(I AM SO SORRY FOR THE DELAY, DON'T KILL ME PLEASE. I'm okay, by the way, reviewers, I am not in the path of Hurricane Harvey! Still battling writer's block, but your comments are helping with that. Also, I'm heading to DragonCon until September 4th, so this fic will probably not be updated until after then, which I hate and apologize profusely for. Don't leave me! I'll be back, I swear, it's just a few more days. Hopefully this pathetic little chapter will be enough until then. Love you people! -Doverstar)
Lisa Snart of Earth-66 had grown up with an abusive father and a big brother who had lost all sense of self-worth. Lenny was never one to stand up for himself—but he'd do it for his sister. In fact, nine times out of ten, he was the one who took her punishment, whenever daddy had had a little too much to drink and had deemed Lisa the reason for whatever was making him angry at that particular moment.
When Lawrence Snart had up and left late one night when she was 17, 31-year-old Leonard Snart had returned from a life on the run—running from their mess of a father—to take her home with him.
As a teenager, Lenny was literally her hero. But well into her adult years, they realized who was the more prominent personality between the two.
Living in a tumble-down basement of a friend of a friend of a friend with her struggling bro was not what Lisa had envisioned freedom being. They needed cash, and Lenny introduced her, at her impressionable age, to his favorite get-rich-quick scheme: steal stuff and kill whoever got in your way.
Actually, the kill whoever got in your way part was her own addition. A woman's touch, if you will. Leonard Snart showed a slightly empty appetite for taking lives, whereas his hardened little sister saw people as obstacles rather than souls. They were fine until they made your life harder, then they needed to be ejected from the scene, and the fastest way to do that was with a gun—her favorite means of solving problems.
Lenny was not as seasoned at the whole criminal thing as he had led her to believe. He was smart, all right, but not smart enough—he was a kind of wild child, drunk with the exemption of a ruthless father, and it made him reckless. A train wreck. Lisa found that she was the sibling with a knack for wrongdoing, and her darling brother ended up following her lead by the time she was 31.
Then the S.T.A.R. Labs accident had happened, and the city went upside-down.
Crime was everywhere—rumors of special people using their newfound abilities to get what they wanted became everyday conversation. Lisa and her brother were spared any funky genetic alterations, but the competition on the streets for heists and such became that much fiercer. It was tough out there when you weren't endowed with superpowers and you didn't do domestic labor.
But then she'd met someone who could help.
Someone who was a master at all of it—stealing, cheating, killing. Someone smarter than all of them but wiling to share the action. And he wanted her on his team.
Lenny had been good to her, for all his bumbling. But a bird's gotta leave the nest sometime.
So she'd struck out on her own. Well, not entirely. Taking the stranger up on his offer meant becoming part of a little crew, a team, a posse. A gang of Rogues, but apparently that name was too cliched and the idea had been shot down early on. Whatever they were called, being one of them was a lot better than trying to make it big on her own.
There was something there for everyone. And Lisa, like the rest of this mini-king's subjects, wanted her own piece of the pie, her own corner of the playground to play on.
Her first solo mission was to stick up a bank. Classic. Rough a few people up, take some money, get out without needing reinforcements. And she'd almost done it, too—but hostages were a mistake.
Everything had gone a little sour—one of the people in the building, or maybe in the parking lot, happened to be a cop. A blonde with a nice build. Cute, but he was trouble, and he had the place surrounded immediately. So hostages were the only thing Lisa could think of to keep the boys in blue at bay while she tried to think of a way out of the bank without calling for backup.
She could've redeemed herself.
If he hadn't shown up.
The running man, the shadow, whatever he was. The fast guy. Freakshow, Rory's little nickname for Central City's newest superhuman pain in the neck. He was everywhere, tangling with everyone, even Lenny—and Lenny wasn't apart of their little operation. Lisa had heard he'd been the driving force behind their group's most recent difficulties, though she wouldn't believe one man could catch hothead Rory all on his own. Rory had a one track mind, true, but he wasn't someone who went down easily.
Being thwarted by the speedster herself changed her mind.
And now she was in prison, set to be moved to Iron Heights to join her brother in the morning.
Oh well, she thought, examining her nails as she sat back on her cot. At least I got to fry Speedy's hands before I left. That's something. The chemical on her weapons was lethal, and she'd seen it staining his stylish black gloves just before he'd sped away. Doing some damage as a parting gift made her defeat a little less frustrating. Besides, she and Lenny would be out of Iron Heights in two hours, tops. Those cops didn't know what they were in for, putting her in the same building as her big brother. They may not always be on the same page morally, but together they were a force to be reckoned with.
She was torn from her thoughts at the sound of the door sliding open down the aisle. Lisa didn't bother getting up to go to the bars of her own cell and take a peek. Nothing interesting happened in prison, her inmates were silent and smelly, and her warden was less than good-looking. Probably too many frappuchinos in an effort to stay awake during the night shift.
Lisa heard the jangling of keys as they twirled around a finger, and a jaunty whistle, something that sounded an awful lot like Here Comes The Sun.
There was only one person who could whistle that song so perfectly, so clearly, and so ridiculously often. But she'd seen the consequences if you insulted his taste in music; she wasn't entertaining the idea of suggesting a different tune every once in a while. Her heartbeat sped up, now she rushed to the bars, pausing for just a moment to fluff her hair.
It was too dark to really see him—which was fine, technically he wasn't much to look at, but she could argue looks weren't everything in his case—yet she'd recognize the head shape and the smooth accent anywhere.
"My, my, my," said her rescuer, still swinging the keys. "Fancy meeting you here, luv."
"Come here often?" Lisa grinned, raising an eyebrow. "You got up off your throne just to open my cage. You know how to make a girl feel special." She reached through the bars for the keys.
But he snatched them backward so fluidly, she had to convince herself they hadn't been that far away the whole time. "Don't be grabby, it's terribly unattractive. And anyway, do you actually think you've earned these?" The keys rattled; he was jiggling them slightly.
Lisa felt her smile slip away. She retracted her hand, suddenly aware of the danger of losing it. When he asked questions, it was time to tread carefully. Flirting was a dangerous move. "I did my best," she insisted, stifling the urge to pout, which worked on those lesser men. A bad idea here. "I didn't count on Roadrunner showing up to spoil my fun."
"I did." He was still now. The keys had stopped swinging. "Why d'you think I sent you out alone? To a bank?"
"Initiation," Lisa responded, like a star student showing off. "To prove I can handle anything."
"Aw, how dreadfully arrogant of you. I am well aware of what you can handle, Lisa darling." His voice became hard, cold. "I was waiting to discover whether our bother in black would be added to the list. I'm afraid you've really disappointed me."
There was no pout, flirt, or even the trace of a smirk in Lisa at that. None of her usual reactions. The tips of her fingers were starting to tingle a little, and she refused to name the emotion in her gut—she hadn't felt it since daddy had left home when she was 17. Fear. Nerves. Something in his tone was making her anxious. No one but Lawrence Snart had ever made her afraid, until he had curled into her life.
"If you'd told me I was supposed to take him down—" Lisa began, though the volume dropped out when he shuffled a little closer. "…I could've done it."
"You could've done it if you'd had what it took at all, preparation or no, luv." A rattly sigh. "No, sorry, it just wasn't what we're looking for."
"I've been running with you and your crew for three years!" Lisa gripped the bars tighter.
"Yes, and you're very good." His silhouette said he was examining the keys now, probably out of boredom. "Really. I got chills, watching you on that security feed. Gun technique, flawless. And all with a lovely little smile! Gold. But when it counted, you were on the ground."
"So—what? You came all the way here yourself just to tell me I'm out?" Lisa breathed, still feeling that creeping sense of horror, of indignation. After everything she'd done. And she hadn't even known she was being measured and tested—if she'd known, if only they'd told her he was coming, the running man wouldn't have stood a chance.
"Don't be so melodramatic," her rescuer hummed. "I came here to release you. I do believe you'll have to cancel that dawn date with your dear brother."
There was a twisting of an arm through the bars, a click of keys in a lock, and her cell door swung open—silently.
Lisa felt all tension shoot right out of her at the words. She stepped out into the aisle, trying not to exhale too revealingly, relief pulling her smirk back into the light.
"However." He was behind her, and there was something cold and metal up against her neck. Lisa fought that same fear threatening to suffocate her long before he could. No one else could bring it out so suddenly. "This will be your last chance. Prove I didn't come into this frankly odious establishment for nothing."
Lisa nodded very gingerly, careful not to brush too energetically against the knife.
"Excellent. If you waste my time again, you'll have the honor of becoming an only child." The knife disappeared, and he released her. "Come along, Snart. I do believe we've overstayed our welcome here."
"You look like a cornered cat," Caitlin muttered beneath her breath.
She and Savitar were at Jitters, after five days of Caitlin nonstop mentioning it—in the med bay fixing a dislocated arm, in the Cortex over the comms, in the corridors just before bed. Finally he had agreed to go in, order, go out that morning when she entered the engineering room to run some tests on Cisco's vacuum device. According to a recent video chat, he still had not decided on a name for it.
Now they were standing off to the side, waiting for their drinks, Savitar apparently a mix between extremely bored and extremely uncomfortable. People weren't staring at him any more than they were staring at Caitlin, but he did a lot of staring himself: from the elderly man in the corner booth to the little girl and her brother just coming inside. He didn't look at the menu and he didn't look at the bake case, or the barista. If anyone ever met his gaze, he switched to looking at Caitlin.
The tiniest of exhales through his nose escaped. "Guess I'm not used to people just seeing me," he grunted.
She fell silent at that. Maybe he wasn't used to people noticing his existence—or noticing it briefly, like average humans did, instead of gawking at a mass of scars—but he had it easy. What was tough was being on the outside, looking at him now that there was almost nothing hiding the similarities between him and her best friend. Out of the corner of her eye, she would see him come into the room and she'd have to stop herself from greeting him with a grin or a steady stream of information the way she would Barry. Caitlin had to get used to the one blue eye and the lack of a smile, the tired voice and the black clothing, all over again. Because before, these were traits she had been starting to associate with Savitar, but here was this jarring reminder that somewhere in his own head, and apparently on his own face now, he was Barry Allen.
Before the transmogrifier, the similarities had been unnerving. After, they were downright distracting. Heaven forbid she actually get him to crack a smile one of these days. Then she'd be doomed. Her poor brain wouldn't know who she was looking at anymore. Good thing he was the stoic type.
"Caitlin."
"Yes."
"You're staring at me."
She blinked, meeting his eyes. Well, one had to look somewhere while lost in thought. He just happened to be standing right beside her. But it was rude to stare.
"Right. Sorry," Caitlin mumbled, glancing back at the counter.
For the first two days after they'd used the transmogrifier, Caitlin had had to make sure she looked at him just as often as she looked at him before. But by the fourth day, it seemed she had become too comfortable with the lack of scars. It was so good to see a familiar face from Team Flash here—even if she was reminded often that this wasn't that Barry. Now she was having to find a middle ground—to look at him enough so that he wasn't offended, but not so much that it was odd. Really, any of it could offend him at this point. That was another code she was trying to decipher.
Suddenly someone pushed past her, in a rush, jostling her so that she had to back up and stepped on Savitar's foot in an attempt to get out of the person's way.
Savitar lazily and robotically steadied her, glancing in a bored sort of way after the culprit. "Somebody's in a hurry."
Caitlin followed his gaze, about to apologize for stepping on him, when the sight of blonde hair and sturdy shoulders stopped her. "That was Eddie," she announced dumbly.
Eddie had, at that moment, reached the door. As he turned the corner out the window, Caitlin noticed he was on his two-way radio, his face tight with stress.
Savitar's voice finally took on a tone of interest. "Wonder where he's going."
A glance at the News by the time they got back to the Cortex gave them their answer.
According to helpful Sandra Peterson, Lisa Snart had broken out of prison and was currently terrorizing a bar in the middle of the city. Aerial footage told them that the bar had been cordoned off by the police, of course, and Caitlin was willing to bet money that Eddie Thawne was down there in the thick of things.
Savitar was already in his Flash suit when she set to work patching into the bar's security cameras. "This'll be quick."
Caitlin's blood ran cold, surveying the images on the monitor. "Don't count on it," she muttered. "Look."
He joined her, looking over her shoulder. Onscreen, the bar was upside-down. Chairs turned over, scattered everywhere, broken glass glinting in the low light, tables either broken or toppled. The footage was fuzzy, but Caitlin could see Lisa trying to pry open the cash register with a crowbar, wearing her resistant black gloves. A little clichéd, but she wasn't her Earth-1 big brother; she'd have to resort to using force rather than experience and brain to open it.
Savitar was looking at the corner of the screen, where a figure could be seen near the door. "Nimbus."
"It doesn't look like there are any hostages this time," Caitlin observed.
"Good." Savitar headed for the exit. "No one will get in the way."
As she flashed out of the room, Caitlin scrambled for the comms. "Wait! You need Cisco's vacuum—"
"Already got it."
Savitar loved fighting.
He loved it almost as much as he loved running. Maybe more than running. The thrill, the adrenaline, the satisfaction of taking out your emotions on someone who deserved it—it was his aesthetic, you might say. And he had a lot of emotions to take out. Yes, it was a much darker guilty pleasure than Earth-1's Barry Allen could dream up, but that made it all the sweeter.
Yet another difference between them was that for Savitar, this had never been a guilty pleasure. Just a pleasure. In his early days, becoming a god through the ages, he had entertained the theory that he had been struck by that lightning bolt in his lab to dish out punishments to those worthy of them. That this was what his incredible power was made to do. Barry Allen had always gotten the same thrill from taking down the bad guys—but never this thick, and not for the same selfish reasons. He loved seeing justice done, being a part of that, helping. He envisioned every person the villain had hurt when he fought them, and he only threw the first punch after being certain it was on their behalf. Not Savitar. Now that he wasn't to be a god, Savitar threw the first punch on his own behalf. Because he felt like it. And it felt great.
More and more, though, it was becoming a guilty pleasure. This probably had something to do with Caitlin's ever-increasing orders not to do more damage than was necessary, the fact that she was watching and listening. Probably also the fact that she expected him to go off the rails. He wondered if she still expected it, now that the transmogrifier had done its work.
Actually, Ramon's vacuum device was a bit of a kill-joy. He didn't have to do anything to Nimbus with this strapped to his back. Nothing but flip a switch and suck him up. Of course, he'd have to wait for the other guy to become a substance suckable—and that might mean a good wrestle after all.
Upon reaching the bar, he didn't stop running long enough for them to see him come in. Them, or the cop barricade outside. He dodged the wreckage in the room and made a beeline for Snart, who was still trying to pry open the cash register like an idiot. There was nothing stopping him from taking her down.
He ripped the crowbar out of her hand, lifted her up, and tossed her against the nearest standing table. It cracked in half almost immediately—it wasn't as sturdy as it looked—and she landed on the rug in a pile of splinters and surprise. All of this in a matter of seconds.
Lisa blinked up at him, shaking her head so that her hair would fly from her face.
Savitar grinned. "Someone should've stayed in prison."
Something slightly desperate flashed across her expression in the split second when she focused on and recognized him. He didn't understand it, but it was almost pained. He chalked it up to the usual last-resort panic baddies felt when they knew there was no chance against the Fastest Man Alive.
The it was gone and she was scrambling to her feet. She looked him up and down, taking in the vacuum. "What are you wearing?"
Savitar decided not to respond to that. He glanced at Nimbus, who was guarding the door, pale, wide eyes trained on the speedster with something like hunger. Savitar gritted his teeth, hearing Caitlin's heart monitor in the back of his mind. Suddenly Lisa became a waste of time.
He left Snart where she stood, and before she'd completed her current breath he was seconds from colliding with the Mist, whose smile seemed to grow the closer he got.
But Lisa would not be ignored. He heard her gun fire three times just before he reached Nimbus, and darted to the left just in time, taking a tour around the room and coming at Nimbus from the other side. The bullets were still in the air at this point, and heading straight for the Mist. Savitar briefly entertained the idea of letting them fall where they may, but he could picture the look on Caitlin's face when he returned with news that there would be no gas sample to cure Mrs. Stein after all, and he rolled his eyes, snatching the bullets one by one from their course.
He stopped in front of Nimbus, facing Lisa, holding up his hand and very deliberately dropping the bullets, letting them clatter to the floor. Lisa gave him a look that would fell a Hun.
Savitar glanced over his shoulder at Nimbus. "Is it my turn yet?"
The Mist raised his eyebrows. "Show-off."
With a whisshh, a cloud of green took up that corner of the bar, and Savitar held his breath at exactly the right second. He itched to say big mistake, but that would require oxygen that wasn't polluted, so he kept it to himself. Time to test out Ramon's little machine.
A flick of the switch, and Savitar felt the tube grow hot in his hands as he held it out—any direction would do; Nimbus was essentially all around him. But though it made a convincing humming sound, nothing happened. The green remained airborne.
Unable to hold his breath any longer, Savitar left the vacuum where he stood andflashed out of the cloud, up onto the second floor, onto the balcony. He had to dodge more of Lisa's very well-aimed bullets on the way. He pressed his fingers to his comms system.
"Caitlin," he gasped out.
Caitlin, who had apparently been away from the comms in the Cortex up until this moment, responded from what sounded like another end of the room, gradually getting louder as she went back to the desk. "What is it? Are you okay, what's happening?"
With a cough, he decided to dismiss the fact that she was apparently not monitoring him the way she always had. On another Skype call with her real friends? But there was no time to be snarky. "You didn't say Cisco's toy needed to warm up," he spat.
"What?" He heard the sound of keys clicking; she was probably pulling up the blueprint Cisco had given her on a hard drive before she left Earth-1. "No—that's not right, it doesn't say anything here about…"
Kyle Nimbus was behind him. He could smell it, even when the meta was in human form. Savitar turned to meet the Mist's eerie grin.
"Am I interrupting your little chat?" Kyle tsked, hands slowly dissolving into gas, the substance creeping up his arms. This was something Earth-1's version couldn't control. "Weird. I thought I ended your secretary."
Savitar heard blood roaring in his ears, familiar as ever. Avoiding the arms, he delivered an uppercut, slugging Nimbus beneath the chin so that the other man toppled backward, wafts of the gas flying through the air as his arms pinwheeled to create balance.
Savitar was this close to leaping on Nimbus and making him a human punching bag, but the meta was made of poison before he could, whirling around the speedster, thicker and thicker, clearly trying to penetrate his system without being inhaled. The gas did have some effect on Savitar's vision; he blinked stinging tears from his eyes. Everything was blurry.
"Savitar? The scanners say Nimbus is on top of you! If you don't have the vacuum, you need to get out of there!" Caitlin's voice was getting tighter and tighter.
But there was a loud, smooth whoosh, and the green around Savitar was being pulled away like water down a drain.
When the air was clear again, everything was quiet, and Savitar breathed heavily, sucking in deeply. He looked around, confused. A fourth figure had entered the building.
Crouching a few feet away from him with a very relieved expression was Eddie Thawne, the vacuum strapped clumsily to his back, still holding the tube. When Savitar met his eyes, Eddie sighed, "Oh, thank God that worked."
Savitar stood up straight, flexing his fingers. "What are you doing here?"
"Saving you," Eddie replied proudly, straightening himself. "And…cleaning up, apparently." He took off the device, setting it down with a little more effort; it was heavy and now it contained one whole sulfurous metahuman. He chuckled a little, slightly out of breath. "This one's gonna be hard to explain at the CCPD."
Savitar zipped over and took the device, slinging it onto his own back. "You won't have to. He's coming with me."
Eddie's eyebrows pinched together. "He's a criminal. Whatever he is, he belongs in Iron Heights."
"You're still out of your depth," Savitar said, shaking his head. After a moment, surveying the scene, he asked, "Where's the other one?"
Eddie glanced around. "Snart? She must've gotten away while you two were—doing whatever you were doing. You were the only people here when I came in." He was wearing a bullet-proof vest and everything. He squinted, cocking his head. "You know what these guys are," he breathed, nodding to the vacuum. "You're one of them."
Savitar crossed his arms. "I'm something."
"Who are you?" Eddie asked at last, a hint of a smile twitching. "Why are you doing this, not robbing banks and bars like the rest of them?"
"Did you get the sample?" Caitlin's voice crackled in his ear, tense. She was probably saving a lecture about taking her advice for later. Writing it up in her head.
"I got him," Savitar mumbled into his comms. Louder, to Eddie, he said simply, begrudgingly, "Thanks for your help, Detective."
With that, he headed back to S.T.A.R. Labs, leaving Thawne to clean up his mess again.