Coldflash and Legends One-Shots

Far from Helpful (Rated PG13)

Summary:

After a blast meant for Leonard Snart knocks Barry out cold and wipes his memory, Len follows the team back to STAR Labs to make sure he's alright. Of course, not being entirely welcome, he has to sneak in. But after one small slip of the tongue, Len might find himself watching over Barry permanently.

Notes:

This is the first iteration of the story I wrote for the prompt - Barry suffers a permanent injury that affects his work as Flash and Len helps him to work out where to go next.

***

"Hey, Red. I'm telling ya, we have to stop meeting like this," Len says in a low voice, gruff from barking orders that didn't matter worth dick since no one listened to him anyway. If they had, maybe Barry wouldn't be lying on a gurney down in the med center of STAR Labs, slipping in and out of consciousness.

Maybe he wouldn't have had the ever-loving shit beat out of him ... again. Even the fights Barry does win usually end up with him getting bashed in the head or kicked in the stomach.

Just because he has the power to super heal doesn't erase the fact that Barry Allen gets beat up a lot.

Len is also a bit worse for the wear – a gash on his right cheek that might require stitches, a blackened left eye, an arm he'd thought was broken wrapped tight in an ACE bandage. But that's nothing compared to what happened to Barry – slammed in the gut by a high-intensity photon blast that was meant for Len and thrown over two hundred feet straight up. Had Barry come back down the way he went, Len might have been able to break his fall, plus his whole body in the process. But Barry had traveled, and Len abandoned the fight, abandoned his team, to go on the search. Halfway out of town, Len found Barry skewered on an iron fence post, the spear-like tip protruding from his chest and covered in blood. When Len saw him - bent impossibly backward with arms and legs limp - his heart stopped.

He thought his boy was dead this time for sure.

Then along came Cisco and Caitlin, and boy, do they have a convenient sense of timing. They had nothing to do with Len finding Barry, but they sure did rush in and scoop him up as if he was theirs and theirs alone. They barely gave Len a thank you, barely looked him in the eyes.

When it comes to him, Len has discovered, even when he's fighting on their side, they don't consider him on their side.

Perhaps that's the way it should stay.

Caitlin did take a second to check out Len's arm and wrap it up, but that was a consolation prize. A token.

The literal least they could do.

But it was also a message. In their eyes, it made them square. Now Len's job was over, and it would be best for everyone if he stepped back and left Barry alone.

Right. Like that was going to happen.

Caitlin and Cisco packed Barry up in their 'Flash-mobile' and left Len alone out in the middle of nowhere, probably all sorts of assured that he wouldn't make it back to STAR Labs anytime soon.

And, as usual, they were wrong.

Not only was he fifteen minutes behind them the whole time thanks to his newest acquisition – a beat-up old Indian motorcycle he'd spied quietly rusting in an otherwise vacant driveway on his way out of town – but he'd managed to let himself into STAR Labs super slick and steal away into Barry's room the second the Wonder Twins ducked out. Sure they'll be watching Barry like a hawk so of course they'll find him, but now that he's in, he'd like to see them try and kick him out.