The One Where Hartley Saves Leonard
One-Shot

Telling the Rogues was quiet.

"Snart's dead." Short. Gruff. Hands shoved deep into his pockets, Mick didn't look at them, more concerned with keeping his voice steady and with the desperate, shaky hold Lisa had on his arm. She already knew, had been crying for hours, but she stood beside him as if she wasn't ready to be alone.

Maybe she knew he needed the strength too.

The others stayed silent outside of Shawna's gasp and the clatter Hartley dropping his pen. He hadn't expected shouting or more tears. They weren't a family. They were occasional teammates if the job called for it, but they clashed more than they didn't. Death threats. Powers lashing out.

Shawna ditched Mark on top of a garbage stuck once.

Hartley rigged one of Axel's toys to screech so loud that Len had frozen it solid just to shut it up.

Axel burned an Elsa doll after a fight with Len once and missed the irony as the melting toy let out a garbled version of Let It Go. Mick tossed it at Axel's head after the plastic had cooled.

Other than Lisa's barely-controlled breaths, no one cried. Mick was dried out and even if they shared the warehouse sometimes, they didn't care that much about the frigid bastard that fancied himself a comic book supervillain.

A day later, the temperature dropped lower and lower until the steady rain turned to snow. Central hadn't had a storm like that in May for almost a century. It snowed two feet and Mark looked peaceful.

Axel got another Elsa doll and set it on a shelf, blue eyes repainted into a more familiar shape and shade. No one mentioned how it looked odd against the lipstick she wore, but Lisa hit the button on its back once and burst into tears when she heard Len's voice singing her old lullaby. Axel handed Mick the battered cassette later and went back to his toys like it hadn't happened.

Shawna started poofing in and out with safes, only holding onto them for as long as it took her to learn the mechanics of breaking in. She timed herself with Len's old stopwatch and Mick ruffled her hair with each satisfying click of a safe opening.

Hartley started hanging out at STAR Labs, texting Cisco at odd hours, and slinking around so much that Mick thought the kid had found a new boyfriend in Ramon. Hartley blanched at the idea, disturbed, and went back to his research.

Mick delayed returning to the Waverider, too drunk to be anything but a danger and too worried about leaving Lisa when she looked so lost. He lived with a ghost, one side of the bed empty and a familiar voice in the back of his mind.

"Did you always call him by his last name?" Shawna asked one night as they picked at cartons of leftover Chinese. "I don't think I ever heard you call him anything but Snart or boss."

"No."

She didn't ask what he used to call Len and he didn't tell her. Figured she would have choked on her lo mein if she knew he used to call Len babe to keep him from getting out of bed in the mornings.

He slept with extra blankets now, but it didn't replace the warm feeling of the person he'd shared his bed with for so many years. Len had favored the cold, but he'd always been like a walking furnace. Mick couldn't replicate that.

No one asked about the ring that appeared on his left hand or the twin of it that hung on a chain around his neck, but he thought they knew. It wasn't as if he cared enough to be subtle.

"Will you go back?" Hartley signed at him one day rather than shout over the sound of Mark blasting that dubstep trash he was addicted to.

Mick paused, translating the hand motions in his head that wasn't quite like the bastardized version they used in prison. "He would have wanted me to," he replied eventually with fumbling fingers. Not that returning probably mattered much. By the end of the first month, the team's messages had begun to wane. He still had a beacon in his bag, ready to call them back if he decided to leave, but he didn't even think about it most days. They probably didn't need him back, anyway.

"You could stay," Hartley suggested, grimacing as a particularly high note in the music fucked with his hearing aids again. "We like having you here."

Mick snorted, the sound drowned out by the speakers he was definitely going to be using as kindling later. "To keep you all from killing each other."

Hartley leveled him with a serious look that got softened when he smiled. "Family does that."

Mick's brows furrowed as he raised his hands to sign something else, but the music cut out and the warehouse gave a relieved groan.

"Who killed it?" Shawna called as she pulled her hands away from her ears. "I will kiss you!"

Axel gave a joyful shriek at the same time Mark started sounding death threats and the speakers crashed down to the floor from the upper level. They went to pieces on impact.

Definitely kindling, Mick thought. He was going to get Axel a damn gift card to Toys 'R' Us and let him go wild, the crazy little shit.

"Axel, you're dead!"

"Hey!" Shawna shouted. "No storms in the warehouse! Take it outside!"

Mick cast a look at Hartley. "You call this a family?" he signed.

Hartley laughed. "Yes."

"Seriously, kid, are you dating the Flash's little sidekick?" Mick asked when Hartley slipped back into the warehouse late one night.

"No!" Hartley sputtered. "Stop asking me that!"

"I think he likes you."

"He better not," Lisa said as she dropped down to sit beside Mick. "You're cute, Hart, but I'm not into threesomes."

Hartley rolled his eyes. "You're not exactly my type."

"Don't you all have other safehouses?" Mick grumbled from the kitchen that had slowly been getting renovated into something useable.

Mark snorted. "Don't you? We like it here."

Axel snagged a pepper strip off the cutting board. "What are we having?"

"Stir fry. Move before I stab you."

"Do you think he's doing okay?"

Mick paused, footsteps suddenly ceasing as he heard Shawna's whispered voice around the corner.

"He's still here," Mark muttered. "Better than him going back on that weird little Doctor Who mission."

Axel fucking giggled. "I told you you'd like that show," he gloated. "Are the others almost done?"

"They're checking calculations," Shawna sighed.

"Again? They've checked them a thousand times."

"They won't risk it."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Mick cut in, watching as they all froze.

"Bank robbery," Mark answered quickly.

Mick crossed his arms over his chest. "Yeah? Which bank?"

They robbed a tiny Keystone bank a week later and it was a fucking disaster.

Shawna and Hartley left a week before Christmas with nervous smiles. Neither of them could look Mick in the eye, but Shawna kissed his cheek and said they'd be back in a couple days.

Mark focused on pulling a storm into Central that shut down the entire city and didn't even try to look innocent when news reports started bitching about the five feet of snow that had fallen before noon.

"They're going to have to use a dog sled to get back," Axel said and sounded positively giddy about it. He looked at Mick, excited. "Can we get a dog?"

"Do I look like your dad?"

No one said anything, but Lisa snorted before she started laughing.

Snart walked into the warehouse on Christmas Eve and everything stopped.

Lisa froze before she cried out and darted forward into her brother's arms.

Mick stared.

And stared.

And stared.

It wasn't fucking possible.

"You're dead," he muttered. "You blew yourself up. You fucking…"

"He came back on Christmas," Axel said happily as he bounced on his heels. "He's like Jesus now."

"Jesus came back on Easter," Hartley sighed, sounding like they'd had this conversation before. "And it's Christmas Eve."

"And he's Jewish," Mark added.

Len kept his eyes on Mick as he kissed Lisa's head and stepped away. Yards. Feet. Inches. Mick didn't move until Len was close enough for him to touch.

He punched him.

"You fucking asshole."

And Len—the fucked up psycho that he was—laughed. Hand on his jaw, he gave Mick a grin like the punch was funny and Mick's brain shorted out. Someone started the kiss, but he couldn't figure out who it was.

Axel whistled and yelped when someone smacked him. Probably Mark, Mick thought.

Lisa cheered.

Hartley and Shawna groaned.

Mick didn't understand the science of it when Hartley explained it later. He mentioned the time it would have taken for someone to drag his unconscious ass out before the explosion and a window of opportunity between the Oculus firing up and blowing Snart to bits.

The Flash was fast. He grabbed him in the second-and-a-half window they had, explosion sparking at their asses.

Jax had helped, waiting for them at the jump ship like the little thief they'd been molding him into. Mick wondered if the professor had any idea what his better half was doing in his down time.

"He had some burns," Hartley said as he gestured at the bandages covering Len's right hand and disappearing up his sleeve. "Cisco and the Flash are making modifications to the Gideon mainframe at STAR Labs and linking her to the one on the Waverider so they can restore it." He shrugged a shoulder. "Worse comes to worse, he can freeze his arm off again and it can be regenerated."

Shawna blanched, looking a bit ill. "I still can't believe you did that," she told Snart.

"It grew back," Snart said as he waved at her, fingers wiggling. The room shuddered.

Mick looked away until Len gripping his knee tightly made him look back. He directed his gaze towards Hartley instead. "This was your idea? Why?"

"Because you're a miserable bastard when he's not around," Mark said plainly. "Just because he did the math with his boyfriend-"

"He's not my boyfriend!"

"-doesn't mean we weren't helping out."

"I was reading up on medical treatments for burns," Shawna volunteered. "Caitlin needed an extra hand."

"Mark and me kept you distracted," Axel added with a grin. "And he made it snow."

"Even metas weren't going out with that much crap outside." Mark shrugged. "We told the Flash we wouldn't let the world end while he was playing hero in space. I don't like making deals with him."

"You guys didn't tell me," Lisa said from where she'd glued herself to Len's other side. She pulled his injured arm into her lap like she wanted the connection, even if she couldn't grip it for fear of hurting her brother more.

"We were only 60% sure we weren't going to blow ourselves up trying," Hartley admitted, nose wrinkled.

"So why do it?"

The other Rogues shot a pointed look at Mick and Snart.

"The wedding ring wasn't exactly subtle," Hartley said. "They're gaudy."

Len looked insulted. "You're too young to remember 90's fashion."

"Your supervillain outfit is a parka from Sears," Mick said. "I don't think you can say all that much about fashion."

"Is this what I came back to life for?"

"Technically," Hartley cut in, "you never actually died."

Lisa reached over to pat Hartley's knee comfortingly. "Don't get in the middle," she said sagely. "Just let the dads fight."

"What did you call us?!"

Axel and Shawna burst into laughter as Mark rubbed a hand over his face. "I didn't sign up for this."

The End