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batsutousaiTitle: Only Half the Rainbow
Fandom: CW's The Flash & Legends of Tomorrow
Author: Batsutousai
Rating: Mature
Pairings: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart, Barry Allen/Mick Rory, Barry Allen/Iris West, Barry Allen/Mick Rory/Leonard Snart
Warnings: Soulmate AU, canon character death, grief, PTSD, alcohol dependency, verbal abuse, canon-typical violence, slow burn, happy ending
Summary: The thing no one ever tells you about being the hero, is that you always lose something when you're saving the day. And, some days, when you finally make it home, it turns out you've lost the only thing that ever mattered.
A/N: Okay, I'll be honest, I was vaguely disappointed in the lack of name-calling in the reviews last chapter. (My beta had some words for Mick.)
Oh well.
Chapter Three
-0-
Mick wondered if he shouldn't have explained that, if anyone was at fault for Lenny's death, it was him. Except he wasn't drunk enough to tackle that particular fuckup, and the kid hadn't pushed, so Mick had held his silence. Had let the kid get ready for bed and tuck himself into the other bed, then got ready and turned over to sleep as well. (He was pretty sure that going back out to finish getting wasted wasn't going to go over well with the kid, and he didn't really want to find out how hard the Flash could punch when he meant it.)
Once he finally got to sleep, he had expected to stay knocked out until well after dawn, whereupon he would very likely spend a chunk of time regretting the decisions of the night before; it wasn't an uncommon life occurrence.
Instead, he woke after what felt like no time at all, all of his senses coming to life in that way that meant danger. Something like law enforcement or a time pirate having found him. (Or Lenny suffering a nightmare, which was impossible, any more.)
While there was no way it could be a time pirate – he'd given that life up, thanks, and he'd left what little remained of Chronos' equipment was on the Waverider, so if someone was hunting him, they were English's problem – it was certainly possible that someone had recognized him and put in a tip to the police. Which would suck, but the kid could probably speed them out of trouble, or else Mick would have to make him out to be a hostage; the kid didn't need a record just because he'd let himself be bullied into taking a holiday.
Mick shuffled a bit and turned over in bed, trying to make it look like natural movement in his sleep, in case someone was peeking through the inevitable hole in the shitty curtains. Then he carefully cracked one eye open, hoping to spot something to give away the numbers, or how much time he had to get the kid up.
Except, he realized right away, it wasn't the cops that woke him, but the kid. Who was lying flat and rigid in his bed, his blankets twisted around him, yellow electricity sparking over his skin.
Mick was frozen in shock for a moment, but then a spark of electricity lit the kid's face, and it looked like he was in agony. That got him scrambling out of bed and over to the kid's. But he stopped at the edge, uncertain how to help, because if he touched the kid, it looked a lot like he'd get a nasty jolt. "Red!" he hissed, and kicked the bed.
The kid didn't so much as twitch.
Well, shit.
Was the kid even breathing?
There was nothing for it, so Mick took a breath, then reached down and gave the kid's shoulder a rough shake. "Barry!" he hissed, hoping the kid's name would snap him out of it where his nickname hadn't; he was pretty sure the kid had done the same thing to him in the pub.
The electricity didn't shock him on contact. Instead, it sort of sparked off into the air, vanishing, and the kid gasped in a breath, eyes snapping open.
Mick had about half a second to feel relieved, and then the kid started scrambling to get off the bed and away from Mick, whimpering what sounded suspiciously like, "Oh, god, nonononono!"
"Red!" Mick snapped, and grabbed his wrist to keep him in place. Even though he'd never have done that with Lenny, because that just would have made things worse.
The kid, though, froze, and Mick was fairly certain he was being stared at. "Rory?" he rasped, and it sounded a little like he'd screamed himself hoarse.
"Yeah. We're in Coast City, remember?"
He was pretty sure the kid had nodded, but the motion was a little too jerky for him to be certain in the dark. "Light?" he requested.
Mick reached over and turned on the lamp between their beds.
The kid sort of slumped, his eyes sliding closed. They didn't stay that way for long, popped back open almost right away, and the kid twisted his wrist in Mick's grip, grabbing his wrist back before he could think he wanted to get free. As though the kid needed the contact. Needed to ground himself in the real world.
Mick knew that need, had been struggling so desperately against his Chronos conditioning until Lenny had stepped into his cell to fight, and it all had slid away at the first punch, letting him think clearly at last. Because Lenny had always been his rock.
Had he somehow become the kid's rock?
(Had the kid become his?)
"Y'alright?" Mick asked instead of thinking any further on that particular bucket of worms.
The kid let out a shuddering breath and shook his head. "Please stop hovering. I just– Right now, I can't–"
"Yeah, alright," Mick agreed and, since the kid didn't seem like he'd be letting go of Mick's hand any time soon, he climbed into the kid's bed and lay down next to him.
The kid relaxed a bit more. Still wouldn't close his eyes for more than a quick second – he kept snapping them back open like there was something terrifying lurking in the dark spaces behind his eyelids – but Mick couldn't really hold that against him, since he'd never much liked going back to sleep after a nightmare, either.
"Wanna talk 'bout it?" he offered; he'd never been much interested about talking about his nightmares, but Lenny had liked to ramble. Lulled him back to sleep, or something.
The kid shook his head and whispered, "Zoom."
Yeah, Mick supposed that about summed it up. And he supposed it explained why Mick in the dark had spooked him, because Zoom had worn all black, from what he could remember about that broadcast while Lenny was still in Iron Heights.
The way the Flash had been hanging, limp, in Zoom's hold had given him chills, at the time. Now, the memory made him in turns sick and angry. He opened his mouth to ask...he wasn't sure what, honestly. Probably nothing that would help.
The kid beat him to the punch, asking, "Will you tell me what happened? To Snart."
Mick choked in a breath and squeezed his eyes shut; right from one nightmare to the other, was it?
The kid squeezed his wrist, and Mick wanted to hate that that helped him breathe a little easier, that that touch made it hurt a little less to remember waking up just in time to watch his soulmate get blown up.
Lenny'd been the kid's soulmate, too, even if they'd never touched skin-to-skin, never known each other as more than nemeses who occasionally helped the other out. He supposed he owed it to him to tell him what had happened.
Mick took a careful breath and made himself open his eyes, meet the shadowed green eyes watching him. The kid looked a little like he was about to take his request back, and Mick had to wonder how many times the kid had wanted to ask, but talked himself out of it.
(Shit, he'd fucking gone and blamed the kid only a few hours ago, hadn't he? Kid needed to know, before Mick got hammered and fucking did that again.)
"Y'know the Professor, Stein, and the kid he joins up with?" he asked, because clarifying how the kid was connected to the team would help, a little bit. Maybe. (Certainly make it easier if the kid had at least a little bit of an idea about the people involved.)
"Jax?" the kid replied, tone a little uncertain. "Sure. Dr Stein told us they'd be travelling for a bit. Weren't sure how long they'd be out of contact, just that we shouldn't expect them to show up if we needed to close another singularity." He smiled, but it was a bitter, broken sort of thing, and Mick wondered what had really happened the day the black hole opened above Central City.
Mick cleared his throat, trying to remember who else on the team the kid would have known. Possibly all of them, save English? Heroes all seemed to know each other. " 'N you know Haircut. Palmer."
"The Atom? Sure," the kid agreed, a confused frown making the space between his brows wrinkle in a manner that was maybe a little cute.
(Mick had not just thought that, fuck him.)
"He came to Central last year and Cisco helped with his suit. The Green Arrow mentioned he'd survived the explosion at Palmer Tech, but I guess he went travelling for a bit, rather than trying to take his company back over."
Heroes really did all know each other, holy shit. " 'N Blondie? Uh, White Canary."
"Sara?" the kid asked, something terribly sad about his expression, and Mick recalled that Blondie's sister had died while they'd been gone. "She was...travelling, too? No one could reach her when Laurel died."
"Yeah. 'N the bird people. Uh–"
"Kendra and Carter?" the kid guessed, pushing himself up on one elbow so he could frown down at Mick and, he assumed, see every inch of his face, without the pillows in the way. "Wait, you and Snart were travelling with everyone else who fell off the face of the earth for five months?!"
Mick cleared his throat and explained, "This English asshole picked us up, said 'e needed a crew t' hunt down 'n kill Vandal Savage."
"We killed him months ago, though," the kid insisted, shaking his head. "Kendra and Carter and the Green Arrow's team and mine."
Mick nodded. "S'what they told us, yeah. 'Cept Savage regenerates 'less he's killed in a certain way, 'n ya didn't manage it."
"What?" the kid breathed, dropping back to his pillow and looking a little like Mick had just given him more nightmare fodder.
"He's dead. Fer good. We saw t' that," Mick promised. "English, the one who grabbed us all, he's from the future. Had a ship what could time travel."
The kid's eyes went wide. "Oh my god. That's why no one could reach you! Time travel. No wonder Dr Stein went along." He snorted, a smile twisting his mouth into something a little happier. "Screw that, no wonder Ray went."
"Ya have met him," Mick couldn't resist saying.
The kid let out a short laugh, his expression easing a bit more. "And so have you, clearly. How many times did you threaten to shoot him?"
"A lot," Mick replied, maybe a little too cheerfully, because one of his greatest joys, as Chronos, was being able to shoot Haircut without anyone calling him out for not being a team player; guy might have suffered torture for him, but that didn't make him any less irritating.
The kid's laugh was a little less abrupt, that time, and his smile stayed for a long moment. Until something seemed to occur to him and a shadow of what looked like grief and regret darkened his expression. "Did Savage kill Snart?"
"No." Mick sighed and looked down, towards where their hold on each other had shifted to a more comfortable hand holding. Which really shouldn't have seemed comfortable to him, but, with the kid, it was. (Soulmates, ugh.) "Savage, he had allies with the body in charge 'o time travelers. They were pr'tectin' him. Takin' away the will o' time, too, a bit."
"Taking away the will of time?" the kid repeated.
Mick frowned, trying to think of how best to explain the specifics of time travel to someone who'd never done it. Then he remembered his uncertainty about speedsters and time travel and asked, "Ya ever time travelled?"
"Yes," the kid answered, sounding cautious. "If I run fast enough, I can open a portal to the Speed Force, travel through it back through time."
Mick blinked at him, a little disturbed at the proof that speedsters could just...skip back in time whenever they pleased. No wonder the Time Pigs had seemed to hate them and banned anyone from interacting with them. "Ya ever tried t'change sum'thin' 'n it didn't take?"
"Not...quite." The kid frowned and rubbed at his mouth. "But, the man who killed my mom, Eobard Thawne, he was from the future and he came back to my past to kill me."
A chill went down Mick's spine, and he honestly couldn't say if it was because of the thought of the kid being dead before they could meet, or because of how completely that must have fucked up the timeline. Why hadn't the Time Pigs stopped this Thawne character?
"Thing is, changing my future so I wouldn't become the Flash lost him his own speed–"
Another speedster. That explained things.
"–and the only way for him to get back, was for me to become the Flash so I could open a path for him."
" 'N ya did?" Mick asked. "That's what the singularity was from, weren't it?"
The kid blinked at him, looking vaguely startled. "Uhm, well, yes, but no. We closed the one that started to open because of the path, but..." He swallowed and looked away, old grief and self-disgust darkening what Mick could see of his face. "Iris' soulmate, Eddie Thawne, was his ancestor, and he shot himself to keep Eobard from existing."
"So the paradox created the singularity," Mick realized. Shit, that was a massive mess. That sort of nonsense was why there had been so many laws surrounding time travel. Not to mention protecting certain persons of importance in history, such as the Flash.
"Thawne – Eobard – once told me that the past wants to happen," the kid offered quietly, grief in every word. "I'm not sure how true that is, though, because I've changed the past before. I kept a tsunami from taking out Central City, and Savage from killing everyone."
"Some events can't completely be changed," Mick explained, because he had the answer to that. "Ya know the butterfly effect?"
The kid frowned and nodded. "Sure. Butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the world and it creates a hurricane on the other, right?"
Mick shrugged. "Essentially. Some events – 'specially ones affectin' hundreds of people – must happen. Ya can change 'em ta happen t' a different hundreds a people, but it's still gonna happen. When ya overwrite sum'thin' like that, yer the butterfly, 'n yer jest movin' the hurricane sum'where else."
The kid looked horrified and maybe a little green. "Oh my god," he whispered.
And then he was gone, and Mick heard him retching in the bathroom before the blanket he'd still been partially tangled up in settled back onto the bed.
"Shit," Mick mumbled, levering himself up and going to check on the kid. He felt a little bad, but time travel was dangerous, and the kid needed to know what he was fucking with. If Mick had to be the one to fill him in, so be it; at least this way he maybe wouldn't chance doing something that would wipe out half the world, or whatever.
He filled a cup of water from the sink on his way, then handed it down to the kid once he reached him. "Thanks," he whispered, and he sounded wretched. Mick debated getting down on the floor while the kid used his first mouthful of water to rise the taste out. He eventually decided to just stay standing, leaning against the doorframe, because he had no interest in falling asleep on another bathroom floor.
"Before we met," the kid said quietly to his cup of water, "I was... I was going to go back. To the night my mom died. Stop Thawne from killing her."
Mick swallowed down what tasted suspiciously like stomach bile. "Ya'd've created a paradox, opened another singularity. 'R else ya'd've fergot this timeline, prolly stopped bein' the Flash. 'N there woulda been a tragedy, sum'thin' ya couldn't stop 'ny more."
The kid let out a bitter laugh. "Yeah, I'm good at causing tragedies I can't fix. That and getting people around me killed; guess some things wouldn't change even if my mom survived."
" 'S not yer fault. Doc Allen? Ya didn't kill 'im. Told ya that."
The kid looked up at him, smiling a terrible smile that made Mick's chest hurt. "Zoom never would have come here if Eddie's death hadn't caused the singularity. And Eddie wouldn't have shot himself if Thawne wasn't about to kill me. And Thawne–"
Mick bent forward and covered the kid's mouth. "Ya didn't hold 'ny guns ta anyone's heads. Ya didn't make them do nothin'. People have free will, 'n their choices're up t' them. Psychopaths'll kill, whether ya tell 'em to 'r not. 'N good people'll hurt themselves ta save ya. Sum'll even die–"
He stopped, unable to continue, because it occurred to him that the kid wasn't the only one who'd been blaming himself for the death of someone else.
"Rory?" the kid called, sounding worried.
"Snart," Mick forced himself to say. And then, because this was their third and that meant he was safe, he corrected, "Lenny. He– English saw Haircut blowin' himself up, dyin' ta take out the Time Pigs, so me 'n him, we knocked Haircut out 'n I took his place. Owed 'im fer havin' my back in the gulag. Lenny–"
"Took your place," the kid finished for him. "Because he loved you."
"Yeah," Mick croaked. And it didn't really help, because if he hadn't done that – if he'd just let Haircut die – Lenny wouldn't be gone. Him and Lenny would be off committing crimes together, maybe even through time, if Chronos' ship was still outside Nanda Parbat. He wouldn't be avoiding Lisa and trying to drink his liver back into the shit condition it'd been in before the Time Pigs'd 'fixed' him.
But, then, if Lenny'd survived, what about the kid next to him? Would they even have ever met? Would they have come back to a world without the Flash in it, because no one had been there to stop the kid from going back in time again?
Was Mick fated to only have one of his soulmates at a time?
"Rory?" the kid called again, right before he got up and pulled Mick into a hug. Because the kid seemed to think hugs fixed things. Which, well, they didn't.
(But Mick was beginning to believe they maybe helped. Just a little.)
" 'M not sleepin' on the bathroom floor 'gain," he muttered against the kid's shoulder.
The kid huffed out a sound that could have been a laugh, if only it sounded a little less like it hurt in all the wrong ways. "Yeah, alright. Not sure I'll be getting back to sleep, though. Just to warn you."
Mick grunted an acknowledgement, then forced himself to let go – when had he fucking started returning the hug, anyway? – and made his way back to his bed and climbed under the covers.
The kid returned to his own bed and shuffled around a little bit, before a soft glow lit the walls of the room. "Is that going to bother you?" he asked.
"Nah," Mick decided, because he'd survived thirty years of Lenny leaving lights on while he pulled all-nighters over his most recent heist plans or whatever blueprints had caught his fancy; he could sleep just fine with a light on.
Mick was just starting to doze off when the edge of his mattress dipped, going especially slow, as though whoever it was wasn't certain they'd be welcome, or else were trying not to wake him. Or both, since there were only so many people who could get that close to Mick without setting off all his alarm bells.
(It should probably disturb him that the kid had become one of those people after barely three days, but he blamed the soulmate thing.)
Once the kid seemed to have settled, Mick twisted and threw an arm over his legs to keep him from trying to escape, because that seemed like the best option.
He was asleep before the kid finished relaxing against the bed again.
Barry was a little surprised to have fallen asleep again after Rory had woken him from his nightmares, but he had, as evidenced by him waking up next to Rory, warm and comfortable and safe in a way that was so utterly unfamiliar. Which he... Well, he wasn't quite certain how to handle that, so he got up as carefully as he could, breathed in relief when Rory didn't so much as twitch, then went to use the toilet.
His reflection, he saw while he was washing his hands, looked a lot less tired than he usually did after an interrupted night. And he supposed he felt less tired, but it was always hard to judge that; who knew if it was wishful thinking on his part.
He sighed and looked back towards Rory, who still hadn't moved. Time travel via space ship, huh? Well, that certainly explained some things. (Also, he was maybe a little jealous. Too many sci-fi show and movie marathons with Cisco.)
Snart...well. Maybe Rory was right, maybe they never would have gone if Barry hadn't kept trying to convince Snart he was a good man. But, well, he was a good man. And so was Rory, evidently, if he'd been willing to die for Ray. He almost wanted to talk to Ray, get his version of events. Not because he didn't believe Rory – there had been too much honest agony in his voice for Barry to believe it was anything but the truth – but because he sort of wanted the opinion of someone less inclined to downplay heroics.
But he didn't actually have a number for Ray, and he wasn't really ready for anyone to find out that him and Rory were soulmates. Wasn't sure he ever wanted it to get out, honestly; he might be willing to overlook some minor crimes, but Rory still had a long rap sheet and more than a couple active warrants. Sulmates or no, if it got around that he was consorting with a wanted criminal, he'd lose his job. And very likely end up in Iron Heights for at least a couple years. Which would suck, although it would serve him right.
He shook his head, trying to lose those thoughts, but the certainty that he deserved to get tossed in prison had been pretty constant since he'd failed to save Ronnie. Briefly eased by his time trapped in the Speed Force, by the certainty that he was in the right, but when Zolomon killed Dad...
He forced himself to take a shaky breath, to think of something other than Zoom and his dad.
Iris. She was always a good distraction. A complicated one, especially after recent events, but she was still his best friend, his rock. He should probably ring her, check in on things in Central; he'd said two days, despite everyone else apparently thinking he needed a longer holiday, and it had been that. Iris would at least be expecting a call.
It took him a minute to find his mobile, because he hadn't had much use for it the past couple of days. At least he'd had the sense to plug it in at some point, so it had a full charge. There were a couple of alerts from Cisco's metahuman app, but they were all the minor ones that popped up when someone saw one of the handful of non-criminal metas using their powers in their everyday lives, so he ignored them. There was some junk email waiting for him, as well as a written reminder from Singh that he was on leave at least through the end of the week, and if he needed more time, it would be granted. (Barry was a little surprised that the captain hadn't mentioned that he'd have him kicked out if he was seen in the building again, but he supposed threats of violence in official communication wasn't the done thing.)
Cisco had texted him some pictures of oil pumps, wind turbines, and fields, clearly taken through the car window, which led Barry to believe he and Caitlin had headed west when they left for their little holiday; they should be on his way if he needed to grab one or both of them on his way back to Central. But that was the sum total of the communication from his friends. Which, given how shitty the last couple of weeks had been, Barry couldn't pretend to be surprised.
He threw on some trousers and made sure he had his key, then stepped outside to call Iris, because he didn't really want to wake Rory.
"How's the beach?" Iris asked as soon as she picked up; Barry suspected she'd done that just to keep him from asking after Central first thing.
"Warm, sunny, and crowded," Barry told her in a dry voice, just to make her laugh, which she did. "I helped a couple kids build a sand castle yesterday."
"What I wouldn't give for video of that," Iris told him with a laugh. "How much did you nerd out, trying to get it exactly right?"
"Oh my god, Iris. I haven't done that since we were, like, eight!"
"Uh-huh. And how about that structure you drove your shop teacher insane with in–"
"That was completely different. It was so not my fault that he didn't appreciate the work I put into that term project."
Iris was laughing, quiet and honest, and Barry relaxed back against the wall outside his and Rory's room, smiling at the motel's carpark. It felt good to joke with Iris about something stupid that happened so long ago, the frustration he'd remembered suffering at the time was just a vague memory.
"So," he asked once she'd quieted a bit, "how's Central?"
"Fine, as I'm sure you've already seen by checking the meta app religiously," Iris returned in that tone of voice that meant she was rolling her eyes.
"I actually...haven't," Barry admitted. "I don't think I checked it at all yesterday." Which he should feel bad about, probably, but if something truly serious came up, the app wouldn't be the only thing setting his mobile to make noise.
"Oh? That beach must be super distracting," Iris said, and although she didn't actually ask, Barry could hear the question in her voice: 'What could distract you from Central City so thoroughly?'
Barry swallowed and looked up at the wide expanse of blue sky above him. "I...found my soulmate?" he told her, because this was Iris, the love of his life and his best friend, and she deserved to know.
"Oh my god," Iris breathed, and Barry couldn't really tell how she felt about that from the tone of her voice. "Bare, that's huge!"
"Yeah."
"No wonder you've been ignoring your mobile! What's she like? Are you going to bring her back to Central so we can meet her? Is she from Central?"
"Iris!" Barry called, a little disturbed to recognize her reporter voice. Also, at her calling Rory female; he'd really stuck himself in it this time, hadn't he? She wasn't going to leave him alone until he either let them meet, or came up with a damn good reason why they shouldn't. He cleared his throat in the silence following her finally shutting up, squeezed his eyes shut, and admitted, "He is from Keystone. And it's complicated."
Iris was quiet for a moment that felt like an eternity, then she said, sounding cautious, "I forgot that you dated a guy in college."
"It's not like that."
"Bare, it's your soulmate. Of course it's like that."
"Okay, no. No, being soulmates is not an automatic sign that you're going to end up in bed together."
"It's as good as," Iris returned, firm and insistent. "I've been there, Bare, okay? I know there's no denying–"
"This is not like you and Eddie!"
She breathed in a sharp breath on the other end of the line.
"Shit. Shit, Iris, I'm sorry. I didn't mean–"
"Barry," she interrupted, her voice quiet, but firm in that way she'd got from Joe, which meant he'd best listen to her, or god help him. "This guy is literally the other half of your soul. You don't just let that go. And if you think I'm going to make you pick me over him–"
"Oh my god, that's not what this is about!"
"Then explain it to me." The 'and it had best be good' went unsaid, but Barry knew it was there.
He sighed and rubbed at his eyes. "Look. Okay. He's been in a relationship for...I don't know, a while. Like, a long while. And his boyfriend just died, same as– same as Dad. So this whole– He's not looking, and like I told you, I'm not either. So we're not– It's complicated. I told you. Okay?"
"Okay," Iris replied quietly. "But now you listen to me, Barry: He is your soulmate. It doesn't matter if you hate him on principle because he's stupidly pretty and so many kinds of stuck-up cocky–"
Barry couldn't quite hold back a laugh, though it came out a little strained, because Iris had spent so much time bitching about Eddie when he first got assigned to their precinct; she maybe didn't have the same sort of history with Eddie as Barry had with Rory, but there had almost certainly been a period of time, there, while Barry was in his coma, where Iris had struggled with her own first impressions of her soulmate. He knew that, that not every match went well from the start. (That some matches went so utterly sour, one of them ended up killing the other. And he honestly and sincerely hoped that wouldn't happen with him and Rory. If only because he couldn't lose yet another person, not even his criminal soulmate.)
"Bare, you're going to love him. One day, you're going to wake up and realize you can't live without him. And he's going to realize the same. And I love you, you know I do, but I can't get between that. I can't play second fiddle to the other half of your soul, any more than you could with me and Eddie."
"I know," Barry whispered, because he did. Because a part of him – that hollow, lonely part of him that had just kept getting bigger and bigger every time someone died or betrayed him – was already way too attached to Rory, legal difficulties aside. "I just–" He sighed. "Right now, I need to focus on keeping him from committing suicide by alcohol, okay? I can't– Whatever happens with, with the rest of it, with fate, I can't think about that right now."
"Shit," Iris said with real feeling.
"Yeah."
They were both quiet for a long moment, Barry staring out across the carpark.
And then Iris let out a long breath that was almost a sigh and said, "Central City is okay, right now. We've got this. You worry about your soulmate."
Barry snorted. "Yeah, I know."
"Which, actually, it occurs to me, does he know? About your night job?"
Subtle; she was clearly not at home. "Yeah, he knows." And Barry was starting to think it hadn't been Snart who'd told him; Ray was nearly as bad as Felicity and Barry himself when it came to stopping himself from saying too much, and Barry knew way too many of the people Rory'd travelled with for the Flash not to come up. Probably. Which meant Snart had kept his word until the very end, and Barry wasn't really certain how to feel about that.
Iris snorted. "Well, that's something, I suppose. So he's not going to freak out if you vanish to handle an emergency."
"Pretty much, yeah. I did warn him that I might have to run back to Central, if something happens there."
Barry could almost see Iris rolling her eyes at him.
"Thanks," he told her, because while he didn't really feel better, per se, about leaving Central with Rory, he felt a little less like a complete jerk for blowing her off and then running straight to his soulmate. Which he actually hadn't really realized had been weighing on him, but he supposed it made sense; it was never going to be easy, picking between one of the most important people in his life and the other half of his soul.
"Don't go thanking me yet; you're introducing us as soon as you're both back in the Twin Cities," Iris informed him. And he didn't doubt for one second that, if he tried to put her off, she'd find a way to hunt Rory down and meet him without Barry. Which, as poorly as Barry expected them meeting to go, it would be infinitely worse if he wasn't there to mediate. And/or warn Iris that she was about to meet Heat Wave.
"Oh my god. Why are we friends?"
Iris laughed, sounding so much brighter and happier than Barry could remember her being of late. And he wondered how much his own stress and grief had been pulling her down.
Maybe it really was for the best that he'd left Central for a while; she deserved someone in her life who would leave her smiling, not drag her down with him. Her certainty that him and Rory would end up together was probably the best possible outcome of the whole mess, honestly.
He remembered the fear of Zoom attacking the people he loved that had led to him letting Patty go, and the proof that, if his enemies found out who he was, they would rip his family apart to break him.
If he had to be with someone, better it was someone like Rory, who could damn-well take care of himself; he might not be able to cut Iris out of his life entirely, but at least she was less of a juicy target if they were just best friends.
"I'll let you get back to work."
"Bare? You okay?" Iris asked, because she clearly knew him far too well.
Barry forced himself to smile, because he knew that would transmit, at least a little, through his voice. "Yeah. Just remembered I haven't eaten yet. And you know how I get."
"Yeah," she agreed, but she didn't sound convinced. "Go eat, then. And take care of yourself, okay?"
"Of course. And you don't go cornering any gangsters up on the top floor of a high rise until I get back, got it?"
"That's my job, Barry. Don't start sounding like Dad."
Barry rolled his eyes, because the fact that she'd already done that once, meant it was a valid concern. "Yeah, yeah. I'll see you."
"Yeah. Bye, Bare."
"Bye." He hit the end call button, then leant back against the wall and sighed, letting his eyes fall closed.
It occurred to him that he'd basically just decided that he'd rather Rory be a target over Iris, and he winced because shit, that was an asshole thing to want. Rory might be a criminal, but he wasn't that bad a guy, really. Not deserving of the death penalty, certainly. Yet there Barry was, preparing to hand him over to the figurative wolves, just because he wanted Iris safe.
God, he really was a terrible hero, wasn't he? No wonder he'd ended up with two criminals as soulmates.
If either of them had expected things to be easier after the night before, it was pretty clear that wouldn't be the case. The kid was quiet and hunched, like the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and Mick felt a little like he woken on the wrong side of the bed that morning, which, if it had anything to do with what he'd heard of the kid's phone conversation, well. He was fully determined to pretend otherwise.
Breakfast was eaten in a grim sort of silence, then they retreated to the beach, where the kid made straight for the ocean waves with an expression that left Mick wondering if he was debating the pros and cons of drowning himself. Well, he was damn-well welcome to, if he felt that was the best way to deal with Mick's attempts to 'suicide by alcohol', or what the fuck ever.
His dark mood didn't last long – not having a cooler to cart beer down to the beach with them may have helped, and stealing a pair of jeweled sunglasses that Lisa would love and fifty dollars in cash definitely helped – but the kid's whatever clearly wasn't so easy to dispel, given he still looked like he was grieving his whole existence when they found somewhere for lunch.
Mick would be the first to admit that he had no idea what heroes did to cheer themselves up (bring in bad guys, he assumed?), so he went for what always worked for him and Lenny: Stealing.
Which, well, the kid was almost certainly a novice, so Mick started with the basics: Explaining how to spot an easy mark.
To his credit, it didn't take the kid long to figure out why he was pointing out absentminded pedestrians as they walked past the restaurant. "Are you seriously trying to tell me who to steal from?" he hissed after the third person, leaning forward across the table as he did so.
Mick took a moment to debate his response – the kid looked more disbelieving than angry, and he had been letting Mick get away with stealing on the beach, so he probably wasn't going to threaten to drag him to the nearest police station – before admitting, "Yeah. Gotta problem with that?"
"I–" The kid covered his face with one hand and shook his head. "Of course you are. I'm not sure why I'm surprised."
" 'S good practice, spottin' them what aren't payin' 'ttention," Mick insisted, a little annoyed at himself for feeling annoyed at the kid's response.
The kid huffed out a noise that could have been a laugh, then dropped his hand and looked out at the passing crowds. "It's not just inattention, though, is it? It's loser clothing that you can slip a hand into without them noticing, or bags that are easily accessible."
Okay, Mick could admit that he wasn't expecting that response.
"Please. I grew up with a cop; I got all of the warnings about how best to keep my things from being stolen," the kid said, clearly seeing Mick's surprise. "And I got a refresher when I got hired. Although that was more about avoiding any holes in the chain of custody for a piece of evidence."
" 'Cause 'o them what the Families hire t' clean up their messes," Mick assumed, because it was no secret in the circles he'd once run in that there was always a need for people willing to tamper with evidence, either before it made it to whatever lab, or once it was in that lab or lockup. Not really Mick's forte, but he knew Lenny had pulled a few of those jobs over the years, and Lisa got a weird sort of pleasure out of charming guards and members of staff so they'd do the job for her. (Honestly, Mick would be happier just burning down evidence lockup, but the first time he'd suggested that, Lenny had pointed out that that might let pedophiles and their like free. And Mick might have a shitty moral compass, but he'd never been far gone enough to let a pedophile out on the streets.)
"Essentially, yeah. Though the crime families aren't the only problem; if there's a chance that a piece of evidence has been compromised, and either of the lawyers involved in the trial find out, they can strike it from record. And, sometimes, you've only got one good piece of evidence."
Oh, yeah; Lenny was meticulous, but even he'd had bad days, and Mick knew of at least three warrants for his arrest that had been based on a single piece of evidence. (Mick, himself, was far less careful, but his habit of burning everything he could set on fire usually helped him cover his tracks.)
"So," the kid said when Mick didn't say anything further, "why are you trying to teach me who to, ah, borrow things from?"
Mick rolled his eyes at the kid's dancing around the topic. Not that he could talk, really; he had no interest in coming out and admitting he was teaching him because stealing was one of the few mood enhancements the Time Pigs hadn't managed to take from him. "Watchin' fer easy marks is a good way t' distract. Good focusin' work."
The kid blinked a couple of times, looking maybe a little startled. "Oh," he said at last.
When he didn't say anything else, just went back to his food, Mick cautiously pointed out another mark. The kid followed the woman with eyes that had the same sort of too-sharp intelligence that Lenny used to get, and it was...actually sort of soothing. Even though Mick would have expected it to hurt, to cause that empty space in his chest to throb all over again.
"Maybe," he said to the kid once he'd paid and they were heading back to the beach, "I'll teach ya' t' pickpocket next."
A breeze swept over him, apparently localized, given no one else's clothing looked to have been ruffled, and then the kid held out Mick's wallet. "I think I'm good," he said with a wide, smug smile.
Mick snatched his wallet back, torn between being impressed and being annoyed. He settled on annoyed and informed the Flash, "Usin' yer speed's cheatin'."
"Isn't cheating the point?"
Mick huffed and turned a glare on the kid, because he didn't have a good response to that. Except maybe one that would be a little too close to a pun.
Ah, there was the ache of the hole in his chest.
The kid cleared his throat, the sound distinctly uncomfortable, and Mick forced his hand away from his chest, irritated that he'd been rubbing at the ache again.
"So, should I teach you about what I do for a living?" the kid asked, just a little abrupt, and Mick turned to glare at him, only to see the kid was looking towards the patio of one of the restaurants along the boardwalk.
"What, savin' people?" Mick replied, not even bothering to keep the note of derision out of his voice; he'd had enough of being a hero.
"No," the kid replied, something odd in his voice that Mick couldn't quite place, but which didn't sound like he was upset about Mick not giving a damn about him being a superhero. "Being a CSI."
Mick frowned, uncertain why that would have come up. But the kid hadn't looked away from that patio, so he stepped up behind him, only to flinch at the spark of energy that arced between them without them touching. It didn't hurt, and the kid didn't even seem to notice, but Mick realized pretty quickly it had happened because the kid was vibrating. "The fuck's so interestin'?" he demanded, admittedly a little concerned.
"That family," the kid said, still with that odd note in his voice, "with the two kids actually in their seats."
Mick followed the kid's stare and blinked, because it wasn't hard to spot the family, if only because the other three sets of parents seemed to be struggling to keep their kids seated, even when food was in front of them. There was something slightly off about the scene, but Mick couldn't quite put his finger on it, wasn't certain he'd even have noticed if the kid hadn't pointed them out. "Yeah?" he said, when he still couldn't quite figure out what about them had the kid vibrating.
"The dad's abusive."
Mick couldn't quite keep from sucking in a sharp breath, because now that it had been pointed out, he could see it: The kids kept looking between the male adult and the other kids, and the woman was slouched slightly and maybe leaning away from the man, just a little. And all of them, except the man, was wearing a long-sleeved shirt over what were clearly swim clothing, with both of the kids' shirts being wet.
The furtive looks and the slouched posture were things he'd seen Lenny do around Lewis, now he thought about it. Not that he'd seen much of Lenny around Lewis, not after he'd suggested he punch the fucker bloody.
"Didn't think that were CSI business, readin' body language," Mick said, in part to distract himself from thoughts of Lewis and Lenny, but also to distract himself from the burning need to turn his old rage on a new target. Even if said target would deserve it.
The kid shrugged one shoulder, a spark of electricity racing over the fabric of his shirt.
Mick reached up and pressed his hand down on the kid's shoulder. "Red," he said, stressing the nickname to hopefully get the kid's attention.
The kid startled, then looked at the hand on his shoulder, just in time for a spark to crawl over Mick's hand. The kid jerked away, looking horrified. "Oh my god! I'm sorry! I didn't even–!"
"Doesn't hurt," Mick interrupted, because he'd seen that expression on Haircut's face enough time to guess the kid was about to spew an apology.
"I–" The kid blinked and looked down at his hand, a frown creasing the space between his eyebrows. "Really?"
"Really."
The kid blinked at him. "Huh. That's– Huh. Caitlin and Cisco always complain about my shocking them," he added, either reading Mick's intention to ask what he was 'huh'ing about, or otherwise realizing he needed to explain himself. "I guess it's a soulmate thing?"
Mick grunted; given how he hadn't been shocked yet, even when touching the kid during his nightmare, he thought there might be something to that. Not that he had any interest in rehashing the events of the night before. So he turned his attention, instead, back to the family, who looked to have just got their check for the meal.
The kid twisted, following Mick's stare back to the family. "It's not," he said as the waitress picked up the little tray with – judging by the gleam of the sun on plastic – the man's credit card. "CSI work, I mean. Not really. But, well, I grew up with a cop. And one of my first cases was a mom killing her live-in boyfriend. She would have got murder one if I hadn't noticed a couple of old bruises on her and the eldest daughter. Well," he added, his voice twisting with something old and tired, "and if I hadn't irritated the lead detective on the case to the point that he asked the right questions during the interview, just to shut me up."
Mick knew well how cops could get when they were certain they had their criminal, and was more than a little impressed that the kid had managed to get one – not his adopted father, he assumed, since he doubted the kid would have needed to resort to irritating West to get him to ask the right questions – to let off their bit long enough to get the real story out of their chosen perpetrator.
"It's not just the crime scene, sometimes," the kid added, quiet and with an old grief adding weight to his words. "It's the people, too; can't put the whole puzzle together unless you have all the pieces." And then he sighed. "I wish there was something I could do."
Mick tore his glare away from the family – all of whom were getting up, and the way the woman was getting between the kids and the man, the way she flinched when the man wrapped an arm around her waist, made him want to kill someone – to look at the kid, who was watching the family, too, arms wrapped around his middle like he was trying to comfort himself.
Or, Mick realized, recognizing the twist of the kid's mouth from a time Lenny had forced himself not to intervene when a guy was getting a little too handsy with Lisa, the kid was trying to hold himself back. For Lenny, it had been a case of Lisa being perfectly capable of breaking the handsy fucker's arm in three places on her own, but he suspected the kid's problem was more born of too many years not being able to get involved unless he actively saw a crime being committed; even the Flash didn't intervene without first seeing a crime occurring.
Well, Mick didn't care what the law said most of the time, and there was no Lisa there who could hold her own. So he snorted, patted the kid's shoulder, then started towards the family.
"Rory!" the kid hissed behind him.
Notably, the kid didn't actually attempt to stop him, though Mick suspected he would be more than capable of doing so, and Mick allowed himself to smile, wide and just a little mean.
There were probably a dozen different ways he could have approached handling the man, and if Lenny were there, he'd be weighing the pros and cons of each way, would settle on the best possible way long before letting Mick lose to see the deed done. (Assuming Lenny didn't decide to see to the matter personally. Which he might have, in this case.)
But Lenny wasn't there, and Mick wasn't particularly fond of the part of him that was trying to strategize approaches – another gift from the Time Pigs – in his place, so he just went for the direct attack: Walking right up to the guy and slamming his fist into his face hard enough to knock him to the ground.
The woman scrambled back, placing herself between the kids and Mick in a way that looked way too practiced. "The fuck!?" the man shouted. Or, well, that's what Mick assumed he meant to shout; his bloody nose and the tooth that dropped out of his mouth as soon as he opened it to speak made it a little hard to understand him.
"Real fuckin' shitty, ain't it, gettin' hit by sum'un bigger 'n stronger 'n ya'," Mick replied, was actually kind of pleased with how violent he sounded. "Ya ever heard this 'un? Do unto others as ya'd 'ave done unto you."
The man immediately looked to the woman, who – Mick saw as he leant down to cuff the guy – was staring at Mick like she couldn't believe he was real.
"Dun go lookin' at her," Mick said, leaning down close enough that he could smell the man's lunch on his breath. "My soulmate's got a sharp eye 'n a quick mind, 'n useless shits like you 're always obvious."
"Police!" someone shouted, followed by, "Break it up!"
Mick didn't quite flinch – he'd been a criminal for far too long to have tells so obvious – but he did look up to check how close the cops were, only to realize he'd drawn a bit of a crowd. So he snarled, "Child-beater," down at the man he'd punched, just to get the people talking, make it impossible to let him talk his way out of the issue.
And then he stepped back, into the crowd, and was unsurprised when a slim hand curled around his wrist and pulled him further into it.
The rush of air and suddenly finding himself nearly on the other side of the beach from the boardwalk was a surprise, and he couldn't quite stop himself from blinking at the kid a couple times.
The kid cleared his throat and ducked his head. "Figured we could use a bit of space before someone recognized you."
It hit Mick, then, that a part of him had expected Lenny to be there, pulling him out before it got too hot for them. But Lenny hadn't come, would never come again. Instead, the kid – the Flash – had been there to back him up, to get him out in time. Almost like he'd taken Lenny's place.
His chest ached.
"Rory?" the kid called, right before his hand came to rest over Mick's on his chest.
The eyes that watched him were green, instead of blue, and the concern in them was so much more obvious than Lenny ever would have let his own be.
"I need a drink," he heard himself say, and was glad it was that, instead of something meant to hurt the kid; it wasn't his fault Mick felt like he was trying to replace Lenny.
The kid's eyes narrowed, not quite unlike how Lenny's would have. But instead of suggesting sex or that Mick go burn something, the kid just said, "No."
And then, without any warning, Mick was falling into ocean water.
He flailed and sputtered and somehow managed to get his feet under himself before he drowned. And then he turned his most murderous glare on the kid, who was just out of throttling range.
The kid grinned at him, wide and bright.
"This means war," Mick informed him, because he was going to make the little shit pay for dropping him in water if it was the last thing he did.
"Only if you can catch me," the kid replied in a voice that was somehow even more cheerful than Haircut at his happiest, yet simultaneously half as irritating.
Soulmates.
By the time he managed to catch the kid, he was grinning that same delighted grin that usually only crept out during high-speed car chases with the cops. Or, he realized as he struggled to keep the squirming kid's head under water for more than three seconds at a time, when he'd been trying to burn a speeding man in a red suit with his flamethrower, Lenny laughing in delight next to him.
Soulmates, he thought with far more fondness than he'd ever admit to out loud, and let the kid go.
"Hungry?" he asked the kid once he'd stopped sputtering and had mostly combed his hair out of his eyes.
The kid snorted. "Yeah," he said in a tone that Mick was pretty sure actually meant 'of course I'm hungry'.
Mick shoved him, mostly because he could, and the kid laughed and caught his hand instead of shoving him back, using it to lead him out of the water. And if neither of them let go once they were out of the water, well. They were soulmates.
One || Two ||
Epilogue
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