Here we pick up right where Flash Sideways left off, and the things Cisco had seen-and been told-about Len's sickness keep bugging him. Kidnapper or not, he hates how upset Lisa was about it.
But how can he investigate without helping the enemy...?

Amber (mentioned) copyright me.
All others copyright DC, CW, etc.
Cisco's pop culture reference copyright Squaresoft.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sounds like a trap."

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

"No?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And you believed her."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's hardly surprising."

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

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

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

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

Cisco nodded and stood up to leave.

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

"Okay."

—FLASH SIDEWAYS: ENEMY—

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

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

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

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

Linked fics:
Len's "hallucinations" of working for Star Labs, as well as the "urban legend" he'd been transferred to, will be explored in the prequel fic What Could Have Been.

Chapter length is going to be a bit more sporadic on this one. It's a much shorter fic than some of the ones I normally write, so scenes will be divided according to what's going on with little concern for actual length. This may result in a few extra-long chapters; it will result in a few extra-short ones.

Edit: Originally said Len was grabbed "in the middle of a bank heist."
I removed "bank" because I changed my mind about where he was while working on the prequel.