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Len should've been dead.
He’d taken Mick’s place by knocking him unconscious, placed his hand on the lever of the Oculus and shut his eyes tight. Got torn to shreds while the threads of time themselves erupted. Had a pretty good exit-line too, if he's being honest. There are no strings on me.
He didn't know it then, but the Oculus would get the last laugh.
Len had experienced the nothingness of death, the emptiness from lack of consciousness. He felt it in his bones now that he was restored: I once was dead. Now I am not.
The Legends crew managed to scavenge him back. It’d taken them quite a bit of time (Mick’s still with the crew, but Rip only came back onto the Waverider for this little mission), but they made it when the Oculus blew, where Len was singed but not torn apart yet. Mick got his just deserts by knocking Len unconscious and pulling him back to the Waverider. He woke up in the Med-Bay.
“Hey, I got this hand in here,” Len had said as a joke, raising the hand he had frozen off what felt like a lifetime ago. What was a lifetime ago, if he wanted to be literal.
Sarah laughed. The queen of resurrection herself, sitting at his bedside. Apparently she had been since he was brought on board.
They played cards, acted like nothing ever happened — kiss included, Sarah was dating some woman named Ava, sounded nice enough — and she told him about the Waverider’s most recent travels. Len figured that all the extra effort to save his life all of a sudden was because the crew needed him for some little project of theirs. From the stories of Sarah as captain of the ship, they’d had plenty of need for the extra help.
Then Rip came to the door and Sarah ran out like she’d heard a gunshot.
Rip looked bedraggled. His eyes were dark, his face gaunt, and his hair was longer than Len had ever seen it. He had his typical flair about him, though, sauntering forward with his hands behind his back.
Then, once at Len’s bedside, he pulled his hands away, producing a little silver stuffed lion in his hand. He looked like he was about to cry.
Rip and Len had gotten amicable, but his death was certainly something Rip wouldn’t cry over. It clearly had to do with the toy in his hands.
“This was Jonas’ lion when he was a child. He carried it with him everywhere,” Rip said. He spoke with old, old, old sorrow that Len could guess came from traveling the same expanses of time to prevent something that was beyond him.
“Cute.”
“I want you to have it.”
Len furrowed his eyebrows. “Feeling fatherly over your old crew?” Len snarked.
Rip and him were on good terms, but Len wasn’t the forgetting type. Rip asked him to kill his own partner; had left Ray, Sarah, and Kendra in the 1950s to save his own skin; and manipulated them all to be on a manhunt mission from hell; and overall didn’t seem all that sorry until he was called out on it each and every time.
So, though Len respected him, he wasn’t going to give him easy outs.
Rip laughed and it was utterly mirthless.
Len had also learned that Rip knew how to keep appearances, too. Better than Len was, if he was honest. “Affectionate as I am toward you lot, that’s not quite what I’m inferring.” He pulled the stool that Sarah had been sitting on out and sat down, sinking onto it like his bones were about to turn to dust. He turned the lion over in his hands, not meeting Len’s gaze as he said,
“You’re a father, Mr. Snart.”
Len blinked. Then he laughed.
“Knew you had a sick sense of humor, Rip,” Len said, pulling himself up on the bed so he could properly glare at him. “But that’s pretty dark, even for you.”
“It’s not a joke,” Rip said. “His name is Malcolm Hugh Lawrent, though eventually he’ll take your last name. He’ll be six in September, in time for Kindergarten.”
Len huffed and turned away from him. Rip was an experienced liar, had spun quite the tale to get the first crew aboard the Waverider. He knew exactly what to say and when to say it — managing to trick con and angel alike — so Len wanted to know what the catch was.
“Is this some sort of final plea to go back to 2166? You think you can appeal to, what, my paternal instincts?” Len snorted. “Newsflash — I don’t have any.”
But Rip didn't rise to the taunt. He'd matured since Len saw him. Responded more than reacted. Less fun, but probably better for his own health.
“You’re the one who caused it. And I don’t mean by having unprotected sex.” Rip snickered still like he told a great joke. “You caused it when you took my shuttle and went to steal that emerald for your father.”
Rip had to be fucking kidding. Len had asked Gideon what changed that night. If he thought he could try to pull a fast one over Len on this; “I know all the changes to my timeline —“
“There are some things in time that are meant to happen,” Rip interrupted before Len could even begin. His gaze skittered over Len and he frowned, guilty and sorry and overall a little pathetic. “Lewis Snart becoming what he was... the Counsel was going to make sure happened no matter what. But your little foray to get the emerald for your father wasn’t completely fruitless.”
“Gideon said nothing major changed.”
“In your timeline,” Rip corrected. “See, this is where having training to be a Time Master is very helpful, because you know not to just check your timeline for deviations in your past." Len had to stop himself from rolling his eyes at the snootiness. Rip was barely a Time Master, since he'd gone rogue himself. "You checked yours and your sister’s, but, you see, there were a lot more people involved in Lewis Snart’s plan to get that emerald.”
Rip was right. It had not occurred to him to think of the other cronies from Lewis’ hack-job heist. They were a bunch of low-lifes who didn’t matter, in Len’s opinion.
Len felt like he shot himself with his own cold gun.
“The getaway driver from your father’s initial plans was never arrested because he never had to be involved due to your… finagling.” Rip sounded delighted by that development, as though this was the exact kind of consequences he’d meant when he had laid down the rules in the first place. “And for that reason, Michelle Lawrent never moved to Star City, and she went to high school with you.”
Rip had explained that sometimes, changes in the timeline will retroactively infiltrate your memories. It will always feel a little different — the original timeline is not so easily erased from people who can dance between them — but they do find their spot.
And Michelle Lawrent was starting to sound familiar.
“You never dated — you’re not married to the girl. But, five years ago, Michelle started as a bartender at Saints and Sinners. After your last big heist in Central City before you tried your “gig elsewhere” as you called it, you went to Saints and Sinners. And, well…”
Rip referred to the sex that Len remembered having in the back of the bar with a wave of the hand, and continued on as though he was reading a story. But it wasn't. It was personal and biting, and the more details Rip gave him, the more a stone settled into Len’s chest.
Rip wasn’t even looking at him. His fingers passed over the silver mane of the toy in his hands.
“She gave birth to a perfectly healthy boy, however, trouble soon followed her. She got hooked on Vertigo and showed no signs of recovery, so her parents took custody over the boy. Sadly, she overdosed a year later.”
Len would bet money Rip knew about this long before Len stepped forward to blow up the Oculus. Rip probably knew of this development the day Len ran off in the escape pod, and then Rip decided not to tell him for the good of the mission at best, for a sick and twisted bit of revenge at worst.
Rip seemed a little bit sadistic, that way. Len imagined that most people who lose their own family — especially people who lose them over and over and over no matter how hard they try — probably become little sadists. It was a cruel flare that Len liked to pick on about Rip, but now that he was on the receiving end, Len was... less than thrilled.
“Then his grandparents both died in a tragic accident.” Rip looked up from the stupid silver stuffed lion, then. He looked, dare Len might say, hopeful. “Now, back in 2016, social services is on the way to your last known location that isn’t Iron Heights. Which is your present, so when you asked Gideon, she wasn’t going to tell you about that. Nothing major had deviated in your timeline yet.”
Rip was a selfish bastard. A selfish fucking bastard and if Len still wasn’t feeling woozy from being literally blown up by time, he’d throttle Rip.
No, actually, he wouldn't. He can't believe he's developed such fucking empathy - of which he blamed Barry first and the Legends second and they can all go to hell - but this must be a damn nightmare for Rip.
Why should Leonard fucking Snart have some child when Rip can’t save his own?
“Social services?” Len asked. Then he snorted. “They’re not going to give the kid to a known supervillain.”
Rip rolled his eyes at the term Len used, but reminded him of something critical:
“You had the Flash wipe your record. By all legal avenues, Leonard Snart is an innocent, law abiding citizen.” This time when Rip laughed, and Len will admit, he deserved that one. “By all formal standards of the ever-revered United States Foster Care System, you’re as eligible as anyone else to be a father. So, we will be dropping you off at Central City shortly. Congratulations."
Len almost doubled over. “You can’t really believe that this is a good idea.”
“Social Services is looking for you, Mr. Snart. If you don’t arrive to help your son, he’ll stay in the system. Now, because the Oculus is gone, there’s no way to check all the different futures that could result for the boy, but he’ll have better chances with you.”
That was quite the assumption. “Didn’t realize I had to make this clearer, Rip, but I’m not exactly father material.”
“Someone’s got to protect that boy.”
“Protect him?” Len asked. “You think he needs protection now, wait until he hears Captain Cold’s his father!”
Len could list the thousand reasons why it was an abhorrent idea. Not only the fact that his own lineage was stamped with influence from his own piece-of-shit father, there was the fact that Len was well known as a master criminal. That he ran the Rogues. That he hadn’t had a legitimate job since he was 24 when he worked in a bakery for one of his father’s schemes to overrun the place to launder money through it. He had no credit history, no job history, not even a high school diploma. Hell, when he was on earth in 2016, he lived from safe house to safe house, for God’s sake.
Rip got up onto his feet, set his stance wide and looming.
“You listen to me. We helped you cheat death. There aren’t many left, but there are still Time Masters who are devoted to the Counsel — and seeing that you have managed to survive when so many times you probably should not have, I believe they will find that you have overstayed your welcome. They will be after you, and if not you, they will go after your boy. The Legends are going to do what they can to make sure nothing happens, but he needs someone to look out for him.”
“Look, I get that you’re feeling all vile and spiteful, but you can’t think that ruining this kid’s life is the way to get your jollies back.”
And that was when Rip looked at him strangely. Eyes wide and big, that sneer wiped right off his face. The pressure-cooker seal on the room came loose, and all that hot air went right out.
“Leonard.” His name was said softly, and Len tensed at the sound. It sounded far too emotional. Rip sighed, ran a hand through his greasy hair. Slumped over so that his back was hooked in a hard bend. “I’m going about this wrong. This is not my doling out of some sort of punishment, I am not ‘getting my jollies’. It’s… It’s the reality. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
Rip placed the lion on Len’s lap. “I want you to have this to give to little Malcolm. And I know it will be the first of many toys, because you’re going to be a fine father.”
Len rolled his eyes.
But Rip shook his head. “You saved the world. You’re a hero.” As if a stupid title like that could clean up a history of wrongs. Rip seemed like he was going to reach out and pat Len on the shoulder, but thankfully he knew Len better than to do that. “And better yet, I know your story. You took care of your sister, may as well have raised her. I can think of no one better to take care of him than you.”
Len’s stomach knotted up. He swallowed the overwhelming feeling in his throat, then picked up the stuffed animal and turned it over in his hands.
His sister had a tiger that she loved when she was a child. Her Majesty was how she often referred to it, and Len was to address her as that or Queenie.
Len had a stuffed animal of his own as a child, too, but it was so long ago he doesn't remember the name. He does remember, however, that it was a polar bear.
Time can be very funny, when it wants to be.
So, Len asked, “Your kid have a name for it?”
At that, Rip gave the first sincere, mirthful, and kind-hearted laugh he’d heard since he walked in the room.
“What a father-like thing to ask.” Rip said, as though they solved all the problems in Len’s universe. Instead he leaned against the bed. “Its name is Mr. Lion.”
Len raised an eyebrow. Rip scrunched up his face.
“Children aren’t always the most creative.”
Len picked up the stuffed animal and inspected it. “Mr. Lion.” No, children weren't that creative. And if it was Rip's kid, well, chaos was probably more his style.
Rip raised hell and was ready to take the world by storm in order to get his son back. Maybe a little intense, but more love than he or Lisa had ever experienced from their own father.
Len didn't believe in superstition, or good luck charms. That ring he carried with him all those years, the one he gave Mick before they went after the Time Masters, was a reminder of a heist gone wrong, of Alexa. It wasn’t to tip the scales in his favor in a faith kind of way, but in a lesson.
Maybe Mr. Lion could be a good reminder in a different way. Or, at the very least, buy him brownie points before he completely screwed up this kid’s life.
Mr. Lion is sitting next to Len on the seat at Central City’s Foster Agency.
The room is covered in crappy colorful paintings, most of them done with fingers. The couches are cheap yet garish, bought for comfort and now sat upon so many times that they were splitting at the seams and feathers were coming out of the back cushions. The floor was recently vacuumed, and children’s toys are strewn artfully, away from pathways and in corners. The room smells of cake and recently cleaned urine.
Across from Len sits a social services representative. She’s dressed up in a woolen suit that’s covered in lint and has faded in the sun. She has a smile permanently etched on her face, bright and toothy and wooden. Her eyes are tired, and tighten every time there are vibrations from a stampede of small feet on the floor above them. A bright, irritated laugh leaves her mouth every time a scream accompanies those footsteps.
Len’s already forgotten her name. He wasn't really listening when she introduced herself, too many alarms going off in his head.
She’s been irritatingly accommodating. Gave Len coffee and offered water, extended a plate of stiff-frosted cupcakes which Len refused, and overall urged him to get comfortable as though her life depended on it.
It’s a schtick Len’d been on the opposite side of before, when his mom was in the hospital and Lewis was still in prison. Len knows that they’d taken their time to squirrel away all the chaos, as though that would make a difference as to what Len was doing. As though if Len felt he had a choice he would make a decision on whether or not to be here depending on how clean it is in here.
Len knows what a hell-hole most public orphanages were. There’s no real way to get comfortable here.
“It’s natural to be nervous,” she says to him. She’s more nervous than he is, at least outwardly. It’s possible that she’s heard his name on the news, knows exactly who he is, but she hasn’t mentioned it yet. “Sadly this kind of situation happens more often than you think.”
She’s referring to the fact that he didn’t know he’d had a son.
Len wants to laugh. There’s a lot of situations that happen more often than Len thinks, his world recently expanded beyond imagination by his time on the Waverider, but this still feels like a joke.
Perhaps it was the Counsel's last play. You blow up our Oculus? Here’s a wrench in your life you’ll never see coming.
It’s not true, Len brought this on himself as Rip explained, but it gives Len one more reason to hate them so he likes to choose to believe in it. They were pretentious assholes, anyway.
In the corner of the room there is a little boy playing with legos. His son, which he needs to keep telling himself. Before they’d sat down, the woman had tried to get him to turn around and greet Len three times, but he’s fixated on the structure he's building. The woman’s smile stretched wider with each attempt, and Len could see that she was about to make him come join them when he said,
“Don’t. We can get business done first.”
The way Len saw it, they'd have plenty of time together from hereon out. If the boy wanted to play with legos and ignore the world, he wouldn’t blame him.
The woman had stood stiffly and left the child to his devices.
The paperwork on the table — MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SENIOR SERVICES, BUREAU OF VITAL RECORDS, FATHER’S AFFIDAVIT ACKNOWLEDGING PATERNITY — was covered in what Len was going to graciously assume was coffee for now and wash his hands the instant he could once they were done. Len’s signature a sweeping ink-scrawl at the bottom.
Now this woman is going through her spiel. “It’s often that children in foster care get reunited with their parents… You can expect that your child’s education was handled most appropriately — not that he had extensive classes, mind you, he’s only five, but we made sure…”
He doesn’t think the woman is cruel by any means — the boy did not flinch when she got near him, even smiled at her before going back to play — but what's bothered him is she's never used his name. He wonders if she even knows it, or if she does so many of these it's just easier to gloss over such things.
Len knows the boy's name. Rip told him before he got off the Waverider and read it again on the forms: IN RE: MALCOLM HUGH LAWRENT. The line below that Len signed would change the child’s name effectively to SNART, since apparently single parents have a hell of a time if the child’s last name doesn’t match their own when it comes to schooling.
Which is something Len has to worry about now. School. And getting the boy prepared for school. And all the fun aspects of life that Lewis had pulled him out of a long time ago.
Still, the lack of recognition by the lady leaves a sour feeling in his gut. Or maybe it’s the fact that two hours ago he was on a goddamn time-ship. Or that a day ago, he was dead.
Either way, the woman’s voice is getting on his nerves. Another scream rattles the light above them, and the woman breathes out a wheezy sigh at being interrupted.
“Do I have anything else I need to sign?” Len interjects as well.
“Huh?” She looks over the papers. “No. I believe we’ve got that all settled. And we inspected your home, it looks suitable enough, though the neighborhood —“
“Can I talk to him, then?” Len says, nodding toward the boy.
“You can try.” She sweeps a piece of lint off of her skirt. “He doesn’t talk much.”
“I’ve got a way to get people talking,” Len says standing up, but he halts.
Last time he said something like that, he had kidnapped Cisco Ramon to get the Flash’s identity. The deja vu in this situation is a little sickening.
The woman reaches out and touches him on the arm. Len does what he can not to recoil.
“It’s okay to be nervous,” she says again.
And damn it all, he is.
He nods, takes his coffee and Mr. Lion, and walks away from the garish couch and towards the little boy in the corner.
Len approaches Malcolm, but he doesn’t get too close, instead leaning against the wall and watching him. He doesn’t want to spook the kid, and he can tell that Malcolm is not like Lisa was — he’s far more precocious.
Malcolm’s tongue is poking out of his mouth as he stacks legos one on top of the other. He’s nearly finished with whatever he’s building, two towers erected and an almost complete base. It’s a myriad of stacks and colors, but the brick organization is actually neater than Len expected from a five year old.
He drops the stuffed lion behind him. He’s not going to distract Malcolm from his current project with a different toy. Doesn't look like he'll be bribing the boy's attention.
“Whatcha workin’ on, there?”
Malcolm does not respond. He searches furiously for a particular lego in the big basin of them that he has to his left.
Len inspects it. Two towers, and he’s working on a center grouping. “A castle?” Len asks, and he knows he’s wrong by the way that the boy’s expression changes. “There going to be a dragon?” The fact that Len is wrong is starting to gain Malcolm’s attention. In fact, it might even annoy him a little. “A bridge and a moat?”
Annoyance is a great way to get someone talking in Len’s experience. It’s a frequented tool in his arsenal, and he’s not ashamed to say it.
Len hums and inspects the legos a little more. Drops down to a crouch, but keeps his back to the wall and doesn’t get too close to Malcolm. He doesn’t want to make the boy uncomfortable. He does, however, reach out and touch the top of a tower. “Will a princess sit in here?”
At that, the boy huffs, an exasperated sound that startles Len how familiar it sounds. “No.”
That no is an open door.
“No?” Len pulls back his hand. He drops from his squat so that he’s sitting, pulling up one knee up and lacing his fingers around it while outstretching his other leg. He hums again, drawing out the sound. “Well, then, if it isn’t a castle, what is it?”
“It’s an army base.” Malcolm finds what he’s wanted, because he pulls out his fist with an excited hoorah in his breath. Two red caps, and he places them on top of the towers.
“An army base?” That’s when Len eyes the plastic bag of army men that the boy has situated in the box, hoarded away like a treasure. “Hmmm, very interesting. So these are guard towers. And this is the red light on top?”
Malcolm nods.
“Beautifully constructed,” Len says, looking over the lego towers, smirking at the product. He believes in encouraging kids, even if it is a bunch of blocks chunked together with no real distinguishing features. Yet, anyway. “What else are they going to have?”
Malcolm considers Len’s question, his face tipping toward his box. If Len had to guess, he thinks Malcolm is considering showing him what he's got secreted away in there.
He pulls the basin closer to his own shoes. Turns to face Len and says, “Army men.”
For the first time since they started talking, Malcolm is facing Len head on, and Len takes the opportunity to catalogue the kid.
At first look, Len doesn’t see much resemblance between them. Malcolm’s got his mother's olive skin tone, thin lips, and green color to his eyes. His hair is near-black like Len’s was when he was young, but Len’s shaved it cropped since he was 25 so it’s been a long time since he associated it with himself.
Then the boy raises an eyebrow, and it all clicks.
Len’s seen a picture of himself with damn near the same expression, one of the many photos Lisa’s managed to get over the years despite Len’s protest. Though the boy’s eyes may be Michelle’s color, they are Len’s eyes: sharp and critical and assessing. Malcolm’s mouth is tipped up in a little smirk, which Len can already tell is going to cause them some trouble.
Len also knows that now that Malcolm has started talking to him, he needs to be careful. He keeps his voice low, and keeps it encouraging. “Army men. Big fan,” Len says. He's not, they're too close to cops and just as nosy in Len's business it seems, but the boy's five. He doesn’t need to know Len’s whole history. “What kind of army men will go here?” Len asks, pointing to the first tower.
Malcolm turns to the bucket and pulls the plastic bag of army men out but keeps it behind his shoes. He grabs a handful and inspects them closely. Then, he grabs one green army man with a long-range rifle and puts it on top of the tower.
“That’s a good choice.”
Malcolm turns to him and beams. Pulls the plastic bag out from behind his shoes and in between the two of them.
“Your turn,” Malcolm whispers.
Len raises his eyebrows at him. “Do you want another guard?” Len asks. “Or someone trying to get in?”
Malcolm sits back on his heels. Grabs the plastic bag with both fists, and hums in consideration.
Then, he challenges, “Try to get in.”
Len can’t help it: he smiles.
“I think I can do that,” he says. He gestures to the bag, and Malcolm holds it out for him to look through. He finds a man carrying a sling full of grenades and pulls out that one. He sets it down near the back of the tower, where the guard can’t shoot him.
Malcolm’s nose scrunches up. Len whistles low.
“Your turn."
His eyebrows come together, his gaze trained on his new enemy, the grenade man in the back. He crawls to the other side of the base, and on the opposite corner Len watches him place a man with a handgun, as though he turned the corner upon the man with the grenade.
“Ooh. Very good,” Len says, and he means it. The boy isn’t stupid, that’s for sure. “My guy would never have seen him there.”
That makes Malcolm laugh, and he shoves the bag in Len’s face.
“Your turn.”
The enthusiasm is nice. Seems Len's got his opening to get the boy to talk to him, at least for now.
Len rifles through the top layer of the bag. He bypasses a lego block that fell into the bag and grabs a man with a gun to provide as a scout for his grenade man and who can shoot the man with the handgun.
“If I were you, I’d call for help,” Len says as he watches Malcolm think about what he wants to do next. “You’re going to get a hole blown in your base.”
With the determination of a chess master, Malcolm scans the lego base for his next move. He fumbles through the contents of the plastic bag, his fingers stiff and rigid as he fists one of the army men and brings it out of the bag like he punched an uppercut.
He scoots back around, this time getting awfully close to where Len’s men are standing.
“Whatcha doin’?” Len asks.
Malcolm unfurls his fist. An army man that has been painted red gets placed down behind Len’s men.
Len’s heart picks up. He gives Malcolm an incredulous look. Last he checked, all the army men were green.
“And who…” Len points at the red army man that Malcolm has placed. “Is that?”
“It’s the Flash!” Malcolm cries cheerfully, like he just won the game.
Len blinks at the little soldier. He sees the resemblance, why this little army man was picked to be submerged in acrylic red paint and what Len can now see is a sharpie-black marker making a lightning bolt on his chest. The hands on the hips. The puffed out chest. The stupid helmet.
It may have been a long while since Len’s seen the Flash, but it’s like picking up the Cold Gun. The memory is visceral.
“Of course it is,” Len says with a begrudging sigh.
Malcolm doesn’t know how on the nose he summarized Len’s last few years with a stupid piece of plastic. The Flash coming out of nowhere and arresting all of his plans, sometimes in every sense of the word. Except, instead of the way that Malcolm takes to knocking down Len’s soldiers, he did something different to Len.
He got him on the side of the heroes. Damn it.
Len rests his head in the palm of his hand, looking over Malcolm as he cheerfully cleans up the game, taking his win.
For the first time ever, Len hopes that Barry’s little con worked. That Len’s a changed man. That Len can leave his past behind him.
Because now he’s got someone else to look after, and he thinks it might be a lot easier if he’s on the side of the heroes for this one.
Barry thinks he’s been patient.
When Snart went with the Legends, he didn’t protest half as much as he wanted to, because he knew that this was the opportunity for Snart to finally see that Barry was right. That there was good in him. That he could be more than “Leonard Snart, Robber of ATM’s”, or whatever he tag-line he liked to throw at Barry.
He’d even found out from Ray that Snart had sacrificed himself for all of them. That he’d let himself die, get torn apart by something called the Oculus, in order for everyone to be free.
Snart died a hero.
That isn't what Barry meant by wanting Snart to see the good in himself. Barry didn't mean it as a challenge - to die for redemption - and he knows that's not why Snart did it but it still made Barry a little sick to know that he might have planted the seed to make that sacrifice.
Except then, apparently, the Legends brought him back.
Barry still doesn’t know exactly why it happened. Despite the guilt and horror he'd felt about the role he might have played in Snart's death, he’d protested Rip Hunter going back for him. Time is a fickle thing, and Rip should know better, but Rip was insistent. And Barry didn’t have much of a leg to stand on: he’d screwed up the timeline more than once himself.
And, he was never going to protest too fiercely. He wanted Snart back too, after all.
He figured Rip wanted Snart for continuance with the Legends, but he didn’t. Said he was dropping him off in 2016. And Barry knows that they did, he’s run into Ray more than once in stop-throughs and apparently they brought Snart back a few weeks ago now, and yet…
Well, this is Snart. Barry was expecting the man to be holding a cup of hot cocoa after breaking his apartment. Was expecting Cisco to report to him that there were Cold Signatures in the Center City Trust, or in the Art Museum’s new expo. A theatrical affair where Captain Cold and The Flash can go against each other in one big clash.
Was expecting him to at least say “hello, ice to see you” in the way that only Captain Cold can. In the way where it’s completely sarcastic and yet entirely genuine. Because, whether Snart would admit it freely, they're friends. Or at least they were.
But nothing. Not even an “I’m not dead.”
“I don’t know why you care so much,” Caitlin said one night when Barry had wondered aloud about it. He thought he’d kept his despondence over the situation well-contained, not wanting to draw too much attention to how much he thought about Snart, but Caitlin looked absolutely bored with the subject. “He may have decided to go with the Legends, but he had something to gain by going, too. It’s still Snart.”
“C’mon Caitlin, let him whine,” Cisco had admonished, all the while teasing Barry. Because though Barry had never said anything, Cisco was adamant that he had a, to quote, “huge thing for Snart.”
Which, Barry can’t totally deny, but it isn’t the point. The main point was the fact that Snart didn’t even bother to touch base. After he reportedly died.
Then, the perfect opportunity presented itself for Barry to go investigating without raising too many eyebrows.
Oliver calls and explains that there’s this group similar to the Rogues that’s been raising hell in Star City. Oliver had been letting the police handle it, but this time, they stole medicine that was critical to the patients at the hospital suffering from Vertigo.
So, of course, Barry goes to Cisco to enlist his help to find Snart. He asks Cisco to start searching for all possible known locations, for cameras near Saints and Sinners, any of Snart’s old haunts. Look into his old aliases and see if he’s been using those. Snart was sneaky when he didn’t want to be found, but they could find him. If worse came to worst, Barry could speed around and patrol for him until he found him.
Turnabout's fair play, and Snart had stalked him in the beginning for God knows how long. He figures a little revenge reconnaissance would be in order if it came down to it. But it doesn't. In fact, it's not even five minutes that go by when he hears Cisco say:
“Dude, I found him.”
Barry blinks. Did he somehow use the speed force? Did he go into the future?
“What?”
Cisco looks as astonished as Barry is, hand over his mouse and swiveling it constantly, going from tab, to tab, to tab, as though he feels the need to keep checking.
“Yeah, man. He’s not hiding. Or, well, he is, but he’s using one of his old aliases. It’s… pretty obvious. Especially for Snart.”
Barry walks over to Cisco’s computer and sees that he only has three tabs open. All for Lawrence Winters, which Barry knows is Snart. He's used it before to be a security guard at the Art museum when the Monet exhibit was there, and he used it again at the docks pretending while pretending to be a ship-master.
Now, Lawrence Winters has a bunch of records. As of two weeks ago, he has a credit card. A home address. A landline that's registered with the yellowpages. A car, some SUV minivan type thing, that even has insurance.
“You think someone’s conning us?” Cisco asks. “That it’s a trap? That they found out Cold’s alias and are trying to use it to get to us or something?”
Barry snorts. What kind of trap would this be? Does Cisco think this is some sort of "possum" technique, where being domestic is the equivalent to Snart as playing dead?
Actually, that sounds pretty accurate.
“One way to find out.” Barry whips out his cell phone and squints at the number that Cisco found, ready to dial it in.
“You’re going to call the listed number?” Cisco asks like Barry's gone insane. “What if you, I don’t know, set off a bomb!?”
“You think Snart would set off a number that goes straight to a bomb? The police would be on him in a minute."
"I don't know, man. This just seems really weird to me." Barry brings the phone to his ear and Cisco reaches up toward him, like a child clamoring for a toy that they want. "Barry, I don't think you should call."
"Why are you trying to make this harder than it needs to be?" Barry hisses at him, batting his hands away. "If I really need to, I can just act like I'm taking a poll for some group." Barry's worked in customer service, he's been the telephone operators for their funding program at school. Hell, he was the phone operator for the fundraising team for his acapella group in high school. He knows how to fake a tone and a story just to get through a conversation. And Barry's less worried that this is a trap and more that he's actually calling some old guy named Lawrence Winters whose identity Snart stole a decade ago.
Since Snart left with the Legends, maybe he left the guy whose identity he stole all of the stuff to get his life back in order. That sounds like something Snart might do.
The phone rings and rings and rings, and the longer Barry sits there - this is why he hates calling people, it always takes so much time - the more he's convinced that he's calling someone who is seventy years old and has a subscription to cat fancy.
Then someone picks up.
“Hello?”
The voice is a low, baritone pitch. Barry recognizes it instantly, and when he looks at Cisco, Cisco blinks back in surprise. “Snart?”
“Barry?” Snart murmurs something that Barry can’t quite catch. “There a reason for your call?”
Barry can't keep his shock at bay. Ducks back to look at Cisco's screen and confirms that he actually dialed that number and not one of the many burner phones Snart's had over the years.
“Since when do you have registered phone numbers?”
He hears a sigh over the phone. “Got to keep the Flash on his toes. Do what he would least expect.”
The lie is so poor that Barry wishes he could see Snart just to glare at him.
“So you’re saying that if I went to Lawrence Winters’ residence right now, I’d find you?”
“Please, as if I’d ever be so obvious,” Snart says, but there’s something about it.
There’s something different about this whole thing, about the way that Snart is talking. In their little tit-for-tat, everything was always so calculated. Even when Snart was acting like he wasn't paying attention to Barry, Barry knew he was and was pretending to not for the sake of the game. Snart would act bored or disinterested whenever it appeased him. He had his affected drawl, he had his little quips, he gave the cold shoulder when he felt it would raise the stakes and would talk Barry’s ear off when he knew Barry wanted him to be quiet.
Snart now, sounds… truly distracted. Distracted and surprised that Barry would call him.
But surely he figured that someone would find him eventually, that Barry would figure out all this.
“Well, since I’ve got you on the phone,” Barry says, a phrase that brings him back to high school when he was calling other students' parents to donate to the choir fund - they all thought Barry was so nice but they just couldn't spare the dime but that’s neither here nor there - he says, “I actually need you for something.”
Cisco scoffs so loudly that Barry turns away from him.
“Oh, as much as I’d love to Barry, I don’t think I can come to the neighborhood potluck, so you’ll have to find someone else.”
Barry breathes out a chuckle. At least Snart seems as aware as Barry how weird this is. Calling him on his landline. On his phone that's in the online yellowpages.
“C’mon, Snart. At least hear what I’ve got to say. Cisco can maybe do upgrades on the Cold Gun?” Barry asks. Looking over his shoulder, Barry jumps in his skin at how murderous Cisco looks at him for that offer. He mouths 'sorry', and turns away, rubbing the back of his neck as he tries to relieve the weight of Cisco's heavy disapproval.
“Barry —“
“There’s something we need you to steal. It won’t be easy. It’s a Captain Cold kind of job,” Barry explains in a rush, hoping that maybe he can motor-mouth past Snart’s reluctance. “Could be his resurgence, since you haven’t done one already.”
“Well, I’ve been a little busy, hey! —“ the phone clatters against something, and Barry thinks he might have been dropped.
And then the phone clicks off.
Barry blinks. Did Snart just hang up on him? Did something just happen? He sounded a bit surprised at the end there, maybe something's wrong.
“Well, that was weird.” Cisco shrugs, turning back toward his computer. "And if you ever offer Cold Gun upgrades without talking to me - "
"Sorry, Cisco," Barry says, sheepish.
He rolls his eyes. "Whatever. Next time, at least ask how his sister is doing for me."
Barry laughs, then crouches down by Cisco's face. Cisco's about to close out the tabs, but Barry covers his hand with his.
“What’s the address?”
“C’mon, man, Snart’s not dumb enough to have it all registered on here. That’s bound to be —“
Maybe Cisco's right, but Barry has a hunch. So he asks again, “Cisco, what’s the address?”
He gets a flat look for his trouble, but Cisco moves out of the way of the computer screen and clicks the tab that has it laid out.
323 Breeze Bay Street.
Barry knows that neighborhood. It’s nice. Nicer than anywhere Barry’s ever seen one of Snart’s safe houses. It’s near an elementary school and a church. It’s a neighborhood where ivy crawls up the brickwork of old houses, and people have gardens, and children play in the street. Unlike the area of Saints and Sinners which is littered in cigarettes and beer bottles, this has chalk-drawings and posters that say “SLOW DOWN — SAVE A LIFE”.
“That’s definitely not where Snart’s staying,” Cisco says. “Don’t fall for it Barry —“
And maybe it is all a trap, and maybe Barry’s about to walk into a bomb going off, and maybe this is all one elaborate scheme that Snart knew that Barry would waltz right into, but Barry doesn’t care. It's part of the game, and Barry is pretty sure that Snart didn't come back from the Legends just to kill the Flash.
Besides, Barry and Snart wouldn’t be Barry and Snart if it weren’t for Snart’s all-too-extensive plans being cut off by Barry’s impulsive decision making.
So, Barry dips into the speed force and makes his way toward Breeze Bay Street.
Len’s in over his head. Len’s losing his head. Len wonders if he actually died and this is all his subconscious shooting out one final, very strange fantasy, before his brain finally craps out and he ceases to exist.
“Lenny?”
Mal is pulling on his pant leg. He’s got an army man in his hand, a game that Len realizes he's now signed on to for life, at least for the foreseeable future. It now runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no holidays.
Len’s trying to cook dinner, is checking his email every twenty minutes for a message from the kindergarten confirming that Mal is registered for their school, and is also trying to keep up with a game of army men.
“Lenny, it’s your turn”
Mal doesn’t call Len “dad”. Len asked him if he wanted to, and he didn’t seem sure, so he’d given Mal “Len” as the out. A few weeks later, after Lisa has visited and Mal’s grown more familiar, he’s taken to calling Len “Lenny”.
Len doesn’t know if he likes that any better than “dad”, but it’s where they’re at and he’s not going to ask Mal to change it now.
“Need a minute, Mal.”
Multitasking, he once told Ray in regard to one of their Legend missions while plucking a wallet. Stealing a wallet and conning a woman is all the same game, yet Len had said it so smugly. The look on Ray's face had been worth it, but he'd be lying if his own voice didn't sound like a taunt in his ears. He thought he knew what multitasking was. He was such a fucking moron.
Multitasking is looking for a house in a good neighborhood with a decent school, while also looking up videos on how to child-proof your current apartment, and also trying to explain to Lisa that if she tries to rob the bank on a Thursday there won’t be as much money in it as there would be on a Tuesday so she needs to wait a week.
Multitasking is trying to buy real plates with real silverware and real food because paper plates and months-old take-out isn’t good for a child, while also trying to schedule a job interview and being laughed off the phone call when they realize just who you are.
Multitasking is trying to scrub every last fucking remnant of your old criminal life while not trying to completely lose yourself in the process.
“Lenny, it’s your turn.”
“I know, can you give me a minute, kiddo? Where’s Mr. Lion?”
“He’s with the other soldiers. And you said a minute a minute ago.”
Len groans. Crouches down and looks through the bag of army men.
See, he’s tried it where he places a soldier haphazardly. But Mal… Mal is smart. He’s so smart. He picks up on so many things, more than Len would like sometimes.
Like at the supermarket. Len left him for two fucking minutes, and next thing he knows, Mal's got some woman's devoted attention. And it's easy for Mal to get that when he's not being shy, he's a cute kid and everyone looks at him, but he also has a tendency to talk way too much. And what he was explaining nearly gave Len a heart attack:
“Lenny always parks the car so far away," he'd been complaining. "And we never drive the same car. We had a green car for a day, it was so cool. It had lights in the back, but he didn't keep that one either. Now we're in this old car, and it doesn't have lights in the back. I didn't know someone could own so many cars. Do you have that many different cars?”
Len just up and left the grocery cart. Scooped Mal into his arms, and barely restrained himself from flipping the bird at the woman for the sheer frustration of it all. After that, Len to get a minivan that was actually registered to him, because he did not want Mal explaining to any more women at the supermarket how he'd been boosting cars just so they could get around since Mal can't be on his motorcycle and Len can't leave him alone.
The other thing he picked up on was, "How come my drawing paper and your drawing paper is different? And why do you have so many drawings of buildings? Can I have a drawing of buildings?"
Len learned after that little exchange, if he was going to help Lisa plan a heist, he needs to do it when Mal is out of the room. And he needs to roll the map away before the kid even takes a peek at it.
And, most importantly, when it comes to army men, Mal knows when Len places soldiers at random. He’s figured out about how quickly it should take him to bring them down with anything but the Flash soldier (and now the Flash painted soldier has a Captain Cold counter soldier who reduces the Flash’s moves to three per day), so Len can’t just grab a damn soldier and put it down. He has to actually consider this for a moment, otherwise he gets upset.
Len wants Mal to know that he’s paying attention. That he cares enough to try to figure out the game. Because the kid is smart, and deserves Len’s attention, and he will not be like Lewis.
As soon as Len grabs a paratrooper — they’re good diversions, which Mal has also figured out, so this won’t buy him a ton of time — the phone rings.
“Phone!”
Mal yells that every time it rings. Len ruffles his hair, but meets Mal’s eye when he says:
“What’d I say about indoor voices?”
Len can hardly believe himself. Since when did he ever say shit like indoor voices? He wonders how much information Gideon can give the Waverider about Len’s forays into being a goddamn parent, because if they’re at all detailed, Mick has to have about laughed himself to death.
“Phone,” Mal repeats, quieter.
Len squeezes his shoulder. “Good boy.” He stands up and heads for the phone, an obnoxious corded thing that’s very 1950s, but the school wasn't comfortable with him stating that he would give them an updated phone number every week if they wanted it. So, landline for Mr. Winters it had to be. “Hello?”
“Snart?”
“Barry?”
The rush at hearing Barry's voice, the thrill of the chase, is now immediately overwhelmed by the fact that Len's doing enough chasing around here as is. Chasing his own mind as it runs away from him. Chasing Mal before he ends up kidnapped or getting Len in prison just by running his mouth too much.
Where is that goddamn red army man? Mal has one more move with that thing, and Len swears it’s taunting him from somewhere in their boxed up living room.
Of course, he's not going to let Barry know just how domesticated his life has become, though he has a feeling that Red will find out shortly. Len's been juggling so many things, he's not even really bothering to hide anymore, just so long as it's not actually his name and he keeps his baseball cap and sunglasses on every time he leaves the house.
“There a reason for your call?”
There's an irritated huff from the other end of the line, and Len smiles. At least he can still sound just as disinterested in Barry's do-gooder behavior as he did before.
Not that his perceived lack of interest has ever gotten him anywhere. Barry prattles on all the same.
While the water boils and Mal figures out a new position for the army man and is tugging on Len’s pant-leg again to play his next move — they’re going to have to set another house limit soon because Len cannot do this all day — Barry does three things.
One, complains without overtly complaining that Len has not graced him with his presence, which Len would spend more time teasing Barry for if it weren’t for Mal’s insistence.
“Mal, I’m on the phone, no army men.”
Two, Barry asks Len for a favor. Asks him to help them steal something, and part of Len yearns. Because as fond as he has grown for the kid, he is starting to lose it a little. Notwithstanding his time with the Legends which is all dreamy and literally in the flux of time, his presence in Center City has done a complete reversal. He went from running the Rogues, the most dangerous thieves in town, to going to bed at 8:30 because he cannot stay up another minute before he wakes up at 5:30 to start this over again. He wants something familiar, like a heist — and not the army men trying to break into the potted plant that Mal is guarding — but a real, actual heist.
At the same time, though, Len does not want the possible ramifications. Before, if he got pinched, well he can get himself out. Breaking out of Iron Heights is child's play these days - and he means that now that he is intimately familiar with what child's play is - but he’s not going to leave Mal back with Social Services. And he’s not going to burden Lisa with taking him in while he’s locked up. And he’s not going to give Mal the experience of visiting his dad in prison.
And if it was a job for the Flash, those consequences would be less likely, but there’s also the likelihood that he dies. From what he understands of what Barry's been up to these days, the likelihood of that seems unacceptably high.
Which, Len’s died once. He doesn’t really want to die again.
Three, Barry starts inquiring into Len’s new domestic set up. Which, he figured would come some day, but he was hoping for a little bit more time.
Then again, it’s been a few weeks now. It has flown by already. Mal has an appointment to get vaccinated tomorrow, or else he can’t go to school for the year. Maybe once Mal is in school again things will be easier, but —
That’s when Len sees Mal, stretching his small little body to put an army man on the pot of water that’s about to boil over because Len’s been on the phone for too long.
“Hey!” Len shouts.
This is not a good reaction.
Mal startles, and slaps the pot of water, causing it to slosh on the stove and tip off the burner. The water splashes, and Len launches himself in front of the pot of water about to topple over. A stream of hot water pours against Len’s arm, and he does all he can not to yell out at the pain, and instead hugs Mal too tight to him.
Mal’s breath leaves him in a whoosh, and in an instant, he’s crying.
Fuck.
Len lets go of Mal and rips off his jacket he was wearing, the burning of the boiling water making his skin feel warped already.
Fucking fuck.
He goes over to the phone and slams it back on its cartridge. Barry be damned.
“Mal!” He yells. “Don’t go near the stove like that!”
This makes Mal cry harder. Len grips the back of his neck, digging his fingernails into the back of his skin until his neck feels raw.
He’s had custody of the kid for less than a month and he almost poured boiling water on the kid. He’d have had to take Mal to the hospital. And if Mal went to the hospital for something like that, and they saw who Len was, and saw his record.
They say abuse goes in cycles.
Len rubs his temples. Takes a step toward Mal, but when the kid backs up, he stops.
Shit.
Instead he crouches down. Tries to breathe through the rushing feeling of panic.
“Mal. It’s alright.”
“I —“ he breathes in a shaky sob. “I didn’t mean — I didn’t mean to.”
“I know you didn’t.”
The anger ebbs away, far quicker than Len is used to. It’s stupid and foolish and not indicative of anything, but there’s an internal checklist that Len’s keeping on ways that I am not like my father and he’s going to put this on the tally. If Len had done something like that, he’d have been standing in the corner for the rest of the day until he dropped.
Still, he also gets one tally away, because he knows he scared him. But shit, Mal scared him.
“I know you didn’t. But now you know, don’t go near the stove. You could have gotten hurt.”
He nods vigorously. Fat tears run down his rounded cheeks, and Len feels guilty, guilty, guilty.
So, Len says, “C’mere, little criminal.”
Little criminal is a nickname that slipped out three days ago, now. There’s probably a hundred parenting books out there that would explain why a nickname like that isn’t good for children, but, Len thinks it suits the two of them. Besides, the kid earned it.
Len had beaten the kid in army men (he’s not going to let the kid win every day) and Mal was holding quite the grudge. Had been quiet all throughout dinner. Had been quiet throughout watching the movie he picked out. While brushing his teeth, Mal got to business — he tends to try to start a sword fight with toothbrushes which Len always denies, but he will do it with his finger — instead of attempting anything.
Then, when Len was putting him to bed, he enacted his revenge. Len got him all laid down, had given him water, had read him a book like his parenting book and Lisa told him to. The entire time the kid breathed so even that Len thought something was genuinely wrong with him.
He reached forward to grab a pillow, when the kid spat water in his face.
Not an insignificant amount either. The kid spewed water like a fountain. He’d had to have been holding that in his mouth for at least a half an hour, to the point where the kid’s tongue was pruny.
“Cold blast,” he murmured, and Len almost lost his mind. It came from a newspaper that Len had around from one of his and Barry’s fights. It was in the headline, Len remembered it.
And clearly, so had Mal. He was so impressed by the kid’s diligence that he didn’t even think to reprimand him. Only said,
“That’s enough, it’s bedtime for little criminals,” Len called him, and Mal had beamed.
And the sniffles get a little less intense when Len calls him it now. The wave of relief that the kid doesn’t all of a sudden hate him is far stronger than Len wants to admit to himself. Eventually a five-year-old’s opinion of him will not be the most important opinion in Len’s life, but right now is not that moment. It matters far, far, far too much.
Mal starts making his way over, and Len stands and grabs him up from off the floor so that he doesn’t climb over the hot water. Pulls him up into his arms and holds him to his chest.
“Okay. You’re okay, Mal.”
His arm burns. Len might not be the most temperature-sensitive, but boiling water is boiling water. It hurts like a bitch.
As Mal breathes through the tears and finally smiles, there’s a ring of their doorbell.
“Door!”
Len winces.
“Mal. Indoor voice.”
Not that it matters. The inside of their house is about to become a whirlwind, because Len knows exactly who has arrived.
When Barry arrives at the house, he knows it’s Snart’s. The car is a minivan that’s registered to Lawrence Winters, and Len's motorcycle is parked alongside the house.
Barry chokes.
This is a legitimate house. It’s not a crappy little condo where Barry can see the card table through the window, or the apartment where there’s so much weed being smoked inside the building that he can smell it on the outside. This is an honest to goodness house.
Now, it’s not exactly the house with the picket fence, either. It’s not like the house from Barry’s own childhood, with the painted garage and mailbox with the handprints. But, when comparing it to what Len used to live in, it may as well be. It’s got a cracked driveway, and it’s more narrow and tall rather than broad and squat. There’s a porch. And a doorbell.
The doorbell takes him by such surprise that he just has to ring it.
Before anyone can come to the door, Barry makes sure that this isn’t one last trick. The voice of Cisco and Caitlin infiltrate his brain, that Snart is clever and even admitted that he wanted to keep Barry on his toes, so he should at least do his due diligence to check. He dips into the speedforce and runs around the whole house, inspecting each crevice, each spot that is obvious and likely to hold a different kind of gambit.
There's nothing. It just looks like a house.
Barry gets back to the door, and the door swings open.
A man steps out, his face completely obscured by a child climbing over his head.
Oh, god, Barry’s got this so wrong. Lawrence Winters is a real guy, and he's got a kid, and Barry immediately stands stiff-straight. He stammers out, “I’m sorry, I’m looking for a —“
“We’re Atheists,” he hears, and Barry falters.
It's Snart.
For a moment, he thinks that Snart has done it. Snart has kidnapped a child, for God knows what reason, and this time Barry will have to bring him in.
Snart turns to face him, pulling the child down so that he’s no longer climbing across both shoulders. “And radical anarchists. We also live off the grid. No matter what, we don’t want your pamphlets.”
“No pamphlets,” a smaller voice mimics. Snart chuckles, then turns to face Barry. His lips are curled up in a smile. The way he stares at Barry, it’s all analysis, gauging Barry’s reaction.
And Barry’s not sure how to react. Can’t even speak. The child turns over in Snart’s arms, and he blinks at Barry owlishly, eyes red-rimmed, his fist is in his mouth, but there’s the turn of the same smile on his face, too.
The kid is Snart's, too.
Barry would know that if he’d ran into the kid on the street. His eyes have the electric charge to them that Snart’s do, even though his are green. His eyelashes are long, like Snart’s are, and flutter against his cheeks when he bats them at Barry. The boy’s hair is a little shaggy and dark, the texture reminds him of Lisa’s. He’s got a chubby baby face, with cheeks that are getting pinker the longer Barry looks at him. The boy’s eyebrows are angular, and right now furrowed, the boy’s critical stare is directed at Barry that reminds him of Snart so much that Barry’s almost knocked back by the force of two hard stares at him.
He’s absolutely precious.
“He — Hello, there.”
“Barry, Mal. Mal, Barry.”
If Barry wasn’t so stunned, he’d give Snart a flat look. Introducing them like they’re businessmen. The boy — Mal — grips onto Snart’s shirt with tight little balls of fists. Pulls himself closer to Snart’s face like he’s trying to climb his head like a ladder.
“Close your mouth, Red. You’ll catch flies.” With that, Snart walks back into his house.
This is his house. Barry’s not having some sort of grand hallucination. This isn’t some big trap. Barry actually reached him on a registered landline, saw a minivan in the driveway that is registered to — well an alias of — Len, and this is his house and the boy in his arms is his son.
“Are you coming in or what?” Snart yells back, his voice echoing and Barry feels like it's from another world. “I’m cooking dinner. Don’t have enough for your speedster metabolism, but, it should tide you over until you can eat your thirty hamburgers.”
Pulling out his phone, Barry sends a quick text:
Am I not on Earth-1?
“I — I’m good.”
Once inside the house, Barry tries to absorb everything. Anything he can. He eagerly anticipates Cisco’s reply, because this can’t be real.
Except, there’s a pressure in the back of his head that tells him that it is. That this is his earth, and that Snart is here, and Snart is…. a dad. With a house. And a minivan.
The house is mostly boxes, which makes sense — the records of the sale of the house looked recent from what Cisco showed him —but there are some essentials and other stuff that is spread out everywhere. There are toys all over the floor. A silver stuffed lion on one side of the couch, a patterned elephant on the coffee table. Next to the couch sits an empty glass and a stack of varying books from “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” to “Control Systems Engineering”. Rolled up blueprints are stored in the corner near a closet, where a beat up little tykes vacuum is also placed. There are drawings everywhere done in crayon, mostly looking like different cars.
In the corner of Barry’s eye, he also notices a little plastic soldier shoved into a bookcase. He’s about to remove it, when he hears:
“That’s my guard!”
Barry startles, turns around, and sees Mal pointing at Barry like he saw Barry shoot someone.
Snart lowers Mal to the floor, and while he crouches down he says, “Mal.”
The exasperated look that crosses Mal’s face is so reminiscent of an expression Snart has sent Barry’s way so many times, it almost has Barry laughing.
“Indoor voice,” Mal says with a whole lot of attitude. Barry grins.
He’s not over the weirdness of this being Snart’s kid — he’s not sure if he’ll get over that for a while — but he can move on from it. Barry loves kids. Usually is pretty good with them, too, if he doesn’t say so himself.
“This is your guard?” Barry asks, pointing up at the soldier.
Mal nods.
“What’s it guarding?”
Mal’s jaw is set, and he looks back at Snart with big, beady eyes. Needing reassurance to talk to Barry.
When this kid is older maybe he’ll understand how funny that is. As it is, Barry will be telling Cisco and laughing over it with him, but at the same time, there’s this warm blooming feeling in his chest.
This boy is Snart’s. And he…
They’re adorable. He wonders if Snart would freeze Barry for saying so, but he can’t help but think it.
Snart meets the boy’s stare with a critical one of his own. He raises an eyebrow at his son, mimicking his apprehension, Snart’s gaze slowly sliding to Barry himself. Critically assessing the threat that he imposes.
Barry swallows hard, he can feel his Adam’s Apple bob harsh in his throat. His phone buzzes, and in the moments that Snart is staring at him he uses the speed force to check Cisco’s text.
this is earth-1 — why? do u need help?
Oh, the answer to that question is miles long. Barry doesn’t want to bother answering it right now. He's far too invested in what he's just walked into, wishes he had popcorn to see how Snart interacts with this little kid.
Snart smiles at Barry this small, fond smile, that he’s never seen Snart wear before. Then his gaze goes back to Mal, who is awaiting Snart’s assessment.
“I wouldn’t invite him into this house if he wasn’t safe, Mal.”
Barry’s heart bottoms out in his chest. Crash thunders against his ribcage.
I wouldn’t invite him into this house if he wasn’t safe. It repeats in Barry’s head, and he feels hot, and he’s embarrassed by how touched he is, but he can’t help it.
It’s the nicest thing anyone’s said about him in a long time. And those embers of something in his chest, that feeling that Cisco keeps teasing him about, it just stokes it - it's at great risk of becoming a real fire that he can't put out.
Barry has to clench his fist to try to stop the feeling from completely taking over.
“You should tell him what your army man is guarding,” Snart finishes.
Now invigorated with Snart’s confidence, Mal turns on his heel. Faces Barry head on, his chin jutted out, his expression fierce.
“Lenny shot my paratrooper yesterday, but he’s not dead, but he’s dying, so he’s guarding him.”
Well, that’s dismal. Barry snorts. That follows from what Barry would imagine is Len's parenting style, and his attack style in whatever game they're playing.
“That’s Lenny by the way,” Mal says, pointing back at Snart, who has gone to the kitchen and started tending to the dinner he referenced earlier.
Barry nods. He'd managed to piece that together. “I know. Thank you, though.”
“Some people look at me weird when I call him Lenny. ‘Cause, he’s my dad. But he said I don’t have to call him dad. So I call him Lenny.” Mal marches up and stands next to Barry, right at his knee. “Does that make sense?”
“It makes sense. I call my dad Joe. So you’re not alone.”
There’s a twenty year story behind that, as well as a litany of differences between why Barry calls Joe, Joe, and why Mal probably calls Snart “Lenny”, but that doesn’t matter. Mal grins at him.
“You get it.”
Barry nods. “I do.” He curls his hand into a fist and brings it down so that Mal can fist-bump with him. He wonders if he’s done this before.
Mal has. He takes his fist and bumps it with Barry’s, and Barry knows in kid world, he has won him over.
“Do you play army men, Barry?” Snart asks from across the room.
Mal gasps at the mention, and stares at Barry with an electrified curiosity. Grins at Barry this crayon drawn smile, so big that he can see that Mal is missing one of his molars.
“Do you?” Mal asks. He's already jumping up and down, so Barry knows that his answer should be yes.
“Um… I can learn.”
“Great,” Snart says. Barry hears clattering in the kitchen, and then Snart’s on his way to him, a plastic bag fisted in his hand. It’s filled with green army men. “Distract him for a little bit, if you would.”
Barry blinks at Snart. For the first time since he’s arrived, he actually takes a good look at Snart.
He’s exhausted. Barry can see that right away. There’s the same tightness to his face that he had when he approached Barry to help him out when Lewis put a bomb in Lisa’s head. There’s this frantic energy of worry that’s keeping him upright, but if Barry had to guess, that’s about it. He’s thinner than Barry remembers, the worry lines more prominent on his gaunt face. He also has a raw and nasty mark on his arm, which Barry opens his mouth and is about to ask about it, when Len beats him to it:
"It's a bit of trial by fire," Len quips with a weary smile. "I'm fine."
And Barry sees it then. The way Len's smiles are more genuine. How they're softer, carry less bite with them, don’t make his eyes glint sinister like they did when Barry talked to him behind plexi-glass.
"So I should be a hero like you, Barry? How exactly does that pay again?"
Snart's more on his way than he realizes.
“After dinner we can talk a bit about why you’re really here," Snart says.
Barry smiles gingerly, taking the plastic bag of army men from Snart.
“I’d be happy to.”
Dinner, thankfully, goes without too much interruption.
The last several nights Mal has been hell to figure out what he liked. He doesn’t like broccoli unless they’re steamed, doesn’t like carrots unless they’re raw. Len’s pretty sure the kid’s allergic to beets with the way he described that his mouth feeling"fuzzy and stingy”, so he added that to his list of concerns to ask the doctor and got rid of the dish for now.
Tonight is mac and cheese, though. Snart was trying to be healthy at Lisa’s insistence, but if she wants an input on what Mal eats, she can come over and cook for him.
It's later than he intended. The affair with the pot nearly falling over, and then Barry coming over, has pushed the dinner past sundown. For the past five minutes he's watched Mal pick at his food with his face nearly in the bowl, eyes drooping.
"Okay, little criminal, I think you're finished."
"Can I have it again tomorrow?" Mal asks, petulant and quiet.
Len chuckles. Looks like mac and cheese is a favorite. It was one of Lisa's favorites, too. (Still is, though she won't admit it out loud). "We'll see. C'mon, let's head to bed."
He's aware that Barry's been watching him. Been tracking almost every move that Len makes, and he can't imagine what he's thinking. Snart, once upon a time, had threatened him at gunpoint. Has freezed Barry more than once, betrayed him on the airstrip, and broken into his home.
Now, he's watching Len wipe mac and cheese and snot off of a kid's face with his sleeve. Barry probably thinks he's changed radically, but Snart's not sure he has. He'd still break into Barry's house again, take his hot cocoa and taunt him for not having mini marshmallows. He has no regrets about the heists he's pulled, doesn't even feel that sorry about not helping Barry with his metahuman transfer.
Just now is not the time to attempt to freeze someone at gunpoint. It's not the time to try to pull strings and make deals. Now is the time where has to pet a kid on the head for doing a good job not getting food in his hair like he's done the past four nights.
And weirdly enough, this is somehow a lot more exhausting. When Barry first showed up after getting burned and listening to Mal cry like he did, Len considered taking his Cold Gun out and shooting him where he stood.
But, he knew it was Barry. And he'd meant what he'd said: if there was anyone from his life that he had no real worries about Mal being around, Barry Allen - and Len is not including the Flash in this assessment because that hero is prone to trouble - but Barry Allen is one of them. And Len desperately needed someone to look after Mal for an hour, or else the rest of the night would have gone a lot worse, he just knows it.
Though, Len also is aware that he started something else with this little foray. Because Mal’s looking at Barry the way Lisa looked at Mick the first time Len brought Mick home. All delighted and intrigued by this new and shiny person who wanted to play with them.
“Is Barry a little criminal?”
… and there it is.
“Barry’s a little narc," Len replies. He hears Barry’s sharp gasp at that, but Len has no intention of taking it back. He walks over to where Mal is sitting and picks him up off the chair.
“What’s a narc?” Mal asks.
“Never mind that,” Len says, hoisting Mal up to his shoulders. “He’s out past his bedtime, too, so he’ll be going home shortly,” Snart says.
He hears Barry’s snort at that as well. He will say, he's had Mal for only a few weeks, and if he thought his senses to everything around him were attuned before, they're incredible now. He definitely has a sixth sense for nonsense that's growing, and he has a feeling he'll be using it a lot.
Mal slinks over the top of his head, and Len knows that he’s wearing a pout without even looking at him.
Funny what you pick up in a couple of weeks.
“O-kay,” he says with this forlorn sigh.
Barry waves at Mal. “It was nice to meet you, Mal.”
“You’ll come back tomorrow, right?”
Barry chuckles. “I don’t know about tomorrow, but, I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”
I'm sure I'll see you soon? Since when did that become something Barry could promise?
When Len turns to look at Barry, he can see that Barry's caught his forwardness himself. Barry's blushing that bright scarlet, the color crawling up his neck, making those moles on his face more prominent. Len raises his eyebrow at Barry, and Barry's mouth wobbles under the embarrassment.
“Pretty sure, anyway.”
That sends a dart through Len's thoughts. "Are you?"
The way Barry shrinks on his stool is just too good. And Len finds himself wondering what Barry thinks he's doing. Always so impulsive, always running into situations without dwelling on the consequences. What does he think he's doing digging his heels into this? Len figured now that he's gone domestic, Barry would be out of here with a bolt of lightning tracking his path out the door. Len's the first to admit it: this whole thing is a goddamn mess, and certainly isn't the Flash's problem.
Yet, Barry's at his kitchen counter. He's covering his mouth like he doesn't want Len to see how much he's smiling - which hardly works, his elastic mouth stretches beyond his expanse of hand - and Len can't help but smile back.
Above him he hears a tell-tale yawn of Mal, and as much as he'd like to continue to flirt with Barry, he's got other matters to handle.
“Okay, off we go."
There is a perk of Mal playing with Barry for the past hour. Barry is a far more enthusiastic and inexperienced army man player. Which meant that Mal had to expend a lot more energy explaining the game to Barry (and Barry, attentive as ever, asked him many, many questions on the subject), and once playing, was far more energized. They went through more rounds in the hour than Len had in the past four.
The moment that they get to the bathroom to brush his teeth, Mal's mouth stretches into a yawn so big he covers it with his chubby little fist. Len scratches his thumb across the boy's shoulder.
“Yeah, let’s get you to sleep,” Len murmurs.
Len wants to get himself to sleep, too, if he’s being honest. However, he’s not going to have subjected Barry to two hours of dealing with his shit without at least hearing him out by this point. That seems dirty in a way that Len’s past letting himself sink to.
After brushing his teeth, Len walks Mal to his bedroom. It’s not the best; there’s still boxes to unpack, and the furniture is all secondhand, but it’s nice enough for now. The bed is safe for Mal to sleep in, if he rolls out he can't fall too far. There’s a dresser, and though Mal doesn’t have that many clothes, it’s good storage for toys and other things, too. The endtable is one where he has about thirty army men lined so it seems like that's a hit. There's a nightlight that turns on the moment that there's no excess light coming into the room that Mal has expressed he greatly likes.
Grabbing him by the arms, he swings Mal onto the bed and plops him down, making Mal giggle.
“There you go, kiddo.”
“Len?”
Mal’s got a pout on his face, and he’s looking rather sadly at the door.
“What’s the matter?”
“I didn’t show Barry the Flash army man. He’s the most powerful one.”
It takes everything in Len not to burst out laughing, which he knows would result in receiving Mal’s brief but scathing disdain over something so serious. As it stands, he breathes out a chuckle.
“I think Barry knows all about the Flash, Mal.”
“Do you think he likes him?”
Now, that is a far more complicated question.
Len could always see a little bit of the bad in the Flash. Could see the frustration, could see that the Flash did have to put in an effort to always be on the side of light. In Barry Allen it's a far more nuanced aspect, Barry's all romanticism and high standards that he can't possibly upkeep. Pouring all those ideals, all those desires, into his self-embodied hero?
It wouldn't surprise Len if sometimes Barry didn't like the Flash at all.
“I would say that the relationship is a little complicated, if anything."
“Well, I like the Flash. I like Barry, too. And I like you!"
Ah, how simple life comes to a five year old. “That in order?"
Mal hums for a moment, thinking it through. Len isn't sure if he should be flattered or insulted, but he's erring on flattered just in case. The Flash is awfully high in Mal's book, as Len has come to learn. "I don't think so."
"Well, thank you.” Len starts pulling the blankets up. “Want me to let Barry know?”
“Yeah.”
“About the Flash or about him?”
“Both.”
Len figured as much.
As soon as Len pulls up the blankets around Mal’s shoulders and is ready to pull up and wish him goodnight, Mal throws all of the bedding off of him.
Len braces himself for a fight. He let Mal stay up too late, they ate dinner too late, now he’s got this weird energy and it’s going to be an argument —
But Mal throws himself forward and wraps his arms around Len’s neck.
He hasn’t done this before.
Len stiffens, a bit startled by the way Mal’s head wallops against Len’s throat. Cupping the top of Mal’s head, he rubs his thumb to check for any sort of indent where he bashed his face, but there’s nothing there and all Mal does is squeak out a little sigh.
His hands are small and scrabble around his shirt for purchase, and it’s not until Len wraps an arm around the kid to pull him up that he can completely loop them. He presses his face into Len’s shoulder and squeezes as hard as he can.
“Goodnight, Lenny.”
Len sucks in a breath. And he does something he hasn’t done before either. He kisses into the little boy’s hair and smooths it down with his hand.
“Goodnight, little criminal.”
With that, Len lowers him down into the covers once more. He won’t detach from his neck, so it makes the next few steps a bit more difficult, pulling up the blankets and tucking Mal in best he can. Finally, he has to grab Mal’s hands and slide them off.
“C’mon, Mal, you gotta let go.”
When he does manage to pry Mal off, he sees that he’s already asleep.
Len huffs a breath. Kids are amazing that way.
“Does he need this?” Len hears from behind him.
Barry’s standing in the doorway, shadows painting his face, the light a golden thread at his back. Call Len sappy - he's in his fucking kid's bedroom, he can afford to be - but Barry Allen looks more heroic in this light than he does in the Flash costume.
However, maybe that's because he's saved Len from a headache later. In his hands is the lion that Rip Hunter gave Mal before Len even met the boy. Barry's combing at its mane, treating it carefully, and Len can see why he did so well with Mal for the past while.
“He will.” Len reaches out, and Barry steps into the shadow of the room. He blocks enough of the light in the doorway to trigger the night light, and the ceiling gets painted with myriads of pastel colors, like they’re looking at the world from underwater.
In the strange light, Len takes the time to look at Barry. He’s matured. He’s no longer the boy that he ran into in that subway with the toothy grin. He's got a harshness to his gaze he can't ever quite shake, and a bit of world-weariness that Len supposes is probably good for him in his profession. But he can still see the little goodie-two-shoes who started this all. There in the soft smile that he gives Len as he curls his fingers over themselves, now without something to pick at after giving the lion away.
He's still just as pretty as when Len first laid eyes on him. Might even be prettier, now that his idealism has been framed with some experience. No longer trying to be the perfect icon of Central City's hope, but the battered protector of its reality. Much more respectable, in Len's opinion.
Being the Flash is a dirty business. Len would know. He was the dirty business the Flash felt he needed to handle, to his chagrin.
Looking back at Mal, there's a pang of nostalgia. He isn't that man anymore. He can't be. But that isn't Mal's fault. It's the Legends. It's the Oculus. It's Barry, most of all. Len's greatest con was the one he pulled on himself, believing he was diligently ignoring all of Barry's pleads, all of Barry's endless confidence in him. He wasn't, and he can track every move he made that was influenced by him.
Once Len started to ride the wave of Barry's optimism, he didn't stand a chance.
Then Barry, in very Barry fashion, pipes up to apologize for nothing. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have — I wouldn’t have barged in like I did, but — I didn’t know.”
It’s very typical Barry for him to go barging in that he doesn't believe those words for a second. Not like it mattered.
“I didn’t know either until a few weeks ago.”
Len passes a hand over Mal’s sleeping form, brushes his hair out of his face. Len can't help but smile.
He's a good boy. A smart boy. If Lewis were still around, he'd try to use Mal's intelligence for his own selfish schemes.
Then, it dawns on Len that Lewis would never get the chance. He'd have shot Lewis before he ever got a hand on his son. He'll shoot anyone before they lay a hand on his son.
He never expected this, a child, but now that Mal's here... He's going to fight fiercely for him to have a good childhood. He won't deal with the shit that Len and Lisa did. And Len's proven hard to kill, and he vows to keep it up. Barry may be the glowing ideal to many, Len's also acutely aware that he doesn't want Mal to end up like Barry, either. The world's not going to be on the boy's back, he refuses. There will be no need to avenge, no need to save the world, none of that.
Mal deserves better. He's a smart, smart boy. Has charisma, and can talk for hours, and has a knack for picking up on the little things. He's going to do whatever he wants, Len will make sure of it.
Barry sways in his spot, lumbering above Mal’s bed, trying to find a way to meet Len’s eye without getting too close. He looks like he's debating leaving, but Len nods for him to come inside.
Eventually, he chooses to squat down and sit cross-legged on the floor. He eyes Mal apprehensively, but Len shrugs.
“He’s out, promise.”
Barry nods. Presses his head into his hands, then looks at Len and says, “I heard you died.”
So that's how he's choosing to start this conversation? The question sounds innocuous and concerned, but Len knows there's an accusation in it too. The same bitterness he'd heard in Barry's tone when he called him earlier, all incredulous and haughty.
“Few weeks ago I did. Didn’t take, though.” Len exhales long, bites the ends of fingers, a habit he hadn’t had since he was a teen and has now picked up again since Mal’s been around. To fill the silence, Len finally decides to comment on a tidbit he had heard about Barry in return:
“Heard you were engaged. Mazel tov.”
But a sullen look passes over Barry’s face at even the mention. He lowers his gaze to the floor as he shakes his head. Then he picks up his head to smile and say.
“Didn’t take. Thanks, though.”
Len hums. Keeps impassive as best he can, because that information threatens the careful balance Len has about his feelings about Barry. The emotion in the room ramps up to a level that Len doesn't know how to handle right now, and doesn't have the energy to deal with. It's got to be put on ice before Len does something he regrets.
“You need a favor from me?” Len asks, cutting to the point.
Barry blinks at him like he’d completely forgotten. Like this was all some sort of social call and this didn’t start with Barry and Cisco’s shitty investigating into Len’s life.
Then Barry’s gaze flickers to Mal. “Don’t worry about it.”
Len gives him a flat look.
“I told you I’m not dead,” Len says. “And making it ‘worth my while’ will be relatively easy: get me a babysitter sometimes, or some cleaning help.”
“We’ll talk,” Barry says, but Len knows that it’s shelved for now. Barry’s too noble. He won’t put Len in the front-lines now that he’s a dad. Not until he’s actually run a risk assessment, something probably foreign to Team Flash. Even if Len tells him it's fine, Len knows better.
On another night, Len might pick a harsher fight — he’s not out of fucking commission because he’s got a kid — but right now he doesn’t have the energy. Because, if he's being honest, he is out of commission because he's got a kid. At least for another week or two.
Then he’s reminded of his little promise he made to Mal. He groans into his hand, sliding his palms over his face and over his hair.
Barry frowns at him. “You okay?”
“Yeah, but I promised to tell you something," Len says. The words chip at the inside of Len's throat like he swallowed a woodpecker.
"What?"
"Mal finds it critical I tell you how much he likes the Flash.”
A teasing smile cuts across Barry’s face.
“Are you serious?”
Len wishes he was joking, except he also doesn’t. The absolute amused delight that is brightening up Barry’s face almost makes the ridiculousness of the whole thing worth it. “He talks about him non-stop. He even brought a red army man back with him from the orphanage that's supposed to be him.” Len fishes into his pocket and pulls out the little red figurine.
Len pocketed it during his and Barry's game so that things didn't get too complicated, and that Mal didn't cheat the 'only three moves' rule. In Len’s opinion, he’s a cheating figurine in the first place, but he won't argue the long and arduous history and lack of fairness that comes from the particle accelerator explosion. Not until he’s older, maybe.
Either way, with it out of sight, Mal has a better time remembering the rule of the game.
Barry extends a hand, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “I... cannot even begin to explain how much I love this” That’s when Barry regards the endtable covered in army men and laughs. “He sure likes that game.”
“He’s not bad at it.”
“No, he’s smart. Probably won’t be long until he finds out I’m the Flash,” Barry jokes, cringing a bit as he does so. At the very least, he recognizes how bad he’s been at keeping his own secret. Len’s never told a soul, not even his own sister.
Len will rue the day that Mal figures out that he’s Captain Cold, but who knows when that will be. So long as Barry doesn’t out his alter-ego to Mal before Len can figure out how to broach the subject.
Barry turns over the red figurine in his hand, using his other hand to cover his mouth and snickers. “He’s a lot like you.”
“Ah, hopefully not too much.”
Barry caresses the figurine with his thumb, as if trying to memorize it with his fingers. He looks up at Len, and it's that same look he had in the prison from behind the plexi-glass. "Part of you wants to be more than just a criminal... It's just a matter of time."
Jesus. Maybe Barry was right, but he certainly didn't think it would end up like this.
“You’re a good dad.”
Len grimaces. Barry thinks he’s a good dad, but he wasn’t there for the whole incident with the boiling water. How Len nearly let him get third degree burns because he couldn’t handle everything tha twas going on. Barry witnessed them on an easier night, his presence making a considerable difference because it could give Len a little bit of a break.
Mal and him have fought a lot over things, and half the time Len doesn’t have any clue what he’s doing. He’s terrified a switch is going to flip inside of him and suddenly he’ll be a carbon copy of Lewis.
“That’s… debatable.”
He’d rather die than let that happen, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
“You practically raised Lisa,” Barry mentions. It’s an argument that Lisa also pitches to him, but Len’s not sure it means anything. “And I mean, Len, you just found out about this?”
“More or less.”
“You’ve changed a lot for him in a short amount of time, then.”
“We’ll see how long it lasts.”
Barry nudges him, suddenly far more familiar than they’ve ever been. “I’ve got faith.”
Len breathes deep, exhales out, keeps that balance in check. They can't keep talking about this. Can't give Barry the opening to give him another one of his optimism pep-talks, because tonight Len won't even deny it: he'd fall for it.
So, Len changes subjects, “I don’t know if I like the idea of being able to be found in the yellowpages.” Lawrence Winters may be an alias too linked to Len’s name, and that could bring trouble. “Don’t like the idea of anyone finding us here. I needed a name that was presentable, so we could get a house near the school Mal needs to go to, those kinds of things. But the fact that others can find us, not sure if that’s a good idea long-term.”
“It won’t be a problem. I won’t let anything happen to him,” Barry says, stern and matter-of-fact.
Len’s thoughts stutter. He looks to Barry, about to rebuke it, about to argue with him. The Flash has already got enough in his purview, what with the entirety of Central City, Star City, and everything else that gets shoved onto his plate. He can’t give that kind of promise about one little boy, especially when it’s Captain Cold’s son.
But Barry looks determined. Glares at Len like he already knows the retort that's on the tip of his tongue. “I won’t. He’s going to be fine.”
And Len can't help it, he feels grateful. He's got a colorful past that he's been tapdancing around best he can, but he knows it will catch him. Knows it will catch Mal if he's not careful, and he can't have that. Barry's assurance is hot air, there's no guarantees, and yet Len finds himself assured by it all the same.
Damn it, anyway. How many times does Len need to learn that he can't ignore Barry's bullshit until he does something about it?
Then, Barry stands up, looming above Len and Mal. The Flash figurine is in one hand. The other he presses to Len's shoulder, his hand warm against Len's shirt.
“I know my opinion might not mean much,” Barry murmurs. “But I think it’s really —“ Barry clears his throat, squeezes Len’s shoulder as if he needs to ground himself. “I’m really proud of what you’re doing here. And I’m sorry, again, for just barging in. I’ll — next time I’ll…”
Len doesn’t need Barry Allen’s validation. He doesn’t. But he can’t help but feel a bit of relief that the hero of Center City doesn’t think he’s a complete disaster, that he isn’t going to try to take the kid away from him before he even starts. There’s many that would.
“Thanks," Len says, and he means it. "And don’t worry about the barging in. It’s your signature.”
Barry rolls his eyes at that, but he smiles, too. “Goodnight, Len.”
“Goodnight, Barry.”
Barry’s shaky as he exits Snart’s house.
Snart’s house. It still feels weird to think about it, to take in it all. To see Snart so domestic. To see him cooking dinner and have shoes at the door and no Cold Gun out on the table.
In a pitiful, shameful little thought, Barry can’t help but think it’s everything that he ever wanted. To have a nice little home, with the family and the drawings on the wall and the toys on the floor. It’s where Barry thought he’d be by now, but…
Well, he and Iris didn’t make it. And that’s okay. It is. But that doesn’t mean Barry doesn’t still mourn what could have been. What he's witnessing, now, with Snart. Someone who he thought that if he ever so much as tried something with, he'd have to give up all those desires. But now...
Fuck, Barry's flirting with disaster with nothing more than these daydreams. He'll be taking disaster out to dinner if he does anything more.
He really wants to do something more, though.
Before he can dwell anymore on it, Barry flashes back to STAR Labs. It’s familiar, and that in and of itself is a comfort, but it’s empty. The lights are dimmed to their lowest setting, but it’s still bright, the lights not often powered down for theft and security purposes. The room is cold, and smells sterile, Caitlin must have spilled ammonia because the scent is stinging.
It’s a stark difference from the house Barry spent the last few hours. The warm coziness of food and blankets everywhere, the excited sound of a child running around the house. A different kind of energy, frantic and wild, but thrilling. Here, though Barry's got his speedster warmth, he still finds himself shivering.
Borrowing one of Cisco’s sweaters he’s got on the backs of all the office chairs, he wraps it around himself and checks out any work that came in while he was gone. Not that he’s paying attention. His mind’s elsewhere.
He tried to be quiet about it, and he’s pretty sure Snart doesn’t know, but Barry watched him tuck Mal into bed. It almost brought Barry to tears. And he knows he’s a sap, but Barry did, he wanted to sob.
He just didn’t expect it. He hadn’t seen anything like that in a long time, and it came from Snart.
Everyone doubted Barry when he said that he saw good in him, but what Barry watched? That was a good man. That was a better man than most, in Barry’s humble opinion. Because, he can see that Snart’s scared to death. Snart’s scared to death and exhausted to the point where he almost admitted it out loud to Barry tonight, but he’s still got enough Snart in there that he won’t. Doesn’t mean Barry can’t see it.
Yet he’s doing it all anyway. He’s trying his damndest, and that, Barry will stand by. Cisco and Caitlin may have choice words with him, but he'll have words of his own.
Also, after playing with the kid for an hour, if Len needs a babysitter — he doesn’t even have to ask. Barry will volunteer. Immediately. Any time that he can.
Barry’s phone buzzes, and it’s a text from Iris.
Oh my god that’s Snart’s??? He’s SO CUTE.
(Okay, so maybe Barry took a selfie with Mal and sent it to Iris. He had to tell somebody. Mal is adorable. He’s got Snart’s sharp stare packed into those electric green eyes, paired with the chubby cheeks and little hands as he carries his little army men from place to place? Barry couldn’t help it, he had to.) Barry pulls out his phone and smiles at the picture of him and Mal and one of the paratroopers he's clutching.
One of the paratroopers…
Shit. Barry reaches into his front pocket.
Sure enough, there’s that red plastic little army man. He tugs it out and cups it in his palm, and the little figurine has him laughing again.
A little version of him in his pocket. Well, in red-acrylic form. But it’s still him, and he would have paid money to see Snart’s first reaction to that. It was probably solid gold.
But if it’s that important to Mal, Barry can’t keep this. Dipping into the speed force once again, he makes his way back to Snart’s. He doesn’t bother with the door, he’s not planning on staying. He’ll leave the red figurine with the others.
Except when he gets there, it doesn’t look like anything’s moved. All the lights are still on, the plates are still in the sink. The house is quiet. Listening for movement, Barry takes careful steps, but he doesn't hear anything.
The door to Mal’s bedroom is still open.
And maybe Barry shouldn’t, but he just wants to make sure nothing bad happened. So he sticks his head inside.
The nightlight still glows its myriad of pastel colors. Mal is still sound asleep, hasn’t moved.
Len, however, is now asleep at his side. He’s curled around Mal like a dragon protecting its treasure, his arm slung over the little boy and his head pressed into the pillow that now he and Mal are sharing.
Barry’s heart throbs painfully in his chest. His cheeks feel warm just looking at the two of them.
He knows what Iris is going to say when he tells her later. She’s going to give her that all-knowing look, and she’s going to warn him: Careful, Barry.
And Barry knows that he should heed that warning. It’s a good warning. This situation is ripe for Barry’s heart to melt out of his body and drip into a gutter. For it to be swept away with sewage until Barry is physically or emotionally broken and is laid up in the Med-Bay at STAR Labs. He's naive and gullible and a romantic, and he knows and accepts these things about himself, but it comes with a danger for moments just like this.
Barry will say to Iris, “I know.” Because he does know. He does.
Knowing is only half the battle, though. The other half is using it as a weapon against all the warm, teary-eyed feelings he’s having. The last bastion of rationality before Barry completely submits to the cacophony of emotions swirling around his chest.
He knows all the arguments. They’re the same ones that Cisco and Caitlin and Iris and Joe have been parroting since the beginning: Len is a career criminal. He left Barry betrayed and devastated on the airstrip. He does things for profit and profit only.
But looking at Snart now, that isn’t true. There’s no way. And so, that little bastion is starting to crumble, because Barry can’t help but wonder: are these thoughts really so bad? Is it wrong to fall for the way someone cares for someone else?
As carefully as Barry can physically manage, he sets the Flash army man on the dresser at the front of Mal’s room.
He needs to leave before he completely crumbles, because he needs time. Len needs time. They both need time.
But maybe. Maybe someday.
If he drops a blanket over Snart, that’s just being gracious since Len hosted him at his house for a while. And if Barry cleans up the house at flash speed, shuts off all the lights, and closes all the blinds so they can get more shut eye… Well, Barry's just trying to help.