Barry had slept for about an hour – fifty eight minutes to be precise - not even twitching or snoring. When he woke, Len watched him silently from where he sat, taking in every tiny twitch.

Their eyes met and Barry tensed a little, then his brain finally got with the program.

"Snart," he mumbled, pushing himself into a sitting position.

"Allen," he deadpanned.

Barry eyed at the water bottle on the couch table, clearly considering his options.

"It's not laced with anything, Scarlet. Go ahead. You must be parched."

A slightly trembling hand took the bottle, still wary, but Barry finally drank. Snart felt himself relax a little.

"So you're a Sentinel."

The tousled head shot up, green eyes wide, and the younger man looked like a deer caught in the headlights. He hadn't been able to startle such a reaction out of Barry in a while. A long while, long before he had left Earth.

"And you know what you are," Len concluded, doing the math as he tilted his head. "You didn't just trigger recently. You've been online for a while. Surprising and then again not."

His mind raced. Scarlet knew he was a Sentinel, but he had no partner Snart had been able to determine. Curious. Especially since being a speedster should be wreaking havoc on his senses. How could he run at that speed and not zone on sight, sound or the sensation of it all? How much did he dial down all his senses to achieve this? And what about touch? Any injury inflicted on him would have to be devastating to his sense of touch, maybe even smell, but aside from the very human reaction of pain, The Flash had never been completely crippled and zoning.

"Since when?" he asked, head tilted, assessing the younger man anew. Barry Allen always had been and still was a mystery.

Barry frowned. "You really think I'm going to tell you anything about myself if you haven't been able to find out yourself?"

There was fire in his voice, a new strength. The fire was reflected in his eyes and Len had to swallow a grin at that. Instead he smiled coldly.

"Well, I know now and that means I'll dig. I'll find out. I know everything else about you, Scarlet. There are probably some well-hidden files, but everything can be found."

The frown deepened.

"You know I will."

Now there was a glare.

"The accelerator accident didn't make you a meta as well as a Sentinel," he went on conversationally. "You were one before the other happened. So something triggered you, unless you just bloomed into your abilities." He smirked. "I wouldn't guess that to be your style, though. Usually emotional trauma does the job, so that means either your mother's murder or your father's conviction of a crime he didn't commit."

There was a new spark in those green eyes that was a clear warning, as was the suddenly mask-like face and the tension in the whole body. Yep, he had hit the sore spot.

"Don't," Barry warned.

Snart tilted his head, feeling an unaccustomed surge, and he briefly wondered how.

"You've been online that long without a Guide," he stated. "Not a single zone. Then you get hit by lightning. I doubt you lost your senses, Barry. I think they're still all there, all heightened, and yet you don't zone. I wonder who your little helper is."

"I don't need a Guide," was the level reply.

"Maybe not in the field, but what about a little voice in your ear, coaxing you out of a hyper-focus?"

"I don't need a Guide," Barry repeated through clenched teeth.

"Every Sentinel has one. Who is it to you? The Ramon kid? Caitlin? Your sister?"

Barry's face was made of stone. "No one."

He wasn't lying. He really wasn't lying! Len leaned back, surprised. His mind started racing again, going through all the known facts, how Sentinels weren't perfect, even if it sounded like they were all-powerful, that they needed someone. Just like Guides weren't all-powerful empaths. Both had flaws, both needed someone to level out their abilities, but like Scarlet, Leonard Snart had never needed someone else.

Curious.

"Self-sufficient Sentinels don't last that long," he said.

Barry grimaced. "And yet, here I am."

"Not to mention that your speed should completely disable a Sentinel's senses. You should be a catatonic mess."

A shrug, followed by a slight wince.

"Self-contained," Snart mused, fascinated. "Complete control."

"Hardly." Barry grimaced. "There is no perfect design in nature."

"So you do zone."

"No," was the defensive reply.

"Then you have a Guide on your team."

There was no answer, but from Allen's expression that was still a negative.

"Huh." Curious and curiouser. And so very interesting. Like the whole package Barry Allen came in.

Len had heard about self-contained Sentinels, those who refused any outside help, who worked with their senses, trained themselves. They weren't immune to zones, but they usually managed to live a rather normal life. They were also on the lower end of the hypersenses spectrum and sometimes only had one enhanced sense.

For some reason he didn't peg Barry to be one of them.

"What's it to you anyway? Looking for a way to blackmail me some more? Exploit some weakness?" Barry demanded.

He studied the Sentinel, took in the still too gray pallor. He saw the core of fire and steel, the unwavering belief in what he did, coupled with that endless optimism and hope.

"Hungry?" he asked.

"Don't change the topic, Snart!"

"Len," he corrected him, surprising himself with the offer. Like a truce. "And I'm going to order pizza. You want one or not?"

"Four," Barry blurted. "Uhm, family size." He looked almost embarrassed. "I get hungry from, uhm, running. And healing so fast."

He actually smiled at that. "Sure. Four," he echoed. "Well, I'm a good host. Let's get you fed."

He had never given the fact that channeling such energy could wreak havoc on the speedster's metabolism much thought. And he would never have believed that a meta like Barry Allen would require such a high amount of calories. The numbers were mind-boggling. Seeing him polish off four family pizzas was… well, Len was secretly baffled and bemused, but on the outside he showed only his trademark smirk, hardly a real emotion displayed on his face.

"Done?" he teased.

Scarlet looked torn between embarrassment and despondency, and somehow Len found that strangely endearing. Just like he had found a lot of things about Barry Allen interesting and even attractive.

Damnit.

"Where do you put all that? You should be bursting at the seams."

"Sped-up metabolism," was the brisk reply. "It's like throwing wood chips into a furnace. They burn up immediately. Hypoglycemia isn't fun. I get dizzy spells."

Interesting. So he metabolized food while eating it. It was immediately processed into energy and hardly took up any room. That meant a change in his digestive system, too.

The cold bastard in Snart was already putting the information into a handy box, marking it for review. It was a weakness. He might be able to exploit it, drive the speedster into running himself to the ground, bring him to his knees because he had reached his limit.

The box was immediately erased. Mentally set on fire and destroyed. The ashes iced and then stomped on.

Not his style, Len knew. It might have been part of his mind-set in the past, to know a weakness, to take an opportunity when presented to him and use it.

But now? Not any more. Especially since he and his very own little speedster had come to an agreement of sorts and Leonard Snart was a man of his word. He might still be looking out for himself first, but the moment Barry Allen entered the picture, his priorities had started to shift.

It was a rather disconcerting shift and he had yet to take that sensation apart, analyze it, understand it. It was there and manifested in curious ways.

"So, how are your senses?" he prodded. "All five of them," he added, putting his complete conviction into this shot in the dark.

Barry's face closed off.

Len grinned devilishly. Bull's eye! So the speedster had all five senses enhanced.

They stared at one another, neither man breaking eye-contact.

"Why did you help me?" Barry finally asked.

"I was in the neighborhood."

No, the kid didn't believe him. Not a single word.

"I thought I'd do my good deed of the month and see to it that Central City's hero wasn't going to bleed out in the streets. Or fall into the wrong hands."

"And you are the right hands?"

Yep, Scarlet, I am, he thought. "I didn't see anyone else coming to your rescue."

"You didn't rescue me!"

"I just iced the crazy meta who had zapped and stabbed you, Flash."

Barry stared at him. "Why?" he blurted.

Yes, why. Because despite claiming he was a criminal bastard with a heart of ice and no remorse, Leonard Snart liked The Flash. He thrived on pitting himself against Central City's hero. He felt more alive. The Flash was a challenge.

"Let's just say you keep my city safe and I have gotten to like you, Scarlet."

Barry clearly didn't believe him. He couldn't fault him for that.

"Do you want me to say you owe me one? Who would believe that anyway?"

Scarlet glared as best as he could in his condition.

"You being the self-sufficient Sentinel explains so much," he went on conversationally, a teasing note in his voice. "I should have seen it sooner. It's very obvious. Central couldn't ask for a more perfect little protector. An autonomous Sentinel with no Achilles Heel in shape and form of a Guide. No one to kidnap."

There was a moment of hesitation. Finally his shoulders sagged a little and he leaned back against the wall. "It's not that perfect."

"Nothing ever is."

Barry was silent, staring at nothing, then, "I'm… in a loop. My senses are balanced in themselves. All of them, all the time. Nothing breaks a loop, so they stay in a sort of containment."

"No spikes?"

The green eyes evaded him for a fraction of a second. "My senses are fine. Always."

His mind sped up again, shelving information. "You don't zone and you have no spikes."

"No."

"At all?"

"At all," he confirmed.

He had been sort-of spiking after the meta attack, but not because of the hyper senses. It had been the speed energy and Len's touch had… grounded him again? Pushed him back to the baseline? Like a reset?

"You're a special little snowflake, Scarlet."

It got him a grimace. "It's not unheard of."

"Just really rare?" he teased.

A shrug. "Autonomous Sentinels rarely end up anywhere but the military."

"Can't see that happening with you," Snart agreed. "You hid yourself well."

Another shrug.

"But you have some form of spikes and they run their course," he mused. "Your teams probably knows."

Scarlet didn't say a thing, but that was more than Snart really needed to confirm his theory.

Watching him, he found that his color had gotten better, the hollowness was gone, and there was more life in those eyes than before.

"I should go," Barry said softly.

Snart gave a one-shoulder shrug. "Suit yourself."

"Thank you."

"You owe me for the pizza."

It got him a little laugh, which was actually what he had been aiming for. "Put it on my tab."

"That's already quite a list I'm keeping."

Barry's eyes were now felt with real humor, chasing away the shadows and the pain. "Thanks," he just repeated.

And then he was gone.

Len looked at the space where the lean form had been a mere second ago, feeling a smile grow on his lips with everything he had learned in the past hours.

Scarlet was a Sentinel. His little speedster had five enhanced senses and they were all under control. He would have been an amazing cop, but instead he had gone into science. Two degrees, one in physics, one in chemistry, and he was a really skilled forensic scientist. Smart kid. Really smart.

Something shivered through him. He liked smart. He liked the handsome package. He liked a lot about the kid.

Now, on top of being a Sentinel, he had the speed. It wasn't just the physical side where he could run really fast. His mind was faster, his metabolism, everything about him.

Such a nice package. Too bad he was on the wrong side.

You could have gone bad, Len thought to himself. You would make an amazing master criminal. But you are too good. Too much a protector.

The Sentinel dominated everything in what the young man did, be it as a forensic scientist or The Flash.

He had no idea if he could use any of the information in the future and he really didn't plan on it. It was simply information. He liked having all the facts. It made things easier.

In this case, though, it might make all those things a whole lot more complicated.