#coldwaveweek2018

"Compared to humans, I am tall," Len points out. He's over six feet tall, after all.

"True," Mick agrees. "But I wasn't comparing you to humans, now was I?"

Len scowls at him. It's not his fault that his species tends more towards seven or eight feet in height.

Even Lisa is a perfectly normal seven and a half feet of gorgeous woman.

(It's not Len's fault that he gave her all his food growing up, stunting his growth in the process...)

"Besides, I'm taller than you," Mick says. "And I am human."

"I didn't need the reminder," Len tells him, giving up and slouching down into a seat next to Mick. There's clearly no reasoning with the guy. "Why'd you run away this time? You know your half of the contract is to stay put."

"And as you're so quick to remind me, humans are creatures of chaos capable of breaking contracts," Mick says dryly. "Unlike you lot, all rules and order above all else. You don't eat, sleep, or have fun without rules. You even kidnapped me according to the rules!"

"I'm a creature of order, what do you want me to do? Not be what I am?"

"You even left in a loophole where I could get free of our contract if I could escape," Mick continues, looking aggravated. "And you told me about it."

"Of course I did! You're my counterpart, you have the right to be informed!" Len protests, even though he knows that humans are not afforded any rights under the Law. According to the Law, humans are the subject of contracts, not counterparties, not real counterparties.

Len's never liked that.

A contract between two parties ought to be between counterparties, fair and equal, whatever the Law currently says.

"And anyway, that doesn't change the fact that you tried to run again," Len adds. "In the middle of a party, too."

He didn't actually object to leaving the party early, he hates these sorts of parties - he by and large hates other people, actually - but there's having a good excuse to miss the party and then there's having to track Mick down again - and again - and again –

Mick huffs. "Maybe I wanted some time to myself, ever think about that?"

"But you call for me to come back to the demesne any time I go away," Len says, utterly at a loss. "I don't know what you want."

Mick looks at Len pityingly. "Buddy," he says dryly. "You're not supposed to care about what I want."

Len groans and flops back on the earth next to Mick.

"You're really bad at this whole abduction business," Mick observes. "Like, really bad. I thought kidnapping humans is what you Othersiders do for fun."

"Status," Len corrects Mick. "We do it for status. Having humans around helps us think more clearly."

The problem with being a creature made from order is that you fall far too easily into stale ruts, repeating the same thing over and over again, and you can't get yourself out. Not without a spark of chaos to help inspire you to, anyway.

That's why they took humans. As faelings they offered gifts in trade, as jinn they pretended servitude, as dragons they kidnapped by force - but the end goal was always the same, to use the human to further their own goals.

Len never liked it.

Oh, he likes rules as much as the next Sider, as humans called them: he liked making them, he liked twisting them, he adored the challenge of maneuvering around them.

But he hated what they did to humans, draining them of inspiration and will and spark until they were greyed-out shells that were so empty they actually thought they'd made it out intact or even ahead of the game.

Johnny with a violin of gold won and his ability to compose lost.

Tam Lin with his bride to be, going mad over his inability to write another poem.

Orpheus, who didn't understand why his music no longer had that extra oomph that won him all of his acclaim.

Len hated it.

It was addictive, for one thing; cruelty summoned cruelty, but each human that was taken would provide less and less of a high, and in time the Sider doing the taking would deteriorate into mess good only to be put down. But that wasn't really the reason - that sort of thing wouldn't happen for centuries, if you were even slightly careful.

No, Len'd rather his inspiration come from himself, however tired it made him; that way his victory was his own, rather than stolen from the soul of a broken toy.

But he was in a tricky situation in the centuries-long life-or-death match he was playing against his Father, and he needed to demonstrate to the East Tower Clade that he had the ability to enthrall a human into a contract, not to mention a lack of disdain for those Siders that did use it.

A disdain that Len did, in fact, feel.

But Lisa convinced him that he needed their alliance to pull off his next maneuver, one that would bring him closer to the victory she longed for as much as he, and he'd begrudgingly agreed.

He'd taken the easiest route: he came across a child at a vulnerable moment, their family dead in an inferno they themselves had unintentionally started, and he offered them a contract too good to be true - safety, pleasures, the whole rot.

Mick accepted, of course, because Len is good at what he does. Even this, when he puts his mind to it.

That should've been the end of it: children made for fantastic inspiration, but they burned out fast, and Len would have been free of his obligation within a few short years –

If he'd managed to stick to it, anyway.

He'd had Mick a week, a week of giving him all the food, games, and other innocent joys the boy had ever wanted, and then at the end of the week it was time to take Len's due portion from Mick's soul and Len had balked like the coward he is.

He couldn't.

Not a child.

(Not after what his Father did to him, and to Lisa, when they themselves were only children, and never mind that this was a human child, a human, someone Len shouldn't even care about.)

He couldn't do it.

He'd amended the terms of their contract to give Mick an out, a reprieve of two score years if Mick could do some middling task for him, and he'd dumped him back in the human world for a few decades.

He'd kept him safe from afar, ensured no one interfered with his counterpart, his property, but tried otherwise to leave him his privacy.

And when the time was up, well.

Then Len had come to him as a dragon of fire and carried him off back to the Underhill because what else could he do? He'd signed a contract with Mick, and he's a creature of order.

Unlike Mick, he has to obey a contract.

But it isn't any better now that Mick was an adult, either, because Mick isn't vacant-eyed with grief anymore, but charming, and inventive, and crude, and different. New.

Human.

A thousand different creatures contained in a single soul: the babe, the child, the teenager, the young adult, older but not necessarily wiser...

A creature born of chaos, as much in love with the fairytale-order offered by the Siders as the Siders were in love with them.

Len hasn't laid a goddamn finger on Mick.

He can't.

But what can he do? He can't let him out of the contract. He can't break a contract.

To be specific, he can’t break a contract.

All he can do is hint at the loopholes and make Mick as comfortable as he can until he figures out how to get out via one of those loopholes.

But he can't do that if Mick keeps trying to escape in a way that makes Len have to chase after him.

"You were supposed to be awful," Mick says suddenly.

"I am," Len objects automatically, because he's unSeelie, damnit. Humans perceived his chosen clan as violent and dark rather than wise and peaceful and light - Len preferred it that way, found it less hypocritical to let the humans see a little of what they were really up against. Lisa, though he loved her, was Seelie: golden of hair, golden of smile, and yet she and her lover, the dark-haired, dark-eyed Cynthia, drew upon human souls with a facility and ease he would never have. "What do you mean by that, anyway?"

"You put me back without making me forget anything, you know," Mick says, turning to look at Len. "Was that on purpose, or accidental? Answer me honestly."

"I didn't want to pervert your mind," Len says, and he is being honest. "I know we're supposed to dull what you know of the Hill, but really, what are you going to do even if you know? Bring cannons?"

"Nukes, maybe," Mick says.

"Bright as flame," Len says, "but just as useless. We're creatures of order - do you really think that we can't put some atoms back in their proper order just because you've gone ahead and split them?"

Mick grunts, acknowledging the point. "We could build better weapons," he points out.

"You could," Len agrees. "Honestly, you probably should, so as to better defend yourself as a species. Get more respect from the Othersiders that way. But I don't know what those weapons would look like."

Mick sighs. "See, that's what bugs me," he complains. "You want us to protect ourselves! You don't want to force-feed on me! You want me to be happy!"

He seems upset.

"I don't understand humans," Len says plaintively. It's not the first time he's said that. Not even the first time to Mick this week, even. "Would it be better if I were cruel?"

"Yes!"

"But why? I don't want to be cruel! I just want -" Len cuts himself off.

Mick rolls over, suddenly interested. "What do you want?"

Len shakes his head.

"No, really," Mick persists. "I know you made a contract with me because you wanted to get an alliance to win that fight against your dad. But once that's done - what do you want?"

"I wish I knew," Len replies sadly. "I've always been - dissatisfied."

"You know something, o Thief For Hire."

Len scowls at Mick. He was too perceptive, even if he did have too much fun with Len's chosen profession once Len had explained what he did to fill his days. It was a perfectly respectable profession, one of daring and creativity and skill, thank you very much.

"What do you want?" Mick asks, his eyes oddly compelling. "Tell me."

Len gives in, as he always gives in. "I want to be free."

He doesn't even know what he means by that, when he says it, just knows that he wants it like he's never wanted anything else.

But Mick seems to understand.

He smiles.

"I was hoping you'd say that."

When the sky rips open and the human invasion-ship arrives to rescue Mick, to take him away, to win him free of his contract per the loopholes traditionally included, Len's almost not even surprised.

He is surprised when Mick convinces his rescue team - they call themselves the Legends, many of them escaped from the Hill themselves and now operating through the in-between spaces of the world to save more of their kind - to take Len with them when they flee the Hill.

They put him in the brig, of course.

Len's okay with that. He's never been in a spaceship before, so it's a brand new experience - chaotic and inspiring.

He picks and re-locks the lock three times before finally deciding it was time to go exploring.

Mick is arguing with the rest of the crew on the bridge -

"- can't just keep him! He's an Othersider!"

"He wants to be free! How does that make him different from the usual people we rescue?!"

"Because he's an Othersider! A kidnapper, not a kidnappee!"

"Actually," the tall smiling man says, "I think Mick really is his first kidnapping - I was looking through the records while we were visiting last time, and his reputation -"

"Am I the only person who remembers the fact that this guy is - an - Othersider?!"

"Don't be racist, Sara -"

Len decides to keep going in his exploration, at this argument doesn't seem likely to finish anytime soon. There's a kitchen, which confuses him for a few moments until he remembers that humans generally construct their own food out of raw ingredients, lacking as they do the ability to simply siphon nutrients out of the relevant objects; a number of bedrooms, all personalized in intriguingly different fashions, of which he can only recognize one as Mick's characteristic messiness; and a gun room, which is hidden behind several walls.

"You shouldn't be in here, you know," the ship's AI informs him.

"I'm just looking around," Len protests. "I'm not doing anything harmful."

"I suspect the crew has a different interpretation of harmful than you do," it says wryly. "For instance, your ability to exit your cell at will, given that it's supposed to be immune to your species' particular powers."

"It is," Len says. "Very impressive. I just picked the lock, that's all."

"I saw," the AI says. "You did it very quickly and quietly and sneakily."

"Sneakily? Don't be ridiculous," Len says. "I'm a thief. If I was being sneaky, you wouldn't have seen me."

"Are you suggesting that your escape was because of your profession rather than your species?"

"Exactly. Why'd they bring me on, anyway? Do you know?"

"Better question," a voice says from behind Len, causing him to turn. "Why did you agree to come?"

It's the ship's captain: a woman, blonde, wearing white and carrying staves with the air of someone who knew how to use them.

"Mick said to," Len explains.

She looks at him for a long moment, clearly expecting more. Her eyebrows arch up when she realizes that's it. "I didn't realize it was so easy to abduct one of your kind."

"It probably isn't," Len says with a shrug. "But, well, he said I should, and I've never been on a spaceship before, and since my previous plan failed, there's no reason not to try something new."

"Your previous plan," the captain says slowly. "The one involving sucking the life out of Mick, yeah?"

"Close enough," Len says. For some human, the difference between inspiration and life was a pretty narrow line. "It was meant to demonstrate that I could fit in with the Tower Clade gentry, to get them on my side, but I couldn't do it - either during his childhood or his adulthood."

"Yeah, we noticed that," she says. "We had Gideon check on him, and he's not been drained at all."

"I wouldn't have liked to see him grey," Len says. He had nightmares about it, sometimes, vivid ones where he could see himself achieving the pinnacle of all his dreams - his Father gone and locked away - but only at the cost of Mick crushed beneath his feet. It was never worth it. "I like Mick."

"If you didn't like doing it, why did you want to join this - clade?"

"The Tower Clade. And they would have helped me gain advantage against my Father."

She frowns. "Your father?"

Len nods. "He is no longer stronger than me such that he can obtain compliance by force, so he comes up with other ways to get it, like threatening my sister."

"You - Okay. Huh. I didn't know Othersiders could have abusive dads."

"Anyone can," Len says. "It's the penalty paid for allowing anyone who wants to to reproduce."

"...right. Point. Okay. Are you planning on betraying us?"

"To whom?"

"I don't know, anyone. Other Othersiders."

"I don't particularly care about you lot," Len says honestly. "But if Mick doesn't want me to, I won't."

The captain doesn't look entirely pleased with that answer, but she shrugs and accepts it. "Welcome aboard, then, I guess," she says. "You'll have to earn your keep."

"I can do that," Len says. "I'm a Thief for Hire."

"What, really? Okay. Well, we don't do much thieving - rescue missions are more our style."

"People can be stolen," Len points out. "Memories. Lives. Kneecaps. I'm a very good thief, when I'm hired to be."

The captain purses her lips. "And what does it take to hire you?"

"I take many forms of trade -" Len begins his usual sales pitch, but there's cough at the door.

It's Mick.

Len turns to him with a smile.

"You're going to offer a reasonable trade," Mick instructs. Len can't blame him for doubting; he's overheard some of Len's negotiations.

"Very well," Len agrees, feeling strangely mellow. Happy, even. Is he happy? It's been such a long time.

He likes this, whatever this is. Being abducted by humans. He likes it.

"What's your price, then?" Mick asks.

"A kiss from you," Len says on impulse. "One per theft."

Mick flushes red.

The captain starts to laugh. "Oh, it's like that, is it?"

"It is not!" Mick exclaims.

"It isn't?" Len asks with a frown.

"Okay, maybe it kind of is - but it wasn't - not back where we were -"

"I wouldn't take advantage of you when you were in my power," Len says. "But you've escaped your contract, so now you're an equal again - as much as humans can be, anyway, the Law is really terrible - and that means I can try to lure you into a new contract."

The captain's laughter dies. "Another draining contract?"

"No," Len says patiently. It's not her fault - she probably has limited experience with Othersider contracts. "A marriage."

"Whoa, there," Mick says. "Hold your damn horses. Marriage?!"

"It's the final goal," Len assures him. "I intend to spend months and months in extended negotiations convincing you of what a good idea it is."

"He's asking you out," the captain translates. "To potentially start a serious relationship."

"But," Mick says, but for all his verbal objections coming out of his mouth, his body language is quite positive. Len feels like he has reasonable basis for hope. "He's an Othersider!"

"May you have more luck with that argument than I did," the captain says wryly. "If he's good enough to travel with, then he's good enough all around. If you want to date him, don't let us stop you."

Mick is silent for a long moment.

"Well?" Len asks.

"Oh, all right," Mick says. "But no tricks! And we're going to negotiate you a better price than kisses, because I don't want to be limited!"

Len sits crossed-legged in the chair, the man is waiting in front of him, eyes filled to the brim with tears as he awaits his fate. He's shaking, and really, if Len was still that angel that he had been all of those years ago, this pathetic soul wouldn't still be standing, instead he would have been sent to hell a long time ago without a word or a hearing. Someone like him didn't deserve to be heard about why he needed to be sent to heaven instead of hell.

Except it wasn't his choice now. After heaven held new management, Len had to become a new, different type of angel.

His manager eyes the man as well. Thoughts radiating off him as he listens to the man's pleas.

“Yes, I've done wrong but I've repented. I've done better in my last few years on earth. I don't deserve hell. I'm a good person.”

Len snorts, Good person? Stole millions from the helpless, and when asked about it blamed it on his employees who knew nothing about the situation. Len knew the man deserved hell and he'd be more than willing to send him to his husband without a second thought.

Len glances over at Barry who's watching him now. The question stands. His actions have been weighed and Len has made up his mind. It's now up to the rest of the council.

“A few does not outweigh the years that you have done.” Barry begins. “I'm sorry. But your actions have done nothing but wrong.”

There's a snap of the fingers and soon Len sits up when he sees his husband arriving through the doors that had appeared.

No one understood how this worked, how an angel and the king of hell… worked and they didn't need to. It worked for him and it worked for Mick and they were happy.

Nick glances quickly at Len before taking the soul, saying some words to him and Mick’s partner arrives, leading the soul to where he belonged.

Len stands up, looking over at Barry and gets the approval that he can spend a few moments with his husband.

Barry and the rest of the council vanish, leaving the two of them alone.

“You alright?” Mick asks, he wraps a hand around Len’s waist and pulls him closer to him. There's a soft kiss pressed to his cheek.

Not many people got to see this part of Mick. As far as most of the Angels knew, he was the king of hell, a force to be reckoned with. But they didn't know the part that Len knew, the part that he had fallen in love with the first time that he became an angel. They didn't see the loving and caring part of Mick that he got to see every day.

“Yeah. I'm just sick of these hearings for people who don't deserve it. The man that you took, he didn't deserve to be heard. He needed to be sent directly to hell.”

Len cuddles closer to Mick, one hand reaching around Mick's waist.

“Can I visit tonight?” Len asks, it had been far too long since he was last in Mick's bed.

He missed it.

“Of course. I won't stop you. Just be careful when you come down. There's some things happening and I don't want you to get hurt.”

Len nods. “I just miss you.”

"It's not exactly like him, though," Amaya demurs. "Len's usually a really down-to-earth sort of villain, flair for the dramatic aside. This is really out of character."

"I know it's not like him," Mick says through gritted teeth. "That's why I'm gonna strangle him."

"Domestic violence is wrong, Mick," Sara says.

"In this instance?!"

"Hmm. Point. I will totally let you get in a few punches as long as I get one too," she offers.

Mick grumbles but agrees. Len doesn't actually take being beaten up by heroes when he deserves it personally, after all. "I really don't know what he's thinking this time," he adds gloomily. "He hates world-conquering plans, he thinks all-powerful magical trinkets are cheat codes for losers, and he's normally the first guy to tip off the good guys that something like this is going down."

"Maybe he didn't know about it?" Ray suggests.

Mick snorts. "His membership in the Henchmen and Minion League hasn't been revoked, as far as I'm aware. No way anyone got this far without him knowing."

"Then why..?"

"I don't know! He won't answer any of the usual numbers, and it's been over twelve hours of Alternate World and he hasn't so much as shown his face yet!"

Zari nudges Mick's shoulder gently with her own. "Hey," she says, immediately getting the real problem he's been having, which is not exactly the same problem everyone else has been having. "Don't worry about him, okay?"

"I'm not worried," Mick grumbles.

That's a lie.

He's worried.

Normally, anytime any big battle goes down that the Legends are even remotely involved in, Len can be guaranteed to show up within six hours, usually less, to check on his favorite team.

"He's fine," Zari insists. "He's Leonard Snart, Mick. One of the five co-rulers of Doomworld. He literally helped create this world."

"Yeah, sure. All the more reasons for one of his co-rulers to want to knock him off so they can be the only ones in charge..."

"Go back to being angry," Amaya suggests. "We haven't seen any indication that anything has happened to him, and you know the other villains wouldn't be able to keep from boasting about it if they did do something."

"Hm. Point.

"That means he's fine. And that, in turn, means that he'll have to show his face sometime."

"Does he?" Mick asks glumly. "He owns a fifth of the world now; I'm sure that'll keep him busy."

"Too busy for you, Mick?" Sara says skeptically. "Not really likely."

"More like 'never'," Ray agrees.

Mick shrugs. He admits it's unlikely, given Len's track record, but then again, so is Doomworld itself.

He doesn't like it when Len goes out of character.

Certainly not without some justification like mind-control or new-villain pheromones, and there's been no indication of anything like that.

"Personally, I'm just really happy we're immune to all the Doomworld changes," Nate says.

"Nate," Amaya says gently. "We're not immune."

"Wait. We're not?"

"Nope," Zari says. "Len just let us keep our memories of the original timeline. Possibly without telling any of his co-rulers about it."

"He did? Huh. One point in the 'he has a secret plan' column."

Ray obediently adds a point to the chart they have going on the whiteboard Gideon created for them when they first realized that the Waverider was grounded until repairs could be made. The time drive is totally dead, without any hope of recovery, so at this point they just want to have the air support. Not to mention wanting to avoid notice from the other people in Doomworld any more than they already have...

The other columns in the chart (titled "Why Would Leonard Snart Do?") are "he's gone crazy", "he was tricked into it", and "he's going to literally give the world to Mick on a platter because he couldn't think of a good enough gift to pay him back for that Diana thing".

(Mick objected strenuously to the inclusion of that last one, but got overruled.)

"Wait, if we're not immune," Nate says, "what are we?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, what do we do? Is there an evil Wikipedia saying what our jobs are in this universe?"

"Good question," Sara says. "Zari, could you -"

"Already checked," Zari says. "We're officially part of the Enforcers of the New Regime, actually."

"We are?!"

"Officially. Unofficially, we're Len's pet superhero team."

"That doesn't actually seem all that different from how it normally is," Ray says thoughtfully. "In our regular universe, I mean. Without the whole 'Enforcer' bit, but still."

"It's - actually not, sad to say, except for the part where we're all part of the ruling class of a dystopia and have absolute control over about 99% of the population, which has to fulfill our every request."

Silence for a few long minutes.

"Which we will not be exploiting," Sara says, sounding very tempted. "Because we're heroes and that would be bad."

"So much free coffee," Ray says, his eyes dreamy. "So much."

"...not what I was thinking, but you know what, sure, we can demand free coffee."

"Sara!"

"We have to exploit the system somehow or they might get suspicious of us," Sara sniffs.

"They'll be suspicious anyway," Amaya mutters.

"Hey, if we're Enforcers, why don't we get the sexy leather get-ups the rest of them have?" Nate wants to know.

"Because unlike the rest of them, we haven't been brainwashed," Sara points out. "Which I for one approve of."

"We should still get cool outfits."

"I'll have Gideon make you a leather outfit, okay? We'll probably need it to infiltrate somewhere eventually anyway."

"Good," Nate says, pleased. "I volunteer for that mission."

"Of course you do."

"Wait," Ray says, "are all of the other superhero teams incapacitated?"

"Uh, yeah, as far as I can tell," Zari says. "The only ones still at large are deliberately weakened so that they can be hunted down at the leisure of their respective villains. Why?"

"So what you're telling me is that the Legends are the only hero team left available to fight a world-destroying event? Like, this is our big chance," Ray says, rocking up and down in excitement. "This is our save-the-day, enter-the-big-hero-leagues moment!"

"Huh, yeah," Sara says, already looking vaguely haunted by the responsibility. "Hadn't thought of it that way, but I guess you're right."

"That bastard!" Mick suddenly roars.

They all look at him.

Mick, scowling, grabs the pen from Ray and puts a check in the "world to Mick on a platter" column.

Then he crosses out the word "world" and adds in "opportunity to be a real hero" instead.

Silence for a few long moments.

"You have got to be kidding me," Sara says flatly.

"It is the one thing he's always wanted to be able to give Mick," Amaya muses.

"I'm going to find him," Mick says. "And when I find him..."

"Never mind that," Ray says. "Let's go save the world!"

When reality is returned to normal, Len is given a very long talk about not using reality-altering devices to create what is essentially an Escape Room-style puzzle for the pleasure and glory of his significant other and his friends (from Mick and the other Legends), not playing with his fellow villains' dreams of world-conquering like that (from Lex), and about the fact that this whole gift-escalating thing really needs to stop (Sara called Diana in for that one).

Len responds by proposing marriage to Mick, being as that's the only way he can think of to permanently one-up him.

(He claims that once they're a single unit and Mick is permanently locked down, Mick's amazing gift-giving ability won't make him so frantic to pay him back.)

Mick says yes, but claims loudly that he's only doing it in order to write a pre-emptive restriction of crazy plans clause into their marriage vows.

(No one believes him.)

Their marriage is the biggest social event of the year for heroes and villains both. It goes remarkably well, or at least it does after they all end up teaming up to take down the locust-aliens horde from Earth-ABC.

After all, if there's one thing heroes and villains can agree on, it's that it's one thing to crash a wedding and a totally different thing to try to eat all the food.

Len swears he didn't set it up deliberately so that everyone would have a nice, entertaining fight to get out their hostility before the reception, the food for which was stashed in a totally different place.

Mick, having seen the early drafts of the program for the wedding, doesn't even pretend to believe him.