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Ray Palmer wasn’t just wealthy, he was a true genius and excellent businessman, having built his company up from its very foundations. Really, he saw himself as your average self-made-man: his ideas, his technology, his company… all things that could not be achieved without his own will, hard graft and determination. Of course, your average self-made-man did not have a billion dollars in assets, so maybe Ray was a little extraordinary in that sense.
With that kind of money, Ray didn’t often find himself posed with questions that he could not answer. Scientifically, of course, some things were unanswerable, but not when it came to day to day life. Conversations, contracts and cash solved pretty much everything – apart from the biggest question of all:
What exactly was he going to do to make his soulmate hate him?
Now, the 21st Century wasn’t an awful time to live in. Society had moved forward greatly in the last 50 years, and the pressure to find and spend the rest of your life with your mystical ‘soulmate’ had lifted greatly. It wasn’t looked down upon to date around, or even choose to marry someone who’s first ever words to you wasn’t marked on your skin. There was even a school of thought popular amongst the younger generations that just because your soulmate was deigned to be from the moment of your birth didn’t mean that you had to subscribe to such condescending programming. That it was human nature to meet and fall in love with spontaneity. Only you could choose where you found happiness. Ray Palmer believed in this philosophy – happiness was your own making, soulmate or not.
He’d been engaged. Anna had been beautiful, she had been kind and she had been smart. She’d been everything that he’d ever wanted; a partner that spurred him to fulfil his potential and be the best man he could be. The only problem was that when she came bounding up to him in his second year of college to ask him where her class was supposed to be. “Hey, do you know where B57 is?” were not the words scrawled on his forearm.
But that didn’t matter. He loved her, and against the criticism of his grandparents he’d asked her to be his wife. They were going to live happily ever after, meant to be or not. Except, that is, until Slade Wilson’s army had stormed Starling City and she’d been caught in the crossfire. She’d died in front of him, and he’d been helpless to stop it.
After the funeral, after the grief and the anger and the bitterness, Ray was left sitting alone looking at his forearm, reading his mark over and over again.
“You’ll pay for that, pretty boy!”
What did it all mean, any of it? It seemed angry, bitter in itself. Perhaps that is what the universe had decided – that Anna’s death would change him and that his true soulmate reflected who he was now, in that moment of pain, rather than who he was before.
But things changed. Ray grieved, but he moved on; finding joy in new places and resolve in others. In his work, and in Felicity Smoak. The inscription on his arm did not change, nor did it fade as it would if his soulmate were to die, but it once again slipped back into the recesses of his mind. Who cares what was destined for him? He should live in the now and be the best man he could be no matter what opposed him.
***
Gunfire in an enclosed space is louder than they ever give it credit for in the movies. Ray knew that that really shouldn’t have been his first thought, but then again hearing a gun fired into the air behind him while chatting amicably with a receptionist at one of Central City’s bank branches hadn’t been top on his list of things to expect from his afternoon.
The gunshots, accompanied by the screams of the other patrons of the bank – yes, screaming should maybe have been the correct response– were followed by the shouting of the man who had pulled the trigger.
“EVERYBODY GET ON THE GROUND! THIS IS A ROBBERY!”
Ray sank to the floor with everyone else, eyes darting left and right.
There were five men in total, each dressed head to toe in black, carrying a gun of some description and four of them carrying sacks. The fifth, however, held a stopwatch in his free hand, pointing his oddly shaped gun lazily at the terrified crowd. He said something inaudible to the man who had discharged his weapon, who nodded in response and gestured to rest of his crew. They fanned out, heading to the desks.
“Nobody move and nobody will get hurt! Just unload the registers into the bags. And don’t even think about hitting the alarms, or I swear to God I will put a bullet right between your eyes!”
The woman at the desk behind Ray whimpered. Her hands were shaking as she tried to open the register, but she couldn’t focus. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The nearest of the men saw this, diverting from his previous aim and heading straight towards them both, gun pointed directly at the woman’s head.
“Alright lady, you better start pulling that cash or you’re gonna regret it.” He had an accent, Irish, maybe.
But it was too much for her. With the register just open she broke, the muzzle of the pistol cracking the last of her resolve. She burst into hysterics, falling back and curling her arms defensively around her head. The man swore, scanning the room quickly before pointing his gun at Ray.
“You. Stand up and get around the desk. NOW.”
Taking a deep breath and swallowing Ray stood, slowly so not to provoke the man and his finger itching on the trigger, and sidled around to the business end of the desk.
Irish followed him with his gun. “Now open the register. Slowly. That’s it, sunshine, now take the cash and put it right here in the bag.”
Behind Ray the clerk was wailing, making enough noise to draw the attention of the man with the stopwatch. Gun raised he came to join the man currently watching as Ray emptied the cash register into his waiting sack.
“There, not so hard was it. Keep an eye on this one and I’ll get the next desk,” Irish motioned to Stopwatch to take over from him and made his way toward the next one along.
The handover should have been smooth, but there was something about Stopwatch that caught Ray’s eye. He seemed restless; impatient even. There it was; Ray’s chance! Stopwatch’s eyes flicked for the briefest second from Ray to the ticking clock in his hand. Just enough time for Ray to reach under the desk and trigger the silent alarm that he knew he’d find. His finger connected with the button, pressed it with a satisfying click-
A firm hand gripped his arm tight. Stopwatch’s eyes, visible beneath his full-face ski mask, narrowed in fury. A second later Ray was being slammed against the wall behind him, Stopwatch’s hand gripping the front of his shirt and his gun jammed into the soft flesh under his jaw. A low growl escaped the man’s covered mouth, his voice a sneering drawl.
“You’ll pay for that, pretty boy! Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t ice you right now.”
Ray gaped.
There it was. The sentence Ray had been waiting his whole life to hear, out of the mouth of a man with a gun to his head. He floundered, as if the air had been sucked from his lungs, and tried to take in every detail of the man in front of him. He was tall, though lacked an inch or so on Ray himself, and moderately built; slender yet muscular. His gloves suggested hands almost too delicate to hold a handgun, suited more suited to tasks that required great skill – surgery, the piano, lock picking… but it was the man’s eyes that struck him most of all. Bright and blue, a piercing stare picked out against the black of his mask. Ray found himself transfixed.
The muzzle of the gun pressed harder into his jaw. (It was strange, Ray thought, how many other guns glowed?) “Well?”
Ray swallowed again, with some difficulty, unable to tear his gaze away from the pools of icy blue in Stopwatch’s eyes. The words come tumbling out all on their own – without rhyme or reason – self-preservation be damned, according to his larynx. “You have… beautiful eyes…”
The effect was immediate. Stopwatch’s eyes widened in shock, just for a second, before narrowing in anger, his eyebrows furrowing and his grip on Ray’s shirt tightening. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
He dropped the gun from Ray’s head, his hands shifting to Ray’s arms and flipping him around with force. Ray heard the scrape of plastic on plastic and felt something cut into his wrists, binding them together.
“You’re coming with me, pretty boy,” Stopwatch’s voice was hot against his ear, and he was being pulled, dragged across the length of the bank. “Come on we have forty three seconds!” Stopwatch was shouting to the others.
They were running, the hand on his arm never faltering in its grip. There was a van, and Ray was bundled into the back. They were driving off before the doors were shut.
One of the men pointed a gun at his head. “What the hell are we doing with him, Snart?”
“He’s a hostage,” Stopwatch replied coolly, “he’s worth a lot of money.”
“Yeah well he’s not worth jail time. Look at him! He could identify any of us, Snart!”
“Well, he can identify me now, can’t he?” Stopwatch- no, Snart – shot back, his tone steady. “Here, I’ll fix it for you.”
There was a sharp pain in the back of Ray’s head, and then there was darkness.
***
Light. Pain. Pain. Light. It was like a bad hangover. Ray blinked, slowly, eyes focussing on the dim room around him. There was a single light overhead, pointed directly in his face, obscuring anything too far beyond from view. As far as he could tell he was in a small, windowless room, with a concrete floor. A single door, the paint flaking, stood closed to his right, a shadowed figure leaning against the frame.
Ray tried to move, finding himself bound to the chair he realised he was sitting on. Everything ached. His head pounded.
The figure moved.
“I have some water here, Doctor Palmer. I’m going to untie you, now, and you can drink it, if you promise me you won’t do anything stupid. Can you do that for me, Raymond?”
That voice… the slow drawl… it was the man with the stopwatch. What was his name? Salt? Snit? Snart.
Ray nodded, slowly, the very motion making his head pound harder. At once he felt his hands free and he grasped the cup held before him and drank. His throat was drier than he’s ever imagined, the water like a drop in the Sahara. He needed more.
The cup was refilled and he drank, and drank again, his thoughts slowly returning to order, his memories organising and reorganising, piecing together what had happened and why he was here. The bank, the robbery, he’d triggered the alarm-
You’ll pay for that, pretty boy!
Ray froze, the words ringing out in his head. Surely not? Surely that had been a dream, a concussion induced hallucination. The man who had put a gun to his head, who’d tied him up, thrown him in the back of a van and knocked him out... he couldn’t be his soulmate, could he? It had to be wrong, a coincidence or something. Ray squinted through the bright light above him, trying to pick out the man’s features. As if reading his mind, Snart reached up and angled the light away, easing Ray’s effort and illuminating himself in the process.
He wasn’t bad looking – sort of rugged, his hair buzzed close to his scalp and his jaw strong. Thin lipped, he smiled at Ray, his piercing blue eyes fixing on him through the gloom. He’d changed out of the black long-sleeve he’d been wearing at the bank, now opting for a simple dark T-shirt, his arms visible but not bare. A series of intricate tattoos wound their way from the capped sleeved of the shirt down to his wrists, undiscernible in the half-light but undoubtedly beautiful. With a painful twinge Ray realised their purpose; not just to decorate the man before him. They obscured both his forearms, so obscuring the inscription he’d been born with – his soulmate’s first words to him. Ray’s first words to him.
“How you doing there, Raymond?” His voice was gentler, now, almost soft.
Ray rubbed his face, running his hands through his hair and wincing as his fingertips brushed the welt forming at the back of his skull. “How do you know who I am?”
Snart shrugged, “I didn’t, not at first, but I thought you looked familiar. Then it hit me: not many billionaires frequent Central City, especially not dead ones.”
“So that’s what you want with me. The money? To hold me to ransom? Overturn my death and blackmail me?”
The man shrugged again, moving to recline against the wall opposite him, though he kept his voice soft, almost wistful. “What else is there?”
Ray shook his head incredulously, “I don’t know, destiny? Love?”
Snart snorted, the drawl returning to his voice. “Love? Don’t you think that’s a bit forward Raymond? After all, we just met. And I did knock you out and tie you up, though if you’re into that then I won’t be the judge…”
Ray grit his teeth. “Come on, there’s no point denying it. You know as well as I do, I saw the look on your face! We’re soulmates!”
“Please. Do you really think someone like me would end up magically bound to someone like you?”
“Yes. I really do. And I don’t think so, I know so, Snart. That is your name, right?”
Snart kicked off the wall and came to crouch in front of Ray’s chair, their heads level. He held out his hand as if in greeting, which Ray felt obliged to take, “Leonard Snart, at your service,” but he didn’t let go. Instead his other hand gripped Ray’s forearm and pulled up his sleeve, revealing the black lettering on his skin.
“See?” Ray held his gaze as Snart examined the words, written in a slanting script. He mouthed them silently to himself, running his index finger across each letter lightly. Ray shivered at his touch, feeling equal parts repulsed at the thought of this violent criminal laying hand upon him and intrigued at what else they could do, his soulmate’s hands against his skin…
He took the opportunity to rake his eyes over Snart’s own forearms, searching for his mark amidst the man made lines. His tattoos were breathtaking, like a scene from the Sistine Chapel ceiling but bent on Dante. Figures in flowing robes danced across his skin, with wings and horns and swords all poised. Ray couldn’t help himself. His free hand moved and traced the patterns of its own accord, demons and creatures giving way to a single angel, its sword raised high as if calling the darkness around it to order. There! Along the blade of the sword, half obscured by the shading Ray saw the ghost of the mark, blacker than the other lines, which had faded slightly with age. To any other it would have been illegible, the shadow of the ‘y’ and the curl of the ‘s’ bookending the mark. Ray felt his heart flutter involuntarily.
“See?” Ray repeated, breaking through Snart’s trance. The other man grunted in response, standing and pulling his arm away.
“It doesn’t mean shit, Palmer, not to me.”
“Yeah well you’re a terrible liar, you know that?”
Snart turned, a sneer suddenly drawn across his mouth, “you know what, Raymond? It’s bullshit. All of it. You know nothing about me. You have no idea the kind of shit I’ve had to deal with in my life, the kind of things I’ve had to do in order to survive; in order to feed myself and my sister, to keep her safe. And yet here you are, rich beyond comprehension, just ready to stroll into my life and start caring about me? And what, because of some stupid tattoo? Maybe I would have believed in it twenty years ago, but now? Not a chance.”
“Leonard…” Ray paused, his voice low, nearly a whisper in the wake of Snart’s outburst, “I’m… I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I can’t change the past, you know? If I could go back there are so many things I would change, people I could save… but I can’t. What I can do, though, is change the future. Change how things pan out. Make a difference. I’ve spent my whole life refuting this stupid soulmate thing. I fell in love, nearly got married. Not for one second did I ever think that some random stranger could ever jump into my life and change it forever, but they did. Anna did. But then she was taken from me. And if one person can do it, why not two? Soulmates or not, one person can change another’s life. That’s something I believe in. And you must too, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. You know who I am, Leonard. This place,” Ray gestured to the room around him, “it’s pretty small. Probably a basement, right? A group of your criminal prowess would probably have your own holding cells, if not a larger, more well equipped basement for keeping your hostages tied up. You didn’t tell the rest of your crew who I was, did you? Otherwise I’d be hog tied to a table with a camera in my face while you demand my company ransom me for half my worth.”
Snart tilted his head, “would you prefer that? Because it can be arranged.”
Ray grinned, despite himself, “See. I knew it. You took me somewhere private. Based on the dimensions of the room and your change of clothes… This is your house, right? You took me home?”
“So what if I did?”
“It doesn’t matter how cynical you are, Leonard. Some part of you still believes in whatever forces there are in the universe.”
Snart sighed, “Not just a pretty face, huh?”
***
They talked for what seemed like hours, Ray pitched forward in the rickety wooden chair and Snart cross legged, back up against the concrete wall. Their childhoods, their dreams and ambitions, their struggles and deepest fears, all suddenly exposed in the cold little basement. It was awkward at first, but as they spoke it became easier, familiar even, and understanding flowed between them. Secrets never spoken aloud spilled forwards, dark truths and long buried skeletons rearing their ugly heads without judgement.
It was Ray who made the first move forward, reaching without thought to take Snart’s hand as he told him about his father. About how the man beat him and his sister, time and time again, about how he forced Snart’s hand to work for him by implanting explosives into Lisa’s head and how, without an ounce of regret, Snart had driven a shard of ice through the man’s still-beating heart.
Len didn’t retract from the touch, instead squeezing Ray’s hand in return. Ray ran his free hand back through his hair and winced again at the pain it caused. Realisation suddenly seemed to dawn on Snart and he stood quickly, pulling Ray with him. He led him through the door and up the darkened flight of stairs, into the house, into his bedroom. He sat Ray down gently, leaving and coming back with a fresh glass of water and a packet of painkillers.
“Here, take these. You’ll feel better after you sleep, I promise.”
Ray tried to protest but Len was as forceful as he’d been in the bank, helping Ray strip off and practically tucking him in. The afternoon had faded into evening into night, and Ray was more tired than he remembered being, and Snart’s bed was soft and warm. With ease undeserving of the day he’d had, he drifted into dreamless sleep, Snart sitting by his bedside, hand entwined with his own.