From Fox River to Central City, Ch 12/14
Chapter 12 - Facing Cold
1 – Team Flash & Legends, Mick-1 & Palmer
2 – Mayor Snart, clearly the most crooked here
4 – Cold-4, retired
11 – Killer Cold & Heatwave, bad guys
16 – Cold-16 & Sara-16, thieves
19 – Leonard-19 & Mick-19, smugglers
22 – Snart-22 & Rory-22, cyborg survivors
27 – Len-27 & Mickey-27, freedom fighters
29 – Michael-29, Lincoln, Veronica, & LJ, criminals but the good guys?
30 – Scofield-30, structural engineer
53 – Leo & Ray, 4-ever
He knew it was a trap. It could only be a trap. Three warehouses going up in flames nearly simultaneously and dangerously close to an apartment building had to be the work of Heatwave.
He knew it was a trap. What could Barry do but go anyway?
Barry spun his arms in an effort to suffocate the flames near an interior office while the two workers inside waited for their chance to bolt.
“Cisco," Barry called into his comms. “This fire is everywhere. I don’t think I can get it out quickly. Not alone.”
Then a shot of blue streaked past Barry and froze the burning beams next to him.
“Cold?”
~
Heatwave stood beside Cisco as the kid genius tapped violently at the computer. His eyes were manic but focused. Cisco was usually spaced out and disoriented, but he was lucid right now in a way Mick had only seen a few times, when they were steps away from killing another doppelganger. Snart’s doppelganger.
Killing Snart.
“You sure you can actually do what you’re trying to do from here?” Mick asked. “This office don’t look used much.”
“Don’t you know Rory? Computers are magic.” Cisco clicked one more series of keys and smiled. “And I’m a frickin’ wizard.” Then his hand shot out and opened a breach a few feet away. “Go. I’ll catch up.”
Mick went.
~
Mayor Snart leaned against the railing of the stairway landing above the cafeteria. He looked down at Cold-4, Michael, and Lincoln, the only ones left in here after lunch. Cold-4 and Michael were trying to discuss the science behind the cold gun, but they were agitated. Lincoln was trying to eat cold pancakes to calm himself down, but it didn’t look like he was having much luck.
Then he saw movement outside the room, on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the cafeteria. It was Killer Cold. He was walking across the concrete, headed straight for them.
Mayor Snart pointed from his vantage point over the cafeteria and shouted, “Cold!”
Cold-4, Michael, and Lincoln tracked his finger to Killer Cold outside. A breach opened, and Heatwave stepped out next to him.
“Get upstairs!” Cold-4 shouted at Michael and Lincoln, gesturing them up towards Mayor Snart.
“Facility-wide lockdown engaged,” a passive, computer voice alerted over the PA system.
Mayor Snart immediately bolted for the door on his left that led into the main halls of STAR Labs. He darted into the hall just before the door automatically slammed closed and locked.
“Shit,” Lincoln shouted. He and Michael were barely even to the base of the stairs.
“He’s got us cut off from each other,” Michael said.
Cold-4 looked back to Killer Cold and Heatwave as they approached one of the windows. It was just the three of them down here, and he was the only one armed.
Killer Cold stepped up to the window and pressed his cool hand against the glass. Frost immediately started to form fractals across it.
“Definitely shit,” Cold-4 said.
Killer Cold fired.
~
“Why won’t this door open?!” Mick-1 shouted. He was trying to force open the doors of the cortex to get to the hallway.
“Sorry, Mick, we’re trying,” Palmer said. He and Cisco were frantically typing on the computers, trying to get the lockdown lifted.
“Whoever initiated the lockdown blocked all my override codes,” Cisco explained. “Which means it was probably me. Other me.”
“Can’t you use your fancy black hole powers to get us out of here?” Mick growled at Cisco.
“Yes, but everyone else would still be trapped and isolated. Caitlin’s with the 16s in the med bay, and I don’t even know where everyone else is. At least here we have a decent chance of finding out where Killer Cold is going to attack.”
“Uh,” Palmer pointed at a blinking computer. “I think we just did.”
Cisco looked over Palmer’s shoulder. “The cafeteria.”
~
Cold-4 ducked and rolled away from dual ice and fire rays. He fired back at Heatwave, who spun behind some rubble to avoid another collision between his heat gun and a cold gun.
Fortunately, Cold-4 had managed to pull the fight outside. This meant that Michael and Lincoln, who were young, unarmed, and wholly unprepared for a supervillain fight, could move away from the shooting.
“Get out of here!” Cold-4 shouted at them and jerked his head towards the industrial district near STAR Labs. There were docks, shipping containers, alleys, and any number of buildings for them to hide in.
“But –“ Michael, the do-gooder, started to object, but his more sensible brother grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him towards the relative safety of the other buildings.
At least they were two fewer things to worry about.
Killer Cold shot at Cold-4, who ducked further behind the cover of a large tree in the grassy area outside the Labs. The blast grazed his side, but the thermal threading in his vest took the brunt of it.
Unfortunately, being outside meant that Killer Cold and Heatwave had the space to split up and approach Cold-4 from both sides. He could see Killer Cold in the reflection off a nearby car window and Heatwave along the walls of STAR Labs. That wasn’t good. If he died here, Sara was never going to let him hear the end of it.
Then there was the high whine of a cold gun and the metallic shrieking of twisting metal. Cold-4 looked up in time to see a frozen part of one of the metal spires atop STAR Labs break off and crash to the ground. Heatwave had to run to avoid being crushed.
“I get you, Mick?!” Leonard-19 shouted down. He had been on the roof of the Labs enjoying a couple beers and a quiet minute when the lockdown happened. Now he couldn’t get down, and the ground was well out of range of his cold gun. He had to improvise by freezing and knocking down bits of the roof. Luckily, there were many expendable bits to choose from.
“Not quite, Snart,” Heatwave shouted back up.
“Mick, go after the kid!” Killer Cold shouted at Heatwave. “I’ll handle these two.”
Heatwave shrugged vaguely in the direction of Cold-4 and took off for the industrial district.
~
“There!” Michael shouted and pointed at a side entrance to an industrial complex that had a gated fence.
“Right.” Lincoln ran for it with Michael right behind him. “We’ll lock it behind us.” Lincoln glanced back briefly to make sure Michael had the gate then ran ahead to make sure it was clear. He heard the chain slide around the post and, with a drop in his stomach, the padlock click shut.
He already knew what he was going to see.
Lincoln turned. Michael was on the wrong side of the fence, making sure the padlock was locked tight.
“No.” Lincoln ran back to the fence, but it was too late. Michael kept his head down, too ashamed to look Lincoln in the eye. “No no no no, Michael. Michael, don’t do this.”
“It’s done, Lincoln.” Michael finally looked up at his brother. Lincoln clutched at the chain link between them, separating them once again. “Get out of here. Heatwave will chase me.”
Michael reached his fingers through the chain link to grip Lincoln’s as best he could. It broke Lincoln’s heart to be in this position again, on the wrong side of a locked gate from a loved one and a death sentence between them.
“I love you, Lincoln,” Michael said. “Keep Veronica and LJ safe.”
Then Michael yanked his hands away from the fence and ran further into the industrial park.
“Michael!” Lincoln shouted after him. “Michael!”
Seconds later, Heatwave caught up to Lincoln, drawn by his shouting. He looked at Lincoln locked on the other side of the gate and shouldered his heat gun.
“Yer brother do that to ya?” Heatwave asked, gesturing toward the padlock.
Lincoln just glowered.
Heatwave nodded. “That’s a good kid. You did right by him.”
Lincoln growled, “If you touch him, I’ll kill you.”
Heatwave shrugged and headed out after Michael.
“You hear me?” Lincoln shouted after his doppelganger and banged on the gate. “I’ll kill you!”
~
Leonard-19 kicked frozen rubble off the roof in Killer Cold’s general direction, but Killer Cold easily rolled out of the way. It at least bought Cold-4 enough time to reposition to a more defensible spot in the parking lot.
Annoyed, Killer Cold shot a massive blast of blue plasma up at the roof, and he had much better range than Leonard-19’s cold gun. The blast struck the edge of the roof and froze into huge spikes of ice. The force of it threw Leonard-19 back and knocked the wind out of him. He raggedly huffed in some air and wobbled to his feet. The ice had formed a jagged wall taller than him.
“Dammit,” he whispered. He ran around it to the next clear patch of roof ledge, but the angle was bad. He could barely make out movement in the direction of Killer Cold and Cold-4. He was out of the fight.
~
On the ground in front of the Labs, Cold-4’s position was growing desperate. They had once again seriously underestimated the scale of Killer Cold’s power. The car in front of him froze, hard and brittle, and then shattered. Now completely exposed, Cold-4 shot Killer Cold directly in the chest with his cold gun.
Once the beam stopped, Killer Cold looked down at his chest. He was completely unharmed, only frost left across his shirt to show Cold-4’s work.
“Yeah, I suppose it was too much to ask for that to work,” Cold-4 griped at his murderous doppelganger.
“It really was,” Killer Cold agreed. He raised his right arm and pointed at Cold-4.
Then bullets and what could only be shots from a ray gun rained down on Killer Cold from his left. Ice immediately formed across his shoulders to form a type of shield from the bullets, but one of the rays hit his left arm just above the elbow. He shouted in pain and clamped his right hand over the burn. It hissed into steam.
Killer Cold looked left and found Snart-22 pointing his dual pistols at him from across the parking lot. Rory-22 stood next to him holding a paper grocery bag in one hand and a highly processed, sugar-packed Danish in the other. They had not been in the Labs at all but grocery shopping when Killer Cold attacked. The word ‘shopping’ being used loosely.
Rory munched his treat, and Snart shot both guns at Killer Cold again. Killer Cold, now prepared, formed an ice shield and deflected both shots.
Cold-4 decided he was useless here and took the opportunity to run after Michael and Lincoln. They needed his help much more than the cyborgs of Earth-22. Killer Cold paid him no mind.
Snart-22 was not Captain Cold. He wasn’t Citizen Cold. He was not, in fact, a Cold of any kind. He was just Leonard Snart, a violent, dangerous survivor of the hellhole that was Earth-22. He had his wits, his guns, and his friend, and that had always been enough.
Rory-22, however, was Heatwave. He carried no guns but instead had a tiny, red rock wired into his chest, just over his sternum.
“Are you going to burn something now?” Snart-22 asked flatly.
“I think I will,” Rory-22 answered. He (tragically) dropped both bag and Danish and stretched his scarred arms out to crack his knuckles.
Then his tapped the red stone on his bare chest. It glowed. Then his bones beneath his skin glowed as if lit up with an internal fire.
“What the…?” Killer Cold muttered.
He didn’t have a chance to say anything else before Rory shot a fireball at him with his bare hands. The force of it exploded Killer Cold’s shield of ice and sent him sprawling back onto the asphalt. Snart-22 tried to shoot Killer Cold while he was down, but Killer Cold quickly rolled out of the way and on to his feet. He shot tiny spears of ice from his finger tips at Snart, who dodged out of the way into the grassy park nearby.
Flames surrounded Rory. They grew in every direction and formed into a humanoid shape around Rory, making him seem far larger than he was. The liquid in some of the tubes of Rory’s cybernetics bubbled, and the asphalt melted at his feet.
Snart-22 got his footing and fired again at Killer Cold, but he waved his right hand and formed a wall of ice around him on that side. Then Killer Cold shot raw blue cold energy at Rory. Rory fired back, and the two energy blasts struck. Instead of exploding on each other, the fire overwhelmed the cold and pushed it back towards Killer Cold in a burst of hot steam.
Rory-22 pressed his advantage and marched forward, beam of fire ahead of him, footprints of black slag behind him. Killer Cold braced his feet and tried to hold the stream of cold, but the cold core in his arm was no match for the power of the Zambesi fire totem in Rory’s chest. He slid against the ground at his feet until his back hit the wall of STAR Labs behind him.
The wall of ice protecting Killer Cold from Snart-22’s guns was rapidly steaming and melting beside him. Snart-22 pointed his pistol at the wall in anticipation for a clear shot.
“Almost got him, Mick,” Snart-22 yelled at his partner. “Keep it up!”
Then there was an undignified “whoop”, and Rory fell through a breach that opened under his feet.
“Mick?” Snart-22 startled. He scanned around to find him and instead found Cisco standing on the other end of the grassy landscaping. It wasn’t Cisco of Earth-1. This Cisco was a mess of knotted hair and rumpled clothes. It was Vibe of Earth-11.
Vibe pointed up, and Snart followed his gesture. He looked up just in time to see Rory fall out of a closing breach hundreds of feet in the air. The wind and speed of his fall quickly extinguished the flames around him.
“Mick!” Snart-22 shouted.
He had little time to check on his partner, though. Abruptly free from flames and steam, Killer Cold shot ice after him, and Snart-22 had to run to stay clear.
“You got him?” Killer Cold yelled to Vibe.
“Oh yeah,” Vibe responded.
In the air, Rory-22 tried to twist around and get his hands beneath him. He shot fire from his hands in an effort to control his fall, but it took several tries to get himself steady. Then he was able to get his feet pointed down and shoot fire from them too. Finally, he started to slow down.
Vibe shook his head and opened another breach underneath Rory, who couldn’t help but fall in. Vibe dropped him from further up, this time at an angle so that Rory had to correct his trajectory again. Vibe opened breach after breach, faster and faster, to catch and drop Rory, always higher and at a sharper angle, spinning and disorienting him.
The human body can naturally withstand between four and six times the force of gravity before passing out. Rory was more resilient than most. He lasted until nearly seven. But then his fire went out, and he dropped like a stone.
The car park and grassy courtyard between the Labs and the offices nearby were a mess of bullet holes and ice patches. Snart saw his friend fall, and shouted, “Mick. Mick, wake up!”
His momentary distraction was his undoing, though. Killer Cold shot him straight in the chest. Ice bloomed over him and froze him in a giant block of ice, gaze still directed upward.
“One down,” Killer Cold gloated.
Suddenly, a bright gold light torpedoed through the air. It was Ray on a direct course for Rory’s falling form. He grabbed Rory around the waist, but he was going much too fast, and Rory was much too heavy. Unable to dodge around, Ray flew straight into a new breach and came out into the side of a skyscraper across town. The two launched through a wall of steel and glass, and the people inside screamed in surprise. The pair tumbled, unconscious, to a stop inside.
~
On the street level, Leo and Joe were stuck a few blocks away from STAR Labs. Crowds of people were screaming and fleeing the buildings near the fighting, blocking the street. Leo and Joe gave up on driving and exited the car, but they were still trying to go the opposite direction of the scared crowd.
“Excuse us, please, here we go,” Leo tried to push his way passed the running pedestrians.
“Police!” Joe shouted. “Everyone out of the way!”
That did little to calm the group and nothing to make them move.
So Leo shot his gun at a nearby streetlight. It froze, and the light shattered.
“Everyone, get the hell out of the way!”
They did.
~
In the cortex, Cisco gave a triumphant shout. “Yes! Lockdown lifted.” He immediately hit a button on his computer to activate the Lab-wide PA system.
“Anyone still in the building, get to the pipeline,” Cisco shouted into the PA’s microphone. “It’s safer there.”
Then he turned to Mick-1 and Ray Palmer. “Ray, man the comms. Heatwave, get to Caitlin in the med bay. She might need some help.”
“But – ,” Palmer started to object.
“You heard ‘im, Haircut.” Surprisingly, Mick quickly did as he was told and ran down the hall towards the med bay.
Palmer sat in Cisco’s vacated chair and put in an earpiece. Cisco grabbed his gauntlets and visor and breached outside.
~
At Cisco’s announcement, Sara-16 tore the med bay door open, just in case it tried to lock them in again. She pulled out her sticks and looked around the hallway. “We’re clear, let’s go.”
Caitlin tried to help Cold-16 out of bed but was pushed away.
“My legs work fine, Snow,” Cold-16 objected. His left arm was in a sling, and there were bandages wrapped around his torso. He grabbed his cold gun and followed after Sara.
~
Outside, Killer Cold and Vibe-11 were out of immediate targets. Heatwave was chasing after Michael and Lincoln around some nearby warehouses, and Cold-4 had gone after them. Rory-22 and The Ray were unconscious somewhere downtown. Barry was busy, Leonard-19 was trapped on the roof, and Snart-22 was a block of ice.
“Inside then,” Killer Cold said.
“Not yet,” Vibe held up a hand.
A breach opened, and Cisco-1 hopped out.
“Just you, Cisco?” Killer Cold asked.
“Yeah, I was really hoping there were others already out here.” Cisco-1 looked at the destruction around him and Snart frozen like a giant popsicle. He hoped that didn’t shatter during their fight. He waved at Vibe-11. “Hey evil me.”
“The stars are ringing, singing, screaming, and I hear them all.”
“Not this again.”
“Somebody has to go polish the stars, and I am not afraid of what I am.”
“Right… so you’ve gone for the full-on crazy pants option, then. That’s – that’s great.”
Suddenly, Cisco-1 had to duck and roll away from a stream of cold.
“I missed on purpose, Cisco,” Killer Cold said. “It would be best if you survived this, but I will go through you if I have to. Are you really willing to die alone here for those killers and monsters in there?”
Cisco shifted his weight, ready to dodge or breach if he needed to.
“Yeah, I really wish I was an even slightly worse person so I could say no, but here I am.”
“He’s not alone,” Vibe-11 said flatly.
In a flash of yellow lightning, Barry ran to his friend’s side.
“You heard him, Killer Cold,” Barry said. “He’s not alone.”
Killer Cold raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I’ll admit I expected the fire to take you at least a few more minutes. How’d you get here so fast?”
“I had backup.”
~
Mickey-27 shot at the blaze moving towards him and the people he was evacuating.
“Come on, this way, let’s move it!” Mickey-27 yelled as he herded them towards an exit.
Len-27 held a frozen door open for the civilians while keeping an eye on the nearest flames. One of the evacuees lost his footing and took a second to fix his shoe. “No, please, take your time. It’s only a fire. No pressure.”
~
Cold-4 found Lincoln apparently lost in the maze of industrial buildings and factories.
“Cold!” Lincoln shouted at him. “You have to help me find Michael. He left me behind, and now Heatwave’s after him.”
“Okay, this way,” Cold-4 said.
He led Lincoln back the way he came. They reemerged near STAR Labs, but the fight had moved away from them and towards a small park near the river.
“This isn’t where Michael is, Cold. We have to go help him.”
“Lincoln, listen to me. Michael is smart; he’ll find a way to ditch Mick and get back here.”
“You don’t get it at all, do you? That is my baby brother trapped in there with a psycho killer.”
“And do you know where he is, Lincoln? Because I don’t. But we have friends down there right now that need our help. So come on.”
~
Michael knew what he needed to do. He just needed a couple minutes to do it. The warehouse he was in was large, more of an entire complex or network of buildings. The HVAC system was exposed along the ceiling and walls. It was gas heated. He could work with that.
First, he found a more enclosed corner of the building.
“Where ya hidin’ young, fake Snart?” Heatwave shouted from somewhere else in the complex. The echoes made it impossible to guess how far away he was.
Second, Michael used a crowbar lying around to break open a gas pipe. There was no way Heatwave wouldn’t hear that.
“Just hold tight, and this’ll be over a lot faster.”
Third, he increased the pressure of the gas until it exited the broken pipe with a soft hiss. Then he waited.
He didn’t have to wait long. Heatwave turned a corner and leveled his gun at Michael.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mick. You smell that? That’s propane. It’s filling the room, and if you fire that gun - .”
Heatwave fired his gun.
The explosion threw Michael back into a wall, knocking the wind out of him. But the gas in the air cleared quickly.
Heatwave strode through the few remaining flames.
“I’m an arsonist, idiot. You really think I can’t tell the difference between propane and natural gas? Plus it takes more’n a couple minutes to fill a room this size.”
Michael gasped air back into his lungs. “It was worth a shot.”
Heatwave stepped right up to him. He pulled his goggles down around his neck.
“Smart ass kid with your smart ass mouth. Always getting into trouble.”
Michael did get into trouble a lot. He usually didn’t mean to. He stole food a few times as a kid when his foster parents rationed snacks. He smoked a grand total of one time outside the school weight room with that idiot Terry Jace just so he could feel like a normal teenager. He lied about where he’d been when he snuck out to see Lincoln. But mostly he lied to Lincoln. About the snacks and the cigarettes and the sneaking out. Lincoln never bought it, called him a smart ass, and gave him a black eye to remind him not to do it again.
In that moment, Heatwave seemed so much like his brother that it broke his heart.
“But usually I had you to get me out of it.”
Heatwave steeled his jaw and tightened his grip on his gun.
And in that moment, Michael looked so much like Snart – 14 years old and bleeding on the concrete floor in juvie – that it broke his heart that he had long ago learned to ignore.
~
With Barry keeping Killer Cold busy, Cisco-1 tried to fight against his murderous doppelganger. But it wasn’t a fair fight by any means. Vibe-11 seemed to be so much stronger than Cisco. It wasn’t even like Cisco’s first fight with Gypsy. His vibrational blasts were constantly interrupted or overwhelmed by those of Vibe-11. Vibe always seemed to know exactly where Cisco was going to breach to before he even got there. It was almost like he could - .
“See the future?” Vibe finished Cisco’s thought. Cisco had taken another blast to the chest and was knocked on his back. His mad look-alike loomed over him. “I can see everything, you know. You can too. But you don’t. You’re too scared to try. Too scared of yourself, your power, and what parts of yourself you might lose if you ever actually tried.”
Vibe blasted Cisco with both hands, and Cisco was thrown across the ground.
“But you won’t be able to protect him with half-measures. You won’t be able to protect anyone.” Vibe stalked closer to Cisco. “So I have to do it for you.”
Cisco stormed to his feet and shot a vibrational blast at his doppelganger, but Vibe opened a breach right in front of him and sucked it up.
Not far away, Barry ran out of the way of another one of Killer Cold’s bursts of ice. He ran up the side of STAR Labs and just cleared the roof when he spotted Leonard-19 holding his hand out. Barry grabbed it and pulled Leonard close to him to run back down with him.
But the trip back down didn’t go according to plan. Vibe’s breach opened up beside him, and Cisco’s redirected blast hit him in the side. Barry and Leonard-19 fell the four remaining stories and hit the ground.
“Barry!” Cisco shouted.
“He’ll be fine.” Vibe-11 kept himself between Cisco and his friend. “But Cold won’t.” To Killer Cold, he shouted. “Kill him, Cold. That one’s even worse than the others. He loves Barry. You know that will get him killed so much faster than hate. Kill him!”
Killer Cold advanced on the fallen two.
“Leonard,” Barry groaned. He looked at Killer Cold. Leonard-19 had thankfully fallen on top of him, and Barry tried to roll the semi-conscious man off of him, to put himself between Killer Cold and Leonard-19. Leonard did his best to shift off Barry and let him up.
Barry painfully got to his feet. “Leonard,” he pleaded, “you don’t need to do this. You don’t need to protect me, and you don’t need to kill them. Please, just stop this.”
“No Barry,” Vibe spoke for them both. “The multiverse is better off without Leonard Snart. You are better off without Leonard Snart.”
He nodded to Killer Cold and steadied one hand at Barry while keeping the other on Cisco. Killer Cold leveled his hand at Leonard-19, still on the ground behind Barry. The circuits and blood vessels in his arm glowed blue in preparation to fire as soon as Vibe cleared Barry out of the way.
“I’m sorry Barry.”
But then Heatwave’s heavy hand landed on Killer Cold’s left shoulder.
“Mick?” Killer Cold asked.
“It’s taken care of, Snart.”
“Then go for one of the others inside.”
“Nah, kid. I never should have let it get this far.”
Heatwave stepped up right behind Killer Cold and wrapped his left arm around his partner’s shoulders.
Cold’s eyes widened. “Mick?”
“I’m sorry kid.” Heatwave pressed the muzzle of his gun up against the back of his friend’s ribs and fired.
The resulting blast from the absolute heat hitting Killer Cold’s freezing body knocked everyone off their feet, and the ice and glass from nearby buildings shattered. Cold was thrown forward, and he rolled several times before he finally stopped dozens of feet from where he started. Heatwave was sprawled on his back.
Lincoln was one of the first to recover. “Michael? Michael!” Heatwave had said that he got the kid. But Michael couldn’t, he couldn’t leave him.
“Lincoln!” Michael shouted and ran from around the side of the building. Lincoln heaved a sigh of relief but was surprised when Michael ran not to him but to Heatwave.
Michael skidded on the rubble around Heatwave when he tried to kneel down beside him. “Mick? Mick!” Heatwave’s gun had shattered in his hand, shredding his right arm, and pieces of the gun were embedded in his torso. Michael scrambled to feel for a pulse. There was nothing.
Michael inhaled a shuddering breath, trying to calm himself down. He took Mick’s head in shaking hands and used his thumbs to close his eyes. “Thank you Mick,” he whispered. “Thank you for getting me out of trouble one more time.”
Lincoln stumbled to a stop beside his brother and dropped to his knees to grab him into a hug.
A short ways away, Vibe was sobbing and clutching at Killer Cold’s frozen arm. “No no no, you have to get up. You have to fix it. Cold!”
Barry sped Caitlin to Vibe’s side. She knelt beside her friend’s distraught doppelganger and looked Killer Cold over. He was still breathing, but she didn’t need to be a doctor to realize that he wouldn’t for long. There was a blackened hole torn through his side. The fire had cauterized it, so there was very little blood. But the blast had torn away part of his torso. A few of his ribs were exposed. Even now, the ice from Cold’s right arm was spreading down in an attempt to stabilize the massive wound. It wouldn’t work.
Caitlin rubbed Vibe’s back in an attempt to calm him down. Then she looked at Barry and shook her head.
Barry knelt on Killer Cold’s opposite side. “Hey Leonard,” he said softly.
Cold slowly turned his head to look at Barry. It took him a few seconds to focus on him. “Hey Scarlet.”
“You, uh, you really went all out this time, didn’t you?” Barry tried to chuckle at the mess around him. It didn’t work.
“I just wanted to keep you safe,” Cold said weakly.
“I know. I know you did.” Barry set his hand on Cold’s forearm, at a loss for words.
Cold knew, though. He raised his hand up and cupped Barry’s cheek. Somehow, it was still warm against Barry’s skin. “There was never any version of me that was not in love with every version of you.”
Barry sobbed. “I miss you, Leonard.”
The ice crept across his body, up his neck and face, until it finally stopped at his left shoulder. His hand dropped.
Leonard Snart was dead.
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