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flamemask · 6 years

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A ColdFlash Interest Check

Long time no see fam! I know I have been quiet on here for....well months, especially when it comes to posting a new peace, but have no fear! For I have returned with an idea I’ve been sitting on for some time now that I want to see if there is going to be any actual interest from, well, you lot. So before you jump into what this is, please be noted that it is ColdFlash, but other pairings will be brought into fruition as well if this becomes a thing. When I started getting interesting plot point ideas, I really started to get on the bandwagon but I have one issue. Soulmate AUs. While I love reading them, I know how common they are and how some people may be sick of seeing them, which is why I currently only plan on posting this prologue piece to see if the concept catches your attention. I am also hoping you guys have some questions about how this particular version of the soulmate au will work, especially when it comes to different matches (or bonded pair, as is more common). So I am encouraging you guys to ask me questions, please. If you are at all interested, after reading this piece and looking at any additional info I’ll be adding in the comments in response to you guys, drop a like will be my number one way of knowing if I want to continue this.

And so, if I have at all intrigued you with this idea of mine, go on ahead and read below. I will be out of town (and thankfully not working) for the weekend so I will have plenty of time to look at comments and respond when I’m not busy with family stuff. And don’t forget to ask questions and let me know if you’d like to see more of this story in the future.

From the moment you are born, a number is written into your skin, constantly counting downwards. Some argued that the number is there long before you leave the safety of your mother's womb, but that wasn't proven until fetal surgeries first came into practice in the 1980's. Still, it's the importance of that ever changing number that matters.

Constantly ticking down, a person can watch that number to know when they are going to meet their soul mate. No one in recorded history has been born without this marking. However, some are unlucky enough where their life ends before that number reaches zero. But that's not what happens in this story. While soul mates come in many shapes and forms, this is a story that tells of how a young man had to wait a very long time to meet the one destined to stand by his side, no matter what.

On June 2nd, 1972, a little boy is brought into the world at 10:34 in the morning. His number is large, in the billions. The woman, his mother, cries when she sees how many digits make up her son's soul mark. It will be many years until he meets his soul mate. Her own mark has been at zero for as long as she can remember. She was lucky, met her soul mate as a child, another girl that turned into be her best friend. But the girl was killed as a teen at gun point. Mrs. Snart wanted her son to be lucky like she had been, to know his soul mate young. But he would have to wait a long time.

Later that day, two women broke into the nursery and rescued this baby boy, with his little black hat, from an assassin from the future. He was whisked away to a place called the Refuge. And all though the boy won't remember it, he was held for a short time by his own future self. And this man, grown and aged with short, graying hair, had a stationary zero upon his wrist. And the grown version of Leonard Snart was amazed to see the number upon his newborn self's wrist frozen in this time he should never have been in.

Only fifteen minutes passed when a man in a brown trench coat returned the baby Leonard to 1972 to the nursery. No one was the wiser, and the number on the baby's wrist continued again on it's countdown to zero.

A few years past and again a Leonard Snart of the future meets his younger self. It's now the middle of October, 1975, when a three year old Leo meets a stranger in his kitchen. The man claims he's a friend of Leo's father, but the boy was raised to be skeptical. "No matter what, you always have to look out for yourself." Leo thinks of the strangers words after his father sends him back upstairs. And as he sits on his bed before falling asleep, he looks at the numbers on his wrist with a little frown. The number is still over a billion, and he wonders what will happen when it finally reaches zero.

Days after Leo's encounter with the stranger, Lewis is arrested for trying to sell a stolen gem to an undercover cop. Leo tries to ignore the sound of his mother's tears. Five years later, when Lewis is let out and returns home, he's a different man. Lewis drinks and is angry often, yelling at Leo whenever he makes a mistake. He doesn't hit Leo until nearly a month after his return from jail, and the number on Leo's wrist is still over one billion, but only just.

Leonard is almost fourteen when his baby sister, Lisa is born. It's late February of 1986 and Leonard is in the eighth grade. He misses his mother, a woman who did not bring Lisa into the world like she did with him. Lisa's mom isn't as nice, but he just ignores her. He's been dealing with cruel people ever since his father came home from jail the first time. He has the scars to prove it. When Lisa's mother came forward about her pregnancy, that had been the last straw for Leonard's mom. She could deal with the abuse, watching her husband hit his own son for his mistakes as he taught the boy how to be a thief, but it seems she drew the line at cheating. Leonard just wished she'd brought him with her. But when he's allowed to hold little Lisa in his arms the first time, with the numbers on his arm just over nine hundred million, he realizes that if this little girl is to remain as precious as she was at that moment, he needed to be around to protect her from Lewis' hate.

He breaks that promise to himself and Lisa months later, when he's caught stealing for his father and gets sent to juvie for the first time. He's just glad Lisa's mom is still around to care for her with Lewis in jail too. When a gang of punks decide to corner Leonard for being the scrawny teen he was, he meets his future best friend and partner in life, Mick Rory. But his number is just under that nine hundred million mark now, and Mick isn't that kind of partner. No, Leonard still has a long time to wait for that.

It's not until he's eighteen that Leonard does the math. He's a high school drop out because of how much time he spent in juvie over the past four years, but it doesn't matter, he can do math just fine. He assumes the numbers are seconds, just as so many in the world have proven in the past but he has no way to look it up. When he finally does gets done doing a rough estimate, because that number is constantly changing, he wants to scream. He wants to shout and hit something at how unfair his life has been, how it always will be from the looks at it. Leonard Snart is already eighteen years old, and he does the math three times only to keep ending up with the same numbers. He has twenty three years, seven months, and thirteen days until he meets his soul mate. After his anger subsides, he counts it out on a calendar and burns the date into his head. October 28th, 2014.

After that, Leonard starts to wear long sleeve shirts. He doesn't want the constant reminder of how long he has to wait, even though he has the date memorized. Len doesn't look at it, doesn't want to. He ignores it in the shower, looks the other way when he's changing, and keeps his arm turned when he's in bed with someone that isn't his soul mate because he doesn't want to think about it. It isn't until the day Lisa graduates from high school that he's forced to look at that number again, and it's because of her. Lewis is in jail again, but it doesn't matter. Len goes, keeps to the shadows in case someone on the off chance recognizes him. Lisa hasn't gotten involved too much in the criminal world, Len doesn't want her too. That ends up changing in a few years, but he doesn't know that yet. For the mean time, she's smiling wide as she walks onto the stage and accepts her diploma from the school's principal. He's smiling too, glad she can do this when he didn't get the chance. After the ceremony she finds him, gives him the tightest hug he's gotten from her since before she was a teenager. When she pulls away, she's suddenly pushing up the sleeve of his left arm. It's up before he realizes what she's doing, before he can stop her. She frowns at the number, still nine digits long and will be for a while more, but when she looks up at him she replaces that frown with a large smile. "Don't worry Lenny, I'm sure whoever they are, they'll love you no matter what." Len doubts it, who could ever really love a man like him.

The next, and last time before that day, Len looks at the number on his wrist is the day the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator explodes. He'd made it back to the sanctity of one of his many safe houses in Central City, and it's quarter to eight at night when a sudden panic goes through him when he flicks on the news and hears that the explosion has caused some deaths. He has ten and a half months until he is supposed to meet his soul mate, but what if they'd died this day. He pushes up his left sleeve in a hurry, glad to be alone when a sigh of relief escapes him. The number is eight digits long, but still counting down. He can't meet his soul mate if they're dead.

On March 14th, 1989, Henry and Nora Allen welcome their first and only child into the world. Bartholomew Henry Allen. His mark is on his right wrist and nine digits long. The doctor offers to give them an age estimate of when little Barry, as they choose to call him, will meet his soul mate. Both new parents agree and smile when they're informed that he'll be twenty five. It's a prime time to meet a soul mate. After all, they were only a little younger than that when the numbers on their wrist had turned to zero the moment their eyes had met.

The night of Nora Allen's murder left young Barry so confused. In the days to come, no one would believe him about the man in the lightning, his father blamed for the murder and hauled off the jail. But that very night, and the 18th of March, 2000, when little Barry Allen suddenly finds himself a couple blocks away in the blink of an eye, he looks down to his wrist for a moment and reads the digits there. Four hundred, sixty one million is still a long ways away, but he pushes that thought aside as he starts to run back home, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Barry waits to find out the date he'll meet his soul mate until years later, on the day he graduates from high school. It's June 8th, 2007, and the sun is setting as he works out the math on a piece of old notebook paper. On the other side are notes from his AP Biology class, but those don't matter now. A wide grin spreads across his face when he sees he only has seven years, four months, and twenty days left. He counts it out until he's able to pin point the date as October 28th, 2014. He can wait that much longer, but he's excited to just know when it'll really be. After he's written the date on a post in and pinned it to the bulletin board over his desk as a reminder, he rushes back down stairs to join Iris and Joe for a movie and popcorn.

When Barry walks into the CCPD for the first time as a CSI, fresh from college, he peeks down at his bear wrist and grins at the number there. One hundred and five million seems so small in comparison to what it had been when he'd done the math four years ago, but he still finds comfort in the fact that his number continues to count downwards. A few months later he's moved into the old CSI lab at the far end of the building because of complaints from his fellow forensic co-workers, but he doesn't mind, he likes the peace of working in his own space. He doesn't look at his wrist as he's moving stuff into his new works space, but the number is now down to seven digits, and constantly getting closer to that date in three years.

Barry often looks at his soul mark, but after the particle accelerator explosion, he's left in a deep coma. The number continues to count down even as doctors at Central City Hospital think his heart is stopping and bring him back from the dead, not aware that his heart is just beating faster and faster than should be possible. It's not until after he's brought to S.T.A.R. Labs, despite Joe and Iris' original reluctance, that things seems to normalize for him, despite the coma. It's not until a few months after the explosion, on the day he turns twenty five, that someone else makes note of the number on his wrist. Iris was sitting in a chair at his bedside, her own wrist showing a prominent zero. A finger traced over the numbers on her foster brother's skin, a small frown on her face. Barry had told her the date years ago, when they were fresh from school and waiting for the day they'd meet the person who they were meant to stand besides. And she knew how close that date was coming to be. "Come on Barry, you only have seven more months. If you don't wake up before then, you won't get to see their face when they find out it's you. They are going to be so lucky to have you Bear, but you need to wake up first." She whispered, tears collecting in her eyes.

Dr. Caitlin Snow is the next one to take note of the number on Barry's wrist. It's the seventh day of October and Barry only has three weeks left until the day he's waited his whole life for. But he doesn't know that yet. Dr. Snow is just finishing up a routine test when she looks at the number and sighs. "You better wake up soon Mr. Allen, time is ticking." She says softly before turning to walk check a screen a few feet away. Soon she is jumping back into her argument with her colleague, Cisco Ramon, playing Poker Face by Lady Gaga for Barry because it was 'on his facebook'. She doesn't get a chance to speak though, because suddenly there's a loud gasp from behind her and as she turns around, she sees that Barry Allen has finally woken up. Her comment about his soul mark is forgotten, but later that day, after everything that Barry goes through, he looks at the number and smiles.

#The Flash #Barry Allen #Leonard Snart #Captain Cold #ColdFlash #soulmate #soulmate au #au

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