Chapter Text
To Lance, it feels like Arnwaldo Schnitz hasn’t existed in many, many years.
He was born outside of Corona, but the where or the when aren’t entirely clear - the most he knows is that it must have occurred sometime around early spring, so the orphanage picked out a date of birth for him at random and called it a day. His feelings on that particular aspect of his life changes year to year; he can go from demanding a king costume and three tier cake with sparklers to wanting to ignore the celebration entirely. Nobody he’s ever told that to really gets it, so he hasn’t brought up this peculiarity in years.
As a kid, he wasn’t overly curious about his parents. From what the orphanage staff told him, his parents had died from a horrific illness plaguing the north-east of the land that year. He wasn’t the only kid at the orphanage with this particular origin story, but he was the oldest of them, at three years old. If he scrunches his eyes shut, he can almost make out their faces, but it’s as though they’re covered in a layer of silk, distorting the features. He can recall spectacles on his father’s face, and acne scars dappling his mother’s cheeks. But their voices, their words to him and the way they loved him are gone, and he doubts he’ll ever get them back.
But who needs them, right? The orphanage was fine. He had the other kids there. He had Eugene. It’s not like he ever planned to go on some big quest to find the truth about his parents’ identities, or anything. After all, they were gone. No magic or science or prayers in the world could bring them back.
He told himself this for the next nine years, until one day Eugene decided it was time for them to leave. They would chase their dreams, just like Flynn Rider and Lance Archer, be true heroes and fight the good fight and end up rich as kings. And maybe, just maybe, Eugene could even find his parents while they were at it.
They bummed around for a while, picked some pockets, joined a circus, tried to make a life for themselves. It didn’t work out, and fuck , was that crushing to a couple of twelve-year-olds ready to take on the world. Shit happens, they had both laughed, before dissolving into tears. We pick ourselves up and move on.
Around this time, little Arnie Schnitz stopped existing, and Lance Strongbow was born.
…
After a while, Lance and Flynn began frequenting the pubs in Pincosta, Vardaros, Old Corona, making connections where they could. Started landing jobs. Started knowing how it felt to have the weight of gold in your pocket, and taste good wine and eat good food. Sometimes it would be honest jobs, like bodyguard gigs, but for the most part it involved teaming up with fellow thieves to carry out jobs as innocent as swiping some jewels from a lady’s purse or as complicated as a multi-storey robbery.
It turned out that Lance was very good at stealing.
It felt kind of nice to steal. Taking a piece of the world from somebody who didn’t even need it felt a bit like karma, somehow. The world took plenty from him before he was old enough or strong enough to try and wrestle it back, so it was only fair, right? From time to time, there would be a moment of self-reflection there (what would my parents think of me if they saw me now?) but he was quick to reason with himself that wondering what could have been only made it harder to live in the moment. Thinking about it just became a chore, so he learned to shut it off.
Things carried on this way for a few years. Steal, celebrate, spend, repeat. At some point, Stalyan joined them. With her came a new taste of danger to their missions, because the Baron took them on for high risk cons and heists that could so easily go wrong. Lance didn’t enjoy those so much, but he did enjoy that the thrill of danger always brought Flynn crawling into his arms at night, head resting on his chest as they dreamed away the memories of doing unsavoury things to people who probably didn’t deserve it as much as the Baron thought they did. They fled town after Flynn’s disastrous almost-wedding day, but by that time, Lance wasn’t so sure Flynn was bothered about having him around either. He seemed tormented somehow, though Lance was never quite sure of what played on his mind constantly. The shame of abandonment? The unwavering need to find a missing piece of his past that may never show itself?
Money could never fill that hole, try as he might to convince himself.
…
Then one day Lance woke up and Flynn was… gone.
It was the night after they’d stolen from the owner of a successful brewery in town. The mission had gone without a hitch; Lance had done trip after trip up and down the stairs, lugging sackfuls of gold and silver from the safe, while Flynn had looked pretty for the owner’s son and charmed him into a position that impaired his line of sight, positioning him perfectly for Lance to carry out the heavy lifting. Flynn, after bidding farewell to the flustered young man, hadn’t seemed out of sorts. They’d laughed about how much trouble this guy would get into once his father returned to find an empty safe. They’d made a joke about their future island of wealth, and how this would surely be enough to make it all the way to Bayangor and back before running out. They had fallen asleep the same as they always did, tangled up and exhausted, and as he’d been lulled into his dreams, Lance had no idea that this would be the last they would cuddle for many, many years to come.
His side of the bed was unmade, so at first Lance believed he’d only left to take a leak, but as the minutes ticked by, turning into an hour or more, and he grew more alert with the brightness of the room, it dawned on him that Flynn’s scarce belongings were nowhere to be found. That did, unfortunately, include the majority of the money from last night’s heist.
It took Lance two days to accept that Flynn Rider wasn’t coming back.
From then on, things are a little… hazy. Lance recalls wandering for a while, busking a few times, spending many nights slumped over the bar of whichever local pub would have him for the night and wasting away the last of the money Flynn had left behind. Looking back, it’s easy to see it for what it was - his first heartbreak, and maybe his first bout of melancholia too. At the time, he’d simply wished to disappear, to be thrown into a river and sink like a stone.
Luckily for him, Pearly Perlson had come along.
After one such night of drinking way more than he probably should have, he found himself being hoisted upright by a woman a fraction of his size, with a mane of curly hair tickling his cheek as she dragged him towards a horse outside. He’d needed to stop, empty his stomach on the grass a couple times, and she’d stood patiently the entire time, lugging his deadweight body onto the saddle once she was sure he’d finished throwing up.
When he’d next woken up, she’d been there immediately, pushing a bowl of cinnamon porridge into his hands and perching on a stool beside the bed he’d been flung onto the night before.
“So what’s the story, Arnwaldo?” she’d asked, chin against the heel of her hand.
Lance hadn’t heard that name in a long time, so he asked her about it.
“When I asked for your name, you gave me Arnwaldo,” she’d chirped, amusement in her deep brown eyes. “Arnwaldo Schnitz, and don’t nobody forget it.”
How embarrassing. It was a part of him he hadn’t thought about in years, truthfully. Unlike Flynn, who could never truly separate himself from Eugene Fitzherbert no matter how hard he tried, Lance had had no problem shoving Arnwaldo Schnitz to one side, pushing him under the bed of his identity with one foot about as artfully as he would when hiding dirty laundry during room inspections as a child.
“I’d rather be called Lance, now I’m awake and sober.”
“Oh?” She’d cocked her head to one side. “So, Fancy Lancy, what’s the story? Cause you don’t look like the drink-yourself-to-death type.”
“It’s not always easy to tell.”
“Yeah, but I got a good look atcha last night, and I’m looking at ya now. You’re not trying to destroy your liver, so I wanna know what drove you to it last night.”
He’d taken his time chewing through several mouthfuls of porridge before answering. And when he did, for whatever reason, he’d answered honestly.
Names were changed and certain details were omitted, as to be expected when spilling one's entire life story to a stranger who rescued him from a pub, but by the end of his tale of woe, she simply shrugs.
“Fuck him.”
“Fucking him didn’t do anything but cause me more problems in the long run, actually.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She snorted out a laugh. “I mean, it’s doing ya no favours, drinking yourself to death over a guy. You know what I think? Any friend - or boyfriend, or whoever he was - any good man worth his salt would have said goodbye to your face. So just… if you need a reason to push daisies, it’s gotta be better than that running son of a bitch.”
She had a point. Lance wasn’t too sure Flynn was at the centre of everything though, despite how happy that would have made him. No - it was loneliness that tethered him to the bar night after night. Flynn and Lance had been inseparable for too many years, and being independent wasn’t something that came all too naturally to him. Too old to go back to the orphanage that had been his home. Too young to put himself in the grave. Quite the conundrum, really.
Things had gotten better after that. She’d kept him fed for a month, old crazy Pearly Perlson, who had started insisting he call her his Grandma Pearl. The attachment had been purely for laughs, at first. But at some point, once he had a clear head and the ache in his chest had dulled, he’d started to consider her family.
It hadn’t taken long for the two of them to team up, and life almost returned to normal. Grandma Pearl was great at using her age to fool travellers into taking pity on her, and their routine was honed to a fine art - Grandma Pearl would fake a back injury or dehydration, beg for assistance, and Lance would sneak in the other side of the cart and steal their valuables while they cradled her in their arms and fed her fluids through a flask. She would wave them off with a smile and they would leave, feeling good about themselves for helping a sick woman until realising half of their things were missing, by which point the two of them would be long gone. It was easier than relying on Flynn not to put his foot in his mouth while flirting with their victims.
Unfortunately, any heists Grandma Pearl roped him into held more risk than the ones he used to take up with Flynn, and one such heist landed him in prison with no chance of release for the next four years. Grandma Pearl had visited him the once, made him promise to visit upon his release. The loneliness returned.
He couldn’t help thinking of Arnwaldo Schnitz in that moment, and all of the false hopes his parents may have had for him when they had cradled him in their arms for the first time. What kind of fucking disappointment was he? All he had to be remembered by was a sad portrait sketch hanging in the orphanage common area, faded beyond recognition in most places, and now a criminal record. Was that sad little boy ever destined for greatness? Was he deserving of it? Was he deserving of anything besides cold bars and a bleak, endless existence?
Prison is a time he’d much rather forget.
…
“So my real name is Arnwaldo Schnitz,” Lance says solemnly.
Keira and Catalina exchange amused glances, before bursting out laughing. He lets them. It’ll be easier to have this conversation once they’ve gotten every last giggle out of their system, he reckons, so he lets them laugh until there’s nothing left.
“It’s a heavily guarded secret. I can count the number of people who know on… okay, maybe a little more than one hand, but definitely no more than two hands!” Keira snorts again, and he bops her lightly on the shoulder with his fist. “Yeah, yeah. I’m only telling you because the date of the adoption is coming up and I didn’t want you two to walk out of the courthouse in shock, having signed your names away to be known by all as Keira and Catalina Schnitz.”
“Well, it’s really not that bad,” Catalina offers, with a small smile and a confused tilt of the head. “Your name would be the shocking part, not ours.”
“Touché. Look, I’m just trying to be upfront, like a cool dad. I don’t want to be one of those freaky dads who have all these horrible secrets that come out after they die. Nothing but honesty between us, all right?”
The girls both nod, and Keira asks in a small voice, “This isn’t a roundabout way of telling us you’re dying, is it?”
“No! No, no way.” The way relief washes so visibly over their little faces is heartbreaking. He reaches over to ruffle both heads, and grins. “I’m gonna be around for a long time.”
“So do we get to call you Arnwaldo now?” Keira asks, a cheeky glint in her eyes.
“No you may not,” Lance says sternly. “That’s like, an ultimate offence. Punishable by grounding and stable duty. I’m talking the royal stables. Eugene’s got strings, and he will not be afraid to pull them out for me.”
The girls exchange disgusted expressions, and he chuckles. They’re so… animated. They really do remind him of a couple other rowdy orphans he used to know. Little Arnwaldo Schnitz would have thought they were so cool.
“Well, I don’t mind being a Schnitz,” Catalina says with a small smile, “but do you? Is that why you tell everyone your name is Strongbow?”
Huh. “I… I guess it doesn’t feel like me. Just because our names are written down on paper, it doesn’t define us,” he decides. “So, y’know, you might become Keira and Catalina Schnitz, but you can call yourselves Strongbow, or whatever the hell you feel like. Your identities are yours for the taking.”
“Duh,” Keira says, rolling her eyes. “We already know that, Arnwaldo. Now, can we do something else? Teach us a new card game or something?”
Catalina, in full agreement, gets to her feet and begins rummaging around in the drawers for a deck of cards to use. Keira keeps muttering about how dumb the name Arnwaldo is, but the twinkle in her eye tells she’s just testing the limits of how far she can tease him. He’ll let the threat of stable duty slide, just this once.
Lance realises, in this moment, that he doesn’t really need to be Arnwaldo Schnitz to know that his existence matters either way. Giving a piece of him, a piece of his parents, their hopes and dreams for him unto these girls is something he’d been dreading, ever since they agreed to the idea of becoming his daughters. Expectations on a child abandoned are so much, he knows firsthand, but he never expected the euphoria he would feel in acceptance. They didn’t have to open up to him, but they did. They didn’t have to love him, but they did.
Arnwaldo Schnitz, or Lance Strongbow, whoever he may be… maybe he didn’t turn out the way his parents would have wanted. He’ll never know how they would feel if they could see him now, and maybe that fact will haunt him for the rest of his days, but maybe it’ll stop mattering so much in the face of something so wonderful as becoming a parent himself.
It doesn’t matter. Today, he’s enough.