There Is Only One Cold @cptsnart - Tumblr Blog

reflectedmonarch:

Evan scoffed, a half-delirious laugh coming from his lips as he lent against the mirror, “I don’ even care if ya insult me. I’m so fucking happy ta hear you speak ta me.” A year of nothing. He’d have gone insane if he didn’t master the ability to at least see through mirrors after the first month. It’d been like watching TV, spying on the world, on people’s private moments, just as a way to try and stave off his isolation. From there it’d been small progress, refraction burns, pain and disappointment from his lack of skill. Sometimes it got too much and he’d snap, screaming at the people in the mirror to just look at him, acknowledge him.

He wasn’t dead.

Evan’s hands curled into fists against the mirror, “He trapped me,” Evan spoke quietly, “Inglo’s machine… Dunno wha’ it did exactly but it made me part o’tha mirror. There’s a whole world in here Snart, not a gateway, it’s a planet.” he tried to explain but, again, was likely failing. “A whole empty world. I screamed for him ta help me but… he could’ne see. None o’yous could. He put me in hell.” he growled, thumping the mirror slightly, “I can’t eat, can’t sleep- I’m jus-” he swallowed, “I tried ta get out so many times. First I couldn’t, then I could but it woulda killed me. Now… now I think I can. But I dunno…”

He shook his head, Snart’s brusque demand enough to tip him over the edge. He spread both palms on the glass and began to push as though he was trying to move a boulder. The surface rippled and pushed out with him, clinging to his arms and face like saran wrap, he felt the burning pain and screamed, his skin turning red but not blistering like before. With something almost like a ‘pop’ he tumbled from the mirror and landed in a head at Snart’s feet, curling in on himself, holding his tender skin and panting to the point of hyperventilation.

“I’ve got half a mind to wring your neck for letting me think you were a goner this whole fucking time.” It wasn’t Evan’s fault, though, and he held no actual blame toward him for whatever it had been. Even when he started to explain, Leonard was still thinking about Flash. He was still thinking about what he had witnessed happen and what it looked like, and he’d held onto that for a long fucking time by then.

He wasn’t going to move at first. When he saw Evan lift his hands up to the mirror, he didn’t know what he thought was going to happen. It didn’t seem like Evan knew either. Leonard didn’t know if he was going to have to pull him out, if there was some weird shit that needed to be done to let him pass through. He’d have done it, whatever he was. If he needed to stand there and chant some kind of spell like some British wizard kid then he’d have done it to see if it worked. He’d had enough to drink to block out how stupid it’d have been, anyway.

But Evan didn’t need anything from him except to get out of the way, it seemed, and Leonard barely had time for the huge sidestep he took as he came through the mirror. He didn’t keep the distance for long. Just a few seconds after he’d landed, Len had knelt down and was hovering his hands above Evan’s shoulders as if he wasn’t sure what to do with them. “Are you with me?” he asked. There was a frantic look cast between the body in front of him and the mirror. Whether Evan heard it or not, Leonard muttered, “What the hell...?” He’d seen some weird things - years and years of weird things - and it wasn’t like the mirror shit was new. But a whole other world behind it? He almost reached out to touch it again himself to see if maybe it was still open, but it wasn’t a priority right then.

#ch: evan

uisu

Flash Rogues 1 / ?

Captain Cold

reflectedmonarch:

“Snart!” Evan yelled, relief washing over him, the other man could see him, hear him. His control was there, finally he could cross the dimension. He’d break through, it was now or never and he knew where he’d try. Even if it hurt him, burned him, he’d do it. He couldn’t live like this anymore, alone, isolated. A world of his own that was nothing more than damn prison to rot away forever.

His breathing was shaky as raised a trembling hand and with a hard gesture, Evan appeared in front of Leonard in his mirror. His cheeks were hollow, deep rings around his eyes, his body was slimmer, he’d lost weight and muscle, his skin even paler making his bright ginger hair stand out in comparison. He wore a plain white shirt and joggers, the colours doing nothing to hide his almost unhealthy pallor, but he was alive. Unquestionably alive. “Ya c’n see me right?” he asked, his deep Scottish brogue almost echoing through the glass, “Fuck me ye c’n see me.” he lent forward, a choked sob almost escaping him, “I’ve been watching ye fer months, screaming’n banging on tha glass but… ye could’nae see me.” he swallowed.

“S’taken me a year ta get ma head round this, a year by meself… oh god it feels good ta talk to another person.” he shook his head in disbelief, “I gotta get outta here Snart, I can’t take it no more.” another shaky breath left him, “But I think I finally can… I can control it.” He was so pent up, Evan didn’t even realise he was only giving Leonard snippets of the story.

When Evan actually showed himself clearly, not through the distortion of a curved bottle and dark glass, Leonard took a wide step back away from the mirror. Immediately, he brought his hands up to his face and ran both of them down his cheeks like he was trying to rub life back into them. It looked like someone needed to do that for Evan, too. “Yeah, yeah...yeah, I can see you. You look like shit,” he said, the words just rolling out, “but I can see you. Why the hell-” He tapped his hands hard against his own face like he was trying to snap himself out of something. This was real wasn’t it? He didn’t want to jolt awake to sweaty sheets and a hangover.

When that didn’t happen - when the image of Evan in front of him didn’t waver and he didn’t wake up, Leonard walked forward again. “What the hell happened? I don’t understand. I don’t know what the fuck I’m looking at.” Maybe he shouldn’t have (he didn’t really know what’d happen if he did) but Leonard dropped one hand away from his face and reached out to press two fingertips against the mirror like he was about to set off some kind of launch sequence. He didn’t know if he could go through or Evan could come out, or if he was just going to be touching a regular mirror. Well, not regular. Practically fucking haunted. If Evan hadn’t started out in the bottle first, that might’ve been what he thought, stupid as it was.

“I saw what he did to you.” His voice was more steady when he said that. The indignation and year-old anger cleared away some of the alcohol. “How am I looking at you, McCulloch? Get out here.” He curled his fingers against the glass and into his own palm. “Come on.”

#ch: evan

bxrtholomewhallen:

If there was anything colder than the ice that sprang forth from Snart’s weapon it was the words he spoke in that moment as they stared each other down like sworn archenemies instead of amicable ‘frenemies’. Barry’s gaze hardened into a pained half-glare. “That’s not how that happened….” He spoke - his tone making it clear as day that Snart’s words found their mark. Barry knew exactly what the remark was implying. It was the same dark thoughts that plagued his own mind when he began doubting he hadn’t done everything to try to stop what had happened to Evan that he could have.

There was a relief that washed over the speedster for a brief moment as Leonard ordered the bank teller to run away - leaving just the two of them to continue their ‘conversation’ in the meantime. “You’re not in your right mind, Leonard… You need help. We both do. We haven’t worked through this between us in over a year…” Barry dropped his choice of familiarity for a different brand. There was a slight shift in Barry’s feet as his gaze moved to the cold gun that continued to be death-gripped in the other male’s hand. “It was an accident!” He stated - jolting forward on instinct.

If things had been different, if the circumstances of his life had been something other than what they were, then maybe Leonard could’ve been something else. If he’d been thrown onto earth with a different kind of family, if he’d never touched a bottle, if...if if if. Maybe he would’ve been standing on Flash’s side of the line and not the one that he picked. But that’s what it came down to, really. He’d chosen to do the things that he did, he kept making that choice, and he called a spade a fucking spade. He didn’t let anybody else tell him what he was - he knew and he told himself. All the time. It got under his skin and dug in when somebody else couldn’t do the same thing. Was there anything worse than a hypocrite? Not a bank robbery. That was for sure. Flash was a hypocrite, a self righteous, lying, piece of-

Now that he’d let the teller go, he knew that the police would be on their way soon. They wouldn’t get there as quick as Boots McGee in front of him, but they’d get there. Usually he’d have been looking for a way to make his exit already, but he wasn’t really at the bank because of the bank. He’d barely even done anything. A little light hostage-taking, implied robbery without actually executing it...Hey piggies, if you want to haul someone in, maybe you should look at the guy in front of me.

“Why does it get to be an accident with you! Why do you keep thinking you’re so special that it doesn’t count!” Leonard gritted his teeth so hard he could feel the ache run through his jaw. “You show up and pick us off, throw us in a cell to rot, and tell yourself you’re keeping people safe. That’s what it feels like, right? Feels good to keep acting like you’re a hero? So which one of your buddies is going to save us from you?” He didn’t know if he believed everything he was saying, but it didn’t matter if he did or not. It was coming anyway and he had no plans to take it back.

#ch: barry

reflectedmonarch:

“I feel… Cold.” Those were the final words he’d spoken in the real world. In the world where he’d grown up, in the world where he’d learned everything that him himself. In the world that, as it so often did, had broken him, thrown him, about like a rag doll and left him in pieces, forever unable to put himself back together in any way approaching normal. He’d tried, fuck he’d tried over many years. Evan had never been able to completely let go of his ties to crime, it was too familiar, too same, too brilliant at distracting his mind from the demons that hounded him relentlessly day and night without fail. But… he’d sought more nonetheless. The Flash Family were somewhat kinder than other vigilante’s. Yes they fought them, threw them in jail, left them to rot. But, when approached on an open playing field, they were willing to offer help, advice, friendship even.

And that was something he’d lent into. Evan approached Wally West of all people who’d helped him apply to college, get through a BA in half the time and a Master’s too. He’d been working on a PhD under Dr. Inglo but then, it all went wrong. Inglo was a monster and he’d needed to be stopped. So, Evan had stopped him. But not without a price. The Flash, the original, had been there to stop him. They’d fought, and he’d lost. In a way more dire than ever before…

Trapped. He’d ended up trapped in the very Mirror Verse he’d manipulated. At first he’d thought he’d go mad, screaming endlessly into the mirror as he saw the world he’d been exiled from grow and evolve. Yet, nobody saw him. Nobody responded… Nobody cared. He may as well have been dead. But that hadn’t stopped him, night after night, day after day he’d toiled. Yes he was truly a part of this Mirror Verse now but that meant he could control it. Manipulate it.

It took him a year or more but he learned to use his powers without a suit, just as he was. And, eventually, his work paid off as he appeared in a beer bottle of all things to the man he… well, even with a year in isolation he hadn’t sorted through his feelings for Leonard Snart, but he appeared. And it worked. Thank fuck it worked. “Snart!” He yelled again, “Look at the bottle dammit! S’me! I need you to go to the mirror in your bedroom, the big one, quick as!

Leonard damn near dropped the bottle when - and this was when he started to seriously question whether he ought to ever touch another drop of alcohol again as long as he still had to live - he heard Evan’s voice on top of the face. Fuck, that was Evan’s face he’d seen, wasn’t it? He’d dreamed about him before. Nightmares and other kinds of things. But he’d not actually seen him while sitting there awake.

“McCulloch! What the-” Saw you die. Saw you shatter. Fucking Flash, the fucking Flash-

The command managed to get him moving. He held the bottle out in front of him like he was carrying a live grenade, nearly tripping over the corner of his bedroom door as he rounded it and went inside. The mirror was situated over near the closet, just above a table that had odds and ends scattered all across it. Leonard shoved everything off into the floor so that there was nothing in front of him but the mirror. Then, as if somehow Evan were trapped in the beer bottle (in retrospect he’d realize how very stupid that was, but could he be blamed?) he sat it carefully down on the empty table like he expected it to release some kind of genie into the mirror. Maybe it would. This whole thing couldn’t get any god damned weirder could it?

It felt like the room was spinning. Was that the drinking? Probably. He was regretting it more by the second, even though he could’ve sworn he hadn’t really had that much. “What’s going on!” he finally demanded, bracing himself with one hand on either side of the mirror.

#ch: evan

bxrtholomewhallen:

Left, right, left again; up a building, down the other side. Golden lightning and blurry scarlet streaked throughout the city as Barry barreled his way to the scene of the latest bank robbery in progress. He knew they had a while before the police would be able to make it to the scene and so he had decided to step in and help them out himself. It wasn’t as if he was doing anything more important anyway, after all.

Barry had moved through life as he always did, but some nights - when his thoughts got the better of him - he found himself replaying that night over again in his head. He went through everything he could have done differently; each choice that might have led to McCulloch still being alive. Next to living with the guilt of what had happened, accident or not, having to break the news to Leonard had been the hardest thing.

When he came to a skidding halt, he had been expecting to see the usual perps - ski masks and questionable decisions that led them to rob the bank. He hadn’t been expecting to see Leonard aiming his cold gun at the floor between them. “Snart?” The name escaped him with confusion. Snart didn’t stick around long enough to alert the authorities - not normally. “Coward…? Snart,” Barry shook his head slowly, “Just put the cold gun down and leave these people out of this, alright? We can settle this…” He held his hands up in non-hostility.

“Settle it?” Leonard laughed, but there was anger behind the sound and not a single ounce of humor. “How are we going to settle it, Flashy? I lay down this gun and then what? You turn it around on me and shatter me into two bazillion pieces?” Because that’s what had happened to Evan. Leonard had seen it. He’d seen the security footage. He’d been a rogue for a long time, and even before that he’d seen a lot of rough things in his life, but watching Evan burst into all those fragments of mirrored glass...it wasn’t like anything he’d witnessed before. There was some inhuman quality to it that had left his chest tight and had seeped into his nightmares for the whole year that had followed. Leonard jerked his head over his shoulder toward the bank teller who’d been ‘assisting’ him in this particular robbery. “Get the hell out of here. Go on!” He didn’t care about them. He didn’t even really care about the money this time. Usually, he didn’t hurt anybody that there wasn’t any kind of reason to hurt. He wasn’t some kind of mindless sadist. They weren’t in Gotham. But he’d needed to do something, he hadn’t been able to just sit at home and soak in all of it anymore.

He shifted the cold gun and tightened his grip on it. Rather than look at Flash, he stared at the space of floor right in front of those stupid yellow boots. “You heard me. You’re a coward. You run around here like you’re some big savior, like you’re a hero because you’ve got these-” He sounded drunk. He knew he did. He could hear the slur to his own words, and it pissed him off even more. “Because you can run! What makes you any better than the rest of us now? You’re a killer, too.”

#ch: barry

A Humble Heist

It was not his best work to date. It wasn’t even in the top hundred bank robberies he’d ever tried to pull off. If he was being honest with himself, Leonard hadn’t particularly put a lot of effort into it, and the whole gig was sloppy. Definitely by his own standards. He’d done it more to keep himself from being idle than with the intention of actually succeeding. That was left more up to luck and chance than his usual approach. When he put his mind to something, Leonard could be intelligent. Maybe not in the book-learning, seven degrees kind of way, but he was no idiot. He’d built that cold gun, hadn’t he? Not that anybody would’ve believed that had they seen the poor excuse for a heist he’d put together this time.

He didn’t hear police sirens yet, but he knew he’d given the teller too much time to hit the ‘panic’ button before getting everyone down on the floor. It wasn’t like he was new at this. No, he had enough experience to know when he’d fucked up, and he’d certainly fucked up. The thing that was missing was any concern about that whatsoever. He’d had several drinks before setting out to do this, and they’d dulled both his reaction time and any fucks he might’ve had left to give about how his night ended. Messy. It was messy. He was being messy. It had been nearly a year since Evan was killed, though, and it sort of felt like...what? Like he deserved whatever happened, maybe, as penance for not being there.

When he sobered up later he’d know that was stupid. That was later, though. The sudden glimpse of red didn’t come as a big shock to him. Of course he’d show up. That might even be what Leonard had been gunning for all along. If anybody deserved to feel as bad as he did, it was Flash. He turned his back on the counter and the half-filled bag of money and raised his gun, aiming it at the floor. He didn’t pull the trigger right away. Instead, he shouted, “You’re a coward!”

@bxrtholomewhallen

#ch: barry #lmk if you need anything changed

Reflections

To say that Leonard hadn’t handled the aftermath of Evan’s death well would have been a real undersell. There had been a heavy feeling of guilt since it happened. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t been there or hadn’t known what was going on, it still seemed like something that he ought to have been able to prevent. He should’ve been there to help. Evan hadn’t said a damn thing, of course, and had went on ahead and done it all without him. By the time Leonard had been clued in, he’d already been gone. It felt like it was on him. It wasn’t just because he and Evan had been...whatever in the hell they’d been, but Mirror Master had been one of them. He’d been a Rogue, and that made him Leonard’s responsibility. He should’ve done better watching his back.

In some ways, it had made him double down. He’d lost confidence in himself as a leader, but that hadn’t got him to step away from it. He’d put his hands in more pies than ever in an attempt to not let anything slip under his radar again. What happened to Evan couldn’t happen to anyone else under his watch. But once he got home, out of the suit, and behind closed doors, that resolve faded almost instantly. Leonard had never had what people might call good or healthy coping mechanisms, and he’d been leaning on them hard for the last year.

That particular night, he’d practically fused with his armchair as he watched the game between the Red Wings and Blackhawks play out. There was a collection of empty bottles in the floor beside the chair, and it mirrored the other ones scattered in random places through the apartment. He needed to clean the place, but when he was sober he didn’t want to stay there long enough to actually do that.

He brought the bottle up to his lips to take the last sip, and as soon as he raised his arm he saw a reflection. It was a face, he was fucking sure that it was a face. He turned quickly, already going on the offensive, only to find empty space and stagnant air waiting behind him. “What the hell?” He’d made it through a couple of beers, but he knew he wasn’t drunk enough to be seeing shit already. No way.

@reflectedmonarch

#ch: evan