Work Text:
The cabin was Henry Allen’s, and after death there are traces of him that linger in this space: rustic overstuffed furniture; warm colors in the artwork; the faint scent of sawdust from one of his woodworking ambitions; a wedding portrait, newlyweds safely ensconced in each other’s arms with wide adoring smiles, prominently displayed on the mantle. Little pieces of him, Henry Allen, left where he has since departed.
Barry sets the box aside, the last of five which contain Christmases of eleven years enjoyed and sixteen years wasted. He started decorating on Monday. Today is Friday. No desire to use his speed, to tap into anything that reminds him of the Flash, of Central City, of the life and duties and obligations left behind for the holiday. This year, this Christmas, he’s just Barry. Barry, the son who was too young and powerless to prevent almost two decades of false imprisonment, the hero who wasn’t fast enough to keep an abomination’s hand from shredding Henry’s heart, and now the disappointment – the failure, in all things, in all ways – who signed a deed to keep the cabin off the market, paid to keep it respectably maintained, but hasn’t set foot inside for three years.
This Christmas, then, is finally the one which sees Barry Allen come home – home, here, while the rest of the world has become a stranger or an enemy. Cisco and Caitlin are the only ones he still, truly, knows, and they both wear faces to mask pain, inner conflict, regrets, and resentments. Fake faces to match fake smiles and fake intentions. Fake, the three of them, and yet Barry thinks they, together, may be the most authentic people left in a world that feels utterly devoid of sincerity. Those he once called family offer hollow embraces, they touch with cold hands, and offer help for the superficial scrapes and cuts because their eyes do not, or cannot, see the gaping wounds beneath: wounds infected and rotted with old blood while they continue to bleed. The people he should, by principle or supposed virtue, call allies, Barry now sees cracks and distortions crawling over the painted veneer of honor, virtue, selflessness.
This, Barry knows, perhaps better than most, is a lie. No hero is truly selfless. The very idea of a hero is to step in, fight the monsters and save the innocent, while claiming they are doing it only for the people, for justice, for the city. And that, the identity of every self-proclaimed hero, is the true lie. It’s not just for the people. There are plenty of others – police, first responders, Good Samaritans – who show up and do the same thing. They wear no mask, have no costume refined for the sole purpose of protecting their identity. They are known, and as such willingly place themselves at risk for retaliation as much as they do to be a terrible casualty of their life’s work.
The mask feeds the lie of a hero. The mask is the lie of a hero.
“…why are you still here?” His voice sounds terrible: hoarse from underuse and dry from dehydration. “Aren’t you bored yet?”
This Christmas is the one which sees him come home. And with coming home, shedding the Flash from his person, the ghosts finally have open access to descend upon him. Fitting, then, that the most prominent presence would be his most damning ghost.
“You’ve been a lot of things over the years, Scarlet.” The voice is too soft, almost tender, and Barry flinches away from it. Tenderness doesn’t suit this ghost, not with the rightful vengeances he carries. “You’ve never been boring.”
Oh, yes. A great plethora of things Barry has been over the years, and most in relation to this ghost. Impulsive. Reckless. Pushing a personal agenda of restoration and salvation where it wasn’t invited. Silence in a moment of condescending insults that, because of his silence, went unaddressed when each word should have been declared as blasphemous slander. A bridge burned before it was ever built, a second chance lost before there was ever a first, hope devastated before it was fully realized, all in the wake of a handful of words, a death announcement spoken with false sincerity – and, in them, a cold reminder that Barry Allen has no cares for the wellbeing of Leonard Snart. His death is a relief, a reprieve, not direct cause for the tightening of a throat and the scalding burn of tears which could not, and were not, shed.
“Barry,” A chill passes nearby, and Barry quietly withdraws into the weighted comfort of an overlarge blanket and the heat of a crackling hearth. “Barry, look at me.”
“Why?” He watches a little ember pop around in the flames before coming to rest on a half-burnt log. “You never stay.”
“…do I visit you often?”
“You know you do.” Barry bristles at the indignity of such a question. Do ghosts forget how often they pay a visit to torment? Doubtful. Even more doubtful that this ghost would forget a single moment spent clawing away at Barry’s heart and sanity until there are only scant tatters left among them. Until the wounds split, the barrier of old scabs wasted against a fresh wave of guilt, and he simply couldn’t hide the constant emotional bleeding a moment longer.
The announcement of divorce was cold, colder than he has ever been to the woman for which he once professed undying love. The questions, pleading for conversation, assurances that this could work, they could work if only given a chance, changed nothing. Better to leave Iris cold, hurting and perhaps even hating, and let her be free. Let her find someone else. Let Joe be disappointed, furious, or any combination thereof, and find someone better suited to be his son. Someone like Wally, the true flesh and blood – a long-lost son returned home to replace the outlier playing pretend in a family that isn’t his own.
It all falls in line with his record, really. It wasn’t enough to walk away from the empty illusion of marriage, of domesticity, of playing house. Barry had to burn the house to the ground.
“What do I do, when I visit you?” He wants to snap, show the teeth of his agitation, but doing so requires energy that Barry isn’t sure he still has. “Tell me, Barry.”
It’s insufferable that he should be forced to recall to a ghost the details of said ghost’s prior actions. But this, Barry supposes, is the next logical progression: the old torments have grown stale, so now it’s time to involve Barry, make him an interactive part of his own misery.
“You remind me.” Barry whispers. He tugs the blanket in closer as though it will keep out the chill. “Every time I mouthed off or dismissed you as a common criminal. Every time I faced you or confronted you without a plan – and suffered a hit from your gun for it. Every time I placed faith in you, knowing exactly who and what you are, and then had the nerve to feel betrayed when things didn’t go according to my plan. All the times I went on about the good in you – and how disgustingly inappropriate the timing was to shove that crap in your face. The way I stayed silent when you deserved, at the very least, someone in the room to be in your corner, just for a minute. Each and every way I screwed up with you, you remind me.”
“…I’m s—”
“Don’t.” Barry bites the word out through his teeth. “Don’t you dare.” He has suffered the absurdity of a ghost with selective memory. He will not endure the indignity of Leonard Snart apologizing to him. Not now, when he is a specter to haunt and remind Barry of his past failures. Snart only apologized once, only sought forgiveness for one thing in his life. This wretched…thing conjured out of the ugliest parts of Barry’s mind will not touch that moment. Ever. “Don’t you dare apologize. You – he – whatever – never apologized for a damn thing.”
“Dying can’t change a few things?” The ghost sounds annoyed, which just ticks Barry off more – that this unwelcome apparition would have the gall to be annoyed with him, given the massive headache he’s beating into Barry’s skull. “Maybe if I had apologized for a few more things before I had to heave Mick’s insufferable carcass off the sacrificial altar, things would have been different.”
The annoyance flares up again on principle, then falters. “…what would…have been different?” He finishes on a whisper, because different is dangerous. A dangerous word for a dangerous promise. If things were different, if something had injected itself in an established sequence of events before they came to fulfillment, an entirely new series of occurrences would have been conceived – and that thought is the most terrifying, because it feeds into the ‘what if’s and ‘could have been’ moments of a lifetime never lived.
“…some things. Everything. I don’t know.” The specter sounds frustrated, and it’s so like Leonard Snart to be audibly displeased with a lack of knowledge that Barry loses a tiny sob. If he just closes his eyes, just for a moment, it could almost be real. The air smells of winter, of cold, and the faintest hint of mint aftershave – the same scent Barry drew in when he closed himself inside Snart’s personal space with claims of disarming him that were utterly ruined by the heat in his cheeks and the knowing smirk on the man’s face. The kind of smirk that said Barry wasn’t fooling anyone but himself, and isn’t that the overarching theme of his life? “If I had…done a lot of things differently, we wouldn’t even be here: you, in the doc’s cabin, and me trying to figure out what I do with the last three years of life that I never lived.”
This time, Barry does shut his eyes – not to make a fantasy the tiniest bit real, but to staunch the tears threatening to bleed out. “’m sorry…” He chokes on the words, and a single hot tear drips down the right cheek. “I’m so sorry…it’s my fault.”
“Barry, don’t—”
“I let you go.” The sob mangles his next words while they’re still in the throat. “I…I knew w-what was going to h-happen to you and I said nothing. I did nothing. I just p-put you back in Siberia and ran away like a coward! If I had told you, warned you—”
“Barry, this isn’t—”
“—you would be here! You would be here and not in my head as this ghost that won’t leave me alone – won’t stop punishing me!” His cheeks are scalding and wet with the rush of tears, and he can taste the salt of it with every word. “You’d be here and Mick wouldn’t be mindlessly rotting away with a group of hypocrites who don’t respect him, don’t deserve him, and Lisa would be spending the holidays with her brother, her family, and I—”
There’s a sudden rush of air, a weight knocks into his chest, and Barry stumbles back into the couch. He doesn’t have a chance to open his eyes before two hands – cool, dry, long fingers – catch him around the jaw and a searing kiss claims his gaping mouth. A kiss…warm and conquering and real. No ghost feels like this. No figment of a twisted imagination could draw him in with hands, over his back, across his shoulders, deep in his hair, and lips, kissing just as they fought – with the unwillingness to back down before the other, the refusal to surrender because then it would be over, and it could never be over between them.
Until it was. And it was – over, finished, and Barry carried a gaping hole in his chest with tears he couldn’t shed. Until now. And now…
“Scarlet,” thumbs paint the orbital curve beneath both eyes; Barry can feel the heat of each breath over his cheek, “open your eyes. Look at me.”
The process hurts: his eyelashes are heavy with tears, his eyes burn in the light, and his chest heaves like he’ll never get enough air. Even when Barry manages to open his eyes and keep them open, his vision swims. Everything is a blur of color and fragments of light, and the sight he wants to see is blended into the background. A frustrated noise scrapes out of his throat as Barry reaches for the only solid proof he has: the hands on his face. From there, he blindly walks a touch up both arms, dances over toned shoulders, and nearly scratches a jawline in his haste. The stubble is more prominent, and the clothing feels heavy, starched, like an old coat taken from a thrift store. He blinks twice, fighting to clear his vision, but it doesn’t work.
“I can’t…I can’t see you…”
“Because you’ve swollen your eyes shut.” The voice sounds amused this time, then a sudden bit of movement leaves Barry with empty hands clutching at air.
“No!” He falls off the couch and bangs his elbow into the coffee table. “No, please! Not yet—just please—!”
“Barry, Barry,” there’s some kind of hurried movement, then a hand grips him by the shoulder, “Scarlet, calm down. I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving you. Hold still.”
He doesn’t want to hold still. He needs to feel, touch, do something that will keep this from being the worst break from reality ever experienced. But the hand on his shoulder doesn’t budge and Barry has no choice but to squirm in place until something warm, reasonably soft, and damp starts passing over his eyes. The noise he makes isn’t especially impressive, mostly a confused squeak, and he hears a fond chuckle. “Adorable, as always.” The murmur is soft, unbearably tender, and Barry almost starts crying again. “There.” The cloth moves away. “Can you see now?”
He's scared to try. If he does, and all of this is a lie, another beautiful lie crafted by his traitorous mind, it will destroy him. He’s never gotten this far in the fantasy before. It’s never been this real, this close. If it’s not here, if it—
“Barry,” a firmer tone this time, but the hands on his face are still gentle, brushing and stroking in coaxing rhythm, “look at me.”
It’s the most agonizing process to open his eyes. Barry feels it like a blow to the gut. But it’s nothing compared to the blow delivered when he sees piercing blue eyes looking right back at him. There’s more stubble on the jaw, the clothing is, as his touch suspected, worn and cheap, but it’s him. It’s him.
“…Leonard…”
“Len.” Long fingers slip into his hair again and Barry shivers. “Let’s leave the full names out in the cold where they belong.”
“Len.” Barry croaks. He can feel the tears building again. “…you’re here. You…you came back. You came home to m-me…You…”
He never gets the next words out, but they weren’t especially important. What is important, what does matter, is the way Len’s mouth settles over his, a kiss to match the first in its intensity; the sound of that ugly old coat hitting the floor; and the feel of long arms enveloping him entirely. Everywhere. Anywhere that can be reached. In Barry’s hair, down his back, across the shoulder blades, and finally down to his waist.
“Barry…”
“Please.” Barry whispers. Len’s hands steal under the hem of his sweater, and Barry just stops thinking about anything else.
***
The shower’s heat lingers comfortably on Barry’s skin as he slips into sweatpants and his favorite t-shirt: a college relic, it’s gotten soft with age and is about two sizes too large for him, but he just relaxes the minute he puts it on. Small comforts and all – like the rich aroma of hot chocolate calling him into the kitchen. There, he finds Len – Len – standing at the stove, carefully pouring the melted chocolate to be mixed with the hot milk. The mugs chosen for the honor are a snowman and a reindeer. The same reindeer used years ago, another Christmas whose events, as time ultimately told, Barry would just as soon forget.
Seeing it now, nestled close to the snowman with its cheery smile and bright red nose, Barry feels a tiny grin start tugging at his mouth. “There’s Cool Whip in the fridge for mine.”
“Peasant.” Len snarks, even as he heads over the fridge and pulls out the blue-and-white container. “Large scoop or small?”
“Large, please. Mom…always used to say I preferred a drop of hot cocoa with my…whipped cream.”
The tears burn again, this time for a lifetime of missed Christmases, Thanksgiving dinners, birthdays and all the other celebrations you’re just supposed to have with your parents. With your mom. She’s supposed to be there for all of it. Watch you walk across the graduation stage. Celebrate promotions at work. Cry at your wedding. Spoil her grandchildren for the holidays. It’s supposed to happen, be a given. That she’s gone, that they’re both gone, isn’t fair. It’s not fair.
“Like this?” The snowman is gently set in Barry’s hands: a perfect towering spiral of Cool Whip tossed with cocoa powder and crowned with a trio of mini marshmallows. Barry chokes on a watery laugh and looks up to find Len smirking (fondly) at his t-shirt. “Cute.”
The teddy bear with its cheery Santa hat and armful of colorfully wrapped presents is a little worse for the years, but Barry smiles down at its design. “Found it in a gas station, back in undergrad. Reminded me of a sweater Mom had. Only ever wore it at Christmas.” The smile droops a little before he adds, “Can’t tell you how many times Iris begged me to donate this shirt. She said it was only cute to a point.”
“I disagree. I find it adorable. The shirt,” Len adds as he daintily wipes the cream off Barry’s nose, “and the person wearing it.”
Barry can’t bring himself to be embarrassed to have so quickly made a mess of himself – just like he can’t find a hint of shame to offer his dad’s old clothes for Len’s use while his are in the wash. They weren’t the same build, Len and Dad, but the pants seem to fit well enough, and the sweatshirt…well, it certainly does plenty of favors to the upper half.
“Alright, my little Teddy Barry,” his cheeks probably turn five shades of pink at that, “you wanted Christmas movies. Let’s watch Christmas movies.”
“Can we start with ‘Frosty’?” Let Len think he’s a man-child. Most people already do. It’s Christmas, the end to one of the worst years Barry has lived through (and that is saying a lot), and he wants his nostalgia fix.
“There’s no need to seduce me further, Barry.” Len quite truly purrs the words, and the heat in Barry’s cheeks is for a different reason. (Namely, an immediate surge of memories from the last four hours during which there was quite a bit of purring and…other things. Many other things.) “You did a fine job of that already.”
“…how long?” He carefully settles on the couch with another lick of cream for his taste buds’ enjoyment. Then he pops a mini marshmallow. And steals one from Len’s mug just because he can.
He knows Len notices. Barry may be fast, and he is, but Len is the master thief.
“A few dozen lifetimes.” The comment is thrown out as casual as can be, no more inflection than if Len was addressing the weather, but it sobers the humor for a moment. A few dozen lifetimes…what lives have they lived, Barry Allen and Leonard Snart, and how much was spent apart as opposed to…? “And maybe more. If you’re interested in sticking around.”
Sticking around…there’s no hope for reining in Barry’s imagination after that kind of prompt: sticking around to drink hot cocoa and watch children’s Christmas movies, wake up tomorrow to frosted windows and cold floors and argue over waffles or French toast for breakfast, then stay in this cabin until the new year. And then they’ll discuss how to handle finances because they need to invest in an apartment, or a condo, or a penthouse loft in downtown with rooftop access. After that, there will be disputes over mattress size, modern versus rustic furnishings, how often Lisa can spend the night, whether Mick is going to move in with them, and kitchen appliances. There will be late night conversations in the living room, nestled together on the couch under a heavy blanket, or in the kitchen because Barry woke up with a craving. Italian dinners for their anniversary. A wedding to plan – quiet, intimate, private – and rings to shop for. Lazy Sunday brunches, movie nights, Len teaching him how to play chess while a little ragdoll kitten named Snowflake rubs against their feet and makes herself comfortable wherever she pleases.
Maybe, in a Christmas yet to come, there will be a third stocking to hang on the mantle, right between theirs. A little stocking to match the little feet running around the loft.
Maybe. For now, there’s hot cocoa, a warm fire, and a movie about a magical hat that brings a snowman to life.
It still doesn’t feel as special as the miracle sitting next to him.