"You gotta be kidding me," Mick said and that, Leonard had to admit, was probably the only way to sum the situation before them.
An aberration had brought them to their own time period, to Coast City, where apparently something was going wrong. Thanks to Gideon's reluctance to share information about the future with them, they were practically flying blind, a prospect that not a single one of them liked. But they went on what they had and found themselves at the Coast City art museum.
Well, three of them anyway. It was just Sara and the two crew members who had previously earned their livelihoods from breaking, entering, and robbing. The others were all monitoring from the Waverider, as the mission currently only called for recon and Sara didn't exactly relish the idea of the entire team breaking into the museum. Anyway, the reason for Mick's words, well Sara wasn't exactly sure. They had come across a figure, clad from head to toe in black, and pointed their weapons with demands that the figure turn around with their hands up. The figure complied, revealing the face of a woman with dark brown eyes, eyes that locked immediately onto Leonard.
That was when had Mick spoken.
"Alexia," Len drawled and Sara felt her heart drop. She could tell by the way he said the name that he wasn't telling them he had a bad feeling about this, but that he was addressing the woman.
"Leonard Snart," Alexia returned, her eyes scanning all three of them before eventually resettling on Leonard. "You've been off the grid for over a year now, I thought you might be dead."
"Sorry to disappoint," Len snapped, "Now what are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same question." Alexia scoffed, taking a few sauntering steps closer to the group, her previous target seemingly forgotten. "If you're here for The Key, I'm afraid I've beaten you to it." She said, although to be fair The Key, the art exhibit she was apparently stealing, was still in place. So technically, she hadn't really beaten him to it.
"And I'm afraid that you've got the wrong idea, I'm not here to steal The Key." Len drawled, looking at her with a gaze that, although Sara was looking at the back of his head, she knew was causing Alexia to rethink her every assumption. "I'm here to stop you."
Alexa smirked at that, in fact she almost outright laughed.
"You and what army, Leonard?" She asked before finally looking past him and over at Mick and Sara. "Mick and… I'm sorry have we met?" She asked, her eyes now focused on Sara.
"No, we haven't. Now leave The Key here, go on your way, and we'll go on ours." The blonde negotiated and Alexia chewed at her lip, pretending to consider the idea.
"Sorry," she eventually said, "But I'm not doing this one for the kicks." She said and with that she threw something to the ground, and the next thing the three Legends' knew they were choking on a thick gas.
Sara snapped her eyes open with a gasp, only to find the familiar ceiling of the med bay staring back at her. She moved to sit up, her head still spinning just a little, and she almost immediately found Ray at her side.
"Easy, easy." He commanded more than anything, not that she listened.
Looking around she saw Leonard waking up on the bed next to her, his eyes meeting hers as he sat up and silently asking if she was ok. She gave him a barely detectable nod as an answer, one that none of the others seemed to notice. The two of them hadn't talked about the kiss; it had only been a few days. But something had definitely changed between them, they just weren't sure what to call it.
Scanning the room beyond Leonard, Sara noticed that Jax was next to his bed while Mick was sitting on the edge of a cot in the corner with his head practically between his legs, Amaya by his side and rubbing gentle strokes up and down his back. Martin was also standing against the far wall, tapping away at a tablet that Sara assumed held information on what had happened to them. Nate was propped against a wall inside the doorway, not far behind Ray.
"What are we looking at Martin?" She finally brought herself to ask, though her words apparently startled the professor, as when she spoke he jumped before composing himself.
"It appears that the three of you were exposed to an airborne sedative, in short… you were hit with knock out gas."
"Looks like Alexia has some new tricks," Len grimaced as his thoughts finally began unscrambling themselves and he was able to focus on the situation at hand.
"Who's Alexia?" Ray asked,
"A double crossing pain in the ass," Mick replied as if the answer was automatic, lifting his head up and blinking a few times to get his vision straight. "She's a chick boss and I worked with back in the day, said she had been hired by some guy to steal something out of a safe deposit box, but she needed some help."
"And the two of you just agreed to help her?" Jax asked suspiciously, doubtful that Snart and Rory would have helped someone "just because" back when they were full time criminals.
Mick looked at Len, his gaze asking for some kind of permission. Leonard met his eyes and sighed, before looking around at the others.
"I dated Alexia back in high school, or what would've been high school had I not dropped out. Her family was every bit as messed up as mine. She also had a habit of getting caught, and the job was supposed to be a huge payday. She said if we helped her she'd split the money."
"Only problem is she was lying," Mick interrupted, "She'd made a deal with the cops. If she could get us where they wanted us, they'd let her go."
"Needless to say, we hightailed it out of there before the heist." Len finished with a scowl.
"So… Snart's ex-girlfriend is our aberration?" Ray asked but Leonard ignored him, instead choosing to look over at Sara. Her expression was blank, purposely of course.
"Doubt it," he answered, still gauging Sara for a reaction and still not receiving one. "She said she wasn't stealing The Key for the fun of it, and as much as she has a knack for getting caught, she never pulls something like a museum heist unless she's been hired."
"So whoever hired her is most likely behind the aberration," Nate finished and Leonard nodded, before the room fell awkwardly quiet.
That is, until Ray broke it up.
"Well, I think we know what we need to do."
For the record, Len was NOT in favor of Ray's plan. But the resident genius, although sometimes Len would like to argue that title, did make a pretty sound argument, especially after they got it out of Gideon why this Key sculpture is so important. Apparently it's on loan in the U.S. from Russia, two countries that are already on controversial terms. When the exhibit goes missing, and is evidently never found, it apparently starts the ball rolling on a series of events Gideon wasn't to keen on getting into but will result in a terrible war, as opposed to the previous version of history where, again according to Gideon, no such war ever occurs.
It was likely that Alexia was hired by some criminal from the future who didn't realize how much he's screwing up, but with her job already done the ball was already rolling. Meaning that the Legend's needed to use any lead they could get to find her employer.
So that is how Leonard found himself walking into one of Coast City's dive bars.
Alexia was seated at the end of the bar, a bottle of beer in front of her. Of course she saw him approaching, he never expected her not to. When he sat down next to her she didn't say anything, so he ordered himself a beer, but still nothing.
"So… where'd you get the knockout gas?" He asked when it became apparent that she was going to keep on ignoring him.
"A friend," she answered shortly, still not looking at him.
Leonard rolled his eyes; sometimes he wondered how Alexia managed to get caught half the time when she has such a hatred of telling people things.
"Look," deadpanned, "I don't really care who gave you the knockout gas-"
"No, all you care about is The Key." She mused almost bitterly, which Len definitely chose to ignore.
"Normally I wouldn't, but it turns out that Key is more important to history than it should be."
"What are you talking about?" Alexia demanded,
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Len said but of course that only peaked Alexia's interest. She swiveled on her stool to face him, meeting his eyes with a challenging gaze.
"Try me," she purred and mentally Len scanned through his options, and determined that he was screwed no matter what he said next.
Sara clenched her teeth and tried not to dig her short nails too deep into the palms of her hands. The entire team had been less than pleased when Snart returned from his meeting with Alexia following behind him. But the woman who had previously been so set on making their job impossible quickly changed her tune once she heard what the future was in for with that Key missing. She gave them the name of her employer, along with a physical description, and Gideon was easily able to identify him as a known time pirate named Peric. Once that had been done Sara had been all set to give their guest her amnesia pill and send her on her way, but Alexia insisted that she stay and help catch Peric. Nobody saw any reason that she shouldn't, as he did apparently trust her, so she stayed.
Currently Sara was watching Leonard and Alexia, his ex and childhood friend, standing side by side over a table in the library as they went over the plan for disrupting Peric's meeting he had scheduled for tonight in order to pawn The Key.
"Why can't we just sneak in through the vent?" The dark haired woman asked, leaning over the table and pointing to a line on the blueprints that illustrated an airshaft.
"Because," Len replied, picking up her arm and moving it out of his way in a manner that made Sara's heart hurt and her eyes threaten to burn. "It's an air-conditioning vent, there's no entry point from the roof."
"Ok, so we go through a window?" Alexia asked, although she was looking at the backs of their heads Sara could just feel Leonard roll his eyes with amusement.
Therefor she rolled hers with disgust.
"This is why you always get caught," He mused, "You go with the first thing that comes to your mind."
"I don't recall getting caught when I had you watching my back," Alexia said, and Sara decided she had heard enough.
"Are you two ready to move?" She asked, her words enough to turn them both around as she stood there with her arms crossed. "We need to leave in the next twenty minutes."
"Well we're still working on a plan," Alexia said and Sara took that as her cue to approach them.
"That's why I'm giving you the time check," she said, "Don't want to roll out without a plan."
Ok, maybe she shouldn't have looked over at Leonard when she said that, considering he always has a plan no matter what. But that was what was bothering her at the moment. He always has a plan, and he didn't speak out against Alexia staying. So he might have a plan for her, or for him, or for her and him. A part of Sara realizes that's a very far-fetched idea, to say the least. She and Len may have not yet had an explicit discussion about their relationship following the other night, when they kissed while she sat in his lap as he calmed her from a nightmare, but she knows that he isn't going to be hooking up with his ex-girlfriend any time soon.
Still, the way Alexia positioned herself standing the inside of Leonard's personal bubble, combined with the way that he didn't even seem to notice, was enough to keep Sara's blood boiling.
"We'll have a plan," the dark haired woman assured her, her voice firm and challenging in a way that had Leonard watching Sara for her next move.
Sara was, admittedly, a little taken back by Alexia's tone. She probably shouldn't have been, but it had been such a long time since she had last found herself on the receiving end of this type of hate. She could handle someone actively trying to kill her, but catty drama was something she hadn't really dealt with since high school.
Well, high school and when she first came back from the dead and faced Laurel.
She knew the best way to handle this was to just go along with it, that Alexia would be gone soon enough anyway and so if she wanted to delude herself into a false sense of power, it's best to just let her.
So she nodded and turned away to leave, hoping they could get this over with as soon as possible.
"Ok, spill." Leonard demanded later on that evening, lounging in the doorway of the captain's office while the captain herself finished logging away the records of they're mission today.
They had returned The Key back to it's place in the museum, dropped Peric off at the vanishing point where Rip had gotten a few prison cells secure and was slowly but surely rebuilding along with the help of a few other former Time Masters, and Alexia's mind had been wiped of the past twenty-four hours. Everything was as it should be.
Well, almost everything.
"You're going to have to be more specific Leonard," Sara said and with a smirk Len let himself into the room.
"I couldn't help but notice that you didn't exactly get along with Alexia," he said.
"She did try to hand you and Mick over to the cops the last time you saw her." She snorted, standing up from the desk and crossing her arms when the look on Len's face said that this conversation was far from over. "What?"
"Don't tell me you were actually jealous of my back stabbing ex-girlfriend?" He said with a smirk and Sara rolled her eyes with a scoff.
"Don't be ridiculous," she insisted but of course Len had that damn knowing smirk crossing his face, and she huffed. "Ok fine, maybe a little."
"And here I thought you were the only one on this ship who regularly thinks straight," he teased and Sara didn't know why, because she should've laughed at that. She wanted to laugh at that, but instead she rolled her eyes and scoffed.
"Sorry to disappoint," she growled and she felt her heart hurting when the smirk was wiped off Leonard's face.
She didn't want to be like this, this pointlessly anger was something that she knew she shouldn't be feeling. She hadn't felt something like this in a long time, this pettiness that she thought Ivo eradicated from her. But yet, here it was again, still a part of her.
"Sara-" Len began, but she cut him off.
"I know, I'm nuts!" She suddenly snapped, not angrily mind you, but exasperated. "I know there was nothing to worry about, but I just couldn't help it! The two of you have known each other for years, and we aren't anything official-"
Leonard grabbing her hands and effectively stopping her in front of him cut her rant short, his eyes meeting hers with a promising gaze.
"I don't want to get back together with Alexia-"
"I know that," she cut him off.
"But you aren't crazy," he said, much to her surprise. "Or maybe you are, but if you are so am I, because if it had been your ex-girlfriend who strolled in here I can promise you that something would've ended up incased in ice." He said and now she laughed, trying to picture Nyssa walking onto the Waverider and seeing exactly what her ex has been up to, she imagined that the brunette would turn right around and claim that this was all too insane for even her.
"So what are we then?" She found herself asking and Len smirked before leaning down and capturing her lips with his own.
The kiss was soft, loving, and very much like the one that they had shared on the bridge not too long ago. As much as Sara was normally a fan of kisses that were much harder, or at the least more possessive, she could certainly get used to this much tender approach to the action.
"Hopefully two people who get to do that a lot," Leonard said when he pulled away and with a grim Sara pressed her forehead to his.
There was a part of her that she thought was gone, a part Leonard was reawakening. For the first time since before the Gambit, maybe even for the first time ever, Sara felt like she didn't have to hide anything. She could be every part of herself around Leonard.
She felt whole.