hello ! please tell me anything you want about the snart siblings. headcanons. anything they’ve said or done that made you think. ANYTHING please i’m starving
Ooh well, one of the things that's always interested me is something we didn't get to see on screen: how Len’s relationship with Lisa changes after he kills Lewis. (tw: discussion of child abuse and parent death)
Len all but raised her; Lisa’s about fifteen years his junior, so there’s a strong parent-child element there, not just siblings. There were periods he was gone, though, and those complicated their relationship, times he was in jail and times he ran, because he was young and didn’t know how to take care of a kid—Lewis certainly hadn’t taught him.
Lewis going away for long stretches put a huge strain on Len to take care of Lisa in her formative years, but they were also some of the only times they felt safe at home. Lisa remembers those as some of the happiest times in her childhood, and Len never mentions the multiple jobs, the other things he had to do to make ends meet, barely older than a kid himself and trying to keep child protective services off their back.
Len worries about what Lewis will do when he comes back after a few years to find Lisa is growing up beautiful, and is resolved to kill him if he detects the faintest hint of that danger. But Lewis doesn’t care about Lisa; he’s never had patience for a daughter, he doesn’t bother training her and Len always puts himself forward to keep Lewis from bringing her on heists.
So Lewis doesn’t care at all about teenage Lisa, still comes roaring after her with broken bottles and belts when Len isn’t there to get between them. Even when Len’s an adult, Lewis is bigger than him, has weight on him, but Len is fast and dangerous and Lewis stops coming after him and starts targeting Lisa instead.
Lisa runs away and Len feels like it’s a failure, hates himself for being relieved. She takes time in National City, years; payphone calls while Len would drive across the country if she just gave the word, needs to see that she’s alright; she’s too good of a liar over the phone, and he never gets anything real out of her.
Then Lewis gets an eight year sentence and Lisa breezes back into Central like she simply decided it was time to live there for a while. She’s twenty-two, a worrying beauty, with keenly weaponized femininity and ruthless ambition to take exactly what she wants from whoever she wants. She demands a place on his crew and Len turns her away, so she seduces the plans out of one of his crew and robs the place an hour before he does, lets him show up to an empty vault.
After that, he lets her in on low-profile jobs. Lisa tests the boundaries, tries to slip his plans every now and then to keep him on his toes, to undercut his authority a bit. She’s the only one Len allows that from; it’s sibling rivalry.
When he kills Lewis, things must change. Lisa’s shown an inclination to trust Team Flash, is friendly with Cisco, but shows no regret for her line of work. She’s only ever been mistreated by men in her life (Len and Mick the only exceptions, at first, then Cisco, then the Flash).
So when Len starts going soft (and he is going soft. He wants to be better, wants to take control of his destiny. He won’t kill innocents, he stops the others from doing it. He talks about the Flash with respect and something like envy. He’s afraid, but changing.), Lisa is troubled by it. It upsets their dynamic, he’s less tolerant of her deviations from the plan. More controlled. Striving towards something. For the first time in their lives, he has something to prove just to himself.
Then their father is dead, and Len did that. Lisa isn’t sad, she’s relieved, but it reopens that wound. It’s a sick feeling realizing she’s an orphan, there’s loss even if it’s not grief.
She hears Len goes quietly for the crime, and Lisa can’t visit but he does call. They speak in code; she’s angry at him for getting caught and his voice is strange: he’s in prison to give himself time to repent, to give himself time to think about what he’s going to do when he gets out. He hasn’t made the decision yet how much to help Team Flash, but Barry’s offer is chasing itself in circles in his mind. So Lisa hears the change and doesn’t know how to move forward without his guidance. She takes up Rogue heists while he’s away, runs with Hartley and Shawna and a few of Len’s crew who respect the blood and her strategic mind.
Her and Len are going to have to hash this out when he gets out, can’t keep having this cyclical conversations on the phone, where he always asks about casualties and what she’s heard from Cisco lately. (Cisco is still wary but allows her company over coffee. Cisco mentions that The Flash really believes in Len, in both of them. Lisa says they didn’t ask for that, they are who they are, thanks very much. Cisco backs off but doesn’t retract his statement. He makes a joke, he’s just saying, he has a design for her costume in mind. And he can do one better than that parka. Lisa gives him an arch look, and they change the subject.)
She’s more in touch with her guilt than Len is, more conflicted about the people she’s killed. She doesn’t let herself dwell on it, but she’s aware that it’s there, and that she’s running from it. So Len is more getting to where Lisa is, which embarrasses him, and takes away some of the stability Lisa has always relied on. It takes time to find their new normal, but Lisa loves Len, and is willing to see these changes through. Len, again, is embarrassed by what amounts to admitting he was wrong, each instance of doing good feeling glaringly obvious and incriminating, because of decades of being trained never to show weakness.
They get to normal eventually, but never talk about it aside from a single comment over dinner. Len mentions something they need to account for to keep the Flash off their backs during the next heist, and Lisa down at her food for a long moment, then glances up at him. This is after Mardon breaks him out, post-Lewis’s death, after almost a year has passed and they’re settling into their new roles, still a little shaky but almost there. Len gives her a flat “What?” and she cocks her head with a smile like she’s just realized something funny, and says, “Sometimes I think that brat’s the best thing that ever happened to us.”
It cuts Len deep, he goes still. The idea that Barry not only changed him, but also changed his and Lisa’s relationship. And they are better; they’re eating dinner together at her apartment, a quiet night, no heat on either of them. Their bastard father is dead and they have enough money to keep them going for years if they decide to take a break, thanks to Barry’s agreement not to chase them down after hours following a successful heist. After a few long moments, Len just spears another piece of food, doesn’t disagree, and it’s as good as an acknowledgement.
(And then he doesn't join the Legends, because, sorry, this man is an anxious control freak and he's not leaving Lisa alone without backup or any way to reach him. And she would probably punch him for trying. It's them against the world, exactly like he always promised her.)
