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Memories are fickle things. Nothing at all like Hollywood would have you believe, with conversations remembered, line for line, and whole afternoons etched into your memory forever.
For example, Len knows that his mother loved him; that she sometimes curled up next to him when he couldn’t sleep at night and sometimes huddled over his body to protect him from a beating. But that doesn’t mean that he can recall such moments with perfect clarity. He imagines that he could draw himself a fairly accurate picture – the sound of her voice, the scent of her skin, the warmth of her body pressing against his back – but, in the end, it would still be nothing but a pointless reconstruction.
The same with the beatings he took from his father. They’ve always just been a collection of vivid flashes – an open-handed slap to the face in front of his friends, an unexpected kick while trying to crawl to his feet, a belt buckle connecting with his hip bone – coming together to form more Frankenstein memories. And he’s always considered that fracture between past and present a blessing. After all, only a mad man would want their minds cluttered up with over forty years of memories. Certainly only a mad man could live with it.
But ever since his return to the past and that sorry walk through his childhood home – past broken crayons, abandoned bread crusts and a stuffed toy without a name – Len can't stop wondering if maybe Hollywood had it right all along. If maybe his fractured memories are just further proof that he’d once been broken and then never healed up right.
Because suddenly it seems that all his mind's good for is remembering.
xxx
His father throws a glass against the wall.
The sound hurts Len’s ears but the way the glass shatters, the way the shards come cascading down and bounce against the floor like hail hitting frozen ground… That's as beautiful as it's terrifying. The sight freezes him in place, blocking out the sound of his mother’s shrill anger. The next thing he knows is his father’s hands, strong and warm as they lift him up onto the kitchen table. The same hands then brush against his clothes and bare feet, making sure Len's okay before he's sent back to bed.
xxx
When Len's twelve or thirteen, his appendix bursts.
He stays home from school that morning, watching muted cartoons on the couch while his father fights with Lisa’s mother over the phone. When nausea gets the better of him and Len pukes, all over his own lap and the couch, his father boxes his ears and sends him to his room. Len crawls up the stairs then curls up outside the door to the bathroom. The pain in his belly worsens. Over and over again he has to swallow down bile to keep from making another mess. When his father finally comes to check on him, the man curses and picks Len up as if he weighs nothing. Len's unconscious for the ride to the hospital, but when his father tells the story later he mentions driving straight through three red lights.
xxx
One night a man – one of his father’s friends, there for the weekly poker game – gets fresh with Lisa, cornering her upstairs and sticking his hands up under her skirt. She does good, scratching his arms and biting the hand that covers her mouth. But at the end of the day, she's just a kid. Len still braids her hair each morning before school and the floor of her room's always littered with broken dolls and plastic jewelry.
He loses his cool that night, forgetting all the lessons he’s ever learned. Len means to kill the guy with his bare hands, only Lewis shows up at the last minute to finish the job himself. Then he drags Len with him to help dispose of the body, even though Lisa's still crying in the bathroom.
xxx
The memories never end.
They keeping replaying in front of his eyes, like a technicolor Hollywood movie reel. In the here and now Len breathes through his nose and raises a hand to claw at the back of his head. He finds that he prefers his memories fractured. Knows how to handle the fragments, but has no clue how to deal with this… barrage. And if that means that he’s still broken or that he’s healed wrong, well, then he’s just fine with that.
“Wanna get drunk?” Mick asks, his voice rough and warm.
“Not quite my thing,” Len forces past his clenched teeth. He can still remember those bottles, littering each available surface. Still remember the smell of beer on his father’s breath. And Lewis' idea of a wake-up call; a half-full bottle emptied over Len's head, lukewarm liquid spilling into his ears and past his collar. He bites the inside of his mouth, focusing on the burst of pain instead. He slows his breathing. Counts his own heartbeats. Wills himself to focus on the present.
“Wanna fuck?” Mick asks next and when Len turns his head to stare at him in disbelief he finds that his partner’s squared his shoulders and lifted his jaw. He looks like he’s about to throw himself in front of a bullet and Len wonders, with as close to wide-eyed wonder as he ever gets, what he must look like for Mick to make such an offer. Wonders also what he’s ever done to deserve it.
And then – for a million reasons, but most of all; because he’s Captain Cold and Heatwave’s one of his Rogues, because Leonard Snart’s might be a selfish bastard but he still would never reward loyalty so poorly, because a man from the future once told a little boy to keep his heart from harm – he turns Mick down.