Archive of Our Own ^beta

The same hands that held his baby sister killed his father, and Len can’t get that thought out of his head.

Lisa had been so small, bundled in his arms for the first time. His dad had said something about needing a drink and handed her to him, breezing in and out of Len’s room with a cloud of beer already hanging around him, the smell lingering even after he stumbled out. That had been Lisa’s first day home.

Sitting on his bed, Len had looked down at the tiny thing in his arms, crossing his legs underneath him in case she fell – she was so little, he worried she would slip through the gap between his arms and his chest. Wrapping one arm around her to hold her more securely, he had peered into the fuzzy pink blanket the lady at the hospital had wrapped her in. In his arms, she barely registered; he could feel her warmth through the blanket on his hands, a tiny bulk of a person resting there, but she was so light that he still wondered if babies were just dolls that came to life in their mother’s arms. She couldn’t be real.

But then a tiny face blinked up at him from amid the blankets – and he knew he was done for. The moment those brown eyes met his own, blinking up at him sleepily, a low gurgle rising in his sister’s throat as a tiny hand reached out to him, Len knew he would do anything to protect her. She was perfect.

“Go back to sleep, little Lisa,” he whispered, rocking her gently in his arms. For the first time in a long time, love lit up his eyes as he looked down at her, a real smile forming on his lips. “I’ve got you. I’m going to keep you safe, I promise.”

Holding Lisa brought back memories of warmth, like holding pure sunlight in his arms.

The gun was cold. It wasn’t a joke, and the grimace on his face wasn’t a smirk.

It was steel against his palm, the smooth metal biting into the ridge where his thumb met his hand. It rested there heavily. Usually, it made him feel in control – this was a weapon he knew inside and out, something he could rely on. The weight of it was normally a reassurance; now it was deadweight.

For its purpose, it was icy to the touch. The cold gun always carried with it an atmosphere of ice, frigid in the air around him – the parka wasn’t all for show. But he could carry it easily; it was no burden, not even the things he had done in life to get that far kept him up at night. I am a survivor. It was his mantra, something he repeated to himself at any inclination to doubt.

He was nothing but what his old man made him.

A criminal. A murderer. A man who could carry a gun to turn rushing blood to ice and stop a heart mid-beat.

A big brother, too.

Not that it mattered when he stood facing the Flash, his father with a gun on the scarlet clad man and a bomb in his sister’s neck. It had all been for her. That baby who was so small in his arms, and always would be in his eyes. All the stealing, the fights, this moment – it was for his little Lisa.

The Flash said two words to cement his father’s fate: “Lisa’s safe.”

Pulling the trigger had been easy. The same hands that held her when she cried silent tears about what their father had become – what he wanted them to become – those same hands held the gun as he aimed it at the son of a bitch’s heart. The trigger was nothing, as soon as that movement was done.

The next thing he remembered was the absence of the gun in his hand, as the Flash lifted it from his grip. Although it was foreign to him, the feeling that flooded through his system was relief.

Lisa didn’t come to visit him in jail. Cisco did, and said she had left the city, not that Len blamed her. He had killed their father. Lewis Snart might have been an awful father, truly, but he was still their dad.

Rule One: nobody messes with his crew. And there was no bigger team than family. He broke his own rule so it was his price to pay. He’d pay it willingly, over and over, to know that his father could never hurt anyone again.

Then the Flash came to see him, and strangely brought that same relief back. Barry Allen was alive because he pulled that trigger. His sister was alive because of Barry Allen. They should be square – but, even from behind the bullet proof glass of a prison, he found that he was glad to see the other man walking about. Emotions were messy: Leonard Snart did everything possible to avoid them. Why he should be happy that Barry even bothered to visit at all was beyond him, yet a stir in his chest betrayed the fact that he cared.

Of course, the idiot had ruined it a minute later, smirking and making false promises. Just a matter of time? Please, he was no hero. Nothing the Flash had to say was ever going to change that, no matter if there wasn’t any uncertainty in the speedster’s eyes. Not even judging by the way his hands shook as he put down the prison phone, hidden behind the smirking façade Len wore like skin these days.

Except. Things hadn’t gone according the plan and now he was on a time ship actually trying to save the world. Go figure.

He’d still punch the Flash out if Barry tried to say I told you so.

The same hands. Those same hands that killed their father punched in Lisa’s number when he decided to tag along on the Waverider. She hadn’t answered. He’d left a message. With all the time travel, their phones were practically useless now as they mostly hadn’t been invented wherever they went in search of Savage, so he had no way of knowing if she had tried to call him back. If he was honest – he was scared to find out.

*

He doesn’t like to be touched.

It’s a thing not many people pick up on: Len is a looming presence with his height, standing near by to people in a way that makes them feel like they’re close. A carefully crafted illusion. But when it comes to being touched – a hand on his arm, especially when people grab at him in anger, to make him stop – he flinches away. Sure, he’ll play it off as being cold or hold himself back for a moment, long enough to step away, but it’s there.

A freeze. A flinch. The way, if grabbed, his entire body tensed up as if he is being electrified, spine stiff and every hair standing on end. Those are the precursors to the building snarl if he is grabbed by any of the team, the sneer and snap, the cutting words screaming 'back off'.

It’s too much like his dad hitting him not to react. Hands, coming towards him.

His own fists clench until the knuckles are white.

He isn’t a touchy feely person – a hand on Mick’s arm to hold him back is the most he’ll go to. The ‘cool as ice’ persona only helps him to keep his distance. Mick, perhaps, is the only exception. Although even he knows that if he’s going to touch Len, if he’s going to land a punch or shove, then he had better be sure it’s worth it. He better make it count.

Len did not forgive transgressions easily.

If he initiates contact, it’s not so bad. Len had checked on team-mate’s well being with hands to their pulses on missions, shook hands, and clapped people on the backs and shoulders in thanks. But he’s not a hugger, either. It’s limited contact. Controlled.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that his new Team are especially observant of the rule. Sara notices; he appreciates how slow and steady she is, understanding to keep her distance without having to be told. He thinks Rip knows too, although he can’t be sure of that. The Captain never oversteps his bounds with things as silly as friendship as the others do. Although, even in anger, he had never raised a hand at them – brutal words, yes, but never violent hands.

It starts with Raymond, as most infuriating developments do.

They’re on the Waverider and Mick has been captured and Len is ten seconds away from charging into the middle of Berlin to fight the entire Stasi himself to get his partner back. It had, as usual, all started with a mission gone wrong. Ray thinks he can make some kind of mechanical marvel to short out the German Secret Police so they can save Mick, but it’s been two days so the fizzing and tapping of him in that lab is rubbing against Len’s jittery concern the wrong way, like sand on the skin.

To be short, Len is one minor inconvenience away from popping a fuse. The cold gun has been in his grip for over a day, never resting, ready to go save Mick. His grip is tight.

His other hand turns upwards in his shrug when Ray looks up excitedly.

“Got it!”

The scientist is grinning, holding up some sort of device which is humming worryingly. It flashes a blue light, setting off irritation in Len, who is about to ask what when Ray just – slaps his open hand.

It’s a second of movement; a clap in the air which seemed to ring louder in the hollow metal room.

Len blinks down at his hand even as Ray is brushing past him in a blur of excited chatter, gathering the troops to launch their rescue mission, breezing by without even realising what he had done. He is gone, but Captain Cold is frozen in place.

It didn’t hurt. Logically, he knew it wasn’t supposed to, but the feeling of a slap not being to cause harm is so abstract it takes him a moment to progress – he knows what a high-five is. He’s forty, not dead. But it wasn’t something he had ever done.

With Mick, they didn’t self-congratulate after a job. Occasionally, they’d have a beer and that was about it. Lisa, she would kiss him on the cheek or hug him warmly, but she always asked first, knowing he needed to be warned. That kind of affection he thrived on – only from her.
Mick used to say that Lisa was the only person who could thaw his cold heart.

That fact was steadily becoming untrue, but it was a marathon, not a sprint. Since Russia, it was true that he tolerated Raymond more, even smirking with genuine amusement instead of just malice at the excitable scientist’s antics. Ray had chosen his life over the mission that day – something Len didn’t expect from anyone. He noticed.

Although his heart was pounding from the touch, eyes falling briefly closed as he composed himself, Len recovered from the panic that swelled in his chest faster than he used to in 2016. In prison, his reputation had kept him mostly safe away from others – but when anyone made a grab at him, it hurt. Panic attacks had been common since he was a teenager. A familiar feeling of being unable to breathe seized at him erratically at the slightest touch, just a brush of skin; on the Waverider, it felt like he was breathing easily for the first time in years.
So the fact that he was able to move on after just a few seconds pause, eyes growing wide and blinking non-stop at the touch - it said a lot. It even felt good to not react as badly as he would have before.

He thought that was the end of it – a brief respite, a gasp of air before going under, a simple moment of relief in the long chain of violence and misery that was his life. It couldn’t be something permanent, the thought alone was absurd. Things didn’t get better. Life just tricked you into thinking it did before the next catastrophe inevitably hit.

Except, Ray kept doing it and it never hurt, and he never broke down, and Len started to like it.

It comes after missions, the other man tapping his hand exhaustedly before collapsing at his feet in a heap. It happens in the Lab as Ray works something new out, letting out cheerful shouts of joy before high-fiving him and anyone else in the room excitedly. He starts walking towards Len in the aftermath of battles that left them all one step away from caving, holding up a bone-tired hand and waiting patiently until it gets begrudgingly tapped; the smile it earns is almost enough to make it worth it.

It’s not a thing specific to Len: the other man does it to everyone on the ship, but it’s the person who is affected most by Ray’s insistency on high-fives and fist bumps. The others oblige him with varying degrees of co-operation. Leonard originally gives all of his attempts the cold shoulder, but after that time, after realising it wasn’t to hurt, that he somehow inexplicably trusted Ray not to attack him – he allowed it to happen.

It never was done with malicious intent. It was met with a smile and a laugh. He allowed that smile to happen, growing and bursting on Ray’s face so brightly . . . how could something with that result be bad? It couldn’t be.

So the high fives continue, until the time comes he doesn’t even react to them – he’s comfortable. At the contact, although he never gives Ray the satisfaction of seeing, he will smile as he walks away.

The touch happens, and the world doesn’t end.

*

It had always been different with Mick. Neither of them were affectionate people – they worked well as a team, a partnership. Just like they had always been since they were teens, they had one another’s back without question, and often didn’t even need to speak to communicate. He was as comfortable around Mick as he was his own sister.

The point was: they knew each other better than either of them cared to admit.

Mick had known not to touch Len unless he was dying or headed that way for well over a decade. It was something he witnessed at first, the distress in his partner at the slightest touch or attack; once he did understand, he made sure never to touch the other boy unless it was necessary, and that the other kids in juvie knew they had better not, either. He didn’t question Len about it, he just adapted.

A lot of people would assume Mick Rory was tactless; they would be more wrong than they could imagine. If Mick had the uncanny ability to adapt to survive in any situation, to save his own ass by manipulating whatever trouble he ran into, it was because he paid attention to people and knew how to push their buttons.

He watched, learned, and acted. It had saved their collective asses more times than Len could remember.

So when he saw how Len flinched at touch as if he had been burned, Mick changed the way he acted without a word. He stopped touching him altogether, made considerations for his personal space when they were just talking, and put out a ‘touch him and you get me’ message. It kept a lot of people too scared to go near Len again, and anyone who did paid the price with their own blood.

Len was smart enough to notice all of this, knowing he had allied himself with the right person. He paid Mick back by cutting him in to every piece of action and score he got, becoming his partner in crime and in brotherhood. If there were two people he trusted to touch him, it was Lisa and Mick. They didn’t – but he wouldn’t flinch if either did by accident, so used to their presences he barely registered them anymore – they were just there, like they always were.

When Mick did touch him on the mission, it isn’t an explosion or a big thing; it is the pressure of his back against Len’s own as they fired their weapons in a circle, the ultimate defence.

For the briefest of seconds, his weight might rest there as they stood back to back against the world, a simple touch he leaned in to with pride, not fear.

*

Jax knows.

Since the side mission to steal the emerald, when they had talked about changing his personal timeline so that his father was never abusive, Jax had known. After it, they had talked only that once. He didn’t push.

He did exercise caution around Len, though. It wasn’t fear or the alienation others would feel after finding out something like that – Jax just understood. The kid was patient; he listened, he watched, and then he understood. Len doubted he had ever met a more empathetic soul, or that any of their team-mates had noticed this quality in the younger man.

Jax was used to being silenced in his head by Stein and didn’t speak up the way the others did outwardly, either. As if he was happy to get orders and march into battle: sometimes it was possible to forget he was in a room until he spoke and scared them all, he was so quiet.
Not that he wasn’t happy. Jax was still the teenager who hummed in the mornings while he poured his cereal and laughed the loudest of them all, when it fitted the situation. But Len worried about him in the same way he did about Lisa – the kid hadn’t even chosen to come on this mission, only staying out of some misplaced sense of duty, like he owed the world something.

Len knew that nine times out of ten, the world didn’t give a damn.

That left him to. If Jax could take the effort to walk loudly into a room to not scare him and not touch him unless it was absolutely necessary, then he could watch the kid’s back as closely as possible. Len had sworn that if any of them were getting home at the end of it, it was Jax.

Which is why he had to close his eyes for five seconds when he finds Jax stumbling onto the Waverider at 3am, blink drunk and in danger of injuring himself if left alone, trying to think of another option to get him home that didn’t involve carrying the younger man. None shine as being good: their team-mates would give the kid a hard time for being that way, and Len was no snitch. Mick could help, but his partner was in the med bay with a concussion, it wouldn’t be right to bother him with something like this.

“Hey, chilly.”

Jax is smiling at him softly now, lips tumbling into a grin as his face caught up, lighting up with a haze of unawareness. He was leaning heavily against the side of the corridor, using the wall to remain upright; as he took a few steps closer, he swayed slightly, shoulder thudding against the metal with each step in a way that was going to leave bruises.

Len raised an eyebrow as he got closer. “Chilly?”

“Yeah, you.” Jax pointed in his direction, arm not staying straight long enough to that his finger was always pointing just behind him, “Mr. Freeze. Ice Man. You’re like a flightless Snowman.”

The kid laughed lowly to himself at that; knowing there was no way the other man would remember this in the morning, Len allowed a small smile to form on his own lips. Humour was a defence he knew well.

“The Snowman? Really?”

“Hey, my mom used to play it every Christmas. This was . . . this was before even DVD’s, man. Old times, like we’ve been in this,” Jax stopped next to him, smile flickering and faltering as he banged twice on the side of the ship. His glazed eyes turned nostalgic, teetering sideways until Len made the choice to step forward to support him - catching him by the shoulder. Jax looked down at the hand on his arm, eyes flicking back to Len’s face and seeing the uncertainty then until he got a quick, firm nod. Satisfied Len was okay, he chose to keep talking to lighten the mood, even in his drunken state as they began to walk together, making slightly faster progress down the corridor. “It was a video, dude. A battered up old case and a tape you had to rewind every time it finished. I-it used to click and make this sound in the background throughout the whole movie, it was so old. She’d still always put it on, though. It made her happy.”

The kid’s words stopped as he licked his lips, eyes glassy with something other than alcohol. For a moment, he leaned on Len more heavily as they staggered on; it didn’t bring a lurch in the stomach of the other man, but a warmth. He felt relied on, something that had been as absent as Lisa was here.

Jax missed his mother, they all knew that.

“Your mom’s got good taste,” Len said to distract him, gaining a confused upturn of the kid’s lips. He explained. “I used to watch that movie with my sister, too.”

“So the cold thing started at a young age, huh?”

“About as long as you’ve been a hot-head,” he said back, this time rewarded with a laugh that burst out unexpectedly, filling the silent hall. Jax laughed, almost doubling over with the effort, but stood obediently when Len tugged his arm, shaking his head as it subsided. He looked at the other man from the corner of his eyes, but Len caught the look. “What?”

“Nothin’,” Jax slurred, shrugging him off at his door. Even as Len let go, he made a show of pointedly reaching out to touch the other man’s shoulder. Feeling him freeze up, Jax held Len’s gaze until he relaxed, nodding encouragingly, just a slight movement of his head. His eyes were wide and trusting. Once Len had accepted that the touch meant no harm, body relaxing under it, the younger man squeezed his arm slowly, comfortingly. “Thanks, Lenny. I – I’m, I know it’s hard for you. Don’t give up.”

Then Jax was gone, leaving only a smell of cheap liquor and the stirring in Len’s chest as evidence he was there at all. He didn’t know what he left behind, apart from words that were easy to say, things that were so clear for him to see, even in his drunken state.

Len stood at his door for maybe ten minutes. Inside, various bumps and bangs echoed, silencing after a few minutes, replaced by the soft snoring telling him that Jax had got to bed okay. After that, the sound of his gentle breathing kept him there, just . . . listening. Thinking.
Nobody but his sister called him Lenny. Yet he had no desire to correct the younger man. In fact, the words struck him in a way even the touch hadn’t managed to reach him, feeling as if his heart was vibrating, the reverberation filling his chest in a way that made him feel bigger than he was. Like he was something more, something whole and . . . it wasn’t altogether unpleasant.

The same hands that killed his father also got that kid safely to bed.

That kid trusted those same hands, ones that he knew had tortured and killed and done so much bad, to do that. Those same hands. Jax trusted them to carry him home; trusted him with his life, for those few minutes and on this crazy mission. Jax trusted those hands to keep him safe for long enough to see his mother again.

The next day, they didn’t say a thing to one another about what had happened. But Jax must have had some vague memory of it, because at breakfast he caught Len’s eyes and slowly, surely nodded his wordless thanks.

He returned the gesture with a hint of a smile.

*

Progress is not a straight line. There are moments of hesitation and doubt, moments that knock you back as soon as the ground beneath your feet feels stable. In life, there are no episodes. There are just days piling on top of each other, good and bad things, all merged together.

Change only comes when you notice it. When you try for it.

Kendra is the one who knocks him back for the first time. It isn’t her fault, not really. She didn’t ask to be a reincarnated Hawk-Goddess who occasionally let the bird inside of her rule her brain and attack her team mates.

But it happens, anyway.

It’s the aftermath of a fight somewhere in Cuba in 1962, with bombs that were barely disabled in time scattered around their feet, a thick smell of smoke hanging in the air and bodies among the bombs. Vandal Savage had been behind that incident too, apparently, and he was beginning to doubt that war itself would exist if it weren’t for the ominous figure they were chasing through time.

There was blood on his hands. It wasn’t his.

He didn’t see her coming. There was just a whoosh of wings a slicing through the air an inch away from his head before a talon-like grip seized his arms, lifting him into the air. Flinching heavily as they cut deep, nails biting into his flesh even as Kendra flew higher into the air and he flailed in her grasp, a panic to escape overriding his logic that falling would not be good.

She was hurting him and he wanted her to stop she needed to let go he couldn’t breathe and stop stop stop –

Sense deserting him in a blind panic and rush of thoughts screaming to break the contact and defend himself, he jerked out of her grasp, falling twenty feet down to the pavement. The sound of his skull hitting the slab with a sickening slap is enough to draw the attention of their team and break her out of the trance – as he lies immobile on the ground, he sees her coming down towards him, eyes returned to their normal hue and streaming with tears.

She lands before the others get there, kneeling beside him and reaching out towards his head, surrounded by a warped halo of slick blood, black in the sunlight.

“I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“Don’t touch me. Get away!”

He managed to bark out the words through gritted teeth, the smell of iron hitting the back of his throat as he sucked in breaths, and there was enough force behind them that she immediately leaned away, aghast. Mouth falling open and eyes flicking desperately over him, he could see that she wanted to help, knowing from the way he couldn’t quite focus on any of the details of her face and the warmth and wetness behind his eyes that he was injured – but he couldn’t be touched.

“Len! . . .Len, shit,” Mick shoves Ray out of the way to kneel next to his partner, but holds his hands out instead of trying to touch him. After his initial curse at the injury, he scrutinised what he could see about the back of Len’s head carefully, leaning to his side to try and get a better look rather than crowding his friend, gaze furious as he levelled it at Kendra. “What did you do?”

“I – it wasn’t me, I lost control – I-”

“Mick, it’s fine,” Len grit out, cutting off her stammering as Ray appeared behind her to help her up. He took the shaking girl in his arms, but his eyes remained on him with worry. Len couldn’t take it, looking back at his partner. “She didn’t mean it, we’re cool. Really.”

“Great,” Mick said sarcastically. “She knocked your brain out.”

It was the closest the other man would get to being affection or joking, a weak attempt to lighten the mood. Exactly the sort of comfort Len needed; reminding him why he chose the other man as his partner and that he was the person he trusted the most, the injured man’s grimace turned into what could be a smile.

“Still got more smarts than you,” he replied. “So what does that say?”

“That you’re an asshole as well as an idiot,” Mick answered. He didn’t miss a beat, and Len smiled wider, lips cracking to reveal teeth stained with red. At this, the older man winced, turning serious again. “We have to move you. No choice.”

Although the idea of someone touching him again filled his stomach with lead, especially being vulnerable with the injury, Len only had a second to close his eyes in discomfort, aware of all the eyes on him. He had to get medical attention – that was a fact. He wasn’t dying here.

He opened his eyes, nodding at Mick. “You. No one else.”

Mick grunted and nodded, being handed a wad of white gauze that was pressed against Len’s head a second later. It wasn’t too gentle, but it couldn’t be – life came before discomfort this time, although Mick kept the amount he had to physically move and touch Len to a minimum. It took ten minutes to wrap his head up like a mummy to slow the bleeding, another twenty for him to walk light-headed back to the Waverider, only pushed upright by his partner when he had to be, adamantly refusing to be carried.

In the sterile white and scentless space that was the med bay, Gideon fixed his head in minutes, telling him that his skull would have been cracked had another ounce of pressure been put on it. Just another touch. It would have left him dead or dying, and that thought lingers with him as he discharges himself and locks the door to his room for the next two days.

Ray breaks into the security panel on the third day, but it is Kendra stay steps into his room to see him sitting on the bed with his arms around himself, a barrier which he only reinforces by standing defensively as she enters. Kendra freezes. Standing but not trying to get any closer, her mouth opens and closes as it struggles to find the words to say. She hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t the body language that projected defence but whose dead eyes betrayed fear.

“I . . . everyone is worried,” she said lamely, making a show of walking over to a chair in the corner of the room and sitting. Hands openly resting on her thighs, she sat still and simply. “You’ve got to eat, you know. Staying up here all the time isn’t healthy, please just – we need you. Mick is striking against any missions until you’re better and Jax is going to wear a hole in the ship if he keeps pacing in the kitchen.”

He almost cracked a smile at that, turning his head so she couldn’t see his expression but listening. Even amongst her ramblings, the guilt in her voice was unmistakable – and misplaced.

She finally said the words. “I’m sorry.”

“- Don’t be.”

The absolution was out of his mouth before she had even finished, as he turned back to her with a smirk that restored his mask of indifference in a way they could all see through now. It did what it had to do – show her he was back. It might be half of an act to push him forward, but it worked – pretending to be the man who walked on that ship to steal a quick buck and split gave him a boost of confidence.

It didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t that person any more, that the mask was there to reassure them because he didn’t want them to worry. The mask of Captain Cold used to be a shield to protect him from the world: now there were more people under that umbrella with him – they needed him, so he provided. It was simple.

“What the world wants us to be and what we are – two different things. My dad wanted me to be like him,” Len spoke slowly, his voice the controlled cadence it always was, however he held her gaze in a defiant way, as if looking away would be giving in and admitting his fear. “I’m not. And you’re not the bird brain who attacked me.”

The edge of her lip turned up hopefully, the way she breathed out imitating a laugh. Uncertainly, she set her jaw and said, “I’m not sure what I am. Not anymore.”

“You don’t know,” he replied, taking a few steps closer to her. “You choose. Life isn’t simple, you don’t get to be one thing or another, it’s not that black and white – you make choices as to what you’re going to do, and you live with them the best you can. That’s it. Fate, destiny – screw it, frankly. It’s not real.” With a little sigh, he said down on another chair beside her, not quite touching but closer than he had been to anyone in days. That was his choice. “I know for you that might sound ridiculous, what with the reincarnating and all . . . but you do have a choice in life.”

“I don’t have a choice when it comes out . . .”

“No, I guess not,” he admitted wearily, rubbing his brow at the sight of her closed off expression, marred by confusion and anger at her situation. “But you choose what you do afterwards – and you listened to me. When I asked you not to touch me, you didn’t – and you’re here now, trying to make amends. That’s who you are.”

She looked at him, eyes brimming with tears but shining with gratitude. Kendra had a kind face, all soft curves and pink lips, which were smiling at him like he wasn’t a bad person. After a moment of silence, in which he would later admit they became friends, she blinked at him.

“You don’t like being touched.”

She didn’t phrase it directly as a question, but one hung in the lilt of her voice.

“No, I don’t. The only person who I trust not to hurt me is me, that’s the way it’s always been . . . back in Central City, not trusting anyone saved me from prison a fair few times,” Len made the admission without guilt – he had done what he had to do, he survived. She didn’t look at him judgementally at that, but with interest, leaving the pause to encourage him to go on. “My sister. She’s the only one who doesn’t make me flinch when she touches me – Mick too, but I have to know. I have to trust the person as well as I trust myself to not feel . . . uncomfortable.”

Kendra looked sad. “That sounds lonely.”

“Better lonely than dead,” he laughed without humour, looking away before his gaze drifted back to her. “I had Lisa and Mick; that was enough. I didn’t need anybody else.”

“They’re your family,” she said, smile soft. At his look, she shrugged. “I never had much of a family, either. I guess it must be a reincarnation thing, but I never felt like I belong anywhere until . . .”

“Here?” Len guessed, nodding. “Yeah, it really gets under your skin, doesn’t it?” She laughed, leaning in his direction before she caught herself, freezing and looking apologetically in his direction. He shook his head, “It’s okay. I . . . I was getting better here too. Ray high fives me. It doesn’t hurt, and I think it’s good to be away.”

She raised an eyebrow teasingly, “You ought to be careful. You’ll lose your scary reputation if it gets out that you’re high-fiving heroes and making friends.”

“Maybe I should,” he shrugged. Although he said it like it was no big deal, they both knew that wasn’t true; her head turned to him sharply, but his eyes were across the room. “I want to be better. It was . . . nice, knowing he didn’t touch me to hurt me like my dad did. I felt normal.”

“You trust him,” when he turned back suddenly at that, she shrugged. “It’s alright, Ray is easy to trust. He’d only hurt a fly accidentally.”

“It’s not just him.”

Slowly, with movements extended so he could see them, she held her hand out between them, palm up. Catching the edge of an eye roll at that, she forced a smile onto her face and kept it there determinedly, eyes jumping up to the team mate she knew perhaps the least before this conversation’s face and staying there.

Len’s eyes were on her hand, warily at first. He didn’t look at her face, but her fingers in the air, waiting for him, trust offered so easily it took his breath away. People used to look at him in fear, or disgust, or hatred. He was Captain Cold, murderer and thief.

But even as those thoughts crossed his mind, the warmth of baby Lisa in his arms ghosts across his palm; he looked down to see his hand had taken Kendra’s, linked together in the air.

He could almost forget the bite of the cold gun in a grip that warm.

She stood a second later, using the hand to pull him up before letting it drop – baby steps. It was a show of trust to take her hand at all, so she dropped it before it was too much, a brief reassurance instead of a burden.

A marathon, not a sprint.

Side by side, she motioned with her head to follow him, hearing his footsteps fall into step with her own as they walked through the ship, making their way to the waiting team.

*

A month later, he is high-fiving Ray again, but now they all know it makes him uncomfortable, the team starts making little changes to suit him. The usual shoving and fighting to get to the bathroom in the morning turns into a queue after they notice how he winces and waits outside as they’re scrapping. His seat at the dinner table is changed to be at the head of the table where Rip previously sat so that he was no longer jostled by elbows and knees when he was eating; the captain himself came to him to tell him of that change. Ray would hold a hand up cautiously to offer a high five now, but always waited for Len to complete the action, giving him the choice and being understanding instead of disappointed when he can’t deal with the contact.

A year ago, he could have bit their heads off for doing it – he would have thought it patronising or insulting to change for him; he would have believed they thought him as someone inferior or breakable for his fear. Things had changed since then. Now, when he noticed the subtle changes, it didn’t feel like an insult – it felt like a relief.

They were doing something kind. At times he doubted he deserved even that comfort, the soft eyes and smiles they sent him as they stood to make room for him in the kitchen, the simple way they all adapted so that he didn’t have to spend his days counting the seconds until the room cleared and he could breathe again. They didn’t have to do it – if anything; it left them at a slight inconvenience.

But they chose to anyway. That meant something.

If he stopped complaining so often and found himself laughing more genuinely in their company, the smile on his face becoming less rare, the words from his lips never cutting towards his own team anymore, it wasn’t a coincidence. Sacrificing something for him with the prospect of gaining nothing in return was something heroes did . . . something he wanted to do.

So when Jax needed someone to pass him the screwdrivers while he tinkered with the ship, Len gave up his free afternoon to sit beside him. And when Sara woke from another nightmare, he was waiting with a pack of cards to chase the night away. He listened to Ray’s stories without interrupting, and found he actually enjoyed listening to them sometimes – the other times, he pretended to. It didn’t cost him anything to smile wanly and pretend Ray discovering something else was the most interesting thing he had heard that day. Stein would look grateful if Snart managed to corral the rest of the team out on some side mission or day trip so he could have a moment’s peace; Kendra was the happiest when he cooked and they all ate together – a habit he began to indulge them in once a week.

Rip and Mick were harder. The Captain had claimed that the small considerations were the least he could do, after all, Len was volunteering on what was a mission with small chance of success to save his family. He still made sure that the other man’s liquor cabinet was always stocked in silent thanks.

Mick was the same as ever – he had long grown used to his partner’s needs. Being aware of Len’s personal space came almost as easily as breathing to him so as long as he had a good fight often enough, he was content enough.

*

The same hands that filled his father couldn’t kill Mick. They couldn’t bear the weight of any more blood.

He had been resolved to pull the trigger, standing facing his partner with the gun in his hand; at the last second his shaking hands betrayed him, confidence flying away alongside the jet of ice that missed Mick’s head. Though shaking, those hands managed to land a solid hit to the other man’s skull.

Mick was unconscious on the ground and Len didn’t stop shaking until long after he returned to the Waverider. Of all the debris of his mistakes that had piled up around him like walls during his life, having to do that to Mick of all people was the thing that made it so that the prison of those walls finally blocked out the sun. Things got harder after that.

Captain Cold came back. The man who stepped onto the Waverider appeared on board it once again, as if a switched had been flipped inside his head. Whatever it was that had changed in him, made him soft – it was dead. Being soft lead him down this road, where Mick, the man he trusted more than anyone – he had to sacrifice him. Trying to be one of the good guys caused him to lose everything. At least before, all he did was take; now, what he cared about had been taken from him.

Len was gone along with his smiles and the almost, sort-of, trying family he had forged there. A cloud of silence followed him around as he walked through the ship, no one knowing what to say. They thought he had killed his best friend. It was enough to make the space they had given him suffocating, a detachment from the rest of the team instead of a kindness – he stopped smiling altogether, stopped cooking dinner, started spending all of his time alone in his room.

At first, they tried. Jax reacted with anger, and Len was half-proud of the kid for sticking up for Mick when the others were happy to look away.

It was after a week of silence and the fifties that Martin Stein walked into his room unannounced.

“I need to talk to you, Mr. Snart.”

“ . . . Come on in,” Len rolled his eyes at the audacity of the entrance, but expected no less from Stein. He had always believed he would win the bull-headedness Olympics until he met the old man. It amused him greatly; so he stayed silent from his perch on the bed as the scientist began to pace back and forth in front of him, waiting for the other man to talk. Stein’s entrance had shattered the bubble of alien silence Len had held around himself for days, and he found a flicker of relief surge within him.

“This has gone on long enough,” Stein finally settled on saying, doing that thing when he entwined his fingers and looked down at a person over his glasses. It was a time-travelling gaze: it sent whoever was on the receiving end back to their school days with a vague sense of guilt, of being told off for putting glitter in the glue or pushing someone in the schoolyard. “What happened with Mr. Rory-”

Len was on his feet in seconds, “Don’t you say his name!”

“What happened with Mr. Rory wasn’t your fault.”

Stein wasn’t one to be stopped when he was on a roll, plundering on through his words even staring down the fury of Captain Cold. The old man held eyes that were filled with the desperate anger of someone pushed to their limits – the most dangerous kind. Although Len stood like a coiled snake, body tense as an elastic band pulled too tight, Stein kept talking in his matter-of-fact tone, seemingly not caring about the quicksand at his feet.

“You’ve punished yourself enough, Mr. Snart,” he said, his pacing ceased by the man blocking his path. “Mr. Rory made his own choices, and they were his to make. I don’t think he was a bad man . . . I don’t think either of you are. But he was a danger. He chose to oppose himself to the rest of us, and whatever consequences there were . . . he made his own bed, so to speak. It wasn’t your fault.”

Snart sneered, crossing his arms as the energy drained out of him, shoulders sinking. Melting, only his voice retained his frost. “Who are you to decide that, old man?”

“Someone who has seen a lot of men like you and Rory in his lifetime.”

It was not the answer he expected. Snart looked up to see surprisingly soft eyes watching him from under those square rimmed glasses. Tilting his head to one side, Stein’s age showed in the wrinkles around his eyes from the weight of what they had seen. He had never really thought of Stein as old before – the guy was as ready to fight as any of them, and had pushed Jax into coming on this adventure, after all. But those were eyes that had seen a lot, and Len felt his reserve crumbling.

“He was my partner,” he said quietly. “And I failed him. I deserve whatever happens to me now.”

“That’s not-”

“Mick was my responsibility the same way Jax is yours!” Snart snapped, lip curling into a snarl aimed at himself, shaking his head and taking a few steps away. Arms still crossed over himself, he stood with his back to Stein, not able to hold his gaze any more. “So don’t tell me that it’s enough. It will never be enough, not for what I did. Don’t tell me that you would be any different in my shoes.”

“I lost Ronald;” Stein’s tone turned ragged. Each word tore out of his throat like it pained him, hitting Len’s back like waves. “I let him down – he – he was just a boy. I know how it feels to lose a partner, Mr. Snart. I know.”

Eyes closing guiltily, Leonard kept them that way, remaining silent as he heard Stein’s quickened breathing slow behind him. Having grown agitated talking about his former half, he heard the teacher begin to start pacing again, out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Stein remove his glasses and rub tired eyes with his hand. Eventually, he stopped again.

“You feel guilty. You go over it a thousand times in your head trying to think of ways out or how you could have changed things. You bargain your own life for his. You can’t bear your own reflection because it reminds you what you lost, what you sacrificed to still be there.”

Stein said the words plainly, as facts. He was facing the other man’s turned back, hands moving as he spoke, each line punctuated by an invisible blow to the other man as the words struck as true, almost word-for-word what had been going through Len’s own head non-stop.

“I thought that for the longest of times, before young Mr. Jefferson came into my life. He made me better,” Stein said fondly, small smile playing at his lips. “I blamed myself for Ronald’s death – but ultimately, he made his choice. We both chose to stop that singularity, just like Mr. Rory chose to come along on this trip and then to betray us. We may have been a part of their choices, but it defeats the purpose of free will to claim we are responsible.”

After a short pause, waiting for Snart to speak but being left with silence, Stein blew air out of his nose. Grinding his teeth a little, he went on, determined to talk until Snart gave in and started acting like a human being again.

“Do you want to know what changed me?” he asked, receiving a half-hearted shrug in return. Walking forward, he moved until he was standing just behind and to the left of the other man, just in sight but not crowding. “Jefferson. At first, I was so afraid to merge with someone else – I didn’t have much choice in the end, I was dying – but it was the best thing that has happened to me. He is so full of life and light . . . I want to be a better man because although I am the elder one, it is he who has taught me so many things. You recover by letting people in.”

Stein put a hand on Snart’s shoulder without thinking.

It was supposed to be an almost fatherly gesture, to support, but the reaction was immediate – Snart tensed and jerked away, taking flight a few steps. A sound between a gasp and a pained wince left his lips, matched with eyes that flickered to Stein with fear as he moved away; although extreme initially, he regained composure quickly. Seeing there was no legitimate threat, his mask fell back into place, everything but slightly elevated breathing and screaming eyes falling still.

For his part, Stein froze in horror. “My boy, I’m so sorry-”

“Good talk, professor.”

Leonard stalked out of the room without another word, back stiff in retreat and leaving a tired man with good intentions in the ruins of his own attempts to fix things.

*

On some base level, the words must have sunk into his skin through the cracks and took root in the last shred of good in him, for Captain Cold thawed again after that.

They still needed him, and caring wasn’t something that just disappeared overnight. So he still had their backs and over the course of the weeks and missions together, he slowly but surely started to grow back together with them as scar tissue, stronger than before but still leaving a mark they could all see. It wasn’t exactly the same – the smiles happened only on rare occasions, he still spent time alone, and his fist bumps with Ray were few and far between.

But it was a start. It was progress.

Mick still weighed on his mind like a deadweight, but it felt less when Jax forced him to go with him to see Star Wars in the 70s at one of the first showings, or when Sara suggested they should go fight the biggest douche bags in history and struggled to keep a straight face as Rip lectured them with Stalin’s blood on her knuckles. He was almost happy again. Most days, he managed it in some way.

The others return to normal: they respect his space, but are there everywhere he turned, never letting him feel quite alone. Stein keeps his distance the most at first, the shame at forgetting not to touch him in the old man’s eyes until Snart took him aside one day to affirm they were cool. He had meant no harm; he was forgiven.

It was easier than he thought it would be.

A setback didn’t mean the path was blocked. Just as he had with Kendra, after the moment of shock and doubt, Snart got back up. If there was something he had learned young, it was that you couldn’t afford to stay down for long – getting back up and fighting back against whatever pushed you down was the only way.

Except, he didn’t have a bully or his father or a cop or the Flash to hit back at this time. It was none of his teams fault; his own fear was his burden, one they tried to lift, as well as sharing what had happened to Mick. A wise man might realise the truth – that the purpose of a team was to do just that, to share the weight of the world so no man had to be an Atlas alone. But he was not a wise man yet, and Len just walked around with a strange sense of confusion that registered oddly as belonging.

When Rip tells him about what had happened with the space pirates and what he had said to Mick, the captain accepts the punch coming towards him with as much dignity as was possible.

He took the next six with a mixture of shame and defeat, not putting up a defence aside from clutching as his sleeves as Len’s fists connected with his face, turned bloody and cracked. Blinded by fury in the time it spent to land those hits, his stomach churning as he stepped away to leave a bleeding Rip on the floor of the ship, hands shaking as he did, Len felt the world invert.

Snart was not a fan of violence.

Sometimes, it was necessary. If it was him or them, he wouldn’t think twice against throwing the first punch to protect himself or his friends. All in all, though, he preferred to be hands-off when it came to fighting. He would rather not have to injure at all, or use his gun – it detached him from the violence, but using his fists against Rip now in a way that left them bruised and aching sat as wrong in his centre, throwing the whole world around him off kilter.

His father used his fists. Rip wasn’t even fighting back, and Snart wouldn’t be his father. He couldn’t be.

Defeated, he slumped against the wall, breathing heavily until he slid down it, tucking his knees up to his chest. Exhaustion wrapped around him as he rubbed his hand over his face, watching as the other man blinked in surprise at the end of his beating, holding a sleeve to his bleeding lip as he pulled himself up to sit similarly on the other side of the corridor. Rip kept his gangly legs outstretched instead of curling in on himself the way Len did. He sighed loudly, the end of the sound degrading to a weak cough.

“I deserved that,” Rip said simply. He looked over at the shaking Len not with any anger or reproach, but the same submissive guilt that weighed down the man as long as any of them had known him. Rip Hunter moved like someone who knew they had already lost, so took any pain and punishment with the graceful acceptance of hopelessness. “And more, probably. You and Mr. Rory joined my cause without any personal connection to it, and I let you both down. I am sorry.”

“Save it, Rip.”

Tone somehow always dismissive, steady and deliberate in a way that make it feel like he didn’t even have to tell you to do one to get the point across, Len lifted his head from his hand, curling a single finger with the reprieve. He winced to look at the face he had damaged, freezing at Rip’s eye, which was already beginning to swell and close up. Quickly averting his own gaze, he balled his hands into frustrated fists, at the captain and at himself for losing his cool, the corridor quiet apart from their own laboured breathing.

Rip shook his head even though the action caused him pain, wincing as he did so. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

“Did you believe it?”

“Excuse me?”

At the captain’s excused expression, Len turned back, coldly questioning. Although he was determined to keep his composure this time, residual disappointment at the other man lingered just enough to make hi blood boil; his knuckles turned white in their fists.

He regarded Rip with a stare, not allowing the captain the relief of looking away. “Did you mean what you said to him?”

To his credit, Rip thought about it for a minute. The short quiet stretched as he struggled to form words, finally meeting Leonard’s eyes again, truth shining there.

“At the time, I did. It was . . . I was angry, not that it’s an excuse. Now, I realise the credit Mr. Rory was to this endeavour. I myself would not be here if not for him. I owed him more than that.”

Leonard nodded. Slowly, surely, he let his head bob in acceptance of the words.

“Okay then,” he said, rising to his feet. Standing above Rip, who still looked ready for his beating to continue, he extended a hand, reaching out to help the other man up. Rip took it. The touch as he pulled the other man to his feet didn’t repulse him; Len was in control of this, he chose to extend the hand. Not in violence this time, but with amends.

“That’s it?”

“You came clean when you didn’t have to, and you took the beating,” Len answered, finally letting go of his hand as Rip stood steady on his feet. The truth was, he didn’t particularly like Rip. He did however respect him. “Don’t make the same mistake twice. I won’t be so forgiving.”

Rip said nothing, but nodded solemnly as they parted.

The same hands that killed his father left marks on the captain’s face; they also chose to help him back to his feet. The same hands that killed also forgave.

That wouldn’t have happened a year ago.

Len felt some of his own guilt over how things fell apart with Mick as he forgave Rip, melting away and leaving his lighter as his feet struck the floor of the Waverider. It was as if a vice around his chest had been suddenly released, an abolishment of a pressure that had been keeping him breathless for weeks, a pressure that left him light headed and disconnected. He knew he could hold a grudge: it was a refined skill of his – forgiving? That was new ground.

A smile, a real one, grew and spread over his face.

*

Out of everyone, it could be said that he liked Sara the most. While he respected or tolerated or originally just ignored the rest of the team, something about the ex-assassin interested him.

Kindred spirits often called out to one another, and Len recognised parts of himself in her straight away – his curiosity teamed with her ability to make the mission fun led to what he thought could be friendship quickly, only cemented by life-and-death situations they found themselves in. When you could die any day, you didn’t waste time.

He thought she could be a friend. She was definitely an ally, but he wasn’t really sure. Growing up, he didn’t trust anyone enough to have friends. He only had family. Mick – he wasn’t his friend, it wasn’t that simple – he was his partner. The closest he arguably ever got to having a friend, someone who believed in him and it was amusing to spend time with, was Barry. And he couldn’t go around admitting the Flash was his friend, he had a reputation to keep.

So he didn’t know what Sara was to him, only that when he saw an arrow in the 1400’s headed for her, he stepped in front of it, and that all the bar fights in all of history were made better by her laughter alongside his own.

When they had been trapped freezing to death, she had sat next to him for warmth but he hadn’t touched her more than necessary, he didn’t put his arm around her or cuddle; the thought alone was too claustrophobic it make him break out into a sweat. But he had given her his parka, a piece of clothing as close to a home he had. He wished he could have done more that day, she was so small and shook so much, but they were dying and he couldn’t think straight enough without adding the spike of fear that came with touching anyone.

It was the closest he had been with anyone for years, in that room. They had sat touching sides for a long time, at first in a way that made the freezing room seem stifling, however after a while, Len felt himself begin to relax, feeling her shivering against him until all he wanted was to make that better for her. She was leaning on him, relying on him in a vulnerable way nobody else would – knowing she trusted him, the gentleness of the contact, it wasn’t scary anymore. It was reassuring, a concept foreign to him, especially for that long.

Long story short: she made him better.

He finds her in the storage room where she trained at 4am, all of the fight gone out of her, a punching bag still in the air as she leans against a trunk. From personal experience, he knows the signs of panic attacks and nightmares. They don’t speak- they didn’t have to. It was suffering recognising its own kind; an understanding.

Crouching so she can see his arrival and isn’t startled, he waited for her to nod permission before moving to sit beside her as she shook, a small gap between them at first. As she calmed, Sara motioned that he could move closer with a tilt of her head, gratefully accepting the way he allowed her to lean against him again, resting her head on his shoulder.

For hours, until the artificial dawn created on the ship came to pass as the lights gradually got brighter in the small space, they sat side by side in peaceful silence.

Sara whispered when it became clear they would have to leave soon, or else one of their team would find them. “Thank you.”

“It was nothing,” he replied, the way his lips pressed together an honest half-smile.

“No, it wasn’t. I know that,” she said, moving her head from his shoulder to look up at him. “But you made me feel not so alone anyway.”

Her own smile was small but genuine, bringing dimples to her face. If he had only seen her fighting, all that power and fury, he wouldn’t have thought it possible for her face to posses such sweetness. Tapping her head against his arm one last time in a way that sent not a jolt but a warm wave of affection through him, she stood and left to get dressed, leaving him with an unshakeable feeling that there was no going back from the way he had changed this time.

*

They beat Savage, and they’re all too surprised that they actually won to know what to do next. However the ship needs repairs and Ray has been stuck in his small form for a week, so they blindly head back to S.T.A.R Labs, only half-aware of the course they had plotted in their mildly hysteric delirium.

People pat him on the back and shake his hand; Len doesn’t flinch. They have done the impossible, conquered time itself against the tide of sand in an hourglass, and he feels like nothing could ever hurt him again. So when Kendra grabs his arm in shock and Rip won’t stop shaking all of their hands and Jax even hugs him, which caused even Mick to tense up and look over in worry only to see Len’s bright grin as he clapped the younger man on the back, it doesn’t phase him.

Inside, he knows it isn’t that simple and there was no magical cure for his fear – but in the aftermath of the battle, it feels a thousand miles away, a problem for another day. Except now it feels less like a problem and more a work in progress, something that is getting better.

He takes the victory.

They’re all standing in the Cortex and for once Detective West isn’t glaring at him with complete disdain when Barry Allen walks over, his hood pulled down without fear, because the kid was still too damn trusting and Len can’t help but smirk at that when he approaches. Barry is grinning, so the smirk becomes a closed mouth smile, as close to an admission that the speedster was right that Len will ever get.

He never says ‘I told you so’, but its shining there in Barry’s eyes and raised eyebrow when he stops.

Instead of punching him as planned, the same hands that killed his father holds out a hand to shake the Flash’s. A warm one takes it and holds it a second too long with a shared look and Snart knows there is no going back now. He’s gone soft, except it doesn’t feel that way – just to be able to touch him like this is something he wouldn’t have been able to do before the Waverider and his crazy team and it’s just a matter of time.

He is smiling and shaking a heroes hand; all his toughness and bravado out of the window, his reputation a blip on the horizon that means nothing to him, not anymore. It isn’t a scenario he would ever have thought possible. But there he is, their hands together in a room full of people he knows are his friends and the heat from the speedster’s hand is rushing into his own.

He realises the truth then: it isn’t a weakness, its strength.

The same hands that killed his father have done so much more than that now, and Leonard Snart smiles, not having the time to linger on the thought – they have so much more to see and do to waste any more time on the past, and he can’t wait to experience all of it.