#me? planning cf aus specifically for my birthday? .......maybe so

[areyouscarletcold]

Call’s May Favorites: Day Nineteen - Coldflash, Inkheart Au

Also fulfilling my @coldflashweeks bingo square for “Hurt/Comfort” and now on Ao3!

And happy birthday to me!

Nora hadn’t gone down to bed easily. She was too curious for her own good, something Barry knew he probably should have discouraged years ago but couldn’t help but usually be proud of her for.

In cases of life and death, however, her tenacity just exhausted him.

He ran both hands down his face, leaning back against the kitchen cabinets and letting his head knock against the wood. He didn’t mind his daughter asking questions, not really, and she was smart, could fill in the blanks where she saw fit, but it was too late to be having conversations about the past.

Especially when he wasn’t prepared for them himself.

The thing was, part of Barry had known this day would come. He’d run from it for years, bottled up his grief so tight that it seared his soul to pretend nothing was wrong and he and Nora had lived like this forever. Just a father traveling around the country with his daughter, never quite settling down for more than a month at a time before the paranoia struck, or he caught a glimpse of a familiar head of hair.

And then they’d pack their bags and go - again. It didn’t matter where, didn’t matter how; they just needed to be far away from their temporary home as they could get.

He didn’t know how they’d found them after all this time, but Barry wasn’t about to lose the only family he had left. Not to people he knew wouldn’t give a damn about her, except to use Nora as leverage.

It was moments like this that he wanted to glance over his shoulder, meet Iris’s gaze, and plead with her to help him, tell him what to do. It seemed like she always knew just what to say - how to calm Nora down when she had a temper tantrum, how to soothe the grief after his parents died.

How to convince him to do the one thing he’d sworn never to do again, even when she hadn’t known it would doom her to a life...well, wherever she was now.

Someone cleared their throat beside him and Barry nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun around, arms rising to do something - maybe as an attempt to protect himself or shove the intruder away, who knew - but his hands were caught almost immediately, tucked against their chest like this was some bizarre form of defense for Barry. He opened his mouth to shout, but that familiar smirk caused him to falter just long enough to recognize who he was frowning at.

“Should I be flattered that you thought you could take me down with just your fists?” Snart’s voice was unusually soft and he knew it had to be because Nora was sleeping, which was oddly considerate for a thief and a liar, but he still shuddered at the feel of their hands trapped between their chests, the low drawl he’d grown too accustomed to already. “Hardly a hospitable way to greet your houseguest.”

Barry snorted. “Houseguest? Is that what you are, now?”

Snart looked even more amused, as if he recognized the irony too. Which he likely had, the jerk. “Nora seems to think so.”

Her name was a bucket of ice water, a shock back to the reality of the situation, and Barry pulled his hands out of Snart’s grasp, a little surprised when the man let him go willingly. He glared at Snart. “Only because there’s no good way to explain why I was letting a wanted thief into our house. And I definitely don’t appreciate your little visit, by the way. It - Did you really have to barge in during dinner?”

“I believe knocking is considered polite. Not quite ‘barging’ - ”

“Snart.”

The thief held up his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying.”

“I know why you’re here.” That got Snart to quieten, his face going carefully blank in that way that meant he was listening, even if he didn’t want to. Barry wanted to hate that he knew him so well.

Then again, it would be a dream come true for anyone to meet their heroes, right? Some people idolized Harry Potter or Bilbo Baggins - the stereotypical hero model everyone recognized nowadays.

But, no. Barry had to have a crush on the wanted thief in his favorite childhood book.

He could almost envision Iris standing beside him and snickering, reminiscing on how they used to read Inkheart together, her reading out loud because he refused to, and the endless teasing that had ensued. It’d been long before he realized he was bisexual, before either of them could even put it into words, and while the teasing had been nothing but playful, it struck a chord with him now every time he had to look Leonard Snart in the eye because he was real and here and Barry had done this.

And then he would remember the price he had paid to bring this character to life in the first place and that short-lived awe would be snuffed out in an instant.

Too many people had paid the price of his mistakes, and he remembered every last one.

His sorrow must’ve shown on his face because Snart started to tilt his head, eyes narrowing. Barry shook himself out of his memories, though he was unable to stop himself from glancing in the direction of his daughter’s room, chewing on his bottom lip as he aimed to lower his voice and crossed his arms over his chest like the simple gesture would protect him.

“Look, whatever they’ve sent you for, I can’t help them. Honestly. I keep trying to tell them - ”

“I’m not here for Thawne.” The unreadable expression gave way to a stony anger, mixed with something he couldn’t put his finger on, and Snart stepped forward into Barry’s space, either oblivious or uncaring toward the way the latter backed further against the counter. “You know he would’ve come here himself if he could. Doesn’t exactly trust others.”

Or he just likes to manipulate people too much to do his own dirty work, Barry mused to himself with no small trace of bitterness. “That doesn’t explain the whole ‘barging in for an impromptu visit in front of my daughter’ ordeal. Why the hell else would you be here if it wasn’t for Thawne? To steal my silverware again?”

Snart’s mouth twitched. “As tempting an offer as that is - ”

“It was not an offer, you - ”

“I actually came here out of the goodness of my heart.” The sardonic tone didn’t inspire any response aside from a glare from Barry. “Call it a present, of sorts. To pay you back for your...generosity.”

“Generosity?”

“Well, wouldn’t be stuck here if it wasn’t for you, if I’m remembering right.”

Barry sidestepped Snart, his stomach churning as he jabbed a finger in the other’s direction, just daring him to move closer. “I didn’t want any of this to happen,” he hissed. “None of it.”

“Seemed pretty eager at the time,” Snart sneered.

“Right, because trying to fend off a man who might burn down my house and get three strangers out the door is the very definition of eager.”

“And who was it that contacted Thawne first to see if he wanted to go back?”

Barry dropped his hand with a huff. “What was I supposed to do? Again, call the arsonist who tried to kill me? Thawne was the one who stole the book, I figured it was a ‘two birds with one stone’ type of deal.”

Snart’s eyes narrowed. “For someone who supposedly knows all about our world, you’re painfully obtuse. Don’t you know anything about magic and working with sorcerers?”

“Why on earth would I?” Barry had to pause so he didn’t yell his next words, but just gritting his teeth in a poor effort to calm himself down succeeded in making him seethe. “Magic doesn’t exist! Not here, anyways! It’s not like I’ve had time to sit down and experiment or know what the fuck I’m doing or if this even is magic.”

“I think even a troll could’ve told you that.”

“It’s not like I’m reaping anything good out of this whole mess! Because yes, living like a fugitive with a daughter who’s almost a teenager and knows better is the life I wanted from a fucking bedtime story. I’m sorry that I ever brought you three out of that book, but if you’re going to stand here and deal out threats in my house then you’re going to have to - ”

“He’s planning to ambush you both tomorrow.”

“And here I thought you didn’t come here on his behalf. What, like I’m supposed to believe…” Barry paused again, that sickening coil around his insides like a snake seeking its next dinner rising once more. Amidst the anger in Snart’s eyes, there was a hint of sober regret he really didn’t like.

Oh.

Oh, god.

He wasn’t lying, he was serious, and that meant -

“They’ve known your whereabouts for a few weeks now,” Snart said, and at least he had the sense to lower his voice, the harshness fading as Barry had to look away because the walls felt like they were closing in on him and this couldn’t be happening. “Heard him mention they were to bring you both in, no questions asked, alive and well. I don’t know when, I only heard about the time frame.”

Coming to Thawne was one thing, especially when Barry knew he had the upper hand and trying to manipulate - not well, admittedly, but he was desperate even then - a sorcerer whose sole purpose in Inkheart came from showing off his intellect and terrifying decisions that lead to enslaving villages and gaining power through corruption and murder was not his smartest plan.

Having to run from Thawne was another matter entirely, especially when Barry realized too late in his efforts to “help” Thawne that he was the one being watched and toyed with until all hope was close to being squashed out of him. The last time he’d seen Thawne, he barely escaped with his life, and even then he’d prayed Nora wouldn’t be dead by the time he got home.

Thawne was going to do much worse things than Barry had tried to manipulate him into accomplishing.

He couldn’t even hurt Barry - not physically, that is. Attempts at torture had made him clam up faster than anything, and that had ended the moment the asshole recognized his resolve for what it was.

And if he wanted to, it wasn’t like there were many options left to try and hurt him. Barry had no home, no wife, little belongings that actually mattered to him from each move.

The one thing, no, the only thing that could ever hurt him was -

Nausea seized him and Barry made for the kitchen table, grabbing the first chair he saw as he forced himself to breathe. He heard Snart sigh somewhere behind him but he didn’t give a damn what the other man thought, shutting his eyes tight against the surge of panic that felt like it was expanding wider and wider in his chest. A fucking sorcerer from an imaginary world should’ve have this much power over him in a place where magic didn’t even exist.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Snart crossed the room, but thankfully kept his distance from Barry; something about being able to see his dark figure out of the corner of his eye was a simultaneous comfort and grievance. “Let’s just say, Thawne took something from me, and I’d like it back.”

Barry choked on a hollow laugh. “I don’t suppose you’re talking about some diamond, are you? Or did the ‘goodness of your heart’ come from a stupid game of Keep Away?”

“Thawne and I have never had similar goals.” There was that ice again, creeping slow and steady back into his voice. “You know he’d rather stay here than go back. Not when he knows how our little story ends.”

“I’m not in the mood for riddles,” Barry muttered, “so stop the cryptic bullshit, Snart.”

“Well, he’s going to use Nora to convince you to give him that power. And I don’t need to spell the consequences of that out for you in bold print, Barry, do I?”

The confirmation of his fears did nothing to reassure Barry, and he glanced over at Snart’s tight-lipped expression of what he’d swear was rage, which did even less to make him feel better. Though, it didn’t explain why Snart was angry, since he hardly knew Nora and Barry knew he cared about nothing more than money, thieving and getting back home after pestering Barry before he knew Thawne’s plan at all and -

Wait. No.

That wasn’t everything.

He imagined if Iris were here, she’d smack him on the forehead herself, rolling her eyes with a quiet, “You dummy,” to soften the blow. Somehow, that thought was mildly comforting too, in its own way.

“Your partner.” Snart stiffened, jaw clenching before he schooled his features - a millisecond of a reaction, but a reaction, nonetheless - and Barry couldn’t help but feel slightly vindicated. “Thawne’s got him, doesn’t he? Rory, right? That’s the catch of all this. You want me to free him.”

“Absolutely not. If you set foot anywhere within a couple towns’ radius of Thawne, he’ll be on you in seconds,” Snart said, his voice tight as if he were restraining himself from spitting in someone’s face. Whether it was Barry’s or Thawne’s, he wasn’t quite sure.

“But you’re - ”

“He’s not imprisoned.” It looked painful for him to even utter those words. “He stayed.”

But then why -

Oh.

(Maybe that should be his new catchphrase of the night, he thought, a little hysterically.)

Barry didn’t remember much about Mick Rory, but the man had never been much for small talk and brevities, staring with a greedy focus that he’d found eerily akin to Thawne’s at the time, fascinated by the mountains of gold and magic lamps and even the few dozen fairies he’d once managed to read out of some old folktales. He’d also kept close to Snart - always had, if Inkheart’s tale was true. He couldn’t recall the specifics but they’d grown up together, started out stealing and flourished from there, and…

Well, it seemed Rory had grown out of just stealing.

Or Snart had been the one to realize the bad hand they’d been played when Thawne’s shot at getting them home bolted off into the night with his daughter in tow.

Neither painted either’s motivations in a flattering light, but Barry knew Snart. Well enough, at least. And the man was a thief but he was calculating as Thawne, thinking ahead of the curve when he had to, making sure Barry saw him during those first few years when things were still new and Snart demanded for him to bring them home.

It was funny, but after all this time he still wasn’t sure why Snart wanted to return so badly. He and Rory wound up run out of town, after all, barely a penny to their name, never to be seen again. What could possibly be waiting for them back there in a world where autonomy was a joke compared to living?

Snart rolled his eyes and threw himself into the chair beside the one Barry still leaned against for support, lingering on the edge of the seat - cautious, until the end - as he drummed his fingers on the wood of the table. “So, you see, we both have a common goal.”

“I’d hardly call running from a manipulative asshole and wanting to get home the same goal.”

“Neither of us can do anything with Thawne hunting us.” Barry frowned, and Snart shook his head as if Barry was being trying on purpose. “He doesn’t take kindly to people telling him ‘no’, as you know.”

“How badly did you...tell him ‘no’?”

Snart grimaced. “Enough to nearly get sent free-falling into Arabian Nights for it.”

“You - wait, how would he even - ” Barry’s legs almost gave out as his jaw dropped. “He found someone else? Someone like - like me?”

“Not quite. They haven’t done more than swap animals around, monkeys and a few mice and the like. But, it’s his only back-up plan should capturing you fail. And he doesn’t intend to fail.”

Barry hadn’t even considered the idea of there being others out there who could read like him, who knew the pain of this game of chance that seemed like a wondrous gift at first glance. His heart went out to the poor soul, whoever they were, a sudden longing gripping him with both hands like a vice.

But the gravity of Snart’s words sank in as well, heavier than the revelation of another storyteller like him, and he knew what the other was trying to say.

“Nora and I can be out by dawn,” Barry said. “We don’t have much and I can pack it - ”

“They’ll find you just as quickly,” Snart cut him off. “It isn’t just him and Mick. How do you think he found you in the first place, kept track of your every move?”

Spies. Of course Thawne had spies - were they outside now, down the road, just waiting for the lights to go off and for him to fall asleep? What had Thawne possibly promised them, especially if they were ordinary -

Barry’s heart flew to his throat. “The storyteller… They haven’t brought over anyone yet.”

And they couldn’t have, not when these men could have come from passages Barry had read, speeding through them as he hoped to send Thawne back and free Iris and everything would work out so long as he kept reading and reading and reading until -

“He has his own army now,” Snart confirmed, his features softening as he likely read the horror written all over Barry’s face. “All followers or villagers from the book.”

“Fuck. Fuck my - fuck.” Barry buried his face in his hands, despair threatening to take hold and toss him overboard. “I should’ve known, I should’ve - this is all my fault. How am I supposed to run from an army? And Nora, she - ”

“She’ll be fine.”

Barry lifted his head with a snarl. “How? What about this screams ‘safe’ to you? If I take off, they’ll hunt us down again, but I can’t stay here like a sitting duck! There is literally nowhere to go! Even if I could, where would I?”

“Barry,” Snart said, raising an eyebrow, and he really didn’t like the tone the thief was taking, “I’d have thought you’d trust me by now to know when I at least have a plan.”

“Because that is supposed to reassure me?”

“Because I already got three tickets on the first train out of town - which leaves in less than two hours, so we really ought to hurry - and just enough for a car trip to an old friend’s place to lie low.”

He blinked at Snart dumbly. “An old friend.”

“Yes.”

“You have friends that aren’t arsonists? And are also from this world and not your book?”

Snart fixed him with an unimpressed glare. “Says the man whose only company has been his daughter for ten years.”

Barry winced. “Touché. Still doesn’t explain who your friend is, since you seem so keen on trusting them.”

“That is for me to know, and you to go pack and trust me over.” Barry started to protest, but the thief pressed a finger to his mouth, effectively shutting him up. Mostly out of surprise, to be honest, because he couldn’t remember the last time Snart had initiated touch with him that wasn’t meant to be constricting or threatening - including the moment earlier by the sink. He wasn’t sure why but his stomach gave another, weaker twist the longer he stared back at Snart. “You can worry and sleep on the train.”

“I - it’s almost midnight!”

“And? Do you think Thawne’s going to wait until it’s a decent hour?”

“Well, no, but…” Snart didn’t budge, his finger tapping against Barry’s bottom lip pointedly, which was really distracting, and Barry let out a groan, rubbing at his eyes with one hand. “Have you ever even ridden a train?”

“How do you think I got here?”

Right. He didn’t exactly have a driver’s license. Or a car.

Still, uncertainty plagued the back of his mind, hissing and spitting like a serpent of the worst kind.

He was tempted to act childish, push Snart away and go off to bed and sleep for once, but he knew the other man had a point. Bizarre as it was to be listening to him, of all people, especially when he had no idea where they might be going. For all Barry knew, they could be on a train to Thawne’s place within the hour!

But…

Barry did know Snart - or, he had a better sense of him from reading Inkheart, that is. And the thief was calculating and just as ruthless as Thawne when he wanted to be, but if there was one thing he truly cared about more than his lifestyle, it was his partner in crime.

And being outsmarted.

Both of which fell under the umbrella of this situation.

At least Barry had had experience in moving plenty of times before. Nora, though… She was used to it, but what the hell was he supposed to tell her? She was a smart girl, she’d figure it out in a heartbeat, if she hadn’t had an inkling already.

Barry slumped into the chair, shaking off Snart’s finger and heaving another groan into his hands before he peeked up at Snart. The glare was starting to dissolve in the face of Barry’s reluctant defeat, softening once more into something almost amicable.

“Even thieves have hearts of gold,” Iris had once teased him when they were little, poking him between his ribs when he griped at her to stop. His heart ached for the days of silly fights and not a care in the world, back before he’d discovered what he could do.

Before he sent Iris away and brought three criminals to life.

Snart’s knee nudged his and startled him out of the spiral he was edging toward, a light enough touch that Barry wondered if he’d actually felt it. Barry gave him a thin, grateful smile, but he couldn’t bring himself to move.

“She’ll be fine.” His heart clenched for a different reason, unsure what to do when Leonard Snart was offering the barest of comfort instead of sniping at him. “Your little girl’s strong. Does she know?”

Barry shook his head. “I don’t… I don’t even know how to tell her about Iris.”

“Does she have… You know…”

Fear punched a hole through his chest and Barry shook his head again, harder this time. “No. No, god, no. I don’t think so, at least. We’ve never - I haven’t read since Thawne. And I don’t let her do it out loud.”

“Good.” Snart nodded, averting his gaze as he scanned the room. Barry watched his shoulders relax, just for a moment, and he wondered if he was worried about Thawne bursting into the kitchen on no notice or if Nora being like Barry had plagued him that badly. Barry didn’t even want to think about the idea of Nora pulling Toto from The Wizard of Oz out of thin air.

Parents were supposed to be worried about normal things, like puberty and bullying and such, not magic tricks and literal villains from storybooks.

Snart got to his feet, his cool mask already solidifying in place again as he gestured in the direction of Barry’s room (which was both satisfying and eerie because he knew the other had scoped out the house beforehand). “Pack up everything you absolutely need. Then worry about waking her. I’ll get some of that, ah, coffee people seem to love here.”

Barry snorted. “Not a fan?”

“It’s just caffeinated water,” Snart grumbled. “Yet you all seem to love it.”

Barry stood as well, and he had a feeling the thief had only brought up coffee to ease the tension in the room, as evidenced by the quirk to the corner of his mouth when Barry glanced away to hide his own budding smile. Not that he was complaining.

“Alright, fine. It won’t take long just… Please don’t burn the house down. I like this house, even if I’m abandoning it within the hour.”

“I know how to make coffee.”

“There’s a whole scene in Inkheart where you burn water trying to make lunch.” The thief scowled and Barry bit back a laugh. “Oh, and Snart?”

“Hmm?”

“You stole those tickets, didn’t you?”

Snart laughed, as if he hadn’t anticipated the question, and turned to Barry with a broad smirk. “I’ll have you know, I paid for them with my own money.”

“That you stole from someone.”

“Would it make you feel any better if you knew it was being borrowed from a certain sorcerer?”

“Not really,” Barry muttered, but he couldn’t help the way he started to smile again at the implication. “But I guess… If you had to steal from anyone…”

“He didn’t need that much gold anyway.”

“You stole his gold?”

Snart gave him a look that clearly spelled out Barry was an idiot. “What other money-related items was I supposed to take? It’s not as if you read them a stack of cash from books like Rumpelstiltskin.”

“Alright, alright, I get it.” Barry rolled his eyes and headed for the hallway. “Next time I’ll read a newspaper clipping about a robbery, make things more realistic.”

The sound of Snart’s chuckle seemed to echo through the house long after Barry got to packing, bringing a brief levity to his nerve-wracked heart.

At least someone would be enjoying their impromptu vacation.