OH. MY GOSH.
I legitimately thought this fic would never end. This was an ambitious idea from the beginning, and restricting the fic to 10k words was a challenge, but it's FINALLY, FINALLY done (and posted four days late woops). I've always wanted to do a Hades/Persephone fic, and while Savitar/Killer Frost would have been the more fitting and easier ship to write this for, I wanted a challenge and wanted to see if I could do it with Barry and Caitlin. The creative and thought process for this one was really hard and stressful, but it was really fun and rewarding at the end, and I'm actually quite proud of how everything worked out.
Written for the Snowbarry Spot April Minibang based on the following prompts: remembrance/forget-me-not, freedom, sacrifice, and touches of chaos/devotion.
There are a number of people to thank for this fic, but I'll keep it short. Thanks to everyone at the Snowbarry Spot discord server for all the love & support and for hosting this minibang!
Batty - thank you for the BEAUTIFUL moodboards (featured on AO3; look up the fic name and you'll find it)! You're an incredible human being for all you do and all you put up with on a daily basis.
Chowda - jie, thank you SO MUCH for beta-ing this piece for me (with a headache!) and for being my biggest fan and supporter. I love you so much.
LariaGywn - thank you for everything always 3 (but my wallet does not thank you) and for sitting with me through the beginning of my brainstorming and writing and putting up with me whining about this L O L
Disclaimer: I don't own the Flash.
The old gods are dead.
Hades sees the black wisps of his body fading, his spirit turning to ash as his kingdom crumbles underneath him. His wife lies next to him, crushing the forget-me-nots that she had painstakingly grown all over the hillside only the spring before. Everything about Persephone has always been warm, from her smile to her complexion, regardless of how much time she spent with him in the Underworld, but now, he can see hints of frost on the blue petals next to her body that is slowly fading in white mist.
The dead have no ruler now. The dead need no ruler now.
"Are you satisfied, brother?" Zeus murmurs some feet away, staring at him. Hera and Athena's still forms flank him as Apollo and Artemis lay at his feet, the twins facing each other, hands clasped between them. Hephaestus fades away in front of Hades' eyes. Poseidon is reduced to vapors. The Fates' song echoes in the wind, ghostly and haunting. All of them are fading, dying, gone.
"Death is never the end, brother," he replies instead, watching until the world becomes black glass before his eyes. He feels around for Persephone's hand, cold as ice, and Hades sees a lightning strike, finally freed from Zeus' control, feels the glass shatter when he dies.
There are other forces at work, it says to itself, to the universe. Red lightning streaks through a tunnel of impossible blue, crossing earths, crossing ages, crossing lifetimes.
Sometimes, Barry Allen wonders whether he's cursed.
First, there's his mom—a man in a yellow suit surrounded by lightning killed her. He knows what he saw that night; he will never forget. He could never forget. Then, his dad incarcerated at Iron Heights for a murder he didn't commit. Joe and Iris took him in, but there are days growing up (and even now, if he is being honest), where Barry is afraid. He has seen too many colleagues in CCPD, CSIs, detectives, and everyone else alike not return from cases they were on, and he worries that one day, it'll be Joe, one day, Iris will tire of him.
It's an issue, he knows. Trauma, someone told him once, when they noticed how he is warm and friendly, but doesn't reach out to many people first or make many friends because he's afraid of loneliness and abandonment. He knows those aren't the only things holding him back. Those deep-seated fears feel deeper, scars feel older, as if there is something else that is missing in his life, something important, something he's forgetting.
"Hey!" Iris bounces into his lab with a wide smile. "I am ready to see this atom-smasher…smashing," she says, and Barry doesn't even need to look up to see the adorably confused look on his foster sister's face. He's been harping about this for weeks; he knows she has no idea what she's talking about, but she makes him grin anyway, despite the next words coming out of his mouth.
"There was a shooting today. Your dad needs me to process some evidence, which means that I don't know if we're going to make it to S.T.A.R. Labs."
She wrinkles her nose. "But seeing this thing turn on is like your dream," she says, stealing a fry from his half-eaten lunch. "Your sad, little, nerdy dream. Besides, I canceled a date for this."
"Hands off my fries," Barry playfully retorts, grabbing his fries and removing them from her vicinity. Not that he didn't see it coming; having grown up together means being familiar with all her habits, including fry-stealing. "Unbelievable."
He doesn't know what he would do without her, ever—Iris accepted him, protected him, believed him, and stood by him, even when no one else did. Barry may not be forthcoming to other people, but he would be damned if he let go of those he loved, Iris included.
By the time they finish bantering and updating Joe on Barry's findings (and getting permission to let him go see the Particle Accelerator turn on while they're at it), both their shoulders feel lighter and smiles feel brighter, the foster siblings tagging after each other as they run out of his lab.
It is the last time Barry and Iris hang out before everything changes.
The last thing Barry remembers is panic—something was happening, something had gone terribly wrong—and then a bright bolt of lightning that blinded him before pain struck and he fell unconscious. It is a strange sensation, floating there, unanchored, untethered to anything and knowing nothing except he is no longer confined to a body, lost in swirls of white and blue.
"Hello?" he calls out, and out of nowhere, a streak of red lightning flashes by him, here and gone. "Whoa!"
Barry.
He hears a whisper in the tendrils of smoke around him. Someone is calling to him, someone whose voice he hasn't heard in a very long time.
Barry.
The mist is so thick that he can barely see anything aside from that strange blue light, but that voice—Barry Allen will never forget the sound of that voice so long as he has one more breath left in his body. He whips around, looking in all directions, looking for a way out, looking for her, and then…and then.
Her red hair is the first thing he sees. It stands out in the endless shades of shifting whites and grays and blues, and Barry feels his breath catch, his heart stutter, and his eyes stinging with tears as the roaring in his ears go silent. She walks forward, closer, until he can see her clear, green eyes, the ones that match his own. He's trying to speak, but his throat is closed up, the weight in his chest so immense he doesn't know how he's taking another breath.
"Mom?" he whispers, scared. Scared of what's happening, scared of her answer, scared—and then Nora Allen puts a hand on his cheek with a small, sad smile.
Hi, Barry.
The tears leak out from his eyes, and then the weight on his chest dissipates, and it's all Barry can do to hold himself together. "Mom," he chokes out, "what—how—how is this possible?"
Her expression crumbles a little, and she looks so incredibly sad that he feels like she just drove a knife into his gut. Her fingers gently stroke his hair a little while longer, her eyes flitting around his face as though committing it to memory before she takes a step back. Barry nearly reaches for her again, something deep inside him stopping him at the last second.
"I'm sorry," she replies, and takes a step back. Her voice sounds, but her mouth does not open.
We thought you would feel more comfortable seeing this form.
Barry furrows his eyebrows, confusion battling with heartbreak and disbelief. "What—what do you mean?"
We're not your mother. But your mother is part of us. Everything is part of us. We thought you would like to know that she loves you.
"Who are you?"
We haven't been introduced yet. We're the Speed Force.
"The…Speed Force?"
We existed—before time, before the universe. And we will continue to exist afterwards. Just as you will. Just as we are not your mother. Just as we are not one single person. Neither are you.
Something clicks in him then, and it feels as though a floodgate has opened—memories that clearly aren't his, that are older than ancient, hit him like a storm, like the lightning storm that struck him the night he had to rush back to CCPD the night the Particle Accelerator turned on, like the lightning that hit him once when his brother misaimed and threw the bolt straight at him on accident, though he is sure, even to this day that it wasn't an accident.
Barry doesn't have a brother.
But Hades did.
For a second, his head spins and his vision swims as reality crashes back into him, and it takes him a second, but all of a sudden…everything makes sense. His deep-seated loneliness, his craving for companionship but difficulty in opening up to others, being CSI and constantly surrounded by the dead and dying, they are Barry Allen just as much as they were, are, Hades. A woman's face flashes before his eyes, but she is gone before he can remember her. The hole inside him that he's felt all his life, the one that tells him something, someone is missing, feels emptier than ever before.
"That woman…" he blurts out before he can think.
The Speed Force doesn't answer his half-hearted, half-formed question. You know now who you are.
A deep sadness fills him then, a wisp of nostalgia for times long past. "I am a king without a kingdom." The words come to him, unfiltered truth.
The old gods are dead, the Speed Force says. The old kingdoms have fallen.
What is a king without a kingdom? What is a god without believers?
But there are more important questions he has to ask. "Why am I here? Who else has come back?"
There is more for you to do, Barry Allen.
He feels caught when the Speed Force addresses him by name, trapped between past and present.
The old gods have no more use in this new world, but you do. Your brothers lived atop the world, but you carried it on your shoulders. You once ruled over the dead. It is now the living that need you.
Barry swallows past the lump in his throat. "What do I do?"
Another small smile appears on his mother's face, her eyes softening. She opens her mouth. "Run, Barry," she says softly. "Run."
He is thrown out of the mist and into darkness and finds himself lying down, finds himself opening his eyes.
And for the first time, Barry Allen sees Caitlin Snow.
Life after that is different for all of them. Iris and Joe run into the Labs the minute they get the news he's awake, and he finally finds out what really happened that night—the Particle Accelerator turned on, but something went wrong and it exploded, causing a large magnitude of damage…and casualties. So many people from the S.T.A.R. Labs team died that night, including their team's structural engineer, Ronnie Raymond, who had been Cisco and Caitlin's close friend.
The living need you, the Speed Force had said to him. It only takes him a day after waking up to find out why.
Barry spends nearly all his free time at S.T.A.R. Labs being poked and prodded by Caitlin and Cisco after he finds out just how fast he can move—that is, when Caitlin isn't completely infuriated with him and his apparent lack of self-awareness, glaring at him in the S.T.A.R. Labs Cortex.
"This is what we talked about, me using my speed to do good."
"We talked about you helping us contain other people who might have been affected by the Particle Accelerator explosion," she retorts, "metahumans. And aside from Clyde Mardon, we haven't found any."
"People in this city still need help." Why can't she see his perspective? He has spent a lifetime being cornered in the Underworld, alone and feared. He has the power now, in this life, to change that; he has companions, and he has the power to protect them. "And I can help them."
"We can help them," Cisco corrects excitedly from the side.
Dr. Wells' input didn't sway her in the slightest. "Don't expect me to patch you up every time you break something," Caitlin scathingly throws at him before walking away.
"Look, I told you, I'm through."
Barry can't help the twinge of annoyance in his tone, recalling Caitlin's anger that morning.
"I know," she replies, her voice crackling a little over the line, "but you need to get to S.T.A.R. Labs right now."
He wants to stay away, to stay angry, but the urgency in her tone has him running out of Jitters and then putting on his speed as soon as he was outside toward S.T.A.R. Labs. Barry doesn't want to say it, he has barely known Caitlin for three days, but—there is something magnetic about her; just her asking him to return has him running back as quickly as he can despite his resolve to stay away from them. He wonders what it is about her that pulls people into her orbit.
Maybe it just pulls him into her orbit.
Being employed at S.T.A.R. Labs means that Caitlin is at the top of her field. Everyone knows this. Barry, however, does not account for just how terrifying she truly is until he comes face-to-face with Danton Black in the S.T.A.R. Labs Cortex.
"Barry!" she calls as soon as he skids to a stop. "It's okay!"
"It is not okay!" he yells back, his eyes never leaving the meta in front of him. His shoulders heave with sudden, hurried breaths and his heartbeat has kicked into overdrive, his mouth running dry. "Black is here, and he's…just…standing there." His fight-or-flight system screeches to a halt as he questioningly turns toward her. "That's not him, is it?"
Dr. Wells wheels up behind Cisco and Caitlin. "It's one of his replicates."
He eyes the figure up and down. "How did you get it?"
He is completely unprepared for Caitlin's response.
"I grew him," she says, a proud little smile on her face when she delivers the news, and all Barry can do is stare disbelievingly at her, all of a sudden coming to terms with exactly how dangerous she is. It doesn't occur to him then, but the thought ringing in his head while she's explaining her process is that Caitlin can grow anything. Even a metahuman, it seems.
That should have been his first clue.
Her last name should have been his second.
"The living need you."
Barry knows what hopelessness feels like—he's felt it so many times in his life, in this life. Losing his speed feels like something has been torn out of him, and for a moment, he feels the hopelessness as deeply as he felt it once before, lying broken on a battlefield with someone's hand clutched in his. As Hades, he had never been able to intervene in the affairs of the living. Now that he can, he feels almost drunk off the sensation, selfish in his abilities and everything he had never had before.
"You think I'll ever wear it again?"
It seems almost strange how quickly and strongly he and Caitlin were pulled toward each other despite and after settling their differences in the beginning. He knows she's there even before he turns.
Her reply teeters between teasing and truth. "I hope so."
Heaving a deep sigh, he turns back to the glass with his suit inside. "I didn't have my speed for very long, but now that it's gone, it feels like part of me is gone too."
The Speed Force said that there is more for him to do. The living need him, but in this life, he isn't a god with powers that can literally shake the world. He isn't a ruler of a kingdom long past, but he is a hero without powers, and isn't that the same thing? Despair digs deep into him again, but Caitlin has never let him sink before, and she is determined that she never will.
"With or without your speed, you're still you, Barry."
"But I'm not," Barry immediately replies. "I'm not the best version of me. I love being the Flash. I love everything about it: the feeling of running hundreds of miles per hour, the wind and power just rushing past my face. Being able to help people." He couldn't, as Hades. But now, he can be around all these people, can help them and bond with them. He can do something before they pass, something he has never been able to do before. "I'm not sure I can live without it, Caitlin."
Not anymore.
It doesn't matter, though. Caitlin watches him as he talks about the things he misses, about the passion he has for who he is, and it is clear in her eyes even without her saying a single word that she still believes in him. She steps closer to him then, is drawn to him as he is to her and he feels that strange familiarity again in the evening light filtering into the Cortex, and for just a second, she looks like someone he knew from a long time ago.
Caitlin has hugged him before, but hiding from Blackout is the first time she slides her hand in his as the two of them crouch in the closet in the Speed Lab. She pushes him into the space first and then wedges herself between him and the door, as if determined to keep him safe, but she's shaking and afraid. They are both afraid.
The moment their fingers lace together when Blackout walks past their hiding spot, Barry feels as though he's been struck by lightning all over again. He knows that inside his heart, there is still a missing piece he's trying to find, someone he lost a long, long time ago he desperately needs back, but he cannot deny the warmth, trust, and security in his and Caitlin's friendship—relationship. He cannot deny whatever feelings he has for her, but he won't let himself think too much about it. When her grip tightens on his hand, he's thrown back thousands of years, certain now that he has seen her before, has known her before all of this.
"Not possible," Cisco immediately replies when they're scrambling to figure out how Tony Woodward managed to get out of the Pipeline while trying to put some distance between them and Blackout. "The Pipeline was designed to withstand a power outage, someone had to have let him go."
"I did." Dr. Wells rolls into the room, his blue eyes sharp behind his glasses. "I released him."
Something that stung like betrayal runs through Barry. He can't believe what he's hearing now, not with Tony's dying words echoing in his brain. "Why?"
He looks at Barry as though it is the most obvious answer in the world. "To divert the intruder's attention while we worked to restore your speed."
"You used him as a distraction?!"
"An unnecessary one, as it turns out. It seems the plan has failed."
There's a roaring in Barry's ears, a familiar anger he's felt along with the loneliness all his life, all his previous life. "I have his blood on me," he snarls. As the god of the dead, Hades knows better than anyone the feeling of blood on his hands that aren't his to hold, but it is the first time that it is literally coating his hands. The mortals may have feared him, hated him, but he had never been the one to bring about their destruction. "How could you do that?"
"You're showing a lot of sentiment for a man who tormented you as a child," Wells says mildly, watching his reaction. Barry is so angry he feels the lightning sparking at his fingertips.
"Tony might have been a bully then and now, but he didn't deserve to die."
Wells' next words cut deep, a rebuke that feels more like a thinly-veiled guilt trip. "Does Caitlin?" he asks, immediately going for the heart. "Or Cisco? Or me? Or you? I had a choice to make. Him or us. I chose us without a second thought."
Barry is sent reeling after that, his thoughts and anger and memories spiraling. "Well, all your talk about miracle cures and scientific breakthroughs," he almost spits, "but you don't care about people at all."
The scientist studies him from the wheelchair, his gaze suddenly blazing. "Maybe you care too much, Barry."
Dr. Wells has been nothing but mentoring to him, caring for him, helping him ever since he first opened his eyes in the Lab, but Barry would be lying if he said that at times, Wells didn't remind him of someone else from long ago. For some reason, the resounding crack of thunder echoes in his ears long after the conversation ends.
When Caitlin is taken by Snart and Mick Rory, Barry is left feeling helpless panic without her soothing presence around him. He realizes when she is gone just how much he has come to rely on her, whether about Flash business, medical advice, or everyday life. When he sees her later that night after Snart and Mick Rory have been taken to Iron Heights, he sweeps her up in the tightest hug they have ever shared right in the middle of CCPD.
He doesn't tell her, for one terrifying moment, how much he wanted to burn everything down, tearing the (under, something whispers to him) world apart to find her.
She doesn't tell him how the temperature dropped in that warehouse and frost suddenly crusted the tips of her fingers when Snart and Mick Rory threatened his safety in front of her.
They don't tell each other how afraid they were.
Just because they're working doesn't mean they can't have fun, and Caitlin makes sure her outfit says as much when she walks into the dive bar a few nights later while trying to pick up clues on their meta Bonnie and Clyde. She most definitely does not miss the way Barry's eyes rove down her figure when he finally sees her, an appreciative expression on his face.
"Hey," he greets her, and immediately resolves to never bring up how he is inwardly cringing and mentally horrified at how breathy his voice sounds just because she is wearing a shorter and lower-cut dress than he has ever seen on her.
"What?"
"What? Nothing," Barry replies, shaking his head. "Uh, well, you look…really…nice."
Get it together, Allen.
A thought suddenly occurs to him. "Are you cold? It's been pretty warm outside, but your sleeves seem a little long for the weath—"
"I'm fine," Caitlin hurriedly says, cutting him off. "Just the style. I like this dress."
It won't be until much later that she confesses that after her kidnapping, after her fingertips were inexplicably coated with ice, she always feels strangely cold.
Caitlin walks up to him sitting at the bar with the most docile, vacant expression he has ever seen on her face. "Barry?"
"Yeah?"
She shakes her head. "I don't feel good."
Barry quickly pays their tab and guides her out of the dive bar, holding her hair and rubbing her back when she gets sick on the pavement outside. When it's all over, he flashes her back to her apartment, his jacket on her shoulders and his arms around her to guide her in.
"Are we still running?"
He smothers a laugh. "No, we are here."
His eyes scan the rooms of her apartment as they walk farther inside, taking notice of all the potted plants she has everywhere. There are magazines on her coffee table and mugs next to them; a fruit bowl is on her kitchen table holding two pomegranates, and dried flowers sit in a potted vase as the centerpiece. There are clumps of blue flowers in smaller pots in little nooks and crannies—bookshelves, tabletops, countertops. Barry knows these flowers, has seen them so many times before, but he can't put his finger on the name just yet. It isn't just the flowers though…it's everything about Caitlin's décor that has him nearly tripping over his own feet as a deep sense of loss and longing hit him.
"Vodka and superspeed, not a good combination," she says, looking laughably miserable.
There is a blown-up photograph of a tree in her bedroom, its branches stretching out to the orange leaves that fill up the space. It had been taken in the fall, the in-between of summer and winter, sunlight and snow. The vase of red and white flowers in front of the photograph also catches his attention, and the words are out of his mouth before he knows it.
"Asphodels and red carnations." He thinks of a woman's laughter in the sun, a crown of asphodel flowers in her hair.
Caitlin grins so wide and nearly smacks him with her hands when she overexcitedly waves them in the air. "You know your plants!" She reaches behind her to tug the zipper of her dress down, and he hurriedly turns around to give her some privacy, but she just huffs and says in the most dejected voice when she can't seem to untangle herself from her clothes—
"A little help, please?"
They're forget-me-nots.
He sits in his apartment with his head in his hands, feeling the ice-cold skin of someone else's hand beneath his. Everything around him he can remember, save for the people who lay there, dying as he died. Hades knows that there are memories missing from the forever he has existed, but maybe that's for the best. He is human now, after all.
"Barry," Wells' voice comes over the line. "Do you see any walls nearby?"
Barry doesn't even have time to stop and consider his strange question. "Why?"
"Because I need you to run into one." A pause. "Or, more accurately, through one."
"What?!" Caitlin and Cisco's reactions are in perfect synch, the horror in their tones matching Barry's gut precisely. Wells ignores them.
"If you vibrate at the natural frequency of air, your body, your cells will be in a state of excitement that should allow you to phase right through that wall, leaving the bomb on the other side."
"Should?!" Something niggles in the back of Barry's head, something important, but the prospect of having to either successfully run through a wall or die like a fly splattered on it and the people held hostage by the Trickster pushes every other thought away.
Wells' voice is steady. "You can do this. I believe in you."
"I can't."
"Listen to me, Barry. Breathe. Feel the air. Feel that wind on your face. Feel the ground, your feet lifting you up, pushing you forward."
Is it his imagination? Wells' voice becomes almost hypnotic, everything falling away from Barry as he runs and runs and concentrates on running and on what Wells is saying. "And the lightning—Barry, feel the lightning. Feel its power. Its electricity, pumping through your veins, crackling through you, traveling to every nerve in your body like a shock. You're no longer you now. You're part of something greater. Part of a speed force."
It's those two words that snap Barry out of his trance, like being doused by a bucket of cold water. He hasn't told anyone about the Speed Force up until now, and it can't be a coincidence that Wells uses those specific words. Also…the emotion that he can't contain as he is speaking into Barry's ear, as though those feelings are something close to him, something that belongs to him, not just from watching Barry, and all of a sudden, Barry has a sickening thought that Wells is hiding more than he lets on. He thinks back to the incident with Blackout and how Wells reminded him of someone else, and as he gears up to run into the giant tanker in front of him, he resolves to find out what, exactly, his mentor is hiding.
Caitlin steps out of the elevator on a bright summer morning with at least two jackets on. Barry would have missed it, but he just happened to grab his coffee in time to catch her making her way to her lab. Warning bells blare inside his head as he reaches out to her with his free hand, putting his palm on her forehead to feel her temperature.
"You okay?" he asks worriedly, eyeing the layers she's wearing. She smiles at him, but it's less than half-convincing.
"I'm fine, Barry."
His hand falls from her face, but then he's reaching for her, and he's too fast for her to react, and—he nearly drops her ice-cold hand in shock.
Any feelings the two of them have for each other stop being a mystery when Hannibal Bates, as Barry, kisses Caitlin in the med bay at S.T.A.R. Labs. She drops her forehead onto her desk after the meta is incarcerated and thinks about just how screwed she is, how she managed to fall in so deep with him in the past few months without realizing it.
And Barry—well, when he's doing a security sweep of the Labs and finds the tape of that afternoon, the ache inside him flares up again, but this time, it's accompanied by a hot spark of jealousy and anger. When Hades would get angry, the Underworld felt his wrath. He stops then, wondering why, exactly, he feels so much rage and a strange possessiveness when he watches the tape.
"Has anyone heard from Dr. Wells?" Cisco asks around the lollipop he stuck in his mouth. "I haven't seen him all morning."
"I think he called out sick today," Caitlin calls from the med bay. Barry frowns next to Cisco, exchanging a look with him. For as long as he's known him, Dr. Wells has never taken a sick day. Ever.
Just as he's about to respond, the console starts beeping, and the blood drains from Cisco's face. "It's the basement," he says, "something's breached our security down there."
Barry doesn't waste any time—he flashes into his suit and makes his way down, only to see a swirling portal of white and blue, and he lurches when he realizes they're the exact same shades he saw in the Speed Force all those months ago. Cisco and Caitlin run up next to him, all three of them stopping in their tracks when two figures emerge. One of them is dressed in all black, a Flash suit that strangely matches Barry's and is surrounded by blue lightning, but it is the second person who causes their hearts to pound and their mouths to run dry.
"Hello, Hades," Wells says.
As Team Flash stares at the two intruders, Wells nods at the figure next to him. The person dips his head and runs back into the portal, closing behind him.
Wells finally turns his attention back to the team, his gaze flickering between each of their faces. "Didn't expect a warm welcome," he finally mutters with a sardonic grin.
Cisco finds his voice first. "Dr...Wells?"
Taking his glasses off and wiping the lenses, Wells ignores him and looks straight into Barry's eyes. "I've been looking for you."
"How are you standing up?!" Cisco exclaims, walking closer to peer at him. Breaking eye contact, Wells turns back to the engineer, peering closely at him.
"I didn't realize you would be here too, Hephaestus."
It's as if that moment was an enormous sheet of glass, and that name shattered it. Everything happens at once, everyone snapping out of their stupor; Cisco's eyes roll to the back of his head as he collapses to the ground, Barry catching him with his speed just before he hits the floor. Caitlin's hands are on him in an instant, but Cisco jerks awake, looking around the room like a frightened animal. Wells glances down at him.
"Easy there."
"What…did you just call him?" Barry askes, his voice quiet. He hadn't thought there would be others like him, reincarnated at this time, hadn't thought there would be those he knew from so long ago. He thought he had been alone, but the minute he sees Cisco's confusion wiped from his face is the minute he knows Cisco's—Hephaestus'—memories have been restored.
His own memories, too. Unbidden, he remembers his helm of darkness, handed to him by the person, the god, standing in front of him. It is an old relic by now, probably worn away by the ages, but it comes back to him as though Hephaestus was standing in front of him yesterday, proudly looking over his work while the Cyclops was off delivering their other pieces to Zeus and Poseidon.
He stills, the memories of his brothers flooding back to him. The good moments, the awful moments—he remembers them. Priming, something whispers in the back of his head, memories that lead to other memories, leading to more memories. Wells looks back at him then, something like amusement dancing in his eyes. "How much do you remember, Hades?" he asks softly.
"…Hades?" Cisco says hesitantly, snapping Barry's attention back to him. He puts a careful hand on his shoulder.
"You okay?"
Cisco takes a moment before responding. "As okay as anyone can be finding out they were a Greek god in a past life," he tries to joke. "Killer headache though." He looks at Barry more closely, almost in awe, almost in fright. "I can't believe…you're here. You're you."
Barry chuckles then, clapping his shoulder again. He tries not to think about the last time he saw him, how his body had been fading into oblivion. Now knowing Hephaestus' memories isn't going to overload Cisco's very much human brain, he and a silent Caitlin lift Cisco up off the ground so he can finally focus on the matters at hand.
"You still haven't told us who you are yet," he says to the Wells standing by and watching them.
Wells clears his throat. "You can call me Harry. I'm the Wells from Earth…well, let's call it Earth-2, but you may know me better…" he grins, trailing off for dramatic effect. "As a Fate."
Caitlin has been pale since the basement alarms went off, but now, her face is stark-white.
"We usually don't cross into other Earths, but—"
"You mean there are others?!" Cisco pipes up excitedly. The Fate sighs.
"There's a Fate, a…Harrison Wells in every reality. When the war of the gods ended, we were scattered, one Fate for every Earth, but we remained connected. We are able to gain knowledge that other Fates on other Earths have, even though crossing is a taboo since every Earth already has its own version of us.
"Something happened to the Fate of this Earth," he explains. "We know when one of us are injured, or worse, and we know that something is very, very wrong, so I came to see."
"Wait a minute," Cisco says, brows furrowing. Barry can now see it in the way Hades had seen it, had seen the way Hephaestus had worked, puzzling over a problem thousands of years ago just as he is doing now. "But Dr. Wells is still alive. How do you know that something's wrong?"
The Fate looks at him for another long moment, as though the words are the hardest things he has ever had to say. "Dr. Wells is alive, yes, but your Fate is dead. That's not a Fate walking around in that body."
A shocked silence falls over the basement. Barry runs his hand through his hair, and Cisco's wide-eyes look like he's about to cry from shock or betrayal—he isn't sure yet. Caitlin looks moments away from passing out.
Metahumans, yes, this she can believe. She's seen them, is partially responsible for their creation, even, but she knows how they work, how they tick. She's a doctor. But to ask her to believe that reincarnation is really a thing, that her best friends are Hades and Hephaestus, names she's heard in books she read growing up, that standing in front of her is a Fate? She ignores the sharp pang she suddenly feels, the small voice that whispers, you belong with them, and wildly tries to grab on to something, anything that makes sense in her rapidly-shrinking world.
The other small part of her feels a strange sort of elation that the person she secretly has feelings for was the god of the dead.
And somewhere deep inside herself, almost like a memory, she sees him on his knees in front of her, offering her a kingdom and three pomegranate seeds.
"Are there any others?" Barry asks, careful with his words. Harry studies him from over his glasses before answering.
"We don't know," he finally responds. "We are usually able to tell a god's true form when we see them, but I've only seen you and Cisco and Caitlin so far."
"And Caitlin…she's…"
"All things considered, she's normal."
He deliberately doesn't bring up the strange flickering he sees when he looks at her, as though her form is fading in and out of existence, tinged by blue. When there's something a Fate thinks is strange…Harry lets that thought go, knowing only that Caitlin Snow is more than she appears to be.
Caitlin has felt like an outsider so many times in her life. While Barry, Cisco, and Harry are hard at work keeping Harry's existence under wraps from Dr. Wells and figure out who he really is inside the body of a Fate, she needs to get it together.
Okay.
Her best friends are Greek gods reincarnated.
Her boss and mentor is possibly dead and has been dead for heaven knows how long.
There are multiple Earths in existence.
And she has powers. Even now, she can feel the ice flowing through her veins, can feel how her fingers burn as frost coats her fingertips. Sometimes, she has flashbacks, sees things in her head and doesn't know if they're memories or figments of her imagination. She needs answers, and Barry and Cisco and…Harry…aren't going to be the ones to give them to her; she needs to talk to someone more normal, someone smart and reliable and isn't a reincarnated Olympic god. Despite Harry's words, she desperately wants to believe there's still a shred of something normal in her life, that he isn't who Harry says he is.
Raising her hand, she presses the doorbell only after a slight hesitation. The door in front of her opens, and Dr. Wells, her employer and mentor for the past few years, the genius behind the Particle Accelerator, greets her in the doorway.
"Caitlin," he says, mildly surprised. "It's getting late. Is everything okay?"
"Yeah." The word springs from her lips, the easiest lie she's ever told. "Yeah, I just—I wanted to ask you something."
He wheels his wheelchair out of the doorway, letting her inside the lavish suite. She doesn't move farther in though; she stays close by the door, careful, guarded. Caitlin licks her dry lips.
"Dr. Wells…" she isn't even sure what to ask first. "Do you believe that there are different realities, different Earths besides ours?"
If he's surprised by her question, it doesn't show. "I've never discounted that theory, and there is more than enough evidence to suggest such a thing."
"What about reincarnation? What about old folklore and fairytales that might have taken root from reality?"
Even to her own ears, Caitlin sounds crazy. She has always been a logical person, approaching things from a practical standpoint. She has a lower tolerance for bullshittery, but this is completely uncharted territory. Dr. Wells, though, doesn't immediately write her off. Instead, he just looks carefully at her.
"Why do you ask?"
The part of her that has trusted this man for so long wants to be honest, to let it all out, but something holds her back from telling him everything. Instead, she fishes around for an answer.
"Nothing. I just—I met someone recently who…I think I've seen them before, a long time ago, but I…Dr. Wells," she finally says, clearing her throat. "I think I'm a metahuman."
Now this is where he straightens in his wheelchair, his gaze sharpening. "Show me."
Caitlin can't beckon her powers to her at will. They respond to her emotions, her fear, her anxiety, her hurt, but she is more than aptly afraid at this point—afraid of the future, uncertain of what's happening around her, her emotions crest and glittering frost crusts her entire hand, frozen mist falling from her fingers. Something like a smile flickers on Wells' face, looking more determined, more excited than she has ever seen him. It sends unpleasant shivers up her spine, warning bells blaring in her head.
"Tell me, Caitlin," he says. "Are pomegranates still your favorite fruit? Do you still grow forget-me-nots in your apartment? Does Barry seem familiar to you? As though you've known him, even before he was brought in after the lightning strike?"
The questions ring through her, a resounding yes echoing in her head, but she clamps her mouth shut. Even back then, she knew she had seen him before, but it seemed too strange to say at the time, and now, with all the new pieces on the board, Caitlin is even more afraid of the answer.
Her mistake is taking too long to respond. Wells can already see it written on her face, see her hesitance, and instinct makes her take a step back, putting her hand on the door handle. He takes off his glasses, and before she knows it, yellow lighting, a pale imitation of Barry's red, flashes in front of her eyes and then Wells is standing in front of her.
"I've been looking for you, Persephone."
"I can't reach Caitlin," Barry murmurs, looking at her contact on his phone. It isn't like her to miss work or to be late without calling in; he has already tried her apartment, but no one was home. Late in the afternoon into the evening now without hearing from her the entire day, his panic from when Snart and Mick Rory took her starts to surface. Cisco frowns, taking the lollipop out of his mouth right when Harry runs into the Cortex, the S.T.A.R. Labs alarms shrieking in protest.
"Cisco, what's happening?!" he yells across the room as Cisco flies over to the console, rapidly entering a series of commands into the system. His face goes white.
"It's the metas in the Pipeline," he responds slowly. "They're out."
One moment Barry is standing upright, the next, he is sent to his knees. He struggles to look up and sees Harry's eyes glowing with a strange light, Cisco's head is his hands as though bracing against a headache. Years, millennia of memories come crashing back to him, of a woman—no, a goddess'—lovely smile, like the sun. He remembers a gentle touch on his arm, his face, and his breath is stolen away when finally, finally he remembers her.
"Persephone," he whispers, and the part of him that has been missing for so long, the part Hades has been missing, is finally complete. It doesn't surprise him that her beautiful face belongs to the woman he has felt attracted to since he first opened his eyes, as though something had pulled them together since the very beginning.
Another window pops up on the screen, and his blood runs cold.
"Hades," Wells, their Wells, hisses. "I've been waiting for you a long time. Come down and meet your fate, brother."
Zeus.
"Or else—" he smirks, the camera panning to the side, and there she is, the face he's waited lifetimes to see, truly see, held in the grip of one of the many metas he himself had put into the Pipeline that Wells freed. "You remember what happened the first time, don't you, brother?"
The thing is, now that his memories are restored, he remembers everything like it happened only yesterday, not lifetimes ago, playing like a movie in front of his eyes. His heart pounds as hard as it did the day he couldn't find her—find Persephone—anywhere, only to receive a summons from Zeus, asking him to return to the mortal realm. The early fall air had been crisp, only starting to cool; the grass starting to brown, the leaves a spectacular show of reds and oranges and yellows and browns.
There, in the middle of the flowers Persephone herself had grown, she is held captive by Ares, with Apollo and Artemis on either side of them. Demeter stands to the side, crying with Athena's sword at her throat, and then there is the mighty Zeus, looking every bit as pale and weak as Hades himself feels.
"No," Persephone grits out, struggling against her captors; goddess of growth, yet with a core of steel and the will of a queen. She looks her husband in the eyes, pleading. "Don't come for me, stay away!"
"What do you want," Hades hisses. "Brother."
Zeus steps closer to him until they are only separated by a few feet, piercing blue eyes boring into hardened green ones. "I'm sure you've felt it. Our powers grow weaker. The mortals are offering less prayers. We must do something to ensure that we regain our strength, that we survive."
It is a truth Hades has known, has seen, has felt in his bones. As the centuries pass and generations come and go, he can feel the waning of their time—as the god of the dead, he knows this better than anyone. Kingdoms rise and fall, and as he and his wife come together to part and then finally to be together again, on and on through the centuries, the world keeps turning. It is Hades' solace, that eventually, all things return to his kingdom, and his kingdom would, in time, be all things.
"We need people who are faithful believers, who will offer prayers at our altars. Those who know the old ways are now in your kingdom. You need to release them."
Hades' answer is automatic; any surprise and fury he feels is squashed underneath a false calm. "No. You know we cannot allow that to happen. The dead are where they need to be. As are the living."
Zeus take in his words, then lets out a mockery of a sigh. "You're right, brother. You're absolutely right." His gaze flickers back toward Persephone, who is beginning to shake. Her skin is turning pale, her lips turning a cold shade of blue as frost covers her hands and creep up her arms.
"Persephone," Hades breathes, halted by Ares' sword.
"It was…" her voice has taken on a strange hollowness, even as crystals slip down her face where her tears had been. "He killed Khione. Used her blood to poison me."
The Olympian only shrugs. "Killing a lesser god to achieve our goals is justified in the end."
Hades ignores him. "Your body is adapted to warmer weather…" he runs through the logic as quickly as he can. "You're already weak, and with the waning prayers…"
"It's poison to her, yes, yes," Zeus cuts in. "The cold is piercing her bones. Her body is starting to freeze from the inside out, and soon, she won't be the queen of the dead anymore—she'll be one of your subjects, unless you open the gate to let the dead, our faithful, back into the mortal realm."
Persephone's eyes are a startling blue now. "No," she growls. Her cold gaze locks onto Zeus, her frozen vocal cords grinding out her next words. "The humans don't pray to us because they need us. They pray to us because we need them, and they know that. Now, they are free to choose."
Her heart is a field of flowers, raw, wild, beautiful, looking at her husband once more. "So let them choose."
With a single exhale, mist coming out of her frozen blue lips, she slumps in Ares' and Artemis' hold.
Hades shakes with rage, looking at his wife's lifeless body. "We are gods, brother," he snarls, "But even gods meet their end, and I will make sure you meet yours, in this life, today."
Barry, Cisco, and Harry cautiously make their way down to the basement, now overcrowded with metas and Dr. Wells with a captive Caitlin at the helm.
"I've been looking for you a long, long time," Wells says. "Ever since I was reborn and the Fate in my time found me. Did you know, I was reborn hundreds of years after you? I killed that Fate too. And when I learned who I truly was, I learned to harness my own lightning to create another speed force to come back. It took me years to figure it out, but it was worth it. I found you; I thought I'd just end you when you were eleven, but your mother got in the way. Your dirty mortal father and mother paid the price for your insolence, brother. You would have died that night if my powers had been fully restored, but my speed force didn't hold.
"But now, I've learned to master my lightning, just as I taught you how to adapt to yours. I took over the Fate in this world, this time, at just the right moment after the explosion, right when you came into the picture. You raised me an army of new Olympians, and the new Olympus will thank you for that." He gestures to the metas surrounding them, and Barry can almost see their faces now, all his old brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and everyone else in between, all the old gods that the humans had learned only cared for them as entertainment in their very, very long lives.
Years of trauma and grief and lifetimes of a need for vengeance pulse in Barry like a storm, lightning striking the ground again and again. The memories of his very last battle, the one that had destroyed all the gods and ended the Olympian line, replay in his mind, and he watches Caitlin, afraid that she will do the very same thing that had brought about her death the first time.
Her face looks stricken, shadows under her eyes from her sleepless night and those hours in between when her memories came back to her, but with no one to truly help her through the process. She looks at him as though stuck between the past and present, as Caitlin, as Persephone, looking at him as both Barry and Hades.
"You were the one responsible for the fall of Olympus, brother," Wells says with a calm of someone who has already won. "And now, you will see it rebuilt on your bones."
The first meta immediately strikes, but Barry dodges out of the way, the meta already too slow for the Flash. He moves to tie him up, but before he can blink, Wells is in front of him, and an unexpected right hook throws him backwards. He recovers quickly, jumping to his feet and rushes in for an attack only to be stopped by Caitlin stepping in his way.
"Wait, it's me!" she cries. "Please don't hurt me!"
Too slow. Barry is hit with déjà vu as she smirks, kicking him square in the chest. Hannibal Bates smiles back at him, his face still just as creepy as Barry remembers, his features melted like candlewax bundled in a clear plastic wrap like a piece of candy. Another meta comes at him, and it takes him more effort to keep up with her hits when Wells joins in, forcing him to fend off two enemies at the same time. From the corner of his eye, he sees Cisco and Harry raise what he can see are the prototype heat and cold the guns in their hands, but Wells immediately steps back, not out of breath even as Barry is panting.
He puts a vibrating hand toward Caitlin's throat, and Barry's stomach drops. "Try anything, and she dies," he says, still with a smile.
Left with no choice, Cisco and Harry stand down, and Zeus wastes no time. He lifts Barry up by the scruff of his cowl and lands punch after punch on him, despite Barry's best attempts at defending himself—he is just too fast, having the time and experience Barry just doesn't have as the Flash, not yet. He manages to get some hits in, though, but every time he does, it's as though Wells never gets tired, never lets up, and knows exactly where to hit to make him hurt.
His gaze slides over to Caitlin, whose face is full of worry and fear; his concentration slips for just a moment, and then Wells delivers a hit to his left arm that shatters bone with a sickening crunch.
"Barry!" Caitlin shrieks, and Barry's head is spinning, his vision white. His knees hit the floor, his body swaying, but then Wells—Zeus—steps around him to strike him one more time, bringing his foot up and smashing it down onto his ankle.
Barry may have screamed. He isn't sure. He can't be sure of anything through the haze of pain.
There's a satisfied smile on Wells' face now, but he takes a step back as a very familiar meta approaches him instead. Kyle Nimbus looks down at the fallen Flash with a malicious grin.
"This is payback, Flash," he says with no small amount of satisfaction. "Thanks for helping me become a god."
Thousands of years ago, she had been in the exact same position she's in now—a pawn on the board, helpless, used only as a hostage, a bargaining chip. Zeus has always been the schemer, the strategist, ruthless and selfish, and, above all, arrogant. Entitled. Persephone knows this, knows that even posing as Wells, that hasn't changed.
But Caitlin has learned. She isn't helpless, and she refuses to be used as a pawn to lure Barry in, refuses to stand by as the people and city she loves are in danger. She remembers that terrifying moment Barry crashed into the Cortex after his first encounter with The Mist, the moment she had to plunge a syringe straight into his lung; she remembers every time he almost died trying to save Central City, every time the sun shone or the rain fell and he smiled at her, and she would die one more time before she allowed him to.
She could feel it building—her fear, her terror, her panic and her anger, anger at Barry's injuries, anger at Zeus and his deception, anger at the mortal metas who thought themselves gods, anger at her captors, anger that she was reduced to just being a piece on the proverbial chessboard—she could feel the ice rushing in her blood then, as surely as sunlight and life did, could feel a blizzard gathering in her hands, feel her eyes freeze over with her powers.
Khione had died so that she could die. Persephone would make damn sure that Zeus would regret ever killing the goddess, using her blood as poison.
Kyle Nimbus begins to disburse into that sickening green mist in front of them, ready to choke Barry to death with his poison gas and intent on succeeding this time, but then Caitlin lets all her pent-up power explode out of her, instantly encasing him, already half-gaseous, and the metas holding onto her in enormous blocks of ice
Zeus turns to her, enraged. "What have you done?!" he roars, but he is too late. With Caitlin free, Cisco immediately springs into action, firing the cold gun right at his feet and encasing them in ice, trapping him long enough for Caitlin to bring her hands up and throw out twin blasts of ice at him. Cisco turns his gun on the other metas trying to escape, trying to fight back and freezing them in place, but Caitlin has a bigger job to do.
It's as though some sort of reserve opens up in her; she pulls and pulls and pulls at the frozen river she feels inside of her until her enemy is standing in a grave of ice, expanding in at least six feet in any direction. Even then, she isn't naïve enough to think the ice will hold him forever; speed and ice are opposites, and with his power at his disposal, it is entirely possible he can still break through the ice.
She doesn't care. She looks at Barry just a few feet away, on the floor in pain, and the part of her that is fully Caitlin kicks in, medical facts running through her brain as she calculates just how long she has to set his bones for them to heal properly once his speed healing kicks in, or…the alternative is too painful to consider. Harry and Cisco rush to Barry's side after they've taken care of all the other metas, and they haul him up to the med bay.
With Joe and CCPD on the way to incarcerate all the frozen metas at Iron Heights, Caitlin's deft fingers work as quickly as they can to put Barry back together. She works through the exhaustion of not sleeping the entire night, through the adrenaline of battle and everything that's happened, through the myriad of thoughts crowding her head, works through the blood and bone and tears and it is dawn by the time she's finished. The room smells of blood, the thick iron scent heavy in the air, but they immediately brush the thought aside when Barry finally opens his eyes after the sun has started climbing up from the horizon.
His eyes search for hers first, not resting until he sees her, his body immediately sinking back into the cot afterwards.
"Feeling okay?" Cisco asks. Barry nods, licking his dry lips.
"You guys?"
"Everyone's good, Allen," Harry reassures him. "Your foster father and his squads are rounding everyone up in the basement. He'll be back to see you after."
Barry hums, making some sort of sound of approval. He's so tired, all of them are tired after the night they just had, but there are questions that need answering. "What happened to Zeus? How did he get to be this way?"
"The only explanation I can think of," Harry says, "is that when he killed the Fate, his memories leaked into him all at once, and…"
"No human brain can hold all of a god's memories," Cisco finishes. "He probably went insane after that. All that anger, after everything that's happened, he couldn't handle it all, not as a mortal."
The words weigh into their bones, a millennia-old feud, finally at some sort of end. Barry wants to sigh in relief, but his eyes meet Caitlin's again, who had stayed silent the entire exchange. Harry follows his line of sight, reading the unspoken question.
"We knew there was a chance she was in this time, but we couldn't find her," Harry murmurs. "And now we know why. With Khione in her blood, it distorted her spirit, and we couldn't see her, not when we were looking specifically for Persephone."
The atmosphere shifts then, into something softer, something quieter. Cisco takes the cue, stretching. "Breakfast, I think. Harry, you're on McMuffin duty with me."
Warm light streams in from the early sun as he and Cisco leave the two of them alone in the empty Cortex.
It's not earth-shattering like he thought it would be—it's a quiet peace when Barry and Caitlin face each other again, Hades lying in the med bay cot with Persephone looking down at him in the early morning light. They feel the past and present crashing together in a cosmic display of lights, and Barry feels caught, all at once, between their memories and reality as he drowns in those same hazel eyes as he had a millennia before.
"Hello," he whispers, lifting a hand up to her cheek. She lets out something between a sob and a laugh, her hands cradling his.
"Hello," she says.