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Len and Mick are recruited into Central’s fort on Lisa’s behest. Because she’s a rare gold, she can have what she wants. At least that hasn’t changed, her brother likes to joke—as if he’s got the right to talk, being the one who spoils her the most.
Director West decides to assign them on a scouting mission with other experienced flyers. It’s a thinly veiled test they intend to pass. Len is sixteen, Mick eighteen; they can get by on their own, but Lisa deserves a steady home, and she’s guaranteed to follow them if they get kicked out.
Harrison Wells before Cisco is belligerent at best. Even today that hasn’t changed, but back then he was extra prickly. Still, Len keeps a steady rhythm of strokes along Mick’s scales to stop his own dragon from lashing out against the irritating bastard. They gotta pass, he reminds Mick; they gotta pass.
So they reach the abandoned fort without incident. Wells lands and orders the unit to spread out, see what they can find. As for himself, he’s there to collect samples of old eggs and such more than he’s interested in actually watching Len and Mick.
Mick hasn’t reached his full size, but he’s still a good eighty feet, and Len expresses his intention of exploring the strange staircase they find that leads underground. He shifts, dressing in the t-shirt and jeans Len tosses him.
“Mind givin’ us a light?” Len asks once they’ve reached the bottom of the stairs. It’s dank and cold, reeking of old blood and musk.
When Mick spits fire into his hand and holds it up for his rider, the stink turns out to have a cause. In an instant, Len finds himself snatched against Mick, the dragon snarling.
The walls are made of dragon skulls. Most of them, to Len’s growing nausea, are small enough to be hatchlings.
“Guess we should call for someone,” Len says.
Mick, having calmed himself by burying his nose in his rider’s neck and reassuring himself of his safety, grumbles, “Guess we should.”
They look at each other.
Continue on without another word.
The tunnel of bones winds and twists a long way, the skulls not thinning at all. Len finds himself looking to the ground more often than not; he can take a lot, Lenny, but fuck. Those are hatchling skulls.
Mick lays a warm hand on his hip. It’s not his best attempt at comfort, but then again Len supposes there’s not much to be had when surrounded by the ghosts of murdered baby dragons.
After what feels like hours—actually twenty-two minutes, by Len’s count—a weak cry reaches their ears. Len and Mick stop cold for all of two seconds before they’re sprinting towards the sound.
Three minutes later, panting and sweating from the cramped space and unabated pace, the pair reach a small chamber that could fit maybe five humans in a tight squeeze.
Len actually does throw up then. Because this chamber? This chamber is filled with the rotting bodies of more hatchlings. Mick growls a low, mournful roar, enraged at whoever would dare commit such an atrocity.
Yet among those unmoving hatchlings, two are still alive. They don’t stop crying for help, despite cowering under Mick. As Len’s vomit adds to the pungent air, Len forces himself to lurch forward, mindful of the deceased littering the floor.
The hatchlings are a rusty brown-orange and light green. They’re close to death themselves, ribs stabbing through their flimsy hides and chains choking their bruised necks.
“Mick,” Len murmurs, not wanting to frighten them with more loud noises, “warm my jacket.”
While Mick practically hugs said jacket, Len picks the locks on the chains, whispering soothing words all the while. The hatchlings tremble, obviously conditioned to dread the sight of humans, but the more Len speaks to them, the more they cautiously relax.
By the time Len’s freed them, they weakly jump for his arms. Len readily lifts them, unheeding of the cuts their dull talons manage to slice into his skin and shirt.
“Mick,” he softly calls. Mick prompts holds out his jacket, warmed by his inner flame. Together, they gently swaddle the hatchlings.
Len takes them. “I’ve gotta get them to the surface,” he murmurs, though his eyes stray to the ground around them.
Mick shakes out his arms until they form his enormous talons. “I’ll bring them too,” he offers. He accepts Len’s brief kiss without complaint of the nasty aftertaste.
The hatchlings huddle against each other, the rust one trilling and crooning to the green. Len doesn’t stop talking to them the whole way back to the stairs.
“My name is Leonard Snart,” he tells them, “Len, if you want. I’m sixteen. Mick’s gonna be my dragon as soon as we get clearance. We wanna make it official, y’know? He’s eighteen, Mick. Fire Element, and the biggest I’ve ever seen. I got a sister named Lisa; you’ll like her. She’s this gorgeous gold…”
On and on he talks. Gradually, the rust quiets, and both hatchlings stare intently at him, listening to his rambling like it’s the most important speech they’ve ever heard. About two minutes later, Len hears Mick behind him, rumbling wordless hums as he carries toe poor hatchlings who didn’t make it.
They reach the surface to Wells and the rest searching high and low for them.
“Where have you two—” and even Wells stops yakking.
Len swallows more bile. “Whoever was here,” he says gravely, ignoring the mild tremor in his voice, “deserved what they got.”
Dragons and riders alike gasp and cry out when Mick presents the dead hatchlings.
“No,” Wells murmurs at length, “they didn’t suffer enough.”
They bury the hatchlings in the forest, far from their prison. Altogether they make eleven, and each one gets named and buried in an individual grave. The dragons gather rocks and carve their names into them.
Len wishes he could help, but Wells assures him that he’s doing more than enough by keeping those hatchlings warm. Mick hunts down a deer with which to feed them, mildly roasting each piece before handing it off to Len.
The hatchlings gobble each one with greedy slurps. More often than not they bite Len’s fingers too, but again Len ignores the injuries. The unit gives him strange looks for it, but frankly he doesn’t give a damn.
“Don’t suppose you got names either,” he says.
Len’s settled on a larger rock at the base of a tree, Mick’s neck wrapped around it. His heat’s a pleasant comfort for the hatchlings. Len hand feeds the hatchlings the last bits of venison as they croak in acknowledgement.
“Well, at least you understand English,” Len adds.
“W…” the rust one starts. Everyone in the clearing tenses, turning wide eyes on them. “W-we…name…M-Mardon.”
“Mardon,” Len says. The rust nods. “What about individual names? Could get confusing, y’know.”
“N…no.”
Now Len, he’s got a whole list of dragon names. When Mick consented to his handling other dragons in the interim before their permanent saddling, he dreamed of getting a few right outta the shell, which was a rare occurrence until only about a year before Barry Allen would hatch.
So he asks, “What is your gender? Do you know?”
Rust Mardon once again answers: “M…male. Both.”
Len regards them for a minute. “How about…Mark,” nodding to the green, “and Clyde?” to the rust.
The hatchlings blink. Wells intervenes, “Snart, you don’t have the right to—”
“Yes,” Clyde whispers. “Mark. Clyde.” Slowly, his expression brightens into his first smile. “Mark! Clyde!”
Mark gives a feeble cheer. The food revitalized him somewhat, but he’s obviously much sicker than Clyde, despite his admirable brave face.
Clyde nuzzles Len’s arm, little snout avoiding the sluggish bleeding. “Thank you, Len.”
The rest of the unit looks at each other. Oh no.
Len and Mick grin at each other. Oh yes.
Len’s sent to the infirmary with Mark and Clyde. Mick of course shifts and follows them, foregoing shoes once again in favor of dressing faster. He also, of course, insists on patching Len up himself.
The siblings—Clyde had specified they were brothers—make distressed sounds whenever Len’s out of their sight, so the healers wheel a hospital bassinet to Len’s cot.
“I outta cover you in pads,” Mick bitches as he rubs disinfectant over the wounds. When Len hisses, he snaps, “Shuddup, you big baby. You let hatchlings use you as a scratching post, you deal with the consequences.”
Len wiggles his finger over Clyde, letting the hatchling cree and swipe at it. He smirks at Mick’s resulting glare.
“Anyone ever tell you your bedside manner needs work?” Len asks.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re a reckless moron?” Mick retorts.
“Pot, kettle.”
Mick nips at his jaw. Len turns it into a kiss.
(They were such romantic idiots back then.)
The Mardon brothers’ recovery takes a few months, but they’re able to at least walk around for a while at the end of two weeks.
As soon as they can, however, all they do is follow Len around like a couple of ducklings. When they’re too weak to go any farther, they absolutely insist on being carried by no one else but him.
Mick makes so many mama duck jokes Len almost smacks him upside the head, regardless of how ineffectual it would be.
They grow quickly, though, until Len’s forced to admit one day, “I can’t carry you anymore. You’re too big.” But then Clyde whimpers. “You can get on my shoulders?”
Len had never tried having smaller dragons on his shoulders before. Mick charges over just in time to strap some shoulder pads on him.
“Wherever would I be without you?” Len drawls.
“Still in prison,” Mick promptly answers.
They both know it’d be the other way around.
Clyde and Mark grip the pads. At first, Len keeps a cautious pace; once they gain some kind of balance, though, he goes at a normal walk.
Of course Director West expresses an urgent wish to see him in his office.
“It’s one thing for you to have tamed a dragon like Mick,” West says, “but to take on two at once? You’re not even a registered handler, Snart.”
Len’s eyes narrow. “First of all,” he says through grit teeth, “Mick is not a mindless thing to be ‘tamed’. Second, if I’m not registered, then just register me. If I need to take some written test or somethin’, I’ll do it. I don’t trust anyone else with these two.”
“And,” Mark adds; he’s almost completely recovered by now, and his voice is that of a grown man’s, strong and deep, “Len is ours.”
Clyde, licking the shell of Len’s ear, “If you assign us someone else, we’ll just slit their throats.”
Neither sorcerer nor centaur doubts this proclamation. Dragons are notoriously unorthodox when it comes to showing their affection—even Barry will one day measure his adoration for Len with how many lightning burns he can decorate his quarters with.
West sighs, tail swishing in irritation. Seeing this, Mark straighten his posture and declares, “Len is our handler. We are both Storm Elements; you wouldn’t wanna piss us off, Director.”
Clyde purrs in agreement. Len can’t suppress a smile at their joint nuzzles, the dragon blood in him having him return the gestures.
Watching this display, West lets out a faint groan. “Alright, Snart,” he sighs, “I know I’m gonna regret this, but…” he writes a quick note and hands it to Len. “Give this to Carter Hall. He’ll take you through the process of becoming an official handler here. You two,” addressing the brothers, “gonna leave him to it?”
They answer in tandem, “No.”
Clyde adds, “We’re gonna make sure our Len gets what he deserves.”
Len, who’s never had dragons care this deeply about him outside of Lisa and Mick, presses a kiss to Clyde’s foreleg.
Carter, though as skeptical as West, gives him an oral, eye, and physical test. The Mardon brothers watch, soon joined by Lisa and Mick. Under these hard stares, Carter quickly sees he has no choice but to take Len seriously.
Len passes with flying colors. He had no doubt he would. Carter gets him registered as Mick’s former handler, and finally the current handler of Clyde and Mark Mardon.
“Good luck,” Carter says.
With the brothers creeing and scrambling onto his (“pads, Snart!”) shoulders, Len smirks and says, “I won’t need it.”