Summary: If karma was a thing – and Len tried not to believe in it, but sometimes the evidence was insurmountable – he was being punished by the universe at large for one of a multitude of bad thing he'd done in the past.


If you never did you should. These things are fun, and fun is good.

-Past (Four Months and Two Weeks After the Tidal Wave)-

Leonard Snart liked plans. That wasn't to say he didn't know how to have a good time, or that he couldn't improvise, but when it came to his heists, he preferred to know what was going to happen and when, to the second, because plans were important. Plans allowed them to get in and out without being seen, without being identified, without leaving evidence, without anyone getting killed, which was markedly more important to him as of late. He wasn't going to shy away from it if it came to that, but there had been plenty of death recently without him adding needlessly to the body count.

The point was Len had a plan. It was a good plan. It would have been a foolproof one, if it hadn't been for the little voice that called out behind him just after his feet hit the carpeted interior of the office for the Branch Manager of the West Coast Regional Office of First National Bank.

"Pst, Lenny!"

He froze in place, taking a deep, steadying breath. There was only one person that could be, because the only other person who called him that was outside in the van.

"Lenny, up here!"

He pressed a finger to his ear piece. "Lisa, we have company."

"You need an extraction?"

He stood up and turned around, momentarily taken aback by the dark figure sitting cross legged on top of a tall, wide filing cabinet. Barry didn't look much different than the last time Len had seen him – dark wash jeans and a dark jacket, hood pulled down to show tousled short brown hair and a bright smile. What gave Len pause was the foot long subway sandwich he was holding. Well, nearly foot long, it looked like he'd already started eating it.

Lisa's coaxing voice pulled him out of his own thoughts. "Lenny?"

Pressing the ear piece again, he answered, "I'll get back to you on that. Hey, Scarlet."

Barry smiled. "Hey, Lenny."

"What are you doing up there?"

"Eating a sandwich." The smile quirked higher on one side and there was a twinkle of amusement in shadowed green eyes. "Can you believe someone left this in the fridge?"

"No. Why are you here? During my heist?"

"Oh, well, I was bored." Barry took a bite off the sandwich and chewed happily. "This is really good."

"Barry, no offense, but I'm on a schedule."

"I know. I know all about your schedule. Having Shawna drug the guard's coffee? How did you know he wouldn't have a bad reaction? He could have a heart condition. He could have died."

"Did he?"

"No, but he could have."

"No, he couldn't, because I don't take chances. I did my homework, now let me do the job."

Barry shrugged. "I'm not stopping you."

Len sighed heavily. He'd have to deal with this – whatever this was – later. Going to the window, he used his flashlight to give the all clear and a moment later Shawna appeared in the center of the room, Hartley clinging to her as the disorientation passed. Len had been there and done that, which was why he hadn't come in that way.

Before either of them could notice their uninvited guest, Len pointed to the file cabinet. "Ignore him."

Barry waved back, chewing enthusiastically. Hartley looked between Barry, covered in shadow, and Len, towering over him, incredulous. "What is he doing here?"

"I was bored."

Len pointed a finger at Barry in warning. In response, Barry wagged his eyebrows, but didn't say anything. Len noted Shawna's spooked expression, but she hadn't ghosting out. Again, something he'd have to deal with later.

"Hartley, computer. Shawna, you're with me."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Barry hesitate, then move at lightening speed to finish the sandwich before hopping off the cabinet, apparently intent on following Len and Shawna into the next room.

Under normal circumstances, he would have argued, but he was on a schedule. They skulked onto the main floor of the bank and Len led her behind the register. It was quick enough work to use his gun to freeze the smaller, thin walled safes under each station and Shawna kicked them in, shattering the metal with steal toed boots.

She reached in to gather the cash up in a bag she'd taken out of her jacket. Barry rocked on his heels, standing only a few feet away from Len while she worked. "So, how much time do you have?"

Len glanced over, but there wasn't anything mocking in the kid's face. "Four minutes thirty seven seconds."

Shawna looked nervously at them, but kept piling the cash into the bag.

Barry cocked his head to the side, watching without comment. With the safes empty, they went back to office. Hartley was at the computer, fingers moving rapidly over the keyboards. He didn't look up as he said, "Almost there."

"Three minutes twenty seconds."

"You said I'd have ten!"

"You said you needed five."

Barry stepped up behind Hartley and started to lean over his shoulder, but Len pulled him back by his hood, ignoring the annoyed frown Barry shot him.

"Three minutes."

"That's not helping."

Barry started to make tick-tocking noises with his mouth and Len smacked him upside the back of the head. "Stop that."

Instead of the expected retort, he got that same mischievous smile the kid had given back at the warehouse when he'd told Len he wouldn't join him. There was something unsettling about it, not dishonest, but not… right.

"Hartley, two minutes."

Hartley said something under his breath in another language, too low for Len to pick out.

It wasn't just the smile, though, there had been Barry's reaction to Mardon.

"One minute."

It hadn't even been Mardon himself, just the mention of his name had lit Barry up with anger. Literally. His eyes had glowed red, his voice had reverberated. Len had never seen anything like it. He wasn't even sure Barry realized it was happening, not with the way he'd gone back to smiling and talking normally in the next second.

Barry stepped closer to Len, putting himself shoulder to shoulder and dropped his voice to a whisper. "What's he doing?"

He considered not answering, but if Barry were going to turn them in, he would have done it weeks ago after he found the warehouse. "The branch manager's been embezzling money into a private account that can only be accessed through this computer. Hartley is moving that money into my personal Swiss Bank Account for redistribution."

There was a short pause, barely a second, before, "So you're… taking money from bad people and giving it to the poor. Isn't that what…?"

"Finish that and I freeze your feet to the floor." He leveled Barry with a dead stare, but it only seemed to amuse him.

Hartley pushed back from the desk suddenly, standing. "Done!"

Len looked at his watch. "One minute thirteen seconds too late. If this had been a normal job, I would have shot you and left by now."

"But…"

"I'm not getting caught because you can't admit your own limits."

Hartley's face went red and he glared at Barry. "It's his fault. He'd not supposed to be here. He…"

"If things go south, I need to know when to pull out. I can work with what you have, but don't oversell yourself. Shawna, take him and the cash back to Lisa."

Shawna disappeared with Hartley before he could argue further and Len had no doubt that particular conversation was far from over.

There was no doubting Hartley was a genius, but he was too arrogant. He'd been demanding Len take him on a job for the past two months, so Len had set this up – low stakes and little risk. They'd been careful not to trip the alarms and drugged the guard so they didn't have to worry about interruptions. Len had even gone in first to secure the office, but everything had been planned like a normal, high stakes job, where time meant something and, as he'd suspected, Hartley had underestimated the time he'd need to accomplish the task.

Of course, Hartley's point wasn't without merit. Turning to Barry, Len crossed his arms over his chest. "You said you didn't want to be part of this."

"I'm not, I'm just…" Chiming interrupted him and Barry pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket, frowning, "…watching. I have to go."

Len didn't bother to say anything, because the Flash was already gone.


[]


When Len had first found out the Flash's real identity, he'd paid a private investigator with questionable morals a lot of money to do a background check and rundown. Nothing fancy – friends, family, job, address, education, work associates, after work hangouts, and schedule.

What he'd come away with was that Barry Allen was born to Henry and Nora Allen. His father was convicted of murdering his mother when Barry was eleven, at which time, he was adopted by Joe West, a single father to Iris West, both of whom had died in the wave.

Barry had insisted on his father's innocence throughout the trial and by the regular visits to his father in prison, it appeared he'd believed that up until his father died trying to save patients from the first floor medical wing of the prison hospital. Apparently, heroism must run in the family.

The kid was smart with majors in both physics and chemistry, among other things, and he'd been the youngest forensic assistant the CCPD had ever taken on. Whether Detective West had anything to do with that or not, Barry's track record said he had more than earned his place within the department.

According to the private investigator, Barry worked at the CCPD, sometimes long hours, then went home with Dr. Harrison Wells – who had been a friend before the tidal wave – and didn't do much else in between. In the two weeks he'd had him tailed, he'd spent three nights at S.T.A.R. Labs, also with the good doctor, but otherwise, that was it. Nothing suspicious, nothing to raise eyebrows, nothing, except Len's own intuition.

He hadn't had many dealings with the Flash, only the two, but there was something different there now. Len wasn't sure what it was or what it meant and that alone was enough to make him dig deeper. People liked to say what you don't know can't hurt you, but in his experience, Len had found that it's the things you don't know that have the potential do the worst damage.

The real problem was that there wasn't much to find. He'd paid the same investigator an obscenely large amount of money to do highly illegal things for more information, but after another two weeks, he'd come back with a depressingly small folder of lesser details.

Before the wave, Barry Allen had only a handful of close friends – the Wests, Caitlin Snow, Cisco Ramon, Harrison Wells, and a woman by the name of Felicity Smoak who had visited him during his coma and a few times after. She resided in Starling and they kept up through text and email, but rarely saw each other. He also had a passing acquaintance with Oliver Queen, but they hadn't kept in touch.

Not surprisingly, Barry had been bullied in school and, as Len had suspected, he'd insisted on his father's innocence, which hadn't made him popular at the CCPD. Despite that, all evidence was that Barry had been a relatively happy, well adjusted young man.

The wave had killed the Wests, Cisco, and Caitlin, as well as Barry's father. His only remaining friend in Central had been Dr. Wells, so it was no surprise that they had moved in together. The investigator also suspected the two of them were in a sexual relationship, but had yet to confirm it. Barry's communications with Felicity Smoak had dropped down to almost nothing after her visit to Central and his to Starling after the tragedy. There was no indication of a fight between the two; Barry had simply stopped returning her calls.

At work, he occasionally associated with an Eddie Thawne who had been Joe's partner and Iris's boyfriend, but never outside of work and Barry rarely spoke with anyone else. Captain Singh, who had worked with Joe for years, seemed to take a special interest, but it was hard to tell if Barry reciprocated or simply put up with it.

The kid was squeaky clean. Frustratingly so. The dirtiest thing Len's guy could find on him was one cigarette in high school. He hadn't even managed to identify Barry as the Flash, which led credence to Barry's claim that he wasn't doing that anymore.

The PI sipped his coffee on the bench while Len finished looking through the notes. Len closed the file and tapped the folder. "It's not much."

"Kid's private. He doesn't go out, doesn't talk to anyone. His phone records are thread bare at best – Dr. Wells, Captain Singh, and Felicity Smoak. The emails he responds to are all work related. All. I can't access his actual texts without his phone, but the records show he rarely responds to anyone other than Dr. Wells. I've included samples of reports he filed from before and after the wave. Read 'em yourself, but before the wave, there's a clear enthusiasm in the details and use of adjectives, after, it's dry, devoid of any personality. I'd be interested to see pre and post of his handwriting, but kids nowadays? All about the keyboard. Texting. I can up surveillance, but, as they say, time is money."

"Money isn't the issue, results are."

"I'll get your results." He sat back in the chair. "Who is this kid to you anyway?"

Len tucked the folder in his jacket and stood up. "I don't pay you to stick your nose in my business. Two weeks."

"Whatever, it's your money." The man chuckled. "Or not. See you in two weeks, Snart."


[]


Who is this kid to you anyway?

It was a fair question and not one Len was entirely sure he had answer for. He'd had the potential to be a formidable enemy. The Flash had made things interesting, made them fun, but he could also be a powerful ally, assuming Len could figure out what going on with him. The Flash hadn't been seen in a while. Knowing he was alive meant the reports from survivors saying they'd been pulled out by the Flash and left at the hospital, were probably true. So, what happened between then and now that stopped him?

In Len's experience, when someone disappeared, there was a reason, but then Barry hadn't disappeared. Barry Allen was alive and well in Central City, still working for the CCPD. It was the Flash who'd vanished.

He parked his bike behind the warehouse and took advantage of the warm, sunny weather to look over the reports and pictures the PI had included. He was right about the change in the reports. If Barry Allen's name hadn't been printed on the bottom, he would have thought they were written by different people. Of course, that in itself shouldn't be surprising. Tragedy could change people, it was simply a matter of how much.

The pictures were of Barry at lunch with Harrison Wells, sitting at a bar that faced floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the street. The two were close enough that their knees touched and Barry was hunched down slightly over his plate, looking up and over at Wells with a grin. Wells appeared amused, but focused mostly on his food. In the last shot, his hand was under the bar, resting just above Barry's knee.

Len closed the folder decisively. He needed more intel. His guy was good, but if he didn't find anything this time around, Len was going to have to do some surveillance of his own.

He wheeled his bike around the side and pulled it in through the door that led into the office. Maybe he should find out more about this Felicity Smoak.

"That's cheatin'!"

Mick? He stopped in the doorway, listening to laughter.

"It's not cheating if I'm better than you." That was Shawna, her voice followed by high pitched screeching that he instantly recognized as that god forsaken game system she'd stolen and insisted on plugging into the television she 'd also stolen, which was connected to the surround sound she'd nagged Hartley into installing. After she'd stolen it.

There had been a short, pointed conversation about the kind of things that could draw attention to them before Len was ready and Shawna had called him a kill-joy, but she'd fallen in line and that was all that really mattered. Plus, no matter how much it might physically pain him to admit it, the state of the art game system and sixty inch television it was connected to were good for group morale and downtime.

"Don't worry about Mick. He's just a sore loser." Lisa was in on it too. Why was he not surprised?

"I ain't no sore loser. Kid's distractin' me."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." And that was Barry Allen.

He almost – almost – turned around and walked back out the door. He could take a ride on his bike, come back in a few hours, days… a week.

"Like hell ya don't."

Shawna whooped. "Ha! Eat my dust, old man!"

Against his better judgment, Len followed the voices up the stairs and into what had original been the bullpen. They'd sectioned off the back half of the warehouse for their purposes – the bullpen and offices upstairs, the smaller storage room and office down. They'd re-purposed the offices into bedrooms and he'd let the others clear out the bullpen and turn it into a hangout. It was utilitarian, not his style, but it served a purpose.

Shawna had scavenged furniture from the rest of the building, shoving three sofas into the large open area and pushing them together in a U off center of the door. The conference table had been dragged in as well and set up on the other side of the room. It was used for everything from cheating at cards, to cleaning the guns. Currently, Hartley had his gloves and tools laid out over it. However his attention was entirely focused on the sofa, where Barry was… he was… performing fellatio on a Fudgesicle?

Len tilted his head. There was no other way to describe it and from the pile of sticks on the coffee table, he'd been doing it for a while. Mick and Shawna were racing on the PS4, though Mick's attention kept shifting between the screen and the speedster who was leaning over the back of the left most sofa, propped up on one elbow while the other worked the Fudgesicle between his lips.

"He's been at it for half an hour." It was a testament to how distracting it was that Len hadn't noticed Lisa leaning against the wall next to the door when he'd entered. She grinned. "I know. I almost didn't hear your bike pull up."

It took him a moment to come up with an appropriate response and when he did, the only thing that came out was. "Why?"

She shrugged. "It started out innocent. He said he wanted to wait for you to get back and I know you have an interest, so I let him. Shawna was playing Mick on the PS4 and eating a Fudgesicle. She offered one to Barry, he started licking it, and then she won against Mick and Shawna realized he'd been distracted, so she told Barry there were three dozen in the freezer and to help himself. He said it was the least he could do for locking her in the pipeline and honestly? This is the most action Hartley's seen in months, I didn't have the heart to break it up."

Hartley looked over sharply, his hearing aids giving him the advantage over the other occupants in the room. Lisa winked at him and turned to face Len. "So, did he find anything interesting?"

"Nothing."

"That's not like him."

"I know. He's upping the surveillance."

"Pricey. Kid's really gotten under your skin, huh, Lenny?"

"Don't start."

"But if I don't, who will?" She patted his cheek condescendingly. "Barry! Look who's back?"

When Barry looked up and saw Len, he shoved what was left of his Fudgsicle into his mouth and pulled the bare stick out, tossing it on the pile before coming over to them. "Lenny! You never told me you had a PS4."

It took concerted effort not to let his eye twitch. "Why? Would that have changed your mind?"

"No, but it would have taken longer to decide." He grinned at Lisa, who was still standing beside Len, listening. "Thanks for letting me stay."

"No problem, cutey, anytime."

Barry watched her walk off until she was at the sofa and out of earshot. "We need to talk."

"So I've heard." He watched Barry for a few seconds, watched him shifting feet, rubbing a hand on the back of neck before dropping it into his pocket and then pulling it out again to pick at the links of a watch on his other wrist, while his eyes moved, glancing to the side where he could see the others in his periphery. Whatever this was about, he didn't want them to hear. "Follow me."

In the downstairs office, Len took a seat on the desk. "Why are you here?"

"You need to call your guy off." It was said almost too fast to understand and Len wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't that.

Len sat back, considering his answer. "I have no idea…"

"Don't." Barry rocked on his heels. "Look, just… when you brought Mick into it, way back, I went through pictures and details of all your known associates. I work for the CCPD, I can do that, and I know who he is and I know what he does and you need to call him off before he sees something he's not supposed to."

"Is that a threat?" All traces of humor had gone from the kid, leaving a sense of desperation in its place and it made Len uneasy.

"What? No. No, I'd never, but he… but there's a person, people who would, and you don't know, so if you have questions, ask, I'll answer them if I can, but call him off, because I can't. I can't. Not right now. Please."

The last was said quickly, after a moment's hesitation. It was said like Barry didn't think it would do any good. The old Len would have told Barry he'd think about it, just to watch the kid sweat and he might have called off his guy, he might not have. Now?

Now, he was going to start with something easy. Len put his hands on the desk with a loud enough slap to get Barry to make eye contact. "You and Dr. Wells, are you together?"

Barry blinked in surprise. "Yes? I mean, we live together and we have sex, if that's what you're asking. I'm not really sure how to categorize our… relationship? I don't know, but yes, we're together."

It was an honest answer, even if it left a strange taste in Len's mouth. "Why did you come here the first night?"

"I was curious. They're sending over potential meta-human cases for us to look over, I recognized you M.O. in one of them, but it didn't make sense. You weren't supposed to have your gun. Cisco destroyed it. I just… I wanted to know."

"And how did you find me."

Barry grinned a little at that, but ducked his head to hide it. "You're hooked up to the power grid. Not many places around here are. It was worth a shot."

The kid was relaxing, his shoulders losing some of their hunched in tension as he talked. "How did you know we were pulling the heist that night?"

"I've been sneaking back to listen in on your meetings." He pointed at the ceiling and had the decency to look at least a little guilty. "No one ever looks up. I just wanted to make sure. I mean, so far, the robberies that I know are you haven't had bodies, but I couldn't just leave it."

Len nodded a little, putting it together. "That's why you showed up."

With a shrug, Barry looked down at his feet. "I miss it – the whole being a hero thing. I try to keep busy, but there's a lot of down time and Harrison is busy. It gets lonely."

Which brought Len to what he really wanted to know, the reason he was willing to pay his guy a small fortune to spy on Barry. "And why can't you be a hero, Barry? What's stopping you?"

"What's stopping you?" Barry looked up again and there was a hint of that same fire Len had seen when he'd mentioned Mardon. Not lightening crackling behind his eyes fire, but maybe the start of it. "This isn't you. Even before you got the Sub-Zero Gun, you liked to steal with flare. You spent months planning elaborate heists that could only have been you. Now you're drugging guards and doing jobs that have almost zero chance of being traced back to you and you give away at least half of the money you make from them. No one even knows Captain Cold is in Central City. In fact, no one's seen or heard from you in months. So, what's stopping you, Leonard Snart, from being the bad guy?"

It was a fair point and one that Len didn't have an answer for.

"I look around and all I see is my failure and the potential to fail again and I want to trust you, I think maybe I can if I have… but it's not that easy. See, I know I'm not the same, but it doesn't matter, none of it does. The world keeps going, no matter how much it sucks, and I have to keep moving with it. I can't stop and I've had a really bad week and you need to call him off."

Len stared for a moment longer, taking in the shine of Barry's eyes – like he was on the edge of crying.

The first two times he'd fought the Flash, he'd been fighting a mostly confident young man who'd been willing to do whatever was necessary to stop him, even if it meant getting himself hurt or killed; now the kid shifted wildly between amused, curious, angry, desperate, playful, and something bordering on flirtatious at the drop of a hat. He'd seen those kinds of mood swings before and, frankly, it worried him, almost as much as Barry following his mention of failure up with a comment on trust. This wasn't about the tidal wave or Mardon, because Barry had never known Mardon, let alone trusted him. Which left Len wondering, who had betrayed him and how?

Shit, Lisa was right, the kid really was under his skin. "Fine. I'll call him off."

"Thank you!" Barry's face lit up in a wide smile and for one terrifying second, Len was afraid he was about to be hugged. Thankfully, it didn't come to that. "I'll leave you alone. I won't bother you. I'll…"

"That's… not necessary." It was physically painful pushing the words out. Len was used to taking advantage of situations like this, but just thinking about trying to use this against Barry made him feel sick. "As long as Lisa doesn't mind, you can come by and no more hiding in the rafters. You want to listen in, that's fine, but don't interrupt."

"I can do that." Barry looked back nervously at the still open door. "You know, I'm not the only one that's changed. Mick and your sister, I get, but Shawna and Hartley?"

Len raised an eyebrow, but didn't respond. He hadn't come back into the city intending to take on strays, it had just happened. Not that Barry was wrong. Five months ago, Len would have said, 'not my problem,' and moved on.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs interrupted the silence and Barry pulled his hood back up over his head. "Right, so, I'm gonna go. I have to… there's a thing."

Len felt the rush of wind go past him and sighed. Where had he gone wrong? When he'd first decided to take on Shawna and later Hartley, he'd told himself 'I can use this.' He'd told himself a teleporter and a genius were good to have around, that they were useful. The truth was they were amateurs. Hartley wasn't even a proper criminal, just a trust-fund brat with a grudge and an overinflated ego. Having them around, taking them on jobs, it was a risk, but he was doing it, because somewhere along the way, he'd started to want to help them.

This thing with the Flash was no different. He could tell himself having the Flash on his team was an obvious advantage, but it was clear the kid was more than a little off. That made him more of a potential liability, than a potential asset, but Len wasn't sure he could make himself let it go.

Mick stopped in the doorway, looking around the room. "He gone?"

Len nodded.

"What'd he say?"

"I'm calling my guy off." Mick chuckled. "It's not like that."

"Buddy, it don't matter what it's like. You keep the money coming and the police off us and you can tap dance to Fire and Ice on the hood of a Maserati for all I care."

"That was a dare and I was drunk. This is different. If you have a problem with it…"

Mick held a hand up, cutting him off. "Like I said, it's your show. Speaking of, Lisa wants you upstairs."

Of course she did.