ColdFlash- Soulmates

Chapter 9: Monster

  Barry didn't know what to do, he felt that life was pilling too much on him at once. He felt like he was being crushed. It seemed impossible that only a few weeks before he had been on top of the world- figuratively. Now there was the lies to Iris, who had gone ahead and started her blog despite the disapproval from both Barry and Joe, there was the shadow of the past that loomed over Barry following Leonard's reappearance a whole month ago and now work seemed to be too much, the added pressure from the Captain being the last thing her needed. 

  He had never known where Len had gone after the break up, hadn't wanted to know. Now he knew that the guy was in Central, now he knew that he was there and there just to cause trouble. Thoughts of how to stop him, how to get him away clouded Barry's thoughts for an unhealthy amount of time. He needed to get away from them, they distracted him, they made it harder for him to live his life- both of them. So he had kissed Felicity. On the train as she had left they had kiss, but there was nothing there and they had both known it, she was pinning after Oliver and Barry just didn't feel that way.

  Now there was the Man in Yellow, just to add to the list. His mother's killer had returned to the city, the man that no one had believed existed about for years and years- the thing that everyone thought Barry had created as a way to get around having his dad murder his mum. The Man in Yellow was the reason that he had had to grow up with Joe and Iris, much as he loved them, not his own family. He was the reason that people had looked at Barry as if they were looking at someone mentally ill, the reason that boys had snickered in the school corridors, had made his life hell as the "son of a wife killer". That man, another speedster, had taken both of his parents from him. One dead, one behind bars with nothing, reputation shredded, goodness muddied.

  Then Len had returned, he had been alone last time but it was only a matter of time before Lisa or Mick Rory came into the picture... There would be no chance that they wouldn't. Maybe if Lisa came Barry could talk to her as the Flash- she had always been the most reasonable but Mick...Mick Rory had always creeped Barry out. He didn't like the idea of meeting up with him again.

***

  Barry knew straight away when Leonard was back in town. There was a break-in at a garage with millions of dollars worth of European cars stored within. The door had been frozen and shattered, yet nothing had been stolen. Not one of the ridiculously priced vehicles had gone missing. Leonard Snart was reaching above and beyond, he had tried to trap the Flash himself. But Barry hadn't come, that worried him, he knew Len well, the man would get more and more extreme in an attempt to get what he wanted. After the display he gave last time he was seen in Central Barry had no doubt that people could and most likely would get hurt in Snart's endeavor. Leonard Snart was a monster.

  But there it was... he had come for the Flash. He had wanted Barry even if he didn't know it. For a split second Barry felt that strong bond they'd had stretching out to whatever distance would find the other, the bond that he used to feel when he would lay his head against Len's chest as they sat or lay together in the morning, after Barry had come back from work or in the middle of the night when one had been pulled from a dark dream. When he could hear the beat of his ex-partners heart. But the thoughts, the bond only held him for a second before he angrily brushed them off.

   These mixed emotions soon began to show outwardly, in the way he interacted with people, the way he would zone out, how he would scowl at nothing, which only made the speedster resent his ex more than ever. It's not his fault that you still like him, a little voice said in the back of his mind. It was a very unexpected voice and Barry thought over what it had said long and hard for hours afterwards, turning the words over and over. All of the years that he had either spent convincing himself that the man was a treacherous murderer and a thief. It had worked. Barry had hated Leonard Snart. It had to have worked.