The breech was closer to the ground this time, she staggered out of it rather than fell, tripping for a few steps until she caught herself on a nearby table. Her hand came away with a fine layer of dust, and she shook away the residual dizziness to look around.

It was STAR Labs, but it was nothing like any STAR Labs she'd seen so far. The lights were off, the only illumination provided by blue-tinted light of the breech. There were cobwebs in the corners, and it was incredibly still, the breech behind her the only movement, but even that writhed in uncanny silence.

The emblem was an inconvenient size, too big to stick in her pocket, but it was something to show Zoom to prove she'd done what he told her to and she couldn't leave it behind. She tucked it into the waistline of her pants at her hip, to free her hands.

Her footsteps as she made her way out of the room and into the hallway were muted by the dust that clung at the edges of the hallways, and she didn't find any lights on. The power to the building had been cut, if she had to guess, and she had to make her way along with one hand on the wall and the other outstretched, trusting her knowledge of the building to lead her to the cortex. If anyone was here, she would find them in that room.

The skylights high above her head let light stream into the cortex, even with all the lights off. One lone chair remained behind the desk that usually contained the computers, but now there was nothing. She trailed her fingers down the surface as she rounded it, leaving long swipes in the dust that filled over with frost. The medical room was empty too, save for a few shelves that looked like they couldn't be moved.

If Flash had a base of operations, this wasn't it.

She dropped into the chair behind the computer desk as the chill settled deep in her bones, wrapping her arms around herself in lieu of having anything to pull the heat out of. She was assuming there even was a Flash in this world, and part of her said she should walk back through the breech, write this universe off as nothing important. Curious, she stood up and made her way into the medical room. With the tables cleared away, the windows were the most eye-catching feature of the room, and the dust rose in little puffs around her feet as she made her way over to look out. She'd half-expected to find a twisted skeleton of a city, everything as abandoned as STAR Labs seemed to be, but the city looked the same as it always had. Below, people went about their business under the bright sunshine.

Leaning against the window, Killer Frost weighed her options. The first and most appealing option was going back to the breech, crossing back through and try her luck with finding her home like that.

She could go and sit by the breech and wait for Zoom to take her home. She tried not to think about the fact that he hadn't reached out, even though she had been through the breech three more times since he had dropped her in a different universe. For all she knew, she was getting farther from her home universe every time she went through the breech and he didn't know how to get to her anymore.

Or she could go out and see if this world had a Flash.

She was starting to question what that would accomplish. She had proof she had killed a speedster, that was all Zoom had wanted, killing more would make him happier, prove she was still worthy of his trust, but...

But she didn't really want to kill the Flash. Not when the Flashes she kept running into weren't even the one she was supposed to be hunting and they hadn't threatened her, hadn't done anything to deserve being killed. Usually they had done the opposite, and-

A flicker of light in the corner of her eye made her head snap toward it, but there was nothing when she turned her head. She swiped away the frost that had resulted from leaning on the window, but there was nothing there, not even the light trail of lightning that typically accompanied a speedster's departure.

Sighing, Killer Frost turned around, about to go back to the breech and try her luck with another universe when she felt the crackle in the air that she had come to associate with the arrival of a speedster racing along her skin, the pressing feeling as the air compressed itself, but there was something wrong. This one was too fast, even for Zoom.

There was a sound like a small explosion when he skidded to a halt, taking most of the room to accomplish that, but even then he didn't stop moving, constantly shifting in place, moving from side to side and shaking all over until the edges of his silhouette were blurred. From what she could make out, he was staring at her, and he might have said something, but all that reached her ears was a high-pitched static, like a recording on fast forward.

"Flash?" she asked, taking a step forward. In a flicker of movement, too fast for her eyes to process, he vanished, but the static feeling on her skin, like a storm brewing, didn't leave and she turned around. He had only moved to the other side of the room. "Barry?" she tried.

There was definitely a reaction this time, and he flickered out of sight into a blur of lightning and reappeared inches in front of her, only barely halting in time to prevent crashing into her. The realization that he couldn't control it entered her head as abruptly as if someone had hit her with it.

She set a hand on his chest and built ice around him, slowing him down a little. Flash's head snapped down, then back up in a blur, and more of the high-pitch static whine came out of his mouth as he spoke too quickly for her to understand. She couldn't even make out enough of the tone to determine if he was warning her off or pleading for mercy.

"It's okay," she told him. However easy it would have been to kill this version of Barry, she rationalized that even Zoom would not have killed him. Stolen his speed yes, if he had gotten that trick to work while she was gone, but this one didn't seem to be in control of himself enough to actually fight. Zoom was many things, but murderer of those who couldn't oppose him and wouldn't get in his way wasn't one of them.

He touched the place where a perfect imprint of her hand was visible on his chest in ice, then looked up at her, the motions little more than wisps of lightning. More of the high-pitched noises came out of his mouth, but no intelligible words.

"Can you understand me?" she asked him.

More of the sounds that were closer to static than conversation. He might have nodded, but it was lost in the general vibration that encased him. She collected one of his hands into hers, careful to minimize the heat she was taking. She hardly needed to regulate. Even for a speedster, he was burning up, the patch on his chest already melted and rapidly evaporating.

"Barry," she spoke as quickly as she could, "you have to slow down."

She might have been imagining it, but she thought the flickering around him decreased before it sped up again.

"Can you slow down?" she asked, then realized the error inherent in asking simply that and took a step back. "Okay, go to the windows for yes, the shelves for no."

The lightning trailed him as he flickered out of sight, reappearing by the shelves.

"Do you want to?" asked Killer Frost.

A breeze ruffled through her hair as he switched sides of the room.

"I can help you to slow back down," she attempted, "Will you trust me?"

There was flicker of lightning in front of her, then he reappeared by the windows before returning to the space in front of her.

Setting both hands on his shoulders, she took a second to relish the warmth that seeped up her arms before steeling herself for what she was about to do. "This might hurt," she warned, and pulled, hard.

She had been a doctor once, a lifetime ago. It was part of the reason Zoom had chosen her. In addition to having a useful gift, she could patch either of them up after a run-in they couldn't escape or run circles around. Zoom had always healed quickly, but by time he had taken her through the breech he had gotten good enough that the only injuries were gone by the time he returned to his lab, so she hadn't used these skills in months and cryogenics had never been her specialty, but at this point she'd had enough first-hand experience to almost make up for that.

She knew what she was doing, in theory at least, taking heat to slow down the cell functions without allowing ice crystals to form and rupture the cells. She'd never actually tried to freeze someone without hurting them, it wasn't the sort of thing Zoom had favored, but the principle should hold.

It was agonizingly slow work, and were it anyone but a speedster, it wouldn't have worked. If it was anyone but a speedster, she wouldn't need to be doing this. Several times she had to stop completely to let things come to equilibrium, but after several minutes, she looked up at him and he was in focus, slowed down enough that she could see an expression somewhere between shock and awe.

She didn't dare take her hands off for fear that if she stopped completely, he would revert back to that faster state.

"How did you do that?" Barry asked, voice hoarse with disuse.

She drummed her fingers on his shoulders, ignoring the question for the moment. "If I let go, will you start speeding up again?"

He hesitated, then shook his head, slow and deliberate.

Carefully, she took her hands off him. The flickers of lightning were still there, sprinting him up and down him, and he was still shaking ever-so-slightly, but he showed no signs of vanishing into the speed again. "I have powers too," she told him.

Barry sat down, stirring up a cloud of dust, and slumped with his head on his knees. "More like a curse." Now that she could see him and not just the general impression, she realized he didn't look like the Flash. Instead of the suit, he was wearing street clothes that were burned in multiple places, and he was barefoot and far too thin.

Ignoring the dust, she sat down next to him. "I thought I was going crazy," he confessed, "no one knew it was me. No one could hear me."

He was starting to vibrate again, and she leaned against him and drew out more heat, pulling the kinetic energy back down, slowing him down again.

"For a while after the accelerator exploded, I didn't know I had powers," she told him, voice soft, and he picked his head up to look at her. Something about this moment felt too fragile and precious to break with loud voices, "Then I was locked in a freezer. I thought I was going to die. I should have died, but instead I woke up the next morning able to do incredible things."

He looked away, drawing something in the dust on his other side. "But you can control them."

"Not at first," she answered, "I froze everything and everyone I touched for weeks, but now-"

There was enough moisture in the air that she could easily pull together a snowflake the size of her palm. Tipping her hand, she showed it to Barry.

"How did you manage?" Barry asked. He had started leaning into her, but he didn't seem entirely aware of the gesture, and she dropped her head onto his shoulder. She hadn't had a chance to just sit with a speedster while she had her powers since she'd left her home universe.

"Someone gave me a reason to use my gift," she replied, "he wasn't afraid of me, of what I might do to him." If nothing else, she owed Zoom for that much, even if she had been terrified the first time she'd seen him.

She'd been hiding from everyone, scared of hurting them, when Zoom had walked through the wall in a flurry of blue lightning and said hello. She still didn't know what had brought him to her, if he'd been looking for her or had stumbled on her by accident.

She'd scrambled backward, holding up her hands to ward off the man who'd spoken, crying out for him to stay away and not sure if she was warning or pleading. He was dressed entirely in black, with a face like death, and blue lightning was still crackling around him where he had just walked through the wall.

He'd laughed then and came closer, crouching before her where she had pressed herself into the corner. "Are you frightened of me?" he'd asked, the double-tone of his voice resonating through the room. He came a little closer then, close enough she could feel the heat trailing off him. She'd had to catch her breath and yank her hand back where she had started to reach out, for him, for that heat.

"Interesting," he'd observed, and she remembered one hand reached out to catch her chin, pull her eyes up to his, and she gasped at the warmth pouring out of him, tugging more in. It felt amazing, like water after a desert, filling a need she hadn't known she had.

"There's a good girl," he'd soothed, "you won't hurt me."

He had slipped the other hand onto her wrist, released her chin and stood, pulling her with him. Using that leverage, he pulled her to him. She went willingly, wrapping an arm around him, desperate for the heat. So far he seemed to be fine, unlike anyone else she'd touched since the accident, and she had allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe this curse was lifting.

"I'm Zoom," he'd told her, "and you're going to be just fine now." And then he'd started running, taking her with him.

"You're going to be okay, Barry Allen," she said, pulling her thoughts back to the present, "one step at a time."

"Thank you," Barry breathed back, and let his head rest on top of hers.

How long they stayed like that, she didn't know. Long enough for the sun to noticeably change positions in the sky, and long enough that she stopped actively pulling heat from him, trusting he could stay at that speed without her interference, but without a watch or clock in sight, it was impossible to say.

"Where have you been?" he asked, some time later, "I haven't heard of anyone with ice powers before now."

She braced herself and stood up. He didn't immediately start speeding up when she stopped touching him, which she took as a good sign. "I'll show you," she offered.

Barry took the hand up and nearly toppled into her, legs not used to operating at human speeds. She caught him as well as she could, but he nearly sent them both back to the floor.

"Better?" she asked after a second, when neither of them was in danger of falling over.

He was smiling when she looked up, the same sort of perplexed smile she remembered from a couple of universes ago, when she didn't quite remember what a smile felt like on her face, and her heart broke just a little for him.

"Come on," she urged, knowing it was better not to draw attention to the expression, and started toward the breech room.

Barry made no move to pull away as they walked down the hallway, even though his footing was perfectly steady. She understood that clinginess, after not being able to touch anyone for less than two weeks, she'd been desperate, she could only imagine how much worse it would have been if it had taken Zoom months to find her.

"That is where I've been," she said when they arrived at the room containing the breech, and shot out a bolt of ice at the space she remembered it being. The breech writhed into life in the empty space, flooding the room with a soft blue light.

"What is it?" he asked.

"My way home, I hope," she replied. It was safe to tell him that much, at least.

"I have to go," she slipped out of his grasp and the chill came flooding back into her, "find someone you trust to keep you grounded, but Barry," she waited until his eyes, starkly green in the glow of the tinted light, caught hers, "don't be afraid to run." She turned and started for the breech.

Something snagged her hand, and she had to look back, even though every moment spent near the breech increased the likelihood that Zoom would find her. Barry was holding her fingers tightly, anchoring her against the tug of the breech. "Don't go," he said, the words just slightly too fast, "please."

It was nothing like when Zoom gave orders, but she wanted to do what he said. She could stay here, in this universe, with this Barry and be happy. She could give him a reason to keep slowing back down, and he would keep the chill at bay.

But then, Zoom was out there in some other universe, and he wouldn't stop until he'd found every Flash and killed them. If she stayed here, she would have to either kill him or watch him die when Zoom caught up to her, and this one who didn't know how to control what he was doing was not someone that posed a threat to Zoom's title. She couldn't stay here and watch him die.

"I can't," she said, and stepped backward toward the portal. He took two steps with her, and it was only when she was suspended in the breech that he let go. Her last view of that universe was Barry's face, and he looked like his heart was breaking, and then he was gone and she couldn't have said if he had sped away or the breech stole her sight of that universe.

She hit something, hard, the collision sent her spinning, and all she could do was curl up on herself and wait for it to be over until suddenly, the soundless whirl of the breech was gone.

Killer Frost pried her eyes open and found she was tumbling toward rubble, hundreds of feet from the ground.


Information for the universe:

Eobard died in the particle accelerator explosion, so Barry was never transferred to the care of STAR Labs. He woke up out of the coma and thought he was going crazy, because he just kept speeding up and didn't know how to slow back down, and no one knew to hunt him down and tell him what was going on.

Still taking creative liberties with the biology of speedsters, apologies to the biologists. Because this one took longer and chapter 6 is short, today is a double update. Thanks for reading, next chapter will be up in a few minutes.