“I’m not in the habit of reaching out to masks like you,” Leonard says, his voice as cool as the vapor cloud spilling from his gun. “But your boy scout in scarlet? He’s gone. Off the grid. And when he disappears, bad things tend to happen. Bigger than my kind of bad.”

Your hands clench into fists inside your gloves, every instinct screaming that this is a trap. He spent years scheming against the Flash. Isn’t exactly the messenger you’d pin your hopes on. But tonight, he's serious. Too serious, and that terrifies you more than he ever could.

“You expect me to believe you?” you ask, stepping closer. The brick wall behind him is frosted from the barrel of his weapon, jagged ice climbing like pale fingers across the mortar. “Flash could be anywhere, doing anything. Just because he’s not here doesn’t mean—”

“He didn’t tell you, did he?” Snart cuts you off, a cruel twist of irony in his smile. “Always thought he kept his friends in the loop. Guess I was wrong.” He shakes his head, lowering his gun but never letting it fall from his grip. “He went chasing something he shouldn’t have. Got himself caught. Word is, if we don’t get him back, there won’t be a city left to save.”

Your heart pounds against your ribs, panic laced with anger. Snart’s words could be lies. Yet the fear threading through them feels real enough to chill your veins. The image of Barry—your friend, the one who always arrives in a blur when you need him most—locked away, vulnerable, gnaws at you like teeth on bone.

“Why tell me?” you press.

Snart exhales, the puff of his breath visible in the cold. For a moment, you see past the criminal armor to the man beneath—someone tired, weighed down by grudges even he can’t carry forever. “I hate a lot of things. But I hate the idea of this city burning without him even more. There’s no score to settle if the board’s been wiped clean. Understand?”

You do. And you hate yourself for it. Because he’s right. Without Flash, the fragile balance between chaos and order collapses. Villains won’t just scheme—they’ll consume.

So now it’s you and Leonard Snart. A vigilante who fights to keep shadows at bay, and a criminal who thrives in them. Opposite ends of the same game board, forced onto the same side for once.

“You double-cross me,” you warn, pointing a finger at his chest, “and I’ll make sure that gun of yours melts into slag.”

Snart chuckles low, dry as ice cracking. “You’re fiery. I like that. Let’s hope you’re as good as the Flash seems to think you are.” He turns, frost crunching under his boots, and gestures with his cold gun down the alley. “Come on. We’ve got work to do. And if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll both live to hate each other another day.”