Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Here's to Dante's safe recovery," Barry said. He held up his milkshake and tapped the plastic cup against Cisco's. "And another victory for the good guys. May the next one be even better."

"Victory," Cisco repeated. "Is that what you're calling it?" He sighed. "I know you guys keep saying you don't blame me—"

"We don't blame you," Harrison insisted. "I thought we all made that perfectly clear."

"Even Snart admitted he had you in a tight spot," Barry said, "an impossible choice between two people you care about. Him knowing who I am isn't nearly as bad as letting him hurt your brother. I would've made the same choice."

"—and Snart hasn't done anything since your little... challenge tonight," Cisco continued. "But a part of me still wonders if I should've just tried to smother him with a pillow."

"Cisco!" Caitlin protested. "You are better than that... better than him. Don't you dare suggest anything like that again."

"Doesn't matter. He made it perfectly clear it wouldn't work, that even if I kept him from struggling it'd take too long to do any real damage."

"Hmm..." Harrison frowned. "To say nothing of the impossibility of having that opportunity, of keeping him from struggling long enough." Caitlin glared at him. "Not that I'm condoning such a plan," he added hastily. "Oh, look at the time... shouldn't all of you be heading home?"

Barry zipped around and gathered up the trash. "Yeah, you're probably right. See you tomorrow, Cisco." He waved and left.

Caitlin hugged Cisco. "Don't you ever scare us like that again," she said. "I'll see you both tomorrow."

Cisco nodded. "It's funny," he said, when he and Harrison were the only ones left. He played around with the remains of his burger while Harrison continued eating. "But I actually did have the opportunity. 'This guy are sick.' Real sick."

"There is some debate over whether 'evil' can be considered a mental illness...." Harrison admitted.

"I'm not disagreeing with you," Cisco replied, "but I don't mean that kind of sick. I mean, one minute he was fine, he's ordering me to build those guns, next he's telling Heat Wave to keep an eye on us so he can take a nap. Not even an hour later, Lisa ropes me into helping her bring him lunch and the guy looks like he's on his deathbed."

Harrison frowned. "Barry faced him twice today. He never mentioned anything like that."

Cisco shook his head. "Nah, Barry probably wouldn't have noticed. See, another hour after I saw him like that, Snart looked fine. Tired, but not sick. Weird, right? Anway, Lisa had left me alone with him for a few minutes, and I don't think he even knew I was there."

"Sounds like a trap."

"Yeah, that's what I'd figured," Cisco said. "Can't figure out why, though. I was already building the guns." He hesitated. He didn't give a damn about Leonard... but seeing Lisa scared like that still bothered him. Would it be worth it to look into this? Or could the team see it as a betrayal? He thought about it and came to a decision. "Which, by the way, as if the day hadn't been weird enough... According to Lisa, the main reason he wanted those guns wasn't to go after the Santinis."

"No?"

Harrison didn't sound the least bit interested. That was fine; if nothing else, Cisco could at least vent a little.

"Nope. According to her, when he first got sick, he got so delirious he seemed to think he'd need them to keep Mardon from taking out the city with a tidal wave."

Harrison froze with the last bite of burger halfway to his mouth. "Tidal wave?"

"Yeah, like Mardon was ranting about when Barry captured him."

"Sick Snart is altruistic Snart?" Harrison muttered before finishing the burger.

Cisco scoffed. "Hardly. Apparently even a cold-blooded killer has people he cares about." Like Mick and Lisa, obviously. And maybe this "Amber" Lisa had mentioned, though the police had found nothing of interest in that direction.

"So what was the weird part? If they'd discussed this attack and Snart didn't approve—"

"That's the weird part," Cisco replied. "Lisa swore up and down that Snart doesn't even know who Mardon is." He shrugged. "She could have been lying, but she looked pretty weirded out when I told her that Mardon really can control the weather. She said the whole thing about going after him and needing the guns started when Snart got sick, and she and Mick went along with it to keep him from getting upset until he was feeling better."

"Really," Harrison muttered. He frowned. "When did he get sick? Did she happen to say?"

"Um... this morning," Cisco replied. "Lisa said he'd lost control of his motorcycle, got himself banged up... I don't know, I suppose he could've hit his head or something. Although those bruises..." He frowned. "She seemed to think he'd smacked himself on the steering column, but there's no way he could've gotten those bruises that way without breaking himself in half. Looked more like something had gone through him. We haven't seen any metahumans who can do that, have we?"

"Hmm...." Harrison shook his head. "Not that I'm aware of. Though if he was affected by the explosion, he might be sensitive to other metahumans. Sensed Mardon's power, perhaps?" He shrugged. "If this started because of Mardon's attack, but nobody knew what was happening to him, it could certainly look like he was delirious."

"Nah, no way," Cisco said. "I suggested that, too, but Lisa said he's had this, uh..." What did she call it? "These fever dreams for a long time. That the first time it was that bad was maybe fifteen years ago."

"And you believed her."

"I wasn't exaggerating when I said how bad he looked," Cisco replied. "And Lisa was scared." He chose not to mention that she was just as scared of Leonard hurting her as she was of losing him.

Harrison looked at Cisco for a long time before apparently coming to a decision of his own. "Can you hack into his medical records?" he asked.

"Yeah, probably." Cisco hesitated. He didn't want to sound too eager. "Although... it's weird, but I'm not sure it's that weird."

"Maybe not," Harrison agreed. "The whole thing could be one big trap; maybe Lisa was just setting you up, waiting to see what you'd do with that information. Or maybe..." He smiled. "Maybe, she really was as scared as she seemed, scared enough to inadvertently give us something we could use."

Cisco returned the smile. "Yeah, I think I can find something. Want me to call the others back? We could at least use Caitlin's expertise—"

"No. No, let's keep this between us for now. See what turns up before we decide if it has any value to the team." Harrison gestured and followed Cisco to the computer. "While you're checking those records, see if there's any mention of him having an eidetic memory. Or maybe a photographic memory; some people still call it that, I think."

Cisco turned around to peer at Harrison. "Speaking of weird, why do you want to know that?"

"It's not weird, it's just... okay it's weird. But it's just a theory. Never mind."

"Well, no, I mean..." Cisco shook his head. "Snart told me himself he's got an eidetic memory. When he told me the pillow wouldn't work; me and Dante were arguing about that in Spanish, stupidly right in front of him, and he completely freaked us out when he told us how easy he found it to remember things like languages." He shivered. "Honestly, I'm surprised he didn't kill us on the spot for that. Lucky for us he thought it was funny."

"Yeah, sounds real funny. Anyway... fifteen years ago, you said? Start there."

Cisco nodded. It only took a few minutes to find the beginnings of a paper trail. "Okay, let's see, he gets grabbed in the middle of a heist, cops said he was unconscious when they found him. He got violent when he woke up—"

"That's hardly surprising."

"Yeah, except apparently he was convinced his old man was attacking him. He got sent off for psych evaluation, and transferred to...." Cisco's eyes widened at the name. "I thought that place was an urban legend," he whispered. "But if even half the stories are true... No wonder Lisa was upset."

Harrison's frown deepened as he glanced over the document. "All that because he'd gotten sick. Almost makes you wonder what sort of man he'd be today if he hadn't."

Cisco nodded. "Who knows? But it doesn't explain why he got sick. Says here even the doctors who treated him while he was locked up at Iron Heights have no idea." He shook his head. "There's got to be another record somewhere. Let me—"

"It's a start," Harrison said. "Listen, why don't you go check up on your brother? Then get some rest. Let me see what else is here for now."

Cisco nodded and stood up to leave.

"And Cisco? Don't tell the others. Not yet. Like you said, this still doesn't tell us anything."

"Okay."

—FLASH SIDEWAYS: ENEMY—

Cisco kept checking the records, day after day, waiting until Barry and Caitlin left so they wouldn't ask too many questions. He was no longer sure whether he was doing this to help Lisa or to help the Flash, but Harrison kept insisting that he keep quiet about it until he'd found something they could use.

But even though he kept looking for two weeks, the records simply never led to anything they could use. Not that he could recognize as such.

The records never told him what kind of "treatment" he received in that place, so aside from various urban legends, there was no way to even guess how that treatment might have influenced him.

And aside from getting a chuckle over finding out that Leonard had kept hallucinating that he worked for Star Labs—a chuckle he quickly stifled when Harrison pointed out that the arrest had occurred the same day Tess Morgan had died—there was simply nothing useful Cisco could find about his condition.

Chapter Text

The sun was an hour from touching down when the three Rogues arrived at one of their preferred safe houses.

Leonard stopped walking about halfway down the driveway. There was no obvious sign of danger, and he hadn't gotten an alert from the security systems, but he held up a hand to stop Mick and Lisa. "Something doesn't feel right," he muttered.

Without a word, Mick stepped forward and examined the door with his expert eye. He eventually shook his head. "No wiring that I can see," he said. "No trigger, nothing. If someone's rigged it, they're better than I am."

Leonard nodded and ran his own eye over it. No sign that the lock was picked, either. He reached for the doorknob and felt his hair trying to stand on end. Oddly enough, the sensation was completely separate from that danger sense.

He frowned. What was that, static? But it wasn't that dry out....

He swapped out his winter gloves for a pair of rubber gloves, just in case. But when he touched the knob, the shock still hurt. He yanked his hand back and bit off a curse.

He shook his hand a few times until he could feel something besides the bite of static, and tried again.

The door was locked, just as it should have been. He grimaced; the house looked normal enough to the untrained eye, but all of the outer doors on this place required a key on both sides. If someone had broken in, it would be damn hard to hide that fact.

But a sour feeling twisted in his gut, and he activated his cold gun. He heard the other two guns switching on as he unlocked the door with his own key.

He slowly swung the door open. Lisa peeked around him and gasped.

The place was destroyed. Furniture slashed or broken, their various collections shattered... Leonard glanced in the kitchen and found that even the guts of the fridge had been ripped free and the food dumped onto the floor and left to spoil.

Leonard could feel his anger beginning to boil up. It wouldn't have irritated him so much if this was one of his own places, but this was Amber's safe haven!

"Whoever did this is going to pay," Mick snarled. He took a step towards the stairs.

"Wait," Leonard said. "Whoever did this might still be here."

Mick nodded, and he waited for Leonard and Lisa to join him so they could investigate the next floor together.

Leonard watched their backs, eyes darting to every shadow and flicker of movement, as Mick stalked up to the first landing. Then the next, and the next.

Every room was torn apart. There wasn't a single item that hadn't visibly suffered from the assault.

Except the attic. The computers looked intact at first glance, but they refused to turn on. Leonard zapped himself on the grounding strip before opening one up, but he couldn't find any damage that he recognized as such.

He sighed. The files and his uplink should still be safe—he refused to trust any sensitive data to a single fallible machine—but they'd need Hartley to fix the computers... if they could be fixed.

"Looks like they've been fried," Leonard muttered.

"Fried?" Mick echoed.

Leonard nodded. He held his hand back out to the grounding strip and watched as sparks gathered again. "Static electricity," he said. "Only time I've seen it that bad was around the Flash. Maybe not even then."

"I applaud your superior powers of deduction," an odd voice sneered.

The three Rogues whirled to face what only seconds ago had been an empty corner.

Lisa was the first to fire... a non-lethal shot as Leonard had insisted, intended to trap the intruder rather than kill.

But there was a quick blur of red and yellow, and the intruder rushed to the side before the molten substance reached him.

Mick shot a plume of fire at the intruder's next location, waving the gun back and forth as the speedster seemed to multiply.

"Mick, Lisa, stop!" Leonard ordered. "He's just making you waste your charge." He watched the multiples carefully... there was almost a pattern to how they flickered in and out of sight....

There. He took one careful shot and the speedster was on the floor, his legs trapped in ice. The others vanished as if they'd never existed.

Mick and Lisa moved together to examine their prize while Leonard used his cold gun to put out the fires Mick had started.

"Mirages?" Lisa said. "Neat trick. But you're still no match for my brother."

The speedster nodded. "I knew he had an eidetic memory, but I didn't expect him to memorize my movements that quickly. I won't make that mistake next time."

"Next time?" Mick scoffed. "What's the matter, Flash? Len's beat you so many times already. You really think a new costume and a cheap party trick makes any difference?"

Leonard frowned. New costume? The colors did seem different, but it had been difficult to tell with how fast the speedster had been moving.

He abandoned the cinders and rejoined his team to get a closer look.

The man in yellow didn't say anything more. He just waited until they got closer... then he vibrated, melting the ice that imprisoned him, and knocked Mick and Lisa to the floor.

Leonard felt that rush of vertigo, and found himself pinned to the remains of the dining room table, a pair of yellow-gloved hands wrapped around his throat, before any of the Rogues were aware that the speedster had even moved.

"Lenny!"

Leonard tried to pry those hands loose, but every time he managed to get a decent grip, the speedster merely vibrated free. He couldn't quite stop himself from whimpering at the sensation; those vibrations were not gentle, and he was beginning to worry that the speedster might shred his throat before he crushed it.

Or worse... the speedster wasn't trying to crush his throat, he was cutting off part of the blood flow to his brain. And he was barely trying at that.

Leonard's struggles were getting weaker as the darkness crept into his vision, but he was still conscious enough to recognize the strength in that grip, to realize that the speedster was allowing him to remain conscious.

And to calculate how quickly he would bleed out if those vibrations got any faster.

A movement to the side caught his eye. Mick was sneaking into position, looking for a chance to shoot the speedster without hurting Leonard.

The speedster adjusted his grip, finally allowing Leonard to breathe again, but the thief recognized the new grip too well to feel any relief.

"Try it," the speedster dared. He turned his head to face the arsonist. "If you want to see how easily I can snap his neck, then go right ahead and pull that trigger."

Mick scowled, and aimed his gun.

"Wait, Mick, d—yah!" Leonard cried out as he felt his head wrenched to one side.

He choked on a sob at the pain—the speedster hadn't pulled him hard enough to cause any serious damage, but damn it hurt!—and at the fear, the realization that the speedster could have done so much worse if he'd wanted to.

"Well?" the speedster snapped.

Mick's scowl vanished, replaced with a sick look of fear that mirrored the one on Lisa's face, as it finally dawned on them that the speedster was not bluffing. He pointed the gun away.

The speedster snickered and looked back at his victim. "We need to talk," he said.

The last thing Leonard heard was Lisa screaming his name again before....

Before he felt the rush of air, that already-familiar sensation of being whisked away by the speedster, and then gravity took over. He slammed into a sloped surface, rolled off, and barely managed to catch hold of a bar below.

He couldn't feel anything but empty air under his feet, and the speedster's chokehold had left him so weak he could barely hang on to the bar. He twisted around as much as his hurt neck allowed to search for a safer landing down below.

And immediately regretted it.

He swung his legs, kicking at the cable car, desperate to find anything to use as a foothold and terrifyingly aware that with every move the rubber gloves slipped just a little bit more. He finally managed to catch one foot on the door and push it open, and he shimmied along the safety bar until he reached the opening and could pull himself inside.

He collapsed in the far corner, gasping and shaking.

He lay there for seven minutes before he dared crawl over to the door to close it. There should've been a lever somewhere meant for the job, but it was too dark to search for it. He ended up pushing his weight against the door to shut it... easier from inside the car, at least, but nearly as nerve-wracking as being outside had been.

That hazard taken care of, he finally hauled himself, still shaking, to his feet.

He nearly blacked out from the pain when he tried to turn his head, and he had to actually lean out over the railing to look around.

He could just barely see something red and yellow, bright colors against the fading light, zipping around the rocks more than a thousand feet below. That damned speedster... probably annoyed that Leonard hadn't fallen.

"This isn't funny, Flash!" Leonard called down as loudly as he could. "You think I was joking about the uplink? Get me down from here! Flash!"

No response. No indication that the speedster had heard.

He was simply too far away. Leonard might have been able to make himself heard at that distance under other circumstances, though he doubted it, and everything hurt too much for him to try any harder.

He pushed himself away from the edge, groaned at the twinge in his neck, and patted himself down. No weapons, but he still had a phone with him. He flipped it open and dialed a number the Rogues reserved for emergencies.

The phone only rang for half a second. "Lenny?" Lisa said. "Lenny? Are you okay? Where are you?"

"I... I don't know," Leonard replied in a rough voice. "Where I am," he added, realizing belatedly that letting on how scared he was would only scare her worse.

Damn, even breathing hurt. The cold wasn't helping; if he hadn't been wearing his parka when the speedster had grabbed him he'd be frozen stiff, and his fingers were already numb inside the rubber gloves. "I'm in the mountains," he said when he felt like he could control his voice a little better. "That damned metafreak left me stranded in a cable car hanging in the middle of nowhere." Best not to tell her he'd been left dangling outside.

"Cable car?" Lisa echoed. Her voice sounded a little less shaken now. "Where the hell did he take you?"

"With that sunset? Some other time zone." He glanced at the phone's clock. "Looks like I'm an hour ahead of you." Tempting, sometimes, to get a proper phone, despite how much easier it would be for the cops to track him. At least then maybe he could tell them exactly where he was... or as close to exact as the GPS would be capable of finding him.

"Ahead?" he heard Mick repeat in the background. "You trying to say this guy time traveled or something?"

Leonard rolled his eyes. His friend could be so stupid at times.

"He means he's to the east, dummy," Lisa replied. "One hour ahead, one time zone to the east. Lenny, is there anything that can tell us where you are? There might not be that many places with cable cars around, not with working cell towers, anyway, but if you could at least narrow it down so I knew where to start the trace...."

"Yeah," Leonard replied. "I think I see a sign in here...." He turned the phone around and pointed the dim screen at the sign.

It didn't give a location that he could decipher; if the sign mentioned a name, he couldn't read it in the little light his phone gave off. Not that he could see without twisting his neck further than he wanted to. But he found what appeared to be a manufacturing logo.

"The car's made by a 'Norwood Designs,'" he said.

"Okay, hang on." Lisa's voice became distant as she set the phone down, and Leonard could hear the clicking of a keyboard. He smiled; she never went anywhere without that tiny computer. "I'm not finding any place that uses Norwood cable cars. Wait, it looks like you're at some ski resort that closed down years ago because of design flaws. The whole place was one big safety haz...oh, god, Lenny."

Leonard stared at the door. He thought about how easily it had opened for him, and worse yet... he couldn't remember it latching when he'd pushed it closed. And the windows... nothing but the "safety" bar to keep the occupants from falling out if something went wrong.

The car started swinging in the wind.

"Get me out of here," he whispered.

"They'll never get to you in time," a voice said from behind him.

Leonard whirled around to face the intruder.

The speedster grabbed Leonard's phone and tore it to pieces with a blur of his hands.

Leonard stumbled backwards, trying to get as far from the speedster as possible... but there was nowhere to go. "F...Flash?" he said. But no... yellow suit, red lightning? Not to mention he was a full two inches shorter than Barry.

Believe me, I wish I knew who he was.

"Not even close," the speedster replied, and he took off his mask. "I'm the Reverse Flash."

"Doctor Wells?"

The man shook his head. "Wrong again. My name is Eobard Thawne. I am from the twenty-second century... and you are starting to annoy me." He sighed. "Abducting Caitlin and putting Barry's training on hold just to feed your ego, forcing Cisco to betray him, and now this? Blackmailing the Flash? I wish I could say I was surprised, but I am disappointed."

"So... what? You're here to b—beg me not to hurt them?" Leonard asked. He had to fight the urge to start laughing; he knew once he started, it would be very hard to stop it from turning into hysterical tears. "You want to m—make sure they fulfill their des—destiny?" He shook his head, and winced as the motion pulled at his hurt neck. This was crazy....

But was it really any crazier than metahumans?

"Defiant to the very end," Harrison—Eobard—said. Leonard shivered at the phrasing. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. You wouldn't have accomplished anywhere near as much as you have if you gave in to threats so easily. But you're still wrong, Snart. I don't care about their 'destinies.' I don't care about their futures. I don't care about them... they're a means to an end, all of them. The Flash and I have been enemies so long, if his friends have to die a little sooner than expected to ensure that end, then so be it."

He's out for the Flash's blood. None of us knows why.

But that didn't make any sense. "He's not... the kid idolizes you."

"I can see this is going to take a while," Eobard said. "Why don't you sit down?" He walked over to where Leonard was still frozen to the spot and shoved him down into a seat. "Sit." Then a blur of yellow and red made the cable car rock more violently, and he was gone.

Leonard clung to the safety bar, only relaxing slightly once the rocking slowed down, but every gust of wind had him tightening his grip.

Within seconds Eobard was back. The car began rocking again with his arrival, and Leonard yelped and clutched at the bar again until the motion ceased.

Eobard smirked. "Oh.... sorry, you're not afraid of heights, are you?"

Afraid... of heights? No. Never. One of his and Lisa's favorite defenses while growing up had been climbing somewhere that their father or the various schoolyard bullies couldn't follow.

But being trapped in a small space with a lunatic, and the only escape was a thousand-foot drop? He'd have to be stupid not to be worried.

He forced himself to let go of the safety bar and pressed into the seat, desperate for every tiny bit of distance he could put between himself and the speedster.

"Coffee?" Eobard asked, offering a steaming mug to Leonard.

Leonard didn't even look at the mug.

Eobard shrugged and took a sip before he relaxed into one of the seats on the opposite side of the car. "I won't go into the boring details of why I do the things I do," he said. "Suffice to say that from the Flash's perspective, he and I have been enemies since he was eleven... ever since I tried to kill him and got his mother instead."

Leonard's eyes narrowed at that admission. "His father is in prison for that!" he growled. He knew how it felt to be imprisoned for a crime he hadn't committed; his own father had pulled that very trick on him far too many times to keep him in line. Leonard, for all his own crimes, for all his hatred of the man, had refused time and time again to return the favor.

But they, at least, really were criminals. For someone who was truly innocent to bear that burden, and all because this Eobard Thawne had tried to murder a child at that....

Leonard could feel the rage building up again, slowly burning away his fear of this speedster.

"Interesting," Eobard murmured between sips.

"I assume there's a reason Barry's still alive," Leonard spat. "He clearly doesn't know who you are, what you've done to him... but he's certainly given you plenty of chances to kill him. If you really don't care about him...."

"Cruel irony," Eobard replied. "It's as simple as that. See, shortly after I killed Nora Allen, I discovered I'd lost my connection to the Speed Force. Oh, obviously I'm still fast, but not as fast as I used to be. Not fast enough." He shrugged. "I wanted to kill Barry before he became the Flash, but now I need the Flash to get me home to my time. And since I didn't plan to grow old in this godforsaken era, I need him to get his speed a lot sooner than he did in the history I'm familiar with. So after I killed Nora, I murdered Tess Morgan and..." he gestured down at himself "Harrison Wells, and I took Wells' place to get things started." He snickered. "It's almost a pity, really; in the history I know, Tess had a habit of rescuing strays... I think you might've actually enjoyed working for her and Wells at Star Labs."

Leonard shuddered at the memory triggered by that last remark. True, those hallucinations back then had been very enjoyable... the only good thing he'd had for nearly three years. The treatments, on the other hand, had been nothing short of a nightmare. "I take it you've seen my medical records," he muttered.

"Yes," Eobard replied. "Cisco must really like your sister for him to put so much energy into finding out what's been making you sick, especially right after she helped you kidnap him and his brother. But he's no medical expert—that'd be Caitlin's job—and he certainly doesn't know what I do. And if I'd known back then that you had an eidetic memory, or that you remembered working for Star Labs, I might have tried hiring you myself and finding out just how much I could pick your brain."

Leonard had the strangest impression Eobard hadn't meant that metaphorically. He shuddered again.

"But now?" Eobard continued with a sigh of regret. "Well, sometimes it's too late for even a time traveler to change things. And right now all I'm concerned about is making sure Barry gets fast enough without you getting in the way."

CRACK!

Leonard's eyes snapped upwards to the roof of the car where the sound had come from. They widened when he saw what, even in the darkness, was unmistakably a jagged hole exposing the connecting cable.

"No...." he whispered. It wasn't hard to guess what Eobard was prepared to do... what the speedster was clearly capable of doing. He looked back down at Eobard again to see him holding the missing piece of the roof. "Please... please, no."

The speedster grinned. "Oh, and for the record... I don't have to beg." He tossed the piece aside, zipped back up to the roof, and sliced through the cable with his bare hands.

Chapter Text

Leonard shifted, slowly and painfully, to prop himself up on one elbow, and he stared at the wreckage of the cable car. He tried and failed to shake off the sight of its ten-second plunge... a plunge he would have joined had Eobard Thawne not snatched him back out again at the very last second. Being dragged down the mountainside—and if how battered he felt was any indication, "dragged" was the correct word—wasn't the alternative he would have preferred, but it at least meant he was alive.

For now.

"I don't unders—stand," he stammered, once he'd stopped shaking enough to manage coherent speech. "You w—want to kill m—me... but then you s—save me?" He didn't even try to fight the tears as they began to fall.

Although if he'd been thinking clearly, it would have been all too simple to understand. Eobard might be the type to make sure his victims knew exactly why he was trying to kill them, but his behavior was more consistent with someone who used violence to make a point... a point that would've been lost if Leonard had died.

"A quick death is too good for you," Eobard replied.

Leonard pulled his eyes away from the wreckage to stare at the speedster. "That was supposed to be quick?"

"Besides," Eobard continued, "you just got abducted by a speedster. How long do you think it will take your Rogues to start talking if I killed you now? Later, maybe, in the middle of some heist..." He shrugged. "Accidents happen to the best of us. Especially to those of us who don't know when to leave well enough alone. But you...."

Leonard was flipped over onto his back before he even saw the speedster move. He couldn't move... something pressed down hard on his chest—

No, not on his chest. Eobard plunged both of his hands, those same hands that had blurred fast enough to cut through the cable, inside his chest. And Leonard didn't dare fight back, not without running the risk that those hands would shred something vital.

Leonard whimpered as he felt his bones rattle with the vibrations.

"I'm sure I can trust you to behave," Eobard said. "Because if anything, and I mean anything happens to Barry Allen before I'm ready for him, then I will tear your sister to pieces in front of you.... and then you will go back to that asylum to be treated for whatever possessed you to murder her in such a horrible manner."

The vibrations came faster.

Leonard's whimpers turned into screams.

He didn't stop screaming until he was hoarse.

—FLASH SIDEWAYS: ENEMY—

"Look, I'm not saying he can't be caught off guard," Mick said. "I'm not stupid enough to pretend that didn't just happen. But this is your brother we're talking about." He risked a glance to the passenger seat, but Lisa still hadn't lost that worried expression. "The Flash can't beat him. You know that. And even if this is some other speed freak, just some copycat looking to make a name for himself by taking on the Flash's nemesis..." He shook his head. "It just ain't gonna happen. Len's too smart to let someone like that get the best of him."

"I know," Lisa said. She peered through the darkness, and tried to watch for the turnoff to the airfield. "I know that, my head knows that. It's my heart that's always afraid of losing—Mick!"

Mick glanced back towards the road to see what had prompted that scream, and immediately slammed on the brakes.

The man in yellow kept one arm wrapped around Leonard's throat, the only thing keeping the Rogue on his feet. He waited until the last second before dropping Leonard in the truck's path and speeding away.

The truck finally slid, squealing, to a stop. Mick stared into the darkness, his eyes darting to everything even half-revealed by the headlights, but he couldn't see Leonard anywhere. "I didn't.... did I?"

Lisa tore off her seatbelt and jumped out of the truck. "Lenny... Lenny!"

Mick had to pry his fingers loose from the steering wheel before he could follow her. "Is he okay?" he asked. He ran over to where Lisa was crouched over her brother, right in one of the truck's blind spots. "Tell me I didn't...."

"I don't... I don't think you hit him," Lisa replied. "I need a light."

Mick nodded and ran back to the truck to retrieve a flashlight. He aimed its beam over Leonard, illuminating every fresh scrape and bruise, and easily picking out a disturbingly large bloodstain on his chest.

Leonard appeared to be conscious. But he was shaking violently, sobbing, and the feeble noises escaping from his throat sounded very much like he was trying to scream.

One of Lisa's hands flew up to cover her mouth as she stared at the wreck her brother had become. "Oh, god, Lenny, what did he do to you?"

Chapter Text

Leonard did not possess the Flash's capacity for healing, but he healed quickly enough and soon returned to a semblance of his usual routine.

He continued to plan his heists, but his injuries meant he had to do so remotely, and let Mick and Lisa handle all of the field work.

He continued to keep tabs on the Flash... but now he made sure his Rogues stayed out of the speedster's way, even if that meant dropping his plans at the merest hint that the Flash's friends were around.

As it turned out, that wasn't the best way to deal with Eobard's threat.

After the third time in as many days he'd forced the Rogues to abandon a stakeout, Mick snatched up his gun and stalked off, a disgusted look on his face.

"Where do you think you're going?" Lisa snapped.

"We can't keep doing this, Lisa," Mick growled back. "I'm putting an end to it. The Flash needs to die."

"No!"

Mick and Lisa turned around to see Leonard staring at them with a look of horror on his face.

"You're supposed to be in bed," Lisa scolded. "Having your ribs melted together by a speed freak is kind of new medical territory, and I know you don't want the doctor breaking them again. Especially not when he can't even sedate you for it. And we are not supposed to let anything upset him!" she added with a glare for Mick.

"Yeah, I know," Mick replied. "Why do you think I want to kill the Flash?"

"Mick, you can't," Leonard pleaded in a broken voice.

"And why the hell not?" Mick asked. He had to force himself not to snap at the other man. "It's his fault you're such a mess. Why shouldn't I—Len!" Too late, he realized what he was looking at. His gun clattered to the floor and he rushed forward, to guide the other man gently to the floor before Leonard could collapse on his own. "It's okay, Len," he murmured. "We're here for you. It's going to be okay."

Lisa fetched the portable oxygen mask that Leonard hadn't needed in years, but had started clinging to as a lifeline ever since the speedster had attacked him. Together they provided the physical support Leonard needed until the panic attack ran its course and left him sobbing in Mick's arms.

"It's not the Flash," Leonard whispered over and over, his voice muffled by the mask, as his tears continued to drip down. "It's not the Flash. It's not the Flash."

Mick and Lisa shared a worried look.

"I didn't think anyone but dad could scare him like this," Lisa muttered.

"Me neither," Mick replied. "Okay, Len. If you don't want me hunting him down, then I won't. But the next time he comes after us... I'll be damned if I'm going to let him hurt you again."

—FLASH SIDEWAYS: ENEMY—

That had been the only time Mick had suggested killing the Flash, and neither he nor Lisa had ever tried to find out why Leonard was so insistent. And Leonard never tried to tell them. To them, his panic had been reason enough to drop the subject.

Leonard's physical condition improved quickly enough, though his neck still pained him when he turned his head too quickly, and breathing hurt for a long time. But it took several weeks more before he felt that it was safe enough to leave Mick or Lisa's company now and again.

The worst part was, he couldn't even tell if he stuck close to keep an eye on them... or to make sure they could keep an eye on him.

Not that it mattered either way. Eobard had snatched him from their midst once before; there was nothing to stop him from doing it again.

This realization did not, unfortunately, make it any easier to stop himself from jumping at shadows every time he was alone.

"Give me another one," he said to the bartender in Saints and Sinners. "Ice cold." He didn't normally have more than one drink in a day. Hated the thought of becoming a drunk like his father and had never before dared to take that risk. But ever since Eobard had attacked him, he'd needed an easy way to settle his nerves, and today an extra glass or two, or even a second bottle, sounded like just the tool for the job.

The bartender nodded and walked away to get his drink.

Leonard's danger sense never went off, but he suppressed a shiver at the sensation of eyes on him. He glanced at the reflective surface of the glasses on the bar to get a hint of who was behind him.

"Well, well, well," he said, turning around to face Barry. "If it isn't the Scarlet Speedster." He forced himself to smile at the kid; just because Eobard still had him rattled, there was no reason to let Barry see it. No reason to let the Flash have any more of an edge than the Reverse Flash had already given him.

Besides, from the look on his face, Barry wasn't much more comfortable being here than Leonard was seeing him here.

"We need to talk," Barry said.