#oneshotff

She paused, looking at him. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, sincerely. 

He pulled a face. Everyone knew what the stopped clock meant: your soulmate had died. There was no guarantees that you’d find your soulmate before the clock reached zero and they died, there was only the promise that if you had found them you’d know when your clock stopped and they were gone.

 He’d never really cared for the idea of meeting his soulmate, although he’d been concerned Mick might be that and his clock was counting down, and then one morning he’d woken up and his clock had reached zero and Mick was snoozing on his sofa and he hadn’t cared, not really, but he’d still felt a small thud of loss in the pit of his stomach because somewhere out there in the universe, his soulmate had just died. 

He’d never known them – she, he, them, whatever – but they were still gone, he’d never meet them. He was more bothered by not knowing exactly who had died (he checked obits, but they didn’t tell him anything) than he was by them being dead. 

And then, a year after that... his clock had started counting again. 

As far as he knew, this had never happened to anyone else. Ever. 

But there it was. 00:00:00 turned to -00:00:01 to -00:00:50 and kept going. It was into the months now: -2932:34:21, he’d done the math. 

Four months. 

Give or take.

He didn’t really want to explain any of this to her, but it didn’t feel right to not, either, so he sighed. “A year after that, it started counting again.” 

Her head snapped up, icy blue eyes staring into his. “What?”

“Just under three thousand hours, now,” he said. “Or, well, minus three thousand hours.” 

“Can I see?” she said. 

He shrugged, rolling his sleeve up to his elbow and no further. Under a few tattoos and a myriad of scars was his clock, still counting down below zero. “Here.” 

She stepped closer, into his space, and he wasn’t in love but her presence set his skin on fire in ways he wasn’t used to. She put her hand on his arm, slow so he could stop her but he didn’t, and brushed her thumb across the numbers. 

She didn’t speak, he didn’t either. 

After a moment of staring at the ticking clock, she lowered his arm and looked at him. “It’s not me,” she said. 

He let out a breath and looked at her. “Know someone else who came back from the dead four months ago?” 

“Actually, yeah,” she said and turned away, picking up her sweatshirt and pulling it on. “I’m sure it happens all the time.” 

He was equally sure it did not. 

“It’s not me,” she said again, heading for the door. “But whoever it is, I’m sure you’ll meet them eventually.” 

Because her use of gender neutral phrasing didn’t make him like her more at all. “I’m sure,” he drawled, and watched her walk away. 

*** 

She continued to insist they were absolutely not soulmates, that the clock on his arm (still ticking) was absolutely not hers. 

He let her, even though he disagreed. 

They had sex. She ended the night with, “It’s still not me, Leonard!” and stormed out of his room. 

He smirked. It was definitely her. 

He hoped Raymond didn’t catch her stomping through the Waverider half-naked. 

She’d taken off her pants but never her shirt, but that worked for him. That way he didn’t have to take off his either. 

After a while though, he started paying closer attention to her wardrobe choices. He’d seen her in tank tops, before he’d brought up his clock, he was sure of it. It was hard to get the image of her biceps and strong shoulders out of his mind, after all. 

But now she was wearing long-sleeves. Jackets. He hadn’t seen her wear her White Canary outfit without her coat in weeks. She even worked out in a zipped-up sweatshirt. 

She never took her top off when they had sex. 

And maybe that hadn’t been a concern, maybe he’d even liked the excuse not to deal with his own issues, but it didn’t seem like her thing. She seemed like the kind to bare her skin proudly. 

He’d seen her wear less than a jacket. 

It didn’t take him very long to figure it out. 

She was half asleep, curled up on her side of his bed in a long-sleeved shirt and nothing else, and he was lying on his side, watching the ceiling in a t-shirt and nothing else, and before she could fall asleep he said, “Show me.” 

She looked over at him. “Show you what?” 

He sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Show me your clock, Sara,” he said. “My clock.” 

He expected her to argue, insist it wasn’t his clock, spout some nonsense about Oliver Queen being her soulmate again (that was just insulting the first time, let alone the third), but she didn’t. 

She sat up, tugged her shirt off over her head (and dear god she wasn’t wearing anything underneath and this would be a great tactic for continuing to deflect him from seeing her clock if he wasn’t a very determined individual) and extended her forearm for him to see. 

There it was, counting down the seconds and minutes and hours of his life he had left, and it wasn’t in four digits like hers. 

It was barely even in three. 

“Oh,” he said. He wasn’t sure what else there was to say. 

“It’s not yours,” she said, but it was weaker this time, almost like she was begging. 

He licked his lips, mind reeling and going a mile a minute. He could slap on a trademark smirk, kick her out of his bed, sulk quietly, or he could reclaim the determination he’d used to not let her bare chest distract him and put it to good use. 

“So here’s the thing,” he drawled out, reclining on the bed with his head on his hand. He reached out, trailing his fingertips up her forearm, along her clock, and enjoying the sharp intake of breath he received in response. “I have no intention of dying.” 

She swallowed. “Oh?” 

“There are no strings on me, Sara,” he said, fingertips sliding further up her arm. “I’m not going to die just because a clock on your arm says I’m going to.” 

She let out the breath she’d taken in and looked at him. “No?” 

“No,” he said, and met her eyes. “I’ve never let anyone tell me how to live my life, and I’m not going to start with letting a clock tell me how I’m going to end it.” 

She replied with a kiss and he let her, even as the imaginary ticking of the clock on her arm filled his ears. 

*** 

He had never felt truly ashamed of his own actions before, but here he was, ashamed. The time masters had come for them, her clock was reading hours in the single figures, and he’d panicked. 

He’d panicked. 

And worse still, it turned out he’d been a puppet all along. 

“Turns out I was just following a script,” he said from her doorway. She was staring at the ceiling and he wondered if she had the same sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that he did. 

“Doesn’t make you any less of a jerk.” 

He ambled over, leaning against her bed, and looked across at her. They did the dance, the one of deflection and avoidance, like they always did, and then he said, “I’ve started to wonder about what the future might hold for me, and you.” He looked at her and he wondered if she knew how hard this was for him. “And me and you.” 

She looked back at him. “There is no future for us, Leonard,” she said, and her voice cracked, just a little. “We both know that.” 

She slid off the bed, walking out of the room, and he stayed, looking at the bed they’d never shared, and wondering if they ever would. 

*** 

He’d sworn he wouldn’t do this, he’d sworn it. He’d promised himself her clock would go down into minus figures just like his had, he’d made himself a million promises that he’d not die, he’d not prove that a clock on some woman’s arm could dictate when he’d breathe his last breath and yet here they were. 

Just like the clock had foretold.

She’d known it all along, and he supposed he had too. 

“Just do it,” he said, one hand buried in the oculus and the other at his side. He wondered if there was irony in the fact her clock would blow up long before he did, if the explosion came from his hand. 

“No.” She shook her head. “There has to be another way.” 

“There isn’t.” He looked at her, meeting her eyes. “I was always going to end up here. We both knew it.” 

It was true. He’d known he couldn’t beat her clock. 

He’d take being her soulmate over beating it anyway. 

“Show me,” he said. When she looked at him, confused, he sighed. “Your clock.” 

She hesitated, then rolled up her sleeve, holding her forearm between them. He looked down at it, reading the numbers as they counted down from two and a half minutes. 

“You know it’s right,” he said. “Get Mick out of here. Raymond’s damn clock is still counting, so he can’t die here.” 

She made a little noise under her breath, he could see the gears whirling behind her eyes, and then she kissed him. 

And it all mattered just a little less. 

*** 

She looked down at her clock. 

00:00:00 

Not a surprise, but still painful. 

Agonizing, even. 

She lay awake, staring at it, wondering what it would take for it to start ticking again, what deal she’d have to make, what pit she’d have to drop him into. 

Not that there was even a body.

No body for Leonard, no pit for Laurel, just a gaping hole in the very fibre of her being. 

She kept going.

She imagined it sometimes, his arm and his clock, the ticking of the minus figures of her life that now felt so empty, even if it was full. 

And then one day he showed up again. 

And she looked down at her wrist and it was still all zeroes. 

Every single number was zeroes. 

No minus figures. 

He wasn’t alive, he was still gone. 

And it hurt all over again. 

“We have to send him back to twenty fourteen,” she said, leaning back in her chair and resting her hands in her lap. She hoped she didn’t look as exhausted as she felt, but it was doubtful. “Malcolm has to go back to twenty-seventeen, Damien has to go back to assholeville, and Leonard has to go back to where Eobard recruited him from.” 

“Why?” Mick said, and he looked as pained as she felt. 

“Because if we don’t set him back on that path,” she said, “he’ll never be on our ship, you won’t be either, and he won’t die destroying the oculus. Either time will fold in on itself, or we’ll end up in a totally other timeline. Probably the first, since the Vanishing Point exists outside of time.” 

She’d spent too much time with Rip, clearly. 

“Ah,” he said. 

She swung through the holding cells to collect Damien, and kept her face impassive when she looked at Leonard. “Before we drop you off,” she said, “show me your wrist.” 

“What?” he said. 

She eyed him. “Just do it.” 

He only argued a little more, and then he rolled his sleeve up and held it to the glass. 

The countdown wasn’t in minus figures. On his timeline, she hadn’t even died yet, and on hers he’d been gone almost a year. 

She sighed a little and collected Damien. 

*** 

Sara was grateful as she belted through the urban jungle of wrong LA that she hadn’t let herself go once she was captain. 

If she had, she’d probably be t-rex kibble by now. 

She leapt over a low wall, did a roll and—crunch. 

Her foot went down wrong, her ankle snapped and she hit the ground.

She wondered if somewhere in the vanishing point, her clock was about to stop again. 

She rolled over, choking back a cry as the t-rex bent down to eat her and then— 

It turned to ice. 

“I leave you alone for five god forsaken minutes,” a familiar voice drawled, “and you break time.” A pause. “And your ankle.” 

She scrambled to her feet, then yelped in pain when she put her weight on her ankle, and Leonard looped an arm around her. “It’s okay, lean on me.” 

She did so, tilting her face up to look at him in confusion. “Leonard?” 

“In the flesh,” he said. “I assume because – as previously stated – you broke time.” 

“You’re alive,” she said. 

“You broke time,” he repeated.

She pulled a face. “There’s more where that came from,” she said, gesturing at the t-rex popsicle where it wobbled beside them. “The Waverider is that way.” She gestured. “Help me get there?” 

They stayed quiet as he helped her limp back to the ship and through it to the medbay. Once she was lying down, her ankle elevated for Gideon to fix, she looked over at him. 

“An ankle is nothing,” he said, “try having your whole hand replaced and repaired.” 

“Pass,” she said, lips twitching a little. Everyone else was out trying to fix time or find supplies, so she hadn’t had to deal with them readying up to murder Leonard yet. That was good. 

“Yeah, can’t recommend it.” He pulled a chair over, sat down on it and looked at her. “Were you trying to become food for a t-rex?” 

“No.” She sighed at his face. “No,” she said again and sat up. “I’m not suicidal if that’s what you’re asking.” 

“I just wondered,” he said. “Mick has his moments.” 

“I know,” she said. She stayed quiet for a moment, then looked at him. “So you’re— I mean, do you remember—” 

“The whole thing,” he said. “Damien, Malcolm, Eobard, killing Mick.” He swallowed. “Bit of a weird thing to remember but not remember. I’m sure I’ll get used to it. Eventually.” 

“So you’re—” she said again, not sure how to express it. 

“Your Leonard Snart,” he said, with a kind of intensity she knew she should be uncomfortable with. 

“Are you going to disappear if we fix time?” she said with a sigh. 

“No idea,” he said and she looked at him in surprise. He shrugged. “If I do, I do. If I don’t, we won. It’s not like we’re not used to living on borrowed time, after all.” 

Her right hand went to her left wrist without her meaning to move it and he followed the motion with his gaze. 

“Show me,” he said, voice low. “Show me your clock.” 

She hesitated, but only for a moment. It’d been set to zero for so long, it would hardly matter if it was still zero now. She knew this Leonard was the one she’d shared a bed with, the one she’d kissed goodbye, the one she’d watched die. She recognised him. 

She rolled her sleeve up and they both looked. 

Leonard smiled a little. “Minus figures,” he said. “Whaddaya know?”