Title: Of Heroes and Speed Force
Fandom: DC's Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash
Rating: K+
Relationships: /
Characthers: Leonard Snart, Barry Allen, The Speed Force (Nora Allen)
Summary:
No one truly knows what awaits us when our time on this earth comes to an end, but Leonard Snart could not reconcile his idea of afterlife with waking up in an unfamiliar bed.

Cross posted on Ao3

Of Heroes and Speed Force

People often wonder what the afterlife might be like. Some find comfort in their faith, some prefer not to think too much about it, some develop their own theories and so on.

If someone had asked Leonard Snart, he would have probably answered that he expected a bit more screams and a bit less boredom than what he was actually going through. He definitely would have not expected to wake up in an unfamiliar bed exactly fifty seconds after knocking out his partner, thirty-seven after getting a kiss from the White Canary, and six since he defied the Time masters quoting Pinocchio and consequently ended up in the middle of an explosion.

Yet here he was, in a bedroom that looked a lot like something he would have like to have when he was a kid. A room with an aquarium at the end of the bed, a telescope next to window and dinosaurs and astronauts everywhere. All in all, if this was his afterlife then it might not be so bad, he thought picking up a toy T-rex.

He walked downstairs, mindful of his surrounding, not truly believing that he might be safe, that there might not be a trap waiting for him somewhere, hidden and ready to sprang when he least expected. He found a woman in the living room, sitting on the couch, reading what looked to be a children's book. She looked up when he reached the bottom of the stairs and gave him a bright, strangely familiar, smile.

"Hello Leonard. It's good to see you awake. Have you slept well?" she said confusing Len.

"And who might you be lady?" he replied. Leaning against the wall, arms crossed, head slightly inclined while he studied the room and tried to come up with a plan to escape if things turned out badly.

"Who we are is not important now."

It would only take him six seconds to reach the door, but was it really a door? Would it open?

"We have seen you destroy the Oculus and the brought you here so that we could thank you."

Len did not miss the use of the pronoun we. Whoever this woman was, if she could actually be defined as a woman, was clearly not human. Maybe she was meant to be his guardian in this strange and yet somehow familiar land. Maybe she was meant to lure him into a sense of safety so that he would lower his guard and become an easy target.

"Where are we exactly, lady?" he asked, the tone of his voice carefully controlled, giving nothing away.

"Knowing where you are would not help you escape. You are not a prisoner here, Leonard Snart. You are free to leave whenever you want but you might not be able to without a bit of help from a friend." the woman said and Len defined his plan in the fifteen seconds that followed.

He walked toward the door, to see if she would stop him.

She didn't. He opened the door and kept walking.

It took him four seconds to realize he was in Central City, two more to notice that the street was too quiet, one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-nine seconds more to figure out that he was the only person in the entire city, not counting the woman he met when he woke up.

When he got back to the house, she was exactly where he left her even if the book had changed.

"Welcome back. Now, come and sit with me while we wait for Barry to arrive." she said and, in a flash, he found his attention completely focused on her while a dreadful feeling washed over him. Was the kid dead too? Where the days of the Scarlet speedster over?

Something must have shown on his face because in an instant the woman was at his side, a hand on his cheek, saying "You worry about our Barry too. It's good to know that there are more people caring for him."

"Who are you?" Len asked, trying to understand what she meant.

"Don't worry about it Leonard. It's not important." she said avoiding the question one more.

Len could feel control slipping away from him. This woman, entity, or whatever she was, was too confusing, her eyes and her smile too familiar, her tone too caring. He didn't know how long he would be able to resist here, alone with her, before breaking down.

"Don't worry Leonard, you will be going home soon." she said as if she was trying to soothe him.

"Home?" he asked her, fingers unconsciously moving to touch a ring that he was no longer wearing.

"Yes, home." she said smiling kindly.

He did not now how to deal with her kindness. He really didn't so he tried to hide behind one of his masks, even if he knew it would be useless, and snarled at her "How would I do that? I am dead".

He managed to keep his mask on for a total of sixteen seconds before she replied "You are not dead, sweetheart".

"How?" he snarled again trying not to lose all of his control.

"We saw you defy the Time masters. Power made them lose sight of their true purpose and instead of protecting the timeline, they started manipulating it for their own sakes. They had to be stopped and you, sweetheart, were wonderful. We saw your sacrifice and brought you here a fraction of second before the Oculus collapsed so that you could be returned to your own time safe and unarmed."

"Why?" Len asked wondering if he sounded as lost as she was making him feel.

"Because while it's true that tragedies are always happening around heroes, it's also true that heroes sometimes get the reward they deserve for putting everyone else before themselves. We do not have the same connection to you, that we have to Barry or we would have used a familiar face to explain all this to you, we apologize for that."

The last time he had felt this lost, Chronos had just removed his helmet. This woman, that called him a hero and looked like she believe it, was slowly cracking all his carefully constructed walls and she never stopped smiling while doing it.

"Who are you?" he asked again, not really caring if she decided to ignore the question one more time.

Her smile grew wider, eyes sparkling, and before she could even try to side step the question lighting flashed through the room and a familiar figure in red, with a cheeky smile on his face, appeared right in front of Len.

"Ready to go home, Lenny?"