Chapter 8: The Masonville Conjecture
It took a few minutes of searching, but eventually, she found him – running laps in the Speed Lab, of all things.
Frost was sure that she'd cautioned against the usage of his powers until his body was completely healed. However, Savitar was – among a very long list of other undesirable traits – impudent.
"Savitar!" she shouted, trying to get his attention.
To her surprise, he stopped without any further provocation, appearing on the steps before her. He was flushed, and sweaty, and quivering ever so slightly. Frost wanted to scream. She'd told him about this! Honestly, sometimes, caring for him was like keeping up with a toddler.
"What did I say about strenuous activity? Hmm?" Frost fixed him with a stern look, the sort that a grudging Victorian school teacher would imbue upon a disobedient pupil.
But, he was doing that thing with his face – giving her an open-eyed look that immediately garnered pity. Oh, and Savitar knew the effect that this face had on people. He'd pulled this stunt many-a-time back in his days as Barry Allen. Sitting there, hunched over, just vulnerable enough to victimize himself – she couldn't maintain her ire. There was something about Savitar's aura today that suggested the use of kid gloves.
She huffed, dropping down beside him. "Team Flash just figured out how to save your life and now you're trying to run yourself into an early grave." Frost tutted, giving him a once-over. "For goodness' sake, Savitar, I can feel your fever from here! …You need water. I don't suppose, in your infinite wisdom, that you brought a bottle down with you?"
Savitar just shook his head.
Frost made a sour face, silently cursing this man-child that she had the displeasure of dealing with. With a cursory glance around the Speed Lab, she spotted an abandoned tumbler on the desk. Well… it would have to do. She'd done more with less. Frost quickly hopped up to grab the bottle and was back beside Savitar in a matter of seconds.
With the tumbler in one hand, she used her other hand to create a block of ice the exact size and shape of the container. She dropped the ice inside, screwed on the lid, and handed it to Savitar. "Here; melt this down and drink it."
Savitar wordlessly accepted the tumbler. Frost watched as he vibrated it into liquid, popped off the top, and started to take greedy gulps. She wasn't quite sure how the heat transference worked. It was one of those things that she put on her list of Speedster Mystiques, along with speed mirages and throwing lightening.
Savitar came up for air long enough to utter his first words. "What are you doing down here?"
"What are you doing down here?" was Frost's pointed rebuttal. "You were supposed to be taking it easy."
"What am I, your hostage? I needed to get out of that room." He leaned forward, elbows on knees, his untrimmed hair obscuring one side of his face. She thought it suited him, all mysterious and brooding and captivating.
"Well, I hope it was worth it. You probably just set your recovery back another couple days." Frost reached out to touch his shoulder, but Savitar flinched away before she could make contact.
"What are you doing?" His eyes were sharp and suspicious, as if she'd just done something unthinkable. He'd always been pessimistic – and deeply mistrusting on top of that.
"Savitar, you look like a rotting tomato," Frost replied, for once not entirely trying to insult him, "We've gotta get your temperature down – quickly."
Savitar gave a quiet sigh and turned away, but at least it wasn't an objection. Slowly, Frost moved to settle her palm against the base of his skull. Then, she released a cooling mist – nothing too frigid, more like an icepack, really – from her fingertips. The mist cascaded past Savitar's shoulders, down his spine, and she saw him visibly relax. Frost derived some… complicated form of triumph in proving that, regardless of what he said, Savitar did still need her. Perhaps not for everything, but… even this one thing was enough. It gave her an advantage over him that she would flaunt at an opportune time.
She was sitting on his right side, and that gave her the perfect vantage point for his scar. With the conversation stalled and nothing else to occupy her, Frost found herself getting lost in the pattern on his skin. All the rises and dips, concaves and protrusions, created an intricate mandala. It was poetic, in a way. His emotional scars found a way to manifest themselves physically. In all that time they'd spent together, she never bothered to ask how it happened. Very little could damage a speedster to that extent, never mind that the injury never fully healed.
"It's rude to stare, y'know." Savitar's husky baritone broke the silence. "If you've got something to say, say it."
Frost shifted her gaze over to Savitar's eyes, which were pinned on her expectantly. Oddly enough, this gave her the necessary boost of confidence. "Alright. How did it happen?"
He looked away, unable to maintain eye contact. This was not the Savitar that she knew. The Savitar she knew was vicious and sharp and derisive. This metahuman before her was… tired, and quiet, and… eerily hollow. "It was my third attempt at escaping the Speed Force prison. I'd tried to find a clever way out, but in the wake of those failures, I got… desperate." He gestured vaguely to his face. "I tried to just shove my way through, and, well… the energy of the Speed Force can damage a speedster like nothing else can. And it leaves a mark."
Frost's first thought after hearing that was, what could he be so desperate to escape, that he'd risk an injury like that? And perhaps because Savitar seemed to be in a cooperative mood today, or because she didn't feel the usual amount of bile towards him, that's exactly what she asked.
"The prison… it traps you in a never-ending loop of your worst memory, right? …What was yours?"
Savitar smiled wryly. "Me? Oh, I was special. I got a compilation, a highlight reel…. I was an orphan, a widower, a mistake." He spat out the words like acid, taking a moment to compose himself before continuing. "So, I got to relive it all. All the death, all the rejection, all the rage."
There was a brief moment of silence, where Frost didn't know what to say. It was so easy to despise Savitar that she wasn't sure what to do when he acted like a decent human being.
Then she decided to seize the moment, to hopefully (finally) pull an answer out of him: "What are we doing here, Savitar? …Seriously, what are we doing here?" She let out a laugh tinged with hysteria and scorn. "All that fighting, all that planning and scheming, just to end up right back where we started."
Savitar sighed heavily, but otherwise remained quiet. Just when the silence had stretched on long enough that she thought he wasn't going to respond, he did. "I'll tell you why I accepted Barry's offer, but you won't believe me."
She shifted on the step, getting comfortable for the oncoming explanation. "Try me."
"…It was my mom – I mean, Barry's mom; our mom." He looked at her cautiously, perhaps waiting for a negative reaction.
She didn't give him one, despite the shock of that bombshell. Yes, she was confused. Yes, she was befuddled. Yes, she was desperate to know more. But Savitar was being genuine with her for the first time… well, ever. Perhaps they didn't quite get along, but he deserved an opportunity to tell his story. His stories had been silenced for so long; it's what led to this whole debacle in the first place. The least she could do was provide a listening ear.
"How so?" Frost prompted softly.
If he was surprised by her openness, the only indication was the pause that he took before continuing. "Barry and I met up at this warehouse, and… he started talking about, y'know, 'helping instead of hurting' and 'family' and 'love' – or whatever. The usual self-righteous spiel. But then… then he brought up this memory that we have of our parents. I'll spare you all the details, but… let's just say it was a bad situation that turned into a great day.
"And in that moment, when I was thinking about my parents for the first time in a long time, I saw her. I saw my mom." Frost's eyebrows rose to meet her hairline, but she didn't dare interrupt. "Standing there, plain as day, over Barry's right shoulder. And I felt this… this presence that I never thought I would again. …It was the Speed Force. She was the Speed Force. I hadn't felt its energy in ages. I hadn't… seen her in ages, and I just…
"It felt like she was answering for me. And yes, I know it wasn't really my mom. But she's the closest I've gotten to my mom since… since she died. I knew, I realized, that if my mom – my real mom – were actually here, she'd want me to try. She was giving me a second chance, and… I couldn't turn it down." Savitar wiped away what Frost suspected were unshed tears. He cleared his throat, shaking himself from his reverie. "Which I know is stupid looking back on it now, because… well, I'm what some would call 'irredeemable.'" Savitar smirked crookedly, laughing about a joke that only he knew. "But, now, if I just run fast enough, for long enough, she reappears, so…"
Frost waited, expecting him to finish his thought, but the sentence dropped off there, never to be picked back up. His behavior today suddenly made a lot more sense. And something deep inside her – something cold and hard and thick – melted just a little. Because, as it turned out, he didn't chuck her in the trash for no reason. He didn't loose faith. He didn't just… decide to go it alone. He wasn't walking away from her; he was walking towards someone else. And a couple weeks ago, she would've looked upon that decision with ridicule and contempt. Now, however, with a supposed cure circling through her veins, she couldn't help but understand. It was almost, dare she say… brave. It wasn't enough to make her feel bad for badgering him, but it was enough to stop her from piling on in the future. She was going to start looking at Savitar through new lenses, now. Time would tell how that played out.
Frost gave something that decidedly was not the usual sneer she reserved for him – something edging towards a smile. "It's not stupid, Savitar. Sure, you're a moron, and you've made some awful life choices, but –" she nudged him good-naturedly "- I am the last person that's going to tell you that closure is dumb. Loss is… a mythical beast of mass proportions. Tame it as you see fit."
Savitar gave a much more genuine smirk this time.
AN: Bonus points to anyone who figures out why "Mansonville" is in the chapter title, because I never directly mentioned it in the story.