Archive of Our Own ^beta

He had read once that your mood can shift as the seasons change. Seasonal Affective Disorder, if he remembered correctly. That the dreary darkness of the colder months contributed to the apathetic nothingness one felt until the snow started to melt away. The winter blues, Mick had called it once. He wondered if Len ever suffered an opposite effect in the dry summer seasons of the Midwest. The winters were colder there though, so Len could suck a dick for all Mark cared. He supposed it was no shock that the wand started causing the problems it did, then.

It initially wasn’t much of an issue. He’d always been a little off anyways, dead brother and all. Before then as well though, he supposed. It was probably his parents’ fault. He could remember lingering bouts of depression that would come and go throughout his adolescence. These dreary weeks that would drag on and on. He remembered how poor his grades were then, the only saving grace of his academic career were the grades he’d get in English, boosting his GPA enough to barely graduate. He remembered watching Clyde keep his stellar routine as he rotted away in his room. He remembered Clyde attending awards ceremonies while he only left the house to sneak out and smoke whatever he could get his hands on. Of course, his executive dysfunction was blamed on whatever substances he was choosing from as soon as his folks found out- Clyde would never dare, they made sure Mark was acutely aware. He supposed the drugs never helped him get any better, they worsened everything for him really, but why do they think he got there in the first place? For the fuck of it?

Clyde though, he never could figure out how he felt about Clyde, even now. There was nothing he wanted more than to watch his brother finally get properly humbled, as he’d always been. But that was selfish, wasn’t it? It never was Clyde’s fault that he was a genius with an ounce of humility, a burning Sun to anyone around him, it wasn’t Clyde’s fault that Mark was a blackhole. That Mark stayed stagnant, that he took and took and took yet remained unchanged. That was the first piece of the guilt muddling his resentment.

The second piece of guilt stemmed from the fact that Clyde never mistreated him. His schedule was packed as soon as he hit high school, but he’d always find time for Mark. He’d mention Mark’s writing as their parents went on about how he could never keep up; he’d fended off the upperclassmen hurling homophobic slurs at him the first time he wore eyeliner to school (How Piper ever managed to put up with Digger? He had no idea). He remembered Clyde offering to plug for him, when he’d stumbled home pale and breathless, sleeping for three days straight, never finding out what was cut into that joint. He remembered the naloxone Clyde kept in his prissy leather messenger bag.

He remembered when their parents had kicked him out the first time, a few years after Clyde had moved out. He had let him crash on his couch for a few weeks, even though he wasn’t working. He remembered that about three weeks in his mood tanked again and something inside of him decided that he’d had enough. Mark remembered swallowing half a bottle of Valproate in his brother’s kitchen. He also remembered the look on his brother’s face when he’d come home just minutes after, that look haunted him almost as much as the look on his face the day that he’d died. Clyde had stayed with him in the hospital, and Mark ended up with his own bed in that apartment shortly after he was discharged.

He remembered when he first joined the Rogues. The April rain had been pelting on his back, soaking through the only heavy jacket he had anymore. He remembered the dirty needles and the judging looks from passersby when he would curl up and read next to the public library- he remembered the fearful looks too, if someone happened to recognize his face. He remembered the tank of a man that was Mick Rory, approaching him with a newspaper. He had almost pissed himself then, thinking the other man was a relative, or worse, a civilian trying to play scarlet speedster. Mick was neither of those things, and simply tossed the paper at his feet. He asked if it was him, who had robbed the string of convenience stores that lined the corners of Central City’s North residential district. Mick said that if he was up for bigger operations, he had a roof to put over his head.

He had jumped on that opportunity; looking back, it was idiotic of him to follow an unfamiliar man into an unfamiliar warehouse under the pretenses of committing crime together, but he had lucked out. There were other people staying there too, apparently. There were two men crammed onto a loveseat, one chirping away at the game playing on the television- the loud one twirling an object Mark couldn’t make out between his fingers, and the other dressed in blue. There was a redhead perched atop a circular table, headphones drowning out the sound of the yelling man as he tinkered away at something unbeknownst to him- beside him sat a scrawny blonde man in garish clothing, tearing away at a bag of twizzlers. There was a lady too, she was shorter, also with blonde hair. The woman was making quiet conversation with the final man there, who seemed too well dressed to be hanging around the rest of the group. He was intimidated, figuring he had stumbled upon an organized crime ring.

Upon his arrival though, the man in blue had approached him. Leonard Snart was taller than Mick, and though he lacked his stocky build, he held a commandeering presence that made Mark realize that Mick was just running errands for this guy. Len had taken the wheel from there, introducing himself, and introducing his cold gun even more. There wasn’t much for a tour of their hideout, it was an open-plan storage facility that had been halfway converted into some sort of living space. Then he was to meet the others.

Len seemed to have this strange way with people. He was a career criminal, and a bit of a scumbag, but most of the time he was the closest thing to family a guy could get. Almost all of the other guys seemed to rely on Len the same way Mark did, he was collected in a way the rest of them weren’t- a form of stability in their lives that they couldn’t have found fending for themselves alone. If you listened to him, he had your back, on and off the field. He didn’t realize the latter for a while, believing his protective nature was mostly reserved for Lisa, who he had learned right away was his baby sister. He changed his mind though, after seeing Len patch James up with a first aid manual propped up on his knee for the first time- and he changed his mind further when he handed a pair of earplugs out of his parka to the Piper, they were in the city’s square, and a yellow speedster had been buzzing around them so loudly that the kid could do nothing but hold onto the sides of his head. Len was tough love too, though, and moments of physical comfort from him such as that seemed to be rare- for Mark, anyways.

Len’s care for Mark came in the form of rehab- which he had sent him to using a portion of the money from a bigger heist of theirs. It was one of the rules, nothing illicit was allowed. Booze was one thing, and it was pretty common for the guys to sit around drinking beers while Len dealt out a game of Blackjack. He was pretty sure there was a small exception for marijuana use as well, though it seemed that was mostly Piper’s territory. Anything harder than that was banned, strictly. Len warned him that if it continued to be a problem, Mark was out. That alone was nearly enough to get him sobered up.

The others were mostly okay too, when he bothered to socialize with them. He had a hard time standing Digger, who was brash, vulgar, and rude in a way even the other older guys weren’t. The first time he had sat in for an actual conversation with the dude, he had been harping on Piper so much the kid was nearly in tears, only laying off when James snapped at him in a way that wasn’t reflective of his normally chipper attitude. He never had many redeeming qualities in Mark’s mind- though, despite his cowardly nature on the field, and tendency to play dirty, Boomerang would get into bar fights for you at the drop of a hat, which was nice when you were a group of gimmicky criminals in colourful outfits. Loud, brash, and vulgar was nice to have when it was directed at someone else on your behalf. In the end, Digger had been in and out of the team, though, because of Task Force X- which scared the living shit out of Mark the first time Len gave him the details on that entire operation.

He was always pretty fond of Mick. The guy was built like a fucking bear, and acted like a toy one when he wasn’t pissed off. He supposed it was just because Mick was who he had met first, but for a long time, he was always the one Mark would try to hang around. It seemed the rest of the guys had agreed on Mick’s bear-status, as he was often the one to at least try and repair the touch deprivation most of them had. Even a guy like Len, who didn’t really do touchy-feely.

It was easy to cuddle up to him though, he wouldn’t chirp at you the way Digger would, or tense up and brush you off like their leader. James would often climb up the guy’s shoulders, and he recalled catching the Piper crying when June had rolled around, curled up into Mick’s side and under his arm. Even Len- it was fairly typical to see him and his sister nod off on Mick’s shoulders. Whenever Mark’s moods had gotten particularly bad, it was always Mick who’d clamber up to his room and pull him into a tight hug.

Piper and James were always closer with each other than they were the rest of the group. They were closer in age, both being fresh into their twenties, while the rest of them were a fair bit older. James was a lot. He had this strange energy surrounding him that exuded an air of control and calm even as he was harboring chaos in the form of explosive yo-yos around the city. Honestly, the kid freaked Mark out a little bit- sure, most of the Rogue’s had some sort of intellect, it was needed to build or at least utilize the gear that they had- but James was a little too good with people, he felt psychic sometimes.

Piper was easier- probably the easiest of all of them, really. He’d heard from Mick that the dude’s name was Harley, or Hartley, or Harry, something like that- but apparently he hated it so much that he was always just “The Piper”. He was a bleeding heart type that Mark couldn’t relate to, and the other Rogues had a tendency to ignore the rants he would go on. It was nice to go to the kid after a run-in with the police or a bad time at Iron Heights though, he wouldn’t judge when Mark felt frightened, and he felt himself agreeing with Piper more and more every time they broke him out of the penitentiary. The Piper was always more of a lover than a fighter, in the end- and when he left, Mark found himself feeling unsurprised.

That left Lisa and Roscoe. They were a package deal, almost as much as Lisa and Len were. Everyone liked Lisa, which always entertained Mark since nobody could stand Roscoe but her. He rubbed everyone the wrong way, a strange air of judgment wafted off the guy. He’d often wondered how someone who seems to worry about dressing so well as a civvie managed to have the worst costume of all of them. The Rogues had been through their fair share of awful costumes, but Piper grew out of the polkadots and Digger learned not to be so...blue. Even James ditched the cape eventually. But Roscoe? He kept that fucking awful striped catsuit up until the day he died, and then he kept it still- until he died the second time.

It was nice to look back on, when he was first getting to know everyone. Before Digger was drafted with that bomb in his neck, when Sam and Roscoe were still alive- or at least half-sane, in the latter’s case. When James and Piper were mostly around- before the new kids showed up. Not that he didn’t like them. Despite his overall petulance, Mark felt a certain protectiveness over Axel- and Evan had very well earned his place among them. It just wasn’t the same- it didn’t feel that way anyways. It could just be the wand fucking with him at this point.

When Sam had died there was a strange sort of quiet among the Rogues that wouldn’t return until it was Digger’s turn. Shortly after he had gone, another Mirror Master had popped up in the Gem Cities- after starting some problems with a cape that had powers which reminded him of the green kid that the baby Flash hung around.

“You can’t depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus,” Mark Twain wrote that- it was precisely the thing that the new Mirror Master had over Sam. Evan had this air of creativity that Sam seemed to lack despite his genius- he had discovered a wide range of uses for the Mirror Gun that his predecessor had never even considered. It was impressive when it wasn’t horrifying, and Mark often wondered if it was even necessary for the guy to have the Rogues to watch his back- the reason they were all working together in the first place.

Despite the mostly horrible implications of what he could do with Sam’s mirror tech, Evan was mostly nice to be around. His lack of attitude due to being a legacy made him easier to talk to than some of the other guys, and Mark related to his issues in a way that they didn’t. It was easier to get clean when there was someone to sober up with, even if one of them relapsing could potentially end up in the other following suit. Evan was further deep into his addiction than Mark ever was when he had stumbled into Central, and despite his mostly genial personality, the first few months of withdrawals had him angrier than the hurricanes Mark commanded. He remembered how his violent outbursts had caused small wedges to form between the other guys; Len had given him a few more chances than he would have typically given anyone else. Mark assumed that it meant he saw potential- which he did, clearly, considering how valuable Evan was to their crew once he had finally gotten his shit together.

It was funny though, watching Evan slowly get better, as Mark slowly got worse. Maybe it wasn’t actually all that funny, but Mark had often wondered if it had happened to any of the other guys when they decided to take a newbie under their arm. He wondered if Len had gone through bouts of unwellness after months of shaping up criminal apprentices.

It started becoming more of a problem around the time that Axel was more or less adopted into their group, and the little Boomerang had come and gone thanks to Nightwing and company. It was a shame the new Trickster never really got to see him in his prime (if you could even consider who he was beforehand as his prime). Axel had ended up growing on Mark quite a bit, that brotherly instinct was something he never could quite shake. He was always wary of becoming closer to Axel for that reason though, all things considered- Mark Mardon was never really that great of a brother.

In the early days of the Rogues the weather wand affected him physically more than it did mentally- he wasn’t fully attuned to the thing then which probably had something to do with it. Using it was difficult without the connection he eventually built though, the first months of attempting to summon storms would often end in Mark getting swept up and tossed about in winds that wouldn’t listen to him- and if you looked closely, you’d see the scarred pathways of renegade lightning cascading over his torso, spreading out from his chest and stomach over his limbs. Tiny white and pink branches that crawled over his skin, their spread slowly dwindling as he gained proper control over the power he had stolen.

As time went on, he became less physically affected by the manifestations created by the weather wand. Eventually, lightning began to flow through him rather than at him, and his cheeks became less red with what used to be perpetual windburn. The elements had fully begun bending to his will, it became a practiced skill- no longer an improvised flurry of natural disasters as it had used to be when he first took on his alias. He sometimes thought it was Kafkaeseque in a way, how the metamorphosis worked- how as his body transformed into a vessel adapted to his power, his mind began to shift like the midwestern weather he commanded.

Len noticed when he got worse, of course he did. It would have been stupid to think that he wouldn’t. Len had next to no emotional intelligence when it came to his own life, but he knew his crew well and had a keen eye to match. When he first started noticing the shifts in his mood Len had simply told him to not let it get in the way of his work, to remember the rules. He did keep Mark benched on paperwork duty for a few weeks though, and he could never figure out if Len did that out of the goodness of his frozen heart, or if he just didn’t feel like taking care of payroll himself for a month or two.

Cold tried, he really did. In his own emotionally repressed forty year old bachelor way. He tried the same way he tried with his sister when Roscoe died and died again. It was something he talked about with Piper once, actually. They hadn’t talked with one another much since he had jumped ship, but there was an evening where he’d spotted Piper at the bar Mark frequented when he didn’t want to be bothered by the other guys. There was some sort of musician playing; a wailing bluesy performance that Mark appreciated but wasn’t entirely interested in. The unique set had obviously drawn in his much more musical ex-colleague however, who had been watching with rapt attention- nursing what Mark assumed was a ginger ale (old habits die hard).

He had been alone and so had Mark, so he’d gotten up from his stool at the bar and slid into the booth Piper was holed up at. The kid looked rather startled when Mark had joined him, but simmered down right away because of their location, and their lack of costumes. Piper was always kind of fidgety, shuffling around and winding his longish reddish hair between his fingers into little braids and undoing them nervously. Mark remembered asking him how he was doing, how being a hero was. He wasn’t shocked to hear that Piper had been doing quite well for himself, but he was taken slightly aback by how much more confident he seemed, despite his nervous tics.

Piper had talked with more self worth than he ever had when he was with the Rogues. He seemed more sure of himself. Mark learned that Piper had been spending most of his time as a hero working more as an activist than a fame-chasing crusader like his Justice League colleagues had a tendency to be. He did try to feel happy for the kid, despite the still lingering feelings of betrayal that the remaining Rogues often felt on the subject of Piper and James- who they had also discussed.

James had remained close with Piper even after he left- so it was no surprise that the first Trickster would end up following him away from the Rogues shortly after. James was more likely to collaborate with them despite an official change of his job position. Piper had mentioned that James was doing quite well- that he had mellowed out enough to work steadily as an investigator, that he had mellowed to a point that he was trustworthy enough to Piper that they had stuck by one another for all of these years. It was sweet, in a way, really.

Len was brought up eventually, once Piper had finished elaborating on the heroics he indulged in and the half-heroics of James. Mark had brought up the fact that Cold never quite stopped mother henning the lot of them- even though most of them were well into their thirties by now (with the exception of Axel, whose name was dodged within their conversation). They had agreed that Len could have been a superhero too- that he must be, in some alternate universe. Piper had excused himself shortly after, the act having long since ended- and Mark sat in the booth alone wondering what would have happened to him if the Rogues were a team of heroes.

But Captain Cold wasn’t a superhero, so neither was the Weather Wizard.

The Weather Wizard was a slowly deteriorating criminal with a stolen superpower. That superpower was driving him fucking insane- probably literally. Lately his mood had been swinging with the weather, something that never happened when he first began wielding the wand. Nowadays, missions would culminate and the rainfall he created outside would seep its way through his suit and into his mind, drowning him in regret and guilt. He’d swing hurricanes through Central City, and for days, he would whirlwind through the safehouse, unable to focus on any of his work without his mind jumping- impulsivity running through his veins like lightning.

There was a heist. The large bank in the busy downtown of Keystone City, and Len had assigned him and Evan a simple task. Mark was to create a diversion, while Evan got in and out of the vault. Mark had thunder rolling up from the riverbank by the mid-afternoon, the sudden downpour washing pedestrians and cyclists back into their home. The lightning in the twin cities never ceased because of its protectors- but Mark was the one who commanded it in the end. Half of the city’s power grid was down by the time Evan had gotten inside- and the mission had gone off without a single hitch, not even a scratch from a Flash. It was when they had made their way back to the safehouse when things started to go wrong for Mark.

He’d felt awful. Of course he was drenched and his hair had been windswept into this awful mess, but that was typical for him. Evan watched him stumble his way into privacy with an odd sort of look on his face, but didn’t bother to follow him. All Mark could do was change into civvies and crawl under his blankets. He remembered crying a bit, he remembered drinking a bit. He remembered the drip-drip-drip of the last drizzles of his rain on the roof and he remembered the hopelessness that washed over him. He remembered Clyde. Mark Mardon did not open a novel that night.

It was after a mission with a similar result that he’d found himself sitting next to Lisa on the plush loveseat that sat in the living room of Roscoe’s apartment. He’d been forced to change into civvies before Roscoe would even consider letting him make his way over- but the guy wasn’t even home by the time he’d gotten there. Mark wasn’t there for Roscoe though- he was there for Lisa, who’d dragged him away from a recent crime scene after watching him nearly destroy part of S.T.A.R. Labs in a tornado.

Lisa didn’t expect Mark to say anything, nobody really expected anyone to explain their problems, but she did sit him down- away from any of the other guys, and away from the safehouse. She had explained to him that evening that so much of his identity had been created by his guilt, so much of Mark Mardon was defined by regret and sorrow and that she could not stand for it any longer. Lisa had pulled him into a tight hug, then punched him in the arm, then told him that her brother chose him for a reason- that being part of the Rogues gave him a chance to define himself without letting anyone else do it for him. He’d gone back to the safehouse that night feeling the nicest he had in weeks.

Those instances were once rare. Now they followed every mission. Mark would lock himself away unless he was feeling particularly sunny. It was difficult to prevent a repeat-incident of the night in Clyde’s kitchen. The only thing that had currently been stopping him was the fear of causing further burden to the people that had chosen to be his new siblings- willingly. It wasn’t fair, feeling like he constantly had to prove himself to them, feeling like he needed to earn his place among them even though they had approached him first. Then again, he supposed those expectations were not something they actually had of him. They lingered anyway.

Mark Twain had also once said that if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. Mark Mardon often wondered if he was a hypocrite for spouting the author’s words so often. Maybe he wasn’t, actually, because around three years after he’d first joined the Rogues, they had been gathered in their safehouse after a particularly draining mission. Playing cards and liquor had been distributed among them far into the late hours of the night. He was out about 200 dollars by midnight (he was never very great at Poker), and the two six of jack he’d knocked back halfway had long since impeded his gambling judgment. Most of the guys had eventually dwindled off, and once Mick had called it and stumbled off to bed, Mark was left alone with Len at their creaky round table.

Leonard Snart didn’t do feelings. He didn’t do touchy-feely, and he certainly didn’t do sappy. Leonard Snart still cared enough about business to keep his boys in shape (and maybe Leonard Snart just cared about his boys), and Mark Mardon had enough of that bottle of whiskey settling in his guts to spill them out to his boss. Len had asked him what his fucking problem had been lately, and in response, all Mark could do was tell him what had happened that night with Clyde. He choked out the memories through liquor tears while Len listened with his never changing expression.

Len hadn’t moved throughout Mark’s rambling. He’d just sat there across from him until he had finished, sniffling and exhausted and craving a cigarette. He didn’t get a cigarette though, not that he’d get a light anyways- lighters and matches had been banned from safehouse poker nights years ago.

Instead he watched as Len sighed and stood up after a few seconds of sniffly, and he pulled him into what could maybe be considered a hug, or a pat on the shoulder, or some sort of post traumatic stress induced amalgamation of the two. Len had told Mark that he could never imagine how painful losing a sibling, how Lisa was his whole world.

He told Mark that the Rogues were family, that he could lean on them when he couldn’t lean on himself alone anymore. He told Mark that letting it get this bad would only ever hurt the entire team in the long run, to not let it happen again. Len had phrased it as though he was only concerned about Mark’s productivity within The Game, but remaining shoved up against Cold’s side had said all of the worries Len had that he’d left out of his speech.

Then, in his drunken brash stupor, Len had pulled back from Mark and reached over to swing back the last of his beer. He gathered Mark out of his chair and all but ushered him to bed- not gently but concerned enough that the emotional display was alarming to Mark. Len told him to get some sleep, to get better.

Maybe it was nice to have that off of his chest. It would have been nicer if he and Len weren’t organized criminals and he wouldn’t have to worry about whatever he had said being used against him, but he supposed Len never was that type of guy.

It was easier to work now anyways, he supposed. It was reassuring to know that at least one of his friend-brother-colleague-father figures had some sort of inkling as to what was going on in his own stormy psyche. Fights with the speedsters began to feel less like life or death, and he even found himself opening up more during poker nights, laughing and joking throughout their conversations more and warily watching the guys’ faces less. It felt good to be reminded that he had a family again.

It was a few months later when he saw Len cry for the first and only time, it was after Lisa passed away. Mark sat up that night and wondered how he could ever be so selfish.