So, in the third chapter of "Secret Santa," I wrote a throwaway line about how, in a different timeline, the Time Masters could have snatched the Snart siblings to become Time Masters, just like they took the boy who became Rip Hunter.

And then I couldn't get it out of my head.

Well, what's another WIP among friends, right? Please note that this will have CaptainCanary in later chapters ('cause it's me).

Prologue

It was, like so many other things, Lewis' fault.

Lisa hadn't been so loud, really. She'd just forgotten herself, in excitement over some game she'd been playing with the new doll she'd gotten for Christmas (Len having scraped together enough to hit a sale at the five-and-dime) and her voice had gotten just a little shrill, as the voices of small girls are wont to do. She was only 5, after all.

Lewis, nursing a hangover and planning another doomed-to-failure heist, had snapped. He'd roared into the room, grabbing her by the arm (Len would later find bruises in the shape of his fingertips there) and dragged her to the door, where he'd shoved her out into the January cold in only her pink leggings and My Little Pony sweatshirt, nothing on her feet but slipper socks, too shocked to even scream.

Leonard, who'd been trying to study for a science test, ("Whaddaya doing that for? Not like they're going to give a dummy like you a diploma anyway," Lewis had scoffed) had just started in from the kitchen when he'd seen the scene unfold in front of him. Thinking fast, he'd grabbed both their coats from the kitchen chairs, and darted out the door after her, ducking the blow Lewis aimed his way.

The door slammed shut behind him. He'd heard the lock shoot home.

Lisa had just stared at him, her big blue eyes filling with tears even as she started to shiver. Len, refusing to think of just how bad this could get, had bundled her into her coat, cursing himself for not snatching her boots. After a moment's thought, he'd pulled off his own shoes and made her step into them, glad for once that they were really too small, lacing them up as tight as he could.

Then he'd stubbornly grabbed Lewis' work boots from the back step and pulled them on. He'd get smacked for the theft, no doubt, but time enough to worry about that when they got back inside. It was cold out, tonight, the coldest night they'd had so far, and he knew he had to get them under cover, especially Lisa.

He liked the cold, himself. He'd be OK, he decided with all the false bravado a stubborn 13-year-old boy can muster. He just had to get his sister to safety.

The garage wasn't heated and wouldn't do much good. The neighbors either ignored the Snart kids as much as possible or were the bleeding-heart sort who'd call CPS if they were given a reason. While he'd do that to get Lisa safe and warm as a last resort, Len had heard too many horror stories about foster care and was far too cynical at this point to believe otherwise. Plus, if they were returned to Lewis after that, there'd be hell to pay.

Lisa, shivering despite the coat, wouldn't make it far, but there was a convenience store at the end of the street. With any luck, the friendly young clerk would be working, the one who didn't mind two kids loitering around to keep warm and who occasionally even gave Lisa penny candy—and not the jerk who'd called the cops on Len before (he hadn't even taken anything!) or the motherly sort who seemed to think he was a danger to the little girl so tightly clutching his hand.

All they needed was some luck and some time. Eventually, Lewis would leave, or pass out, and Len could take them back home, pop the lock (at least his father had taught one thing that was useful), and tuck Lisa into bed. Lewis probably wouldn't even remember.

His luck wasn't the greatest. But that's the only idea he had, right then.

In one timeline, the store might have been closed due to a power outage. They might have died out there, all of Leonard's resourcefulness failing in the face of the deadly temperatures, falling snow, and neighborly apathy.

In another, the friendly clerk might have been working, might have turned a blind eye to the kids huddled at the store's one table, maybe even turned up the heat a little and pushed a few "damaged" bags of chips their way.

In yet another, maybe one of the other two clerks called the police. Maybe they recognized the Snart kids. Maybe one held a grudge against Lewis Snart, and decided to hang his oldest kid with his very first misdemeanor charge, a charge that would soon be compounded by one of Lewis' heists gone wrong and land the boy in juvie at the ripe old age of 14.

Just maybe.

But in this one, a nondescript man returning from a simple mission in 1985 Central City sees the small brown-haired girl wearing her brother's shoes while that same brother, standing in boots nearly up to his knees, studies the interior of the store through the iced-over windows.

There's a half-healed bruise on her cheek, and she's skinny and underfed in a way the man understands all too well, from a part of his personal history that's been nearly forgotten. He hesitates only a moment, then nods to himself, detouring toward the child, a ghostly figure appearing out of the snow to loom over her.

Lisa Snart doesn't see him until it's too late.

He snatches her expertly, one arm around her middle, the other clamped over her mouth. No need to use the knock-out device, he figures. No one will see him in this snow, and all he really has to do is get her back to the ship. Then he can double-check her role in the timeline, make sure they're in the clear.

But there's a lot he doesn't know about this little girl. And the important thing, at the moment, is this: Her brother taught her to fight dirty.

Lisa's eyes go wide, but she's only startled for a second. Then, she chomps down on the man's hand with vigor, following the bite with a determined backward kick to his kneecap. It connects and, while it doesn't hurt that much, combined with the bite it's enough for him to lose his grip.

Lisa sucks in a breath and screams.

"Lenny!" she wailed. "Lenny! Nooooo! My bruh-bruh-brother!"

The older boy's head whips around instantly, a look of horror overtaking his thin features, and stumbling in the snow, he charges toward them. The man, cursing, takes a step back…and slips as Lisa kicks at his knee again. Dipping his hand into his pocket, he pulls out a device, tries to thumb it into what he, in his own mind, calls the "dazzle" setting—one made to distract its target just long enough for a hasty escape.

Maybe it's because Lisa kicks him a third time, still shrieking although there's no one else around to hear her. Maybe it's his own subconscious as he looks into the boy's panicked face. Or maybe it's fate taking a hand.

But for whatever reason, the device slides right into the "knockout" setting.

The kid looks right into it as it flashes…and pitches face-first into the snow, lying still, snowflakes immediately starting to scatter over his dark, curly hair, burying him where he lies.

The girl tries to howl again, but the man has his hand back over her mouth again, and muttering to himself, uses the device on her next. She sags immediately in his arms, letting him catch his breath and figure out what, in the Vanishing Point's name, to do next.

If he leaves the boy in his threadbare coat and too-big boots here in the snow, the child will almost certainly die. And the man has no way to tell where he fits in the timeline, if this is the next mayor of Central City or just a petty thief. And truth be told, the way the little one had cried for her brother had touched even his weathered old heart.

There's only one logical thing to do.

He grabs the skinny teenager, too.

"The regulations provide for taking unwanted children to train up as protégé Time Masters," he says mulishly an indeterminate amount of time later. "And these two were definitely unwanted."

"One child!" The other man in the room with him whips around, anger in his eyes before he smooths his expression. "Taking siblings raises the chances that someone will notice…"

"By the time I had them back to my ship, they'd already vanished from the timeline," the man retorts. "No one cared, no one bothered to look for them…"

He's interrupted by the third man in the room, who takes an ingratiating tone. "But you have no idea what lay in store for them before that."

The first man shrugs, narrowing his eyes. He's never liked the leader of the Time Council, nor his chief lackey. This is just solidifying the matter.

"Taking one and not the other here would have caused more trouble," he says coolly. "The brother might have been blamed…"

"What do we care? This…"

"He stays."

At that definitive statement, all three Time Masters turn to stare at the tall woman who's standing nearby, facing the windows. Her eyes are fixed on the gangly teenager who's watching his small sister run across the lawn of the Refuge in the sun. The girl had bounced back from her "kidnapping" with the resilience of the young, especially since this place was warm and comfortable, and her stomach was full of good food for the first time in a while.

And her brother, after all, was there besides her.

"But…"

"Madam Xavier…"

"He stays." Mary Xavier turns on them, her eyes implacable, her demeanor cool. "This one is special. "

Druce stares at her another moment, then shakes his head. "He's too old. He'll remember too much of his former life. Won't be malleable."

"Of course, you'd have a problem with that," the first man retorts, anger entering his tone. "I…"

But Mary holds up her hand, interrupting them again. "One of the rights I have as the caretaker of the Refuge is the right of refusal, balanced by the right of acceptance," she says simply. "And I say he says."

The leader of the Time Council draws himself up to match her. "Then we can put back the girl." Druce's eyes are cold. "One at a time. That is the rule."

Mary shakes her head dismissively. "The girl stays too. They're stronger together."

"She's an attachment."

"And you know how I feel about that, Zaman Druce." Mary Xavier turns away, dismissing the leader of the Time Council as if he were still a haughty boy in the Refuge. "They stay. Both of them."

Druce blusters and Druce threatens. And in the end, Druce leaves.

So does the nondescript man. But he, for one, saunters out of the Refuge with a smirk on his face, whistling an off-key tune, snitching a cookie from the kitchen just as he had as a boy.

He pauses for just a moment before getting back in his time ship. "Good luck, kid," he mutters. "Give 'em hell."

Leonard and Lisa Snart will never see him again.

"Leonard."

The kid in question doesn't jump at his name. He'd seen the woman coming, out of the corner of his eye, and tensed just a little, prepared for whatever she was going to say or do to him. Lisa may think this place is wonderful, the answer to a small girl's prayers, but he's far more cynical, far less willing to trust.

(Even if their kidnapper had brought them here on a ship like something out of Star Wars. Len had tried very hard not to look impressed when he'd woken up.)

Mary, who'd purposefully let herself be heard and seen to avoid startling her skeptical newcomer, sighs to herself as his expression closes off. But after a moment, she smiles a little.

"Leonard," she repeats gently. "Come with me. I have someone I'd like you to meet."

The boy's eyes dart to where his sister is running after her new playmates, under the watchful eye of one of the older children. She'd cast off the chains of her past far better than he, although Mary knows from long experience that some of those issues will still be there, ready to cause problems at the most unexpected times.

"She's fine," Mary tells him. "She's safe here. I promise you that." She pauses. "Far safer than she would be at your…former home."

She nods as he sees him digest her last sentence. "Come with me."

This time, he does.

They walk slowly through the old house, the woman slowing her steps on purpose to allow the boy to look around, to see the genuine contentedness on the faces of the other children they pass. She can understand his caution, can understand it very well considering some of the backgrounds her charges come from. But the sooner he settles in, the more ready he'll be for the trials to come, and all the things he needs to learn.

Finally, after a slow circuit through the house and a trip up a flight of stairs, they enter a room that's comfortable, sunny and lined with bookshelves. She sees Leonard's eyes light up at the sight—followed by immediate caution as his gaze falls on the other boy in the room, one just about his age, who hastily puts down his book and bounds to his feet at the sight of them.

The other boy, nearly as thin as Leonard and a few inches taller, has a sharp face and a shock of brown hair. His eyes are bright and intelligent as he approaches them curiously, and Mary puts a hand on Leonard's shoulder, feeling the hesitation there. He's not someone, she thinks, that's ever had many friends. Too much the outsider, too much the pariah.

Well, perhaps that will change.

"Leonard, this is Michael, my foster son. Michael, this is Leonard—who will also be my foster son. I think…" She smiles for a moment, eyes turned inward, then shakes her head. "I think that you have a lot in common."

The boys stare at each other a moment, a shared background of caution and distrust of their peers (and adults) uniting them.

Then Michael, who's at least had the benefit of years of affection at the Refuge, sticks his hand out. And after another moment, smiles.

Leonard, after a moment's consideration, reaches out too, and shakes it.

And smiles, very tentatively, back.