#YEAH OKAY THE PIGS COMMITTED THIS CRIME CASE CLOSED

[crow-n-tell]

Look at this cool bone I found

:0

I LOVE BONES, that looks like a pretty funny one. Humerus, one might say…

any idea who the bone belongs to??

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: An Internal Affair - Chapter 1 (Ao3 link)

Fandom: The Flash Pairing: Leonard Snart/Barry Allen

Summary: Leonard Snart, the CCPD Captain of Internal Affairs, is known as Captain Cold for a very good reason: He hates corrupt cops with a merciless vengeance, and once you're on his list, you're in serious trouble.

His next target?

A CCPD lab tech named Barry Allen who's developed a suspicious habit of disappearing at random intervals.

A/N: This first chapter (slightly updated) was originally a prompt by @litrapod​ that I filled for Coldflash Week, but it's now a novel. I'm hoping to post updates twice a week - current plan is Tuesdays and Fridays, but we'll see what groove I settle into.

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"Forgive me if I don't get up to say hello," Len drawls as Captain Singh walks into his office. He leans back in his office chair and gestures vaguely towards one of the seats, because if he doesn’t Singh will take one anyway.

Singh smiles tightly. He’s trying to be nice, but it’s hard for him. He takes a seat and makes an effort to make the smile more appropriate for the nice, friendly chat that they’re not actually going to have. "Of course not," he said, nodding at Len's injured side like he knows something.

He knows nothing.

Oh, it's common knowledge by now that Leonard Snart, one of the CCPD's finest undercover agents, recruited into the joint task force with the FBI, had been grounded at last when information about his identity had slipped out to such a degree that those who had worked with him in the criminal underworld had turned on him.

Everyone knows, also, that Leonard Snart took a bullet to the gut and another to the thigh and that he's still healing from them, but that he refused time off and insisted on coming back to work – even accepting a position that was largely a desk job to do so.

Everyone knows, last but certainly not least, that Leonard Snart is a hell of a lot smarter than he seems, because his humble acceptance of a desk job (to keep busy, he said, with a straight face and a bowed head) that was designed to keep him out of trouble was in fact just another stratagem, because it got Leonard Snart the job he's been angling to get for who knows how long.

Internal Affairs.

Head of Internal Affairs.

Leonard Snart's time spent underground – over a decade at least, and possibly two – gathering invaluable information on the criminal world had been rewarded with a promotion and an assignment to a seat that most cops reviled.

That wasn't an issue for Leonard Snart, as the department soon discovered, because he hated most cops just as much in return.

Abusive father that used to be a cop, the whispers said – they'd always known that, of course, but no one had put two and two together until Leonard Snart had been made a Captain and spent his first month on the job systematically destroying men's careers with an icy smile that never wavered.

Captain Cold, they called him – sneers and mockery at first, but as he took down one untouchable after another, men and women who were infamously corrupt but (it had been believed) unable to be removed, the term changed to one of fear and respect.

Mostly fear. Not a little bit of hatred, too, for the man who seemed to have nothing to hide and nothing to lose and whose entire existence, now, seemed wrapped around a vendetta aimed not at the criminals but at the CCPD who enabled them.

It's just as Len said: they know nothing.

Oh, it's all true, all of it, all the rumors, everything from his piece of shit of an ex-cop dad to his time undercover to his manipulation of the system to get the position and power he wanted. It's the details that matter most.

He hadn't just been shot when some asshole at the CCPD let slip who he was, leading eventually to someone telling the Families about him. He'd been kidnapped. Tortured.

Sentenced to a slow and painful death, all alone in the dark.

And he would have died, too, if Mick Rory hadn't come to save him.

Mick Rory, arsonist, pyromaniac, thief, muscle, thug.

Mick Rory, committed criminal.

Mick Rory, Leonard Snart's best and maybe only goddamn friend in the whole wide world, who Len had lied to from day one and kept lying to through thick and thin. Who Len had used. For his friendship, for his strength, for his credibility in the criminal community, and he’d given him back nothing but lies.

Despite all of that, Mick came for him.

Mick fought through the assholes guarding the door and he shot the assholes who were torturing Len and he got Len out.

Mick got Len away from the Families, carried him in his arms while he was bleeding and crying like a child. He got Len to the hospital, to safety, even though he knew Len was a cop now, a pig like all the others.

Then, when the police assigned to guard Len's room arrived and kicked him out, he went home.

And at home…

The Families fire-bombed his house that night, knowing that his pyromania would keep him from saving himself. They were right. He survived only due to a fluke, a part of the building falling fast enough to extinguish the fire faster than expected.

Mick Rory now lies in a hospital bed in a very high end burn clinic in Keystone City as the doctors try to salvage what they can, nearly two-thirds of his body burned.

Len never even had a chance to thank him.

Lewis Snart might've been the one that taught Len what a corrupt cop looked like, but it was what the cops did to Mick Rory that makes Len hate them.

"Can I help you?" Len says to Captain Singh, head of the midtown precinct, who seems to have lost the ability to speak since entering the room.

"I want to discuss the newest case you're working on," Singh finally says.

"Have you got intel for me?" Len asks, deliberately cruel. Cops hate a snitch as bad as any felon, and the suggestion that Singh's here to tell tales gets the flinch Len was looking for.

He doesn't actually have anything against Captain Singh personally – the guy's a good cop, believe it or not, with good detection skills and better management skills and unlike most of the lot of them, he's not completely in the Family pocket – but Singh's a believer in the blue line, cop solidarity über alles, and until he remembers that his loyalty should be to justice and truth before friendship, Len's not about to give him the benefit of the doubt.

That's why Singh's here, after all. He's not here to snitch.

He's here to ask Len to back off.

More fool he. Len never backs off.

(Len will admit, however, that he's a hypocrite: he's never had any problem valuing friends over laws – his first loyalties are to Lisa, tucked far away with her skates and the college he's paying for, and to Mick. But not at the expense of the corruption of the blue, the goddamn cops who are supposed to be protecting the helpless; that's not a crime against society, which Len could forgive, but a crime against his city, and Len will never forgive that.)

"No," Singh finally says. "Listen, I know this is a long shot –"

"Who?"

"I – what?"

"Who?" Len repeats. "Who do you want me to back off of?"

Singh looks suspicious; good for him. He's not an idiot: he knows a request to back off will only make Len more suspicious.

"I don't want you to back off, exactly," he says. "More – I don't want you wasting your time."

Len arches his eyebrows and waits.

Singh's an experienced cop, veteran of a thousand interrogations and interview rooms, and he knows how silence can be wielded as a weapon.

It's just that Len's better at it, that's all.

"Barry Allen," Singh says, giving up the name. "I don't know how he got on your list –"

"He's never here but his work always gets done," Len says dryly.

"He's efficient –"

"He's always arriving late, looking like he's been busy somewhere else."

"He's always had an issue with –"

"He disappears at odd times, say, around the same time something is going down."

"There's always something going down –"

"He knows more about crime scenes than he should upon first glance."

"So he's good at his job –"

"He talks about active cases with people outside the precinct."

"We all do to some degree –"

"Brand new set of friends."

"Not exactly a crime –"

"And all of that following nine months disappearance –"

"On medical leave!" Singh bursts out, a vein starting to pulse in his forehead. "He was in a coma!"

"Yes," Len drawls, stretching the word out. "He was, wasn't he? Then he got himself transferred out of the hospital into a private facility – a private facility run by Harrison Wells, aka the genius behind the Accelerator explosion that supposedly caused Allen's little 'accident' – and what do you know? Not only does that place not have proper records as far as I can tell, it appears that, both before and after the explosion, they have only ever had one patient."

Singh is gaping at him.

"Now, I don't know about you," Len says, tilting his head to the side in his most irritating, exaggerated thoughtful way. "But when you put all that together with the fact that a lot of these bad habits are newly developed following that so-called coma of his – except for the punctuality, of course, that's long-standing – you get a very interesting picture. One I intend to look at a bit more closely."

"Goddamnit, Cold, he was hit by lightning," Singh says through gritted teeth. "Some changes are to be expected. It's a miracle he even got that much of him back –"

"Yeah, about that," Len says and now his teeth are bared. "Funny how his job was still open after nine months."

Singh straightens up like he's just been shocked by lightning himself.

"Funny, too, how there weren't any concerns regarding his mental state after being hit by lightning," Len continues. "But you know what's the most funny of all?"

Singh is silent.

It's okay, Len wasn't asking that expecting an answer.

Len leans forward. "What I find the most funny, Captain Singh," he says, as conversationally as he can, "is that he says that he was in a coma for nine months, right? Nine months. It's been a little over nine months since the explosion. Nine months, and he's back to work in a week? No bedsores, no muscle atrophy, no deterioration, no physical therapy, no occupational therapy – oh, no, our Mr. Allen apparently leaped out of his hospital bed and went for a goddamn run around Central City, fresh as a daisy. And, in the process, either during the coma or during that run –"

Len flips open the folder on his desk, revealing two photographs. One is Allen before his mysterious nine-month absence; one is after. He's shirtless in both, because Len's contacts sometimes like to snag shirtless pics for him ever since they figured out he was pansexual – something that usually pisses him off, except he wouldn't have figured out the weirdest part of this whole Allen thing if they hadn't so he supposes he has to forgive them.

"– the man picks up a set of abs," Len concludes, his voice flat. "Now, Singh, I know you've given up ogling other people in your marriage vows, but tell me, in view of your past experience in this field, does one generally get that sort of body development lying in a hospital bed?!"

That last bit was said with a full on snarl.

Okay, so Len's a bit touchy on the whole hospital subject.

Singh's shoulders slump down, an acknowledgment that he doesn't have the answers Len's looking for and that there is no way that Len's dropping this investigation – either into Allen, or, if that pans out, into Singh for enabling him.

And because Len's investigations are typically confidential among the Captain rank at this early stage, if Allen hears so much as a whisper on the subject before Len's ready, Len will know exactly who to blame.

Len smiles at him. The smile has teeth.

"Good talk, Singh," he says encouragingly. "Have a nice day, why don't you?"

Singh's lips are pressed together until they're very nearly bloodless with rage, but he's smart enough not to say anything. He knows how dangerous Len is.

He walks out with his shoulders squared, much like someone who wants to punch someone and is very nearly there, but barely refraining.

Len dials a number on his desk before grabbing his crutch and limping heavily over to the door that Singh rather rudely left open, particularly given that he knows that Len prefers a closed door and has difficulty walking to close it.

"Chum in the water, sir?" his assistant asks dryly. Technically, Len ought to have a whole team, and he does, but he's spread the best of them out widely among the precincts of the sprawling Central City. This isn't really 'home base' for him, just an office he can use for the time being – and one at which he’s newly arrived, no less, after he was quietly encouraged to move until the looks of his fellow policemen became a touch less murderous – but that's fine. As long as he can do his job, he's fine. And he can do his job here with just him and his assistant.

(Why did he never consider investing in a personal assistant when he was a criminal? They're so useful. He would've saved himself so much angst. His current assistant, Danvers, is the best.)

"Not him," Len tells Danvers with a faint grin. "That was just a friendly chat. Come in and take some dictation, will you?"

"You make that sound so awful," she observes. "I should sue for sexual harassment."

"If you're getting sexually harassed, then I'm in a hostile work environment."

"Boss," Danvers says, suppressing a grin. "You are a hostile work environment."

"Kara Danvers," Len groans. "Just get your ass in here already."

She laughs and gets her ass in there with her speed-typing box – she used to be a court reporter before Len snagged her, and she's amazing – just in time for the open phone line Len dialed to start picking up things on the other side.

The other side being the desk immediately adjacent to one Detective Joe West's, who has the dubious honor of being Singh's confidant, Allen's mentor (possibly father?), and one of the poor souls on Len's list, given the remarkable speed by which the open investigation of his recent officer-involved shooting (West being the officer) got resolved.

Someone should really do something about the security in this place. Len plans on giving them a list before he leaves - but only after he's done exploiting it.

"- don't let Cold get to you, chief," West is saying. "He's got nothing on you."

"That isn't the issue," Singh replies with a sigh. "I don't want him here at all. Investigating my people -"

"When he could be doing something useful with his time," West agrees. "Goddamn parasite."

"Joe," Singh says, mildly censorious. "He's your superior officer."

West snorts. "By cutting in line - yeah, yeah, I'll back off. He did amazing work with the Families, not just here, but everywhere, I'll give him that much. But I don't have to appreciate the fact that the guy's working out his childhood trauma on us."

"Joe!" Singh exclaims. "That's uncalled for."

"Oh, come off it," West says with a laugh. "We all know the story - dad was a bad cop and a mean drunk that liked to knock his kids around. And now the - I mean, our very respectable visiting Captain Cold, he's got a vendetta against the boys in blue instead of the guys that really need to be taken off the streets."

"If a cop's done something wrong, they need to be taken off the streets too, Joe," Singh says. "That's what Internal Affairs does. You can't hold it against Cold - I mean, Snart - that he's good at his job."

"Even you call him Cold," West points out. "And that's saying something."

"No, Joe, it isn't," Singh replies, sighing. He sounds tired. If he was tired, he shouldn't have tried to go up against Len. "I'm pretty sure I just called him it to his face, and that's still not saying anything. The man really is good at his job, and he's utterly fearless. We need someone like him rooting out corruption, we really do. But sometimes he goes barking up the wrong damn tree -"

"Someone in our precinct?" West asks, his tone lighting up with interest.

"That's confidential," Singh snaps, clearly remembering himself. "Damnit, Joe, he'll have my job if you go around blabbing."

"My lips are sealed," West promises, but though he tries to raise the subject of Len a few more times, Singh is having none of it and firmly steers the conversation onto their current investigation.

After listening for a little longer, Len nods to himself and hangs up the line.

"...did he really call you Captain Cold to your face?" Danvers asks, her lips twitching with suppressed laughter.

"Cold, anyway," Len says, allowing himself to smirk as she starts giggling. "I think I made him angry."

"Boss," she says, lifting her glasses and wiping the tears of laughter out of her eyes. "You make everyone angry. It's practically your hobby."

Len grins. She’s not wrong.

But the grin slowly fades as he thinks about the task he’s set for himself.

He’s engineered a few meetings between himself and Allen – usually he sets up the first meet at one of the local Jitters, where he can ‘accidentally’ stumble with his (annoyingly still-necessary) crutch to get people’s attention, and Allen’s no different.

Well, he was a bit oblivious but it worked eventually. Len took the precaution of telling the barista that he was trying to get Allen’s attention, which definitely helped cover his ass stumbling so many times – Kendra thought he was hilarious and adorable and definitely hinted strongly to Allen to pay attention.

Since then, they’ve been sitting together whenever their coffee runs ‘coincidentally’ match up.

That’s probably how Singh realized that Len was onto Allen’s case, putting the seating and Len’s high-level sealed reports together.

The problem, though, is that Allen is…frustrating.

“Thinking about your newest boytoy again?” Danvers asks.

She only looks innocent.

“Target,” Len corrects. “Not boytoy.”

“You’re basically a cat, boss,” she says. “You play with your food and your toys and your targets all the same way.”

“Basically a cat,” Len says, rolling his eyes. “This is what I get, is it? I employ you, you know.”

It’d taken literally months to break Danvers of her annoying habit of being excessively deferential, so she knows he doesn’t mean it.

Her smirk makes that very clear.

“You didn’t answer the question,” she points out.

“Because you phrased it in a stupid way,” Len grumbles. “But yeah, I was thinking about Allen.”

“What’s the problem, then?”

“Well, to start off, he’s extremely shady,” Len says. “He’s got to have some secret way in and out of Jitters, because I have literally blinked and he’s slipped out somehow. He’s always whispering about stuff with those new scientist friends of his from STAR Labs, and they’re almost always talking about the latest disaster in town, and that’s usually followed immediately by Allen disappearing for a bit.”

“That doesn’t seem like a problem,” Danvers says. “That sounds like a good lead.”

Len makes a face.

“No?”

“He’s nice,” Len complains. “I see why everyone here likes him; he’s friendly and acts all well-meaning and he helped an old lady cross the road last week –”

“Oh, I see,” Danvers says, grinning. “You think he’s hot.”

“Of course he’s hot,” Len says. “Lots of people are hot; I’m pansexual. That doesn’t usually distract me from doing my job. Besides, he’s half my age.”

“You exaggerate,” she says. “But putting that aside, you are doing your job, because your job is figuring out if someone is up to something. If even you’re getting good vibes off Allen, then maybe, just maybe, this one time, a cigar is actually just a cigar.”

Len blinks at her.

“Maybe he’s clean,” she clarifies.

Len snorts. “He disappears for nine months, claims he was in a coma, and comes back in the best shape of his life,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “At the minimum that’s going to involve some sort of medical insurance fraud, or possibly unemployment fraud. Plus, by all accounts the guy seems to have a real knack for avoiding confrontation by being a compulsive liar.”

“But?”

“His lab work is good,” Len admits. “I haven’t seen any patterns of him altering evidence in favor of any given party, and the lab boys over at the Feds say the reports are basically done right, though they can’t quite get the centrifuge data to match up.”

“A real enigma, then,” Danvers says. “Your favorite.”

“Danvers.”

“Don’t you Danvers me,” she says, smirking at him. “You should go ask him out on a date.”

“I can’t date a target.”

“Go ask him out for a totally platonic dinner, then,” she says. “Do it when you know something’s about to go down – and don’t think I don’t know that just because you’ve been burned doesn’t mean your connections in the underworld are totally gone. That way you can eliminate each possible affiliation.”

“First off, that’s entrapment,” Len says. “Second, there are so many Families alone that we’d have to go on a date every day for a year for that to work. Third, he'd twig onto what I’m doing and deliberately not go to something he’s affiliated with to throw me off the scent. And fourth, even if it wasn’t a bad idea, it’s not working. There’s no pattern to any of his disappearances!”

Danvers is sniggering.

Maybe he shouldn’t have admitted how often he’s been meeting up with Allen.

He glares at her balefully.

“Give me your notes on his movements,” she orders, as if she was the boss. “I’ll get them cross-referenced with all the different types of city events I can find so you can do your pattern-spotting on the outside instead of the inside; if he’s going to some sort of dumb concert series or something, you wouldn’t want to waste your time. In the meantime, you have a date.”

“I’m not seeing Allen again until tomorrow,” Len objects automatically.

Danvers smirks at him like he’s admitted something. “Of course not,” she says. “But it’s an MR day.”

Len nods, glad that she reminded him. How hard it is to remember what day is which is one of the downsides of deliberately randomizing his visits to the clinic in Keystone where Mick is so that no one can track him when he goes there. He’d prefer to go on a regular schedule – Len’s always liked timing things – but it’s his duty to keep Mick safe. Or at least, it’s the very least he can do, after all Mick’s done for him.

If Len was a good man, he wouldn’t go at all. He’d leave Mick alone. He wouldn’t burden him with Len’s baggage and Len’s job and Len’s everything, not to mention the fact that Len’s enemies are even more numerous now than they were when he and Mick were partners.

The Families want Len’s head on a plate. Many of his old contacts in the underworld know he’s a cop now and hate him for it. The corrupt cops that fear him are gunning for him. Even the clean cops hate him for violating their precious boys-in-blue code.

Len would be better off being friends with no one at all, and if he was a good man, he would refrain.

But he’s not a good man.

“I’ll go catch a ride,” he says. “Is my pick-up here?”

Danvers wrinkles her nose. “Boss –”

“Oh, good, then Charlie is here.”

“I hate that guy,” she whines. “I don’t care if he’s good at losing people, he’s going to kidnap you and eat you one of these days.”

“You exaggerate,” Len says, shaking his head. “I’ve known Charlie for years –”

“He has priors for cannibalism and attempted cannibalism,” Danvers hisses. “Literal cannibalism.”

“Technically,” Len drawls, “he only has priors for defacing a corpse. Cannibalism isn’t a legal crime, and no one proved he was involved with any killing –”

“If you don’t ring me the second you get to the clinic, I’m going to hunt you down,” Danvers threatens. “Don’t think I won’t.”

“Who exactly is the boss here?”

“You, sir,” she says. “Now go and do what I told you to do.”

Len rolls his eyes, but gets up, wincing. His leg and side are really pulling on him today. He uses Mick’s clinic to meet his physical and occupational therapist anyway, which is a good cover for going to visit Mick, but going to PT/OT with an already sore leg is going to suck.

“And when you’re done with that, we can talk about you dating a target,” Danvers adds just as he gets to the door. “It’s actually not against the rules until there’s an official inquiry open.”

“No, Danvers.”

“I’ll book you a table for two at a nice restaurant for Friday,” she says. “It’ll have a pre-paid deposit and you’ll have no choice but to ask him to go or you’ll waste the money.”

“A, you’re abusing your access to my credit card,” Len says. “B, I could always go with someone else, did you think of that?”

“Boss,” Danvers says pityingly. “Mick can’t go, your sister’s out of town, I’m busy that night, and you have no other friends.”

…damnit.

“Have fun!”

“Mick wouldn’t bitch me out like this,” Len grumbles.

“I’ve been keeping him up to date on your little investigation via secure-line VPN groupchat,” Danvers says cheerfully. “You wanna bet?”

Len flips her off and limps off towards the waiting car.

Mick would totally mock him over this whole Allen thing.