Chapter 2

Hartley actually misses the handcuffs.

It's a stupid thing to think when a gun comes out and points at Cisco, but Hartley doesn't have his phone on him and those magnetic cuffs could be traced via GPS. But, no, they're sitting in a shelf in Cisco's lab, gathering dust now in a show of trust that Hartley had greatly appreciated until this very moment.

The car ride is tense and Hartley zones half a dozen times on noises that wouldn't normally bother him because his anxiety is working over time. He's in a car with Mick Rory, a woman likely related to Leonard Snart, and there's a gun pointed at Cisco. And there's nothing he can think of to say or do that will fix this very vexing problem. And of course it gets worse when they arrive at their destination. Not only because Leonard Snart is there, but so is Dante Ramon.

So, yeah, Hartley misses the magnetic cuffs so much right now.

It's assumed that Hartley's dead weight right now, an extra hostage to ensure Cisco's cooperation. It's a misconception Hartley happy to encourage for now, letting them tie him up beside Dante Ramon, who really needs to learn how to shut up. And have a little faith in his brother.

"What, he's gonna save us with his engineering skills? They're gonna kill us regardless, Rathaway," Dante hissed.

Pessimist. Not that he was necessarily wrong, but... "Right now your brother's engineering skills are what is keeping us both alive. So unless you want to be knee-capped by Captain Cold all to prove a fucking point, maybe shut up and let Cisco handle things. He's got three weapons to build and just has to string things out long enough that we're noticed missing at work tomorrow and Caitlin asks the Flash to find us." Caitlin probably wouldn't assume it was Hartley being nefarious anymore, not after how he'd helped Ronnie escape General Eiling, but when neither Cisco nor Hartley answered their phones she'd get worried and call Barry. But was about eight-forty-ish now, which meant Cisco had a minimum of twelve hours to stall before they were noticed missing. Who knew how long it'd take for Barry to scour the city actually looking for them after that.

And Cisco had a headache, which meant he wasn't at his best right now. Depending on how sympathetic Lisa Snart might be to Cisco's physical pain - because she was the one most likely to be marginally sympathetic - then Cisco might be able to stall for time more easily. Depended on how easy it was to put the Cold Gun together with the supplies Leonard Snart had provided.

It's hard to tell how much progress Cisco makes as time slips by. Hartley knows it's been two hours and twenty-three minutes (in fact he knows down to the second) because he can hear the soft tick-tick-tick of someone's watch. Most likely Leonard Snart's watch given how the sound seems to move with him.

Surprisingly, Leonard Snart calls a break. He looks concerned, which makes no sense until Lisa Snart comments on Cisco's nosebleed.

Cisco's voice slurs, just a little, as he tells her that he's had a headache all day and needs to sit. Hartley feels sick because... this is the worst possible time for Cisco to be having a headache and a nosebleed and slurring his words. That's... that's not a good combination.

It's a terrifying combination under normal circumstances, because Hartley would be convincing Cisco to see a doctor right now. To at least call Caitlin and get checked out at STAR Labs, if not a hospital. That's not an option right now, though, because they've been kidnapped and are being held at gunpoint and...

And Cisco needs to rest, so Hartley's going to have to find some way of convincing the Snarts and Rory to let him take over building their precious weapons for now.

Hartley feels this need in his chest to protect Cisco. To keep him safe and cared for. And Hartley'd been doing a decent job of ignoring the warm fuzzy feeling Cisco'd been inspiring in him lately, but now it's all a jumbled mess inside of him. If something bad happens to Cisco that Hartley could have prevented - or even that he couldn't have prevented - then Hartley will never be able to forgive himself.

They had only bothered to tie Hartley's hands behind his chair, which while awkward and uncomfortable, was actually workable for Hartley. He could not pull his arms over his head or anything like that, but these weren't exactly the most complicated bindings he'd ever had on his arms. It'd be simple enough to get out of them if he needed to do so.

He was starting to suspect that he needed to do exactly that.

"It wasn't Rathaway having the headache at the party, was it?" Dante almost sounded worried as he watched his brother practically collapse into his chair, holding a bloodied Kleenex to his nose.

"No," Cisco muttered, still slightly slurring but now with a bonus nasal quality as he tried to stem the nosebleed. "He was giving me an out."

"Maybe I should take over," Hartley said. "You look like you're about to pass out, Cisco." As if to prove Hartley's point, Cisco swayed a little in his chair.

"You've never even seen the designs for their guns," Cisco protested, giving Hartley a worried look. Like he thought Hartley might try to BS his way through building the guns and get them all in trouble.

Which at this point Hartley was almost desperate enough to try exactly that. Not that he needed to now that his hacking of the STAR Labs mainframe had finally borne fruit.

"Why did you make their first set of guns?" Dante demanded, before Hartley could reply. "What the hell have you gotten me into?"

"They stole the first set." Cisco swayed dizzily again. "I made them... in case the Flash turned out to be too good to be true, okay? And then he turned out to be a good guy and the guns were stolen."

And Cisco had probably been made to feel like shit about it too. Before Dante could potentially make things even worse, Hartley said, "I... may have reactivated my old login and been poking around the STAR Labs systems, okay?"

"Of course you have." Cisco sounded more fond than annoyed. "Hartley, you're not going to find what you're looking for. If there is proof that Dr. Wells knew about the flaw in the accelerator before turning it on, he'll have gotten rid by now."

Dante did not look pleased to hear that in the least. "You've gotten me into one shitty situation already. Don't drag me into another."

"Well I'm going to keep looking anyway. But right now I can help. Let me, please." Hartley decided to ignore Dante for now. As long as the idiot kept his voice down, he wasn't making things worse. He was being an awful older brother, but at least he wasn't exacerbating the situation.

Cisco reached over and touched Hartley's sleeve. At which point the situation went straight to hell. Because Cisco's eyes went unfocused and then he collapsed.

Hartley might've shouted Cisco's name. He's not sure. Dante definitely did.

The ropes were off Hartley's wrists as fast as humanly possible, which wasn't fast enough because Cisco was hitting the ground while Hartley was still fumbling with them. He still manages to get them off one wrist and drop to the ground to carefully cradle Cisco's head by the time Lisa Snart reaches them.

Leonard Snart and Mick Rory both have guns trained on Hartley, but he just... doesn't give a shit.

"He needs to go to the hospital," Hartley snapped, staring directly at Lisa and hoping he wasn't wrong about her being the most sympathetic of the trio. Because if she wasn't then either her brother or Rory was and either way that would mean they were fucked. "I can make the guns in his place."

Lisa looks up at her brother. "He's right. Ramon's no use to us like this."

"Kid got a medical history of this?" Rory asks.

"No," Dante replied, voice rough. "No, Cisco's never..." he cut off. Then, softly, "oh, god, Cisco..."

And, for the first time that day, Hartley thinks Dante sounds like an older brother.

"How'd you get out of the restraints, Rathaway?" Rory asked, followed immediately by, "and can you really make the guns in the kid's place?"

"Had a boyfriend who could tie'em tighter," Hartley responded absently, finally taking his eyes off of Lisa to look over at Mick Rory. Who was, apparently, more sympathetic than expected. "I've seen the blueprints and I have a near eidetic memory. So, yes. You get Cisco to a hospital and I can make the guns."

"You're a pretty decent hand at sonic weaponry yourself," Leonard Snart muses. "Pied Piper, was it?"

Hartley goes very still.

"Made a spectacle of yourself not too long ago, blowing out the windows on Dr. Harrison Wells house and then vandalizing your parents' business. All to catch the Flash's attention. And then, unlike every other would-be supervillain the Flash has caught, you disappeared entirely. Only to resurface a few weeks ago to bail the Flash out of a skirmish involving one General Eiling, currently about to be court martialed for his bad behavior." Snart pauses and Hartley's glad for the momentary break because, for a moment, all he can hear is the remembered sound of Barry's pained moans from being skewered all over by Eiling's anti-speedster device.

"Was there a question in there or were you proving yourself more observant than the police?" Hartley finally asked, turning to glare at the elder Snart sibling.

"I just have to wonder what kind of deal you made with the Flash to earn yourself a get out of jail free card." Snart looks genuinely curious despite that otherwise unreadable drawl of his.

Remembering that claustrophobic first night in the prototype anti-meta cells in the STAR Labs pipeline, Hartley can definitely attest to it not remotely being 'free'. "Maybe he just realized I wasn't actually the bad guy in that situation. Do you want your guns or not, Snart?"

"Lise. Drop Cisco off at the nearest hospital. We'll be packing things up here and moving to the fallback location."

"What about him?" Hartley asked, nodding to Dante. "He should be going with Cisco."

"Nice try, Rathaway. You're not the bleeding heart type and I can tell you don't like the elder Ramon much, but... it seems that Cisco's opinion matters to you a great deal. And what would happen to that good opinion should anything happen to his brother? No. Dante Ramon is just as useful for keeping you in line as he was for keeping Cisco in line." Snart sounds pleased with himself. And the worst thing is, he's not wrong.

Rory puts his gun away and ties Hartley's arms back up. Tighter this time. And then he's forced back onto his chair with no choice but to sit and watch as Cisco is carried away to Lisa's car.

"He's... he's gonna be okay, right?" Dante asked softly.

Hartley had no idea.

"I should have told you this before, but I... I didn't think you'd believe me," Hartley said, fidgeting with his napkin. They'd gone out for lunch, just the two of them, since Caitlin was meeting with Ronnie and Dr. Wells was... off doing something on his own.

Cisco, admittedly, hadn't looked very hard for him. Despite helping to hide Cisco, Caitlin, and Barry from General Eiling the other week, Dr. Wells had still tried to set himself up as an eleventh hour hero when it came to separating Ronnie and Dr. Stein and there was the question of the tachyon prototype parts that he'd produced for reuse in the quantum splicer. Dr. Wells had claimed he was making a replacement for the one they'd lost Dr. McGee, but... Cisco had his doubts.

But as low as his trust in Dr. Wells was, his trust in Hartley was at an all time high.

"Whatever it is, you can trust me," Cisco replied quietly in what he hoped was a reassuring tone.

"I know." Hartley smiled and ducked his head and...

Cisco felt himself blush. He was imagining things, he had to be. After all, there was no way he was Hartley's type, right?

"When I attacked Dr. Wells house... he was in his wheelchair when he came into the building. But then he stood up. He might have been paralyzed after the accelerator accident, but he isn't anymore. He was walking around just fine. I don't think he knows that I... I don't think he knows that I know he can walk, but he's pretty wary about me anywhere. When I said I knew his secret..." Hartley shook his head. "I don't have any proof. If I'd known what I'd see that night, I'd have recorded it. But I swear I'm telling the truth."

"Hartley knows something about the Reverse Flash, but he doesn't know he knows it."

Cisco hadn't thought back on his conversation with the future version of Barry in a while now, but those words jump to the front of his mind now. But that's... impossible, right? They'd seen Dr. Wells and the Reverse Flash in the same place the night the tachyon prototype was stolen. The Reverse Flash had attacked Dr. Wells. But...

But they'd seen two Barry's in the same place at the same time due to time travel. And there were other ways to make it look like there were two people in the same place without risking a temporal paradox. Cisco had used holographic technology to project a rather lifelike image of the Reverse Flash from the night Nora Allen was murdered not that long ago.

"Oh my god," Cisco breathed out as, slowly, everything began to click into place. Dr. Wells was the Reverse Flash. "I believe you. But... there's something we need to check out back at the lab."

Caitlin gets the call at nearly eleven pm. She'd been home for an hour at that point, without Ronnie again because he and Dr. Stein had only flown in for a day trip.

And it still blows her mind that by 'flown in' she means they merged into Firestorm and flew via manipulating the fire they exuded in that form.

But the call at eleven is from a local hospital. A young man without identification was brought in, but the woman who'd brought him in had said his name was Cisco Ramon and told them that Dr. Caitlin Snow was his personal doctor.

So Caitlin had dressed in a flurry and called Barry to go check on Cisco's apartment while she went to the hospital.

There's no sign of the woman who brought Cisco in. She disappeared within moments of the Doctors taking charge. And no mention of Hartley at all, which is worrisome. Those two were kind of a matched set these days. Where one was, so was the other.

But here was Cisco, unconscious in the hospital, and no Hartley Rathaway.

According to Doctor Nguyen, who'd examined Cisco upon his arrival, Cisco brain was showing signs of alterations to the expected capillary morphology, indicative of a mini-stroke. There was no reason why he wasn't waking, just that... he wasn't. Cisco didn't have a medical history of migraines or strokes. This event was... unprecedented.

Barry texts Caitlin pictures of Cisco's apartment. There's Chinese food left stacked in its containers by the door. Cisco and Hartley's wallets and phones were left behind too, with the obvious assumption being that they'd been taken away by someone posing as a delivery person. And based on the fact that the food had gone cold long ago, they'd been gone for hours. Caitlin responds with the situation at the hospital and when she hears back from Barry again, he's apparently gotten into the hospital security cameras. He sends a picture of the face of the woman who'd dropped Cisco off. It's blurry and her face is half hidden, so it's hard to be completely sure, but Caitlin's fairly certain she's never seen that woman before in her life.

So how did she know Caitlin was Cisco's personal doctor? Was she a good samaritan and Cisco had given her Caitlin's name before passing out? Or... was she involved in abducting both Cisco and Hartley?

Settling in beside Cisco's bed and reaching out to hold his hand, she wished... Caitlin wished Ronnie was still there with her.

"Caitlin?" Cisco hesitated, feeling guilty to ask this of her today, when her time with Ronnie was still so rare. But he needed Dr. Wells out of the lab for an hour or two. "I need to ask a favor. Can you invite Dr. Wells to join you and Ronnie for a while? I'm sure you can come up with a pretext for it, I just... there's something important I need to check on while he's not here."

"Is this something Hartley..."

"No," Cisco interrupted. "It's about the speedster trap. I want to check something without Dr. Wells looking over my shoulder, okay? It's important to me that he's not here."

Caitlin hesitated and then sighed. "You'd better explain this to me later, but yes. Ronnie and I will find a reason to get Dr. Wells out of the office for an hour or so."

"Thanks, Caitlin. I appreciate it."

The new location is a house. Well, more like a small mansion. If it didn't reach the 8,000 square feet minimum for a mansion, then it came pretty damn close. Hartley would know, after all, having grown up in one.

It's a completely different location from the warehouse they'd been in. Even if... even when Cisco woke up and got in contact with Barry, he'd be sending the Flash to scour the warehouse district and there'd be no trace left to indicate where Hartley and Dante had been relocated to. And Barry wasn't about to go flashing his way through every building in Central on the off chance that someone's house was being borrowed by Captain Cold.

And something Snart said had been niggling at Hartley. The question of what kind of deal Hartley'd made with the Flash to get out of a visit to jail.

Was Snart hoping to make some kind of deal with the Flash too?

The place looked lived in and Hartley suspected that the owners were off on vacation. Probably wouldn't even notice the place had been broken into by the time Snart and Rory cleaned the place up afterwards. Though perhaps there'd be a few 'misplaced' items that the owners never did quite manage to find down the road.

Not Hartley's problem right now. The only problem he needed to consider right now was the Cold Gun parts laid out on an impromptu lab table in front of him and question of how to keep two Snarts and a Rory from walking off with deadly weapons while still ensuring that neither he nor Dante were killed in the process. Hopefully neither of them would be maimed either. Hartley preferred remaining un-maimed. He was sure Dante Ramon felt the same.

So what had been Cisco's plan? Did Cisco even have one or had he been focusing on not getting Hartley and Dante killed and hoping that Barry could take the guns from the trio when it was all over? No... Cisco would have been trying to make a plan. Even with his massive headache going on.

But Hartley's probably not going to be able to figure out what plan Cisco had in progress, so he's going to have to do something else. Like... a kill switch.

"I'm going to need blank paper. Draft paper is preferable but I can make due with regular printer paper, so long as it's no smaller than that. Graph paper works too," Hartley said, as Snart untied his hands.

"Oh really?"

"Unlike Cisco, I've never actually built a Cold Gun or Heat Gun before, so drafting out from memory first so I can ensure I'm getting the designs correct instead of making something that'll blow up in all our faces would be for the best. And since there are no existing designs for the Glitter Gun," because Hartley's a Doctor Who nerd at heart and the guns that shot gold particles at the Cybermen were called that, "meaning I'll be coming up with something entirely new from scratch. Which, once again, better it's drafted on paper first so it's safe by the time it reaches your sister's hands."

"You have a sister too, don't you?" Snart asked conversationally.

The question freezes Hartley about as effectively as the Cold Gun might have. "Yes. And if you intentionally go within even a hundred yards of her, I'll fucking kill you," Hartley replied, voice somehow staying both level and calm, two things he most definitely did not feel at this moment.

"Not threatening, just observing," Snart responded with a smirk. "I've got all the hostage I need in Dante Ramon. Just... trying to figure out what you dislike about him so much. But then, I suppose it's rather obvious. He's an ass to his younger sibling. While yours is stuck with your ableist, queerphobic parents. It must kill you, knowing you can't just take her from them. Not without being branded a kidnapper, anyway."

Hartley didn't respond, but he supposed the way his hands curled into fists spoke loudly enough to someone like Leonard Snart anyway.

"Mick, keep an eye on Rathaway and Ramon. I'll be back with that paper." Snart strolled out of the room.

"You're ballsy, kid," Mick observed, sounding amused. "Don't try to be a hero."

"I'm many things, but a hero sure as fuck isn't one of them," Hartley retorted, turning to the lab table and picking up the in-progress Cold Gun. It looked about halfway finished and Hartley might be able to justify pulling some of it apart by claiming Cisco's work wasn't up to par due to whatever it was that... that had just sent him to the hospital. Certainly it'd sound reasonable to everyone else in the room. But Hartley could tell that, despite however much pain Cisco had been and how distracting both that pain and his fear for Dante and Hartley should have been... this was still incredible work on Cisco's part.

But Hartley needed to embed a small change. Something that Snart wouldn't notice even if he broke the gun back down into its constituent parts. It'd be too obvious to go after the firing pin, but if he could program the generator itself to shut down if exposed to a specific frequency... then the Flash - or the Pied Piper - could kill all three guns with no muss, no fuss. The generators should already have an auto-shut off to prevent overheating - and just like an air conditioner could overheat, so too could the Cold Gun - which meant Hartley just needed to plug the micro-particle generator back into the computer for a few minutes. Long enough to make a small adjustment.

Notes: Despite what Hartley thinks, he's definitely crossed over into hero territory. :D