He's down the staircase before he can blink, and she marks him almost immediately, crosses the floor to him, unsmiling.
Until he leans close and murmurs in her ear, "Thank god."
She registers his recognition immediately, and her lips curve in an involuntary smile. "How'd you know it was me?" she asks, just under her breath.
He's not going to tell her it's all in how she moves. Or that he's a student thereof. "Where is she?"
"Taking a nap. In the car with other you. I stopped to find it and drive it to the event center parking garage. They're fine; they're going to lose hours; they won't remember any of this."
"So ... we should leave?" Now he's oddly disappointed.
"Well, we shouldn't mess things up too much, even if it's not our world or timeline." She takes a sip of her champagne, eyes on his. "You ... other you ... is up for reelection soon, after all."
"So ... what?"
"First, put your comm back on long enough to let Rip know we're still alive before he sends someone else and things really get messed up."
He sighs, for her benefit (he knows she's right), moves back to a quiet-ish corner (she follows), turns the earpiece on, and drawls "Hunter. We're fine. We'll be back in a while. Don't wait up."
A moment of silence, then, "What the hell ..."
He turns the comm off again and smirks at the woman at his side.
Right on cue, the band strikes up. She can't hide the smile. "Do you want to dance, Leonard?"
He doesn't say a word; she doesn't really expect him to. But he does put down his mostly finished glass of champagne and extends a hand to her.
Her eyebrows rise. But she takes it, and he whirls them both out onto the dance floor, pulling her as close as he dares.
After a few silent moments, she says, with a tone of surprise, "You're a very good dancer."
"Mmm. Job skill."
"I don't want to know, do I?"
"Probably not."
After the first song, they hold a quiet conversation, planning things out. Stay for an hour or more, making sure they're seen. Once it's dark out, smuggle their sleeping counterparts home under cover of darkness and head back to the WaveRider. That leads to awkward speculation about whether "they" live together; the consensus is, yes, probably.
In the silence that follows, they decide to take a break. He finds them both another glass of champagne and returns to find Sara bantering with a man he pegs as "asshole" from the minute he sees him.
She gives him the "I got this" look. Oh, this should be amusing.
"Oh, no, Ms. Lance, I'm not saying the funding should be completely cut, but you have to admit, the money could be better spent, say, on people who want to be saved and not people who stay in these 'relationships' ..."
"Oh, really ..."
Her tone is sweet as sugar. She's going to eviscerate the man. Not literally. He hopes.
He leans against the wall and enjoys the figurative bloodshed. Asshole can barely get a word in; she's cutting every one of his arguments off at the knees. He approves.
His mother died in her "relationship" ... a pretty word for the hell that was her life with his father. She'd been too scared, too cowed, with few other skills, no other family, no other resources, and two children ... as little as she'd managed to protect them ... to run, even walk, away.
Wait, did Mr. Mansplainer really just step into Sara's space? He watches her eyes flash and her fingers twitch as her chin goes up ...
He gives her a look of apology and cuts back in.
The bastard looks pissed. He's so tempted to let Sara go all White Canary on his ass, but that would probably truly screw things up.
"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" His tone is downright chilly and his eyes are narrowed, and for half a second, the councilman (or at least a certain amount of animal instinct buried in his DNA) registers the danger he just might be in, from both of them. His eyes go wide.
Then his perception of "reality" reasserts itself. This is the mayor and his pretty blond fiancée! What danger could he possibly be in?
The councilman turns away, chuckling uncomfortably, wondering why his heart rate has skyrocketed.
He watches the man go, then looks at Sara. He's relieved to see a smile; she understands why he did what he did.
"That was probably not a good idea," he allows. But they share a grin anyway.
"Maybe. But I can't imagine a universe, any universe, in which either of us deal with fools ... especially that fool ... kindly, so it can't be much of a surprise to him." She takes a sip of her champagne.
This time, he notices she's wearing the ring.
She follows his gaze and goes still.
"Well ... it's part of the 'costume,' isn't it? I'll put it back."
"Mmm." He catches her hand, raises it to get a better look. At least two carats, gorgeous workmanship.
"He has good taste." The words leave his mouth before he really thinks about them. Her eyebrows go up again, and he coughs.
He doesn't backtrack, though. Instead, he invites her to dance again.
xxx
He pulls her a tiny bit closer this time. She smirks, but only warns, "There are knives."
He shifts his hand on her back a tiny bit, leans closer. "I'd be disappointed if there weren't."
xxx
Later, the actual Earth-2 Leonard Snart will learn that his approval ratings went up by a number of points that week, spurred in part by the public's fascination with his obvious infatuation with the woman at his side at the police event. It's a crack in his usually ... chilly ... public persona.
Amused and surprised, he takes it to heart.
Their relationship is the better for it.
xxx
They make their escape once the event is winding down and it's safely dark outside. Their doubles are still safely passed out in the backseat.
ID confirms an address in the nicer part of Central City, the part where if young Leonard Snart visited at all, it was only for breaking and entering. He tries not to show how unnerved he is by this.
They park close, get the door open, carry their opposite numbers inside quickly. Neither of them can look the other in the eye as they arrange the pair in a comfortable sprawl on the king bed in the master bedroom.
Likewise, neither of them is very comfortable taking a closer look at the house's contents, the assorted artifacts of different lives, of two people making a life with each other. Snart pauses just once, to take a closer look at a framed photo of Lisa that holds a prominent place in the living room. She's wearing a graduation gown and cap. She looks happy, and his double is standing next to her, looking proud.
He sighs.
Sara slips the ring back onto the finger of her own double and pauses for a moment, staring at her, an odd, disturbed look on her face. He goes to stand next to her. Show of support.
Finally, she speaks. "She never went on the Gambit. She never joined the league. She never ... saw the inside of the Lazarus Pit. I wish I knew ... is that what I was supposed to be?"
He speaks without thinking again. She tends to do that to him. "You are who you're supposed to be. She's a different person, and you're stronger than she's ever had to be.
"I'd rather know you."
He can hear the sincerity in his own voice, and a bit more truth than he'd intended to show. Her eyes go to his face, but she doesn't say anything.
A few minutes later, they leave the home, that comfortable existence, behind them and head back out into the night.
xxx
They're almost back to the WaveRider when she says, nonchalantly, "So, did you kiss her?"
"No." She looks immensely skeptical, so he clarifies. "She kissed me. No worries." Smirk. "I was a gentleman."
"Of course." Irony heavy in her tone. "Good kiss?"
"Mmm." He shrugs. "OK."
"Just OK?"
He eyes her as if there's something he'd like to say but doesn't. "OK."
"Hmph. OK, then." The field where the WaveRider is "parked" is just ahead. She slows her steps just a little, then stops. So does he. "Then, just for comparison purposes ..."
And she grabs the lapels of his suit coat, pulls his head down, and kisses him.
xxx
She's not quite sure why she does it. Maybe she's still trying to convince herself that the unscarred, successful, sparkling woman they've just left is not, inarguably, the better Sara Lance in all things that matter in the real world, the world where hunting down immortal despots and taking out bad guys and doing general property damage are not actual job skills.
Maybe because the light in his eyes when he realized it was her in the ballroom and not the other Sara is something she's still digesting.
But whyever she does it, it doesn't really matter.
The whole damned thing gets a little out of control just about immediately.
xxx
It's nothing like kissing the other Sara.
If he's honest, the best part of that earlier kiss had been the moment before his intellect had caught up to his hindbrain and reminded him that it wasn't, really, her. It had been a perfectly ... nice ... kiss.
This one is not ... nice.
Sara Lance, the one he knows, kisses like she fights, with challenge and a little bit of aggression and great skill. He's gone almost immediately, wrapping one arm around her waist, tangling his other hand in her hair.
She doesn't pull away. If anything, she leans closer.
xxx
Neither of them is quite sure how long they've been standing there ... involved ... when there is a sudden seemingly mutual decision to back away before someone comes looking for them.
They're both a bit flushed; they're both breathing more than a bit heavily. She looks at him for a long moment, face unreadable but eyes wide, then takes a deep breath and turns away, heading toward the WaveRider.
After a moment, he follows.
xxx
Hunter is incredibly pissed off at both of them. (They pretty much ignore this.) The others aren't well pleased, either.
But they've gathered enough information that Gideon is able to pinpoint which variant Earth they're on and how to get home, and soon enough the WaveRider is back to where it should be, and the mission goes on.
Neither of them ever lets on what happened there. Who they were. What they did.
No one else really needs to know.
xxx
Their Earth2 doubles wake with a good five hours lost. As predicted, they freak out only to each other. The brain has a way of rejecting the "impossible" and replacing it with something far more plausible.
By all accounts, after all, they spent a perfectly normal evening together at the police event. They even took Councilman Lowman down a few pegs. (This is a common occurrence, really. And it's sort of refreshing how he treats them both with a bit more trepidation thereafter.)
It must have been a bad batch of champagne or something. Right?
(Sara later confides a little about the strangeness of that evening to Iris Allen-West, who doesn't think much of it at the time. But after her own strange experiences of a few months later, she wonders.)
At any rate, they move on. They do good for their city. They wonder about that night, sometimes, but not too much.
They live, as the stories say, happily ever after.
xxx
Author's note: Dedicated to the strong, brave women who once allowed me to interview them about why they stayed, and how they left.
So many people wanted to see this expand to the wider Earth-2 that I feel a little bad it stayed so short and so centered around these two. (It was just really a little thought experiment that got out of hand, like so much of what I write!) So I may revisit it at some point after the shows are done for the season. Thanks for reading!