Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Fifty-seven minutes after it starts:

Hartley shoved the bag behind his seat and snapped the seatbelt on. "Are you going to hit me when we get out of the car?"

"For turning a quiet job into a demolition project?"

Hartley swallowed. "Yes. That. I mean--" His fingers were locked together, knuckles white with pressure. "I'd understand." Probably the fact that he knew how Cold could control Cisco was the only thing keeping the other man from--

He closed his eyes for a minute. "Thank you for not doing it in front of her."

"What?"

Anything. He'd been too angry in the moment to assess the likely outcome; if he'd thought of it in advance, he'd have expected the kindest possible response from Cold to be getting decked, and would have come up with something else. Anything else. But the thought of actually talking to them hadn't occurred to him, and--

"Hitting me. Or something..." He trailed off and the tires made a rattling groan as they slewed sideways on the gravelled driveway, drowning out anything else he might have said. It was as good an excuse as any to shut up.

"Maybe after we're out of here. Get the gate!"

"Right." Hartley leaned out of the side window, his glove starting to hum as he stretched his hand towards the gate ahead of them. Out of the corner of his eye he caught it when Cold shot him another look, which he couldn't quite read. Disgusted or furious, he thought. Which was understandable; he'd done things that had upset other people, but he couldn't actually remember such a massive screw up by his own lights in... ever, really.

Chapter Text

Five days before it starts:

It was impossible to even find floor plans for the Rathaway home; they should have been on file with the housing authority, but they were 'lost' a couple of decades ago and currently the Rathaways just got a form letter reminding them each year, paid what they doubtless thought of as a trivial annual fee, and continued merrily on.

If it were just him, Len told himself, he'd walk away, no matter the appeal of being the man who stole from the Rathaway home. He'd ignore Stiles, snatch Cisco Ramon, hide him from the Flash long enough to convince him to build new guns-- but kidnapping is tricky work at best. People are fragile, stubborn, unpredictable things, and Stiles hadn't been wrong pointing out the difference between scaring someone for a few hours and convincing them to actually work for you.

Mick was still fuming about not having his heat gun, Len wasn't really happy either, and Stiles was promising something faster.

So he went back to checking on Stiles.

STAR Labs was easier to look into than the Rathaways or anything personal about Wells, and Len started there. Stiles had worked there and left or been fired; large research labs that let people go didn't generally erase the paperwork afterwards.

Len considered sneaking in, which grew into considering the possibility of running into Snow or Cisco working late, the likely fallout from bringing Mick or Lisa along for backup, and then the odds of the Flash showing up--

He pulled himself away from contemplation of all the horrors that could come out of that particular clusterfuck and went to poke around the security firm that used to work for the lab. There'd been a couple of attempted break-ins (amateurs), a Christmas party where one of the guards had taken a couple of people's car keys away, special training on procedure for dealing with the gorilla onsite (what?), and a handful of employees that had been fired and escorted out.

Including a Hartley Rathaway, which was probably relevant.

=====

Bisrat was expensive as hell, but reliably tight-lipped, and probably the best ID broker he knew of. Len liked her office; it was the top floor of an old manufacturing plant, all dull brick and a faint smell of rust in a wide empty space with a desk and a handful of computer monitors in one corner, and she left the windows open. It was raining a little outside, spitting cold and thin out of a dull-steel sky, and there was a chill and constant breath of air brushing over his skin.

"And do you have me a story to tell about these names, my cold man?"

Len shrugged. Bisrat liked the sound of people's voices, and she'd never repeated anything he said or shown offense when he outright lied. "Useful to talk to people who hold grudges."

"Faces and places, then." She laughed, low and rich, and started typing; the clucking of the keys mixed with her voice. "You want the names of people with grudges against the Star, I could give you a longer list than this."

"Grudges and history."

"Cold man," she said affectionately, "if you told me these things up front, I wouldn't make these foolish suggestions." On her screens, windows popped up, bearing faces and details. Len stood back; Bisrat didn't like people looking over her shoulder when she was working.

"Then I wouldn't have these charming conversations."

"Do you come to see me for the banter or the paper?"

Len smirked. "I need to pick?"

Bisrat laughed again and hit a few final keys, then half-turned her chair away from the desk, waving him over to look at the screens.

"It is lovely how many people have these," Bisrat said as Len examined the names; drivers' licenses and photos, as far as he could tell. "Although this one hasn't updated her address..." The monitor on her left opened utility records; she began scrolling through a list of details that Len tuned out.

He's not the only one. The face of 'Stiles' was gazing out from Hartley Rathaway's driver's license. Address wasn't Len's safehouse; an apartment out in the Heights, not a bad one, but not the Rathaway mansion. Kid probably moved out for a while when he was working at the lab. "That's not one of the Rathaways, is it?"

Bisrat hummed and typed; Len glanced away, politely. "Surely is," she said after a moment. "Hasn't been at that apartment in a year and some, though. Someone else's name on the lease there now, and I don't think they and their kids are sharing the place with him. You want me to go looking for him?"

Len hesitated, then shook his head. "Sure I can find a rich kid if I need one. Addresses on the others, though?" Unlikely to matter, but didn't hurt to have, and Bisrat didn't need to know that the Rathaway details were more than he'd hoped for.

"Always always."

"You're an angel, Bisrat."

"And you're a flattering man, but I like you still."

Len left, a loose idea of a story coming together in his head. Rich kid gets a job, thinks he's better than he is or that being however good he is gets him more latitude than it does, gets his spoilt ass roasted by his boss, and mommy and daddy don't pick up the pieces. Cue a seething hate-on directed at parents, former boss, and STAR Labs as a whole. Wouldn't have been remarkable if he hadn't had a knack for gadgets that broke glass and shoved cars around.

Len wondered idly how annoying the kid had been before he'd screwed up at STAR Labs, that his parents hadn't thrown him a lifeline.

Still. He didn't need to get along with him; he just needed a few details about Cisco Ramon and the way into the Rathaway mansion. And he wasn't seeing anything to suggest Hartley--pardon me, Stiles--was anything more than he'd seemed to be.

Running an errand for a rich brat was annoying, but Len's hands were itching for the grip of the cold gun again, and he could tell Mick was missing his heat gun. Felt bad for his partner, really; was going to make that right.

He and Stiles could work together long enough for that.

When it starts:

One-thirty Thursday morning, Hartley had insisted, and they walked the last of the distance to the Rathaway grounds. It was a cold night, damp with a slight wind, and the estate was far enough out from the city that the sky was thickly frosted with stars. Light pollution was apparently not in vogue. Hartley was shivering in his jacket and carrying a pair of empty rucksacks, but doing it without complaint.

From the wall around the grounds, the house wasn't fully dark, but it was politely dimmed, a scattering of its windows dimly lit. The delivery gate around back was locked, but Hartley tapped a code into the keypad and it beeped politely and opened.

"Sure that'll stay open?"

"For another eight hours." But only from the inside, from what Hartley had promised earlier; the Rathaway estate needed to let reliable plebians in sometimes, but it did that once and let them see themselves out. It worked well, if you were dealing with bonded staff and if a prodigal son hadn't turned off the cameras and sensors.

Hartley was still talking, which by this point wasn't really a surprise to Len. Ask the kid about something he knew that you didn't and as long as you didn't look irritated he just kept talking. "They generate a code when the landscaper needs to bring in equipment. It's good for twelve hours after generation, for one use. But Burtch likes to get them set early, sends them to the landscapers before he goes to bed, and their security is... pretty pathetic, really."

"Landscaper's coming, Stiles?" He hasn't bothered to mention his visit to Bisrat yet; if the kid wanted to hide his name, Len was happy to let him think he'd succeeded. Some people got touchy when you caught them lying.

"There are guests coming on Friday. They want the place looking its best." Hartley sounded bitter and pleased at once; as if he'd bitten into a lemon so someone else couldn't have it.

The servant's garage was by the delivery entrance, and there was a lockbox by the door, lightly furred with dark dust. Nothing here was really allowed to get dirty, but this hadn't been touched in months, and the exhaust in the air had layered over it. Len kept a lookout as Hartley knelt next to it. The lawn was a dark rolling acre of wet grass, ruffling under the breeze. Footpaths carved elegantly through it, and in the distance there was a hint of something sharp-edged and flat that was probably either a tennis court or a pool.

The size of this place, kid could probably have snuck back home and no-one would've noticed for a month.

He glanced down as the lockbox opened. "Everything you managed and you couldn't get your own keys?"

"They changed the locks." Hartley's voice was sharp. He picked up the keys, curled one finger through the keyring. He was wearing long gloves under his jacket, thick things with silver keys along the arms and green lights at the wrists. Len hadn't particularly wanted him to bring them, but Hartley had pointed out that he didn't actually have a safe place to leave them, and the safehouse didn't count since Len knew about it.

The mutual trust was heartwarming.

He'd walked city blocks shorter than the distance from the garage to the back door. The cameras studded the building; Hartley didn't look at them, but Len took a moment to satisfy himself that they were actually out. Hartley hopped up the back steps, crossed the open porch, and opened the back door with the keys.

He wiped his feet as he went in. Len rolled his eyes and followed, shutting the door behind them as Hartley punched yet another code into the panel next to the door. The was a polite tone--nothing so aggravating as a beep--and recessed lighting came gently on. Len shook his head. It almost felt like cheating.

The floors didn't creak, exactly, but they muttered a little under Hartley's feet; the whole house was solidly built, and the floors were rich oak hardwood, neatly joined. Len let Hartley lead. There's a dim green light from his gloves, the kind of thing that wouldn't be discernable if there was any more light in the halls, and he clearly knew the place. The rapid walk through the hall takes a detour past a room with a fireplace and a collection of overstuffed chairs, into a library, and through the shelves to an alcove that has a discreet door set within it. Hartley stopped for a second, listening, and then took a framed print off the alcove wall to reveal yet another panel of buttons. This one at least looks like it fits with the rest of the room, bevelled brass and line etchings like an elevator's idea of Art Deco.

"No secret passages?"

"Not in the library."

Len glanced at the print resting at the foot of the wall--Raczynski, he thought--as Hartley tapped in someone's birthday or anniversary and opened the door. The room beyond was dark, and he took three steps into the darkness and flicks a switch.

Warm lights came up, illuminating a room in the theme of dark wood and burgundy. There was another door that's more obvious across from them, has a carved doorframe and a deeply panelled body. Len glanced back at the one they came through and decided it was a servant's entrance, or something Rathaway used when he felt like going discreetly from his office out to the library.

There was a cherrywood desk bigger than some cars Len had seen, set grandly in the middle of the room. A chair upholstered in burgundy, a rug that's all dark red and cream with blue lines carving patterns into it. There wasn't a computer in evidence, but there was an actual paper blotter on the desk, and a glorified notebook, and pens. And there was a cabinet and one glass-fronted bookshelf for books and another--how do these people have so much stuff--half filled with what for a normal person would probably be junk, pictures and glasses and display boxes. But the glasses were Lalique crystal, like the matching decanter, and the paperweight on the desk was a netsuke, an ivory mouse gone yellow with dignified age, that looked like it might get up and cross the desk if left alone.

There was a photo on the desk, too, in a gold frame. Just Rathaway and his wife, and Hartley was staring at it, hands clenched and shoulders hunched under his jacket. There's a little less hate in his glare than Len expected; the restraint's good to see.

"Key for the desk?" he prompted after a moment.

Hartley shook his head. "The key won't be in here, but it's got an ordinary lock. And there's a safe in the cabinet, too." He dragged his gaze away from the picture and stepped back towards the room's other door as Len knelt down in front of the desk. There locks on the drawers were an elegant joke, and it was the matter of a minute to open them. Hartley moved to the desk and began opening drawers as Len crossed to the cabinet.

Inside it was a collection of files, a flatscreen TV, and a tough little block of a safe. The latter had a mechanical combination on it--a waste anywhere else, an acceptable indulgence behind the Rathaway security--and Len began to work on it. It occurred to him that Hartley could probably learn to do a decent job of that, with hearing sharp enough to catch the sound of the lock opening, but Len was bored enough to take a crack at it himself. There was a delicate shunking noise, barely audible, and the door swung open.

He'd collected the case of Krugerrands and the bearer bonds when he noticed that Hartley was just standing over the desk with a letter opener in his hand, staring down at the open drawers.

Len noticed the picture of Rathaway wasn't in evidence anymore.

"Take something that doesn't have a lot of resale value," Len said, "people start figuring out it's personal."

"Because it doesn't look personal anyway?"

"It looks like bragging," Len said, grinning as he finished emptying the safe. "Different kind of thrill."

"I was just looking for the certificates," Hartley said thinly, gesturing with the letter opener. "I mean, everything's been used, and they're scarcely good museum quality, but it's something."

"Your--" Len almost said Your father and caught himself-- "telling me Rathaway uses museum pieces at his desk?"

"It's not a particularly special work," Hartley said, "but I thought that with the certification that it used to belong to Eleonora de' Medici it'd be worth more. And the netsuke's actually from the early eighteenth century and well-preserved, and not a late-nineteenth century-- I mean--" He was starting to sound very slightly flustered. "I am really not up to date on the illegal trade of items that aren't actually useful, but I don't think it was an unreasonable assumption."

Len opened his mouth, shut it again, and then settled on "Long as it's actually worth something, grab whatever you like."

Hartley nodded and finished with the desk, then hesitated and turned to the bookshelf with the display cases and took one of them down. Len had seen it and dismissed it; an large ornamental key, a brass thing greasy with tarnish, but nothing special. If it actually belonged to any lock, it was one he could have picked with a spoon handle.

"What'd I just say?"

Stiles shook his head. "This is bragging," he said. "It was given to Obed Rathaway in 1907. City ordinance held that another one couldn't be given to his descendants--one per family--and by the time that was changed in '85, the Rathaway businesses had spread their focus away from Central, diversified. And they're not likely to have another on issued to them now." He held the case out to Len, who didn't move to take it.

"Fascinating," he said sarcastically. "What is it?"

"The key to Central City."

Len blinked.

"I mean, I understand that you don't need it, practically or symbolically." Stiles looked down at the case, his mouth thin and nervous. "Still. Schlösser und Schlüssel macht man nicht für treue Finger. You seem the type."

"Come again?"

Stiles smiled a little, pleased to be interesting. "'Locks and keys are not made for honest fingers.'"

Len laughed. "You carry it," he said, finishing with the safe and slinging the knapsack over one shoulder. Spoiled brat, maybe, but a little entertaining when he got past the vendettas against the Rathaways and Wells. Not reliable yet, certainly, but competent and entertaining made the job more enjoyable, and they were turning a hell of a profit.

"Come on," he said. "Jewelry won't lift itself."

Chapter Text

Twenty-seven minutes after it starts:

Hartley is used to keeping his family at a remove. Even when it was going well, they didn't understand him. Since then, he's confined himself to watching (although if they hadn't been out of town when the particle accelerator was turned on, that would have changed); he tells himself it's not that different than his last few years at home, except they don't expect anything of him.

Coming back home is like nothing he ever imagined.

Hartley spends his time diving into what he's learned, chasing it into perfect configurations; schematics and algorithms and the blind purity of instrumental noise, secrets and conspiracies and Harrison Wells. But when he's tired, his mind drifts back to his home; knowledge so old he can't remember learning it, reflex and memory, the path he'd take if he ever wanted to come back.

It's not the same. Everything sounds different; the house shifts and creaks and breathes, and he's more aware than ever of the age in it, the whispering gravel around its foundation and its oaken bones. This was meant to be his home; it's not the house's fault that he's been away.

We don't have a son anymore.

He can feel his father's ransacked study behind him like the empty socket of a tooth.

Someone better call 911.

A light flicks on in one of the halls that around the hallway's corner, and Hartley doesn't even hesitate; skips the first door on his right because it sticks, opens the second and steps in without turning on the light. Cold follows quick as a shadow, and Hartley leans back against the wall, listening.

Cold waits patiently for a minute, then shifts his weight, draws Hartley's attention. Arches an eyebrow and glances pointedly at the door, makes a come-on gesture with fingers circling in the air...

"Two," Hartley says softly. "One coming, one going back into the atrium." After hours, it might be Ethan going over the paperwork, or one of his parents. It's probably Ethan; neither of the Rathaways stay up very late, and while his mother liked the atrium, if his father woke up in the middle of the night he'd be more likely to go to his study.

The lights in the hall outside the doorway come on. The footsteps are coming closer, and he thinks they're probably Ethan's, but he hasn't heard the man walk except briefly at the airport and to be honest he was fairly distracted at the time.

"Think they know you?"

Cold's voice is loud enough that Hartley can hear it, but no louder. "Probably," he says absently, still straining to see if he can recognize the pattern and pace of the steps--

Cold shoves him out the door.

Hartley trips into the hallway, catches himself before he goes sprawling, straightening up and doing a quick two-step back to catch his balance. And thank goodness it is Ethan, because someone else might not recognize him so quickly.

"Ethan!" he says, sleepily, pleasantly, and most importantly not too loud. He sticks his hands behind his back to hide his gloves and smiles up at the family's assistant, taking another step back.

"What are-- Hartley?" Ethan comes towards him, reaching a hand out. He's had more years of treating Hartley as the Rathaway scion than he's had of running interference between him and his parents. Hartley's not sure if he's offering balance or planning to try to restrain him. Ethan probably doesn't know either.

"It's good to see you again, Ethan. You're looking well."

"You can't--" Hartley watches Ethan realize that the locks were changed and Hartley's access codes were cleared from the system, and come to the natural conclusion; that someone let him in. And there are very few people who would defy Osgood Rathaway that way. "Did your parents-- does your father--"

"It's all fine," Hartley says, still smiling, and that's when Cold hits Ethan from behind and the man goes down, doesn't even have time to groan. Cold catches him before he hits the floor and drags him back into the room they came from. Hartley follows, shutting the door behind them, watching Cold drop the man next to the couch and go through his pockets.

"Will he be alright?" Hartley says at the same time as Cold asks "There a lock on that door?"

There's a moment of silence that's only awkward for Hartley. "There is," he says as Cold-- it looks like he's tying Ethan's wrists to the couch leg with a lamp cord, and Hartley wonders how the hell you get enough practice to do that by touch and decides not to ask. He's feeling--

Ethan wasn't a bad sort. He didn't risk his job to get Hartley back in touch with his employers or anything, but Hartley doesn't really blame him for that.

"I asked if he was going to be alright," he says, a little sharper.

"He'll be fine," Cold says, straightening and moving towards the door. "We going past the atrium?"

Hartley folds his arms and doesn't follow. "When did you figure it out?"

Cold's smirking a little; Hartley can make out the twist of his mouth in the darkness of the room. "Must've been when he called you by name."

"How very prescient of you, to ask if he'd recognize me before you heard that."

"Hartley Rathaway. What d'you care if I know your name, long as I don't spread it around?" The smirk widens, but he can hear a slight hurrying of Cold's heart; realizes he's clenching his own hand into a fist, and forces himself to stop it, spread the fingers out again, relax. Angry is fine, he can be angry; he doesn't want to look like he's angry and planning to be a threat. He hasn't actually used the gloves on people, not really, not standing so close, and anyway it'd probably go badly.

"It's a matter of wanting to be sure you wouldn't spread it around." It isn't. It isn't only that; Hartley is alright, sometimes, but the Rathaway name comes with shivering chains of expectations and responsibilities, self-taught and stringently reinforced, and he really has enough to deal with right now.

"Not my style." There's an amused drawl creeping into Cold's voice. "You made it easier to take him out, that's it. We're here for a job. Let's get back to that. So--the atrium?"

"We need to go through it." Hartley thinks for a second. Ethan was there, so it's probably just catching up on the household paperwork; he probably had someone else helping him with a couple of details, if there was something important. Might have been seeing someone, but working from an admittedly small sample size the house staff usually doesn't use the atrium for that. And given how late it is, whoever was helping him was probably house staff, so they'd know Hartley.

"Same routine?"

"That should work." Hartley follows Cold out of the room, watches as he turns to lock the door with what have to be Ethan's keys and then starts down the hall. The hallway to the atrium is ahead on the right; through that is Rachel Rathaway's sunroom. Another twenty minutes and he's sure they can be gone.

He isn't trying to be quiet, and whoever's in the atrium hears him coming, and probably thinks it's Ethan coming back. He can hear them approaching, and hooks on a pleasant enough smile as whoever it is comes to the door--

"...Hartley?"

It's his mother.

Here is a thing Hartley is proud of, though he has not had anyone he would confess it to in so very long; his parents love each other.

They are a perfectly courteous and conventionally devoted couple in public, and to friends. In private he has seen them fight and make up, has seen the wounded anger and trusting joy. Osgood Rathaway holds his wife when she cries, and moves heaven and earth to make her smile; Rachel Rathaway is thoughtful and genteel and he has seen her turn herself inside out in her husband's defense. She could make peace so easily between her husband and son that it took him years to notice it, and she taught Hartley to play chess.

She hasn't won a game against him since he was nine. (Not a real game. He used to play her with handicaps; the real challenge was hiding it when he let her win.)

They went through a bad time when he was eleven, and stopped talking except in front of him or late at night, hissed and angry. He knew what to expect. No-one in Osgood's circles would really look down on him for remarrying to a brighter model, and his mother is only a Rathaway by marriage, not blood. But it never happened, and they began speaking again. He remembers being surprised that they stayed together; he hadn't seen people get so angry with each other and come back together again.

It was nice, being in a family that loved like that.

Cold is moving behind him, Hartley can hear it, and he puts one hand out to his side, reflexively, the palm pointing backwards. Ethan was unfortunate, but no-one is hitting his mother. His head is spinning in the quiet. He tries to say mom but nothing comes out.

He got her that housecoat for Christmas one year. His second year of university, when he'd been thinking about telling them and hadn't. That she still has it when his father's replaced the family picture in his study makes his eyes sting.

"I guess you didn't get my calls," he manages. He was aiming for bitterness, but it comes out in a waver instead. She didn't say anything to Ethan at the airport. She didn't say anything to his father. She didn't really have the chance, did she? There was that interruption--

This is not what he planned.

"I'm so sorry, darling." She's not lying, not even in that smooth-it-all-over way he knows so well where the intent isn't to deceive but to protect; there's a set to her jaw when she does that, a slight lift to her brows. It's strange to realize he hasn't forgotten any of this; all the old knowledge was waiting, just behind his memory of their last conversation. "Your father should never have sent you away, we never should have-- I'm so sorry--"

He hears someone trying to say don't, stuttery and hesitant, and there's air moving in his mouth but nothing's coming clear. Her eyes are shining and she looks so afraid, but not of him. "Don't cry." Don't you dare, when you did this. It's not her place. It's not her right. But he doesn't want to be the crying kind, and someone should--

"Hartley," and this is not what he was planning, not any of it, but her hands are on his arms and she's smiling. No-one's looked at him like they care about him instead of just wanting something from him in so long.

He didn't expect it to be so disarming. He didn't expect it at all.

Muscle memory, that's all it is. Shock someone and they'll fall back on an old habit, they'll step forward and put their arms around someone they haven't spoken to in years, put their chin on her shoulder and let out the breath they've been holding when she hugs him back...

His eyes are watering.

"It's all going to be alright, Hartley," she says, pulling back a little so she can look at him again, and putting one hand to his face. Thumb brushing across his face, just below the glasses. "Everything will be alright." He's just beginning to smile back--

"I've found a place where they can fix you."

Chapter Text

"I've found a place where they can fix you."

For a second, Len thought the kid's mother had stabbed him. Hartley's face drained to ice-white in the elegant lighting of the hall, and he stepped back from her, hands falling loosely to his sides. Len took a step towards them on pure reflex; the kid's intel, maybe, but it was Len's job and his direction. He wasn't interested in getting anyone killed.

But there was no blood and she was still reaching out to him, hands empty of any weapon.

"Please stop." Barely loud enough to hear.

"Hartley, let me help! Hasn't it been awful, since you left? And that trouble at S.T.A.R. Labs--you'd never have done that before--"

Oh good. Family squabble. Those always went well.

Hartley took another step back, two, and stumbled but didn't fall. He lifted his hands; wide, like a conductor, pointing up and out. Not aimed at his mother, although Len wasn't sure she was paying attention to the gloves regardless; not even an effective bluff, then. "Just stop."

"Darling," and her face was sharpening with a look that was one part irritation to three parts concern. Len recognized the expression; he'd worn it a few times when Lisa got stubborn and did something more dangerous than he'd like. He started forward. This discussion was over, if it meant dragging Hartley out of here by the scruff of his neck. "It's not your fault. And if Wells-- Hartley, if he or anyone else persuaded you that you had t--"

The world shattered as Len was reaching for Hartley's arm.

There wasn't a noise. Noise had a shape; even the loudest thing Len had ever heard had a beginning and an end and a way to turn away from it. He got his hands over his ears and it made the pain stop, but everything was shaking, the air and floor alike trying to slip away from him. He went down on one knee, felt the floor shudder and crack.

The hallway danced. Before Hartley, silk wallpaper tore apart as plaster shrapnelled behind it, lath and plaster bursting into the air. As the walls began to peel away, the support beams behind them cracked lengthwise as old oak hummed to itself, discovered dissent, and split. Behind Rachel Rathaway, the lights began to pop as the ceiling shuddered, shrugged, and then fell into the hallway. Glossy white tiles from the floor above broke into smithereens as they hit, followed by something heavier, porcelain or marble. Water began spraying from somewhere, catching the light still shining from behind Len, cutting a faint glitter through the dust filling the air.

And in the center of the crumbling hall, a slight figure in black, dropping his hands as everything stopped shaking.

The ceiling above Rachel Rathaway hadn't fallen, although it was sloping down into the hallway, and less than a dozen feet past her it had stopped being a ceiling and was rubble on the floor. She was huddled on her knees, hands over her ears. Her mouth was open, but Len couldn't tell if she was screaming or not. Everything was ringing, as if the air itself was chiming like crystal about to split.

Glass, Len thought, with his sight vibrating slightly, as if his eyes were trembling in their sockets. He pushed cars off the road and broke a lot of glass. He never did anything like--

He felt a thump coming up through his feet as part of a wall collapsed somewhere. Taking his hands off his ears didn't hurt, so he straightened back up, tried to get steady on his feet. Hard to tell if he was managing it; the world was doing a slow lazy swing around and under him. The worst of the damage had been done ahead of Hartley, like a shaped charge; here, Len thought he could put a hand on the wall next to him for balance without falling through it. He did that, put one hand over his mouth to filter out some of the dust in the air.

Glass. What the fuck.

Hartley turned; Len thought he was wavering a little, but his sense of balance was still shot and everything looked like it was swimming a little if he didn't look at it head-on. The kid came up to him, hesitated, and said something that looked like excuse me.

"What?" Len heard his own voice but only on the inside of his head, weird and echoey. It sounded like speaking inside a tin box.

Hartley looked back at his mother, who was staring shocked at them both, and smiled that bitter fishhook grin. Then he hooked both wrists over Len's shoulders, pulled hard enough to drag himself up and erase the height difference, and kissed him.

Len put one hand back on the wall for balance as Hartley leaned into him. His head was still ringing, and the reflex to shove Hartley away was tripping over the irritation at being used to make a point, and the anger that had started when he'd thought Hartley's mother had actually hurt him.

He'd clearly missed a couple of things--something to address later--but Len understood wanting to make a point to any parent that made their kid look like that.

He put the hand he'd been using for balance around Hartley, high in the small of his back, and leaned into him. Hartley yelped against his mouth, and staggered a little, and Len caught him; free arm around one shoulder, hand in his hair, steadying him.

(Not his oddest interlude in the middle of a job, but it was up there.)

He watched their audience from the corner of his eye, counted to four before Rachel Rathaway actually managed to blink, and then he straightened up and loosened his grip. Hartley stepped back, looking only slightly less stunned than his mother, and Len felt a brief flare of satisfaction and grinned.

Hell if he was going to be upstaged.

"Time to go." His voice was still that odd tinny thing coming from inside his own head, but he thought he could hear a ghost of it sounding more normal. Hartley blinked at his we-need-to-leave handwave, and nodded. He hooked his elbow around Len's arm and started pulling him down the hall, running with only a bit of a stagger.

Chapter Text

It's not quiet, but he can't hear anything. He can't make out anything, his ears feel hot and there's a noise roaring in them like a paper fire, all chewing and crumpling, and a screaming at the edges trying to needle its way in. It's as close to silence as he can get, now. His earbuds have gone into full damper mode to save themselves, leaving him with the sound of his own ears; otoacoustic emissions of shifting cells and fluid.

Stupid. He has no excuse for it. None. He should have thought more quickly, planned better, expected a more realistic reaction than the one he'd thought he was seeing for a minute, and hoped less.

He should have hoped much less.

(The screaming is the noise of the world creeping in around the deadening filters. There is always screaming.)

His hands hurt at first, a crackling pain in his palms, but the pain's being overwhelmed by a dull buzzing sensation and his fingers are starting to go numb. The baffles protecting his hands from his gloves are resiliant, but the acoustic lenses and amplifiers don't actually have any kind of enforced limit; he never saw the need. Common sense and restraint always served him well enough before.

He doesn't think anything's actually broken, but--bolting down the hallway, unhooking his elbow from Cold's arm because the other man is keeping up perfectly well, and trying to concentrate on where they're going in the face of his mother saying she can fix him--the pain in his hands is secondary to the fact that he thinks everything's getting quieter.

Not sure what's causing that; hopes it's only being stunned. Or trying to process things. He can't exactly keep up with everything that's going on and it's a very fraught situation and he did come onto a professional thief in front of his mother just to make a point, what was he thinking--

--but he tasted like something clean and inevitable, wintergreen breaking under the weight of frost, rain at three in the morning when you've got nowhere to go, and he kissed back and--

Hartley takes a short flight of stairs at a clean jump, glances back to see Cold close behind him and letting him lead, and the glance is enough to throw him; he hits the floor of the lower hallway unsteadily and the bag he's still got over his shoulder swings and throws his balance off so he puts his hand out the wall to catch himself, and the pain that bolts up his arm is a useful distraction. His hands don't hurt as badly as his ears right now, but there's a reason he hooked his wrists over Cold's shoulders instead of getting a grip on his jacket and Hartley you broke your home you need to get out of here so please just focus.

Alright.

The car they'd brought was still outside the back gate. He expected that the sudden interruption of power, plumbing, and structural integrity that he'd caused would have triggered a lockdown; the system wasn't talking to the outside world, and it was blind, but it wasn't dead. Getting off the estate as quickly as possible meant a car that wasn't across the grounds and on the other side of a wall, and that meant the garage.

The perpetual shrieking in his ears has died. The crumpling hush is still there, but it sounds like a fire that's getting further and further away, dying down to embers. He brushes at his ears with fingers too stiff to bend and then Cold grabs his shoulder and Hartley takes one look at his expression and starts moving again.

He didn't need to hear to know his way around his-- the house, and he didn't need the lights; he was running the route half out of habit. He used to go this way in summer sometimes (to sit with a book in the cool oil-smelling shade of the garage with the cars lined up glimmering and sleek, all their colours gone sleepy-dark against the sunwarmed grass-smelling glare from the open door, and he'd partly he'd wait for one or another of his parents to come back, but mostly it was just reading somewhere quiet and still), down the back hall and along the east side and after the next doorway the garage was just a short way past the--

His habits never took the security room into account.

He slammed into one of the two discreetly suited people hurrying towards the noise, and since they were professional security and Hartley was Hartley he'd have bounced backwards and fallen if the man in front hadn't grabbed his arms. He was trying to pull back enough to get his hands up when there was a flicker of motion to his right and the man went down in a heap from Cold's punch, fingers pulling loosely off Hartley's jacket.

He had time to say sorry to the other one before he held up his hands. There was a flicker of green and the sensation of a fresh cluster of nails being pounded through his palms as she went skidding backward and slammed into the wall, bounced back and hit the floor and didn't move.

Skidding, not flying. Barely put a dent in the plaster. Alright.

Cold touched his arm, and Hartley looked around. The other man's mouth was moving and by the irritated expression Hartley guessed he'd been saying something for a while. He shook his head, held his hands up with the backs of the gloves towards Cold rather than the palms; it was the best he could come up with for a wait gesture that absolutely couldn't be read as a threat. He hoped.

"I can't hear you," he said. Cold started to say something and Hartley put his hands over his ears, shook his head, shrugged helplessly. "Can you hear me?"

There was a pause and Cold held a hand up, parallel to the floor, see-sawed it a little. Hartley nodded.

"I think the back gate will have locked." He pointed back the way they came--well, aimed his fingers that way, it hurt less--and shook his head. "The car's outside it. It'll be faster if we can get another car, and the garage is this way." He gestured in the direction he'd been running in.

Cold pointed back over his shoulder; since he'd just brought it up, Hartley thought he could make out the shape of word garage on his mouth.

"That was the servant's garage. This one's closer and the car keys will be there." Most of them. Possibly all of them. But at any rate at least some.

Cold nodded, beginning to turn away before something caught his attention. He stepped forward, took Hartley's chin in hand (and Hartley pushed away a completely unreasonable tangle of emotion) and turned his head to the side.

"What're you--" Hartley reached up and Cold brushed his hand aside with a flick, ran his fingers over Hartley's ear; then he stepped back, holding his hand out, and Hartley saw the blood on his fingers.

Ruptured eardrum was his first thought, and of course that's just a perfect problem to have right now, but it leaves him wondering why the hell he was hearing anything at all after the dampers cut in. Shouldn't everything have gone quiet at once?

He might almost put up with Cisco if it meant that he could have Caitlin look at his ears.

"Are you bleeding?" He wiped at his other ear; there wasn't much blood, and it sank into the black of his gloved fingers with little more than a pinhead glitter.

Cold touched his own ears and held out clean fingers. Hartley tacked a thin smile onto his face and shrugged. "Alright. Let's just go."

The garage smelled the same; oil and clean darkness, the faint overlay of rubber and oil. Hartley elbowed the switch on and pointed to the keys on the wall, touched his own ears again. If he could get the buds out of damper mode he might be able to get a better idea of how bad it actually was--

There wasn't anything small enough on the walls or the neat shelf by the door. "Do you have a pin or a wire?"

He didn't really expect a response, but Cold handed him something that looked like a dental pick with a flat handle and crossed to the row of keys on the wall. Hartley held the pick in his right hand, curled those fingers around it with his left until he'd gotten the best grip he could, and poked the wire carefully into his ear. He'd done this before, but his hands had been working better then.

He probed gently, found the reset button's pinhole, and pressed down.

The world came back with a blender-engine shriek, knives hollowing out his skull, the grating howl of Cold's sleeve brushing against his jacket, the crepitant slither of grease in the engines sliding slowly down in gravity, the whine of electricity in the walls and car batteries, the clamour of a keychain drowned out by the crash of the lockpick falling to the ground, his own breath buzzsawing wet in his throat--

And then relative quiet, and Hartley picked the lockpick up from where he'd dropped it and straightened up. Cold was giving him a distinctly unimpressed look. Not out of line with what you'd give anyone who jammed a wire into their ear. Hartley was really making a stellar impression, he was sure.

"The hell're you doing?" and Cold's voice sounded muffled--not quiet but blurred, as if it was coming to him through something thicker and soupier than air.

"Fixing my ear," he said, and caught a slight skip in Cold's heart rate through the blurring of sound. It really felt like he was half underwater, and he touched the side of his hand to his ear again, looked at the glove. But there was barely any blood at all--

It clicked, and he pressed the heel of his hand against his earlobe, dragged it down. There was a brief wet heat on the side of his wrist and the howl of air flowing in as blood ran out, sounds gone crisp and clean when he took his hand away. He looked at his wrist and saw more blood, but not... well, he didn't think it was a terrifying amount. About what you'd expect, if your ears started bleeding and you had a carefully fitted appliance in your ear canal that kept the blood from actually getting out.

"Stupid," he muttered, and Cold looked over from where he was opening the driver-side door of one of the cars and hummed agreement. The car was something dark blue with a dramatic silhouette. Hartley had seen it get driven maybe twice.

"You can hear now?"

"Yes. Well, partly, although if I can get the other one--"

"Great." Well, the word was great. The tone was shut up. Verbal communication was such a nuanced thing. "The way out?"

"Going out the garage and down the driveway takes us out the front gate. It'll be locked. I can break it?" The question in his voice sounded terrible; he swallowed and shook his head. "I'm sure I can break it."

"I bet you can." Cold was getting into the car and Hartley started towards it, heart in his mouth and already figuring out what he'd do if Cold left without him. "Get the door and get in. --the garage door, Rathaway."

Truly stellar impression. Truly.

He hit the switch on the wall, then hurried over to the car and hooked his hand under the door handle, pulled awkwardly. The car was half out of the garage before he was fully seated, gravel pattering under its wheels like hard snow. Hartley shoved the bag he was still carrying behind his seat and snapped the seatbelt on. "Are you going to hit me when we get out of the car?"

"For turning a quiet job into a demolition project?"

Hartley swallowed. "Yes. That. I mean--" His fingers were locked together, knuckles white with pressure. "I'd understand." Probably the fact that he knew how Cold could control Cisco was the only thing keeping the other man from--

He closed his eyes for a minute. "Thank you for not doing it in front of her."

"What?"

Anything. He'd been too angry in the moment to assess the likely outcome; if he'd thought of it in advance, he'd have expected the kindest possible response from Cold to be getting decked, and would have come up with something else. Anything else. But the thought of actually talking to them hadn't occurred to him, and--

"Hitting me. Or something..." He trailed off and the tires made a rattling groan as they slewed sideways on the gravelled driveway, drowning out anything else he might have said. It was as good an excuse as any to shut up.

"Maybe after we're out of here. Get the gate!"

"Right." Hartley leaned out of the side window, his glove starting to hum as he stretched his hand towards the gate ahead of them. Out of the corner of his eye he caught it when Cold shot him another look, which he couldn't quite read. Disgusted or furious, he thought. Which was understandable; he'd done things that had upset other people, but he couldn't actually remember such a massive screw up by his own lights in... ever, really.

He tilted his wrist and forced his fingers through the air, coaxing out a glissando of sound, and the gate juddered against its hinges, danced for a moment, and came apart in a shower of silver and black. There was a brief moment where the air smelled like scorching metal as they drove over its remains and whipped onto the road.

Hartley pulled his arm back in and hunched over it. The feeling in his hand had gone from nails to a wasp's nest, but he didn't think it was a good time to complain.

"Are we going back to the other car?"

Cold shrugged. "I didn't leave anything behind. Did you?"

That's a rather fraught question. "No." It sounded thin, but he was afraid that adding anything would sound weak or annoying or-- He shut up, pressing the back of his left hand to his mouth.

"Good." Cold glanced back at the lights of the Rathaway house and pressed down on the accelerator. The car leapt forward, bolting after its own headlights, leaving the empty road in its wake.

Chapter Text

Hartley was nearly certain they were overdriving their headlights. He actually opened his mouth to say something about it and couldn't bring the words out, pressed back into his seat instead as if it'd make the road come at him a little slower. The back roads this far out from Central weren't well-kept; the twiggy ends of branches rattled along the side of the car and groped in at the open window, snapping against the car's speed.

He flinched back as one of them slashed past hard enough to shed a leaf into his lap. Thin little thing, looked like a fragment of oak.

"Could you close the window?" he said.

"Can't you?"

"Not at the moment." He'd tried, but starting to bend his fingers enough to hook the window's latch made pain burst nearly up to his wrist.

Cold glanced over, and then up to the rearview mirror to take a look at the road behind them. Whatever he didn't see apparently suited him, because rather than touching the controls to close Hartley's window he pulled over to the side of the road.

The engine ticked patiently to a stop. The leaves whittled against each other in the chill breeze, and after a minute Hartley could hear crickets starting up again. He was trying to calculate the odds of Cold telling him to get out and walk when the other man spoke.

"What the fuck was that about?"

"I-- wasn't thinking." He couldn't think of anything more damning at the moment, and his chest felt hollow; it was a struggle not to hunch forward, curl his shoulders in. "I don't get along with my parents."

Cold snorted when nothing else was forthcoming. "I guessed. Now, from the top: how much of that was planned?"

"Nothing!" He hoped the surprise he was feeling rang true; the thought of anyone deliberately planning that debacle made his head hurt. More than it already did. "Nothing since we-- I ran into her. I didn't expect to see her; she's usually asleep by now. I didn't plan on how to leave after, I just knew that the garage was the closest place to get a new car, and that'd be faster than running back across the grounds. Before that--"

The ceiling coming down, unpeeling, the crumping finality of the fall. He started wondering what had happened to the room Ethan was in. It hadn't been in the blast zone, but if the walls had been more damaged than he'd thought, or the ceiling had been weakened...

Probably Ethan was alright. Probably. He'd have to-- if-- when he made it back to someplace where he could sit down and think for twenty minutes, he could find out.

Hartley shook his head and it turned into a shiver; he hoped it passed for a reaction to the damp night air that was blowing gently in through his still-open window. "I didn't plan to bring the walls down," he said distantly. "I thought she--" What? Meant it? She had meant it; that she missed him, that she wanted to help him, that help meant pruning away inconvenient parts of him and graft on something more palatable.

He closed his mouth miserably.

Cold sniffed. "What exactly did you do that mommy and daddy think needs fixing so much?"

"I'm gay."

Cold didn't say anything, just waited, and frowned after what seemed to Hartley like far too long. Not the what the fuck is in the car with me kind of frown, more of a get to the point thing.

The latter expression meant less immediate grief, but Hartley was really tired of both of them. He glared.

"That's it?" Cold said. "Not 'gay and secretly married to a circus acrobat'?"

Hartley's glare sharpened. "I actually lead a fairly--"

"'Gay and blew the trust fund on your mother's pool boy'?" Cold was smiling, very faintly; Hartley wasn't sure who was being made fun of. He hoped it was his parents, but overall he was failing to see a lot of the humour in the situation.

"She doesn't have--"

"That's why they didn't do anything when you got hauled out of STAR Labs by security?" A definite edge of amusement in the voice, now, which didn't distract from the details of what was being said. Hartley bit back a startled curse.

"They weren't doing anything for a quite a while before that," he said, and then, measured bitter words and feeling like a fool, "Is there anything you didn't dig up?"

Cold made a low humming sound that Hartley was suspected was a laugh. "Rich people." He glanced behind them again, then looked back to Hartley. "No wonder you were pissed. Alright." He ran his fingers over the steering wheel for a moment, light and thoughtful, and Hartley's own fingers twitched sympathetically and zinged with pain. "Any more landmines in your brain I should know about? Your grudge for Wells going to come up with Cisco Ramon?"

Hartley caught himself before he could flinch too hard, and before his hands got too close to his ears; folded them on his lap and lifted his chin back up. "No. Nothing like that."

Cold looked at him for a moment.

"You're new to this," he said patiently, "so I'm gonna ask you one more time, 'case you were thinking of keeping your mouth shut out of habit." Hartley imagined an unspoken or because you keep secrets so well and winced. "Anything else that's gonna come up with Cisco Ramon?"

Hartley shook his head.

"Good." Cold took hold of the keys, but didn't turn them. "The last thing you did with those gloves was shove cars around?" Hartley nodded, since the details of the Flash were-- well, that hadn't worked, so he doubted it counted as a done thing. Cold seemed a rather pragmatic sort. Results-oriented. "Why the upgrade?"

"There wasn't an upgrade," he said. "I just never turned them up to eleven before."

"Because your mom upset--"

"Yes, I lost my temper, can we move past that?"

Cold looked at him flatly. Hartley remembered deeper disdain from men whose opinions he'd valued more and that had hurt worse, but...

"I find dealing with them--" dammit, his throat was dry; he swallowed and went on-- "irritating. I wasn't expecting it to happen and I acted unreasonably." Mea culpa; mea maxima culpa. Hartley couldn't actually bend his fingers to put them to the corners of his eyes.

Cold started the car and pulled out onto the road; the greenery on Hartley's side moved over the car's paint with a ticking scrape. "Sure," he said, and Hartley did not trust the mildness in his voice for a second. "I've seen worse reactions."

Hartley thought of the pyromaniacal ox he had seen at the airport, and didn't say anything. He imagined that seeing a reaction was different from being surprised by it, and the latter was probably more upsetting, but it didn't seem like a good time to volunteer that observation.

"Which is not to say I'm pleased," Cold added. "Feel like talking about Wells?"

"Shockingly, no."

That amused humming sound again. The car picked up speed and Hartley tried very hard not to shiver in the damp wind. Cold tapped a couple of buttons; the window next to Hartley slid up and the seat started to warm up.

"Thanks," he said softly, but either he'd misjudged how loudly he needed to speak or Cold was ignoring him.

Hartley took a long, slow breath and concentrated on calming down. Being stuck in a car with a career criminal after he was done being useful wouldn't have exactly been a comforting position, but then he wasn't done being useful. The theft hadn't been the point, after all; the point, as far as Cold was concerned, was leverage against Cisco Ramon. And Cisco wouldn't really get hurt; they needed him.

He opened his mouth, shut it again, and told himself there were more immediate concerns than Cisco and Ethan, and there was nothing he could do from the car in any case--

Someone better call 911, and he shook his head once, sharply. He was still upset. He knew he was still upset. That meant it was not the time to start second-guessing himself.

"Something on your mind?" Cold still sounded mild. Hartley looked up, didn't look at him exactly but the dashboard lights were enough to put a faint mirroring on the inside of the windshield. He could see a ghost of both their faces, faintly. Over to the left, Central was painting a dim warm light onto the sky; it had been on their left since they'd left the mansion, he realized.

"Where are you going?"

"Back to Central, the long way," Cold said. The road ahead of them was long and clear; he glanced at Hartley. "You said they're having guests tomorrow?"

"Yes." Kay and Cherie Lemberg from the Arts Board, Dexter Myles, Carlisle and Harburg... His parents had friends, but the people coming by tomorrow were more connections. The kind of people whose company you might enjoy but who it was primarily important to look good in front of--

Hartley was smiling. It felt odd. "I think they'll have to find a different venue for dinner," he said. His voice was... well, he wouldn't go so far as to call it giddy. Wavering and light. "The mansion simply won't be up to snuff. How inconvenient."

"Good," Cold said. He looked at Hartley's reflection in the windshield for a moment, and the flat expression--the kind of thing you would call a gaze, Hartley decided, very calm and still and not at all gentle--was almost unfrightening. "You're going back to the house. I'm going to give that colossal clusterfuck you got me involved in back there a little time to cool down, and then I'm coming to see you about Cisco Ramon." Hartley felt his smile fade, clung to the light wavering sensation. "Trust you're smart enough to stay put 'til then."

"My intelligence is not ever the problem," Hartley said sharply. He shook his head again, putting the doubt aside. He'd think things over later, sort them into order when he was done processing the events of tonight, wasn't tired and hurting and a little on edge (and still hadn't quite pushed aside that irrational thought of being left by the side of the road). He could figure it out, see if he needed to change things, if he just had enough time--

Meanwhile, halfway through an arrangement with Cold and headed back towards a part of Central he's never spent much time in, he hardly needed to be a genius to know what promises to make. "I'll be there."