Chapter 2 :- In my Heart I Will Keep Her

"Is it love, obsession, infatuation? You don't know. You think of a strange and beautiful word you read about once, Limerance, a psychological term, meaning an obsessive love, a state that's almost like a drug. Need like a wolf paces the perimeter of your world, back and forth, back and forth, never letting up. ...You're appalled by the new appetites within you, kicking their feet and clawing to get out."
― Nikki Gemmell

It's been days since the incident at the train track and Leonard Snart has not resurfaced. He has kept low and out of trouble. He has brooded for days trying to figure out whether or not these feeling that have been creeping around his mind and heart are true. A small voice in the back of his mind shouts at him that the feelings he had been having for a woman he barely knew were simply lust induced, that he was caught up the moment by her subtle beauty and those irrational notions would vanish with time.

But a larger, louder voice booms over the other. In its uproar it tells him that no these aren't irrational thoughts and that yes he is justified to lust and long for this beauty. The voice preaches that he needs her. It says that she should belong to him and this damned world does not deserve the privilege basking in her radiance. The louder voice commands him. It drives him to acknowledge the desire that he has for Caitlin. It coerces him to give in to his yearning for her, even if the little voice continues to try to tell him otherwise.

Caitlin Snow.

Since the night he discovered her name, she has been on his brain. Her image flashes beneath his eyelids every time he blinks. Leonard can't stop himself from thinking about her. As much as has he tried to resist the urge he finds himself going back to her profile on the S.T.A.R. Labs website and rereading her script. He always needs the reassurance that this image he has formed in his head and reality have really run the same path.

In the middle of the day , when there is a lull in his schedule he finds himself staring at the board of pictures he has collected of her. The collage of pictures displaying her face has grown over the pass days. Snart has added a few new additions since that first night. He's gone through her Facebook, profile – and Cisco's and just about anyone's who he thinks has a deep connection with her. He has searched for anything and everything connected to her. His desire to expand his knowledge on Caitlin Snow is comparable to a man depraved of oxygen searching for his next breath.

It's while he's searching through her Facebook profile that he discovers Ronnie Raymond- the fiancé- or rather deceased fiancé. He sees pictures of them smiling brightly up through the screen and he feels his anger flare. Leonard's hand clench into tight fists because this man has his filthy hands on his girl. He has to swallow the snarl that threatens to erupt when he sees the picture of Caitlin and Ronnie.

But his vision goes red and no dam can hold back the flood of rage that bubbles up through him when he reads her status on Facebook as still engaged. She hasn't changed her status yet and it's been what almost a year since the particle accelerator exploded?

Curiosity gets the better of him and Leonard searches for Ronnie Raymond. He was much easier to find than Caitlin. He was a structural engineer working alongside the team at S.T.A.R Labs during the construction of the particle accelerator. The young man's resume isn't as brilliant as Caitlin's or Cisco's but he is by no means lacking sensibility. It's fortunate for him that he's not in the picture anymore; Snart would hate to go up against such a handsome face for the affection of his dearest.

If truth be told Snart would have had no problem snatching Caitlin away from Ronnie. He is after all, in essence, a thief, although he prefers procurer of precious commodities - and Caitlin is indeed precious. But that fact that Ronnie Raymond is no longer amongst the living just make thing easier for Snart. There won't be any terrible disputes when the time comes for Caitlin to come with him.

It still stuns Leonard how hard and fast he has fallen for Caitlin and his thoughts will not give him a reprieve. Like film on a never ending reel, her images play on and on in his mind. Her voice still echoes against the walls of his safe house in the wee hours of the morning. It rouses him from his slumber to stare blankly at the ceiling as her voice and those four simple words continue to play on repeat. Those four simple words, "Are you all right?" A simple question as any. And yet he can recall how she pronounced each syllable of each word, as if she were standing in front of him asking him the very same question.

It pulls on his heart strings to think that her kind and gentle words were directed at that God forsaken scarlet speedster. How he would revel in the sensation of his name falling from her beautiful lips.

The more Snart dwells on Caitlin the more he begins to realise that pictures can no longer suffice. The urge to actually see the woman who has been haunting his thoughts has begun its slow burn. Now with each hour that passes during the day it strokes the fire in his heart until it is a roaring inferno in his chest. But the question remains.

Does he give into his urge and go and seek Caitlin out?

Does he sit in his safe house and brood over her pictures like a love sick puppy?

Leonard contemplates all these questions.

Every single day of his life, Leonard Snart has lived each one as if he were walking into a battle arena – ready to fight with everything he has. Every step he takes has been carefully measured and every turn leads to a known destination, all of which have been carefully mapped out. He was taught a long time ago that you could never leave anything to chance. Fate was an amusing little fictitious thing people made up as a means to justify the wrong things that have happened in their life. He has never ever been a believer of fate. If he was then he would have to believe it was fated that his mother would die when he and his sister were so young, and that it was fated that he would have an abusive good for nothing father. You can easily see why Leonard Snart thought nothing was ever fated to happen.

He has been tactician in every aspect of his life; Snart knows what decisions he has to make for the betterment of his life. But for once he is stumped, never has he been in such a quandary. There is a metaphorical war brewing between his heart and his head. And this is because for once he does not know where this obsession of his will lead. He does not know if this new found longing will bring any sort of betterment to his life.

He was always thought to lead with his head first- the heart is often biased in its choices.

Early on in his life he learned that nothing good ever came from following your heart and letting it dictate your course of action. It was because of a broken heart that his father became a wreck and a child abusing scoundrel. It was a hopeful heart that had kept him and Lisa in the house with their father for as long as they did.

That same hopeful heart that made them believe that each bruising blow inflicted on their bodies was simply a stepping towards their father's salvation. The scars and bruises that lined Leonard's back were a testament to the truth that having a heart would only make you weak, because we all have only one heart to break.

But now….oh now, didn't the world have a cruel dirty sense of humor?

Because now his heart had recaptured the reigns and was steering his action on a different path.

Logically, Leonard Snart knew he should feel absolutely nothing for Caitlin Snow. If logic ruled – as it should- he would have despised this woman from the tip of her toes to the apex of her head. But he doesn't. He can't bring himself to hate her, to hate anything about her- even when there are so many things he could hate. First and foremost being the fact that she worked with and maybe even for the scarlet speedster. However, not even that can cause a diminution in his infatuation.

Nothing he has found so far about her past or her present has diverted his feelings. The little voice is his head is still screaming and trying to dissuade him but the other voice stills over powers it, bellowing out that his internal compass had now found it true north.

So for once, Snart is going to follow his illogical heart and let it lead him to her. He is going to give in to his irrational urge and see his beauty in the light of day and not under the pallid light of the fluorescent bulb.

Tomorrow he will see her bathed in the shining brilliance of the sun.