Reaction to 3x18 because if I'm having feels so are you. Title and Epigraph from Mary Oliver poetry

Maybe Death isn't Darkness (but so Much Light)

so this is the world.

I'm not in it.

It is beautiful.

(Mary Oliver, October)

She made her peace with death one cold January night in 2014. Of course, situations changed, her world grew and shrank and grew again. The shattered glass that her life had become got swept up, glued back together, cracked in new places. Such is life. No one stays whole, not forever, not for always. Usually, no one stays broken, either. But that peace remained.

If she died, she died. It wasn't that she wanted to die, not in so many words. There was still so much to do. To see, to learn. There would be so much lost. But then, there was so much waiting. Her father. A world where cold didn't lurk under her breastbone, a hungry ghost waiting for her to make one false move. Peace.

She was so tired of grieving and fighting something that might be inevitable, something she didn't want to be inevitable, so many things. The future had been seen, and maybe it wasn't set in stone, but maybe it was, and the hoping hurt so much. What if all the fighting was for nothing? What if it was for something, but another tragedy followed? She remembered the stems of daffodils, thick in her hands, a loss she'd thought averted. A fate that caught up.

She was so tired of living in fear of the day she'd wake up, a fairy-tale monster, the white witch from a heavy-handed allegory that never did sit right with her. She was so tired of dreading the day when once again she was powerless to stop horrible things from happening, or when she'd have to make the choice. A friend's life for her own soul. And what would she choose? Or would she hesitate, again, too long, too late? Her soul forfeit, and for what?

Cisco had tried to talk to her, about her powers. About how she wasn't Killer Frost, not really, she didn't need to be afraid. He understood, she guessed, better than anyone else, but still not fully. He and Reverb, they controlled their powers as much as their powers controlled them, and losing control—it was bad, but it hurt him. It didn't use him to hurt others, didn't make him want to freeze and kill and bring the world down around outstretched hands, or if it did, he never told her that. It was too hard to compare things that didn't mirror exactly. There was a future threat, for both of them, but where his was a promise of some great destiny, whatever that meant, hers was a promise that for all her efforts, she would fail again. For good.

One day, she would make a choice, and it would be the last thing Caitlin Snow ever did. The start of Killer Frost's freedom, her killing, would be born of that. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not even this week. But it would come, unless she died first.

So the peace remained.

Looking into brown eyes in the mirror, hunting for blue that wasn't there, she found that peace, but it was not made then and there, a rash choice of a scared woman. She had made her peace a week into January, the night she was supposed to return from a honeymoon she never left for, the night she finally dragged herself from her couch and into the shower, turning the water on as hot as it would go and waiting until it ran out. She made that peace, forged it, finally, finally sobbing, folding her hands so a diamond she still wore bit into her right palm. She whispered to the Universe, to God, to whatever might be listening, her offers.

She knew bargaining was one of the stages of grief, but somehow she was certain that this would not be in vain. What would she do for one more minute with him? Just the chance to say "I love you" and hear him say it, too, or the feel of his callused fingers on her cheek. What would she give up? Everything. She said it aloud, hot water filling her mouth. What was there, left, anyway, but a mother who didn't care, a building in shambles. She was ready. Acceptance was another stage, Peace, and she made it, not with his loss, but with her own.

Death didn't take her that January, or the next, when she offered it, that new purpose in her life still not enough to overcome the peace that she had made. She was human. Humans died. Life moved on, and whatever came next, came next. But now, another January come and gone, she wasn't human, not anymore.

She had heard pain described so often as fire, as flame, but that felt wrong. Fire was Ronnie. Fire was warmth, was safety. The pain in her gut was like the stab of ice, the stealing of breath, like the cold crackle of lightning that had singed her skin when Zoom had held her and not let go. Her ears still rang with the explosion, the noise of it still inside her head even as her hands scrambled for the metal lodged into her, piercing deep.

Her eyes were clear, despite it. Adrenaline pushed her past the pain, and anyway, it was not new. She directed them, the things they'd need, because there were two choices, here. Either one was acceptable. She would live, or she would die, and that was all there was to it, until she heard the murmur and understood. Maybe it wasn't just shock that made her hands go cold as she filtered the meaning, fought away the hand that reached for her necklace.

Cisco's vision of the future. Killer Frost, the third option. I would rather die she said, spitting the words like hot tap water, like blood and bile. As the tweezers slipped and she sucked in air, Iris offering comfort, she had a glimmer of a thought before it melted away—if she died here, on this table, still herself, her foretold future would be averted. The headline, Cisco's vibe, it would not come true, could not. The future would change. Wasn't that what everyone wanted, everyone hoped for? Maybe, she thought, as she forced herself to watch Julian's hands in the mirror, that really would be the best possible outcome. She had wondered, often, if she were to come face to face with her own end, would that resolve waver? Maybe the peace she had made with death would give way, that human desire to keep breathing would offer her the devil's deal, and she would take it. But no, she thought now, no. She was not entirely human, now. Perhaps that gave her the strength. She did not want to die, but better for her body to die than her soul.

Whatever came after this, she would be warm again. Ronnie would still be waiting.

She was a doctor. She knew when something was going wrong, even as it did, the way her fingers went numb, when they shouldn't have, not when she still wore the necklace. The necklace. There was no time to say don't you dare touch it. There was no time to say I'm sorry, I'm sorry, goodbye, not to anyone. There was no time to say This is what I want. Please, just let me die. Let me die as myself. If she said them, no one listened. The chain snapped.

She had feared her own choices. She had made her peace with death.

In the end, it was not her peace, or her choice, that mattered.

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