Blood red.
It was such a unique color.
Or so he was told.
The color of blood was something that people spoke about a great deal. Especially when he had been in art school. There was something…primal, something visceral in seeing the color of blood on the canvas. Roy remembered one of his fellow students…Ian? Evan? Ian…something or other, did an entire collection using only variations of the deepest reds.
Roy had been completely underwhelmed by Ian's show. His technique was sloppy, his shading was childish, and the brush strokes were completely amateur. Roy had expected everyone to see the same flaws, the same weaknesses in the paintings.
But they didn't. The show was a huge success for Ian. He sold three paintings that night and had been offered a show of his own at a prestigious gallery. Everyone had raved about Ian's art.
How bold it was. How unique.
How it spoke to the very core of what it meant to be human.
All Roy saw was the technique, he had no primal reaction to it. No emotions attached to the color red. By this point he had learned that when it came other artists, no one cared what he had to say. Clearly Roy couldn't understand the true meaning of the piece. Couldn't experience it the way everyone else had. So his opinion on the matter was meaningless.
Although that didn't stop him from speaking out against Ian's work several times. He tried to point out the issues to his teachers, tried to make his peers see the flaws.
But they never did.
They just spoke of the "honesty" of the painting. How strong it was, emotionally.
Clearly Roy wasn't a true artist, if he couldn't feel the emotions of Ian's work.
Roy had broken in to the gallery once. He had sat in front of Ian's paintings for hours. Trying to see what everyone else did. Trying to understand what it was that he was missing. All he could see was the brush strokes, the lines, the shapes. Why should something so simple as color, change a piece of art so dramatically? Surely there couldn't be that much difference between what Roy saw and what everyone else was seeing.
Roy figured it was the color itself. There was something in humans that reacted to the sight of blood. Something that made us feel…uncomfortable in the presence of it. We shied away from the color. We tried not to think on it.
The way it reminded us of how little it would take to have all of it come spilling out.
The fragility of our own lives.
Maybe that's why Roy wasn't reacting badly to the scene in front of him. The smell might get to him. But the blood…the blood looked just like any other dark liquid. He might as well have been standing in paint.
It had spilled everywhere.
It covered the floor. The walls. Roy wondered if there would be any on the ceilings if he looked up.
He looked down, the dark liquid was staining his shoes. It had to be blood. In his mind, he knew there was nothing else it could be. Nothing else that seeped into the very crevasses the way blood did. The way it stained everything it touched.
The smell….
Roy pulled out his cellphone and dialed Cold's number.
He turned and started walking as quickly as he could out of the apartment building. But not so quickly that he would attract any undue attention. He removed his glasses, just in case he was spotted. Having them on might decrease his odds of being recognized, but he would rather be able to use his powers instantly if pressed. Especially if whatever had killed those people was still around.
The cellphone at his ear continued to ring.
"Come on…pick up. Pick up."
Roy's whispered plea went unanswered. He turned sharply down an alley, towards where the car was parked. Mick would be waiting inside. Everything would be fine. They would get back to the safe house, and everything would be fine. Roy gave up on trying to reach Cold.
Roy dialed Mark's number.
The phone rang uselessly in his ear.
No one answered his call.
There was nothing to be worried about. Most of the others were at a meeting right now anyway. Putting some of that stolen information to good use. They had confronted two mob families already. Both of whom had backed down rather quickly once confronted with the information that the Rogues possessed. There were still a few families that were holding out.
Cold hadn't seemed too concerned. A minor setback. That was what he had said. A minor setback. Nothing they couldn't fix. Nothing he hadn't foreseen.
Roy could see the car now. He could see Mick sitting in the front seat.
Screw it.
Roy started running.
He pulled open the door and shut it quickly.
"What…"
"Drive! We have to go. Now!"
Roy was two seconds from grabbing the wheel and trying to start the car himself.
Thankfully, Mick seemed to pick up on Roy's sense of urgency and pulled the car out of the alleyway.
They were halfway back to the safe house before Mick said anything.
"Why is there blood all over your shoes?"
Roy looked down. That dark liquid. The one that everyone else had such a strong reaction to, the one that so many people feared, was indeed covering both of his shoes.
Roy was fascinated by it. By the way it seemed to darken everything. Obscuring all the lighter shades. Seeping into his shoes…he wondered if his socks would be darkened as well.
He must have left footprints behind in the hallway. Down the stairs. Maybe even straight to the car.
The dark liquid was following him wherever he went.
"It…it was everywhere."
Mick kept driving. The silence stretched between them. Roy remained fascinated by his shoes. If Mick attempted to speak with him again, Roy didn't hear it. He didn't know why he couldn't stop staring at them. It wasn't like he would suddenly be able to see the color, would be able to understand it.
Roy barely waited for the car to stop once they were back at the safe house. He just opened the door and went straight to take a shower. It was overkill on his part obviously. His shoes were the only things that had been covered in blood. It hadn't even gotten into his socks. They were still completely white.
He hadn't been stained by it. There was no reason to take a shower. Removing his shoes would have removed all the evidence he had brought with him.
But once he was in the water, he found he didn't want to leave it. The sound of the water, the feel of it on his skin, it was calming.
He hadn't realized that his hands had been shaking. His heart pounding in his chest. Had he been breathing like this the entire time?
Why was he reacting like this? There was no danger anymore. He had gotten away from…that…
He had gotten away without anyone seeing him. He was safe. He was in the clear.
He had no idea what had happened in that apartment. The blood…
His hands were shaking again. He reached over and turned off the water. He forced himself to get out of the shower, and walk back to his bedroom.
Had there been some sort of chemical in the room? Was he having some kind of reaction? Was that what had happened to…
He put on new clothes. His old ones, and the stained shoes, sat in a corner. He tried not to look at them, tried to ignore them. But they seemed to always be in his sight. They followed him no matter where he looked. Finally he couldn't take it any more. He picked up the clothes, wrapped them around the shoes, and put it all in a garbage bag.
He was just disposing of evidence. That was it. Any good criminal knows better than to keep anything that could link you to the scene of a crime. He had to get rid of these things. What if the police found his footprint at the scene? Would they think Roy had done…that? They had thought he was capable of murder before, and the way people were reacting to meta humans, the way people feared them…
Roy grabbed the bag and headed down to where they kept the cars. He threw the bag in the trunk. He didn't know where he was going to go to get rid of the evidence, he just knew he had to get rid of it now, had to erase all signs that he had ever been anywhere near that massacre. He was about to get into the car, when the door behind him opened. Two cars drove into the area they had designated as the garage.
Roy turned away from the oncoming vehicles. The others were back. Everyone was fine. There was no reason to think any of them had encountered the same thing he had. They would be here in a moment, they would tell him about their meeting. Tell him everything had gone perfectly. They would ask Roy about his contact. Would ask him what had happened. And he would…he would tell them…
Pete had been an old cell mate. A good one at that. He never tried anything with Roy, never tried to start fights. The man was content to sit in his bunk and read, while Roy was content to sit in his and sketch. When they did speak it was usually just small snippets of conversation. What they had thought of the food at dinner. What the odds were that the new guard would help smuggle things in for them. Roy doubted that in the 8 months he had spent with Pete as a cellmate, that they had spoken for more than an hour total.
But still, when Roy had been released, Pete had told Roy about the cabins outside the city. Told Roy to look him up if he needed anything. Which was generally just something that people say. Not something that Roy ever intended to do.
But in the three years since Roy had seen Pete, the man had become a player. He held high stakes poker games between several of the mob families once a month. There was never any violence at the games, especially not since there were rumors that Pete kept a meta on hand.
Whether or not it was true was irrelevant. The mobsters believed that Pete had a meta who could see your darkest fears and make them real. They would come to life and haunt you until you died of fright. Depending on who you asked, the powers always changed, always got more and more ridiculous. So the mobsters played their game and never let their disagreements reach a violent level. At least, not at Pete's club. If they did it later, that wasn't his problem.
Cold had wanted Roy to go talk to Pete, see if one of the Rogues could be invited to one of these poker games. Cold intended to use the information they had stolen from the police department at the game. To find the moles and reveal the ones they had to reveal, and more importantly, turn the ones they didn't.
Roy had no doubt that the Rogues would be back in charge of the underworld of the city within the month.
So he and Mick had gone out to talk to Pete. That was all it was supposed to be.
Just a talk.
Just a quick favor.
Roy had told Mick to stay in the car. Pete didn't like many people. And he had never liked it when people tried to use physical strength to make a point. So Mick had agreed to stay in the car and act as backup only. Roy had a panic button, as Hartley had called it, in his jacket pocket. If things went down, he was supposed to push it and Mick would rush in.
Shit, he had completely forgotten about it. It was probably still in his jacket pocket. Which was in the bag with all of his other now stained clothes. Hartley had warned him not to lose it. That it would take time and effort to build a new one.
Roy eyed the garbage bag.
Hartley could make another one.
Pete owned the whole building. Charged his tenets more than their apartments were worth. He kept the entire sixth floor to himself. Roy had never been there before. So he had no idea what to expect when he stepped out of the elevator.
He could remember how quiet it was. There was a tv playing somewhere, it sounded like some kind of game show. People cheering, shouting out answers to help the clearly befuddled contestant.
He had found the silence so odd. Something in it had been so clearly wrong, so obviously insidious.
Roy could smell the blood before he had even reached the door. Before he had seen it almost completely ripped off its hinges. Wood splintered and stabbed upwards from the ground. Roy didn't know why he kept walking. Every instinct in him had told him to run. To go get backup.
Maybe it had been some kind of morbid curiosity. A strange desire to see what he knew he would see. There must have been some part, some small naïve part, that thought it couldn't be as bad as he was imagining. It couldn't possibly be as horrific as what he thought.
He had never seen a man's eyes ripped out of his skull before. Had never seen them laying on the table next to a dinner plate. He had frozen at the door. His gaze focused on the odd dichotomy of the eyes next to a half peeled orange, as though both had been prepared for dinner. He had focused on them, knowing they weren't the worst thing in the room. Knowing that he would have to look up and see to whom those eyes and oranges belonged.
They hadn't been Pete's.
He only knew that because Pete was only missing one eye, even from the man's odd position on the ceiling Roy had been able to see that.
The images started to come back more rapidly. The blood, the viscera, the limbs strewn about like discarded tissues.
Roy heard the cars pull up behind him.
He couldn't stop the images, couldn't stop his mind from forcing him to smell the blood. It was overpowering. He looked at his hands…why…why were they shaking so badly? Why couldn't he get his breathing under control?
Roy ran back towards the bathroom.
If any of the others called after him, Roy ignored it. He slammed the door, making it to the toilet just in time to vomit.
He didn't know how long he sat there. His head resting on the seat. He tried not to think about when the last time the toilet was cleaned.
He felt a cold towel press against the back of his neck. He turned slightly, Shawna was sitting on the edge of the bathtub.
He hadn't heard the door open, she must have teleported inside. He looked at her quizzically. She just shrugged and leaned her elbows onto her knees.
"Hey, you did the same for me once."
Roy closed his eyes and rested his head. Letting the cold from the towel seep into his spine. His hands weren't shaking anymore. He could almost feel like he was breathing correctly again.
Shawna wasn't saying anything. He knew she was still there, he could hear her breathing. Now that he wasn't throwing up, or panicking, Roy could see what he had been doing earlier. The fixation on the blood on his shoes, the shortness of breath, the paranoia.
"I think I went into shock."
"Yea…we kind of figured that was it. What with you basically bolting away from us in the garage. And Mick…"
She hesitated. Roy cracked open an eye. She was biting her lip, it made her appear younger. Like a schoolgirl caught in a lie.
"Mick told you I freaked out?"
"No. Come on, have you ever heard Mick say the words freaked out? He said you were real pale and weren't reacting when he tried to talk to you. Like you couldn't even hear him. He called us and said to get back as soon as possible, that something had happened at the meet. That there was blood…"
Mick couldn't have known what Roy saw. And even if he did…god. Why the hell did he go into shock? It wasn't like he was some kid who had never seen a dead body before.
What would the others think of him now?
Roy had a flashback to a parent teacher conference when he was nine.
"He's an odd little fellow."
His third grade teacher had said that about him to his parents.
He probably wouldn't have thought anything of it. Not something that a nine year old files away in their memory to think on when they are in their thirties. But he distinctly remembered looking at his parents' faces.
His father had looked so…not embarrassed. More, like he had been expecting a statement like that. Like he was resigned to the information. His mother had looked angry for a moment, almost indignant. Roy had thought she might say something. Might defend him.
She didn't.
They had both remained silent. Nodding their heads to whatever else the teacher was telling them.
That was the moment that Roy had realized he was broken. That he wasn't like everyone else. There was something in him that would always keep him distant from others. Everyone, even his parents, had known it. Had seen it in him.
He had just hoped that the same thing would never happen with the Rogues.
But now. Now they would know.
Now they must realize that Roy wasn't one of them. Now they must see the same cracks, the same flaws, that his parents had seen.
He didn't doubt that his parents had loved him.
But no parent thinks they will have anything less than a perfect child. To find out that what they had gotten instead was this…flawed, imperfect thing, must have been very difficult for them.
They had both died before he had turned to a life of crime.
Would they have been surprised? Or when an officer showed up at their door to tell them their only son had been arrested, would they have just nodded their heads and accepted the information? Was it something they were expecting? Roy was never going to fit in, never going to hold down a real job, of course he would turn to crime.
He was, after all, an odd little fellow.
Digger was a mercenary. He had probably seen more death and destruction than all of the rest of them combined. He might have walked over corpses like they were blades of grass. Never giving them a second thought.
Mick had started setting fires when he was young. Roy knew that people had died in those fires. Had Mick sat around and watched people burn? Had he been horrified by it? Mick didn't lock himself in his room when something terrible happened to him. Didn't throw up because he couldn't handle a little gore.
Shawna had been training to be a nurse. She had seen people with their intestines hanging out. Had even described it to them one night when they were having pizza. She had been laughing about it. The others had joined in.
Including Hartley. Roy sometimes envied the boy's ability to shake off the terrible things that had happened to him. The shield of armor he had created for himself. Hartley wouldn't have been affected by something so trivial.
Len and Lisa spent most of their childhoods in fear. So they were experts in dealing with it. Experts in the horrors of what people could be capable of before most kids learned how to read.
Mardon had lost his baby brother. Had watched Clyde get sucked out of an airplane and then had every bone in his body broken. He had recovered. He still managed to walk around and interact like a normal human being. Most of the time.
So it was just the universe screwing with Roy again. He, out of all of the Rogues, was the least prepared to see what had happened at the Roxalana Apartments. The least equipped to deal with…with whatever had happened there.
If any of the others had walked into the apartment. They would have been fine. They would have been able to shake it off. None of the others would have reacted like this. They would have been able to at least provide information to Cold about the meet. Would be able to go more than five minutes without flashing back to it. With out the smell of the blood and the…
"Roy, stay calm, keep breathing…stop thinking about it. Just focus on breathing. We don't have to think about anything else right now."
He tried to forget about it.
Tried to push it out of his mind. But it was everywhere. Every thought somehow looped back around to it.
Back to him standing in that doorway, looking at the bodies of those people that he had once known.
He hadn't been close with any of them. There wasn't any reason for Roy to have reacted so…
"You never told me about your mom."
Roy turned his head back towards Shawna.
"What?"
"Your mom. I mean, there was the painting of her. And she was obviously beautiful. But what did she do? Did she have a job?"
"No…she, she was a housewife. My father…was an ophthalmologist."
"Did she ever bake you cookies? My father would bake these small caramel cakes on my birthday every year. Every time I smell them, I think of him. I think of home and how that felt."
"She…she made pumpkin spice cakes every year for Thanksgiving. I would…I would sit on the counter and watch her make them."
"I bet those smelled amazing."
Roy could almost smell them now. His mother had always been so kind, so gentle. She had always let him lick the spoon, and the bowl, when she was done. He had loved watching her make them. It was such a small thing, so inconsequential in the course of a person's life. Sitting on the kitchen counter with his mother, listening to her hum as she mixed all the ingredients together.
Roy took a deep breath. He just needed to focus on something else. Needed to find something else for his mind to do. Which meant he was probably going to have to leave the bathroom at some point.
Just…just not right now. The others would be out there. Waiting to hear what he had to say. Waiting to see if he was truly so weak that he couldn't even handle a little blood.
He could almost hear their laughter. Almost feel their derision and disdain. Roy sighed and closed his eyes again. He could hold off just a few more minutes. He could…
Shawna stood up, she stepped over Roy and stood by the door.
"I'm going to go get you something to eat and some water. Ok? I'll be right back. Just keep breathing alright?"
Roy gave a half-hearted smile, and a small nod.
Shawna disappeared in a puff of smoke. Roy rubbed at his eyes. He wondered what she would tell the others.
How weak he was?
How pathetic he must look?
He would have to explain everything to them eventually. Cold would need to know. Would need to know about the threats that were out there. Need to know about what had happened to their potential allies.
It would be selfish of Roy to keep the information to himself. He would have to tell them.
Roy took a few more deep breaths.
Eventually.
Eventually he might be able to.
Just…not now.
He pushed himself away from the toilet and leaned against the wall. He tried to focus on nothing else.
Just breathing. That was all that was important right now.
Just to breathe.
Just breathe.
"You guys should see this."
Mick had phoned and said something was wrong with the artist. Something had happened at the meet. They needed to get back now. Seeing Roy almost run away from them when they had pulled in had been a pretty good indicator that something was wrong.
Not to mention the bag with the blood soaked shoes.
Shawna was still inside the bathroom with Roy. The rest of the Rogues were congregated in the living room. Except for Cold who had left to make some calls, to try and figure out what the hell had happened.
Digger turned up the volume on the TV.
"A gruesome scene today in downtown Central City. Details are sparse at the moment, but it would appear that some sort of mass murder was committed in an apartment complex. The victims have yet to be identified, however sources claim that over a dozen people…"
"Jesus."
Hartley was staring at the images on the screen. The news wasn't showing any of the crime scene, but it wasn't difficult to figure out that it was bad. Simply judging by the number of cops that kept running into the alleyway to throw up.
"What else has it said?"
Digger shrugged.
"Not much. Some kind of slaughter. Nothing concrete. Though the way they are talking about it, sounds like it wasn't your standard mass killing. Not to mention the body bags."
Lisa raised an eyebrow. Digger pointed at them.
"Look at 'em. Ain't got the regular head, chest, feet sticking up. There hasn't been an entire intact body in a single one of the bags they have rolled out."
Hartley looked between them.
"And Roy walked right into that?"
"Looks like. They say it must have happened a couple hours ago. Lucky Cold didn't send him to check with his contact this morning. Roy might have ended up in a couple of those bags himself."
Cold walked back into the room.
Once Mick had called and said that something had gone down at the meet, Cold had immediately started calling all his mob contacts. Trying to find out who was responsible for this.
From the look of frustration on his face, he wasn't getting anywhere.
"No one is claiming anything. No one knows who did this."
Lisa took a step towards her brother.
"Sounds like someone was sending a very strong message."
"But a message to whom, is the question. As far as I can tell, none of the Cortez family had any debts or enemies that would warrant such an attack. I need you to…"
"Contact Cisco and see if he will give me any information on what the cops have found? I know Lenny, pretty sure that boy will give me the launch codes to a nuclear war head if I asked nicely enough."
"Lisa…"
"I know…I know. Such slaughters are bad for business. I'll be subtle."
"We don't know if this was business related."
Hartley pulled his eyes away from the tv for a moment.
"You think this was a personal attack? If it was against us, then someone had their information wrong. Roy didn't show up until hours after it already happened."
"I know…there is something more happening here. Something…"
Cold trailed off, staring down at his phone. He turned and left without another word, no doubt already trying to determine who would have the most information.
Lisa pulled out her phone and started after her brother. Cisco would give her all the information they needed. If STAR Labs didn't know anything about this…
"Shit."
Hartley turned towards Digger. The mercenary was looking down the hallway towards Roy's door.
"He's out of paint isn't he?"
Hartley was surprised by Digger's question. More than surprised really, shocked would be the better adjective. Surprised that the mercenary would remember something like that. Shocked that the brute understood exactly what not having his paints now would do to Roy.
When Hartley was young, his parents had wanted him to learn to play several instruments. The violin, the piano…It didn't matter to them that Hartley was almost completely deaf. Didn't matter that he couldn't hear the notes, or the sounds he was supposed to be replicating. If you wanted to survive in polite society, your child should play an instrument.
Their son would play multiple instruments.
The piano had been the easiest to memorize. The easiest to fake. Just press the right keys in the right order. Add a little more pressure to certain keys when his teacher told him to. It gave the illusion of emotion, of depth to his playing.
The same for the violin. Although it had been a bit more challenging. He had spent countless hours watching tapes of professional musicians. Watching the way their hands moved. Following the exact movements of his teacher. He had become so good at these instruments that it had reinforced his parents delusion that there was nothing wrong with his hearing.
Then had come the flute.
Why two instruments weren't enough for his parents, he would never know. Perhaps one of their friends' kids played three.
The flute had given him trouble. He could memorize where to put his fingers, the movements he needed to make. But he couldn't quite get his breathing right. His teacher would tell him to breather harder or softer, but without being able to hear what the notes sounded like, it was difficult to know if he was doing it correctly. It caused him to doubt himself. To mess up more than he had with any of the other instruments.
The flute was the instrument that had finally convinced his parents that there was something wrong with Hartley's hearing.
The instrument that had prompted them to determine that it was an easy enough problem to remedy. A simple enough thing to fix.
They spent large sums of money on a dozen surgeries to fix his hearing. Sparing no expense of course. Hartley was certain they played up the sympathy factor to all of their friends. What good parents they were, fighting so hard to give their son a "normal" life.
Hartley could remember the pain of those surgeries, of waking up alone and scared in a hospital bed. But telling himself that it would all be ok, his parents would fix him and then…then they might love him. It was his own fault for being broken.
The first thing his parents did after he had healed was to hire a new music teacher. The woman had asked him which instrument he wanted to play first. He had chosen the flute without a second of hesitation.
He had listened to a professional musician play the flute a week prior to his lesson. Had heard how beautifully the instrument could be played. He could only imagine how much he had been butchering the poor thing. How screeching and raw his own playing must have sounded. He would have to work twice as hard to make his playing at least passable to his teacher.
He remembered so clearly, raising the flute to his lips and playing a few notes. The sound of it in his own ears.
His teacher had praised him. Had said that while Hartley's playing wasn't perfect, it was technically sound. The rest of it would come in time.
Hartley had lowered the flute. He remembered feeling sick to his stomach. He had made an excuse, said he was still feeling ill from his surgeries. His teacher ended the lesson there. He remembered fleeing to his room as quickly as he could. The flute still clutched in his hand.
He hadn't been failing at the flute. He hadn't been destroying the works of the Masters. Vivaldi wasn't rolling over in his grave every time Hartley had tried to play.
He just hadn't been perfect.
And that was unacceptable to his parents.
That was failure.
To this day, Hartley could still play the violin and the piano. But it was the flute that he excelled at. It was the only one he still practiced. At first, it had been a childish need to prove to his parents that he could be good enough. He could still be their perfect son.
But as he grew older he realized there was no achievement, no act, that could convince his parents he was good enough.
The flute was a reminder. It stood as a beacon from his childhood. It was the first time in his young life that he had realized that his parents' views on the world didn't line up with everyone else's.
Especially not his own.
Hartley found an odd comfort in playing the instrument that had opened his parents' eyes to his defects. And had opened his eyes to theirs. The flute had shown them what they hadn't been able to admit to, what his parents still couldn't admit to.
There was no doctor, no amount of money, that could fix what was broken between them.
Hartley gazed towards Roy's door. Roy was going to need his paints.
Lisa and Cold were in the kitchen, talking on their phones. Trying to figure out who was responsible. Why someone had ordered such a slaughter.
Shawna was with Roy. Mardon was pacing outside of the bathroom. The man would be too distracted to help them. Mardon reacted badly to fear, he might just kill anyone they came across who looked at them wrong. That would only make matters worse. Mick…Hartley didn't know where Mick had wandered off to. Hartley doubted that Mick would want to risk his freedom or his life to steal art supplies.
Hartley eyed Digger. The absolute last person he would choose was his only option at the moment. Hartley pulled out his phone and quickly looked a map of the surrounding areas.
"There's an art store that sells paints about six miles from here. Far enough away that if we get caught they won't know where the safe house is. Close enough that we could be back within 45 minutes if everything goes smoothly."
Hartley looked towards where he knew Cold was. Their leader would want to know. He wouldn't want them to go actually. Technically they were supposed to limit the number of times they left the safe house.
Cold was being extra cautious. And after today, after what could have happened to Roy…
Digger grabbed Hartley's arm and pulled him out of the chair.
"Easier to ask forgiveness than permission right?"
Hartley pulled his arm out of Digger's grasp but continued to follow the mercenary towards the garage. It was unlikely that Cold would kick them out of the group for this. And Hartley would just blame everything on Digger. Claim he only went along to keep Harkness from doing anything stupid.
If they got caught, Cold would leave them in lock up. Let them sweat a little, at least until he decided they had learned their lesson. Hopefully Waller didn't whisk them off to some other hidden prison. Didn't put them on the Suicide Squad, leaving Hartley to die in a foreign country without the Rogues there to watch his back.
Was it really worth it to risk their lives for paint?
Hartley thought about the week after he had been kicked out of his parents' house. After he had been disowned and abandoned. They had kept all of his possessions, and ordered their security to not let him back in for any reason.
He had had nothing.
Well, that was a little dramatic. He had gotten the job at STAR Labs, so he had enough money to rent an apartment and feed himself.
But his flute…
He hadn't had it when he needed it the most. When he had needed the comfort it would have brought him. The reminder that his parents didn't understand true concepts like beauty and love. He could have played every note perfectly and his parents would never have understood the melody. Would still have missed everything the music was trying to say, would have missed the emotions behind each note. They couldn't understand love in its true forms.
Stealing his flute from his parents' house had been when he realized he might have a penchant for this whole crime thing. At the time, he had thought it would be a one time thing. And there had been no real danger, if he had been caught, his parents wouldn't have called the police. They wouldn't have tolerated such an embarrassing scandal.
Hartley followed Digger out to the car. They didn't even really have a plan. Technically they could just walk in and buy the paint. It was only 4:37 pm, the place was still open. But Hartley had his gauntlets on under his hoodie, just in case.
Digger was humming along to the radio. The idiot probably hadn't given this heist any thought. Not that Digger gave anything much thought. What must it be like to have so few thoughts in your head? Hartley had been toying with the idea of using sound waves as a form of mind control recently. It might only work on the most dimwitted of the population.
Digger would make an excellent test subject.
They stopped in the parking lot and Digger started to open his door.
"Shouldn't we have some sort of plan?"
"Run in, pocket a few paints. Leave. Simple enough."
Hartley rolled his eyes.
"Or we could try not to make a scene and just buy them."
"Our faces are everywhere mate. We aren't going to get more than a few feet without someone recognizing us. You really want someone to capture a video on their phone, showing the Rogues just walking in and buying something like a bunch of law abiding citizens? The shame of it."
Hartley sighed deeply. Why did he have to suffer so?
"Or, I can get in there, buy the paint, pay for it, and leave. No one ever knows we were here and Cold doesn't kill us for getting caught."
Digger smirked. It was the most annoying thing about the man. How funny he always found everything. It wasn't the same as Cold's smirk. The one that conveyed how smart he was, and how screwed everyone else was. It was as if Digger found all of this, all of their lives, incredibly amusing.
"All right then. You squirrel on in there and buy the paint all proper. I'll wait here for when it all goes sideways."
Hartley wasn't sure if that meant Digger would come to Hartley's aid, or laugh his ass off as he was carted away. Hartley assumed it was the latter.
Hartley pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, obscuring his face. His gauntlets were still hidden under his sleeves. It would have made more sense to take them off. But that would have meant he would be completely dependent on Digger for protection. Something he had no intention of doing.
He kept his head down, avoiding eye contact with the five other customers. He found the brand that Roy used and grabbed as many white and black tubes as he could. He was paying for the paints, thinking he might actually pull this off, when a cop car pulled into the parking lot.
It could be anything. There were a thousand reasons the cop car chose this exact moment to pull into the same lot as two of the city's most notorious criminals. As long as they didn't do anything stupid…
The car with Digger in it screeched out of the parking lot. The cop car quickly followed in pursuit.
Son of a bitch.
The back door of the store suddenly burst open. Several cops bust in, they must have already had the building surrounded. Each of the cops that entered were wearing the reflective shades. They were expecting Roy. They assumed he was the one who entered.
Hartley turned off his hearing aids and pressed a button on his left gauntlet.
He saw the cops walking through the store. No doubt shouting orders to everyone, he saw their lips moving furiously.
There were only a few people in the store. It wouldn't take long for the cops to turn their attention towards the only person with his face obscured. Hartley checked the position of the four cops behind him. Just a few more seconds…
He could see their focus turn to him. Could read their lips in the glass in front of him, telling him not to move. To put his hands in the air.
The left gauntlet vibrated, signaling it was ready.
Hartley raised his hands in the air.
A high pitched frequency erupted from his left arm. The glass shattered all around him. Everyone fell to the floor, clutching their ears. Hartley smirked, he was certain the cops would include earplugs in their Rogue preparedness kits after this.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the money he had intended to use to pay for the paints. He looked around the room for a moment, then pulled out a few more bills. All that glass was going to be expensive to repair. It wasn't the store owner's fault the cops had chosen to try and capture a Rogue here.
Hartley hadn't wanted any trouble in the first place. All this destruction was on the cops.
How the hell was the RTF finding them?
Facial recognition? No, or they would have known it was Hartley in the store and not Roy.
He was going to have to rerun some diagnostics when he got back to the safe house.
Speaking of which…
Digger pulled the old beaten up car back into the lot, screeching the tires as he came to an abrupt halt. Hartley ran outside and quickly got into the car.
He was about to make some remark about Digger getting them killed, when the mercenary grabbed the back of Hartley's neck and pulled his head down. A bullet embedded itself in the headrest behind him.
Digger hit the gas and they pulled out of the parking lot. Hartley tentatively brought his head back up.
The RTF, at least the ones that weren't going to be heading to the hospital with shattered eardrums, were trying to follow them. Hartley could just make out the boomerangs sticking out of their tires.
"Not for nothing, but that was a hell of a lot of fun."
"You're an idiot."
Digger laughed.
"Get the paints at least? Or should we swing by another store? Give it another go?"
Hartley looked closely at Digger's face. The man was serious. He had actually enjoyed that. The man seemed to thrive on the fighting, on the chaos. Hartley understood the need to fight, understood that violence was sometimes the only way to get ones point across. But he didn't revel in the violence the way Digger or Mick or Mardon did. They seemed to truly enjoy the fighting, the adrenaline of almost being killed.
Hartley wasn't sure he ever would.
It was the puzzles that interested him. The challenge.
Hartley pulled the tubes of paint out of his pocket. Stealing had been the only way to help Roy.
This time.
It didn't mean that stealing had to be the only way to get things done.
If the RTF hadn't shown up…
"Oi? You listening to me?"
"I think we can just assume Digger that I am never listening to you, as you have never had a worthwhile thing to say."
"Said Cold just sent me a text message…"
"You shouldn't text and drive."
"…asking why he just saw us on the news. Didn't realize you could sound so pissed through a text message. Didn't even use any emojis."
"The day Leonard Snart uses an emoji in a text is the day the universe collapses in on itself."
"Maybe let me do the talking."
"Seeing as you will simply attempt to pin this entire endeavor on me, I think not."
"You got no faith mate."
"I have plenty of faith in my team, but very little in you."
"Hurtful."
"The truth is rarely…"
Digger slammed on the brakes.
"Harkness, what the hell…"
"Get out of the car."
"Seriously? I insult you and you are going to make me walk…"
"They're tracking the car. We are about to lead them back to the safe house."
Digger pulled open his door and exited the vehicle.
Hartley unbuckled his seat beat and opened his door. He followed quickly behind Digger. Harkness pulled out one of his boomerang, pressed a button on the side of it, then threw it back at the car.
The car exploded.
Hartley stared for a moment, but Digger kept moving quickly towards a sewer drain.
Hartley rolled his eyes. Of course it would be the sewers.
Hartley pulled out his phone and checked all his tracking programs. There was nothing to suggest that they were being followed. But Digger had already disappeared down the manhole. So Hartley sighed and dropped down into the sewer as well.
"What makes you think we were being followed?"
"Gut feeling."
"Ah yes, the most reliable of…"
"Back when I was with ARGUS, we used to pull this gambit all the time. Go after a bloke, guns blazing, make him think we had him dead to rights. Then somehow he slips through our fingers. Bastard thinks he's gotten away lucky. But it's all a part of the plan. Get him to lead us back to his base or hideout or whatever, wait a few hours till he thinks he safe, maybe wait till he's sleeping. Then go in and do what needs done. They wanted us to head back to the safe house, then they would have jumped us all at once when we weren't expecting it."
"I don't have any…"
"More to tactics than just what's in your computers. Black ops have been running since before there was even electricity to power your gadgets."
Hartley still wasn't certain they were being followed, but he was willing to concede that, in this one incredibly rare instance, perhaps Digger knew slightly more than he did.
They used the sewers to travel in several loops, before finally resurfacing. They waited in a nearby hotel for several hours. Waiting to see if the cops would make a move.
Eventually they made it back to the safe house.
Cold was not pleased.
After what could only be described as an hour of the most level and monotone yelling, Hartley finally found his way back towards Roy's room.
The artist was sitting on his bed, his back against the wall. He seemed to be focused on breathing. Roy's eyes cracked open slightly as Hartley walked into the room.
Roy looked pale. Almost a day later and the man was still reacting to the situation at the apartments. Hartley could only imagine what Roy had seen. Not that he wanted to.
Hartley reached into his pockets and pulled out the tubes of paint. He sat them on the bed next to Roy.
Roy stared at them, he reached a tentative hand towards them.
"You and Digger almost got yourselves caught, almost lead the Flash, ARGUS, and the RTF back to the safe house, thereby getting us all arrested or killed, just to buy me paint."
"Believe me, next time I won't take Harkness. How that man has survived this long is beyond me."
Roy wrapped a hand around one of the tubes. Hartley could almost see the tension in Roy start to unravel.
"Thank you."
"I owed you."
Roy nodded, he stood up off the bed and walked over to his canvas. The artist began to paint.
Hartley knew Roy wouldn't say anything else, that the man would be too immersed in his painting to pay anything else much mind. So Hartley pulled out his laptop and sat on Roy's now vacated spot on the bed.
There was something soothing in watching Roy paint. Hartley couldn't really describe it. Maybe it was the familiarity of it, of the sound of the brush on the canvas.
Hartley opened up every program he had, double and triple checking for anything he could find.
It was several hours later before he found it. A single line of code hidden under layers and layers of encryptions. Somehow Cisco had managed to hide it, causing Hartley's programs to pause for 0.0045 of a second every six hours. Enough time for Cisco's insidious little Trojan horse to bury itself deeper into Hartley's pristine work. If Hartley hadn't caught it now, it could have caused serious problems.
Hartley scrubbed everything. He would have to start over in the morning. Tell Cold that some of their networks were compromised, that they would have to be careful over the next few days until he got everything up and running again. Maybe use some of their old drop sites for supplies for awhile.
Hartley closed his laptop. Roy was still painting.
Hartley stood up and left the room. He walked into his own room and laid down on the bed.
Though he didn't like to admit it, occasionally Cisco would provide some minor challenge that Hartley would have to overcome. Cold had once warned Hartley about being too cocky when it came to the STAR Labs kids.
Hartley wondered what it would have been like if he had stayed there sometimes. If he hadn't challenged Dr. Wells on the particle accelerator. Would he be working there still, helping out Cisco and Caitlin with the Flash?
Would he be working to take down the Rogues?
It definitely would have been a challenge to go up against Cold and the others.
Hartley smirked. He would never have been able to stand being around Cisco and Caitlin for so long. They were even more annoying than Digger. The first time Cold came along, Hartley probably would have joined the criminal anyway. Sure there were things here he didn't agree with, and being wanted by the cops hadn't been on his 10 year plan. But…
The Rogues is where he belonged.
A/N: I have no idea how this chapter turned into the Captain Boomerang/Pied Piper Adventure Hour, but that's what happened.