#flashwaveweek2018

[stillnotginger10]

Worth it (AO3)

Word count: 855

Summary: "So they parted ways with her and all—Team Flash, Leonard Snart, and Mick Rory, who were taking a break from their missions on the Waverider—gathered at STAR Labs to celebrate, catch up, and eat some food."

For @thevoiceofdragons, who wanted "Anything with that and Barry appreciating the heck out of [Mick's cooking] skills. (a la "I could kiss the cook"/"I would put out for this, real talk" etc)"

Thank you @wonderingtheblue for beta reading!! <3

Mission accomplished. Another week, another meta stopped. Luckily, this time that didn’t involve sending anyone to Iron Heights. Their wayward meta was just a woman that didn’t realize she had powers. They helped her learn control and even gave her a bracelet that could neutralize her powers if she decided she didn’t want them, just like Caitlin used before she got control over Killer Frost.

The meta couldn’t be persuaded to become a hero, but Barry wasn’t too surprised. What else could he expect from someone that was friends with Captain Cold and Heatwave.

She was a prostitute that they had realized needed help and had brought to Team Flash’s attention. Once they’d helped her with her powers, she had rejected any other help—to become a hero or to help her find a new job. She was happy with the life she had and didn't want their help changing it.

So they parted ways with her and all—Team Flash, Leonard Snart, and Mick Rory, who were taking a break from their missions on the Waverider—gathered at STAR Labs to celebrate, catch up, and eat some food.

As Barry finished piling two plates high with food from the buffet spread out for them and walked over to join the others, he realized that Cisco was still fixated on the woman they’d helped today and her chosen profession.

“I’m just saying,” Cisco said as Barry took a seat, “that I’d be really expensive. It’d take a lot of money for someone to buy this for a night.” He gestured to himself as though it were obvious just from looking at him that he was an expensive prize. “Or some really rare Star Trek collectibles,” Cisco added after a pause.

Barry laughed along with the others and was about to comment before he got distracted by the delicious food he’d just taken a bite of. He’d never tasted anything this good, and even though he’d just started, he was tempted to go grab one of the trays of food before the others could grab more. Did speedsters get dibs on the majority of the post-mission food? They should. He needed it more than the others. And seriously, it was melt in your mouth, finger licking, sell your soul, incredibly good.

Barry moaned around his mouthful, and after he swallowed, without thinking, said, “Forget collectibles. You could buy me with this food. It’s that good.” As soon as he was done speaking, he took another bite. It was just as good as the first.

“Is that so, Barry?” Snart said, and the way he drawled his name made Barry finally look up from his plate to see the amused smirk playing across the man’s face.

Not even a little ashamed, Barry said, “If I got this food every day, I’d put out every night.” The food was incredible. If Cisco could hypothetically sleep with someone for Star Trek merch, he could for food.

“Uhh Barry—“ Caitlin hesitantly tried to get his attention. She’d been one of the ones laughing at Cisco’s comment, was she really against him saying something similar about food?

Before Caitlin could continue or Barry could spare too long on that train of thought, Mick’s deep voice interrupted. “Deal, Red.”

“Uh what?” Barry asked, barely taking the time to stop chewing long enough to try and figure out what Mick was talking about.

“Mick’s the chef, kid,” Snart said, smirk growing into a full smile as he looked like he was trying not to laugh.

“Um well, it’s really good?” Barry asked more than said to the room before looking directly at Mick. “Thanks for cooking, Mick.” This was awkward. Was it awkward? Was he the only one that thought it was awkward? How was he supposed to know that the food had been made by the former criminal and not brought in from some 5-star restaurant that cost more than Barry’s paycheck. Clearly, Mick should have been a chef. He probably would have made more than he did with his heists.

“Come over to mine tomorrow night and I’ll cook for you again,” Mick interrupted Barry’s thoughts again, and was he seriously propositioning him? Barry had been joking…mostly.

At a loss for words, Barry looked around at the others. There were varying degrees of amusement, embarrassment, and incredulity in the faces of his friends and teammates. Barry was about to laugh the whole thing off when he took another bite and remembered exactly why he had made the claim in the first place. The food was incredible.

Turning to Cisco, Barry whispered—as though the others couldn’t hear him—“If I agree, are you all going to judge me?”

That seemed to be Cisco’s breaking point as he started laughing in earnest. “Definitely,” he said. “All the judgement, dude.”

Barry looked around again, at Iris and Snart’s amused faces, Caitlin’s facepalm, and Cisco and Wally’s outright laughter—thankfully Joe had gone back to the precinct—before turning to Mick, who looked like a combination of amused and hopeful.

Well, if he was serious…

Barry shrugged and said, “Worth it. Deal, Mick.”

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: Jonah (ao3 link)

Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Barry Allen/Mick Rory/Leonard Snart Series: Flashwave Week 2018 (Destiny Series)

Summary: In which Barry goes to sleep and wakes up to a very different universe.

And it's all because Leonard "Destiny of the Endless" Snart couldn't keep his big mouth shut while reading the literal Book of Destiny.

Oh, well.

A/N: @flashwaveweek - Flashwave Week: Accidental Marriage

——————————————————————————————

Barry, as he so often does, wakes up feeling tired.

Not physically, of course; his powers make sure that even minimal amounts of sleep are enough to fully revive him.

Wouldn't want the world to go without one its heroes, Barry thinks bitterly.

Most of his mornings are spent like this, now: awake, but trapped in bitterness and regret. He's not sure when exactly it started, this endless frozen atrophied bitterness - when Joe's new baby died, maybe, or when Wally was killed, or when Caitlin was mind-wiped until she didn't remember any of them, or when Cisco went temporarily evil and killed so many people that even the defense of mind control didn't swing the jury back in his favor.

He has new members of Team Flash to back him now, but it's not the same. He knows he can't let himself get close to them or they'll just be targets as well, more than they already are.

Everyone he's close to is a target.

Like Iris.

Oh, Iris...

Maybe that's when the bitterness started, when Iris sat him down - months ago, now - and held his hands and told him that while she still loved him, she thought it'd be better for both of them if they weren't married anymore.

Barry doesn't blame her. He wouldn't want to be friends with a Jonah like him, either: mysterious disappearances at every turn, weird twists and turns what feels like every week, never any normal life, and poisonous honey to draw in every maniacal villain in existence, it felt like.

Even the Justice League, in which he put so much hope, is fracturing: Batman's latest protégé brutally murdered and Batman lashing out against them all as a result, Superman's identity and Earth parents under threat, Diana offered an irresistible chance to go home again for a rest, Hal sent far away...no one has time or interest in their alliance beyond the moments of utter necessity, which seem to happen about once a year or so.

Nothing like the group of friends who can understand the pressures of heroism that Barry wanted it to be.

And that leads him back to where he is: bitter and tired and unable to get up.

"Bar!" Iris' voice rings through the door, causing Barry to violently start. Iris hasn't lived in what was once their mutual apartment since she'd moved back home to take care of Joe, who was near-catatonic with grief. Sure, she still had a key, but she never used it... "Barry Allen, I know you have super-speed, but if you don't get up now, you're going to be late. Or, more importantly, we're going to be late!"

Barry doesn't recall any plans he had with Iris. Honestly, Barry doesn't recall the last time he spoke with Iris, even though (even after everything) she's still his anchor.

Is this another trick? Another villain's scheme?

Only one way to find out.

He gets dressed and goes into the kitchen, where Iris is rifling through the fridge, though she looks up when he walks in.

"There you are, lazybones," she says, grinning at him, and Barry has to take a step back, because he hasn't seen Iris this healthy, this whole, this happy in - years. Even before she moved out. "Don't tell me you're getting cold feet."

"Cold feet?" Barry echoes helplessly.

"More like hot feet, I'd say," another voice says with a laugh from his blind spot, and now Barry's really twitching because it's been forever since he heard that voice, it can't be, he's dead, but no, Barry turns and there he is.

Eddie Thawne is sitting at Barry's kitchen table with a newspaper and a wedding ring.

"You're letting the puns get to you, babe," Iris says, going over and giving him a kiss on the cheek. "You planning to go villain on us?"

"Hey, I don't necessarily get my puns from the villains," Eddie protests mildly, smiling up at her with that devoted, loving gaze he's always had for Iris, the one that won him Barry's affection even despite their competition. "Maybe I get it from my wonderful pun-using award-winning journalist wife. Have you considered that possibility, Mrs. West?"

"I have indeed, Mr. West," Iris says haughtily, but with a grin. "And I'll have you know that your wife just reports what's out there - Barry, you're pale. Did you forget your midnight snack again? You know your metabolism goes screwy when you don't eat enough."

Barry shakes his head and shrugs. He can't think of what to say. He can't think of - anything.

They look so happy.

"Sit and eat," Eddie says, looking at him with a frown. "Did we - did we actually wake you up? We didn't mean to."

"Like Barry would've slept through our kids getting ready to go school," Iris says, but she sounds doubtful. "They're total elephants and we do live right upstairs..."

Barry and Iris didn't have kids. They'd wanted to, of course, in the beginning, but then there was what happened to Nora and they'd never quite managed to get over that enough to start trying, not before the tragedies started - or worsened, really, it wasn't like their lives weren't full of tragedy before...

"Nora?" he croaks.

"No, Don and Dawn," Iris says, looking puzzled. "They're the maniacal little kindergarteners; little Nora's still cooking." She taps her belly, which now that Barry pays attention he notices is curved out slightly. "As you well know. Are you okay?"

Barry opens his mouth to tell them that there's been a timeline alteration, that someone's changed something - Eddie's alive, after all, and he shouldn't be - but then he stops.

If he tells them there's a timeline alteration, then they'll want to help him try to fix it.

They'll want to send him back.

Back to a world where he lives in his big apartment alone with the wreck of all his dreams, where Iris has quit her job to care for Joe, where...his friends...his friends...

"I think I have temporary amnesia," Barry says apologetically. "Can you catch me back up?"

"Uh, sure," Iris says, blinking at him. "Is this a Justice League thing?"

Barry shrugs apologetically.

"I'm going to text Diana very angrily about this," Iris says, who's never had Diana's phone number. No one had Diana's phone number, and once she went back to Thermiscyra it was a moot point anyway. "Or maybe Selina."

"Selina?"

"Batman's wife? Catwoman?"

"Oh," Barry says faintly. "Right. Her."

Batman got married?!

"Barry, please sit and eat something," Eddie says, coming over and putting a warm hand on his back. "Whatever's gone wrong, we'll help you fix it, you know that."

"I know," Barry says, his throat tight. "Uh. Can I ask you - about everyone else?"

"Sure," Iris says. "But then - as soon as we finish our appointments today - we're taking you to STAR Labs for Caitlin to check you."

"Caitlin's - at STAR Labs?"

"Well, no," Eddie says. "Only sometimes. She got that job in that hospital - Head of the Metahuman Wing, remember? Her and Killer Frost both?"

"Of course he doesn't remember, Eddie," Iris says. "He has amnesia."

"Well, I don't know how far back the amnesia goes -"

"Cisco?" Barry interrupts, a little desperately. "Joe?"

"Cisco's at STAR Labs," Iris agrees, clearly puzzled. "Probably setting up for his first class of the day -"

"Class?"

"Yeah, the Flash Engineering Corps," Eddie says, looking amused. "Best scholarship program in the Twin Cities - plus you get to work for a superhero while saving up for college. Iris' idea, of course."

"Shush, you. Joe's - well, Joe's probably dropping Jenna off at school after her dentist appointment, then dropping Cecile off at the DA's office, and then going into work at the CCPD as usual, I guess?"

Barry swallows hard. Caitlin herself, Cisco free, Joe aware...

There's got to be a catch.

"Oh, crap," Iris says abruptly. "Our appointment! Barry, we can deal with your amnesia later, but if we miss this, they won't let us have another, and then you won't have a suit for your wedding!"

...wait, what?

"Uh," Barry says.

"Listen, here, Barry Allen," Iris says. "I know you and Mick would probably get married in your underwear and a bathrobe if we let you, but damnit that is not going you happen, you get me?"

"Yes, ma'am," Barry says automatically, saluting her so that she laughs and punches his arm lightly.

His mind is still reeling. Mick? As in, Mick Rory? Formerly the supervillain Heatwave, most recently member of the Legends, kind of depressed almost all the time?

They're getting married?!

This can’t be right.

Barry checks his phone for confirmation. There’s a WhatsApp group chat titled “Justice League” that’s filled with jokes, that’s the first thing he notices – did Batman really just send around a bat emoji? really? will wonders never cease? – but Barry’s Facebook definitely seems to suggest that he’s marrying Mick Rory and that everyone is sending him congratulations on it.

“Barry,” Iris says. “Appointment. Time to get moving.”

There's a knock at the door.

"I've got it," Eddie says, and is at the door opening it before Barry can say anything - you don't open doors, you don't know who's waiting behind those doors with a gun and a grudge, that's how we lost Cecile, except here they didn't lose Cecile. "Oh, Snart, what are you doing here?"

Snart?

Wait, no, this is good - in Barry's universe, Snart had recently returned from the dead to assume some sort of mystical magical position or something, something Constantine called "Destiny of the Endless". Barry's not entirely sure what he does - it seems to involve a lot of reading - but it did mean that he spends most of his days in his garden house outside of time.

And if he's outside of time, he wouldn't be affected by the timeline changes!

"- just need to borrow Barry for a bit," Snart is saying apologetically. His hood is up over his head and his eyes are glowing that inhuman blue that Barry's still not used to, and he has his ridiculous Book in hand; he's definitely still Destiny here. "I'll get him to the fitting, don't worry; just meet us there."

"Fine, I'm trusting you," Iris says, shaking her head at him. "C'mon, Eddie; you can drop me off before you go to work - Barry will catch up later, apparently. But don't you dare be late, Bar!"

"Uh," Barry says.

"Later than usual," she amends.

"Okay," he says, because that seems slightly more plausible.

They leave and Barry turns onto Snart. "Do you know -" he starts, only for Snart to interrupt.

"I'm sorry," he says.

Barry stares at him. "Oh god," he says. "It's affected you, too."

Snart scowls at him. "It has not," he snaps. "But I promised Mick those'd be the first words out of my mouth."

That seemed pretty plausible. Mick could get Snart to do just about anything.

"And I am," Snart adds grudgingly. "Sorry. I guess."

That sounds more like it.

"You're behind the timeline change?"

Snart winces. "Bit more than a timeline change," he says. "I'm - listen, I'm new at this whole Destiny thing, okay?"

"...yeah..?"

"I was - multitasking."

Barry's never heard that word imbued with such gravitas portending doom.

(Does the ability to do that come with the Destiny job?)

"Okay, and?" he asks.

"Turns out that's a bad idea," Len says grimly.

"What did you do, Snart?"

"I was reading from the Book," Snart says. "You know, the one that describes how reality operates?"

He shakes it pointedly.

Barry just gives him a look.

"Anyway, Mick was on my case about - something - and he mentioned you a few times - as a good influence or something - and, uh, I may have lost my temper a bit -"

"Snart. What did you do."

"I said, 'if you like Barry Allen so much, maybe you should marry him'," Snart says, looking hideously embarrassed.

As he should.

"What are you, five?" Barry asks. "I haven't heard that used as a comeback since first grade."

Possibly third. Maybe even fifth.

Barry was never really good at comebacks.

That's not the point.

"The point is," Snart says, "is that by saying that while reading the Book, reality got a little...confused."

"Confused," Barry says flatly.

"It - may have reshuffled itself into a world in which you and Mick are getting married."

“No kidding,” Barry says. He’s already figured that out. “And I don’t remember the new backstory because…?”

“Speed Force,” Snart says with a shrug. “Protects you from timeline shifts for the most part, or at least your memories. You should start getting the memories from this timeline in a few months, though.”

“Just like it was with Flashpoint?” It’d taken all summer before Barry’s old memories started fading in favor of the new ones.

“Yeah, like that,” Snart says.

Barry considers this. “…can it be changed back?” he asks after a long moment.

“It can,” Snart says. “But Mick doesn’t really want to – there’s some friends of his on the Legends that died. Sometimes in pretty nasty ways. Anyway, they’re back now. But he says I have to check with you as to what you want.”

“My memories of this world will start coming in in a few months?”

“Yeah. You’ll still remember the old world, though; it’ll just be overlaid with, like, important event memories so that you're not always asking about backstory.”

“Okay, then,” Barry says.

“…what does that mean?” Snart asks suspiciously.

“It means ‘okay’,” Barry says. “Thus far, this world seems a lot better than the one I left behind so, you know, screw that.”

He wasn't able to stay in Flashpoint because what he had to give up was so great, but the world he's left behind now? The world of misery and death and the endless despair of being a Jonah?

Seriously.

Screw that.

“You have a whole brand new set of enemies,” Snart warns him.

“Not exactly a new experience,” Barry says with a shrug. “Cisco and Caitlin can catch me up until I get the memories.”

“My sister’s developed plant-related powers and lives in Gotham now.”

“…weird and not exactly on-theme for her, but that sounds like Batman’s problem, not mine.”

“You kind of have to marry Mick.”

“Have to?”

“The entire reality rewrite is based on it,” Snart says. “The whole thing won’t fix into place until you both say ‘I do.’”

“But we could theoretically get divorced afterwards?”

“Yeah, no problem. It’d take you a year, legally speaking, but you can do it.”

A year married to Mick Rory, in exchange for Iris happily married with kids (and living upstairs, no less), Joe still functional, Cisco free and teaching, Caitlin at a hospital, a proper Justice League friendship group, and even some of the Legends brought back?

Yeah, like that’s a tough choice.

“I’m in,” Barry says. “Can I talk with Mick about this? He remembers everything, right?”

“Yes, he does, and he’s coming back tomorrow,” Snart says. “Legends, you know, they’re not always great on timing.”

“I do know that,” Barry says. “Uh – how does Mick feel about it? The marriage thing? Does he just want to pretend our way through it, or…?”

It’s not like Barry would really object if Mick wanted to give the marriage thing an actual go. He’s touch-starved, he’s apparently single, and he’s always been aware that Mick is ridiculously hot.

No pun intended.

(Damnit, villains!)

Snart smirks.

“Like I said,” he drawls. “He likes you. In fact, he likes you so much that he oughta marry you – and look at that, so you are.”

Barry shakes his head. “Whatever,” he says. He’ll talk about it with Mick directly; that’ll make more sense. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a suit fitting to go to.”

Maybe, if he’s lucky, he’s arrived early enough to still help out with the cake-tasting selection…

(Mick ends up making all the cake samples. Barry would marry him just for that.)

[snarkysnartes-blog]

Flashwave week day two: Coffee shop/Tattoo au

Barry couldn't believe that they were doing this, he probably should call Joe and have Mick arrested but that would also mean that he would get arrested and he didn't really want that. It was their three year anniversary. Albeit, a secret three year anniversary because no one aside from The rogues, Mick's little crew and Barry's best friend Iris knew about.

Mick holds his hand as he picks the lock of the tattoo parlor.

Mick flips on a switch and the entire shop lights up. Barry looks around the room and notices that it's empty. And he notices that it's Mick's shop.

"What's this about?"

Mick places a kiss on Barry's lips.

"Not only our three year anniversary but it's also the four year anniversary of the year that you opened your coffee shop and your drink... the flash is doing really well. We should celebrate and you've always wanted to get a tattoo done by me. Don't tell Snart I bought you here. Now get on that chair, let me give you your special gift."

[hiverforesteevee]

Chronitar + Trash

One team's trash is another man's treasure.

“They threw you away too, huh?”

“...They—they say I'm not the real Barry!”

“‘Course you're not.  You’re better than Red ever was.  Ya don’t waste mercy on folks who’ll go back to hurting folks, you built your own armor, you’re faster than light...” Chronos cupped Savitar’s cheeks and pressed their foreheads together.  He thumbed Savitar’s scarred cheek, his other hand on his gun. “C’mon, Blue, let’s go take out the trash.”

Savitar donned his armor and followed him aboard, his eyes ablaze, his heart determined to make anyone who hurt them pay.  Team Flash, the Legends: none would escape unscathed.

And every night, with the world burning around them, they’d worship each other.

[bluewonderer]

Burn Together

For Day One of @flashwaveweek: Chronos/Savitar

Read on AO3

“I know you, don’t I?” The Future asks of Time.

Time, the hunter called Chronos, his would-be executioner blinks away the last vestiges of unconsciousness to turn his hollowed-out gaze on him.

“Would hope so,” Chronos grunts as he looks away to take stock of his situation. There’s not much to look at, just brick walls and looming racks and odd-looking tools, everything made eerie by the blue glow of Savitar’s suit resting on standby in the middle of the room. “Just tried to kill you.”

“Yes, that was fun,” sneers the Future who calls himself Savitar. He reaches up, fingers absently brushing his shoulder. The burn from earlier is healed already but he feels the memory of it knitted in his skin, tender against the fabric of his shirt. “Caught me by surprise.”

“Only way to fight a speedster,” Chronos shrugs. “That and cold.”

“And that’s not really your schtick, is it?” Savitar says. “That’s your partner. Snart. Captain Cold.”

A reaction, there and gone, as fleeting as a spark. A play of muscles in his jaw, the whitening of knuckles, and then blankness again.

“Had a falling out, then?” Savitar clicks his tongue. “Shame.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” Chronos says, matter-of-fact as he sits up in the bare cot Savitar had thrown him on. Savitar is close to the cot, sitting backwards in a chair, his arms folded over the back, his chin resting nonchalantly on his forearms. “Before this is all over.”

Chronos reaches to the back of his head and brings his fingers down. It’s been almost half an hour, but the wound is still weeping a bright red. Chronos doesn’t spare a grunt, doesn’t deign it worthy of even a wince, he just wipes the blood on the mattress. He still doesn’t look up, like Savitar is not a threat, like he’s not the instrument that made Chronos bleed.

Savitar doesn’t like that.

“Where’s my suit?” Chronos asks. Savitar nods to the corner of the room, where the suit sits like an empty husk, its intimidating helmet beside it. Savitar had liked the suit, had stripped it off and pulled it apart and put it back together, discovered pieces of technology sewn into it from across all of time.

Stripped to a tank top and his underwear, Savitar had hoped that without the suit Chronos would seem more vulnerable, more human. But even without the suit he seems to take up half the room with his broad shoulders and his scars and his dead, dead eyes. It’s the eyes, Savitar decides. A window to an anesthetized soul beneath, a soul truly unafraid of stillness, of silence, of death. It’s the absence that seems to occupy a space bigger than the matter of the man.

(It’s not the same for Savitar’s own suit. Without it, he’s closer to being him, to being the Past. The suit makes him the god of motion. Without it, he’s just another abomination who doesn’t want to die.)

Chronos examines his arms and legs, shifting them experimentally, hesitantly, a man used to looking down and finding shackles. “Why didn’t you tie me up? I’m still supposed to kill you.”

“You’d die before you started.” Savitar says, confident. Now that he knew Chronos was coming for him, there wasn’t much Chronos could do against him. He’d outrun Death this long and he’d continue to do so, even if the gap was starting to close. “Why’d you come after me, anyway? Seems to be an escalation from knocking over ATMs.”

Chronos doesn’t respond, doesn’t look up. Just stares silently at his own hands. Savitar closes his eyes, taps into the Past, peeks into his memories.

He hates doing it, even though it keeps him three steps ahead, even though it keeps him alive. He hates remembering that he was once Barry.

“Time Masters,” he murmurs. “That’s right, I’d almost forgotten about them. You’ve become their dog.” Savitar must have finally blipped on their radar, and no matter how fucked up the Time Masters were, they wouldn’t want someone like Savitar interfering with the Flash’s so-called "destiny".

Chronos remains impassive to the verbal barb. White knuckles flash again, forearm muscles flex, and then whatever flickering flame raised its head behind Chronos’s expression sputters into smoke.

Savitar wonders what it’s like, to be motionless and blank like that. To have the live live live live please I want to live scorching through him be muted for half a moment.

Perhaps it’s that, or just the need to get Chronos to look at him, that has him moving. He kicks away the chair, takes a half step forward until his legs brush the edge of the cot. He looms over Chronos, so close he thinks he can feel body heat seep through his clothes. But Chronos does not seem to acknowledge him, doesn’t seem to be afraid of him. He’s Savitar, not Barry Allen. He could pull out Chronos’s organs one by one. He could snap the hunter’s neck quicker than thought. And he wouldn’t hesitate, not like Barry would. Savitar hasn’t hesitated in a long time. To hesitate is to stop, and he won’t ever stop.

He can’t.

Savitar bends a knee to the cot, the springs creaking under his weight. He places one hand on Chronos’s broad shoulder and swings his left leg until he’s straddling Chronos’s hips.

“Can’t help but notice that there’s not much heat in Heatwave any more. They must have done a number on you, dug out all of your useless bits and turned the rest to mush. Though, if memory serves, there wasn’t much to take out to begin with.”

Chronos’s eyes finally glare into Savitar and he shivers to have the attention on him. Savitar smiles with twisted delight, a slow slash across his face, feeling the pull of his facial scars fight against the movement. He lowers himself slowly onto Chronos’s lap, his groin flush against a hard stomach. He drops his hands over Chronos’s arms, fingertips bumping over the strange texture of scarred skin.

Savitar tilts his head. “Is Mick Rory still even in there?”

Chronos gives him a slow blink and turns away again. “No,” he grunts. “Nothing but them.”

Savitar can taste the lie, he wonders if Chronos can taste it, too, or if it’s something he doesn’t even know about himself.

Savitar knows. Savitar knows that you can dig in and claw at yourself until you’re nothing but rawness and pain. You can change your name, change your face, change your speed and still and still there will always be the Past. There will always be him.

There will always be the thing you can’t outrun.

Except Chronos isn’t trying to outrun anything. He’s stillness to Savitar’s motion, he’s death to life. He’s Time, old and endless. Savitar is the Future, always racing ahead, never stopping never waiting never--

Just once, this one time, it might be nice to feel some of that stillness and not be afraid of it.

He runs his fingers back up scarred arms, up strong shoulders, curls them around Chronos’s neck. Drying blood flakes on his hands. Even now Chronos doesn’t fight. He’s either decided that Savitar has no intention to kill him, or he’s decided that this is a death he cannot fight against.

Savitar would fight, if it were him, if something got that close to his throat. He’d fight brutally, and lethally. And yet he feels like Chronos is the braver of the two of them.

“Look at me?” Savitar asks, because it’s all he wants. He wants to be seen, wants to be noticed. He just wants to be.

Storm-like eyes the color of the Time Vortex bore into his own. And it’s probably because he’s Future and Chronos is Time and these universal properties are woven in their molecules, connecting them together, that Savitar is able to look into Chronos and see and experience as Chronos for a fraction of a millisecond.

He’s a speedster. A fraction of a millisecond is a small eternity.

He feels Chronos’s desire, an aching hunger for heat and life, a longing to fathom something other than blankness, something other than pain and the numbness of cold anger. Savitar feels his own body in Chronos’s lap, feels the trickle of need pool in his belly and knows it’s the first real thing, free and pure from torture and torment, Chronos has felt in an age. He feels the ghost of his own hands against Chronos’s skin, feels the heat and how Chronos both craves and fears a simple touch. He sees a long-ago memory of the unadulterated glow of a fire resurface in Chronos’s broken mind as he remembers his love for it.

Chronos lifts his hand to Savitar’s cheek, strokes a thumb across his lips, skin catching on the corner of his mouth before tracing the outline of his scar up his jaw, past his ear, and beneath his eye.

A lust for something other than sustenance, for something other than revenge, glimmers to life. Whereas Savitar chases after a blissful moment of stillness without fear of ending, Chronos is chasing after a memory of fire.

Savitar leans in, presses his mouth against Chronos’s, and together they burn.

end.

Thanks to @tobyaudax and @stillnotginger10 for reading it over/the encouragement! :) Tagging @sophiainspace in case they’re interested! <3

[notsalony]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Flash (TV 2014) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Mick Rory/Barry Allen Characters: Mick Rory, Barry Allen Additional Tags: FlashWave Week 1028, FlashWave Week, FlashWave, Free day, Nudist!Barry, Art Student!Mick, Couple, Nudist, Public Nudity, Exhibitionism, Live Nudes, Nude Life Drawing, Nude Model(s) Summary:

Mick talks Barry into nude modeling for his art class.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: Endless Nights (ao3 link)

Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Barry Allen/Mick Rory/Leonard Snart Series: Flashwave Week 2018 (Destiny Series)

Summary: Despite his nature as Destiny of the Endless, He Who Reads the Word That Is All Things, Len generally doesn't read ahead.

He likes to think that's why his siblings, the others of the Endless, like him: because he loves them, and he trusts them, and because of that he does not monitor them.

That's probably why he misses the moment where they all decide to conspire against him.

A/N: @flashwaveweek - Flashwave Week: OT3

——————————————————————————————

Despite his nature as Destiny of the Endless, He Who Reads the Word That Is All Things, Len generally doesn't read ahead.

Oh, his predecessor had - people thought the Endless were just that, the Endless, but then Morpheus had had a hissy fit and then they had Daniel and now everyone is aware that the Endless can be replaced, though for some reason they always seem to exempt Destiny and Death from that analysis - but Len's predecessor had been a boring old fart who thought he was the universe's gift to itself.

Predestination, really.

Ridiculous.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Or even want to, for that matter! It seems like existence would be hideously boring like that, never being surprised by anything, even if Len does have access to all the stories of all the world, excluding only the infinite multitude of stories that were stored in Daniel's Dreamworld.

No, Len prefers to keep himself at the present, or maybe a few pages ahead, and makes no secret of it; and in return he likes to think that his siblings appreciate him more than they had his stiff and formal predecessor.

(the seven Endless are always siblings, even if they are not always bound by such mortal things blood, and always in the same order: Destiny first, then Death, then Dream, Desire, Despair, Destruction, and finally Delight or Delirium, depending on her mood)

His siblings, too, are new. Daniel has been Dream the longest, thought by tradition Len remains the eldest, and although Daniel wears the thousand faces of the Dream King, he rather prefers to craft himself new forms and new lives and comes to Len's garden to beg for a Word to help slip him into the narrative of Destiny unnoticed.

His current favored form is a baby-faced inventor of a thousand enthusiasms called Francisco Ramon; the one before had been called Harrison Wells.

Len likes Daniel, or Cisco, or Harrison, or however he wishes to be called: he is kind when he can be, and fair when not, but more importantly he is old enough to have seen the changing of the fates.

He was there when Len, still then a mortal, gave his life in an explosion to undo a knot of time he'd found and found himself thrown into the prior Destiny's garden, a guest at his table and a prisoner. For all of his arrogance, for all his talk of predestination, of inescapable fate, the prior Destiny had feared that which sat at his table and sought to keep him, so as to forestall his own end: it didn't work, of course, and the prior Destiny should have known it wouldn't.

He really should have known: after all, Len hadn't even thought about stealing from Destiny until he'd been imprisoned, and even if he had, he wouldn't have chosen the book chained to his wrists if not for that intolerable insult.

In the most classic of ways, Destiny begat Destiny.

(all the world's oracles sighed in silent gratification, and slept dreamless and voiceless for once)

And when Len rose up, made anew - the book chained to his wrist now, his blind eyes unable to see anything but the Word, but that Word now his and his alone - he sensed Her come to take his predecessor by the hand to lead him into the dark.

Death.

The old Death, rather: she favored the look of a Goth, white makeup and black kohl and an ankh for eternity, he knows that by instinct and the memories of words already written. That same memory tells him that she smiled at him, kind.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for you."

Those were the only words she ever said to him.

And Len, whose hands were on his Book, whose Destiny was in his own hands for the first time in his life, understood.

Destiny and Death are the closest of the Endless, and they alone must always be kin: for first there is the Word, and with the Word the Reader, and once there is the Reader (a Destiny) who lives, there must also be Death.

But for every Destiny, a different Death.

The mantle of Destiny can only be taken by a thief in the night, but Death, who loves everyone, can only be replaced by love.

(and Leonard Snart had a sister)

(correction: Leonard Snart has a sister)

Lisa Snart had a choice, of course, but if she hadn't been willing to make that choice, Len's Destiny would never have been.

Lisa Snart is a Death as unlike her own predecessor as Len fancies he is of his: a Death not of darkness, but of glowing gold, warm and bright and brilliant.

Lisa is, of course, Len's favorite sibling.

But very shortly behind her is Mick.

Len and Lisa were still clinging to each other in the Garden of Destiny, their new roles shaking them to their marrow, when Mick came to them, a smile on his face and a raging fire in his wake: himself quite new, having emerged only a short while before, if time can so be calculated for beings whose existence stretches across eons.

Mick was the one who showed them their next steps, not Daniel (kind Daniel, arrogant Daniel, Daniel who was lost in his realm of dreams), and for that alone Len would love him.

But Mick is so much more than merely Destruction: he is rebirth and revival, the will to keep going onwards, and more important than all of that besides, he is Len's best friend.

Destiny, Death, Dream, and Destruction: the eldest four out of the seven.

As is only appropriate (destined, one might say, and Len does, often, with glee), Len met the twins next.

Well, sort of. He has to endure the old versions for a while: Desire of the many forms and a subtle but ever-present malicious arrogance, Despair of the naked trudging sloth.

He likes the new versions much better.

They came together, as all twins do: the White and the Black, goodness and evil evenly distributed but different as particles of daylight.

Sara and Laurel, they were called, but it was easy enough to slip into calling Sara Desire and Laurel Despair. Sara, who wants everything with a never-sated hunger; Laurel with a smile pasted on over the empty yawning pit within her.

And when they were comfortable in their skins again (desire and despair both), Len called a family meeting.

He didn't particularly want to, but it was necessary.

They gathered, all of them, Daniel and Mick and Len and Lisa and Sara and Laurel, and they waited.

Delirium arrived late, laughing as she always did.

When she got to her seat at the table, she stopped.

She stared.

She looked around.

"Oh," she said. "I'm the only one left."

And with that, she popped out of existence.

"What," Mick said.

"Had to happen," Len said, apologetically.

"Excuse me," Lisa said, and scurried away from the table to do her duty.

"But we can't be without a Delirium," Laurel objected.

"Or a Delight," Sara purrs.

"There will be a replacement," Daniel said confidently. Then he hesitated. "Right?"

"Um," a meek new voice says from the doorway. "Is this the right place, right?"

Caitlin is a lovely Delight, and Frost is an equally lovely Delirium.

Nothing like the old one.

For one thing, they swapped between each other far more often, Delight acknowledging the presence of Delirium and Delirium allowing for the presence of Delight, and it worked for them.

Len's family.

He loves them, and he trusts them, and because of that he does not monitor them.

That's probably why he misses the moment where they all decide to conspire against him.

"You're in my bed," Len says. He doesn't need eyes to know where everything is within his Garden realm.

"I know," Mick says.

"I'm ace."

"I know."

"Why are you in my bed, then?"

"I know."

"That wasn't a question that can be answered by 'I know', Mick."

Mick grins. "I know."

"Mick."

Mick laughs and rises from the bed. "I wanted to get your attention. I've found him."

"Found - him?" Len ruffles through the pages, looking for backstory. "Oh, your newest lover. Barry, is it?"

"That's how he prefers to be called," Mick agrees. "Better than 'Speed Force'."

"I've never met the Speed Force," Len says. "He warps time and fate, doesn't he?"

"Like no one else," Mick says proudly. "That's why he's perfect for you and me."

"Perfect..?"

"Yeah - Destruction and Destiny! Perfect for the Speed Force, which is always bumbling around fucking up fate left and right."

"I mean, by reputation, yes, that seems accurate," Len says. "But - perfect for what?"

"To be ours," Mick says.

Len frowns. "Did I mention that I'm ace?"

"Several times," Mick agrees, entirely unperturbed.

"So..?"

"I'm not asking you to have sex with him," Mick says haughtily. "I'll handle that part, and very well, too, thank you very much. But he can't just be mine - you know what happens to my lovers."

Mick means well, he always means well, but he is Destruction, inescapable.

He leaves only ruin in his wake.

"And you think I can help with that?" Len asks skeptically. The Endless cannot step on each other's domains, not with ease, and although Len is the eldest and the strongest, it is not a contest he would willingly engage in. "Why?"

"Because I want someone I can keep," Mick says, "and you need someone who can change you. Besides, you're ace, yes, but you've never fully ruled out the possibility of romance."

"Well, yes, but -"

"Settled, then."

"It is not."

"I'll go tell him the good news."

"Mick, I haven't agreed -"

"You will. It's, you know, Destined or however that happens."

"And how would you know anything about that?! Mick -"

"See you!"

"Mick!"

"You'll like him," Sara says confidently.

Len points a finger at her - not his dangerous pointer finger, the one he uses to read, but the finger right beside it, so as better to convey the fullness of his feelings on the subject. "Desire, you will not."

"I won't!" Sara says, playing at injured. "But you will, you know. Like him, that is."

"Desire..."

"I'm not meddling. You'd know at once if I was meddling and be able to resist it-"

The privilege of being the eldest.

Len appreciates it more each day.

"-but that doesn't mean I don't know things. I am Desire, after all, and you being ace doesn't mean you escape my grasp, thank you very much, even if you get it in a different way."

"I know you are, and I know that fact," Len says patiently. "I'm not questioning your competency in your field, that's for sure. Though I am questioning what you're doing here, in my Garden, instead of out - doing whatever it is you do."

He knows what she does. He knows what everybody does.

That's not the point, and Sara knows it.

Sara laughs. The sound makes Len crave...

Garlic breadsticks?

"Desire," he says sternly. "No meddling."

"It's just my sparkling personality! But seriously, what did you want just then? You always have the weirdest reactions - I think it's because you're one of the Endless. It never works right on Lisa, either."

"I don't need to think about you and Lisa, Desire."

"Lisa's my favorite sibling," Sara says wistfully. "Well, she’s everyone’s favorite, right alongside Delight-Delirium, but still, I like to think we have a real bond. We both have to serve the whole world."

"Still don't need to think about you and Lisa, Desire."

"Oh, come on, isn't it all in that book of yours?"

"In excruciating detail, yes. Go away."

"Awww, but Lenny -"

"You are not Lisa."

"Fine. Len. Just listen -"

"Still no. Go away."

"Ugh, fine. But I'm telling you, you will like him!"

"This is going to be so much fun!" Frost chants. She's taught herself to make ice bridges, created seemingly out of the air, to carry her around him in dizzying circles; he can feel the chill of them.

Len carefully makes sure that she doesn't touch any of his pages. They don't need another Dancing Plague anytime soon.

"You're going to be happy," Caitlin whispers in his ear, smiling. She's in a good mood. "Oh, Len..."

"I don't know how Mick has gotten you in on this," Len says crossly, "but I won't have it."

"You need to lighten up," Frost cackles.

Len gives in to the force of Frost's personality and lets himself be floated up to the ceiling, waiting patiently until Frost gets bored and lets him down again.

"You could just look ahead, you know," she says, pouting at him. "Your book has it down already - and you'd know if it was or wasn't so."

"I don't want to spoil the surprise."

"So you know there is a surprise! You're just holding out in anticipation!"

Len opens his mouth to object, because it won't be a surprise if there's no risk of the surprise being a bad one, then remembers that it's utterly pointless to argue with Frost, and rarely much more productive to argue with Caitlin, either.

"Go away," he says.

She - whichever one of her it is - smiles and flounces away.

Len waits until he can no longer feel her presence.

He glances at the Book that he always holds. He knows exactly where he would need to flip to, if he wanted to look...

No. That pathway leads to boredom and being predictable.

Len's always preferred free will.

He'll wait and see.

Laurel walks into his Garden.

"No," Len says. "Absolutely not."

She shrugs, and walks back out.

Fair enough.

Destiny does not sleep, strictly speaking, but Len occasionally indulges in a little shut-eye just for fun.

He is, in this instance, utterly unsurprised to find himself in his brother's smiling company.

He's wearing the Cisco face again, though the green stone shining from where it hangs from his neck is a clear giveaway.

"Let me guess," Len says dryly. "This Barry guy's great, I'll love him, I should just give in now and accept a polyamorous relationship with him and Mick?"

"Would you really accept Mick having any relationship - a serious relationship, not one of his flings - where you weren't involved?" Cisco asks in reply.

Len frowns.

"That isn't the point," he temporizes.

"It kinda is, man," Cisco says. "You and Mick, you're practically joined at the hip - it's throwing everyone into a frenzy, you know."

"A frenzy?"

"Destiny and Death? Classic combo. It's nice and traditional, you two having your own little thing and the rest of us trying to catch up - or, usually, looking to me, which never goes well for anyone." He shrugs unselfconsciously. No one is more aware of Dream's failings than the he who replaced Morpheus. "Destiny and Destruction being close, though? That's a whole new ballgame. People are talking end times."

"People are always talking end times," Len says dismissively, then adds, not without some real irritation, "And why does everyone always forget that Mick stands for positive destruction as well? Sometimes you can't make progress unless you tear down what's been built up before - the Roman Senate, the ancien regime, slavery, institutionalized bigotry -"

Cisco holds up his hands. "Don't get me wrong, big bro, I totally agree with you. Besides, if you ever let more people into your Garden -"

Over Len's immortal dead body.

"- then they'd realize what it really means, Destiny and Destruction being close, and then they'd freak out even more."

"What it really means?"

"We're the Endless," Cisco says. "Who we are and what we are and what the universe itself is, that's all so bound up together that there's no one without the other. You and Mick, being friends - it has an impact. On you, on him, on the universe."

Len arches his eyebrows. This isn't exactly news.

"Free will," Cisco says with a relish. "That's what it means. You're the most radical pro-free will Destiny in - well, probably since the beginning. The real beginning. And when all those gods and all those systems and all those institutions realize that you're not going to be holding the flood of change back? That far from sitting in your Garden reading people into their nice predictable river pathways, you're going to tear open the dam of fate itself and let everyone face the consequences of their own decisions? When they figure out that the Book of Destiny itself is being Read by a freaking anarchist? Yeah. Total panic."

Len can't help but smile, just a little, denying exactly none of it.

"That's why this Barry guy's gonna be good for you," Cisco adds. "He'll make things even more chaotic, bending reality and time itself back and forth, and he won't stand for anything getting in his way: no force, no injustice, nothing."

That...actually did sound rather appealing, damnit.

"He'll fit in just right with Mick," Cisco says thoughtfully. "All that destruction. But he's the Speed Force - he was made for more than just destruction. He was made to change things, permanently, to birth an age of heroes and stories like no other -"

"Suddenly I see where your interest in this comes from."

"Okay, fine, you caught me. The dreams we'd get if we lived in a world of walking legends...it'd be amazing. But that doesn't change the fact that both Barry and Mick need you to do more than just tear things down. Barry needs you to make his changes permanent."

"I can do that without dating him," Len points out. "Him or Mick. Besides, Mick's my brother."

"You've always been closer than brothers and you know it," Cisco objects. "Listen, just - think about it, yeah? This Barry guy, he's good. He's your type of good. You'll like him. And what it'll do for the universe -"

"I don't make decisions on behalf of the universe, Daniel," Len says. No one knows the perils of arrogance more than Morpheus’ successor, but sometimes he forgets. "Not more than I have to. That's the point of free will. Now let me wake up."

Cisco's face shimmers and stretches into Daniel's pale white features, features that Len can even imagine that he can see if he tries hard enough, and even in Len's imagining Daniel looks disappointed. "If you're sure. I could let you linger in Dreamworld longer, if you like - maybe show you the newest bit of L-space we've discovered in the Library - the Librarian is an ape -"

"No."

Daniel sighs. "As you wish, brother."

Len woke up.

He's reading a football match into existence - a good one, hard fought and well-played, the ball constantly in motion on feet and heads, classic match-up, twenty-two men chase a ball for ninety minutes and then Germany wins as the old joke goes - when Lisa walks in, high heels and golden glow.

Len finishes the match - it'd be a pity to leave it in suspense - and then looks up at his baby sister, who has become Death, destroyer of worlds.

Quite literally, in her case.

He smiles at her.

(He wishes sometimes that he could see her face once more.)

"Barry Allen," she says, not bothering with subtleties.

"Not you too!" Len exclaims.

"Mick thinks you've decided against him," she says. "It makes him sad, like you don't trust him."

"I'd trust him with my Book," Len says honestly, and the most terrifying part of that is that it's true, especially knowing what Len knows of Mick's nature.

"Then go meet this lover."

"He doesn't just want me to meet him."

Lisa studies him. "Why are you so resistant to this?" she asks. "You've always loved Mick. This Barry will only add to that love, not take it away."

"I know. But -"

"Are you just being stubborn, or are you actually afraid?"

Len hesitates.

"He won't take Mick away from you," Lisa adds, quiet. "And you know it: if you were really afraid, you would've read ahead to confirm. But you believe in free will, and you want Mick to choose freely, even if that choice isn't you."

Len presses his lips together.

"Mick's in love with this Barry," he says, after a few long moments of silence. He had glanced ahead far enough to see that.

"Yes," Lisa says. "And if you stop being an idiot, so will you, and he'll love you both back. Now go and meet him already!"

Any of the others he would have told to fuck off - and has.

But not his Lise.

"Fine," he says, surrendering. "I'll meet him."

Barry Allen, the Speed Force, is everything they all said and more.

Mick loves him.

Len loves him, too.

(Damn them all for being right.)

They're going to change everything.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: Teacher Teacher (ao3 link)

Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Barry Allen/Mick Rory/Leonard Snart Series: Flashwave Week 2018 (Destiny Series)

Summary: "I'm starting a school," Len says. "For magical creatures."

"So, like - Hogwarts?"

"No, not like Hogwarts, what do you think I am?"

"A nerd?"

A/N: @flashwaveweek - Flashwave Week: Supernatural AU

——————————————————————————————

"So I've decided to start something of a charity project," Len says.

"O-kay," Mick says slowly. "And?"

"Well, I'm going to need some help -"

"And I'm going to stop you right there. No."

"You don't even know what help I need."

"Boss," Mick says dryly. "I know you. I knew you when you were a kid. I knew you when you were a thief. I knew you when you were a supervillain. Do you really think that you've suddenly become a mystery just because you got magic powers and a book?"

"I didn't get magic powers," Len grumbles. "I got the powers of Destiny of the Endless. And, yes, it came with a book, I'll grant you that - the Book, even. But it's a sight more impressive than magic powers."

"Whatever. You're scheming, Len. Just because you went blind doesn't mean I suddenly have."

Len flips him off, which Mick supposes is fair.

"Can't you just trust that it's scheming that you'd like?" Len tries, like Mick's newly become an idiot or something, and Mick gives Len a look signifying what he thinks of that suggestion.

Len might be blind, but he knows Mick well enough to know what Mick's doing.

"Fine," Len says, rolling his eyes. Mick's still not used to them glowing inhuman blue like that. "Won't you at least hear me out?"

"What, and let you have a chance to use that silvertongue of yours to convince me?"

"Mick."

"Oh, fine. Hit me."

"A school," Len says. "For magical creatures."

"So, like - Hogwarts?"

"No, not like Hogwarts, what do you think I am?"

"A nerd?"

Len rolls his eyes. "I wanna teach 'em how to handle the modern world."

Despite himself, Mick's interest is piqued. "Don't they already?"

"No, most of 'em retreated instead. Various places: to Faerieland, to Dreamland, to Hell, to other realms -"

"Hell? You serious?"

"Mick," Len says, very steadily. "By chance do you remember hooking up with some guy with wings and a piano fetish?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure. That was back when I was Kronos. What about it?"

"That was Lucifer."

"Yeah, he said -"

"No, Mick. The real Lucifer. That's why the Time Masters looked so surprised when you came back out alive and sane."

"...Oh. Huh. Say -"

"No, he's taken, or as much as practicable."

"Damn."

"Literally, in this instance."

Mick sniggers.

Len smirks.

"Okay," Mick says. "So this school. What were you thinking?"

"How to handle things in the modern day," Len says, brightening. "Basic things: trains, cars, electricity, music, basic conversations, cultural expectations -"

"Why, though?"

"Because if they get a basic primer in modern day human life, they can come back. All of them: fairies and vampires and brownies and werewolves and spirits of anything you like."

"And we...want that?"

"Of course we want that! Think of how much more interesting everything will be!"

"Yeah, and dangerous. Some of those things eat humans, don't they?"

"Mick. The guy who helped the Legends unleash literal demons and dragons and shit does not get to bitch about a couple of household spirits and a few bumps in the night."

"...we're gonna put 'em back eventually."

"All of 'em?"

"Most of 'em!"

"Even the dragons?"

"...I like the dragons."

"But Mick," Len says, opening his blind eyes wide. "Don't they sometimes eat humans?"

"Oh, all right, no need to get fucking shirty about it," Mick says. "I'll give you that this school of yours ain't a half-bad idea. But why should I help out?"

He doesn't ask why Len asked him. It doesn't matter how well-fit or not he is for a given task, Len always asks him; he's as necessary to Len as Len's right hand.

He learned that the hard way, in a shatter of bloody ice and a shout in a hoarse, pained voice. He's not going to forget it anytime soon.

He's a little concerned about what's going to happen at the end of his life, which is - as far as he knows - still a mortal one, while Len has taken on the mantle of the Endless, which implies something a little less limited, but he feels pretty sure than Len has something in mind to take care of that issue.

Len usually does. Scheming bastard.

He probably even has a plan to hook Mick up with someone similarly immortal just to make sure Mick agreed to immortality himself.

"- even putting aside how awesome it's going to be," Len is saying, "you should help because it'll help lots of people -"

Mick snorts.

"- and because I'm calling in my favor from Tulsa."

"...fuck." Len's always calling in some imagined favor or another to get Mick to do something that Mick would probably do anyway just because he's a sucker for Len asking him for things and always has been, but Tulsa is an actual favor that Mick owes, so clearly Len's really invested in this little project of his.

And, well, what the hell. Mick's not about to let Len out of his sight again anytime soon; he might as well do something worthwhile with his time, and this school of Len's seems as worthwhile as anything else.

Len is looking all hopeful, though, like he thinks there's a chance Mick might say no, sorry, I'm not doing this, I'd rather go off and keep up with the Legends - or the fire - or whatever.

The man literally became Destiny itself and he's still fucking insecure.

Probably just to fuck with Mick. Mick wouldn’t put it past him.

"Fine," Mick grumbles. "But you've got to make sure I get laid."

He doesn’t actually mean it. Len’s ideas for people Mick should hook-up with are universally godawful.

Well, Mick usually sleeps with ‘em anyway, and it’s usually the best sex of his life, but it doesn’t last or anything; no one who sees how co-dependent he and Len are ever agrees to make it last no matter how many times Mick explains that he’s not ever going to fuck Len, both because Len is ace and doesn't want to and also because Mick has been the other half of Len's brain so damn long that he can't see the man as attractive. No one ever believes him, even though it's true.

"I promise," Len says earnestly, which means he’s already planning something. For someone as disinterested in romance and sex as Len, he sure as fuck was interested in meddling in other peoples' love/sex lives.

Mick officially gives up, gives in, and - just for kicks - gives Len a nudge on the shoulder to indicate as much.

"Great!" Len exclaims. "I'll tell your co-teacher and you can get started right away."

"Hold up," Mick says. "Co-teacher?"

"Didn't I mention..?"

"No. You didn't. And you know it."

"Oh, well," Len says, utterly unapologetic. "Too bad you've already agreed."

Mick'd say he is gonna kill the little fucker, but that threat rather lost taste after the Oculus.

Although now that he thinks about it...

"Say," he says as fake-casually as he can manage. "This whole 'Endless' thing means you're immortal, right? Does that mean -"

"You theoretically could shoot me and I'd survive," Len agrees, because as much as Mick knows Len, Len also knows Mick and figured out exactly where he was going with that. "But then I wouldn't tell you anything."

"You wouldn't tell me anything anyway."

"Yeah, you're right, I wouldn't."

"Boss, your usual assholery aside, you can't just introduce me to some random person as a co-teacher; it'll be awkward as fuck!"

"Good point," Len says thoughtfully. "Well, at least it's someone you know."

Mick's about to ask for more information, but Len promptly disappears.

Fucking asshole.

Mick goes to find the school - it's not hard to find anything in Len's gardens, because almost by definition every pathway leads to where you want to go, it being the Garden of Destiny and all that - and he's expecting just about anything in his co-teacher, from one of the Legends to one of their old criminal co-workers to the homeroom teach he had a crush on as a kid, but somehow Len still manages to surprise him.

"What are you doing here?" he exclaims.

Barry Allen, the Flash, blinks up at him from the table. "Um," he says. "Apparently I'm - co-teaching in a school? According to Snart?"

"Why are you here instead of superheroing?" Mick clarifies.

Barry rubs his eyes. "I, uh - there was a disaster. To save the world, I ran into it and disappeared, leaving Wally to be the Flash for - a while. A fair long while. It was this or sit around in the Speed Force the entire time, and, well, this seemed – less awful. Speed Force is kinda creepy."

“…fair enough,” Mick says. He’d say he’s surprised, but actually that sort of disaster sounds just right up the Flash’s alley. He’s traveled with Wally on the Waverider, though; the kid’ll do a good job.

At the very least, he thinks to himself, this mean that he doesn’t have to worry about this being one of Len’s ill-thought-out hookup attempts – after all, he was just at Allen’s wedding, and the man was besotted.

It means he goes into this whole school thing unsuspicious.

Mick really ought to have known better than that.

The teaching itself goes great – he and Barry stay up late a few days with a pack of beer that seriously affects neither of them and they hammer out a curriculum of stuff that people pretending to be normal people should know, like basic social skill rules (when they ask “what’s up” or “how are you”, the answer is “good” even if it really isn’t), rules of the road (stop at stop signs when driving, you let the people in the train get out before you get in, and don’t hog the whole damn sidewalk when you’re with a group), and miscellaneous stuff (don’t put dish detergent in your washing machine, always tip hotel people and waiters if you’re in America and check otherwise, ask before petting the dog and never if they have a sign indicating they’re working, etc.).

Actually teaching the class itself...that’s fun, too. Mick’s never been up-to-date on his mythology and folklore, but he gets a crash course in a whole bunch of different types of magical beasties and their myriad likes and dislikes, and also how to deal with deflecting attention about them in the modern day.

Burned by silver? Say you’re allergic, people will be sympathetic.

Carnivore species? Say you’re anemic and need to stock up your iron, and anyway you’ve always hated [insert vegetable here] ever since you were a kid.

Otherwise limited ability to eat various food? You’re on the new [make up name here] diet and you can’t eat any of this, sorry.

Unable to stand daylight? You’re a computer programmer who keeps weird hours.

Can’t conduct electricity sufficiently to use touchscreens? They make touchscreen-friendly gloves now; get a pair of those and bitch about your “unusually dry skin” the rest of the time.

You’re a persnickety fucking fairy that can’t sign off on anything without reading the fine print? Congrats, you’re a lawyer.

Unbearable desire to count things? You have OCD.

Can’t pass running water without being shipped in a box with earth? Take a potted plant with you and travel via a subway car; that’s box-like enough.

In other words, Mick likes it. He likes teaching, he likes the school, he likes the students - damnit, he likes it.

He even likes the idea of introducing all these magical creatures back into the world.

Sure, the students sometimes try to kill him and Barry, their nature being what it is, but really, that's just a good reminder to keep them on their toes.

And working with Barry, that’s fun, too. He’s more sharp-tongued and cynical than Mick remembered, and he’s clever and funny and he’s got a bone-deep optimism that’s been tempered but is still unshakeable. Honestly, all around, he’s just more mature than Mick recalls him being when they fought him or at the wedding or at the alien invasion – less prone to drama, more contemplative, and patient with problems.

Mick likes him.

He really likes him.

And he goes along thinking that it’s all well and good to have a crush on someone unavailable to keep him busy (what with Len’s proposed hook-up having yet to appear) right up until the moment when they’re working on grading late at night, laughing at some of the weirder answers (kitsune, man, they’re wild) and then suddenly Barry is reaching over and pulling Mick in and they’re kissing.

It’s very, very nice for the approximately fifteen seconds before Mick’s brain reboots.

Okay, yes, he still waits thirty seconds before breaking the kiss.

Mick’s never claimed to be a good man.

“Red,” he says gently.

“Did I misread this?” Barry asks. “I apologize if I had. I thought you were interested.”

“I am, you didn’t misread that. But for all the things I’ve done, I’m still not a home-wrecker.”

Barry frowns. “Beg pardon?”

“I don’t do infidelity,” Mick explains.

Barry just looks more confused. ���Do you mean – I thought you and Len weren’t together?”

“We’re not!” Mick exclaims automatically.

“Then – who…?”

Mick frowns back at Barry. “Why do you think I’m talking about me? You’re the one who’s married. Iris West-Allen, remember? You only talk about her every ten minutes.”

“Only about as often as you talk about Len,” Barry points out, which is true but irrelevant.

“Well, yeah,” Mick says, “but unlike me and Len, I saw you marry her.”

“Well, yeah, and then divorce her.”

“What, seriously?!”

“Yeah,” Barry says, looking bemused. “Two years ago, now.”

“Two – you weren’t even married two years ago! You got married two months ago!”

More like seven months, but who was counting?

Unless...

“What year are you from?” they both demand at once.

Turns out Barry’s nearly nine years in Mick’s future.

No wonder he’s more mature.

He and Iris are still best friends, apparently; they’ve just fallen into more of a Mick-and-Len co-dependent dysfunctional assholes routine than a proper marriage, and anyway there’d been some complications with people coming back from the dead and Barry spending time in space and whatnot so they’d realized they’d be better friends when they weren’t married. After some heartbreak and routine-adjustment, Barry set out fully intent on dating again, but he's been running into the same problem as Mick: no one believes that he's not hung up on Iris because he still talks to her all the time, even though he really isn't.

For Barry’s part, he hasn’t seen Mick since Mick went off into the timeline.

And that means they’re potentially from the same timeline.

And, apparently, both single.

“Oh,” Mick says.

“Yeah,” Barry says.

“Huh,” Mick says.

“So...” Barry says.

“I’m going to kill Len,” Mick says conversationally.

“Why?”

“He set me up. He always sets me up. Except it never works!”

Barry frowns.

“Not you,” Mick assures him. “You work just fine.”

“Maybe he’s gotten better at it now that he’s, well, uh, Destiny of the Endless?”

“...maybe.”

“Definitely,” Len says, popping out from literally nowhere behind them. “You two could be great for each other. Even I can see it, and I’m blind!”

“Literally no one is ever going to buy that line from you ever again,” Mick says. “You have a giant glowing book containing everything ever.”

“Is this destined?” Barry asks. His eyes narrow. “Did you make sure it was?”

“No, of course not,” Len says briskly. “I believe in free will, I don’t read ahead for my friends – or enemies – because it’s no fun, and anyway, I’m the Reader of Destiny, not the maker of it. Your destiny is in your own hands. Lower case destiny, Mick, stop grabbing at me, I don’t care how good a pun it is.”

Mick sits back down.

Not his fault that some of Len’s awful sense of humor has stuck over the years.

“Besides, everyone in the school is betting on when you’ll hook up,” Len says unhelpfully.

“Including you, huh? Setting us up for a big payday?” Mick asks, mostly nostalgically. Len liked to do that sometimes when they were going somewhere new.

“No,” Len says, surprising him. Though all is explained when he adds, with a scowl, “None of ‘em will bet with me.”

“To be fair,” Barry says, barely hiding a smile. “Book, everything ever, kinda a gimme there.”

“Spoilsports, all of ‘em.”

“There, there,” Mick says unsympathetically. “You can always con the regular suckers.”

“Conning the regular suckers is boring.”

“Con the supervillains,” Barry suggests.

Len looks intrigued by that idea.

“Aren’t you not supposed to interfere or something?” Mick asks.

Len shrugs. “Destiny sometimes requires activity. Now, getting back to the more important part, kiss already.”

They both glance at each other, then glance at Len meaningfully.

“...what?”

“Go away, maybe?” Barry suggests.

“But you haven’t kissed yet.”

“Maybe we’re waiting for you to leave. Ever thought of that, genius?”

Len frowns. “But I put in all that work to get you two together! I deserve to see the payoff!”

“Boss. Go away.”

“But –”

“Boss. You promised me you’d get me laid. Stop getting in the way.”

Len departs, grumbling.

“You know he’s just going to read along, right?” Barry asks, his suppressed laughter bubbling through as he speaks.

“Yeah,” Mick says, “I know. But at least he’s not actually here while I do this.”

He pulls Barry in for another kiss, Barry smiling the whole while as he does.

Maybe this school thing wasn’t as bad an idea as all that.

“Professors, I have a question –” one of their ghost students asks, floating through the wall and freezing when they sees what’s going on. “Never mind! I’ll just go now!”

And then they turned tail and dashed out, shouting, “They’ve done it! It’s happened!”

“That,” Barry says, very steadily, “was Snart’s fault, wasn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“Not via his new Destiny powers.”

“Nope, no need. Probably just tipped off a student on his way out of here.”

“Iris would’ve done the same thing,” Barry observes.

Mick thinks back to his interactions with her. “Yeah. Probably.”

They share a look of perfect understanding. Platonic soulmates, what can you do - can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

“Wanna move this somewhere a bit more private than our offices?” Mick asks.

The world spins, lit up by sudden lightning, and they’re in Barry’s bedroom.

Mick grins. “I take that as a yes...”

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: That Cycle Thing (ao3 link)

Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Barry Allen/Mick Rory Series: Flashwave Week 2018 (Destiny Series)

Summary: "It's kind of weird, though, isn't it," Barry says, sitting in the clinic for the first time. "You know, that being a superhero or a supervillain is correlated with - well, developing a weirdo reproductive system?"

"Not really," Mick says. "See, it's not correlation. It's the other one."

"Causation? Wait, like, being a superhero means you go alpha or omega? But how?"

A/N: @flashwaveweek - Flashwave Week: ABO

——————————————————————————————

"New one, huh?" the big guy asks, not without sympathy.

"Yeah," Barry says. "Is it that obvious?"

"Kind of is," the guy confirms. "Mostly in the freaked-out way your eyes keep darting around. Don't worry. This place is totally confidential and a, what do you call 'em, a safe space."

"I appreciate that," Barry says, very sincerely. "I mean, you hear stories..."

"Pornorgraphy, you mean," the guy says.

Barry laughs. "Yeah, I guess. It's kind of weird, though, isn't it, that being a superhero or a supervillain is correlated with - well, developing a weirdo reproductive system?"

"Not really," the guy says wryly. "See, it's not correlation, it's the other one."

"Causation? Wait, like, being a superhero means you go alpha or omega? But how?"

"You know how a while back, Superman was the only major superhero?"

"Yeah?"

"You know how he and his cousin are basically the last of their species?"

"Yeah?"

"I'd like you to imagine a computer-robot-creature capable of reprogramming the human genetic code being real unhappy with that fact."

"Wait. Are you telling me -"

"The whole alpha-omega shit all of us powered folks get saddled with is designed to make us reproductively compatible with Kryptonians? You bet your ass. Literally, if you're an omega."

"That's - that absolute bullshit! Why not make them compatible with us?!"

"We've all asked that question," the guy says. "All of us. At length. Usually at volume. Everyone reacts differently to finding out about the cycles, but that reaction’s pretty consistent.”

“No wonder.”

“Either way, that’s one of the reasons why capes end up dating each other more often than not. My name's Mick, by the way."

"Barry," Barry automatically replies, then flushes. "I mean -"

"No, no, it's better this way," Mick says. "No hero identities in the clinic. Keeps fights and rivalries from the outside from coming inside."

"Right. That makes sense."

A companionable silence settles on them for a little.

After a few minutes, Barry clears his voice.

"No, it's nothing like the tabloids say it is," Mick says.

"Oh thank god," Barry says. "That stuff about, like, heats and ruts..."

"You get cramps and a mild fever and you're, like, a little more horny than usual," Mick says. "Pretty similar to a woman's menstrual cycle. Nothing at all like the mindless fuck-or-die no-standards do-anyone bullshit you hear about."

Barry sighs in relief.

"Don't get me wrong, sex helps with the cramps and stuff," Mick adds. "But it sure as hell isn't a total loss of your ability to make decisions. Unless you're, like, into that, but that's your own business, y'know?"

"Good," Barry says firmly. "That was - yeah. Not good. I don't know what I was more scared of, the omega heats where you can't say no or the alpha ruts where you don't care if someone else is saying no."

"Yeah, that is definitely not a thing! Anyone who tells you otherwise, they're being dicks. You tell the clinic what they're saying and they'll shut 'em down. Everyone respects the clinic, hero or villain."

"Good," Barry says again, then hesitates. "Uh, one more question, if that's okay..?"

"Sure, shoot."

"How do you, uh, know? Which one you are, I mean. Or which one someone else is."

"There's a bunch of signs," Mick says. "But you usually aren't one or the other, you know."

"What? You're not?"

"Nah. It's got something to do with stress, proximity to other capes, nutrition, hormones, emotional state, whatever, but most people end up swapping dynamics every few years. Pretty rare to be one or another all the time."

"Huh. I didn't know that."

"Most people don't. It's private, you know? Especially with all the misinformation out there."

"Superhero porn," Barry agrees. "Super-heroes, super-popular - and that's even before the cycle thing got into the mix."

"Yep," Mick says. "Congrats, you’re a fetish now. But what can you do?"

“Not much,” Barry agrees.

"Barry!" the nurse calls.

Barry starts. "Oh," he says, starting to get up. "That's me - I've got to go -"

"I'm sure I'll see you around, the way these things go," Mick says, waving. "But, hey - Barry?"

"Yeah?" Barry says, turning back.

"If you ever have any more questions about all this, I'm happy to answer 'em," Mick says. "Cape or no cape." Then he grins wickedly. “And if you ever want some help getting through those cycles, hit me up.”

Barry blinks, taken slightly aback – is he being hit on? He is definitely being hit on, holy crap, he’s being hit on by a very attractive man who is considerate enough to wait until Barry has a built-in excuse to exit the conversation, this is the best day ever – and then, slowly, smiles back at him. "I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks."

"Anytime."

Barry does end up meeting Mick again, sooner than expected - he's a speedster from the Gem Cities, so he's inheriting the mantle of The Flash from Jay Garrick, the older generation, and along with the mantle of the Flash come the Flash's rogues gallery, including the Rogues.

The Rogues, which include Heatwave.

Mick Rory.

Oh, well. It was probably too much to hope for that he'd be a hero.

At least, if he has to be a villain, he's a villain in Barry's jurisdiction. Heroes, Barry had discovered, are extremely territorial about their villains, always insisting on taking lead against them and butting heads over them.

(After the first the time Rogues visit Gotham, Barry abruptly realized that that means they'll be facing Batman's unique brand of massive overkill vengeance only without the vague fondness he has for his own villains; as this was followed immediately by Barry growing a spine and confronting Batman for the first time to insist that he be part of the investigation and subsequent fight, Barry understands the impulse much more.)

But, yeah. Barry goes through his first few cycles - omega cycles, currently - by lying on Iris' couch and making puppy eyes at her until she fetches him chocolate and hot water bottles, but then she gets together with Eddie and it seems a bit rude to impose.

At least Iris assures him she'll continue to pretend to be his love interest, since having one is apparently de rigueur for heroes, since everyone gets very judgy if you're feeling single for a while.

Even Batman has a love interest. Several, even.

But also, going through your cycle alone is...ugh. Mick was right, at least, in that sex isn't required (though superspeed makes taking a bit of time to scratch the itch an irresistible temptation), but Barry's starting to find that company really is.

And he's kind of short of that.

So when he heads out on reluctant patrol during the itching, annoying second night of his heat to find Captain Cold and Heatwave robbing a small jewelry store - no witnesses, no CCTV, barely anything worth taking to the point that Barry kinda suspects that the place is a Family front - he decides to tap Heatwave on the shoulder and say, "Uh, sorry, but at the clinic -"

Cold is in the middle of raising his gun but when he hears the word "clinic" he drops it with a sigh. "Of course he did," Cold says, rolling his eyes. "Mick, I'll see you when you get back."

"You do that," Heatwave agrees. "Barry, this is an anti-Family thing - wouldja mind if Len takes..?"

"Well, if it's an anti-Family thing -"

No one in Central likes the ever-warring Families.

Cold waves a hand at Mick and glares at Barry. "You be nice to him," he says, right before stalking out.

Barry flushes. "I mean - I didn't -"

He kind of did.

"It's all right if you just have more questions," Mick assures him. "Or even if you just want someone to hang around while you're being miserable. Doesn't have to be a hookup." He grins. "Unless you want one, of course."

Barry wars with himself and his own embarrassment for a minute, but Mick seems so calm and even Cold had been so casually accepting and damnit, Barry hasn't gotten laid in ages which is even longer for a speedster who occasionally time travels back in time to repeat a few days -

"The latter," Barry says, flushing red under his cowl. "If you don't mind."

"Not at all," Mick says, eyes brightening. He steps forward and loops his arms around Barry in prime speedster-carry position. "Well?"

Barry runs them out of there.

Turns out Mick was right: it really does alleviate the symptoms.

After the whole mess with Eobard and things blowing up and Barry feeling horribly guilty and nearly running himself ragged, he notices that his cycles are – different.

Less cramping, more mood swings, for one thing. Mostly going manic, actually – super hyper, super bad focus, none of which is good for super activities.

The horniness is way up, as usual, but now Barry’s suddenly eyeing everyone around him because is it just him, or did he somehow miss the fact that he’s surrounded by extremely attractive people?

It takes a few days of being twitchy for Barry to realize that he’s in rut instead of heat this time.

And, well, Mick did say…

“Oh, sure,” Mick says, holding the door to the Rogues’ hideout open and gesturing for Barry to come in.

“There isn’t, you know, a compatibility problem?” Barry asks, coming in anyway.

“Gay people existed on Krypton too,” Mick says solemnly, then cracks up when Barry gives him a look. “I don’t know, Red. I’ve never noticed a difference, whether it’s alpha-omega, alpha-alpha, omega-omega, whatever. Besides, I live with a whole coop full of alphas now; someone’s going to be shifting dynamics sooner rather than later.”

“Oh?”

“Having a lot of one type tends to result in equalization, apparently? Something about syncing up hormones. Dunno.”

Captain Cold – Len, he’d told Barry to call him – waves from where he’s lounging on the couch. “Glad to see you two lovebirds are keeping it up,” he says.

That gets both Barry and Mick to splutter.

“They’re not lovebirds, they're just fucking,” Mark Mardon opines. He’s digging into a pint of ice cream with a fork. Barry wonders if that has to do with the heightened hunger of the alpha, or the cravings of the omega, or maybe the Weather Wizard’s just a frat boy at heart. Who knows?

“We’re just leaving, that's what we are,” Mick says, grabbing Barry’s hand and leading him upstairs. “So don’t bother us!”

As soon as they’re alone in Mick’s room, he grins at Barry. “Sorry about ‘em. Can’t live with them…you know the rest.”

“Why are you all living together?”

Mick shrugs. “Supervillain thing,” he says.

“What, a shared inability to make rent?”

Mick laughs. “Nah,” he says. “We did a job, it went pear-shaped, and now some people are out to get us, so we’re huddling together for safety. S’cool, don’t worry about it,” he adds, seeing Barry opening his mouth to volunteer help. “It’ll all blow over soon enough.”

“Well,” Barry says. “I’m glad you guys are doing okay.”

Mick’s smile broadens. “I’m glad to see you too, Red.”

Mick does end up going omega after another few months, and he calls Barry on the number Barry’s given him – they’ve been texting a little, back and forth, because Barry’s really bad at doing the whole friends-with-benefits thing without also doing the, you know, friends part of it –with a request that Barry show up at a certain warehouse with his supersuit and without plans for the evening.

It’s awesome.

And, well, after that…

It’s not that they’re dating or anything, that’s for sure. They’re hero and villain, and they are not pulling a Batman-Catwoman shtick.

But Barry has Mick on his speed dial, calling him whenever his ruts or heats hit – he ends up going back to omega pretty quickly, since apparently that’s where his body’s comfort zone is – and Mick does the same, wherever he is on his cycle.

And, you know, maybe they hang out outside of that, sometimes. Mick’s pretty cool – no pun intended – and he’s very laid back, which Barry really appreciates given the usual high-key frenzy that he has to deal with as part of Team Flash.

So, yes, sometimes they go see movies, or go to dinner, or Mick will swing by Barry’s apartment and cook him something, even if it’s not exactly on their cycles.

Sometimes Barry goes to hang out at Mick’s place – which usually involves at least some Rogues, or at minimum Len, because Len and Mick are codependent best friends and Barry respects that, especially once Mick explained that Len is ace and didn’t give a damn about cycles in any direction.

(Also, Len sometimes has glowing blue eyes, usually when he's reading this big large Book on the couch, but Barry has decided not to ask about that.)

Either way, though - it works.

It’s – nice.

Barry’s happy.

Of course, Barry's hardly the only hero with a regular hookup for heats and ruts, but most of them at least pretend that said regular hookups are not with one of their villains. Barry, on the other hand, isn't much for pretending, and that means he gets the occasional Talk from his fellow superheroes.

The annoyingness quality of said Talk varies based on the person involved.

"Bad guy, huh?" Aquaman grunts. "Sure that's a good idea?"

"Truce applies in relation to clinic matters," Barry reminds him.

He gets a shrug in return. "Doesn't make it not a bad idea."

"I'm an adult capable of making my own decisions, thanks."

"You sure you're okay?" Cyborg asks, looking sincerely concerned. "I mean, he's not, like, taking advantage or -"

Barry takes poor brand-new Cyborg to the clinic and corrects his misapprehensions much the same way Mick did for him, though without the proposition.

"A villain, Barry," Oliver says flatly. "Really?"

"Huntress," Barry reminds him. He's never going to let Oliver live that down.

"She's an anti-hero sometimes," Oliver says. "But Heatwave -"

"Are you trying to say the Rogues aren't anti-heroes sometimes?"

"Not the point."

"I don't think you actually have a point," Barry says. "You want to register your disapproval. Well, it's registered."

"You know it's not that," Oliver says. "We're friends. I worry."

"I appreciate that. But seriously, I'm fine. Trust me. Mick and I have a good set-up that works for us."

"You know, if it's just a lack of other options -" Hawkgirl starts.

"I'm flattered," Barry says hastily. "But seriously, Kendra, no, I'm very happy as is." He pauses and frowns. "Tell me Oliver didn't send you."

"No, no - well, he did express his concern -"

"Punch him in the face for me, will you?"

She laughs.

"You know, it's really good that you're -" Superman starts.

"Nope," Barry says. "If this is a lead up to say something about Mick, you should stop right there. I'm totally happy to talk work and even fun hanging out stuff with you, but I'm still pissed at you about the whole cycle thing."

"...fair point," Superman concedes. "Well, good luck. My cousin says hi, too; she's hoping to get back to Earth soon and wants to meet him. Assuming you're not still too pissed at her, too."

"...it's hard to be pissed at Kara."

"It really is," Superman agrees, quite solemn. He doesn’t take any of it personally, which Barry really appreciates.

Wonder Woman just gives Barry a thumbs up, but to be fair Barry is pretty sure she's casually dating Golden Glider, so he wasn't really expecting a lecture from her.

And then one day he turns around and the urban legend of Gotham is standing behind him with a brooding expression.

"Don't tell me you have an opinion, too," Barry sighs. He’d known this was coming – Batman had an opinion on everything.

Usually a negative one.

Usually a negative one backed with data collected via an unnecessary amounts of stalking.

“No,” Batman says. “No opinion.”

“…what, really?”

Batman’s expression doesn’t so much as flicker. “Central City is beyond my jurisdiction.”

Barry blinks. “I mean,” he says, “not that I don’t appreciate that, but – and please don’t take offense here – it’s not like you really seem to pay attention to that whole jurisdiction thing for other heroes, so –”

“Central City itself,” Batman clarifies. “I can’t enter. None of the heroes can, not without your authorization.”

“…what now?”

“Well, excluding Diana,” Batman corrects, as if that was the problem with what he’d just said.

“Go back to the part where there’s a forcefield around Central City,” Barry says.

“It’s not a forcefield,” Batman says. “I’ve checked.”

“Then what?”

“A zone of no-interference,” Batman says. “If it makes you feel better, it’s been there for a while; I don’t think it’s actively harmful.”

“…okay,” Barry says. “And you didn’t feel the need to mention this before, so you’re telling me this right now for a – reason? I assume?”

“The zone appears to have changed.”

Barry isn’t very good at glaring, and certainly not at Batman, but he’s doing his best.

“Your relationship with Mick Rory.”

“Wait,” Barry says, “I thought we were talking about the – no-interference zone, I guess? You said you didn’t have an opinion on me and Mick!”

“Mick and I,” Batman says. “And I don’t. But I prefer to keep an eye on things that change.”

“You haven’t even told me how the zone changed!”

“It doesn’t just apply to Central City anymore,” Batman says. “It also applies whenever you and Mr. Rory are – together.”

Barry gapes at him.

“Just thought you should know,” Batman says, and then he’s gone.

“Oh, that,” Mick says.

“Oh, that?!”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it?”

“It’s just a thing.”

“Mick!”

Mick cracks a smile. “Sorry,” he says. Barry smacks him with a pillow; there’s several within easy reach from where they’re snuggling on the couch in the Rogues’ living room. “Couldn’t resist. It is just a thing, though. It's Lenny.”

“Len? I mean, Captain Cold? What about him?”

“Well, way back when, we joined this hero group for a while,” Mick says. “Called the ‘Legends’ –”

“What, really?”

“Yes, really.”

“You guys? As heroes?”

“When I said we all react to finding out about the cycles in different ways, I mean it,” Mick says dryly. “Len seemed to think we needed to try both sides of the villain-hero spectrum to see if it was different. It isn’t, by the way.”

“Okay,” Barry says, mildly disappointed. It would’ve been interesting to go villain for a little bit. Just a tiny little bit. A nice, not-always-on-call villain, who could probably sleep in on the weekends for once instead of having to deal with a brand new crisis of the week…maybe he could arrange a kidnapping instead? Mick would definitely oblige. “What does that have to do with a magical zone of non-interference?”

“Well,” Mick says. “Len ended up doing something stupid.”

“Wow,” Barry says dryly. “Look at me. I’m so surprised. Len? I assume it was extremely dramatic.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Shocker.”

Mick laughs. “Well, anyway, he ended up sort of kind of – getting blown up?”

“He what?”

“Long story. He got better, though –"

Of course he got better.

"- and anyway he ended up in this garden that exists out of space and time, and while he was there, he stole this book - you've seen it, the Book? - and now he has this weird part-time job, sort of, except the guy he stole the book from is sort of mentoring him for a quote, ‘more peaceful transition than my brother’ because apparently there was a whole thing or something, I don't know. So Len gets to spend some of his time here, instead of being stuck in the garden.”

“Okay. So he’s a part-time…bookkeeper?”

Mick cackles. “You hear that, Lenny?” he shouts. “You’re a bookkeeper!”

“You have no idea how literal that is,” Len says, wandering out of the kitchen. He’s got the glowing blue eyes again, and he’s holding the Book – a big, gigantic tome of a book, and there’s a chain going from the spine onto Len’s wrist. “See? I’m keeping the Book. I'm the Book keeper.”

Barry snorts a laugh, somewhat involuntarily. “What do you actually do?”

“Long story,” Len says. “Mick, the pasta –”

“There’s a bowl on the table.”

“You’re the best.”

Len wanders right back out again.

Barry wonders if now is a good time to ask about the glowing eyes.

“They go with the Book,” Mick says.

Barry blinks at him.

“The eyes. They happen whenever the Book’s around. Len thinks it’s cute that you never ask, by the way.”

Barry flushes. “I didn’t want to be rude.”

Mick shifts a little, pulling Barry in closer. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t mind if it’s you. You’re my plus-one.”

Barry pauses. “I am?” he asks hopefully. “Really?”

“I mean. If you wanna be.”

“Yes. I do. Definitely. For sure. I mean, assuming we’re talking about dating.”

“Yeah, we are.”

“Then yes. Assuming you want me to…?”

“Yeah, Red. I do.”

“Okay,” Barry says, smiling. “So, that settled, how does Len and the book play into the zone of no-interference?”

“I think the book gives him certain powers?” Mick says. “I’m not entirely sure. But either way, when he tells people to buzz off, they buzz off. And, uh, when I say that I might want a bit of privacy in my, uh, relationships, then…”

Barry starts grinning wider. “Then it starts applying whenever we're together once I made the move to being relationship material?”

“Basically,” Mick says, looking relieved that he doesn’t have to spell it out. “Man, am I glad that we ironed that dating thing out before I had to admit that.”

Barry laughs.

“So,” Batman says. He’s still wearing the cowl, even though it’s an engagement party and supposed to be low-key and clinic-truce rather than heroes and villains, but he has at least condescended to accept a slice of Mick’s delicious homemade cake. “When you say ‘Destiny’, you mean – actual Destiny?”

Len grins and throws an arm over Batman’s shoulders. “Wanna see my Book?”

“…that’s not a proposition.”

“Nah, I’m ace.”

“In that case, yes. I would very much like to see your – ‘Book’.”

“Great,” Len says. “You can come to my garden and take a peep. One of my new siblings is really looking forward to meeting you…”

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: Slaves of Destiny (ao3 link)

Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Barry Allen/Mick Rory Series: Flashwave Week 2018 (Destiny Series) Warnings: Discussions of suicide, non-linear narrative

Summary: He's there when Savitar makes his first kill, this strange man called Kronos.

They both travel through time - and they keep meeting again and again and again.

Must be destiny.

A/N: @flashwaveweek - Flashwave Week: Kronos/Savitar

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The man is there when Barry - he still thinks of himself as Barry back then - makes his first kill.

(Not his first, not really - there was the one who turned to lava, the one who aged too fast, countless others who were hit just a little too hard or too fast - but the first one since what he's calling the Split.)

"Well done," the man says. He's wearing armor, toughened and used and totally inappropriate to the time period that Barry found himself in the first time the blue lightning took him back to the distant past.

Guess evil Wells was right, Barry thought bitterly when he first arrived to this period, guess all you really need to do is practice to get faster, because it's not like he did anything special to get to the blue other than run all day and all night in the vain hope that he could escape the reality of someone living his life and blaming him for the Iris they did not save.

He’d wandered away from STAR Labs one night, hopeless, looking for direction, and he’d found it in the strangest of places: a strange man in an alleyway, his hood pulled up and over his head so that his eyes could not be seen as anything other than black coals hidden in darkness, a man who told him to run until there was nothing else left in him but the running, and for lack of anything better to do, run Barry had, straight into the endless blue of ultimate speed that took him away.

And now he is here, killing the man who was known to history as being Savitar’s first victim.

It all fits, in a strange and horrible way; it is Barry (the split Barry, the scarred Barry, the not-as-good Barry) fulfilling his destiny.

This strange man in his heavy armor and a tattered cape, his helmet hiding his features? He doesn’t fit.

"Who are you?" Barry asks.

"Who are you?" the armored man responds. His voice is heavy, deep, mechanical. Very Darth Vader without the asthma. "You're new."

Barry shivers. Can this man tell what he is, a time duplicate that didn't die, a mere copy of the original? Can everyone tell?

"To the timeline," the man amends.

Barry's interest is piqued. "You're a time traveler?"

"No," the man says, voice dry as dust beneath the distortion of his helm. "Ancient India had lots of people in full-clad armor. With pulse rifles."

Barry giggles a little at that. He's aware that it sounds hysterical, but he is - he is - he's gone insane - he went back in time, suicidal, to find Savitar and defeat him no matter what the cost, a desperate effort to make the others understand that he can be of use, only to realize when he ran into the blue - Savitar's blue - that he was Savitar, but instead of rejecting it, he accepted it - he understood that this was his destiny - he committed himself to becoming Savitar - all so that he might live -

"I'm here to judge if you're a threat," the man says. "And to eliminate you if you are."

"Well, then?" Barry says, holding open his hands. He knows he is a threat. "Go ahead."

Maybe he's still a bit suicidal. He can't decide if he wants to live or to die.

(He can't decide if becoming Savitar is closer to living or to dying.)

"Speedsters can't be seen by the Eye," the man says instead. "Seems like a waste just to kill you."

"You don't think I'm a threat?" Barry demands, suddenly offended, and in a blink he's standing in front of the man, hand on the man's throat. "Of course I'm a threat! Kill me!"

The helm reveals nothing of the man inside, but Barry can feel that the man is indifferent to him and his desperate flailing actions.

"No," he says.

"Then I will kill you!"

"Why?"

Barry falters.

He only killed that first man to make the reputation for himself: the first reported victim of the God of Speed, they'd discovered (not they, not them, not Barry - that was from the memories of the other Barry, the original Barry, the one everyone still loved), and Barry'd followed the man around for days before he fully accepted the truth.

The truth: that he is Savitar.

The truth: that he was only born when Barry, the original, split himself in a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to save Iris West, who Barry, the copy, still loves.

The truth: that he must kill his love to be born.

Iris West, who he still loves.

Who he still hates.

But there is no reason to kill this man.

And Barry is not (yet) a murderer.

Barry releases him.

"You'll learn to be more ruthless," the man says, still sounding indifferent, as though the risk of his own death was not a matter of any great importance. "In time, you will learn to kill people like me - people who do nothing but stand in your way."

"Do you want me to kill you?" Barry asks, confused.

"Of course I do," the man says. "But as one slave of destiny to another, I'm sure you understand that."

He leaves, after that. Barry - no, Savitar, his name is Savitar now - lets him.

A slave to destiny.

He doesn't like the sound of that. He remembers how the future went: Savitar trapped in the speed trap, Iris dead, Barry mourning - that's how he left them. Is he doomed to run in a circle?

He can't be.

He has to try. Try to fix the mistakes of the Savitar that came before him, try to kill Iris and escape the consequences, try to live.

No matter what the cost.

He turns, and runs once again into the blue.

There are others out there he still needs to kill.

"Your colleagues are a lot less friendly than you are," Savitar says to Kronos, whose name he has since learned.

Kronos shrugs, a silent answer. He's younger than the man Savitar first met, Savitar thinks, but not by too much - it's hard to tell, when the man never removes his armor.

It's the bitterness, really. This young, he still obeys the orders of his Masters in silent resignation, rather than in endless seething hatred - though it's always there, hidden beneath.

Savitar rather prefers the overt hatred.

"Trying to kill you again, are they?" Kronos asks, almost amused.

"Indeed so."

"Idiots."

"Oh?"

"They'll figure out how you affect the timeline soon enough," Kronos says. "And then they'll want to keep you."

"They hate speedsters. You said so yourself; we mess up the timeline more than they'd like."

"As an executioner," Kronos clarifies. "You kill those who try to kill you, don't you?"

Savitar has been, but he won't anymore. He hates being manipulated and used.

Kronos knows that, though, how much he hates it. Telling him about the Masters' manipulation could itself be another trick, another manipulation, the inducement of the sought-after behavior by a true master of the art -

Savitar sniggers.

"What?"

"Just thinking of you manipulating people."

"I prefer to shoot them."

"I know," Savitar says, and his voice is fond. When did that happen? Sometime in the last dozen or so times they've met, clearly, but when exactly, and why? "You never did have patience for anyone manipulating anybody."

He's expecting affirmation: Kronos hates his Masters with a heat stronger than the burning sun, forced to play their games when he prefers to be straightforward and honest, and he is rarely silent about it.

"No," Kronos says instead, after a long pause. Too long. "Not anymore."

Savitar feels something, in a heart he thought long since dead, consumed by Iris and her other Barry.

He's pretty sure it's jealousy.

Huh.

He needs to think about this development.

So he turns and he runs.

The world goes blue.

"I had him, you know," Kronos says, his voice gruff and distorted as always.

"Just lending a hand," Savitar says, jaunty and cocky. He's got his own cult now, a corrupted monastery or three or maybe even three dozen; he doesn't actually keep count. Here in the isles they think they can save them from the fury of the Nordmann, which he can, of course.

Whether he will is a different story entirely.

Still, he enjoys the tribute.

It certainly gives him a reason to run freely through the isles, and that in turn gives him the opportunity to run through a man with a sword who was just about to stab it into Kronos' back as he dealt with another.

Yet another countless life he's saved of Kronos' - countless because if he counted them, he might have to also count the times Kronos has gone out of his way to save him, and that would just be embarrassing.

Kronos shakes his head, but Savitar can tell he's amused, even through that awful helmet he always wears.

"You're slow today," Savitar adds. "Unusually so."

Not that he cares, of course. He's a god. He doesn't care about anyone.

(He's a liar.)

Still, Kronos is a good ally, if not the only ally Savitar has; it pays to be on the alert for these things.

"My leg was shattered in half a dozen places last week," Kronos says, in the same resigned tone one might remark about a particularly horrid stretch of weather. "Still recovering full mobility."

"Don't they let you heal those up first, those Masters of yours, before sending you out on a job?" Savitar asks. Kronos likes him to be blunt and straightforward, and to ask questions about the Masters Kronos serves, which no one else does.

They watch the world through their dreadful Eye, these Masters, but they can't see a speedster, and that means, whenever Savitar comes by and is around, that they can't see Kronos, either.

A small breath of freedom.

There's nothing worth more to a drowning man.

That's why Kronos helps Savitar out when he can.

Why Savitar helps Kronos...

Well.

Kronos snorts. "Usually, yes," he says, answering Savitar's question. "But not if they're the ones that broke it."

That gets Savitar's attention. "Why?"

"Had a relapse," Kronos grunts. He means that he did something too free for his Masters' preference.

Or maybe that he remembered something he shouldn't have, something they didn't want him remembering, some emotion they didn't want him feeling.

(Kronos doesn't always remember Savitar, and it's not only because they meet earlier in his timeline.)

Savitar doesn't like it.

He likes the thought that there's nothing he can do about it even less. He's a god; he should be able to do as he pleases. He should be able to save who he pleases.

But as he's learned in the years since he began to run, he's not the only god out there.

"Are they trying to eliminate you, your Masters?" Savitar asks. "Set you up to fail and use that as an excuse to take you out?"

"No, not at all," Kronos says, and his confidence reassures Savitar. "Merely to punish me, and to mock me for my failure - which you've averted."

"Will that be an issue?"

"My Masters approve of success," Kronos says dryly. "But it does mean I'm already late to return."

Savitar steps aside, and watches Kronos go back to his jailors.

Back to his other gods.

And Savitar, too, goes running, deciding that this time he will save his foolish monks from the Nordmen they so fear, if only to distract him away from wondering if he can run so fast that he can leave behind the growing feeling of possessiveness that's curdling in his heart the way he left behind things like kindness and empathy.

Because he's finding, more and more, that he would rather be the only god in Kronos' life.

"This is a bad idea," Savitar says, his head lolling back against the filthy ancient Roman wall.

"Probably," Kronos agrees.

"Wasn't talking to you," Savitar grumbles.

"Then stop talking," Kronos says, and tightens his grip meaningfully.

Given that Kronos' heavy glove is currently wrapped around Savitar’s cock, which despite his assumed divinity remains an extremely sensitive area, Savitar opts to listen. Kronos rewards him by moving his hand faster.

Good. Savitar likes fast.

(- not like him and Iris were, all soft and sweet and slow -)

Savitar forces his mind away from that. He's not back there, with a woman who loves a man he no longer is, a man who he's just a duplicate, a copy, a badly-done Xerox and nothing more -

"I like how you spark up bluer and bluer when I do this," Kronos says. His voice is mild, easy, relaxed the way it almost never is, like the hatred that roils beneath his surface the way it does for Savitar is eased. Like he's managed, just for a minute, to forget the torment of destiny that is his existence.

All of his attention is on Savitar right now.

Savitar, and no one else.

Savitar grunts and comes hard, his hips jerking forward at an inhuman speed.

"There we go," Kronos says approvingly. "Practically turquoise; must've been a good one."

"This is such a bad idea," Savitar says again. He's a god, now, faster and faster than ever before, master of the blue. He should be alone, independent, isolated.

He should need no one.

Just like a real god.

"No harm in passing time," Kronos says with a shrug. "I like you.”

“I never understood that.”

Kronos shrugs again. “Sometimes I think I like you better than fire,” he says nonsensically. “We understand each other. And besides, like I said - no harm in passing time."

It's not that Savitar disagrees. That was why he agreed to do this the first time, and the fourth, and the fifteenth, until it's become commonplace. Savitar has a long road before him (and behind him, and to his side - constant time travel makes things a bit weird), and it's more pleasant to pass the time with company; that much is still true.

It's that he's starting to worry that it's not just passing time anymore.

"Still a bad idea," he says.

Kronos straightens up, but he doesn't say anything. He never asks for anything, though he's taken to offering, the times that he remembers Savitar. Sometimes even when he doesn't remember. But he doesn't ask.

He never asks.

His Masters have tortured that selfishness out of him.

Savitar could leave Kronos now, leave him unsatisfied and wanting, and he'd never complain.

The glove Kronos worked him over with is still stained with come.

Savitar smiles at Kronos. "Good thing I like bad ideas, then."

He goes to his knees, reaches for the stupid codpiece part of the armor; it's the only part he's ever been allowed to remove. Try to take off anything else, and Kronos goes into spasms of pain, courtesy of his Masters.

Savitar truly dislikes these Masters, even though he knows he ought to be learning from them the brutal cruelty necessary for true divinity.

(He should destroy them and take their worshipers for his own, should keep Kronos his high priest, in his bed and by his side -)

He should be alone.

But for the time being, Savitar finds himself pleased to have someone who understands.

He lowers his head to use his mouth, and wonders what it would be like to kiss his lover.

"They call me two-faced, you know," Savitar says, looking at the perfect mirror made of bronze, the height of Qin artistry. He's clad in blue, his favored color, the color of his mastery, but try as he might he cannot find a place that will construct him the armor he needs to finish his ascension. He knows what the armor looks like by heart, but where it is he does not yet know. "The Two-Faced God."

He sneers at his reflection, which he's never liked.

(was that why they rejected him, because he reminded them of an imperfect mirror?)

"Two-faced," Kronos says from where he's absently tossing a vase hand-to-hand. "Because you only keep your promises half the time?"

Savitar barks out a laugh, surprised; he turns to Kronos. "Are you blind under that armor?" he asks, gesturing to his face, to the melted burn scar that devoured half of him. "This is why."

"What, do you object or something? It's your best feature."

Savitar scoffs.

"I like scars," Kronos says. "Gives a man character."

"Half of my face is ruined, and you think it gives me character?"

"You can eat," Kronos says. "You can talk. You can still mostly see. Can hardly say it's ruined."

"I was thrown out of heaven for being an imperfect copy -"

"Yeah, yeah, and you've been running ever since," Kronos says. "I've heard your origin myth in more countries than you've even had a chance to visit yet."

He might be right, he might be wrong: hard to tell, with two time travelers who do not travel together. Even all of Kronos' computers have difficulty figuring out who is where and how old.

"It means you exist, you know," Kronos adds. "The scar."

Savitar frowns. "How's that? Of course I exist."

"Scars are left when something happens," Kronos says. He puts down the vase - it'll be worth millions a few centuries into the future, should it survive being brand new as it is now - and stands, coming over to stand by Savitar by the mirror. "It shows a time when you collided with life, and survived it. Even if you don't remember exactly what happened, your skin does."

He reaches out and touches Savitar's face.

His fingers are gentle through the roughness of his heavy glove. Kronos hasn't repaired it in some time, old and battered, and one of the fingers is so worn through that the heat of Kronos' skin bleeds through.

Savitar leans forward despite himself, chasing that phantom sensation.

"I've seen your face before," Kronos murmurs, and Savitar starts violently. He didn't know that Kronos had ever interacted with Barry. "I don’t remember when or how, but I did. It was even and neat, brown eyes both. But it was never dear to me before it got this scar."

Savitar's hands are shaking, he suddenly notices - not vibrating, the way he sometimes likes to stim, but shaking.

He wonders if the Barry Kronos met was the one whose memories he shares, the single being they were before the Split, or if he was the hated self-double that was judged to be the "right" Barry after.

"I don't always know you," Kronos continues. "But I always know this scar, no matter how long I've traveled or how short my memory, because only someone who's met life head-on the way I have would have a scar like this - and no one else would ever understand."

"He wouldn't," Savitar says, his tongue heavy in his mouth and his throat tight, and he can't say why. "He wouldn't understand you. You or me."

Barry never hated the world enough to understand how that hatred carves its signature into men like them, on men like Savitar and Kronos, never understand how it carves them up from the inside, writing itself on their very bones.

It's not that Savitar doesn't remember what it's like to want to save the world.

It's just that he also remembers what it's like to want to destroy it, and to mean it when he did.

The Two-Faced God indeed.

"No," Kronos says. "He wouldn't. Only you."

"Only me," Savitar agrees, for he is a jealous god, an only god. He swallows, trying to ease the tightness of his throat and the dryness of his mouth. "Tell me, under that armor you never remove - do you have scars?"

The ever-blank lenses that constitute Kronos' eyes seem to bore into Savitar's soul as he waits with bated breath for the answer he knows must be coming.

"Many."

Savitar jumps forward, into the blue, and takes Kronos to bed.

"I loved someone once," Kronos says as they stand by the bar.

"I bet you don't remember them," Savitar says, cruelty so natural to him now that he couldn't stop himself even if he wanted to, yet somehow his cruelty slides off Kronos' shoulders like water.

The only thing Kronos cannot abide is to be called stupid or worthless, and Savitar has never thought either one of those things about him.

"I do," Kronos says. "They let me keep that much."

"Why?" Savitar demands, knowing he sounds petulant. "I'd give anything to be free of my memories of her."

Her, yes, and him, his other self, the self everyone liked better.

The one they comforted instead of blamed.

"Rage, I think," Kronos says, his voice thoughtful. "He betrayed me; they let me keep that so that they could send me against him."

"Have they?"

"Not yet," Kronos says. "You'll know when it happens."

"Will I?"

"That'll be the oldest you'll see me," Kronos says peacefully. "That's the mission they're saving me for, the one they'll have to give me back my memories for. I don't expect to survive it."

Savitar scowls.

He downs another glass like a shot, the synthetic alcohol working it's way through his overcharged system and dissolving in a breath.

Savitar appreciates it anyway.

Sure, there might be bombs dropping every which way, but the alcohol in this era is great, and by great he means such utter piss that even he can taste it.

"They wanted to cut out everything from me but the betrayal," Kronos says thoughtfully. "But it wouldn't be a betrayal if there weren't love first."

"Suppose so," Savitar allows. "Is this your way of telling me not to kill her? It'd mean I'd never be born."

"No," Kronos says. "This is my way of telling you to make sure you don't let destiny fuck you up the ass about it."

"You're the only one I let fuck me up the ass, I promise," Savitar mocks.

Kronos reaches over and grabs Savitar's hand - quick as a wink for anyone else, yawning slow and signaled in advance for Savitar - and he crushes Savitar's fingers under his gauntlet. "Don't let yourself be caught," he says. "Don't let them beat you."

"They won't," Savitar says. "I'm a god."

"So was your predecessor," Kronos reminds him. "And he didn't end up anywhere good, did he?"

"You're such a downer," Savitar complains, so as to hide the fear that still lurks in his heart at ending up with that fate. Destiny’s last laugh in his face.

"Feelings will throw you off your track," Kronos says. "They'll throw me off mine, one day. I won't be able to look at the man I once loved and kill him the way I should; that's why it'll be the end of the line for me."

Savitar snarls at that.

"Not like that," Kronos says, because he somehow knows how to hear what Savitar means without Savitar ever saying a word. "He was my partner, my brother by oaths instead of blood. One sight of him...I'll threaten him, I'll do my best to hurt him, but I won't be able to follow through on it."

"How are you so sure?"

"Because the Masters are counting on him being the only light in my life," Kronos says. "They want that light to blind me with rage until I do what they want without thinking. But it ain't true anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"He's my guiding light," Kronos says. His hand is still on Savitar's. "But you're my god."

Savitar supposes he can accept that, if he must.

(He hates sharing Kronos.)

"You think I'm at risk of being screwed up by my feelings when I see her again?" he asks instead.

"No," Kronos says. "I think you're at risk of being screwed up by your feelings when you see him again."

Savitar bares his teeth.

"You hate him, the other you," Kronos says. "You've been waiting so long, too; you'll want to gloat. You'll make mistakes, god or no god."

"What are you trying to say?" Savitar asks.

Kronos tilts his helmet in a way that always reminds Savitar of a smirk, or of a smile with bloodless lips pulled back into a tortured grimace of agony.

Perhaps for Kronos they are the same.

"I'm saying," Kronos says, "Remember thou art mortal."

"You don't seem to be very popular," Kronos says. He's smirking, Savitar can tell even through that damned armor.

At the moment, Savitar doesn't much care.

The giant mob chasing after him is doing a good job of convincing him not to care.

Normally this wouldn't be enough to concern him - what's a mob to a god? - but there's something wrong with the land here, this wretched Mediterranean island he finds himself on, and he cannot reach the blue, his heels dragged down slower and slower as he runs ever onward away from them.

Apparently this forsaken place is significantly more developed than he realized, for all that they call their defenses after the names of archaic Greek deities.

"Popularity is overrated," Savitar says, and he's very nearly panting for air. He hates it, the reminder of his mortality - but he can't die, he hasn't even found his armor yet, though the metal he stole from the Temple of this place will do perfectly to construct it, and he still has to go forward in time to be born. This cannot be his end: his timeline has not yet even begun.

His timeline...

"Are you here to save me?" Savitar asks, drawing to a halt as his legs burn and his body feels rooted to the earth in a way it hasn't in forever. "Or to watch me die?"

Kronos snorts.

A doorway from nothingness opens over his shoulder.

Savitar looks at it. He's seen Kronos' ship before; he's even seen it cloaked, but he's never been invited on.

"Go ahead," Kronos says. "Their power to squeeze the powers out of you is bound to their Isle; the effect will fade once we're away."

"Have your Masters agreed to this?" Savitar asks, not moving. "You wouldn't let me on the ship if they haven't."

"They want me to make sure you survive this encounter," Kronos says. "The details of how are left up to me."

Savitar arches his eyebrows.

"I suspect their preferred answer would be for me to kill enough of the mob to let you get away."

Savitar smirks. "As tempting as that thought is, escape is good enough for me."

That's the problem with being part of a pantheon, he reflects as he limps onto Kronos' ship, waving jauntily to the AI, a duplicate of Gideon in the same way he's a duplicate of Gideon's creator. No matter how powerful you can be, it's still never a good idea to go up against another god on their own territory.

(He wonders if Diana knows the truth yet.)

Kronos's ship is every bit as empty and soulless as Savitar would have expected, the chains of a slave rather than the spartan freedom of a sailor, but Savitar feels better already, his speed returning to him. As they lift off and hurtle away into the timestream that Kronos navigates, he feels better still.

"So, you've got me," he jokes, draping himself on one of the less necessary-looking consoles on the bridge. "What are you going to do with me?"

Kronos is still a man, for all his fancy tech; he could never truly conquer Savitar and he knows it. But in all the time and times and tomorrows they've known each other, Savitar's never been in Kronos' bed.

He's interested in changing that.

"The Eye still can't see you," Kronos replies, his fingers moving over the controls confidently as he steers them through the time stream. He'll never be nimble and swift, not like Savitar, but he doesn't need to be. "It can only see your impact, which is why I was sent to avert your demise. Once that was averted, you're free as a bird again."

"So?" Savitar asks, marveling at how Kronos can say such things without resentment. Kronos resents only his Masters; it's one of his (few) virtues, alongside unbreakable loyalty - so long as that loyalty is won freely and without coercion. That guiding light of his won it, and never lost it, and Savitar likes to think he's won it, too. "What does that mean? Where are you planning on dropping me off?"

"I don't," Kronos says.

"What?"

"That was my last mission in the set I was assigned," Kronos says. "It's time to go back to base to refuel and rest and get new assignments."

Savitar sits up straight, understanding racing though him like lightning. "You're taking me to the Vanishing Point?"

"You did always say you wanted to see Mount Olympus," Kronos says, and pleasure curls through his voice. "Figured it'd be as good a time as any."

Kronos has been waiting for this, Savitar realizes: a chance to intervene in Savitar's timeline that is sanctioned by his Masters, a way for him to achieve his own ends even as he obeys what he must.

"Do you want me to kill them?" Savitar asks.

Kronos shudders, a spasm of pain at the very thought. "Not yet," he says. "I haven't broken the kill switch yet."

The one in his head, meant to deal out death if he turns against the Time Masters; the one that can only be destroyed when it is loosened by the demands of destiny, by the return of his memory - and that in turn is only to be found when a man crosses his own time.

Kronos will need to go after himself or another who recognizes him as himself when he is finally loosed against his true prey, and when that time comes - if Kronos is not killed as he gloomily predicts he will be, then -

The Masters should really know better than to let such a viper so close to their chests.

Savitar, who rather likes snakes, smiles.

"In that case," he says, "I would rather like a tour."

Savitar isn't impressed with the Masters.

The Time Masters, they call themselves, the pretentious assholes -

(He who calls himself a god has no room to talk.)

- but they're boring. Awful and cruel, yes, but nothing more than the basic sort of human cruelty that shows up any time someone decides that another person isn't worthy of sympathy. That another person isn't human.

Savitar is intimately familiar with the feeling.

On both sides, by now.

Either way, it turned out they wanted Kronos to report immediately, a process he'd predicted to take a few hours, so Savitar jumped into the blue and reappeared in the hallways, then slowed his run to a walk to look around. Kronos was right: put on a hood and you're indistinguishable from the rest of them. He's wandered through half of the complex already, observing greedily at first and then with less and less enthusiasm.

He's bored now.

Luckily, Kronos is exiting the chamber where he'd been giving his report. His shoulders are slumped, suggesting - not quite exhaustion, but resignation. Hatred, yes, but hatred beaten down so many times that he's almost lost hope.

Almost.

Savitar slides in beside Kronos as he walks away, watching with pleasure as Kronos' shoulders square once more. He might be a god, but he has only one true worshipper - only one who truly draws strength from his presence.

(Not like it used to be, when he was the Flash and everyone loved him. Not at all like that. Better.)

"How'd it go?" he asks lightly.

"They were pleased," Kronos says.

"This is how you look when they are pleased?"

"You can tell that they're pleased because I'm returning to my quarters rather than reporting for punishment."

Savitar snorts at that, but he's abruptly more interested in another part of what Kronos said. "Your quarters?" He smirks. "Will I get the tour? A thorough tour?"

"I want to show you something there."

"I hope it's the bed," Savitar quips.

"No," Kronos says, puzzlingly enough. "It's not."

When they get to Kronos' quarters, though, cramped and sparse as they are, there isn't really anything there but a bed, just a rather bizarre stick-like piece of furniture with pieces of wood jutting out of it. Savitar can't figure out what it's for, much less why Kronos would like to show it to him.

He's just started wondering if it's some sort of disturbing sex toy when Kronos finishes locking the door and sweeping the room for bugs or other recording devices and turns back to face him.

"What is it?" Savitar asks, nodding at the thing.

"A stand," Kronos says, moving over to stand in front of it.

"A stand?" Savitar repeats. "A stand to hold what, exactly -"

Kronos reaches up and begins to undo the clasps that hold his helmet in place.

Savitar's not slow in any respect. He gets it at once: this is where Kronos is meant to rest between jobs.

This is where he is allowed to remove his armor.

And that means -

Savitar will get to see Kronos.

To feel him, skin against skin instead of again armor.

To see those scars he knows are there.

He inadvertently vibrates with excitement like he hasn't in centuries, sending out sparks, but it doesn't matter; Kronos likes it when he does that, when he loses control, even if it's only a little bit.

Kronos removes his helmet and places it on the stand.

The back of his head is the first thing Savitar sees. Kronos is shaved bald, he notes, the white scars of old shaving nicks scattered across his head; he's older, physically, than Savitar is, but only by a decade or two. He's still physically very strong, muscular; that much is evident.

Savitar finds himself captivated by the base of Kronos' neck, and the scar that curls up from beneath his armor to rest at the nape - a scar white and red and every bit as grotesque as the melting of Savitar's face.

Kronos turns.

Savitar looks his lover in the eyes for the first time in the lifetimes upon lifetimes they have been what they are to each other.

"I know you," he blurts out, instead of commenting on the fierce eyes, or the soft mouth, or the firm jaw. "I know you!"

Kronos' eyes narrow. "You know me?"

Without the distortion of the helmet, his voice is familiar, too: deep and rough, with the same cadences that Savitar has grown accustomed to, but without the grinding mechanical sound underlying it.

"From - before," Savitar says, frantically searching his memory. It's been so long, centuries and lifetimes, and he doesn't think he knew him well, the man before him, but that face is familiar to him.

He knows him.

Kronos, who does not know himself, whose memories have been stolen by his keepers and held hostage against him, who has only the faintest memories of a life without bondage.

Savitar knows him.

No.

Not Savitar.

Barry.

Barry knows him, knew him, met him - before the split, he saw that face. It was focused and serious, just as Kronos is now, except for when it wasn't, when it was enraptured and joyous in the face of the burning flame -

"Heatwave," Savitar breathes. "Your name was Heatwave."

Kronos shudders as though he's been struck.

"Your real name was - Mick Rory, I think," Savitar continues. "You fought the Flash - you tried to burn him with your heat gun. You worked alongside -"

"Len," Kronos says, and his voice is a groan of rage and betrayal and love. "Len!"

"Leonard Snart," Savitar agrees. "Captain Cold."

Kronos sucks in a harsh breath, rocking forward, gloved hands going to his chest as if he's been stabbed. "Yes," he whispers. "Yes, I did."

"Do you remember what happened?" Savitar asks, curious.

Kronos looks up, then, and Savitar does not know if it is love or hate that shines in his eyes. "Yes," he says again. "I remember everything."

Savitar hesitates, suddenly - not shy, never shy, he's a god, after all, but feeling strangely wrong-footed. "Is that good?"

"Would you be who you truly are if you didn't remember?" Kronos asks.

"No," Savitar says slowly. "I suppose not."

That wasn't what he meant, though.

But Kronos hears the unspoken question, and he smiles - a smile, a smirk, an expression after centuries of reading nothing but body language - and he reaches out to Savitar. "I might be myself again," he says, and his voice is low and intent and certain. "But you're still my god."

Savitar's shoulders give way in - he wouldn't name it relief, would never admit to it, but that's what it is.

"Like you better even than fire," Kronos adds, something he's said before but never meant the way he means it now and that's it, the rest of that armor's coming off now.

Just because Savitar is a god doesn't mean he can't do some worshipping of his own.

(After all, their destiny is coming for them: this may yet be the last time he has a chance to.)

After that, of course, the Masters have no choice but to send Kronos on his final mission, aimed as a weapon against his younger self and his old partner; they had drawn it out as long as they could, but with the key of his memories unlocked, they had to send him to war before his rage died down enough to let him think.

Savitar could have gone with him, if he wanted: he could have helped him succeed the one mission his Masters most expect for him to fail.

But Savitar is a jealous god.

He does not like to share.

He stays at the Vanishing Point instead, looking to see if there's a way for him to murder the Masters and destroy all that they hold dear.

It's only hours later by his reckoning that Kronos returns, stripped of his armor and his defenses, and he wears the name Mick Rory again like an ill-fitting coat.

"We've improved the chair since the last time you've gone in it," one of the Masters crows as they tie him down. "This time, there will be nothing left behind. You will not escape our bindings again."

So Kronos has escaped their bindings.

How interesting.

Savitar kills the Master where he stands.

Kronos smiles at him from the chair.

"My god," he says, and means it.

He's still Savitar's Kronos, then.

"Get back your armor," Savitar suggests, nodding at the stand waiting at the side of the room. "You might need it."

He watches Kronos rush off with a smirk.

He watches -

Well.

It's a good thing he's a speedster.

It's a good thing he's a god.

Not that that fact seems to bother Leonard Snart none.

"You hurt him and I'll kill you," Snart wheezes, the time radiation of the Oculus just at the moment it was starting to explode reacting strangely to the blue that Savitar pulled him through. Savitar thought he got him away in time, immediately before the explosion, but now he's not so sure. Snart's eyes are filmed over, swirling Oculus blue, but regardless he's still got a decent glare.

"You hurt him first, you know," Savitar points out, amused by the ordering of Snart's priorities. Snart hadn't even checked himself for injuries before he'd gotten into his shovel talk.

"He forgave me," Snart says with dignity. "Eventually. And anyway, he's my partner. Who's going to stand up to his god if not for me?"

Savitar frowns.

"Partner," Snart reminds him. "Best friend. Of course he told me."

"Did he tell you who I am?"

"I got a name, yeah," Snart says, purposefully obtuse.

"I meant -" Savitar gestures at his face.

"What, the scar? He always liked scars."

"You're not this stupid."

Snart scowls at him.

...maybe not purposefully obtuse.

"Can you see me?" Savitar asks. "Can you see - anything?"

"I see plenty," Snart says, which probably means he's blind as a bat and bluffing. "More than I'd like, that's for sure. And if you're talking about your resemblance to Barry Allen, come off it; you're nothing alike, even if you were once."

No, not stupid at all.

"I'm going to destroy him or he's going to kill me," Savitar says, wondering how Snart will react to that. He'd rather liked Barry Allen, Savitar recalls, and it'd been mutual. "Barry Allen, I mean. One or the other, and if I don't try, I'll never get born. No way out - any way you look at it, I'm destiny's bitch."

Snart looks at him, eyes swirling blue, and says, "I wouldn't be so sure about that."

Savitar's shaken. He doesn't know why, but he'd swear those words weren't Snart's.

Or at least, not just Snart's.

Not anymore.

"Besides, it's doesn't matter; nothing's going to happen anytime soon. I don't even have my armor yet," he demurs. "It's not like I can go do what I want to do anyway."

Snart smirks.

"If I say I know a guy -"

"We'll be even," Savitar agrees. He doesn't know why he trusts Snart with finding something he's been searching for without luck for so long, but he does. "Your life for my armor."

"Good," Snart says, so full of confidence that he seems almost certain. "I'll get you that armor of yours, just the way you've always seen it in your dreams. Then we take care of you, take care of Mick, and when that's all done, I need to see a man about a book."

"Aren't you blind now?"

"Don't worry," Snart says. "So is he."

The albino who gave Savitar the armor smiled sadly as he did, murmuring something about wishing his siblings would stay the same for longer and something also about starting a trend, but anyway by that point Savitar isn't listening because the armor is perfect.

Better than anything insipid old Barry could dream of, that's for sure.

The blue comes even easier now, practically leaping to his command. He visits a dozen of his old stomping grounds, missing his former self by seconds, and roars out his name: his followers beam, grateful to see the true face of their god, even if only for a second.

The entire process takes less than fifteen minutes.

Oh, yes, Savitar likes this armor.

With it in place, with Kronos gone and hidden beneath the skin of Mick Rory - whatever Snart might say, Savitar still feels like he's lost him - Savitar goes to fulfill his destiny.

Central City at last.

He finds acolytes - he always does, wherever he goes - and some of them have truly unusual powers, this being Central City and all. He uses them to get Team Flash's attention, dancing on the faultlines of the timeline caused by his former self.

He goes to spy on them, his former self and her, and as he does he remembers how much he hates them.

Both of them.

(He still loves her, in his own way, but she has to die for him to be born and Savitar likes his life too much to just give up and accept non-existence - and anyway she would've been like just the rest, picking the clean-faced Barry over him.)

An interesting effect develops: this close to his past self, his memories begin to change, altered by his own interaction with himself.

Becoming the Savitar he remembers fighting.

(Becoming the Savitar he remembers losing to.)

And in the end –

In the end, Kronos was right.

Savitar lets hatred blind him, and weaken him, and he fails.

He fails.

He should have remembered how good he used to be at beating the odds, even when destiny itself said otherwise.

No.

Not how good he used to be.

How good Barry used to be.

Not Savitar.

Savitar’s just the copy, the wrong one, and maybe they all figured that out from the very beginning, that there was something missing in him, and that’s why they rejected him, rather than just for his burned out face.

Maybe that’s why he’s never had a real choice in all the things he’s done.

Maybe that’s why he never had a real chance.

Maybe that’s why all his desperation to stay alive, all of the terrible things he’s done, all the centuries he’s live, and the one person he thinks he might have loved were all for nothing – all for nothing more than being a learning experience for Barry fucking Allen and his charmed fucking life.

Destiny’s slave.

Destiny’s bitch.

Iris lifts her gun and fires at him from the back, and he hears her, he does, and he’s fast enough to outrun any bullet but maybe he shouldn’t, maybe he should just let it happen, maybe the bullet in his head will make up for his failure to do what he needed to do and stop the non-existence which he can already feel tearing at his heels –

“No, I don’t think so.”

Savitar finds himself unable to move.

That’s a first.

No one else seems to be able to move, either, but Savitar’s pretty sure he’s the only one who’s actually noticing it happening.

“Are you really sure about this one?” the voice continues, sounding doubtful.

“Yes, you asshole,” another voice says, warm and amused, and this time Savitar knows that voice, even though he only heard it without the distortion a few times. “I’m sure.”

Kronos.

Savitar finds himself free to move again, though the world around him remains frozen, and he turns to look.

Kronos is standing there, dressed in jeans and a grey shirt that suits him somehow better than the old armor ever did, and by his side stands Leonard Snart, who is holding in his hands – of all things – a book.

No measly paperback, either: this is one of those grand old tomes that you see in movies, old and massive and dusty. And, for some bizarre reason, it is attached at the spine to a chain that trails from the book to Snart’s wrist.

“…new fashion accessory?” Savitar guesses.

Snart barks a laugh. “Never mind,” he says to Kronos. “I like him.”

“I thought you might,” Kronos says, sounding satisfied. Sounding like Kronos, the way he always had, not like the Mick Rory Savitar feared he had lost him to be. “Well, Savitar?”

Savitar arches his eyebrows. “Well, what?”

“Will you stay or will you go?” Snart asks, voice sing-song, smirk on his lips, but the smirk dies quickly enough. “Seriously. Your choice.”

Savitar doesn’t understand.

“You can come with us and live,” Kronos clarifies. “Or you can stay and die.”

“That seems like a straightforward choice.”

“It isn’t,” Kronos says, and his face is serious. “You’ve been destiny’s slave all your life, running on a circular track that you had to run, running along on a hamster wheel because if you didn’t you wouldn’t be born, but what you got for losing your freedom was security. Certainty. You knew you were on the road you needed to go on because there wasn’t any other way you could go – sure, you could fiddle around and chance the details, but your torment was always going to be to run this race a million times over and find no other exit.”

He’s not wrong, Savitar knows. His own memories have come back to him now, stolen away from him as surely as Kronos’ old Masters stole his from him: this is not the first time he has run this race.

He was Savitar before, and he was Savitar after, and it was only because Barry Allen made different choices that the result was different. That’s what it was all about, in the end; Barry Allen learning his lesson and making things better for himself.

It was never about him at all.

A slave of destiny indeed.

“That’s the choice,” Kronos says. “You’ve been running a long time, Savitar. You’re tired, you’re angry, and you’ve been fueled by hate for so long you don’t know what else there is. You turn around now, there’s a bullet waiting for you, and it’ll give you the rest you’ve not-so-secretly wanted since the very beginning. Or –”

“Or?”

“You keep running,” Snart says. “But this time, you run without the guardrails. No more hamster wheel, no more circular track, no more certainty. This here’s the exit ramp of free will, and what lies beyond is entirely up to you, for better or for worse.”

Savitar takes a step back, involuntary. “That’s impossible. My destiny –”

“Don’t talk to me of destiny,” Snart scoffs. His eyes glow blue under his silly fluffy parka hood, pulled up until it shadows over his face. “I know everything there is to know about destiny. Destiny’s a thief and always has been, stealing away at people’s lives to try to make them run like clockwork when they ought to run free, making the patterns that seem like they have a purpose when purpose is nothing more than something we decide upon. The world ticks on until the end and the patterns of destiny are lies we tell ourselves, and there’s no better liar than a thief.” He smiles, harsh and proud. “There are no strings on me but those I choose, and this one –” He shakes his wrist, the chain sounding against itself. “– this one, I think, will suit me just fine for quite some time.”

Savitar doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t think he has to.

He has a choice to make.

A choice that should be easy, except it’s not: he’s wanted to die for so long that it became what he lived for, his motivation and reason. Kronos isn’t wrong; he’s been running on hatred since the beginning, hatred for the life that was stolen from him, hatred for the birth that he never asked for. He’d have to give that up, if he wants to live; give up that hatred that spurred his heels for so long.

He’d have to find a new reason to live.

“So if I accept,” he says slowly. “If I accept, I – live. And I’m free.” He swallows, his eyes skittering over to Iris’ frozen face, which has no sympathy, no pity, no love, nothing but determination. Putting down a rabid dog, for all she cares; she won’t even remember him in a few months after the next big crisis. “Free - but alone.”

“Not quite,” Kronos says, and Savitar looks at him. Kronos smiles, a crooked thing. “Not quite alone, if you don’t want to be. You’re still my god.”

“I failed,” Savitar points out.

Kronos shrugs. “What about me suggests I want a god that’s perfect?”

Savitar feels a hysterical giggle rise up in his throat.

(Just like at the beginning.)

“Yes,” he says, before he can regret it. “Yes. I’ll live. I’ll go with you. I’ll – I’ll figure it out, what it is I’m going to do now, and I’ll figure it out for myself. Not destiny, not anymore.”

“No,” Kronos says, holding out a hand. “Not destiny. Freedom.”

Savitar takes his hand, and Kronos leads him into the blue.

“This is a bad idea,” Savitar laughs, pressing his lover against a dirty tavern wall, somewhere in ancient Egypt.

“I keep telling you,” Kronos says, mock-sincerely, “Hollywood taught me many things –”

“Now that’s a world-ending statement if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Shut up, you’re just bitter what’s-her-name wouldn’t give you an autograph.”

“Her name is Lena Turner, and she’s perfect,” Savitar says. “And I didn’t want an autograph!”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

“I got a kiss on the cheek. That’s better.”

“Pity kiss.”

“Was not.”

“Was so, but that’s not the point –”

“The point is that I think those handful of years you spent with the Legends before coming back to me have gone to your head.”

“They have not. The point is that, according to Hollywood, there’s got to be something worth seeing inside those big old pyramids.”

“Yeah – dead people!”

“Dead people who, when alive, saw themselves as gods on earth. Like someone else I can think of, maybe?”

“I’ve grown as a person since then,” Savitar sniffs. “I’m older, wiser, more mature –”

“So you are going to help me break into a pyramid to fight some mummies.”

“Yes, of course I am,” Savitar says. “Do you really think I’m going to miss a chance to get laid in the resting place of a god on earth?”

Kronos snorts. “Older and wiser, huh?”

Savitar grins. “What can I say? I’m a jealous god; I don’t tolerate any rival.”

“Yeah, you are,” Kronos says, and his voice has gone soft. “Older, yes; wiser, no; but one thing’s for sure: you’re my god.”

Savitar kisses his lover for the hundredth time that day – it may grow old, at some point, but it hasn’t yet – and takes him by the hand. “Yes,” he says. “And you’re mine, and together we are both free. And now –”

He grins.

“- let’s go fight some mummies.”

In an dark alleyway in the middle of Central City, a man is standing in the darkness, ready to do his duty. He is in his middle years, that ageless time between thirty and sixty, and his shoulders are slumped as if he is very tired. His hood is pulled up over his head, casting his face into shadow, and his blind eyes are black coals hidden in the darkness.

Another man steps out behind him and taps him on the shoulder.

The first man turns his head.

“I think,” the second man says with a smirk and a drawl that suggests that he was born in the slums of this very city, his eyes just as blind but an unearthly blue, “that I’m going to take over from here.”

They watch as a third man – younger, in his twenties, and lithe as a sprinter – staggers out from the large building, his face in his hands as if he could hide the terrible scar that marked one side of it. His shoulders heave as though he is ill, but the illness is all within him: the isolation, the rejection, all crystalizing into hatred.

“Run,” the first man tells the newcomer when he falls into the alley. “Run until there’s nothing left of you but the running.”

“Run,” the second man echoes, but he stands behind the first man and the newcomer cannot see him. “Run until you are free.”

The newcomer shakes himself and rises up straight and turns and runs.

There is a crackle of blue lightning, and he is gone.

“Blue?” the first man asks. It hadn’t been blue the first time around, not until the young runner picked up the armor from a terrible far-future world that died shortly after he visited it.

Last time, it’d been black.

The second man shrugs. “I like blue,” he says.

“In my story, he comes back and kills the girl,” the first man says, conversationally. “Only to be trapped within the vortex of speed itself forever. Or maybe he doesn’t, and his death comes here, to the end of the circle, to meet him before he ever starts.”

“That’s nice,” the second man says. “In mine, he doesn’t. In mine, at the end, he runs free.”

“Someone will pay the price for that.”

“Let them,” the second man says. “I have faith that Barry Allen will find his way out in time.”

“Faith,” the first man says musingly. “There can be no faith where there is only what is already written.”

“No, there can’t be,” the second man says. “But I never much liked reading ahead anyway – and anyway, he’s dating my best friend, and for him I’ll do anything, even this.”

“That must be nice,” the first man says. He is about to speak, but then he pauses. He realizes. “I don’t know what happens next.”

He sound excited.

This is the first time that has happened in a long time.

The second man smiles – not a smirk, a smile, touched with sympathy and just enough ruthlessness that he will manage to survive this task he has taken upon himself. “This is where part ways,” he says. “I stay here, to watch over things, and you? You go visit your sister.”

“Yes,” the first man says. “I think I will.”

“One last thing first.”

They both turn as one to look behind them.

Blue lightning flashes, and two men appear: a god-on-earth with his face half-ruined, his loyal servant with burns along his shoulders. They stand together, laughing, shaking their heads, and they walk off together, human-slow, their hands intertwined.

The circle is complete.

The end comes, but it does not take the god; instead, the first man steps forward in his place, and disappears into a puff of dust that smells faintly of old books.

The second man looks upon the two lovers.

And he smiles.

“I love it when a plan comes together.”

[stillnotginger10]

Bereft Soldier (AO3)

FlashWave Week Day Five: Supernatural AU

For the supernatural au prompt for flashwave week, I decided to do an au of the CW show Supernatural. Barry is an angel (sort of in Cas's role) and Mick is a demon (in a similar role to Crowley, but more trustworthy). This is the first in a series that will show parts of their unlikely friendship.

Thank you to @wonderingtheblue for beta reading for me and @thevoiceofdragons for bringing up the idea of doing an au based on the show. And thank you both for being awesome and supportive! <3

It’s not that Barry meant to run into anyone. He wasn’t looking for company or to hide. He just had to get away. He had to be alone.

That wouldn't be a problem anymore, would it? It wasn’t like he could go back there, the place where he should belong, not after what he found out.

Heaven was supposed to be home. He was an angel, a soldier. He knew his place there and he only needed to worry about following orders. But what if those orders were wrong?

“What the hell?” a deep voice growled behind him.

Barry made no other reaction than closing his eyes. He should have known.

The park was a place where he often came to think, a place where he could enjoy the quiet and watch humanity. He didn’t need to worry about being an angel there. Maybe it was the same for Mick. Maybe that was why the demon sometimes joined him in watching the people walk through the park.

“What the hell are your brothers and sisters doing that Leonard Snart of all humans thinks there’s no chance at stopping the apocalypse?” Mick spoke again from behind him.

“What?” Barry asked, turning. He knew there was a problem, but he hadn’t realized the humans knew it too.

“He just tried to make a deal with me. Wants to trade his soul to make his sister Lucifer-proof,” Mick growled, stalking closer to Barry. “His words, not mine. He thinks I can make her an unusable vessel for angels.”

“You can,” Barry said, no judgement or condemnation in his tone. “You didn’t, did you?”

“Of course not! With all of the attention he’s gotten from the angels lately? Even I can tell that he has a bigger part to play in all this then becoming a punching bag in hell.”

Barry nodded, something in him relaxing at the words. He knew the Snarts had occasionally teamed up with Mick when working some of their cases, but he hadn’t realized that the partnership ran deep enough for the demon to pass on a soul so willingly offered.

“He’s Michael’s sword, Mick.” He shouldn't be telling the demon this, but maybe doing the opposite of what’s expected of him is exactly what he should be doing.

“Shit. Seriously?” Mick asked, but Barry only nodded. What more could he say? The Snarts were destined to play a central role in the apocalypse.

Mick seemed to shrink in size as his shock dimmed some of his anger, but he was still upset enough to growl, “So what the hell are the angels doing to keep the seals from breaking?”

“Nothing,” Barry said, and it took effort not to betray any emotion with his voice.

“Nothing?” Mick asked, incredulous, disbelieving, angry, and only half of the turmoil Barry was feeling inside.

Barry finally turned to look at his unlikely friend. “They want the seals to break, they want Lucifer free. They want Michael to wield his sword. Mick, they want the apocalypse to play out. They want my brothers to fight.”

It was awful. Horrible. True. And it broke something in Barry to admit it out loud.

“What the fuck, Barry?”

Barry closed his eyes at the nickname. Mick was the only one that ever called him that. He’d rather taken to the name, but his siblings only ever called him Bartholomew, even the few times he’d asked them to use the shortened version. It always felt…odd to hear the name from the demon’s lips. Warm somehow.

He debated keeping his eyes closed—it would be easier to not have to face Mick—but he needed the other to understand. His brothers and sisters couldn't really be blamed, could they? Maybe.

“Heaven is full of soldiers,” Barry said, looking Mick in the eye. “We follow orders, we do what we’re told, we don’t need to think. Father is…” Barry swallowed. It still hurt to admit that God left them all. “With Father gone, there are no more orders. No one knows what to do. But there is one script left to play out.”

“The apocalypse,” Mick said, face blank but voice angry.

“Yes,” Barry said. “Michael and Lucifer were always meant to fight, and the Snarts—with their absent father, their close bond, and Lisa leaving the family for a time to pursue ice skating against her father’s wishes—are the perfect vessels.”

“So, what?” Mick asked gruffly. “They’re going to sacrifice half of humanity just so they have something to do?”

Barry closed his eyes again and turned away, as if he could turn from the truth as easily as he could Mick. They were all so lost in heaven. So lost without their father. Alone in a world that he created. Alone with no purpose, so they tried to find one.

But now Barry had a purpose—stopping them—but he was still alone. No heaven, no siblings, no help.

Mick’s warm hand landed on his shoulder and spun him back around. “And what are you going to do?”

What could he do? Was there anything to do?

“If I…” Barry started off quietly but gained strength as he continued. “If I could find Father—”

“Your father’s gone,” Mick bit out, the words as harsh as if he’d slapped Barry in the face. “Don’t rely on him. What are you going to do?”

“I…” What could he do? He was one angel against heaven’s army.

“Hey,” Mick said, his tone rougher than the hand that slid down his arm to land on Barry’s own. “You’re not alone. What are we going to do?”

Barry turned his hand and gripped Mick’s like his life depended on it. Like the world depended on it because it just might. His throat felt tight and his eyes warm. It was a new feeling. He didn’t like it.

It wasn’t nearly as comforting as Mick’s hand in his.

“We’re going to stop them,” Barry said, looking up from their entwined hands to look Mick in the eye.

Mick smiled, a fire in his eyes that reflected the hell fire he came from. It was manic and should have been unsettling, but Barry couldn’t deny that he loved it.

“Sounds like a plan, Barry.”

[stillnotginger10]

Where Do You Sleep? (AO3)

Word count: 506

Summary:

Barry's visiting the Waverider and discovers the mystery we've all been wondering about for two seasons now, and he demands answers. Where exactly does Mick sleep?

Just a silly little thing that I wrote while tired. Don't take it too seriously. But it involves confused/oblivious/foot-in-mouth Barry and forward/flirty Mick, so it's pretty fun :D And Len is alive! Always a plus.

Thank you @sugar-haus for encouraging my late night shenanigans XD

“Red.”

Barry turned to face the door at the sound of Mick’s voice. Uh oh. He hadn’t expected him to be back so soon, but there Mick stood with Snart at his side.

“Hey, guys,” Barry said awkwardly as he stood from the bench press to walk towards the door.

“What are you doing in here?” Mick asked. A completely reasonable question, Barry had to admit. It probably looked really suspicious that he was in Mick’s room without his permission.

“Ever since Ray found out I’m going to invent Gideon, he keeps asking me questions about her design that I have no idea how to answer,” Barry started, rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to think of how exactly to explain. Might as well plunge right in. “And well, I figured you’ve probably intimidated the crew enough by now that they stay away from your room.”

Snart snorted. “Doesn’t seem to have scared you off.”

“Uh you were with Snart, so I figured you wouldn’t mind,” Barry said. Then quieter, “Or notice.”

Before Mick could answer, Sara joined them.

Her raised eyebrows clearly said she wanted to know what was going on, but instead of asking, she said, “Nate wants to have a movie night. You’re all invited. Barry, any reason Ray’s so interested in making sure you’re there?”

“Because Red loves movies,” Mick said.

“He does?”

“I do?”

“Yeah,” Mick said, staring at Barry. “Can’t get enough.”

“So uncalled for,” Barry muttered to Mick as he walked out of the room.

“Do I want to know what that was about?” Sara asked once Barry was next to her.

He was about to say no when he heard Mick call him and turned around.

“Hey, Red, I’ll share my room, if you share my bed.”

What? But—“You don’t have a bed.”

Sara barked out a laugh. “That’s your problem with that?”

“But he doesn’t,” Barry half shouted, indignant. “It’s been driving me crazy for the last half hour. Where do you sleep?” he asked, focusing back on Mick. “Or wait…You were with Snart. Do you sleep in his room? Are you two…? I don’t know how I feel about threesomes.”

“Again,” Sara said, “that’s the problem?”

“I’m not sleeping with Snart,” Mick said at the same time.

“Then where do you sleep?” Barry asked, loud and slow. It was driving him crazy.

“The bench press,” Mick said, bringing Barry up short.

He stuck his head back in the doorway to better see the bench press. It was as slim and short as expected. How did Mick have room to sleep on there, much less do anything else?

“I'm not having sex on a bench,” Barry said, now standing much closer to Mick.

“There’s a bed in your room,” Mick said, eyes intense as he stared down the speedster.

“You know what?” Sara asked. “I’ll tell the others you’re busy.”

“I’ll join you,” Snart said.

A cry of “That completely defeats the point of hiding in your room,” followed them down the hall.

[snarkysnartes-blog]

Mick sniffs the air, his eyes widening when he realizes what he senses and he glances over at Snart, his partner who senses the same thing.

“You smell that right?” Mick says and the man in front of them shifts on his feet, looking around the empty parking lot before speeding away. Mick drops the heat gun in hand, Snart follows suit.

“The flash is an omega.” Snart grins. “how could we miss that?”

“Suppressants seem to be the new trend now. Interesting that he would want to hide that.”

Snart shrugs. “Maybe but he's gone and we can continue on with our evening.”

Mick looks over at the empty spot where the speedster was and his mind was in overdrive.

True mates was something his mom told him about but he didn't believe it one bit.

When you stare into their eyes, there's an instant connection between the two of you and you know, both of you know that it's meant to be.

He laughed her off for years. There was no such thing.

However, here he is now. His wolf trying desperately to go after the omega and claim him for his own.

He had found his true mate.

                                          -

Mick finds himself standing outside the CCPD a few nights later. He had Axel do a bit of research and found out the man's name was Barry Allen; age 25 and lived with his adoptive father and sister and yeah, despite the fact that he was wanted all around Central city and the surrounding cities but he masked his scent, his identity and really no one knew what he looked like, he wore goggles half the time.

He sees Barry exiting the building and his nose peeks up at the smell of the omega. He didn't take any suppressants today.

He's talking to some woman. His sister to be exact, another omega and her hands are around Barry's. Usually he would have been jealous, his wolf wouldn't have been happy yet because of the fact that it was another omega, Mick didn't feel threatened one bit.

The woman smiles and places a kiss on his cheek before leaving and getting in the car of an alpha. Barry stood on the front steps, his eyes scanning the area before they land on Mick.

“I know you've been watching me.” Barry says. “I'm an omega but I'm also a CSI and I could still sense you Mick Rory.”

Mick looks up at Barry, removing the hat.

“Barry…”

“I know. I sensed it too. That's why I left that night. I needed to process the fact that my true mate is a criminal.”

Mick laughs, walking towards Barry. “And is that a bad thing?”

Barry shrugs. “Not really. At least my life won't be boring anymore.”

[snarkysnartes-blog]

Flashwaveweek day 5: spn au

From a young age, Mick Rory knew what his mother did for a living. Not only was she a teacher by day but at night she hunted, hunted things that he believed were only stories that she would tell him to behave.

That all changed the night that he had turned eighteen. Mick had been out with some friends and didn't come home until well after midnight. When he had, his house had been burned to the ground with his mother and father inside.

No trace elements were recovered and nothing had indicated arson. It had been a freak accident, that's what he had thought until he saw someone that had proved his theory right.

A demon. A demon who told him that it was deal that his mother had made and that Mick was supposed to be in that house with her and his father.

That had been the deal.

The demon had left but not without telling Mick that he would be back rot what's his, no human dared to try and capture him and he didn't like the fact that Mick had. He had vanished in the night air, leaving Mick alive and wanting more answers.

And it wasn't until a few months later that Mick had run into the demon again, Barry Allen had been his name and the demon was making a deal, and the moment that he saw Mick, those eyes had turned a fiery red.

They talked, fought and in the end, Mick managed to convince the Demon to help him, in exchange for his soul down the line.

After all, Mick had nothing to lose.

[snarkysnartes-blog]

Helping you help me

Here is my complete set of drabbles written for the 2018 @flashwaveweek

Link : ao3

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: Talking Flowers (ao3 link)

Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Barry Allen/Mick Rory Series: Flashwave Week 2018 (Destiny Series)

Summary: When Barry is young and impulsive, he gets a tattoo that turns out to be a hell of a lot more than he's expecting, and a future that's very different than it might have otherwise have been.

Now he just needs something to explain to him what all these flowers mean...

A/N: @flashwaveweek - Flashwave Week: Flower Shop/Tattoo Shop

——————————————————————————————

"I've never done anything like this before," Barry confesses. "Not just, you know, a tattoo, but, like, spontaneous! I was just walking through the mall looking for some new shirts – looking for something to do, really – and I saw this place and, well, I just figured, you know, why not? So it’s totally spontaneous. On a whim, really - well, kinda a whim. More like a dare. Kinda, sort of an implied dare, actually, since she never actually said it was a dare, but anyway it's practically the same thing, you know?"

"Sure," the tattoo artist says agreeably. He's smiling, and his eyes are very blue. Inhumanly blue, with glowing curls of blue swirling right over where the pupil should be. Barry supposes that they must be some sort of newfangled special effects costume lens - he's the first person to admit that he's not exactly 'up' on what's cool nowadays.

As Iris would say, he’s too much of a dweeb to be cool.

They are pretty cool, though.

The tattoo artist is pretty cool all over, actually, head to toe in black topped with a blue parka trimmed with white fuzz, which Barry thinks should look dorky but actually looks pretty cool, maybe because the guy wearing it is just so casually confident about it. The guy even has a chain on his wrist, trailing back into the backpack he’s wearing, which is just awesome.

He’s clearly so much cooler than Barry will ever be.

"I'm legal, though," Barry adds, in case his blathering had put the tattoo artist off. "Totally legal. I can show you my ID -"

"It's okay," the tattoo artist says reassuringly. "I believe you."

"Oh, okay," Barry - who is actually a month shy of his eighteenth birthday but who had a great cover story lined up if necessary - says. He's only mildly disappointed he won't be able to use it. "Good, great. Iris is going to freak out when I show her. She says I'm too much of a conformist to ever break any of Joe's rules - I think she's in, like, a bad boy phase or something? I don't know. She's the love of my life and she thinks I'm a conformist. I mean, that sucks! That really sucks. Ugh, I'm never going to get anywhere with her. I'm never even going to get up the courage to confess to her. It's hopeless."

"Nothing's ever hopeless," the tattoo artist says.

"I mean, I guess," Barry says with a sigh. "I just wish I had a way to know what people were thinking. You know? I'm just saying. I mean, I don't need a neon sign spelling it out or anything. I'd be satisfied with a hint."

"Seems reasonable," the tattoo artist agrees. "Not good with social cues?"

"No, not at all. I think I might actually be on the autism spectrum - I mean, Joe never took me for tests or anything, so I'm kinda self-diagnosed, but I match up with a bunch of the descriptors - uh, not that you care, of course -"

"Buddy of mine has severe anxiety," the tattoo artist says. "Also not officially diagnosed. It's cool."

And then, for some reason, he smirks a little, as if he'd just made a joke only he understood.

"You're done, by the way," he adds.

"I am?" Barry asks, surprised. "Wow, that was quick - really quick – wait. Did we even discuss what design I'd be getting?"

He was pretty sure he'd just sat down a few minutes ago and given the guy his arm to show him approximately where he wanted the tattoo – the inside of his left arm, just under the elbow, so he could hide it with long-sleeved shirts if he needed to - and then he remembers babbling aimlessly the way he sometimes did, and now, apparently they were done.

No, now that he thinks about it, he hadn’t even decided what he was going to get – something to honor his mother, he’d been thinking, but he hadn’t been exactly sure of what and had been hoping to discuss it with the artist. But he hadn't even gotten around to mentioning his mother yet!

"Wait," he says again, increasingly alarmed as he looks down at his arm, which is covered in a bandage. He has no idea what’s under there. Wasn’t the process supposed to hurt? Or at least take more time to do? Wasn’t there – outlining and sketching and coloring, or something? "Hold up a second -"

"It's just what you asked for," the tattoo artist says briskly. "Come pay."

Before Barry entirely knows what's happened, he's settled up and out the door.

With absolutely no idea what’s on his arm.

It could be anything: dirty words, some awful symbol, naked people…!

Oh, man, oh, man, Joe is going to kill him.

This is why Barry doesn’t break the rules…!

(Well, except to run off to find out things about his dad, but he's been breaking those rules for so long it doesn't even count.)

He hurries home, hiding in the bathroom and peeling off the bandage to find…

A flower?

Several flowers, actually, wrapped together: a pretty flower with white petals, tinted with pink and with a yellow center, right next to a long stalk with green leaf-like flowers, a green herb with multi-part leaves, and a single four-leaf clover. They’re all colored in quite vividly, with a stark black outline.

It’s…not bad, actually.

Pretty.

Not necessarily what Barry would have picked – ‘just what he asked for’, he has no idea where the tattoo artist got that from – but quite nice. Nothing to be ashamed of.

He could even pretend he’d intended to do it on purpose. No one need ever know.

Barry sighs and pulls out his phone, snapping a picture of it – it’s surprisingly not red or puffy, which speaks to the skill of the artist, at least, though obviously he’s still going to follow all the post-care instructions – and putting it aside to send to Iris later.

Ugh, Iris. At least the tattoo artist didn’t put an iris on there; Barry would never be able to live that down.

“Barry!”

It’s Joe.

Crap.

Barry doesn’t have a long-sleeved shirt, and even if Joe doesn't kill him, Iris will if Joe finds out first.

He pokes his head out of his room, careful to keep the tattoo hidden. “Hi, Joe!” he says, pasting on a smile. “What’s up?”

Joe is frowning at him. “You’re home late,” he says. “You didn’t go visit your dad again, did you?”

“What? No!” Barry says. “I went to the mall.”

“Good,” Joe says. “You know I don’t want you going to Iron Heights.”

“I’m almost eighteen,” Barry reminds him, his temper suddenly short. “You won’t control what I do after that.”

Joe scowls. “It’s for your own good –”

“He’s my dad –”

“He murdered –”

“He didn’t! He’s innocent! How many times do I have to tell you -”

“I’m not getting into this with you again,” Joe snaps. “Just – stay in your room, all right? I’m going out; there’s a crime scene I need to get to.”

“Fine! I wasn’t planning on going out again anyway!”

“Good. I’ve left dinner downstairs; tell Iris to stop sulking in her room and come out to get some.”

Iris is away at a party, as Barry is very well aware and Joe is not, but his inclination to tell Joe that right now is exactly zero.

In fact, Barry responds by slamming the door in Joe’s face and turning away with a huff.

He hates how Joe condescends to him sometimes. Especially about his dad! It's like he'd be happiest if Barry just, what, magically forgot that his dad even existed or something...

At least Joe didn’t find out about the tattoo...

Barry glances at it briefly, then stops and does a double-take. When that doesn't change what he's seeing, he just -

Stares.

The tattoo is...different.

The flowers are different!

Instead of what it was before, mostly white and green, now it's a spring of tiny bright pink flowers, a burst of extremely tiny yellow flowers (oddly enough, those were upside-down), a white flower with a big yellow inside, and a few delicate little white blossoms shaped like bells. Again, all twined together in a beautiful and artistic way, vividly colored, but more like one of those watercolor style tattoos rather than the typical black outline.

But definitely not the same as it was before.

What the hell?

What the –

“I just wish I had a way to know what people were thinking…satisfied with a hint…”

That’s what Barry’d asked for, hadn’t he? That was the only thing he’d asked for.

But that’s – that’s impossible, surely?

As impossible as a tattoo changing.

Besides, even if it was in response to his request, it didn’t make any sense! How could this be what he’d asked for? How could this be a hint –

Flowers.

Flowers weren't just flowers, not always; they also sometimes meant things, didn’t they? Messages, in old Victorian times – a secret language, conveyed by flowers.

Iris had been really into it for a few months a few years back, Barry remembers, before she’d gotten bored with it. But before she’d gotten bored, she’d gotten a little book of flower meanings with accompanying pictures.

It's probably still in her room.

Barry gets it off her shelf and pulls it open, his left arm splayed out in front of him to make sure the tattoo didn’t change.

The spring of tiny bright pink flowers, those were...chestnut flowers. They represented the pursuit of justice.

The burst of yellow flowers, that was a mimosa blossom, signifying sensitivity – except when it was upside down, as this one was, when it signified insensitivity.

The white flower with the yellow inside was a Christmas rose. It represented anxiety.

And the bell-like white flowers...

Ladies’ smock, they were called. Cardamime.

Paternal error.

Put all of those flowers together, and you got a message saying...

“Joe’s worried about my going after my dad and he’s being a dick about it,” Barry translates, his eyes wide. “And he’s - he's wrong.”

He stares at his hand.

Impossible.

And yet...

He pulls out his phone and pulls up the picture he’d snapped earlier.

His original tattoo – according to the book, that’d been a spring of apple blossoms, a stalk of a flower called ‘the bells of Ireland’, wormwood, and a four-leaf clover.

All of which signified ‘good luck’, or ‘good fortune’, or ‘safe travels.’

Good luck and have fun with your new tattoo.

Barry grabs his coat and runs downstairs.

Joe’s still there, all the worst luck. He’s lingering by the door, looking a little guilty – probably about his fight with Barry. “Bar,” he starts. "I just wanted to say -"

“Not now!” Barry shouts as he runs past him.

“Barry!”

“Forgot something at the mall! Be back soon!”

“Barry Allen, you get back here this instant –”

Barry’s already gone, running full tilt towards the bus station down the block where the bus is just pulling away; he’s able to jump on through the back door just in time, pushing his way forward to pay the conductor.

When he gets back to the mall, though, less than fifteen minutes before closing time, the tattoo artist isn’t there anymore.

Neither is the tattoo parlor, for that matter.

It’s a flower shop.

And according to the mall directory, it’s always been a flower shop.

“So cool,” Barry whispers. “So cool.”

This is totally going on his blog.

Barry does post about it on his blog, albeit in vague "I knew a guy" terms in the extremely unlikely event that his readers' paranoia about The Government spying on them is correct, but he actually ends up telling far fewer people than he originally thought he would.

He tries to approach the subject obliquely with Iris, talking about people with special abilities and such like that, but she thinks he's talking about his blog and ends up claiming that anyone who has the power to read other people's emotions-slash-intentions is probably kind of weird.

(Barry thinks about his never-really-discussed maybe-diagnosis and wonders if Iris' definition means that all neurotypical people are the weird ones, at least in comparison to those of them who had difficulty with it.)

Long story short, Barry chickens out of telling her about the magic - he doesn't want her thinking he's even weirder than he already is, after all, he still has hope of winning her affection one day in the distant future - and she only sort of finds out about the tattoo itself.

Only sort of, because it takes on the same formulation every single time he's in Iris' vicinity.

An iris with a ribbon tied to the right intertwined with a daffodil with a ribbon tied to left.

"Ooooh, I get it, this is you and me!" Iris exclaims upon first seeing it, beaming wildly. "I’m the iris, of course, and you’re the – what type of flower is that? That’s a daffodil, right? Bright and cheery, just like you are. Really, Barry, you shouldn't have, but it’s totally awesome. Best friendship tattoo ever!"

Barry smiles weakly.

According to all the books he's found, a daffodil says "I wish you would love me" in the language of unrequited love while an iris means "thank you for your friendship" in the language of platonic affection, and just in case he hadn't gotten which was which, the ribbons make it very clear which of them is which even if you ignored the extremely obvious symbolism of Iris' name.

In other words: ouch.

Besides that particular disappointment, it's not like Barry has many other friends to show it to. Everyone at school already thinks he's, well, weird.

There’s Joe, of course, but Joe would probably just freak out about yet another thing in Barry's life he couldn't control. The man meant well, but seriously, he needs to figure out that he can't manage everything for Barry and Iris all their lives.

Honestly, sometimes Barry thinks Joe is only sympathetic to his crush on Iris because he thinks of Barry as a safer option that he's sure of in comparison to the shadowy outline of some future man that would otherwise be Iris' boyfriend/fiancé/husband.

Sometimes Barry really wishes Joe had a son of his own to displace all of his intensity onto. Then he promptly feels bad for thinking that.

Either way, for one reason or another, Barry doesn't really tell people about it.

It ends up being super useful, though.

It can tell him when a teacher is pleased with him (fennel) or angry (firze) or just confused (sainfoin). It warns him when someone is just trying to use him to do all the work in a group project (larkspur for fickleness) or when someone is just too depressed to contribute (willow for sadness). It lets him know if he’s nearly forgotten his mother’s birthday (moss and butterfly weed, meaning maternal love and absence) and reminds him when he's lied to someone (orange mock, signifying deceit, wrapped around peony, the flower of shame, and the evening primrose of inconsistency).

It even helpfully pops up an oleander wrapped around a germanium (caution and stupidity, respectively) to warn him whenever Tony Woodward is looking for someone to shove into a locker.

(That particular combination makes Barry grin every time he sees it, even if it's probably a bit mean.)

Best of all, though, is the time he goes to visit his dad.

He doesn’t even think about the tattoo the entire visit – too worried about how his dad’s doing, focusing on checking in on him and reassuring him that he loves him and believes in him – but he remembers when he’s heading back out and pulls it out to see what it has to say about his dad.

Black-eyed susans wrapped in buckthorn, a wallflower, and an upside down saltceder.

Justice, wrapped in difficulty; faithfulness in adversity; and the opposite of guilt.

Innocent.

Barry doesn’t know if his tattoo reflects the objective truth or just what he thinks, but his throat gets tight with gratitude either way. It's nice to have someone - or something - that affirms him in what he's doing; sometimes it feels like he's the only person in the world who even cares about righting this wrong.

Even once Barry’s through with school – high school, college, even grad school via the accelerated criminal justice program he took – and started to work at the CCPD as a CSI, the tattoo continues to come in handy.

Not just for the obviously aspects – as useful as it is to glance down at his arm and occasionally see the saltcedar that signifies ‘guilt’ after an interview with a prime suspect, it’s not exactly admissible in court – but for the way it helps him analyze crime scenes themselves. A crime scene that sees a bunch of marigolds on his arm, standing for jealousy, should be analyzed in a very different way than one that includes flowers like the orange lily (hatred) or lobelia (malevolence).

The meanings aren’t always that straightforward, of course, and sometimes the flowers that bloom on Barry’s arm don’t appear in any of the few dozen flower dictionaries Barry’s collected and uploaded to his phone in a searchable index.

Other times, the problem is with his interpretation – he once spent three hours puzzling over the appearance of foxglove on his arm after one particular crime scene, given that foxglove represents insincerity and there didn’t seem to be any insincerity in the case of the woman who’d died, only to abruptly realize that it was a case of digitalis poisoning and the tattoo was being literal for once.

Still, Barry loves his tattoo. It is, despite his first impression, everything he could have asked for and more: his own secret little cheat code to the world.

Honestly, half the reason he didn’t turn Oliver in for being the Hood was because his tattoo picked sweet william, amaryllis, hosta leaves, and sage for Oliver, and Barry’s learned to trust his tattoo by now, even if he wouldn’t necessarily have picked gallantry, pride, devotion, and wisdom as the words to describe Oliver.

(Maybe it was partially describing Felicity. Barry could see that.)

After the whole thing with Oliver, he gets back to Central later than he hoped that evening in December, sighing when he realizes that the Particle Accelerator was supposed to turn on that very night and he’d undoubtedly missed his chance to get in line for it.

Oh, well. At least he can sneak into his lab at the CCPD without anyone noticing to finish up those reports he was supposed to be working on during the time he’d run off to Starling to investigate...

His arm gives a sudden twinge of pain, right where the tattoo is.

Barry flinches, then rolls up his sleeve to see what’s happened. He’s learned to notice a small itching sensation when it changes but it’s never done anything like this, sharp and sudden.

The tattoo –

It’s huge.

It changes size sometimes, yes, but not like this: it’s stretching from just below his wrist all the way up to the middle of his upper arm now, and it’s covered in…

White rhododendron, white asphodel, and - white lilies?

Barry frowns at the tattoo as he reaches for the chain to pull open the skylight above his lab.

He’s alone in his lab, after all.

Why would his tattoo be warning him of danger, of death, and of - of all unlikely things - resurrection?

Just as he’s thinking that, there’s a great big sound like an explosion.

Lightning strikes.

Being the Flash is - awesome.

Just - awesome. Barry doesn't have words for how awesome it is; it's every birthday and Christmas rolled up together with a solid helping of every comic book or fantasy novel Barry has ever read, except real and therefore even more awesome.

He even has brand new friends to back him up.

There's really only one problem.

Harrison Wells.

Well, no, that's not true. That's not the problem.

The problem is that Barry's tattoo - which was apparently fixed in the shape of a small white lily the entire time he was comatose - has decided that it doesn't like Harrison Wells, despite the fact that as far as Barry knows, the man's never said or done anything even remotely questionable.

Other than the Particle Accelerator thing.

But no, the tattoo is extremely clear when it comes to Barry's new friends. Cisco is an alstroemeria (devoted friendship but also aspiration, a perfect combination for Cisco), while Caitlin is white acacia (meaning both elegance and friendship), and both of them appear with a blue periwinkle signifying that Barry's interactions with them are the start of a beautiful friendship. Dr. Wells, on the other hand, is, well...

Dr. Wells is a bouquet of marigolds, lobelias, Queen Anne’s lace, nightshade and monkshood tied with a left-bound ribbon.

Meaning, respectively: cruelty or jealousy, malevolence and arrogance, someone's return, dark thoughts, and that the person holding the flowers (here, Barry) should, quote, “beware, a deadly foe is near.”

...yeah.

Not exactly...promising.

Honestly, the only flower in the bunch that isn’t actively screaming “this person is evil” is the Queen Anne’s lace, which signifies someone returning, but that makes no sense at all no matter how long Barry puzzles over it.

The rest of the bouquet, on the other hand, is perfectly clear.

At first Barry tries purposefully to interpret it as Wells being under some sort of dire threat, maybe from an angry meta, but the next time he's alone with Wells the tattoo ties a right-side ribbon on the whole bouquet almost as an admonition.

A right-side ribbon means that the message in the flowers refers to the person to whom the flowers are addressed, which here would be Wells.

So even the charitable interpretation is out.

It basically boils down to a question of trust: does Barry trust Wells, who in all of Barry's interactions with him has done nothing but help him and continues to help him without any apparent expectation of reward, or does he trust his mysterious magic tattoo, which has never been wrong once in the entire time Barry has had it?

Yeah.

So clearly Harrison Wells is evil.

And Barry's working with him anyway because he really wants to be a hero, and without STAR Labs he's out of luck and he knows it.

Ugh.

If only he could have STAR Labs without Wells.

Unfortunately, without letting people in on the tattoo thing - which he's not going to because, face it, people will believe in superheroes caused by a science experiment gone horribly wrong a hell of a lot faster than they'll believe in a magic information-sharing tattoo from a flower shop that was for a brief instant in time a tattoo shop - Barry has no way to convince anyone of the whole evil-Wells thing.

Cisco and Caitlin are great, but they've known Wells a lot longer than they've known Barry, and Barry's pretty sure you don't stick by someone whose name is employment poison without some serious devotion going on.

Joe...has never believed Barry without proof. Ever. Barry doubts he's going to start now.

Iris doesn't even know about the whole Flash thing because Joe made Barry swear not to tell her.

Felicity is too busy with some horrible life-threatening stuff going on in Starling to even take Barry's calls.

And...well.

Barry basically doesn't have any other friends.

So he's out of luck.

Or at least, he's out of luck until he stops a robbery on a moving truck and gets a quick glimpse of the face of the would-be thief in question.

Thief, hah!

More like mysterious magic tattoo artist!

Okay, he doesn't have the same eyes - the thief, Leonard Snart, has normal blue eyes, or at least he does in the mugshot that Joe finds for Barry - but yeah right, like Barry is going to forget the face of the man who changed his life and showed him that magic is real.

Admittedly, it helped that Snart is tall and well-built. A bit too pretty for Barry - his taste in men runs more towards the big and muscular, because Barry maybe-kinda-sorta likes being tossed around and when you're 6'2" that's a hell of an ask even if you are somewhat skinny - but still, he'd been very memorable during their brief previous encounter.

Barry is determined to talk to him. Maybe even get some advice on this whole Wells situation.

Now all Barry needs to do is find him.

(Barry's tattoo is a burst of bronze chrysanthemums and forsythia, which mean excitement and anticipation, and Barry couldn't agree more.)

His first attempt doesn't exactly go well - somehow Snart got a super-weapon that blasts out cold, and he isn't exactly receptive to Barry's attempts to communicate, even if Wells butting in at an inconvenient time reminds Barry about the fact that his suit is bugged and he shouldn't have any conversations about Wells without taking certain precautions first.

So the next time they get a read on Snart's status, he makes up a fight with the guys at STAR Labs - not hard, since apparently Cisco made the weapon and Wells seems to be more worried about it being effective against Barry than he is about the risk it poses to other innocent people - as an excuse to shut off all communications on the suit.

He even takes the split-second necessary to search the suit for extra devices they might have "accidentally" forgotten to mention.

(Beware, a foe is near.)

And then he runs to find Leonard Snart.

The guy is even wearing the same parka he was wearing the day he did Barry's tattoo.

Barry grins.

"Isn't it past your bedtime?" Snart teases.

"You know perfectly well that I'm legal," Barry shoots back. "Or you would, if you'd bothered to check my ID."

That gives Snart pause. Not the quip he'd been expecting, clearly. "Come again?"

"It was years ago," Barry says. "I don't expect you to remember - I was the guy with the flowers?"

Snart's eyebrows start going up. "Is this a joke?" he asks. "Or some sort of absurdist attempt to get me off balance?"

"This really isn't the best place to talk," Barry says apologetically.

Snart's smart enough to get his gun back up - apparently absurdism does actually work to get him off balance - but not quite fast enough to stop Barry from charging him, grabbing him, and running him off the train.

He does try to shoot Barry with the cold gun once they arrive, but Barry is sort of expecting that, so he ducks and dodges until Snart stops firing.

"- and also, what the fuck is this place," Snart says a minute or two later to the empty warehouse Barry's brought them to. "Tell me this ain't your HQ, kid."

"It isn't," Barry says. "STAR Labs is."

An eyebrow goes up.

"Yes, I know, it's where you got your gun," Barry says. "Listen, I need your help."

"My help?"

Barry rolls up his sleeve to check the tattoo - fascination, faithfulness, strength, all good signs, promising signs, this guy's going to be great - and grins at the guy. "Yeah, your help," he says. "According to your tattoo, Harrison Wells is super evil and needs to be taken down, and I can't do it on my own. And then you show up, so it's clearly a sign we should work together."

"According to my tattoo? Kid, I don't have any tats."

"Really? Isn't that unusual for a tattoo artist?"

"I'm Jewish," Snart says, sounding utterly bemused. "I've never really gone in for tats - even if you put aside the religious objection, I never really found anything I wanted permanent -"

"Well, you clearly solved that problem for me -"

"- and while I certainly know how to apply 'em, I've never worked as a tattoo artist. You sure you haven't gotten me confused with someone else?"

"Positive."

Snart crosses his arms, scowling. "I'm going to need you to explain what you mean by that, then," he says. "And while you're at it, explain why your tat suddenly has spikey red flowers on it when it didn't two minutes ago."

Snart's not the first person the tattoo has changed in front of, but he's the first one to ever notice.

Besides, the spikey red flowers Snart's describing?

Camellia japonica.

In flower language, that means destiny.

Yep, Barry's totally made the right decision here.

He explains.

He gets about halfway through the explanation when his tattoo pings another change, this time a snarl of white clover around Ciscos’ signature alstroemeria, Caitlin’s white acacia, and Wells’ monkshood.

“What’s that?” Snart asks.

“White clover,” Barry says. “It means ‘think of me’, while the other flowers represent my team back at STAR Labs.”

“They’re looking for you,” Snart interprets.

“I’ll go tell them I lost you,” Barry decides. “I’ll be back in an hour – will you still be here?”

“Are you joking?” Snart asks. “Of course I’ll still be here. Got another half of the story to go.”

It actually ends up taking Barry a good three hours – mostly of Wells and Joe teaming up to lecture him, which, ugh. Last he checked, he’s a fully grown adult capable of making decisions on his own, but you’d never guess it from the way they talk to him.

Barry doesn’t need his tattoo to sarcastically turn into two overbearing cardamimes, but he appreciates it anyway.

(It occurs to him, even based on his limited experience with the guy, that his tattoo seems to have Snart’s sense of humor.)

Luckily, despite the delay, it turns out Snart is, in fact, still waiting back at the warehouse when Barry finally gets there after loudly pretending to want to go back to his apartment to sleep (and forgiving Cisco, who was really taking their fight very hard, which Barry hadn't intended).

“Tell me the rest,” Snart demands.

(The pink bouvardia on Barry’s arm – enthusiasm – is entirely unnecessary commentary.)

Snart ends up denying being the tattoo artist, or at least not remembering it – they split on whether or not it’s some sort of fairy creature taking his face, a version of Snart from the future, or an alternative universe version of him – but he’s delighted to be involved in working to take down Wells, particularly when it turns out that Barry’s tattoo has assigned him the camellia of destiny as “his” flower.

They’re just starting to make plans about how to start working together to take down Wells when the door bursts open.

They both spin.

The man who enters is big and tall and muscular, his head shaven and his eyes narrowed, a gun in his hand. “I don’t know who you are,” he snarls, “but you’d better not have hurt – Snart!”

“Mick!” Snart exclaims.

Barry glances back at Snart, eyes darting down to his tattoo – snowdrops (troubled friendship), asphodels (regret), and forget-me-nots (memories and missing you).

This guy must be an estranged friend of Snart’s.

“I thought you were in trouble,” the man at the door says hesitantly.

“I - I thought you didn’t want to see me again,” Snart says, also hesitant, which Barry already knows is uncharacteristic for him.

“I thought you didn’t want to see me again,” the man says. “After I screwed up that last job –”

“You got hurt,” Snart says. “It was my plan. I thought –”

“Of course you did,” the man huffs and crosses his arms. “I don’t blame you for it. And anyway, you really thought I wouldn’t come after you if I heard you’d been disappeared by the Streak?”

“Well –”

“Idiot.”

The tattoo is now showing a cheerful burst of freesia (lasting friendship), lavender (devotion), and hazel (reconciliation).

Barry smiles down at his arm.

Best friends reunited.

“- going to help him fight this bad guy,” Snart is explaining. “You in?”

The man (Mick, Barry thinks Snart called him?) grunts in amusement. “’course I’m in,” he says. “Someone’s got to keep your stupid ass out of trouble.”

And then the man turns to Barry for the first time that evening and smiles, a crooked little smile that didn’t hide how warm his eyes are and suddenly for the first time Barry notices how tall the guy is – as tall as Barry – and how big, how the burns peeking out through his clothing suggested wildness but how the careful way he holds himself suggested control and power. “Hey there, Red,” he says. “I’m Mick. Guess we’ll be working together now.”

Barry swallows and glances down at his arm.

A lavender rose.

Love at first sight.

Oh, crap.

Barry is starting to think that Snart’s flower is mislabeled.

He’s not destiny, he’s…

There really needs to be a flower for “chatterbox”.

(His arm suggests camellia against a background of rhubarb leaves, which mean a brouhaha. That sounds about right.)

“I’m amazed he ain’t a chaste bush,” Mick rumbles in Barry’s ear, causing Barry to shiver at the unexpected closeness and the puff of hot air on his cheek. “Len, I mean.”

“On my tattoo?” Barry squeaks, then coughs to clear his throat. “Why would he be a bush?”

“A chaste bush,” Mick corrects. “Sometimes called vitex or monk’s pepper.”

Barry blinks at him.

“Grew up on a farm, had sisters,” Mick explains. “I know a bit of flower language.” He grins, a little sheepishly. “Wish I had something like your tattoo to explain stuff to me back then. I’m better with people now – still shit at figuring out social cues, s’got something to do with my anxiety, or maybe my autism spectrum diagnosis, but either way, I’ve got a decent grasp of people by now, I think.”

“Yeah, the tattoo is extremely helpful and everyone ought to have one,” Barry agrees fervently. Ever since getting it, he's been unable to imagine trying to live life without it. They ought to come standard on all human models. “It’d reduce misunderstandings so much. So, a chaste bush…?”

“Means ‘cold’.”

Barry can’t help but grin. “I could see why you might think that,” he agrees. Snart – who insists on Barry calling him ‘Len’ now that they’re working together, apparently because the thought of magic seems to have turned Snart, no, turned Len into an excitable fourteen-year-old boy again and it seems more appropriate that way – has made at least six cold puns in the last fifteen minutes, each one followed by smirking proudly about them.

“Plus it’s an extra pun because he’s ace,” Mick says. “Chaste, get it? He doesn't do any of it. No romance, no sex, nothing like that.” He pauses. “In case that was a concern you were having.”

Barry frowns at him, puzzled. Why would he..? “Oh!” he says, realizing and turning red. “No, I’m not – he’s – er – not my type.”

“Really?” Mick asks, arching his eyebrows. “He’s usually everyone’s type. Pretty, you know.”

“Too pretty,” Barry says, then groans and covers his mouth with his hands. “Forget I said that.”

Mick’s smiling, though. “You like ‘em bigger?”

“Can we please change the subject?” Barry begs. “To anything. Ever. Really.”

Mick laughs.

It’s good laugh. Warm and real, without reservations or shyness.

“Well,” Mick says, “if we know what flower Len ought to be –”

“Have we decided that?” Barry asks, grateful for the reprieve. He’s pretty sure Mick hasn’t figured out his crush yet, which in his view is all for the better. He needs some time to plan this out – he hasn’t crushed this hard since, well, he met Iris. “He could be something that stands for ‘coldheartedness’.”

“Coldheartedness,” Mick says skeptically. “Like…lettuce.”

Len is still chattering away to himself about his plans, hands painting invisible illustrations in the air.

“Not lettuce,” Barry agrees. “Chaste bush it is.”

“Agreed. So what am I?”

A purple rose, that’s what, Barry thinks, slightly panicky, but then it occurs to him that that’s not necessarily true; the lavender rose had a left-side ribbon, indicating that it only spoke for Barry. That meant that Mick’s flower (or flowers) could be something else.

“- can we check?” Mick is asking, nodding at Barry’s arms. “Since you’ve been talking to me and all. Is that how it works?”

“Sometimes,” Barry hedges, but he can’t think of any good reason not to show Mick his arm other than the possibility of dying on the spot with embarrassment. But not showing him his arm would mean explaining which, again, death of embarrassment, except no possibility the tattoo is taking pity on him and showing something a bit less obvious. “Uh, sure, I guess.”

He pushes up his sleeve. The tattoo has a stalk from a barberry bush on a bed of ivy, with a small delicate umbrella-shaped flower, barely out of the bud, nestled right beside it.

“Barberry,” Mick muses. “That’s – hot-tempered, right? Got that one right. I’m an arsonist, you know.”

“Ivy’s fidelity,” Barry offers as a counterpoint. He knows that’s right, too, just based on Mick’s loyalty to Len.

“What’s this last one?” Mick asks, flushing a bit, but smiling. “Not sure I recognize it.”

“Oh, that,” Barry says. “It also relates to fire, I think – something about flame.”

Mick nods, satisfied, then looks away when Len calls his name with a small measure of irritation that suggests that he may have noticed that they aren’t paying attention to him.

Barry, though, takes a moment to trace the soft outline of that last flower.

It’s rare: a flower with no petals, but rather with a colored calyx that strongly resembles petals, growing primarily in tropical South America. Barry only knows about it because he’s spent years looking up increasingly more obscure flowers and their meanings.

This particular flower is called a four-o-clock flower, due to its tendency to start to bloom in the late afternoon and stay throughout the night, then close in the morning.

It means ‘flame of love’.

It’s tiny, still just in the bud, but…

The tattoo shivers on Barry’s arm, shifting into a tiny little collection of hawthorn flowers.

Hope.

Barry smiles.

“- you wanna defeat this guy or sit around daydreaming?” Len snaps. “I need your input, oh scarlet speedster.”

“The suit’s hardly scarlet,” Barry objects.

“Who can tell, at the speeds you’re normally going after?” Len shoots back. “Actually, on that subject, Mick, I got you a thing.”

Mick’s ecstatic reaction over the heat gun is enough to make Barry “forget” to mention that they really ought to give it back to Cisco.

After all, they did steal it fair and square…

And Mick is just so happy about it.

He’s beautiful when he’s happy.

Oh god, Barry has got it so bad.

(His tattoo putting out a sunflower, meaning adoration, is entirely unnecessary salt-in-the-wound.)

Len ends the meeting by presenting Barry with a pretty thorough plan to do some reconnaissance on Harrison Wells, both by Len and Mick from the outside and Barry from the inside.

Barry protests that his assignments, like “recommendation 1: search STAR Labs,” seemed pointless, except when asked he had to admit he had not, in fact, searched STAR Labs for any mysterious hidey-holes that could explain...anything.

But surely Wells wouldn't be so stupid as to -

Len points out that if Barry hasn't checked, he doesn't know if Wells is or is not that stupid, and anyway it's pretty reasonable to assume Wells would think that Barry wouldn't have any reason to suspect him of being secretly evil.

Barry concedes the point.

Mick seems content to just ride along with all of the crazy – apparently being born and raised on a farm taught him a fair amount of superstition in addition to the flower language, though he claims the superstition has more to do with being Irish – but he does squint at Barry thoughtfully.

“…what?” Barry asks.

“You should come visit us once we’re settled,” Mick says. “You can come have dinner or something. Superspeed – probably means your stomach’s all sped up too, right? Whatever that’s called, metaphorism?”

“Metabolism,” Barry says automatically, doing his best to keep from swooning.

Ridiculously attractive and smart. So what if he doesn’t always know the right words? Barry can sympathize with that, and he’s got the advantage of an extensive education, something he thinks Mick and Len might not have had access to.

...Barry's totally doomed.

"Dinner," Mick says firmly. "You should come."

Barry agrees, of course - why wouldn't he? - but he honestly doesn't think it's going to, you know, happen or anything, except next thing he knows Mick is at his doorstep inviting him to dinner.

Well, more like gruffly reminding Barry that he'd promised to come for dinner and anyway Mick already cooked it and Len was expecting him in order to talk strategy so was he coming already?

Barry thinks it's sweet.

Best of all, Len does want to talk strategy, but he ends up getting a phone call about twenty minutes in and running out with instructions for them to keep some food for him.

So Barry and Mick end up having dinner alone.

Mick isn't much for talking, but Barry coaxes some conversation out of him, finding that Mick is insightful, humorous (in a much dryer way than Len's ongoing sarcasm), and, in his own way, kind.

Incredibly cynical about the world, of course: Mick resists making new friends because he cares so deeply for his friends, truly cares, and he constantly felt that he failed in protecting the ones he already had and therefore didn't deserve any new ones.

It didn't mean people couldn't sneak in despite his best efforts, though.

And he likes Barry.

That part is important.

He likes Barry.

Not necessarily romantically, but, as Barry's tattoo constantly reminds him, there is the possibility of it, still hidden in the bud.

Barry wonders if his abilities mean that he'll one day be able to walk on air, because he certainly feels like he is doing that now.

Even his friends notice.

"Found someone new?" Caitlin teases. "Can we meet her?"

"If I find you anywhere near any of my dates, I will die," Barry informs her. "You wouldn't want that, would you?"

"Way to go, Barry!"

"You're dating someone, Mr. Allen?" Wells asks, wheeling himself out from a shadow. "The esteemable Ms. West, perhaps?"

"No," Barry says firmly. "That's not - she doesn't - she's not - I'm dating someone new. And I think it might be going somewhere. I don't know. We'll see? It's still early days."

Wells made a thoughtful noise.

It wasn't, entirely, an approving noise.

Barry has no idea why Wells would care about who Barry is dating...unless Wells is creeping on Barry himself. Which, gross!

"Have you brought this new paramour of yours home yet, Mr. Allen?" Wells asks.

"Waaaay too early for that," Barry tells him.

"And I suppose a name is out of the question..?"

"Buzz off, all of you," Barry says. "Don't we have a meta to fight?"

They lay off, but the whole conversation makes Barry uncomfortable and he ends up confessing it all to Len, who looks thoughtful.

"What?" Barry asks, hoping Len could pinpoint the issue.

"I'm still not sure what he's up to," Len says, "that's still murky. But based on that conversation, I'd bet money that your house is bugged."

"My house is what?!"

Len shrugs. "I've cased a lot of places," he says. "Including some private homes. If Wells sounded like anything, he sounded like an over-controlling husband or father. Not so much he wants you for himself; more that he expects you to do only what he expects from you and nothing else -"

"So, what, he expects me to just pine away hopelessly for Iris permanently or something?"

"- and when you start showing signs of doing otherwise, he makes a plan to catch you at it," Len concludes. "Usually with supposedly subtle suggestions that you should feel free to use a given space to do as you like - with the given space being recorded."

"So that means -"

"He wants to know who you're interested in and his suggestion that you bring 'her' home is meant to help him figure that out," Len confirms. "Which only works if it's bugged."

"Oh my god," Barry moans, putting his head in his hands. He can check later today, but... "That's so creepy."

"You should find the bugs but leave them in place," Len says. "That way he won't know we're onto him."

Barry sighs, but nods.

"Now," Len says, "let's talk about you being interested in Mick..."

Barry gulps.

Luckily, it turns out Len is fine with it and just wants to give a shovel talk, since apparently his beloved little sister would kill him if he gave one to any of her boyfriends, girlfriends, or nonbinaryfriends.

Best of all, Len finds increasing reasons to leave them alone after that, and the four-o-clock flower on Barry's arm begins, little by little, to bloom.

"Time travel," Len crows. "I told you it was time travel."

"Stop rubbing it in," Barry grumbles.

"I've got a different question," Mick says. He's comfortable sprawled out on the couch, an arm hooked over Barry's shoulders, and Barry's doing his best not to either dislodge Mick's arm or do anything that might alert Mick to what he's doing. "When do you get the power to make magic tattoos? Also, when do I get one?"

"Clearly I decided not to give you one."

"Unfair," Mick whines. "I want one. They're damn useful."

Barry has to give him that.

"You can just use Barry's," Len replies, rolling his eyes. "He's around often enough."

Barry glares at Len.

"True enough," Mick says. "I like having him around; he's very calming. Not like most people. Hey, Barry, would you be willing to hang out and be my people-interpreter?"

Sure, can we do that forever? Barry thinks, but actually ends up saying, "Sure, just let me know when you need me."

"Oh, I don't have anything in mind, I just meant, y'know, generally."

"Uh, sure. Definitely. Definitely sure." He smiles at Mick. "Any time."

"Which, now that we know Barry can travel through time, can literally be any time," Len interjects.

"It's not that easy," Barry objects.

"You just told us you did it by accident."

"...it's probably not a good idea, then."

"Why?"

"I'm never taking you back in time," Barry decides. "That way lies terrible paradoxes, and I don't want to think about what that'll do to the timeline."

"We'll all have magic tattoos," Mick offers.

"Or glowing eyes," Len agrees, grinning. “Besides, if you won’t take me, I’ll find my own way.”

"Anyway, what does it matter that I can time travel?" Barry asks. "Besides it being cool and explaining how I meet Len before ever meeting him."

"Isn't it obvious?" Len asks.

"No. Not at all," Mick says peacefully, with the air of someone used to Len's - Len-ness. Barry grins conspiratorially at him and gets a wink in return. "Why don't you explain it to us the way you're obviously dying to?"

"It's Wells! The flower that didn't match! The one that means 'return', right?"

"There's a variety of meanings -"

"It means return," Len insists. "Return of the threat. And that explains everything."

Barry glances at Mick, but no, his face is equally blank with confusion. Good to know it's not just Barry.

Len rolls his eyes at both of them. "Barry," he says. "Scarlet. Flash. He who leaves behind lightning when he runs."

"...yes?"

"Now that you know that you can time travel," Len says, "I'd like you to give me a good reason that a man trailing lightning might attack your home when you were a child."

Barry straightens up abruptly. "Hold up. Are you saying that I was the one who killed -"

"Not you," Mick interrupts, putting a calming hand on Barry's arm. "But someone like you - a speedster in yellow instead of red."

"A supervillain," Len says, eyes aglow. "A supervillain that figures out he can travel through time - and decides to take the 'go kill baby Hitler' approach to time travel, with eleven-year-old Barry playing the role of Hitler. The hit on your mother was just that: a hit."

Barry swallows. "But that means - that means it was my fault," he says. "Because I'm the Flash now -"

"Unlikely," Len says. "You became the Flash in a freak accident - an accident that happens whether or not your mother dies. The supervillain was probably trying to kill you and failed - yet he never tried again. That suggests that either his attempt was a one-shot thing or, more likely, that time reacted badly to the attempt to screw it up and fought back." He grins. "And that means you becoming the Flash is destiny."

"But if I stopped -"

"You're too good a person to stop helping people," Mick says gently. "I think Lenny's right on this one, Red. It ain't you that made the asshole do what he did, it's all on him."

Barry isn't sure he believes Mick, but he musters up a smile for him anyway. All this talk of being responsible for your family's death can't be good for Mick, after his history.

Mick smiles back and squeezes Barry's arm a little. Then he frowns and turns to Len. "What's this explain about the flower?"

"Isn't it obvious yet?" Len purrs, clearly delighted by his own brilliance. "Return of the threat: the man who tried to kill you is Harrison Wells."

"What? No! He's the one who caused the Accelerator in the first place -"

"Destiny," Mick says abruptly. "Barry -"

Barry goes a bit warm. Mick almost never uses names; only when it's important. But Barry likes the sound of his name on Mick's lips.

"Barry," Mick says again, more urgently, "what if you were the inspiration for it?"

Len frowns. "How's that?"

"This man in yellow - he's a speedster right?"

"We're assuming, yes."

"And he's a supervillain we haven't seen yet, so what if Barry came first? What if this guy got inspired by Barry being the Flash, except when he fucked up Barry's childhood he robbed himself of his original inspiration to become a speedster - which means he wouldn't have his speed anymore. Or, at least, his ability to travel in time..."

Len snaps his fingers. "That's why he didn't try again! He realized he needed Barry to become the Flash, and not just the Flash, to become an increasingly faster version of the Flash - fast enough to time travel. That's why he made the Accelerator explode -"

"No, hold up," Barry says. "He has a whole career behind him! Thirty years!"

"Any weird personality changes around the time of your mom's death?"

Barry pauses. "I mean," he says hesitantly, "that is when he had the car accident where he lost his wife...and then moved to a new city..."

"Cutting off all communication with anyone who knew him before?" Len asks, arching his eyebrows. "If you're willing to murder the wife, then it's a good excuse."

"But - he's in a wheelchair -"

"As a possibly-Aspie superhero, are you really in a position to object to the abilities of disabled people to cause trouble?"

"...point."

"Besides, we're assuming he isn't faking the wheelchair thing," Mick says. "We'll check the records at Wells' house - maybe we can catch him."

"Then what?"

"Then we prove it to your buddies at STAR Labs and we take him down," Len says, baring his teeth. "And we put the evidence of the Flash vs. the Evil Speedster -"

"That name sucks," Mick says. "Reverse Flash, maybe?"

"Whatever. We ask your friend Iris West to put the evidence of that into the news media, and prove that there's a man in yellow that runs like lightning, and we use that to get your dad's case reopened. Simple!"

It was not, as Len termed it, simple.

They all very nearly get killed multiple times in the process, for one thing. If it wasn't for Barry's tattoo semi-regularly pinching him with images of begonias, which mean "beware", they would be dead - Len and Mick, at least, because apparently Len was right about Wells' evil plan needing Barry alive and well and super speedy, though apparently there was an undiscovered element of using Barry as a battery to turn the Particle Accelerator into a time-travel device to get Wells - Eobard? - back to his timeline.

But, whatever, eventually Len's plan does actually work.

Barry nearly dies trying to stop Eobard, but he doesn't, and anyway the near death experience had Mick running over and pulling Barry out of the time loop into a soul-searing kiss -

Len actually whoops at it, it's undignified.

- so really, Barry's quite happy with how it all turns out.

Iris knows about him now, as does Eddie (they've decided, informally, to seriously consider adoption instead of procreation); Joe has been forced to admit that Len and Mick aren't half bad; Barry's dad is being released from prison and set up with a nice big settlement from the state; Cisco and Caitlin are firm friends who he can keep employing thanks to his inheritance of Wells' fortune; Barry and Mick are now officially dating while Len proceeds to keep them company and annoy the living daylight out of them...

Barry’s tattoo shows a four-o-clock flower in full bloom more often than not.

Really, it's all good.

And then Rip Hunter has to show up and ruin it all.

Barry's never been more glad that he keep his own apartment instead of moving in with Joe that one time (he thought about it, but he kept thinking of cardamimes) than when Mick makes it back from his travels with the Legends, hollow-eyed and mute with grief, because he could insist that Mick stay with him for the time being.

Mick agrees, less out of actual desire than out of an apathetic passivity that doesn't suit him. He doesn't say what happened, but Len's absence from Mick's side is clear enough.

(Barry's tattoo encircles Mick's four-o-clock flower with a wreath of cypress leaves spotted with the flowers of aloe and bellwort, all meaning death, mourning, sorrow, hopelessness and grief, but for once Barry's pretty sure he could have guessed even without its guidance.)

Barry stays with Mick whenever he can, working from home and taking breaks at Flash-speed, offering his sympathy and his presence, which he hopes is comforting. They watch a lot of movies, light ones, comedies and action movies: ninja movies and Monty Python and action movies with lots of car chases.

After a few weeks, late one night when Barry thought Mick'd fallen asleep on the couch, Mick whispers, "He died a hero."

That, somehow, is what finally breaks Barry from the overwhelming distraction of needing to care for Mick and reminds him that Len might've been Mick's best friend, but he was Barry's friend, too: eyes bright and avid whenever they spoke of magic, a pun always on his tongue, a brilliant mind capable of anything...

A softer heart than he'd ever admit.

Barry gets in a good cry that night, Mick's arms wrapped around him.

Over the next few days, the story comes in drips and drabs - a terrible story, of deception and manipulation and betrayal and torture. Mick's words, always a little confused from his childhood aphasia, have gotten even slower, even more difficult to summon the right word at the right time, and Barry knows exactly who to blame for that.

There's nothing Barry can do about the Time Masters that hurt Mick, Len took care of that, but if Barry ever sees Rip Hunter again...

They’re curled up on the couch watching Spaceballs when Mick finally speaks about the thing that’s really been bothering him.

"There's one thing," Mick says, looking ragged and wretched, yet strangely tremulous. Like he was afraid to say anything. "One last piece of hope that I can't stop thinking about. Can’t move on till I get it out of my head, but – I can’t let go."

Barry blinks at him. "What do you mean?"

"Your arm."

"My arm? You mean my tattoo? What about it?"

"You said you got it from - from a future version of Len, right? And - it's still there, ain't it? My Len - I mean, my version of Len, we didn't ever go back to year you said it happened."

Barry sighs, understanding. "It might not have been him," he says gently. "We've just discovered that alternate universes exist -" And oh, what a heartbreak all over again that Len won't be able to hear about that - Barry can already see in his head with perfect clarity how the excitement and glee of Len's carefully hidden inner nerd would be pouring out uncontrollably. "- so it didn't, you know, necessarily have to be a future version of him."

Mick breathes out hard, a burst of air like he'd been punched in the gut. Barry understands: that last bit of hope...

There's a knock on the door.

Barry makes to get up from the couch to answer it, but Mick's arms tighten around him, unwilling to let go. "They'll go away."

"Or start yelling," Barry agrees, thinking of his friends.

Another knock.

They both ignore it.

Silence for a few seconds, just long enough for Barry to think that maybe it was just some obnoxious door-to-door salesperson or something and that they'd gotten the hint and left, and then the audible click of the door opening.

Of their locked door opening.

Barry and Mick stare at each other with the same expression - the "wow does this thief have bad luck today or what?" expression - and then they both get up to face the door just as the thief strolls in like he owns the place.

Mick inhales, hard and fast, and Barry's pretty sure he himself just made a sound not unlike being stabbed.

Leonard Snart, his eyes clouded over with a unnatural swirling living blue in just the unforgettable way that Barry remembers from getting his tattoo, grins at them both.

"Sorry I'm late," he drawls. "Didn't mean to leave you in suspense - just needed to pick up a little something on my way, if you know what I mean."

He jabs a thumb at - well, Barry's not entirely sure what it is. Len has some extremely large book, leather-bound and ancient-looking like some tome out of a comic book trying to recreate the feeling of the Middle Ages, or maybe, what does Barry know, something that actually is from the Middle Ages, and it's currently strapped onto his back in some sort of weird backpack-like get up that enables him to carry it comfortably and hands-free despite the fact that he is literally chained to the spine of the book.

What the fuck.

"Are you our Len?" Mick demands, clearly less interested in the book or the eyes than in confirming that Len is somehow impossibly back. "Or are you some future Len?"

“I’m from now,” Len says with a grin.

“That’s just semantics,” Barry objects. “Everyone is from ‘now’.”

“That’s correct,” Len says. “You’re always in the now. Everything that happens now is happening now.”

Mick opens his mouth to say something, then scowls fiercely. “You fucking asshole.”

“Major Asshole,” Len agrees.

Barry frowns, not sure what they’re talking about, then the words “everything that happens now is happening now” blare out from the still-running movie behind them and he groans. “Please tell me,” he says, “that you didn’t wait until we were watching Spaceballs so you could make bad movie quote jokes to accompany your reappearance. Or appearance. Whichever.”

Len’s grin softens into a real smile. “Maybe a little,” he concedes. “But it was the narratively appropriate moment for me to show up, so I couldn’t come any earlier. And in answer to your question, I am the Len you knew – yes, the one who just got involved in the Oculus –”

“Got involved?” Mick exclaims. “What sort of stupid-ass euphemism is that? You got blown up!”

“Fine. I’m the one who got blow up in the Oculus. I’m also the one who’s going to give Barry his tattoo when he’s younger. I’m all of them.”

Barry looks down at his tattoo.

It’s Len’s flower, the camellia.

Destiny.

“Do we want to know the details?” he asks.

“Not really,” Len says. “I’m only here for a short time, anyway.”

“I’m going with you,” Mick says firmly.

Barry’s breath catches in his throat. He missed Len, missed him dreadfully, but he doesn’t – he doesn’t want to lose Mick.

“No, you’re not,” Len says, equally firm. “You’re staying right here – or going on with the Legends, which ever you prefer – and you two are going to be very happy together.”

“I’m your partner.”

Len’s face softens. “Yes, you are,” he says. “But you’ve got your own path to walk now – and a new partner to do it with.”

He nods at Barry, who swallows. “I don’t want you to go either, if it’s worth anything?” he offers. His voice is a bit tremulous, and he knows his eyes are glassy with unshed tears.

They just got Len back – they can’t handle losing him already.

“Oh, for – stop having emotions at me already,” Len says, sounding long-suffering. “Yes, I said this was a short visit and yes, Mick can’t come with me where I’m going, but you’re all acting like I’m not going to show up every few days like a bad penny to tell you all the new things I’ve discovered.”

Mick practically crumples with relief, and Barry’s not much better.

Len rolls his eyes at both of them.

“Anyway, I just showed up for the Spaceballs quote and to make you all stop moping,” he says briskly. “I’ve still got some things to settle down before I can come back, but I swear, I will be back, and soon.”

“Good,” Mick says. “Last time...”

“Last time we were still under the Oculus’ sway; now we're not,” Len says, his eyes glinting with triumph. “Now we’re under mine, and you’ll find I’m a lot more lenient about this sort of thing.”

“So you’re definitely coming back?” Barry presses.

“Absolutely. You’ve got a couple of interesting adventures coming down the pipeline and personally, I can’t wait to see how you’re going to deal with them. Any last questions before I go back to my garden?”

“Can I have a tattoo like Barry’s?” Mick says immediately.

“You don’t need one,” Len says. “You’ve got Barry.”

“Did you say ‘garden’?” Barry asks, because he’s known Len long enough by now to realize the immediate downfalls of that plan. “You? The city boy? A garden? Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’s traditional,” Len says with a sniff. “I’ll be fine.”

“...sure you will,” Mick says, sounding doubtful. “Well, if you ever need any advice, just ask.”

To no one’s surprise, Len comes back three days later with a vaguely panicked expression asking whether plants need to be watered or not and if so, how much.

Barry and Mick laugh themselves sick.

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A/N: As you may have noticed, I've picked "Len as Destiny of the Endless" as the connecting theme for this year's Flashwave week. The only things you really need to know for most of the fics is that Destiny is a blind hooded figure chained to a book, that he's the oldest of a group of immortal entities, and that he traditionally lives in the Garden of Destiny.

Alternatively, you could just go with "Len develops Oculus powers that happen to come with a book and a garden" and you'll still have everything you need to understand this fic.