Chapter Text
When Barry’s running, it feels like everything around him stops. At first it was jarring and disorienting, but now he’s used to it. It’s actually calming, in a way, to feel like time is paused. It’s a nice feeling to know that time is waiting on you.
This isn’t that feeling.
When Barry stops the Reverse-Flash from killing his mother, time stops. But he’s not in control of it. The second he saves her, he feels everything going on around him come to a screeching halt, as if time is a car that slammed on its brakes at the very last second before a red light. This is supposed to be right, this is supposed to fix everything, but there’s a gut reaction that everything is wrong.
After the feeling comes a flash of light, and then there’s nothing.
. . .
The first thing Barry notices, when he wakes up, is a freezing cold. He rubs his arms together, but it does nothing to stop the bitter wind biting at every inch of him. He tries to run to warm up, vaguely aware that he’s next to a train track, but when he does, time doesn’t stop. Barry’s legs hurt and his bones ache, and he knows that his speed isn’t there. He’s lost it again.
His first thought is that he’s broken the timeline and lost his powers, like Eobard did originally. His second thought is that maybe he’s stuck in the speed force again, maybe this is his punishment for meddling with time again. Maybe this time the speed force won’t let Barry out, but leave him to the time wraiths. He shudders, remembering what they did to Zoom, and he keeps running.
“You’re really slow at learning from your mistakes, Barry.” a familiar voice drawls. Barry turns, and there’s Leonard Snart, sitting on the train tracks and playing solitaire. His gun and goggles are gone, and instead of his parka he wears a black leather jacket. He flips up a card, not even bothering to look at Barry. “It’s ironic.”
“Snart? Wha—how? Where are we?” Barry stammers, pulling his cowl down and looking around at the railroad tracks. There’s something familiar about the spot, but he can’t put his finger on it. He takes a seat next to Snart, teeth gritting as he touches the cold metal. “And how are you not freezing?”
“We're at the train tracks,” Snart says, flipping over another card. “One of our first encounters was here.” Barry remembers it now, remembers Snart derailing the train and Cisco just barely saving him from an icy death with a vacuum cleaner.
“Yeah. I remember. A lot of people almost died,” he fires back, but Snart just keeps on playing solitaire, unconcerned. “How did I get here, though? And what—”
“Year is it?” Snart asks with a smirk. “Take your pick, doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t understand,” Barry snaps. “What’s going on?” There’s something unsettling about Snart’s calm. “Am I in the speed force again?”
“Nope. Consider this . . .” Snart waves his hands, gesturing to the general landscape. “Time. At its epicenter.”
“Time. I’m literally stuck in time. Great.” Barry lets out a harsh laugh. He should’ve realized he could only screw with the timeline so many times. “So why you, then? Why’d time decide to choose your face to wear?”
“Oh, it didn’t choose me,” Snart says, tapping a his hand against a rail. A silver ring on his hand makes a harsh noise as it clashes with the metal. “Not like that. I’m not about to be anyone’s puppet. Not again.”
Barry takes a good look at Snart. There’s more emotion on his face than he usually has in Captain Cold mode, more emotion than he’d have if he was just a projection of time or the speed force. He can’t be certain, but Barry’s got a feeling this is the real Snart.
“So what are you doing here? Did you piss off time too?” he asks.
“Wrong again, Barry,” Snart says, turning up an ace from his last pile. “I am time.”