It has been a very long time since I posted a long fic (probably bc this one took nine months), but I am back with my take on the color soulmate au. I had a ton of fun with this fic, and I hope you enjoy!

Color. That word had always had little meaning to Leonard Snart. He knew that there was some phenomenon that caused people who'd met their soulmate to see color. Bullshit, he'd always thought.

It's not that he didn't believe it, he just didn't believe it would ever to happen to him. He'd met a few people who could see color, but the crowd he'd hung around for most of his life wasn't exactly the soulmate type. He was pretty much positive Lisa could see color; she hung around Cisco Ramon far too often, more than she had any other guy who'd been in her life. Why she wasn't saying anything about it was beyond him. Leonard, though, was fairly certain that he'd be living in a world of black and white forever.

Then, one day, something changed.

He woke on a rooftop in the middle of the night after being knocked out and kidnapped. There were others with him, at least seven or eight. He recognized a few. There was Mick, of course, and Professor Stein, but he'd never seen the rest before, and as he and the others got to their feet, he looked them over. There were two claiming to be reincarnating hawk deities, which, he thought, was an iffy story at best. There was the blonde assassin with a glint in her eye that he couldn't quite explain. There was a man in an exo-suit who looked like a discount Iron Man. Next to him was a younger man who seemed to be the second half of Firestorm, and, standing above them all was the same man who'd kidnapped him and brought him here in the first place.

This man started to talk, but Leonard wasn't listening because as he looked away from the people around him, something in his vision changed. The dark grey of his jacket suddenly, just, wasn't. He couldn't explain it, it just wasn't grey anymore, replaced by something else. He blinked a few times, figuring his eyes must be a bit wonky from whatever that Rip Hunter guy did to him when he knocked him out, but when he opened his eyes again, something else had changed. This time, it wasn't his coat, but the skin on his hands, no longer pale grey. Again, the change went away as quickly as it came, bust as he looked around, he saw a similar disturbance in his surroundings.

He was pretty sure what he was seeing was color. No one had ever been able to describe it properly, even those who could see it (and especially those who couldn't. When Lisa was in middle school, she'd been determined to prove that her favorite actor was her soulmate, saying that she'd seen a picture of him in a magazine and seen color, but her shoddy description of what color was gave her away fairly quickly). Leonard knew what color was scientifically: it was the different ways light bounced off of objects, but that didn't really help him here. He knew from grade school art that color came in shades. The words red and blue came to mind, and he was pretty sure those were different colors, but he wouldn't be able to differentiate the two.

If color was anything though, this was it.

As the minutes went by, more and more of his surroundings changed. It rolled over his vision like waves onto sand. Sometimes, objects would change for a moment or two before returning to their previous states. Some things, especially the bright flashing of traffic lights and cars on the street below him, stayed in their new form. It was incredibly distracting. He could barely pay attention to any of what this Rip Hunter was saying, getting in a generic snarky comment or two before turning on his heels and leaving the rooftop. Mick followed him, of course, and soon they were back to the safe house they'd been staying in.

He went straight for the old, beat-up computer that sat at a desk in the corner of the room. He began to type the different colors he could remember into the search engine one by one. He memorized the different names and what each one looked like. Soon, he could look around the room and name the color of each object. His jacket, he learned, was a dark shade of the color blue, and looking down at it, he decided he preferred it this way to the dark grey he thought it had been. His skin was a very light shade of brown and his hair was also brown with touches of grey. His eyes were light blue, nearly the same color as the blast of ice that came from his cold gun.

Just as he was looking at various shades of green, Mick entered the room with a beer bottle in hand. Leonard tried to close the internet browser so Mick wouldn't see what he'd been doing, but he wasn't fast enough.

"Green?" Mick repeated the word that was plastered across the computer screen. "What're you looking that up for?"

"Nothing," Leonard replied, a little too late. Mick heard the hesitation and realized what his partner wasn't saying. He started to laugh, chuckling like this was the best thing he'd heard all day.

"You can see color now, can't you? You saw your soulmate." Mick waited for a response. When it didn't come, he continued, "Well? Didn't you?" Leonard nodded and Mick let out another laugh, "Who could it be? My money's on Haircut."

Leonard didn't respond so Mick didn't pursue the subject. Leonard wished he could say that he knew who is soulmate was, that he'd felt some sort of pull or one of those other clichés he heard about people who saw color, but he didn't. It could be any one of the people who'd been on the rooftop with him and the only chance he'd get to figure out who his soulmate was was to go on this damned time travel mission he didn't want to go on.

After leaving the rooftop, Sara Lance took the train back to Star City. It'd been a while since she'd seen her sister, and besides, she wanted her opinion on this whole time travel stuff. She also wanted to talk to Laurel about something else. Something strange had happened to her on that rooftop. She'd been listening to this British dude talking about time travel when, out of the corner of her eye, she'd seen something she'd never seen before and she was pretty sure she knew what it was: color. Her time in the League of Assassins had taught her a little bit about color, mostly how to spot people who could see it and how to use that to her advantage. The League taught her that to see color was a weakness because it meant you had something to lose. On a few occasions, Sara had seen two assassins find soulmates in each other. The League had a particularly brutal way of dealing with that: they'd pin the soulmates against each other; whoever killed the other first won. It was one of the more barbaric traditions of the League, but it was effective. The winners of those battles always became some of the best assassins the League saw.

Sara never thought she cared about having a soulmate. Looking back at all of her important relationships in the past — Nyssa and Oliver were the ones that came to mind — none of them were "soulmates", none of them made her see color, but she didn't care. She had loved them regardless of whether they were her soulmate or not. But now that color was flickering in and out of her vision like a bad lightbulb, she was having a hard time maintaining that same level of nonchalance.

Soon, Sara made it back to the Arrowcave.

"What's up with you?" Laurel asked after the customary reunion hug.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Sara replied.

"I've seen a lot of things," Laurel replied, "I'm sure I can handle this."

"Fine," Sara sighed, "I think I'm starting to see color."

"Oh," Laurel replied. The surprise was apparent on her face. "Who?"

"That's the thing. I don't actually know. It first started while I was meeting eight people."

Laurel snorted. "Nothing you do can ever be simple, can it? Do you have any idea who your soulmate could be out of those people?"

"I guess I could rule out a few people, but that still leaves five or six."

"Yeah, but you must feel some sort of pull or something towards one of them."

"You didn't," Sara shot back.

That was a low blow. Laurel had seen color for the first time the day she met Oliver when she was seven years old. It was also coincidentally the same time she met Tommy and she wasn't sure which one was her soulmate. Eventually, she decided for herself that it must be Ollie. Years later, she found out she was wrong in a horrific way.

There's a catch to the whole seeing color when you meet your soulmate thing; when they die, so does the color. When Tommy died, Laurel's color began to fade away as she watched the building her soulmate was trapped in crumble.

"Sorry," Sara added sheepishly.

"You have to go on this mission," Laurel ignored her, "C'mon Sara. This is your soulmate we're talking about here. This is your chance at happiness, and if anyone deserves happiness, it's you."

"I don't know if I even want a relationship right now. I mean, I was just dead, Laurel! It's kind of hard to just bounce back from something like that."

"Well, maybe your soulmate could help," Laurel replied. When Sara didn't respond, she tossed her a set of batons, "C'mon, let's spar. I want to hear about this time travel stuff."

As it turns out, every one of the eight people Rip Hunter recruited showed up at the abandoned lot thirty six hours later. Sure, several of them were there against their will, but Leonard suspected that Rip didn't really give a damn how they got there as long as they were going to work for him.

Once they were all seated on the bridge of what was apparently a timeship — even Leonard had to be a little impressed at that, but he didn't even come close to the reaction Dr. Stein and Raymond Palmer had — Leonard decided to take in this new team (Leonard wasn't big on teams; he wasn't sure this one would work out).

He'd worked with Firestorm before, or at least, he'd worked with half of it. He knew Martin to be very smart, yet sometimes arrogantly so. Leonard had never met the meta's new other half, Jefferson Jackson. Jax was the youngest of Rip's recruits. Leonard felt that, so far, he liked him the most out of everyone, and the fact that he was currently unconscious definitely didn't have anything to do with it.

Leonard knew that neither of these people were his soulmate. He'd already met Martin, so it definitely wasn't him, and while he couldn't be completely sure about Jax, he was sure enough to know that it was very unlikely.

He could also rule out the Hawks, Kendra and Carter, who were each other's soulmates and had been for thousands of years.

Leonard could only hope that his soulmate wasn't the Atom. Ray Palmer had both the energy and the common sense of a young child. He felt the same about their apparent captain, Rip Hunter, who had the crotchety I'm-better-than-you sense of arrogance of a much older man.

However much Leonard was against it, he had to admit that both men were possibilities.

That left Sara Lance. Leonard could see the assassin as being the only one he'd be okay with having as a soulmate. She was strong willed and powerful and seemed hardened at the edges in a way no one else on the team was.

He also knew that he was out of his mind thinking that it could possibly be her. She was young and badass and absolutely gorgeous. The universe would never just hand him all of that on a silver platter, especially considering how little it had given him before.

The team's first mission went exactly how Leonard thought it would.

They were attacked and someone died.

To be fair, Leonard had the time of his life. He'd trashed a bar with Mick and the White Canary and he'd gotten back just in time for a fight against a time traveling bounty hunter. All in all, it was a good day.

The second mission, on the other hand, went a little differently. That time, Sara was not with him. She was assigned to accompany Firestorm on a trip to find a young Martin Stein. Leonard and Mick, instead of the assassin, got Ray, so while Sara was off visiting stoned collegiate hippies, Leonard was attempting to break into an immortal psychopath's house with the world's most optimistic vigilante.

It did not go as planned.

By the end of the night, they were down a team member, and Leonard learned that blood was not black as he thought it was, but red.

A few more missions went by. They were still in 1975, they were still down a member, but by now, they'd given him a proper burial. They'd given him the respect he deserved.

Later, when everything was over and they were back on the Waverider, the team sat on the main deck, all in their own chairs, all painfully aware that one was empty.

They were quiet, lost in their own thoughts or not thinking at all, just basking in the silence.

Jax was the first to speak. He turned to Professor Stein with a perplexed look on his face.

"If you think any harder, you're going to explode, and if you go down, I do too."

"I apologize, Jefferson," Stein replied, "More has happened in the past few days than just my wedding ring disappearing, and it's taking me longer than I believed it would to process it."

"Then spill it, Grey."

"The color I've seen since I met my wife faded along with my ring. They've both now returned, but I've been seeing color for so long that I forgot what a monochromatic world was like. At least I had the knowledge that my color could be returned. I couldn't imagine the sufferings of one who had lost his soulmate in a way that couldn't be rectified."

"I guess that's where I come in," Ray admitted, "I lost my color when my fiancée Anna died. You know, you lose your color at the same rate your soulmate dies. For some people, it's slow, but Anna's death was quick and all of a sudden, all the color was gone."

There was a brief pause as Ray sadly looked off into space before he turned back.

"How about the rest of you?"

Rip, being the person closest to Ray, started.

"I'm in the same boat as you, I'm afraid," Rip said, "I saw color when I met Miranda and knew I'd lost her because it disappeared. That's how I found out it happened. I was on a mission, doing my duties as a Time Master. I knew things in 2166 were bad, and I hadn't heard from her in a little while, but then one day I blinked and everything was black and white. The only thing worse than losing your soulmate is not being beside them when it happens."

Rip then turned to Kendra, who was sitting a few feet away from him.

"I've been seeing color since I met Carter in our first life — I guess he was Prince Khufu then — and 2000 years later, it's still here."

"Even after one of you dies?" Ray asked, raising his eyebrows. Kendra nodded sadly.

"How fascinating!" Martin exclaimed with bright eyes.

"You would think that, wouldn't you, Grey?" Jax rolled his eyes.

"How about you, Jefferson?" Martin asked, turning to the other half of Firestorm, "Do you have any experience with the color spectrum?"

"Nah," Jax shook his head, "Maybe someday."

"Yes, you are a little on the young side to be meeting your soulmate," he agreed, "Although it isn't impossible."

"Yeah, some people met their soulmates in my high school," Jax nodded, "There were counselors for it and everything and they'd have to go to meetings and discuss stuff like the future and things like that."

"Yes, adolescents tend to not make the wisest choices when it comes to the future," Rip commented.

"Yeah, I get that," Sara nodded, knowing that had she not gone on the Queen's Gambit as a teenager, she would never have ended up where she is today.

"It seems we still haven't heard from our resident criminals and assassin," Stein commented.

"Nothing to say, Professor," Mick replied as Leonard silently tipped his head to the side in acknowledgement.

"What about you, Sara," Kendra said kindly.

"Not much room for soulmates in the League," Sara said, because technically that was the truth. It just wasn't exactly the whole truth. Kendra's eyes remained trained on her a moment or two after everyone else's had moved on. There was a funny look on her face, as if she could see completely through what Sara had said.

The team traveled to Washington D.C., Soviet Russia, future-Star City, deep space. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, Leonard always found himself with Sara.

In 1945, Sara'd been tasked with killing Martin if a mission went sideways. Leonard doubled back, leaving his partner behind to deal with a temporarily incapacitated Ray and nearly getting caught in the crosshairs of a Soviet gulag rampage, all so he could keep Sara from killing Stein

In 2046, the team separated. Leonard followed Mick into the depths of a crime ring that was running Star City. He wasn't too concerned until the leader threatened to kill his team. It was mentioning a blonde assassin that got his attention. He chose once again to go against Mick and find Sara.

In deep space, he was with Sara, choosing Sara three times. Once when they were freezing to death in the cargo hold of the Waverider and he gave her his parka because if anyone was going to survive this he was damned sure it would be her. Later, when Mick had defected and Leonard had to choose to either go with Mick or stay with the rest of his team, he chose Sara. It happened a third time when Mick and Sara were fighting and he knew if he didn't help one of them, someone would end up dead. He picked Sara.

Wherever the team went, Sara was always on Leonard's mind.

Then, things changed.

The team was in 1953. Sara and Leonard weren't paired together; Rip took Leonard off to investigate the case of several missing persons in Harmony Falls, Oregon and Sara went with Stein to the hospital in the hopes of gaining some intel on those who were missing.

The mission actually went fairly well, better than most. Sure, they sort of handed Kendra to Savage on a silver platter, and sure, Jax was temporarily turned into a ravaging bird monster, but besides that, it went according to plan.

It was departing from Harmony Falls when problems arose.

Something went wrong and Sara, Kendra, and Ray watched the Waverider depart without them.

They had no choice but to stay in the 1953. They waited for a little while, knowing that the team would come back for them if they stayed put, but soon, it had been too long.

The team wasn't coming back for them, and now, they had no choice but to live out the rest of their lives in the fifties.

Sara found that the longer they were there, the duller her colors became. She wondered if that was common, for colors to fade if you were away from your soulmate for too long. She couldn't look it up, though, because computer access was nonexistent in the fifties.

Around the same time she stopped being able to see color in dim light, she left Ray and Kendra. Sara couldn't stand being around them and all the love they had while her one real chance at love was fading away before her eyes.

She needed to go somewhere that had no place for love or color or soulmates:

The League of Assassins.

There, she was finally around people like her. There was no attachment, no connection, no emotions. All that was there was a lot of weapons and an unhealthy relationship with murder.

It didn't keep the color from fading.

Less than a year later, it was almost gone. She tried to convince herself that it didn't matter, that her color wouldn't be missed, but she couldn't. All she could do was wait for the day it vanished completely, replaced with black and white once again.

That day didn't come. What did, however, was Rip, but not just Rip either. Nearly the entire team came to rescue her.

Nobody had ever done anything like that for her before. In fact, she was so blown away that she didn't quite know how to react. So, she did the first thing that came to mind, and that was to turn them in to R'as.

However, Sara almost immediately noticed something that took her attention away from that: the team was missing two members, Mick and Leonard. Sara tried to think rationally. There were plenty of reasons Rip would leave two of his best fighters behind when breaking into the League of Assassins, but even she had to admit that those reasons got more and more bizarre and unlikely as she went down the list. She knew that the only reason they weren't there was because something was wrong and Sara's steadily fading color didn't help to clear her mind.

Lucky for her, Rip had a plan that let her end that train of thought. Unlucky for her, that plan involved pinning her against Kendra, knowing full well that at least one of them would end up dead.

Something rose in Sara as she watched Ray try to jump in front of Kendra. It was not anger, nor the bloodlust she'd become used to feeling when facing an adversary. This was different. She felt so incredibly frustrated, frustrated that Kendra's soulmate was eternally guaranteed, and frustrated that she even had Ray, who loved her regardless of whether they were soulmates or not.

Then, there was Sara, watching her color slowly fade away. Then she felt the anger she hadn't been feeling before. It was red and hot and burned in the back of her throat and consumed her every thought, so much so that she barely had to control her movement as she and Kendra fought.

Rip was almost right. Someone almost did die. Sara was a moment away from slitting Kendra's throat when something in her vision changed and she froze. It was barely there, but noticeable when she moved her eyes from side to side. A bit of color was creeping into her vision. More yellow had been added to the stone walls of the room, adding to their look of age and deterioration. The torches on the walls glowed an even deeper orange, matching the anger in Sara that was now rapidly subsiding.

But she didn't have time to worry about color, because Chronus, the bounty hunter that had been following them since even the very beginning of their mission, appeared in the doorway. She fought him, using every method she had to bring him down. She was one second away from ending the whole thing when it happened.

She heard Leonard's voice before he saw him. He was grimacing, doubled over, with one hand clutching the stone doorframe and the other tucked inside his coat. He looked over the crowded room, stopping only when he found Chronus and then Sara.

As her eyes met his, her vision exploded with color.

It had never been that bright before, never that clear. There was no fading at the edges, no flickering, it was just there, like it was supposed to be.

It was a strange sort of confirmation of what she already expected, given that she was the only one who'd undergone anything at all; she highly doubted anything had happened to Leonard's vision in the two days he'd been away from her.

Sara wasn't exactly surprised, the only reason it'd taken her so long to see this clearly was, what? Fear? Doubt? Whatever it was, all she knew was that the time she spent with Leonard was like a dream in a life that so often felt like a nightmare. She didn't want to let herself believe something like this — love, a soulmate, Leonard — was even possible. More than that, she didn't want to get her hopes up because she didn't want to feel the pain when it all came crashing down again.

The rest of the evening flew by; Sara barely paid any attention to what was happening. All she knew was that somehow, she'd ended up in her old room on the Waverider. It looked exactly as she'd left it, because technically, she'd only left forty eight hours ago.

She was sitting on her bed and working at the intricate braids her hair had been pulled into. She was so lost in thought that she had no idea what she was doing, she was just letting her hands do the work and let her mind wander anywhere else.

Sara wasn't going to tell anyone about the hell she'd been through in Nanda Parbat, not because she thought the war stories or the brutality would be too much to handle, but because how was she supposed to explain that the pain of those things was nothing to how she felt watching her color fade away?

It's not that she wanted to tell anyone either but she knew that if she found herself alone with Leonard, she'd tell him everything.

She couldn't though. She couldn't tell him any of what she'd been through over the last two years. He wouldn't get it.

Would he?

Sara had to admit Captain Cold was not as cold as he had been at the beginning of this mission.

Still, the last time Leonard was faced with emotions, he killed Mick.

Tried being the operative word.

He didn't kill Mick. Sure, he stranded him in the middle of nowhere, but the Leonard she'd met would have killed him. Or would he have sided with him?

Sara didn't know what to think anymore. Everything from the mission was kind of hazy; two years was longer than she thought it was.

Was Leonard still capable of comprehending how hard those years had been for her?

On one hand, why wouldn't he be? Hadn't he been through this whole color thing too? Who's to say he wouldn't want to talk about it with her?

"Cat got your tongue, Canary?"

Sara jumped to her feet, fingers curling around the hilt of a knife that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

As her vision cleared, she saw Leonard leaning against her doorframe. She relaxed slightly and tucked the knife back into the waistband of her jeans.

"Sorry," Sara said, not meeting his eyes. She stood up, "Old habits die hard, I guess."

"Don't apologize," Leonard replied.

Sara moved towards the door.

"If I were you I'd stay away from me for a while. Who knows what I could do?" Sara brushed past him, leaving her room and walking down the hallway.

Leonard didn't move, watching her retreating form until she had rounded a corner. He could tell something was wrong, and it wasn't the effects of returning to her old assassin ways. Leonard remembered who she was when he first met her; he remembered how she'd been, how she'd acted. This was different.

Before, she'd been fearless, and cocky — arrogant even — about death. She'd seen it as unimportant, meaningless, but clearly thought it would never happen to her.

She may have had a point about that last part.

The Sara that he'd just seen bore almost no resemblance to the one he'd met several months ago.

He saw hesitation in this Sara, fear even.

Leonard didn't think he'd ever seen Sara afraid before. It was an interesting color on her.

Color.

Was that what this was about? Had she started to see color on Nanda Parbat?

Leonard had thought that maybe Sara had been the reason he'd started seeing color himself, but now he wasn't so sure.

If not Sara, then who was it?

That didn't explain how Sara had looked at him when he'd arrived at the headquarters of the League of Assassin. Mick had been surrounded, subject to the team's arsenal of weapons and abilities with no chance of survival. At the sound of his voice, the whole team had turned. He met Sara's eyes first and instantly her face went sheet white, her eyes widening. He had no idea why it happened, and still wasn't entirely sure it had at all; it had lasted a split second before his attention had been pulled to saving Mick, but it had been the only thing on his mind since then.

What was wrong with him? How was he letting one person become this important to him, and just on the assumption that she was the one who'd caused him to see color?

Maybe this distance would be a good thing.

Unfortunately for both of them, it didn't last long.

The next mission consisted of a few of Leonard's worst days yet, not because of the mission itself, but because of just a few moments in it.

One such moment was when he accidentally said something stupid. He was manipulative — he got it from his dad — and although he wasn't always particularly proud of it, it came in handy more often that it should have. To be manipulative, you have to be good with words, and Leonard definitely was. He didn't have to worry about saying anything stupid because he never really had before.

Then again, he was starting to think that being around Sara was making him become a different person.

For better or for worse.

Either way, he said something to Sara when he didn't mean to.

And what about your feelings, she'd said

About you?

He hadn't meant to say it. It had been a deflection, saving him from a completely different conversation he didn't want to have. Looking back on it, there were a million things he could have said instead, but he'd been too distracted by how clear his color was when he was looking at Sara to put too much thought into what he was saying.

He knew Sara saw right through him. He could tell just in the way she smiled at him before continuing.

She called him an ass on her way out. Nobody else would have gotten away with that, only Sara.

The worst part of this mission happened at its tail-end, and it was something Leonard didn't think he'd ever forget.

They'd been on some landing strip or something, fighting Savage, his men, and a fleet of atomic robots. It was total chaos, fighting happening both on land and in the air. Then he'd turned and seen Savage holding Sara, one arm pinning her against him, the other holding a knife to her throat.

On the surface, Sara looked nothing more than incredibly angry, and that was enough to send some of Savage's men a few steps backwards, but as her eyes met Leonard's, he saw something even scarier: terror.

What do you want?

The words were out before Leonard could stop them. He would do anything to never see Sara looking so scared again.

Except that wasn't him. He was supposed to be called Captain Cold for a reason. He was supposed to not care.

Well, he did care.

A few more missions went by; nothing particularly exciting happened within them.

Leonard got to see Sara dressed for an afternoon in the Old West, which was a view he definitely enjoyed. He also got to see a younger version of Sara, which was slightly more disconcerting.

Sara tried her best to keep her younger self away from the rest of the team.

She wasn't entirely sure how this soulmate thing worked, but she was pretty sure nothing good would come of seeing Leonard — or, you know, whoever else her soulmate could be — decades before she was supposed to.

Sara did pretty well until she was bringing Leonard's infant self back to the Waverider and it dawned on her that she might be handing her future soulmate to herself.

Is that a baby?, she'd asked, her face scrunched up in confusion.

Sara searched her face for any changes, and wracked her brain for some sort of new memory, but nothing seemed to have changed.

A half an hour later, she was back in her room and free to ask Gideon what she wanted to know away from prying ears.

"Gideon," she said into the air.

"Yes, Miss Lance?" the AI answered.

"Gideon," Sara repeated, "I can see color."

"I am aware."

"Okay," she hesitated, slightly thrown off, "well then can you tell me who my soulmate is?"

"Unfortunately, no, Miss Lance," Gideon replied, "Unless it is of the cardiovascular nature, I cannot deal with problems of the heart. Is that all?"

"No," Sara said hurriedly, "I have a question. If my soulmate is who I think it is, then my younger self just saw him, held him, and nothing happened."

"I assume when you say soulmate, you are referring to Leonard Snart, and in this case, his infant self," Gideon said.

"Yes," Sara said. This was the first time she'd heard it out-loud. She wasn't sure what to think of it. "Why didn't I see color when I saw him?"

"There is not much science on the subject of soulmates, but there are theories," Gideon said, "My theory on this particular problem is in that this Leonard Snart is from the past. In his current time, you haven't been born. Therefor he doesn't have a soulmate yet."

"So you think he's my soulmate?"

"I calculate the probability of Mr. Snart being your soulmate is—"

"Actually, never mind," Sara cut the AI off, "I don't want to know."

While the last few missions were rough for Leonard, the next one was just as difficult for Sara.

They were in 2166, and fighting Vandal Savage at the height of his power. Sara wasn't sure how this could possibly be a good plan, but against her better judgement, she was trusting Rip Hunter.

They went to a speech, given by Savage to some of his men (it had been astonishingly easy to sneak into; Savage's security was abysmal).

Then, they'd seen her.

Cassandra.

Or Cassie, as Leonard liked to call her.

Sara had never been a particularly jealous person, probably because she'd never had to be. She was usually the object of people's straying eyes, not the other way around. It was a part of her that she'd never been particularly proud of.

She'd never missed it more.

"You've gotten pretty tight with Savage's daughter," Sara said to Leonard when they found themselves alone in the mess hall. She had gone in to get some lunch, and Leonard had already been there when she arrived. He was making hot chocolate — he always made it a big ordeal, making the whole thing from scratch and complaining about the "shitty instant crap" the entire time — and he had two mugs on the table.

What are you doing?

Cassie's never had hot chocolate. You've never lived until you have hot chocolate.

Cassie?

"What can I say," he replied, "abusive fathers have me seeing red."

Sara stared at him, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach. It couldn't be a coincidence that the first and only time Leonard directly referred to color happened to be right after he met Cassandra, could it?

"If your hope was for me to be green with envy," she said, choosing her words carefully, "I think you'll be disappointed."

Their eye contact was held for longer than two "just friends" should have been able to get away with. Sara's eyes were narrowed, one eyebrow cocked. Leonard had a smirk plastered across his face.

It was Sara who broke their gaze as she turned to leave the mess hall.

Leonard thought Sara would avoid him like the plague after what he'd said to her, but they returned Cassandra to her own time, and things went back to normal. He thought the quick return to normalcy may have been because of Savage's presence on the Waverider. He had replaced his daughter in the cell on the Waverider mere hours after it had been inhabited by Cassandra. He was just as stubborn as his daughter, but much less capable of reasoning.

Savage being on board made Sara nervous. She hated being nervous; it brought back residual League habits: jumpiness, always being on edge, one hand unfailingly gripping the hilt of a knife or the collapsed batons in the back pocket of her jeans.

For some reason, being with Leonard dampened those effects. It wasn't that he was calm; if she wanted calm, she'd probably be sitting next to Kendra, but she wasn't. She was sitting next to Leonard, him in his usual seat on the bridge, her sitting with her back against it, her head so close to his shoulder when either of them moved, she brushed against the leather of his jacket.

Just the way they were nonchalantly passing the beer bottle back and forth was making her feel better. The sheer force of his aloofness — the way he treated the presence of an immortal psychopath on the Waverider as a mere inconvenience to him, rather than an actual threat — was enough to ease even some of her nerves.

Sara wanted Savage off of her ship. Even more than that, she wanted him dead. She'd always just assumed that's how all of this would end, because that had been the plan the whole time, but now, half of the team wanted to spare his life (although if she was being completely honest, she shouldn't be so surprised considering the outcome of most of their past missions).

Hell, she'd kill Savage herself if she could, but only Kendra could do that.

Maybe that's why his presence on the ship had her so on edge. Next to Vandal Savage, Sara was completely powerless. Sure, she could hold her own in a fight against him, but not even two tours in the League of Assassins gave her the ability to kill him.

Maybe that's why she hung around the team's resident Rogues, because she was sure they felt the same way about all of this, they just didn't show it.

Until they did.

When Mick brought up the idea of hijacking the jumpship and returning to Central City, Leonard agreed. It was more of an impulse move, a product of his anger at Rip for what he'd done to Jax, for his betrayal.

When Sara heard the plan, she didn't exactly argue. It's not that she didn't want to, it's that if she said anything, she'd say everything. She'd say how much she liked being around him, how so much of her had become dependent on him, even though it went against so much of what she believed in. She'd tell him about color, and how she didn't want to go through losing it again and how she definitely didn't want him going through the same thing. She'd tell him everything.

So she didn't say anything at all.

The Rogues' plan fell through, which neither Leonard nor Sara were particularly surprised about. Neither of them were overly disappointed either.

Walking to where the jumpship was docked, Leonard had felt a twinge of guilt — an emotion he was somewhat used to feeling by now — about leaving Sara behind.

He felt an even worse emotion about leaving Sara behind with Vandal Savage onboard the Waverider. Sure, Sara had managed to avoid permanent death for years, but Savage didn't need to avoid it at all; he was defying all human function without lifting a finger.

Leonard didn't want to doubt her skills, but he didn't want to find out later, when all the color in his vision he'd gotten so used to suddenly disappeared, that things had gone sideways.

He wanted to be there with her to help if things went sideways.

It did.

Savage got out of his prison cell — because Ray's an idiot; Leonard had said it all along and no one had listened. He shut down the ships central controls. They were flying blind — Sara was flying blind.

That left the rest of the team to hold off Savage and the brainwashed Carter Hall.

Leonard fought back harder than usual, trying his best to keep them away from the bridge. He needed to keep them away from the bridge, not because he particularly cared about what was happening there, but because Sara was there.

He needed Sara to be safe. He had no ulterior motive, and he wasn't getting anything out of it, but he knew he needed Sara to be safe. That's it.

That's why his heart plummeted into his stomach when he'd been hit, and the last thing on his mind as the world went black was that he wasn't sure he'd be able to see the blue of Sara's eyes when he regained consciousness.

He did, in fact, regain his ability to see color when he woke up.

Sara was fine, royally pissed off, but fine.

"I wish I'd been there more to help bring down Savage," he told her later. He was in Sara's room, leaning against the foot of her bed and watching her deal out a deck of cards. They were waiting, biding their time until Rip came back and told them what they would do next.

"I dunno, you seemed pretty comfortable when we found you," Sara responded, doling out the last of the cards and picking up her own pile.

"That wasn't exactly my choice," he replied, "I would choose helping you over being passed out against a wall in a heartbeat."

"I think most people would," she said, choosing to ignore any hidden meaning in his words, "Sorry to hear your plan to get home didn't work out."

Leonard shrugged, "I'm not."

They fell into silence after that, each concentrating on the game in front of them. They played for the win first, not the company, although that was an added bonus.

Leonard was thankful for the silence later, because it allowed him to hear the unfamiliar noises from within the Waverider. He had sort of a sixth sense for when things were about to go wrong, perhaps because in his past, it often did. He had needed to recognize a bad situation before it happened so he could avoid it. He wasn't entirely sure what it was, but he sure as hell didn't want whatever it was near Sara.

We need to find somewhere to hide.

Why do we need to find somewhere to hide?

Alexa.

Sure, the word Alexa wasn't exactly the best explanation, but it was all the explanation he had time to give before they had to get moving — or more specifically, moving through the Waverider's ventilation system. They were both aware of how uncomfortable the other was; Sara knew that Leonard had never done well with being in close proximity to another person, and Leonard knew that closed spaces reminded Sara of parts of her life she desperately wanted to forget.

They both stayed quiet though, not sure how to bring up their own discomfort, or their awareness of the other's. They listened to the sounds of their team being dragged away. They waited until the only thing they could hear was the sound of their own breathing, then ten minutes more.

Finally, Leonard decided it was safe to emerge from their hiding spot.

The next few hours were a blur of chaos and confusion. He pulled a gun on Sara; an action fueled by his own fear of losing her, and one he instantly regretted. He apologized for it later — not well, he had to admit, but he wasn't very good at apologizing, never had been — but she was still upset with him. He didn't blame her.

You want to steal a kiss from me, Leonard? You better be one hell of a thief.

From anybody else, those words would have meant a rejection, but from her, it was something else. It was a challenge.

Leonard was never one to back down from a challenge.

It turns out, he didn't have to.

The decision to sacrifice himself at the Oculus Wellspring was almost a no-brainer.

Almost.

He couldn't let Mick stay, not after all the times Leonard had gone against him during the mission: taking him out of 2046, stranding him in the middle of nowhere, the countless times he'd chosen the team over his partner. He couldn't add another instance to the list, it wasn't right.

But that still left Sara. Sara was what made this decision almost a no-brainer.

Leonard was almost positive now that Sara was the one who'd caused the arrival of the color in his vision. He'd had no idea, back at the beginning of the mission, that he'd be the one taking it away from her, at least, not in such a brutal way.

He wished it didn't have to be like this. He wished there was another way, that he didn't have to hold down the failsafe. He wanted to follow Sara back to the Waverider and continue their conversation about me, and you, and me and you. He wanted to talk about color, he wanted to get lost in her blue eyes and run his fingers through her blonde hair.

But he didn't tell her any of it. He didn't have time. So when Sara kissed him, he tried to put as much of what he wished he could say into kissing her back, how one look at the beginning of a ludicrous time travel mission had made his entire life light up.

She pulled away, but didn't leave him just yet. As her eyes traveled across his face, trying to memorize every detail, his eyes remained locked on hers. He took in every pigment, every shade of blue, because if this was was, he wanted her eyes to be the last good thing her remembered.

Once she'd dragged Mick onto the Waverider and propped him up against his usual chair on the main deck, Sara sat down and squeezed her eyes shut. Rip directed Gideon to fly the Waverider away from the Oculus as fast as she could.

Then came the explosion.

Gideon clearly had gotten the timeship out of range, but even without seeing it, Sara knew. She heard the rumbling crash roll through the air. With it came the quaking vibrations that shook the Waverider even with the distance the AI had put between them and the Oculus.

She knew she needed to open her eyes. She knew that they were traveling further and further away from Leonard and if he was still alive, she was the only one who'd know.

As the Waverider trembled, Sara hated herself for thinking there was even a chance he could still be alive. She knew Snart had to be dead. No one, not even the elusive Captain Cold could survive an explosion like that. It just wasn't possible.

Then why were her eyes still closed? Why was she holding onto the slightest possibility that she'd open her eyes and see color if she knew it was impossible?

The quaking of the timeship had finally subsided. The team was silent. Nobody moved.

Slowly, Sara raised her head. Her eyes were still closed, but she could see the brightness of the Waverider's tech through her eyelids; nothing gave her an inkling of whether she could still see color though.

She had to just get it over with. She had to do it.

She opened her eyes.

Gone was the brown of Rip's duster, gone was the yellow of Jax's suit and the red of Ray's.

Gone was Leonard.

All she saw was grey.

Sara met Mick's eyes. She silently gave one nod, answering a hundred unasked questions.

There was the proof.

Now, she knew for sure that Leonard was her soulmate. Now, she knew for sure Leonard was dead.

And that was that.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this, and feedback is always welcome! Depending on the outcome of season 2, there might be a sequel to this in your future :)