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He stumbles into Mick's room, hunched in on himself and with his stump tucked close to his chest. The door closes behind him with a hiss, cutting off all sound but the hum of the engine and the ringing in his ears. When he exhales, a miserable sound claws its way past his tight throat. His hand shakes, fingers digging crescent moons into his palm.
It's with desperation that he looks around the room, searching for some way to distract himself from his thoughts. There's a jar of ointment still on the bedside table. A t-shirt lays crumpled on the floor, next to a pair of gray socks. The bed's rumpled, the handle of Mick's second favorite knife sticking out from underneath the pillow. It's not so long ago, he realizes, that he stood here, lurking in the shadows as he watched Mick tend to his burns and wondered what it would be like to just fall to his knees and nuzzle the thin cotton fabric stretched tight over Mick's groin.
Without thinking he sniffs the air, expecting the scent of smoke and sweat to still linger. But instead he finds that the room smells of nothing but recycled air. His legs carry him towards the bed, his knees threatening to buckle with each step. When he finally reaches the edge of the mattress, he kneels down and buries his face in the wrinkled sheets. Inhaling deeply, his shoulders sag as he finds the familiar blend of Mick's scents. Refusing to examine his own actions too closely, he crawls forward, moving awkwardly until he's curled up along the foot end of the bed.
The stump hurts but he doesn't have the guts to examine it any further. His mind shies away from his every attempt to clinically assess the damage he's done to himself. The very real, inescapable consequences of his decision to free himself at any cost. Bile rises in his throat. His eyes sting and burn and he rubs the knuckles of his one remaining hand against them.
He loses track of time. Thoughts keep flashing through his mind. He thinks of Mick, left behind like an abandoned toy. Mick, starving and losing his mind. Mick, getting trained and molded into an obedient soldier. And then he thinks of his sister and imagines her dead. Smothered in her crib. Bleeding out in the playground. Strangled – like a fat, juicy rat – by big and calloused hands on her way to prom.
His chest hurts. His throat hurts. The fucking stump hurts.
The door hisses open and he freezes in place.
“Figured you'd be here,” Sara says.
There's no pity in her voice. No kindness either. Len quickly wipes the back of his hand over his eyes, then turns to face her. He tracks her as she closes the distance between them. The mattress barely dips as she sits down next to him, crossing her legs and resting her elbows on her knees. Her boots leave dirty smears on Mick's sheets and the scents clinging to her skin – blood, leather, foreign spices – fill his nose.
“What do you want?” he asks, refusing to feel ashamed of how his voice comes out as a thin croak.
“Peace on Earth,” she quips. “A pony for Christmas. A second season of Firefly. What about you?”
He rolls over on his back. Stares up at the ceiling as he considers her question.
“A hook,” he finally says. “Or maybe an arm cannon.”
“Oh,” she says. “Like Robocop.”
He tries to stretch his lips into a smile.
“Or Terminator,” he counters.
Sara makes a scoffing noise which makes it clear that she thinks that Robocop could wipe the floor with the Terminator. Len doesn't really have an opinion either way so he just continues staring up at the ceiling. Around them the engines hum. In a cell, not so very far away, Mick might be staring up at the same kind of gray ceiling, listening to the very same hum while daydreaming of Lisa's lifeless body and Len's screams of anguish.
His eyes begin to feel gritty. He feels strange, light and hollow like he's slowly bleeding out even though not a drop of his blood has been shed. His head falls to the side, a victim of gravity, and he finds that Sara's studying him with sharp eyes.
“You can't stay here,” she says. “You know that, right?”
He closes his eyes, blocking out the unhappy twist of her lips and the crease between her eyebrows.
“Don't see why not,” he mutters, burrowing deeper into Mick's bed.
“You need medical attention,” Sara says. “In fact, you needed medical attention six hours ago. You lost a limb, Snart. You look like shit. In fact, I'm pretty sure you're in shock.”
She could well be right, he reflects.
xxx
He makes it to the sickbay by himself, but it costs him.
“Mr. Snart will need to be stabilized first,” Gideon intones and he doesn't have it in him to disagree. Instead he lets Sara and Rip help him up on a cot. They talk, their voices low and far away. And he knows that he should be paying attention. That he can't afford to let his guard down. Not now, when there's no one left to watch his back. Yet he finds himself drifting.
Waves of warmth wash over him. He blinks up at the light.
“What's going on?” he demands, the words slurring together.
“Your vital parameters are returning to normal,” Gideon informs him.
Glancing around the room he finds that he's alone. He's still wearing his jacket, but someone has peeled back the sleeve. His entire lower arm lays exposed, pink flesh ending abruptly just above the wrist. He doesn't want to look, yet finds that he can't stop staring. It's his right hand. His dominant hand. His gun hand.
“I must ask you to relax, Mr. Snart. Your parameters are spiking.”
He tears his eyes away from the stump. Stuffs everything – the pain, the guilt, the fear – into a box and wraps it with heavy chains before sinking it to the bottom of his mind. Does his best to calm his breathing and finds, to his relief, that his heart rate follows. Now more than ever, he needs to be strong. He needs to be a survivor. Not just for his own sake, but for Lisa's too. Maybe even for Mick's.
“That's better,” Gideon says. “Captain Hunter will be here soon.”
“Wonderful,” he rasps.
xxx
“What do you mean by 'regeneration'?” Len demands, grimly stomping down on the tiny, impossible spark of hope. Rip must be talking about the damaged tissue around the stump although even that seems impossible.
“I took genetic samples from each of you at the start of our voyage for this exact eventuality,” Rip explains. He sounds smug. So damned convinced of his own cleverness that Len aches to punch him in the face.
“Why am I only hearing about this now?” he asks.
“Because none of you had lost a limb yet,” comes the answer.
There's nothing in the world more ridiculous or more persistent than hope. And now it flares again, white and bright. It hurts, or maybe that's the regeneration process. Len stares, horrified and fascinated in equal measures. Bones, followed by arteries, veins, nerves, muscles and tendons until there are no more empty spaces to fill. Skin covers it, tiny hairs and even fingernails.
It's a hand. His hand. He wiggles the fingers. Feels the connection, but still can't quite believe it. Rip makes a pleased sound in the background. One of his toy soldiers fixed and made useful again. Perhaps that's reason for Rip to celebrate, even as Len's partner sits brainwashed in a cage.
Len stares at his hand and waits for the relief to hit him, but it never comes.
Instead he just feels empty.