Chapter Text
Well it seems like one of us lost track of time.
Len may be many things, a thief and a murderer among the worst of those, but he would never leave one of his own behind. There hasn’t been a moment since dropping Mick off that Len hadn’t thought about going back for him. Losing track of time, of that need to return to his partner, wasn’t a possibility. There had to be a better explanation for him not coming back for Mick.
Which leads to the real meaning behind Mick’s words. That he never intended to. But it’s like he said, he may not have trusted his partner aboard the Waverider anymore, but he really did intend on going back for him. It was his plan all along. One he had started formulating after 2046 and hoped he would never have to implement.
So Mick had to be wrong, which wasn’t hard to see. This Mick wasn’t his partner of thirty years. It was Cronos, a man completely remade by the time masters. His Mick would never have threatened Lisa, let alone plan to kill her over and over again in front of her brother. Mick has always been a wild card, but he had also always been protective of Lisa. It hurt to see his friend so broken.
He would never let this happen. He would have to be dead. And that was it, wasn’t it. It hit him suddenly and left him feeling numb. In the future, some time on this mission, he would die. It perfectly explained why he wouldn’t be able to go back for Mick. But that left him reeling over something completely different. His own mortality.
He started thinking about all that he would leave behind. Mick would be left to the time masters and Lisa… Lisa would be left wondering what happened to him, if Mick didn’t actually succeed as Cronos and kills her first. And Ray… Ray would be fine after time. He had already moved on with Saunders as it was. He may mourn for a while, but it would be no different from the way it was now.
He hated Mick, at least Cronos Mick. This revelation was eating away at his mind. He couldn’t think about it anymore, deciding to focus instead on the problem at hand. He needed to escape, to warn the team, to stop Mick from becoming the monster the time bastards wanted him to be. He needed to form a plan, something familiar to block out the intrusive thoughts of the bomb that had just been dropped on his head.
So plan he did. He knew Mick had gotten his weapon from behind him somewhere, so he would first need to make it to the other side of the rail he was tied to. He forced his way down it, only focusing on the end goal.
Once there, the next obstacle was met. How to get ahold of the cold gun. It was simple enough to knock it down and pull it over to him, but the problem lied in how to free himself if he couldn’t grab the gun and shoot the cuffs at the same time. There was no promise that he wouldn’t hit his hands if he tried using his foot to shoot, which lead him to his conclusion. What was a loss of a limb to the loss of his partner, his team, or his sister.
In a split second he made his decision. He was dead either way and he was surprised at how liberating that knowledge had become. It left him with nothing to lose. So with that in mind, he aimed the gun and shot.