Ice Flow
By TheLostMaximoff
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. This is my first fic of 2017. R/R.
Sometimes I feel like I'm drifting. It's a strange kind of sensation, this gradual pulling away from everyone I love. I always try to keep people close to me, to let them in. Cold makes things contract and withdraw. I keep Barry and Cisco close to me and use them like space-heaters so I stay warm. Sometimes I wonder if they can tell when I slowly drift away from their warmth like a glacier. Can they tell that I'm falling and need them to catch me? They look at me and don't see me, not really. They see the smiles I fake and think that they're real. They don't see the cracks on my surface or hear the silence of my desperate screams. They don't notice me breaking down.
Some days, I don't come to STAR Labs. I tell everyone I'm sick or make some other excuse for why I can't be there. Some days when I'm there, I'm not really there. The ice in my veins makes my heart contract and I stay quiet unless my input is needed. When I come home, the fear paralyzes me. It freezes me up and makes it impossible to do anything. It's a terrible thing to be a stranger inside your own body. The fear of what I could become makes me curl into a tiny ball, contracting further into the shell of ice around me.
Sometimes I think about Ronnie and the warmth he provided. He was my own personal ray of sunshine and happiness. My world was lighter with him in it and it was full of everything I could want. He would hate seeing me now and my heart aches from the thought of it. It's a dull, persistent throbbing. I just want to see the sun again and be the person I used to be, the person that he was so madly in love with. I just want to feel my world expand with warmth so I can let my friends back in. Nobody wants to get left out in the cold and I know so well how that feels.
On the days that I don't come to STAR Labs, I barely get out of bed. Those days are when the ice inside me solidifies into permafrost that I think will never melt. I feel so lonely but I can't muster up the energy for anything. Cold things don't move because warmth and energy are one in the same. Cold things stay put while the world just passes them by. I know I should move but it's so slow and so painful. When I freeze up inside, I think about Jay. I hate that I still think of him by that name. He warmed me up after Ronnie died for good. He thawed me out and made me more vulnerable than I've ever been. I thought he was the sun and I realized too late that I flew too close to it. He wasn't the sun though. He was just a black hole that tried to devour me. The gravitational pull of his madness almost dragged me into the abyss with him. He made me retreat inside myself, made me cower inside my own body. I think of him and feel the darkness inside me overtake the light, mercilessly choking it out. He would have killed me in the end because that's what darkness does to light. Sometimes I feel cheated that I'll never see him again. I can't decide what I would do if I ever did. Part of me wants to thank him for seeing in me what everyone else is too afraid to see. Part of me wants to kill him myself for making me question everything I ever knew about myself. It's not like it matters anyway. He's dead now and I'll never see him again. I shouldn't feel bad about that but somehow I do.
Sometimes I wonder why no one else can see the darkness inside of me. Why do Cisco and Barry treat me like I'm not a monster? Why are they so warm to me when I know I don't deserve it? I want their warmth. I want to take it out of them and fill myself with it. I want to replace the missing pieces of myself so I won't feel so hollow and disconnected. I feel ashamed for wanting that so I keep those thoughts inside me along with so many other things. I never let my friends in all the way because their light will burn me. Just like all the others, they will warm me up and then leave me colder than I was before. I won't let them do that to me. I'll just stay put and watch them pass me by. They won't notice me shivering and dying in the cold. They won't realize that I'm already dead anyway.