a certain speedster makes him believe he could be something more. Then he is– not quite a hero, just yet, but not a villain either. He is someone who sees all the options, and for the first time he feels himself reaching for the right one without gaining anything from it himself.

Leonard Snart is a traitor. He is the one who pulled Mick into all of this, the one who should have finally known what Mick truly is like, and yet he feels completely blindsided when Mick doesn’t see the big picture. Because Mick never cared about other people in the first place, only himself and money and fire, just as it had always been. He has never cared about things like names, fame and glory, not about going down in history, and Leonard should have known. It’s his fault that he’s a danger to them all, so it only feels like the appropriate punishment that he’s the one who takes Mick out. But what none of his team members realize is that Leonard is all talk but nothing else. So he doesn’t kill Mick – he never could, no matter the distance between them. But he does leave him here, stranded in the middle of nowhere, even though Mick never really wanted any of this in the first place.

Leonard Snart will be remembered as a hero. A thief, too, and a supervillain, but to those who matter, he will seem like a hero. They will think he sacrificed himself for a greater good, and he might have, but that had been more of an afterthought to him than anything else. Because the moment he sees the blue of the Oculus around Mick, he knows that the image is wrong. Mick should not be here, should never have joined Rip Hunter’s little team. It had been a ruse, the idea that they could rob decades – no, centuries – worth of art when the truth is that Leonard could not have cared less about the loot. He had been in it for the thrill, for the way to become even more of a spectacle, and it worked. As he pulls back his hand to knock out Mick, he knows that this is it, his big moment. The one thing that won’t put glory to Snart, but the Leonard in front of it, too.