Fic: Être Libre (Ao3 Link)
Fandom: DC's Legends of Tomorrow, the Flash Pairing: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart For Coldwave Week: Abduction/Kidnapping - @coldwaveevents
Summary: It was supposed to be a standard contract.
The Fae kidnaps the human, the human is given everything he wants and nothing he needs, and the Fae is enriched.
But nooooooooo, nothing in Len's life can be simple.
(Mick Rory is such a tricky human!)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was supposed to be a standard contract.
Supposed to be, being, Len supposes, the key word. He's never been good at being what he's supposed to be.
Neither, it seems, is the subject of this contract.
"How hard can it be," he says, mimicking his sister's higher pitched tone to an exaggerated falsetto. "It's just a basic contract! Everyone does contracts. People have been doing it for literally thousands of years. The time will pass in barely a blink of an eye. You're not nervous, are you? Not you, a strong, attractive, big, tall -"
There's a muffled snort.
Quiet, but enough.
"Found you!" Len exclaims, leaping forward to yank aside a bush to glare at his target.
"Yeah, sure," Mick says from where he's lying on his back in the dirt. Utterly shameless, like he wasn't just hiding from Len a few seconds prior. "Tell me, did she really say 'tall'? That seems like an unnecessary bit of flattery."
"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's never been happier to be abducted.
