Chapter Text
What I've kept with me and what I've thrown away
And where the hell I've ended up on this glary random day...
At first, there was darkness.
No Time and all Time.
At the center of the darkness, a cold blue glow enveloped him.
Then there was noise. It went on for a second. It went on for millennia.
He had the thought—if he could still think here—that the noise would be better if he could understand it.
It resolved into a single note. And then, much later and a moment later, into a Voice.
And the Voice said, “You can go wherever you want. Whenever.”
He didn’t understand. Go where? This was where he existed. This was how it had always been, how it would always be.
And then he began to see. Darkness became color, and he saw multiverses upon multiverses. He saw a multiverse where realities were ripped apart, earths crumbling in on each other, cities collapsing together like a cosmic mudslide. He saw one earth in particular, where a trail of yellow lightning ran in and out of the Speed Force.
“Choose,” said the Voice.
In an instant, and a long, long time later, he focused on a single point of light.
And the light became an earth.
And the earth became a city.
And the picture focused on a quiet, dark suburban street, where a house was hung with colourful lights to keep out winter darkness. Where a fire burned against the cold, and, reindeer mug in hand, a Thief was waiting for a Speedster.
“There,” he said, though he didn’t know why. “...Then?”
“It is too soon,” said the Voice. “They will not understand.”
The picture blurred and reformed. “Just a little later,” said the Voice. "You will need help."
In the darkness, he reached out his hand (huh, he had a hand) towards the glow that was forming into the lights of the Waverider.
He paused. “And then anywhere I want?”
“If you leave, there will be a cost,” the Voice warned, and it sounded almost sad.
He looked back into the darkness, at the blue light at its centre. He looked with eyes that were old and new, and his mouth just about remembered how to pull itself into a smirk. “Isn’t there always?” he drawled.
He stood on the edge of nothing, and fell.
October 2018
Iris West-Allen was perturbed.
Staring at her laptop screen wasn’t helping.
“You’re making that face,” Barry observed from the couch, where he had the TV turned down low with the captions on, to keep from bothering her.
“What face?” she said, without looking up.
“The one that says you’re not finding what you’re looking for.” He was at her side in a literal flash. “Are you in research mode?”
She nodded. His hand came to rest on her shoulder as he looked at her screen, and she reached up to squeeze it on instinct. “You wanna hear about a mystery?” she asked. “It’s in your wheelhouse.”
He offered her a curious smile and pulled up a dining room chair beside her. “Sure. Wow me.”
She flipped to a tab on the browser, watching Barry’s face scrunch into a frown. “I got sent this by a source today.”
The photo was of the back of a man’s head, a familiar shock of graying hair above the fur lining of a hood. It was dark and out of focus, but unmistakable. “That’s Leo, right?” Barry asked. “How’s he back without us knowing?”
“It’s not Leo.”
When reports had first reached Iris of a man in a parka with a cold gun, that had been her first thought, too. She’d had Cisco call Earth-53. Where Leo was only too pleased to have someone to complain to - about having been drafted into politics. “We didn’t win this war just so I could sit behind a desk for the rest of my life, Iris. I’ve got people wanting schools and hospitals. I’m having to make tax plans to pay for them. Save me from this bureaucratic nonsense!”
She’d smiled proudly at him. “That’s how you make a new world, Leo. You’re doing great.” She told him they missed him, and they chatted for a while. Then she ended the call, and went right back to staring at the picture of the man in the ragged blue parka, something very strange stirring in the pit of her stomach.
Barry was frowning at her. “So, then who? Another alternate?”
“Maybe, but...” Iris opened another tab, scrolling through interview transcripts. “Okay, look at these. Eye-witness reports of a man popping into existence right in front of people. At first I didn’t connect them to the photo. But - well, see what you think.” She took a sip from the wine glass in front of her, gesturing at the screen.
He started to read, then pulled back from the screen. “No, she must have been mistaken.”
“The second and third interviews say the same. They all recognized him as Captain Cold.” She shrugged. “In this city? People remember the villains.”
A squeak of a chair on the floor shocked her into looking around at him. He’d gone a funny color. “They’re wrong,” he said. “They’re mistaking Leo for him. Or…” He shook his head.
“Barry,” she said, concerned, with a hand on his arm. He didn’t move, staring at the interview on the screen. “I’m not saying it’s established fact, or even likely. But the team should know that it’s a possibility, right?”
He gave her another tight shake of his head.
Iris raised an eyebrow. “Barry,” she said again, her hand tightening around his arm. “Not only can you run faster than the speed of sound, not only have you met people who can transform into mist and actual aliens who can fly, but not so long ago you very firmly believed in Bigfoot with a lot less evidence than this. After everything we’ve seen, this is too far for you?”
“He’s dead, Iris,” Barry said, his eyes distant. “There’s no coming back from that. Believe me - if there was, we’d have heard about it.” He stood slowly, his head hanging as he went to the bedroom.
Picking up her wine glass, Iris looked back at the photo on the screen. At the torn, ragged parka. The curly, graying hair, longer than when she’d last seen it.
She ignored that knot in her stomach, that might have been... hope.
“What’s happened to you, Leonard?” she wondered aloud.
The wind whistling against the windows of the loft was the only reply she was going to get that night.
The warehouse was dark and cold. He fumbled with the light switch, got nothing. Well, of course they’d have turned off the power. He reached into his pocket and, sure enough, there was a lighter. Old habits. They used to appear in his pocket almost like magic. Apparently he was still stealing them without thinking, even though he wouldn’t be sliding them into Mick’s pockets anytime soon.
They’d fought, before he left. No fists, this time, which was a good thing, because Leonard didn’t know if his aim was what it used to be. Having all of time rattling around in his head was distracting.
He’d appeared on the Waverider in the dead of night—
(shivering, on the empty bridge, his head full of voices, images, stories that couldn’t all be possible at once)
—and stumbled into the med lab, before asking Gideon to wake Mick.
Your system is flooded with tachyons, Mr. Snart. Your DNA has been altered in ways that are currently beyond my analysis. I can synthesize a compound that may help, but you will need further observation.
I don’t know what’s going on with you, and it looks like you ain’t gonna tell me. But - look, for fuck’s sake, you can’t go running back to Central in this state.
Mick had reached out to touch him, and Len had pulled away.
Gideon said just two words to him as he stepped onto the jump ship. “Barry Allen.”
He’d nodded, and glanced back at the Waverider, once.
As soon as Central City shimmered into form around him, he set the controls to send the jump ship back. Apparently, he just wasn’t the thief he used to be.
Now, as he stumbled around looking for candles, a cold wind blew in through a hole in the warehouse roof. At least it was better than the park bench where he’d spent the last couple of weeks, fading in and out of consciousness, then wandering the city aimlessly. This was as close to home as he was going to get.
The couch was still there, right where he had debated with Mick about whether to accept Rip’s ridiculous offer of a trip through time. It felt like yesterday, and eons ago. He sprawled out across it, reaching beneath for the comic book he knew would still be there.
“Well. Here we are,” he said aloud into the darkness.
If there were any ghosts left in the old safe house, they were all silent.
He was just wondering if there was still a drip coffee maker in the makeshift kitchen in the back, when the dark scene began to blur and fade around him.
“Shit, not again,” he heard himself say, before the world tilted sideways with a crack louder than when the Oculus went up in flames. He curled in on himself under the sudden urge to vomit, while reality ripped down the centre.
He staggered out of the bright, crowded factory full of men in Victorian-era work clothes before anyone could see him.
He made it to the waterfront, where, after emptying the contents of his stomach into the river, he curled up against a pillar under a bridge. He didn’t remember anything after that.
Morning broke to the sound of passing cars and kids on skateboards. Whatever uncontrolled power had taken him away, it had at least brought him back again. That was how it always happened.
He didn’t understand why.
He didn’t understand any of this.
He dragged himself back to the couch in the cold warehouse, where he listened, for a long time, to the wind whistling and moaning in the roof.
November 2018
They got their answer one cold day about a month later. Iris had been sick for a day or two, curled up on the sofa, Barry close but keeping a healthy distance. They’d got to talking—about Nora, probably—in the commercial break, and the TV had run on into the evening news report.
“Tonight, a Picture News exclusive: He’s back, Central City! Captain Cold caught on film. But does he still mean us harm? We go live now to Lana Lang...”
Iris felt a sharp grip on her upper arm. She didn’t look up, peering at the screen with keen reporter’s eyes for any sign that this was their Leonard Snart. The camera panned in closer, and the pressure on her arm tightened.
The parka was frayed at the edges. It couldn’t have been the original, but it wasn’t far off. But the cold gun was identical to the one she remembered.
The scene was pandemonium in front of the First Bank on State Street. The citizens of Central remembered that gun.
It was his face that settled it, though. There was something dark and desperate in his eyes.
“That,” Barry said slowly, “is not Leo.”
“I won’t say I told you so.” Iris poked him in the side. “Well, don’t just sit there. He’s holding up a bank. Didn’t you used to stop him from doing things like that?”
“Yeah, but…” He shook his head and looked back at the screen. “Do I need Cisco in my ear for this?”
Iris followed his gaze to where a snarling Leonard Snart had his gun trained on a screaming teller. For Barry’s sake, she made herself sound sure and confident. “If you can handle this on your own, maybe you should?” As Snart shot a blast of ice towards the terrified crowd, she heard doubt creeping back into her voice. “You could take me to STAR Labs if you want help over the comms…”
“You’ve thrown up twice tonight. I’m not speeding you anywhere.”
“Fair enough.” She wanted to tell him that he could do this. It was just one criminal, and it had been a long time since a human with a gun had been any kind of challenge to him. But she was suddenly nervous, reaching up to kiss his cheek. “Be safe.”
A spark of lightning in the air, and he was gone.
She looked back at the screen, at Leonard’s sneering face and shaking hands. There was something very wrong with this scene.
Barry didn’t show back up for a couple of hours, and she went to bed, hoping he’d just stopped by STAR Labs. That this foreboding feeling was about the too-many enemies they’d had near misses with, and nothing more.
When he finally made it home, he was ashen-faced. She dragged herself up and put her arms around him, felt him trembling against her. “What happened?” she asked into his shoulder.
“It was him,” he murmured.
She let out a hard breath. “He got away?”
He pulled away and dropped to the edge of the bed, where she slid in next to him. “We fought. I’m not even sure he recognized me at first. He was a ranting mess, I don’t even…” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “And then I think he did figure out who I was. One minute he was in front of me - he had the gun right in my face. And I…” He trailed off again, frowning, as though trying to work something out.
She touched his shoulder, worried. “Barry?”
He turned his gaze on her. “I touched him. And he disappeared.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?”
“He just—” He shrugged helplessly. “Blinked out of existence. There was… a blue light.” He glanced at her with an unreadable expression. “How’s that for your mystery, reporter?”
She reached over to her nightstand for her tablet. Pulling up the interview document, she ran her eyes down the transcripts again. “It’s what they all say. He appeared or disappeared right in front of them. I thought they were exaggerating. I mean, he is pretty stealthy.”
“That was more than stealth. What’s wrong with him?”
Iris took his shaking hands in hers, rubbing them. They were - cold. “I wish I knew.”
“What if he’s—” He cut off, started again. “What if he’s not okay, Iris?”
In answer, she pulled him down onto the bed with her and curled against him. She couldn’t begin to guess at what he was feeling, but he grounded her amidst her own unsettled mess of reactions. He always did.
They fell asleep to the thump, thump of the wind against the loose window.
It wasn’t his fault.
Len kept repeating that in his head, like a mantra.
(it was his fault)
Shaking on the floor of the warehouse was doing him no good. His hands were turning white with cold again. The dusty stone floor was wet with the rain seeping in through the hole in the roof. There was more than enough money stashed in the back room now to get him a motel, somewhere with nice things like central heating and a kitchen, but here he still was.
He couldn’t trust himself around people.
Accidents kept happening. Accidents like… what happened tonight.
(he closed his eyes against the rush of images, blue and white and a frigid blast from his gun and a boy lying so still on the ground)
But he’d been here alone for weeks now.
Beyond the window, a sudden flash of lightning had him curling protectively around himself.
Lightning.
“All right, Gideon,” he said aloud, pulling himself up off the floor. “You better know what you’re talking about.” He grimaced. “And this better work.”
He closed his eyes, and thought of a speedster in red.
An apartment began forming around him, in long shadows first, then details.
Two people, asleep in bed in a darkened room, lit by halos of moonlight and streetlight.
When he appeared somewhere, jumping through time or space or both, he did it silently. Sometimes there was a brief flash of blue light. But he was the only one who could hear the universe ripping apart to force him through. To everyone else, he arrived as quiet as a thief in the night.
So they were still asleep, Barry’s arm curled around Iris like she was the most precious thing in his world.
He couldn’t breathe, the domestic scene hitting him like a fist in his gut. It was everything he hadn’t had for… a lot longer than just the past few weeks.
He grit his teeth and took a step towards the bed. In his very best Captain Cold voice, as low and dangerous as he could manage, he said, “Well, well, well.”
Iris sat bolt upright.
Barry... flashed. But this time, Len saw it coming. “Don’t,” he said. “You’ll regret it. No - I’ll regret it.”
Barry came to an abrupt stop in front of him. “What?"
He didn’t bother to explain. “Deja-vu, Barry,” he said, hoping his smirk wasn’t giving him away, that it wasn't just a shadow of itself. “But then you always did like appreciating a moment over and over again, didn’t you?”
Barry’s eyes flashed bright with lightning in the still-dark room. Everything about him was screaming danger at Len, stamping down on the hair trigger that told him to run. But just a few hours ago, Barry had watched him shoot a man with the cold gun, and maybe Len deserved everything the hero was about to do to him.
Barry didn’t break his angry stare, now so close that Len could feel his breath on his face. But, as requested, he didn’t touch him. “Who are you?” he demanded. “You’re not Leo.”
“Barry!” Iris took a step forward, and her eyes met Len’s. He shoved his twitching hands into his pockets as her glance took them in.
Her husband whirled around to look at her. “He tried to kill a man tonight, Iris! Not even a - just a kid!”
“Is he dead?” Len asked in a mutter. He picked a dark spot on the nice hardwood floor to stare at.
Barry seemed to remember him, folding his arms defensively across his chest as he stood between Len and Iris. “He’s okay. No thanks to you. I had to run him out of there. Have you seen what your gun does to a human body, Snart? You’re damn lucky Caitlin knows how to deal with the results.” Len felt his lips thin, but he refused to rise to that bait. “And don’t even try to tell me you didn’t mean to kill him.”
“Oh,” Len said, aiming for the same dangerous tone, “I meant every blast of it.” He raised his eyes towards Barry. The speedster was standing between him and the window. Lit up by low street lighting behind him, he cast a long, dark shadow.
(not safe)
And he didn’t know if the voice echoing in his head meant Barry, or himself.
Iris took a careful step forward. “Then why did you come here?” Her voice was everything Barry’s wasn’t - soft, worried.
Barry scoffed, fists forming at his sides. “That’s not the question we should be focusing on right now, Iris.”
“No,” Iris said, voice still so soft it made Len ache. “I think it is.” She hadn’t broken her shared gaze with Len, looking at him like he… mattered. It was decidedly uncomfortable.
“Are you our Leonard Snart?” Barry's own voice was on the verge of yelling.
Snart raised a trembling hand to the wall behind him, steadying himself. “Now there’s a question, Barry.”
Barry narrowed suspicious eyes. “Are you going to explain that?”
Iris laid a gentle hand on her husband’s shoulder. He looked like he was shaking with rage under her touch.
Len shrank back suddenly against the wall, his hands splayed against it. He didn’t want to think about what an unlikely figure of terror he cast in his parka. Or what he was afraid of.
“Another day, maybe,” he said, with an unsteady tremor in his drawl.
He strode past them without another word, but he saw Iris’s hand tighten on Barry’s shoulder, heard her murmur, “Don’t.”
Maybe she thought they owed him a chance. Whatever the reason, they let him leave.
January, 2019
For a while after that, the Leonard Snart trail went cold. Iris exploited all the tricks of the trade she knew, but there was no sign of him.
“Well, he was always good at going underground,” was all Barry would say. It was the most he had said about Snart since the night they’d seen him.
Snart. Alive again. It was… a lot.
Iris and Barry had always talked about everything, but it had taken him a while to tell her about his feelings for Snart. Pulling him out of Siberia had been the catalyst. Barry had poured his heart out to her about how he had always felt about the thief. How guilty he'd felt, wanting him even while they were pulling the heist that was all about rescuing her.
Iris had kissed him, and told him he wasn’t the only one who was attracted to Snart. Even though they both knew that, for Barry, this went way beyond simple attraction.
But it had all been hypothetical. He’d been dead. And now?
Over coffee at Jitters, she even asked Nora if she knew a Leonard Snart in the future. Her daughter’s face stayed uncharacteristically blank, hiding behind her mug. She just said, “Spoilers, Mom. Geez. Have you learned nothing from Dad’s escapades?”
One night, a couple of months after Snart's last appearance, they were coming in from a late dinner out. Flash business had kept them at STAR Labs so long that neither of them could face cooking. A couple of glasses of wine later, they were both in fits of giggles - Iris a bit tipsy, Barry picking up her mood. She was leaning back against the wall, watching her superhero being totally adorable as he struggled with the apartment door. “I don’t know, it’s stuck!”
“It’s not stuck, it’s you. Just grab the thing and turn.”
He grinned at her as he tried to force the key. “Is that a euphemism for something?”
“I will kill you, Allen.”
Pouting, he rattled the unyielding key. “Can’t I just phase us through the door?”
“No, you can do one thing slowly like a normal person for once. Oh, give it here!”
Still laughing, they clattered into the apartment, and—
The silhouette at the window formed the unmistakable shape of a parka hanging off a thin frame.
So much thinner than when they’d last seen him.
“The trouble, Barry,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper, “is that I’m not sure what’s real anymore.”
Barry turned on the light.
Snart didn’t turn around.
Iris took a few slow steps towards him. Behind her, she felt Barry hesitate, but stay where he was.
Snart kept talking in a low mutter, as though he wasn’t sure either of them was going to respond. “So I went back to my old stomping grounds. Thieving is real. The cold gun is real. No, wait. Not sure about that either.” He laid a hand on the gun, where it rested on his leg, and a shock of horror ran through Iris.
The cold gun shouldn't exist, anymore than Snart should.
“Leonard—” Iris started.
Snart whirled around, his face cold with rage.
“You did this,” he snarled at Barry. “You made me - this.” He strode towards Barry, who still didn’t move.
“I made you what?” Barry asked softly, reaching out a hand towards Snart like he was coaxing out a spooked animal.
Snart flinched and took a step back. Iris remembered last time, when he’d warned Barry not to touch him. What had he said?
“This,” Snart repeated. “Hero.” He grimaced. “Did you know I died to save them, Barry?”
Eyes wide, Barry nodded.
I'm sorry, Barry. I forgot that we never told you.
Barry had been inconsolable when it hit him, a few days later. It was my fault, Iris.
“We heard.” Barry’s voice was deceptively even, but he wasn’t fooling her. “Snart, how are you back?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.” He raised a hand, black with dried blood. The horror of a hundred possibilities hit Iris like a punch to the stomach. “Just need to know what’s real. But I don’t...” His chin came up, defiant. “This isn’t helping. Not the old ways.”
Barry’s brow was tightly furrowed. “What happened?”
Snart lowered his hands in front of his face and shrugged. “Fought my way outta something. Don’t worry. Didn’t break your precious rules. I know how much you need everyone to be as much of a hero as you.” He tilted his head. “Why d’you do this to me, Barry? Why can’t I just go back…” Trailing off again, he turned back to the window. “You did this.”
Barry took a slow, careful step forward. “Then let us help.”
Iris almost laughed out loud. Her Barry Allen. Who would he be if he didn’t try to save everyone?
“Oh,” Snart said, some of his old drawl returning, “I think you’ve done enough.”
“Then why are you here?”
There was a dull hint of vulnerability in Snart’s eyes. “Didn’t have anywhere else to go.” His gaze shifted to Iris, as though seeing her for the first time. “Don’t waste your time trying to save people who don’t want to be saved,” he murmured, a little robotic, like he was quoting something.
“But you do,” Barry said, as though trying the concept on for size. “That’s why you’ve been looking for us.”
He turned back to the window, his shoulders sinking in a sigh. “Woke up on the Waverider a few months ago. Spent less than a night there - I didn’t bother her good crew. Turned out, I’d missed three years. And there were… complications.” His voice dropped into a mutter again. “I remember things that can’t be real. Can’t remember things that should be.”
“What do you need?” Iris tried. “Can we help find out why you’re back? We could call the Legends—”
“No,” he snarled, spinning on his heel, face like an ice storm. “No Legends.” He stumbled back against the window. “Don’t care why I’m back. Just - please.”
“Okay.” Barry took another step forward, his hands raised. “So what can we do?”
Snart stared down at his own blood-streaked hands. “I don’t want this. Don’t want to… fall back into old habits.”
He looked up again, and he and Barry shared an intense gaze for a moment. Barry asked, “Can I help?”
Iris raised an eyebrow. But it was hardly like she’d never seen that look between them before. Watching them share something that was entirely different from Barry's connection with her, she was vaguely aware that she didn't feel any jealousy - nothing but concern for Snart. If he needed help, especially with something as strange as... whatever this was, who better than Barry?
The ghost of his old smirk crossed Snart’s face. “Offering to be my sponsor, Barry?”
Barry huffed a little laugh. “Maybe something a bit less offensive to recovering alcoholics.”
“Ouch,” Snart said, his eyes still distant.
“You can come and find us whenever you need us,” Barry said, his voice soothing.
Snart glanced at Iris. “Us?”
Out of her depth, Iris just nodded.
He looked between them, and the shadow of a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. Barry turned to Iris, about to speak—
There was a flash of blue light.
When they looked back again, Snart was... gone.
“Thief in the night,” Iris murmured, quoting something she only half remembered.
Barry's eyes were flashing with the effort of holding himself back from running after a ghost. “Why is he back?”
Iris blinked towards the door that Snart hadn’t used. “More to the point - Barry, where did he go?”
Barry just shook his head.
In the silence, the wind sighed through the wedged-open window where Snart had been standing.
Woke up way too late feeling hungover and old
And the sun was shining bright, I walked barefoot down the road...