SNOWBARRY: Sometimes Runs, Sometimes Can't

Chapter 24 - Time's Up

Two months had passed.

The city still whispered about it. The sudden silence of Central City's protector. The Scarlet Speedster that had once been their hope, vanishing without a trace. 

The Flash Vanishes. The headlines ran for weeks.

***

Iris West was a closed chapter in the book of Barry Allen. 

He didn't think about her, not anymore. Whatever fire had once driven him toward her had burned out. She belonged to another life. To a different Barry.

S.T.A.R. Labs was closed and out of order. 

The lights were off.  The consoles dark. Dust gathered on abandoned monitors, the hum of machines and Caitlin's equipment replaced by silence. 

Barry sat alone in the echoing space, some nights, staring at the empty cortex. The ghost of Cisco's laughter still ringing in his ears.

Cisco Ramon had moved on. Barry had made sure of it; he'd pushed him away after Thawne. 
Cisco took a job at Mercury Labs, building something new, something he was good at, far from Barry's shadows. He'd survived because Barry had done the unspeakable. Cisco's friend had taken a life.

So Barry Allen preferred to be alone, and alone he stayed.
He didn't visit. Didn't call. He couldn't.

Frost was gone too. 

Her disappearance had cut deeper than Barry would ever admit. No note. No trace. Just gone. One day she was at his side, jagged and cold and infuriatingly alive. The next...nothing. 

Barry didn't know if Caitlin was gone forever but if Frost had chosen to leave too, he couldn't stand it. That silence. Her silence just hollowed him further.

Every time he'd glance at his reflection in the mirror. He barely recognised himself anymore. His once-clean look had been replaced with something darker, rougher. His hair had grown longer, falling messily over his forehead. Dark shadows ringed his eyes, the kind that no amount of sleep could erase. A beard traced his jaw, more neglect but he guessed that it suited the man, the thing he'd become. 

Training was the only thing holding him together.
Two hours a day, without fail. Weights, body drills, punishing workouts that left his muscles burning and his lungs screaming. Without his speed, he refused to let his body betray him.

His frame had hardened into steel, muscles ripped and defined, abs carved from exhaustion and discipline. 

He stayed in touch only with Joe. Their conversations were short, clipped. Joe gave him updates about his father's case. How the evidence was still being processed in court. Nothing certain. No guarantee that Henry Allen would walk free. He'd tried to convince Barry to keep the hope, that Joe would find something else, if needed, to which Barry had only laughed bitterly.

Joe also tried to tell him about the city, about the cases and criminals that kept striking. Tried to remind him of the job he once loved. But Barry had already seen the headlines. Cisco was making sure that was covered, arming CCPD with new Mercury Labs tech, strengthening the city in ways Barry couldn't anymore.

Some nights, Barry walked the corridors of the lab and swore he saw her shadow. Caitlin. Slipping just out of reach.His mother. Cisco, moments from death.

Other nights, Thawne's laughter echoed in the dark, cruel and mocking, as if it would haunt him forever.

***

Barry woke up to silence. For a moment he didn't move, staring up at the ceiling. Tracing cracks in the plaster like they were maps to anywhere but here.