Coexistence
By Trick Steven
Wally West, a.k.a The Flash, was sitting on his couch watching TV after a boring day at the Watchtower. There wasn't any super villain activity or any major disaster happening that day so Wally was assigned monitoring duty, which led to his eyes getting sore after hours of watching the computer screen. Normally he would've complained, but J'onn gave him a sobering look that normally meant that he wasn't up to hearing Wally's protests. Even the fastest man alive didn't want to deal with a grumpy martian, so he had to make due to chatting with Orion, who was also on monitoring duty. So to say the least, Wally was glad to be home.
As Wally was absently flipping through the channels, he muttered to himself, "Isn't there anything good on a Monday?"
As he clicked to the local news channel, a woman reporter was in the middle of an announcement saying, "…where Captain Cold has been causing hundreds of dollars in property damages."
"Nope nothing good on," said Flash, who wasn't really paying attention to the news as he changed to the next channel. However when the name 'Captain Cold', registered in his brain he exclaimed, "Wait a minute!" and changed back to the news station. Captain Cold was freezing everything in his path as the news cameras rolled and was shouting explicates that were conveniently being bleeped out for the comfort of the watchers. Recognizing the street where Captain Cold was wreaking havoc, Flash immediately put on his Flash costume and said "Finally! I was starting to think I would be glued to the couch the whole day. Ready or not, Cold, here I come!" Flash then super-sped out of his apartment and into to the highway, toward downtown Central City.
"Take that you son of a bitch!" yelled out Captain Cold as he froze a car near a cowering man. The man tried to run away, but Captain Cold managed to freeze his legs before he could. Cold strode to the fearful man and leveled his freeze-gun to the man's forehead.
"Any last requests?" asked Captain Cold.
In a blink of an eye, a red streak ran past the two men and the man that Captain Cold had tried to kill was gone.
Triumphantly, Flash stood a couple of feet away and said, "Yah, I got a request. Why don't you do yourself a favor and turn yourself in before I hit you from here to Metropolis?"
"Flash, this doesn't involve you!" shouted Captain Cold, "That bastard is mine!"
Flash took a step back, surprised at how angry Captain Cold sounded. Normally when he had faced him, he was cool and collected. Flash never heard Captain Cold sound so upset.
"Maybe we can talk this over?" asked Flash, sounding sincere.
"Not likely," growled Cold, who raised his freeze-gun and aimed at Flash. As soon as he pulled the trigger, Flash was on the move. He grabbed Captain Cold's freeze-gun at lighting speed and broke it in half, all in one swift move.
Captain Cold glanced at the remains of his gun and glowered at Flash, who was standing only a few feet away.
He charged at Flash and threw a punch, which Flash easily caught. Captain Cold threw another punch at Flash's chest, but Flash also caught it. They stared intensely at each other for a minute, until the sound of police sirens broke the tension.
Captain Cold glanced around nervously and Flash asked him, "Ready to talk?"
Captain Cold looked back at Flash, "Alright, you win. I'll talk to you."
A couple of minutes later, Flash was sitting in Captain Cold's dinning room as he listened to the costumed villain's complaints.
"…and Robert told me that I only had a week to pay the rent. I told him that I needed more time, but he didn't listen to me. So I kind of lost it and tried to kill him," explained Captain Cold. He had a mug of coffee in one hand and the hood of his parka was down, reveling dark brown hair with some strands of grey.
"Well you know there are other ways of dealing with your anger. I mean, whenever I get angry I just run a couple of laps around the city," commented Flash.
"I know, but I've been having a rough week. I got a parking ticket on Tuesday, that's going to cost me four hundred bucks. And on Wednesday, my wife moved out of the house and she wants a divorce," said Captain Cold bitterly. "I can't believe it myself. We've been married for sixteen years and she wants to divorce me!"
Flash didn't know what to say exactly, since he's never been in that situation. However he replied with sincerity in his voice, "Well that sounds terrible. But I'm sure you'll be fine, you're a pretty hardy guy after all."
"Heh, you would know that better then anyone else," said Captain Cold, smiling.
Flash couldn't help but smile as well. Captain Cold wasn't exactly his friend, but he wasn't a monster either. Wally still had hope that someday, Captain Cold and the rest of his rogues will see the light and become the good guys. Some of the superheroes scoffed at Wally's hopefulness and regarded it as foolishness, but luckily Wally was the kind of person that didn't get discouraged easily.
"Uh, this isn't going to be easy for me to say, but…thanks for listening to me. I appreciate it," said Captain Cold, looking up from his coffee mug to Flash.
"Hey, no problem," replied Flash cheerfully.
Flash got up and extended his hand. Captain Cold got up from his chair and shook his hand. After they let go, Flash said, "Anytime you need to talk…"
"I'll just make a flash signal out of ice and you'll come running right?" asked Captain Cold and they both laughed.
"But seriously…"
"I'll find you, don't worry about it," waved off Captain Cold.
"Well, see you later Len," said Flash.
"Until next time Flash," answered Captain Cold.
Flash then opened the door and ran out. Captain Cold then remembered something and ran to his window. He slid the window opened and shouted, "Hey Flash I need to tell you something!"
Flash then backtracked and looked up at Captain Cold.
"This little talk of ours…don't tell anyone we had it, o.k.? I don't want the guys finding out," whispered Cold.
"Cross my heart" promised Flash. He then added "But you know if someone really wanted to know…"
Captain Cold threw a boot at Flash but he was already gone. Captain Cold sighed and went back to his table to finish his mug of coffee.
"Sometimes I worry about the younger generation…" commented Cold to himself as he drank the rest of his coffee.