Top Posts Tagged with #flashwaveweek2018

Fic: Slaves of Destiny (ao3 link)

Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Barry Allen/Mick Rory Series: Flashwave Week 2018 (Destiny Series) Warnings: Discussions of suicide, non-linear narrative

Summary: He's there when Savitar makes his first kill, this strange man called Kronos.

They both travel through time - and they keep meeting again and again and again.

Must be destiny.

A/N: @flashwaveweek - Flashwave Week: Kronos/Savitar

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The man is there when Barry - he still thinks of himself as Barry back then - makes his first kill.

(Not his first, not really - there was the one who turned to lava, the one who aged too fast, countless others who were hit just a little too hard or too fast - but the first one since what he's calling the Split.)

"Well done," the man says. He's wearing armor, toughened and used and totally inappropriate to the time period that Barry found himself in the first time the blue lightning took him back to the distant past.

Guess evil Wells was right, Barry thought bitterly when he first arrived to this period, guess all you really need to do is practice to get faster, because it's not like he did anything special to get to the blue other than run all day and all night in the vain hope that he could escape the reality of someone living his life and blaming him for the Iris they did not save.

He’d wandered away from STAR Labs one night, hopeless, looking for direction, and he’d found it in the strangest of places: a strange man in an alleyway, his hood pulled up and over his head so that his eyes could not be seen as anything other than black coals hidden in darkness, a man who told him to run until there was nothing else left in him but the running, and for lack of anything better to do, run Barry had, straight into the endless blue of ultimate speed that took him away.

And now he is here, killing the man who was known to history as being Savitar’s first victim.

It all fits, in a strange and horrible way; it is Barry (the split Barry, the scarred Barry, the not-as-good Barry) fulfilling his destiny.

This strange man in his heavy armor and a tattered cape, his helmet hiding his features? He doesn’t fit.

"Who are you?" Barry asks.

"Who are you?" the armored man responds. His voice is heavy, deep, mechanical. Very Darth Vader without the asthma. "You're new."

Barry shivers. Can this man tell what he is, a time duplicate that didn't die, a mere copy of the original? Can everyone tell?

"To the timeline," the man amends.

Barry's interest is piqued. "You're a time traveler?"

"No," the man says, voice dry as dust beneath the distortion of his helm. "Ancient India had lots of people in full-clad armor. With pulse rifles."

Barry giggles a little at that. He's aware that it sounds hysterical, but he is - he is - he's gone insane - he went back in time, suicidal, to find Savitar and defeat him no matter what the cost, a desperate effort to make the others understand that he can be of use, only to realize when he ran into the blue - Savitar's blue - that he was Savitar, but instead of rejecting it, he accepted it - he understood that this was his destiny - he committed himself to becoming Savitar - all so that he might live -

"I'm here to judge if you're a threat," the man says. "And to eliminate you if you are."

"Well, then?" Barry says, holding open his hands. He knows he is a threat. "Go ahead."

Maybe he's still a bit suicidal. He can't decide if he wants to live or to die.

(He can't decide if becoming Savitar is closer to living or to dying.)

"Speedsters can't be seen by the Eye," the man says instead. "Seems like a waste just to kill you."

"You don't think I'm a threat?" Barry demands, suddenly offended, and in a blink he's standing in front of the man, hand on the man's throat. "Of course I'm a threat! Kill me!"

The helm reveals nothing of the man inside, but Barry can feel that the man is indifferent to him and his desperate flailing actions.

"No," he says.

"Then I will kill you!"

"Why?"

Barry falters.

He only killed that first man to make the reputation for himself: the first reported victim of the God of Speed, they'd discovered (not they, not them, not Barry - that was from the memories of the other Barry, the original Barry, the one everyone still loved), and Barry'd followed the man around for days before he fully accepted the truth.

The truth: that he is Savitar.

The truth: that he was only born when Barry, the original, split himself in a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to save Iris West, who Barry, the copy, still loves.

The truth: that he must kill his love to be born.

Iris West, who he still loves.

Who he still hates.

But there is no reason to kill this man.

And Barry is not (yet) a murderer.

Barry releases him.

"You'll learn to be more ruthless," the man says, still sounding indifferent, as though the risk of his own death was not a matter of any great importance. "In time, you will learn to kill people like me - people who do nothing but stand in your way."

"Do you want me to kill you?" Barry asks, confused.

"Of course I do," the man says. "But as one slave of destiny to another, I'm sure you understand that."

He leaves, after that. Barry - no, Savitar, his name is Savitar now - lets him.

A slave to destiny.

He doesn't like the sound of that. He remembers how the future went: Savitar trapped in the speed trap, Iris dead, Barry mourning - that's how he left them. Is he doomed to run in a circle?

He can't be.

He has to try. Try to fix the mistakes of the Savitar that came before him, try to kill Iris and escape the consequences, try to live.

No matter what the cost.

He turns, and runs once again into the blue.

There are others out there he still needs to kill.

"Your colleagues are a lot less friendly than you are," Savitar says to Kronos, whose name he has since learned.

Kronos shrugs, a silent answer. He's younger than the man Savitar first met, Savitar thinks, but not by too much - it's hard to tell, when the man never removes his armor.

It's the bitterness, really. This young, he still obeys the orders of his Masters in silent resignation, rather than in endless seething hatred - though it's always there, hidden beneath.

Savitar rather prefers the overt hatred.

"Trying to kill you again, are they?" Kronos asks, almost amused.

"Indeed so."

"Idiots."

"Oh?"

"They'll figure out how you affect the timeline soon enough," Kronos says. "And then they'll want to keep you."

"They hate speedsters. You said so yourself; we mess up the timeline more than they'd like."

"As an executioner," Kronos clarifies. "You kill those who try to kill you, don't you?"

Savitar has been, but he won't anymore. He hates being manipulated and used.

Kronos knows that, though, how much he hates it. Telling him about the Masters' manipulation could itself be another trick, another manipulation, the inducement of the sought-after behavior by a true master of the art -

Savitar sniggers.

"What?"

"Just thinking of you manipulating people."

"I prefer to shoot them."

"I know," Savitar says, and his voice is fond. When did that happen? Sometime in the last dozen or so times they've met, clearly, but when exactly, and why? "You never did have patience for anyone manipulating anybody."

He's expecting affirmation: Kronos hates his Masters with a heat stronger than the burning sun, forced to play their games when he prefers to be straightforward and honest, and he is rarely silent about it.

"No," Kronos says instead, after a long pause. Too long. "Not anymore."

Savitar feels something, in a heart he thought long since dead, consumed by Iris and her other Barry.

He's pretty sure it's jealousy.

Huh.

He needs to think about this development.

So he turns and he runs.

The world goes blue.

"I had him, you know," Kronos says, his voice gruff and distorted as always.

"Just lending a hand," Savitar says, jaunty and cocky. He's got his own cult now, a corrupted monastery or three or maybe even three dozen; he doesn't actually keep count. Here in the isles they think they can save them from the fury of the Nordmann, which he can, of course.

Whether he will is a different story entirely.

Still, he enjoys the tribute.

It certainly gives him a reason to run freely through the isles, and that in turn gives him the opportunity to run through a man with a sword who was just about to stab it into Kronos' back as he dealt with another.

Yet another countless life he's saved of Kronos' - countless because if he counted them, he might have to also count the times Kronos has gone out of his way to save him, and that would just be embarrassing.

Kronos shakes his head, but Savitar can tell he's amused, even through that awful helmet he always wears.

"You're slow today," Savitar adds. "Unusually so."

Not that he cares, of course. He's a god. He doesn't care about anyone.

(He's a liar.)

Still, Kronos is a good ally, if not the only ally Savitar has; it pays to be on the alert for these things.

"My leg was shattered in half a dozen places last week," Kronos says, in the same resigned tone one might remark about a particularly horrid stretch of weather. "Still recovering full mobility."

"Don't they let you heal those up first, those Masters of yours, before sending you out on a job?" Savitar asks. Kronos likes him to be blunt and straightforward, and to ask questions about the Masters Kronos serves, which no one else does.

They watch the world through their dreadful Eye, these Masters, but they can't see a speedster, and that means, whenever Savitar comes by and is around, that they can't see Kronos, either.

A small breath of freedom.

There's nothing worth more to a drowning man.

That's why Kronos helps Savitar out when he can.

Why Savitar helps Kronos...

Well.

Kronos snorts. "Usually, yes," he says, answering Savitar's question. "But not if they're the ones that broke it."

That gets Savitar's attention. "Why?"

"Had a relapse," Kronos grunts. He means that he did something too free for his Masters' preference.

Or maybe that he remembered something he shouldn't have, something they didn't want him remembering, some emotion they didn't want him feeling.

(Kronos doesn't always remember Savitar, and it's not only because they meet earlier in his timeline.)

Savitar doesn't like it.

He likes the thought that there's nothing he can do about it even less. He's a god; he should be able to do as he pleases. He should be able to save who he pleases.

But as he's learned in the years since he began to run, he's not the only god out there.

"Are they trying to eliminate you, your Masters?" Savitar asks. "Set you up to fail and use that as an excuse to take you out?"

"No, not at all," Kronos says, and his confidence reassures Savitar. "Merely to punish me, and to mock me for my failure - which you've averted."

"Will that be an issue?"

"My Masters approve of success," Kronos says dryly. "But it does mean I'm already late to return."

Savitar steps aside, and watches Kronos go back to his jailors.

Back to his other gods.

And Savitar, too, goes running, deciding that this time he will save his foolish monks from the Nordmen they so fear, if only to distract him away from wondering if he can run so fast that he can leave behind the growing feeling of possessiveness that's curdling in his heart the way he left behind things like kindness and empathy.

Because he's finding, more and more, that he would rather be the only god in Kronos' life.

"This is a bad idea," Savitar says, his head lolling back against the filthy ancient Roman wall.

"Probably," Kronos agrees.

"Wasn't talking to you," Savitar grumbles.

"Then stop talking," Kronos says, and tightens his grip meaningfully.

Given that Kronos' heavy glove is currently wrapped around Savitar’s cock, which despite his assumed divinity remains an extremely sensitive area, Savitar opts to listen. Kronos rewards him by moving his hand faster.

Good. Savitar likes fast.

(- not like him and Iris were, all soft and sweet and slow -)

Savitar forces his mind away from that. He's not back there, with a woman who loves a man he no longer is, a man who he's just a duplicate, a copy, a badly-done Xerox and nothing more -

"I like how you spark up bluer and bluer when I do this," Kronos says. His voice is mild, easy, relaxed the way it almost never is, like the hatred that roils beneath his surface the way it does for Savitar is eased. Like he's managed, just for a minute, to forget the torment of destiny that is his existence.

All of his attention is on Savitar right now.

Savitar, and no one else.

Savitar grunts and comes hard, his hips jerking forward at an inhuman speed.

"There we go," Kronos says approvingly. "Practically turquoise; must've been a good one."

"This is such a bad idea," Savitar says again. He's a god, now, faster and faster than ever before, master of the blue. He should be alone, independent, isolated.

He should need no one.

Just like a real god.

"No harm in passing time," Kronos says with a shrug. "I like you.”

“I never understood that.”

Kronos shrugs again. “Sometimes I think I like you better than fire,” he says nonsensically. “We understand each other. And besides, like I said - no harm in passing time."

It's not that Savitar disagrees. That was why he agreed to do this the first time, and the fourth, and the fifteenth, until it's become commonplace. Savitar has a long road before him (and behind him, and to his side - constant time travel makes things a bit weird), and it's more pleasant to pass the time with company; that much is still true.

It's that he's starting to worry that it's not just passing time anymore.

"Still a bad idea," he says.

Kronos straightens up, but he doesn't say anything. He never asks for anything, though he's taken to offering, the times that he remembers Savitar. Sometimes even when he doesn't remember. But he doesn't ask.

He never asks.

His Masters have tortured that selfishness out of him.

Savitar could leave Kronos now, leave him unsatisfied and wanting, and he'd never complain.

The glove Kronos worked him over with is still stained with come.

Savitar smiles at Kronos. "Good thing I like bad ideas, then."

He goes to his knees, reaches for the stupid codpiece part of the armor; it's the only part he's ever been allowed to remove. Try to take off anything else, and Kronos goes into spasms of pain, courtesy of his Masters.

Savitar truly dislikes these Masters, even though he knows he ought to be learning from them the brutal cruelty necessary for true divinity.

(He should destroy them and take their worshipers for his own, should keep Kronos his high priest, in his bed and by his side -)

He should be alone.

But for the time being, Savitar finds himself pleased to have someone who understands.

He lowers his head to use his mouth, and wonders what it would be like to kiss his lover.

"They call me two-faced, you know," Savitar says, looking at the perfect mirror made of bronze, the height of Qin artistry. He's clad in blue, his favored color, the color of his mastery, but try as he might he cannot find a place that will construct him the armor he needs to finish his ascension. He knows what the armor looks like by heart, but where it is he does not yet know. "The Two-Faced God."

He sneers at his reflection, which he's never liked.

(was that why they rejected him, because he reminded them of an imperfect mirror?)

"Two-faced," Kronos says from where he's absently tossing a vase hand-to-hand. "Because you only keep your promises half the time?"

Savitar barks out a laugh, surprised; he turns to Kronos. "Are you blind under that armor?" he asks, gesturing to his face, to the melted burn scar that devoured half of him. "This is why."

"What, do you object or something? It's your best feature."

Savitar scoffs.

"I like scars," Kronos says. "Gives a man character."

"Half of my face is ruined, and you think it gives me character?"

"You can eat," Kronos says. "You can talk. You can still mostly see. Can hardly say it's ruined."

"I was thrown out of heaven for being an imperfect copy -"

"Yeah, yeah, and you've been running ever since," Kronos says. "I've heard your origin myth in more countries than you've even had a chance to visit yet."

He might be right, he might be wrong: hard to tell, with two time travelers who do not travel together. Even all of Kronos' computers have difficulty figuring out who is where and how old.

"It means you exist, you know," Kronos adds. "The scar."

Savitar frowns. "How's that? Of course I exist."

"Scars are left when something happens," Kronos says. He puts down the vase - it'll be worth millions a few centuries into the future, should it survive being brand new as it is now - and stands, coming over to stand by Savitar by the mirror. "It shows a time when you collided with life, and survived it. Even if you don't remember exactly what happened, your skin does."

He reaches out and touches Savitar's face.

His fingers are gentle through the roughness of his heavy glove. Kronos hasn't repaired it in some time, old and battered, and one of the fingers is so worn through that the heat of Kronos' skin bleeds through.

Savitar leans forward despite himself, chasing that phantom sensation.

"I've seen your face before," Kronos murmurs, and Savitar starts violently. He didn't know that Kronos had ever interacted with Barry. "I don’t remember when or how, but I did. It was even and neat, brown eyes both. But it was never dear to me before it got this scar."

Savitar's hands are shaking, he suddenly notices - not vibrating, the way he sometimes likes to stim, but shaking.

He wonders if the Barry Kronos met was the one whose memories he shares, the single being they were before the Split, or if he was the hated self-double that was judged to be the "right" Barry after.

"I don't always know you," Kronos continues. "But I always know this scar, no matter how long I've traveled or how short my memory, because only someone who's met life head-on the way I have would have a scar like this - and no one else would ever understand."

"He wouldn't," Savitar says, his tongue heavy in his mouth and his throat tight, and he can't say why. "He wouldn't understand you. You or me."

Barry never hated the world enough to understand how that hatred carves its signature into men like them, on men like Savitar and Kronos, never understand how it carves them up from the inside, writing itself on their very bones.

It's not that Savitar doesn't remember what it's like to want to save the world.

It's just that he also remembers what it's like to want to destroy it, and to mean it when he did.

The Two-Faced God indeed.

"No," Kronos says. "He wouldn't. Only you."

"Only me," Savitar agrees, for he is a jealous god, an only god. He swallows, trying to ease the tightness of his throat and the dryness of his mouth. "Tell me, under that armor you never remove - do you have scars?"

The ever-blank lenses that constitute Kronos' eyes seem to bore into Savitar's soul as he waits with bated breath for the answer he knows must be coming.

"Many."

Savitar jumps forward, into the blue, and takes Kronos to bed.

"I loved someone once," Kronos says as they stand by the bar.

"I bet you don't remember them," Savitar says, cruelty so natural to him now that he couldn't stop himself even if he wanted to, yet somehow his cruelty slides off Kronos' shoulders like water.

The only thing Kronos cannot abide is to be called stupid or worthless, and Savitar has never thought either one of those things about him.

"I do," Kronos says. "They let me keep that much."

"Why?" Savitar demands, knowing he sounds petulant. "I'd give anything to be free of my memories of her."

Her, yes, and him, his other self, the self everyone liked better.

The one they comforted instead of blamed.

"Rage, I think," Kronos says, his voice thoughtful. "He betrayed me; they let me keep that so that they could send me against him."

"Have they?"

"Not yet," Kronos says. "You'll know when it happens."

"Will I?"

"That'll be the oldest you'll see me," Kronos says peacefully. "That's the mission they're saving me for, the one they'll have to give me back my memories for. I don't expect to survive it."

Savitar scowls.

He downs another glass like a shot, the synthetic alcohol working it's way through his overcharged system and dissolving in a breath.

Savitar appreciates it anyway.

Sure, there might be bombs dropping every which way, but the alcohol in this era is great, and by great he means such utter piss that even he can taste it.

"They wanted to cut out everything from me but the betrayal," Kronos says thoughtfully. "But it wouldn't be a betrayal if there weren't love first."

"Suppose so," Savitar allows. "Is this your way of telling me not to kill her? It'd mean I'd never be born."

"No," Kronos says. "This is my way of telling you to make sure you don't let destiny fuck you up the ass about it."

"You're the only one I let fuck me up the ass, I promise," Savitar mocks.

Kronos reaches over and grabs Savitar's hand - quick as a wink for anyone else, yawning slow and signaled in advance for Savitar - and he crushes Savitar's fingers under his gauntlet. "Don't let yourself be caught," he says. "Don't let them beat you."

"They won't," Savitar says. "I'm a god."

"So was your predecessor," Kronos reminds him. "And he didn't end up anywhere good, did he?"

"You're such a downer," Savitar complains, so as to hide the fear that still lurks in his heart at ending up with that fate. Destiny’s last laugh in his face.

"Feelings will throw you off your track," Kronos says. "They'll throw me off mine, one day. I won't be able to look at the man I once loved and kill him the way I should; that's why it'll be the end of the line for me."

Savitar snarls at that.

"Not like that," Kronos says, because he somehow knows how to hear what Savitar means without Savitar ever saying a word. "He was my partner, my brother by oaths instead of blood. One sight of him...I'll threaten him, I'll do my best to hurt him, but I won't be able to follow through on it."

"How are you so sure?"

"Because the Masters are counting on him being the only light in my life," Kronos says. "They want that light to blind me with rage until I do what they want without thinking. But it ain't true anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"He's my guiding light," Kronos says. His hand is still on Savitar's. "But you're my god."

Savitar supposes he can accept that, if he must.

(He hates sharing Kronos.)

"You think I'm at risk of being screwed up by my feelings when I see her again?" he asks instead.

"No," Kronos says. "I think you're at risk of being screwed up by your feelings when you see him again."

Savitar bares his teeth.

"You hate him, the other you," Kronos says. "You've been waiting so long, too; you'll want to gloat. You'll make mistakes, god or no god."

"What are you trying to say?" Savitar asks.

Kronos tilts his helmet in a way that always reminds Savitar of a smirk, or of a smile with bloodless lips pulled back into a tortured grimace of agony.

Perhaps for Kronos they are the same.

"I'm saying," Kronos says, "Remember thou art mortal."

"You don't seem to be very popular," Kronos says. He's smirking, Savitar can tell even through that damned armor.

At the moment, Savitar doesn't much care.

The giant mob chasing after him is doing a good job of convincing him not to care.

Normally this wouldn't be enough to concern him - what's a mob to a god? - but there's something wrong with the land here, this wretched Mediterranean island he finds himself on, and he cannot reach the blue, his heels dragged down slower and slower as he runs ever onward away from them.

Apparently this forsaken place is significantly more developed than he realized, for all that they call their defenses after the names of archaic Greek deities.

"Popularity is overrated," Savitar says, and he's very nearly panting for air. He hates it, the reminder of his mortality - but he can't die, he hasn't even found his armor yet, though the metal he stole from the Temple of this place will do perfectly to construct it, and he still has to go forward in time to be born. This cannot be his end: his timeline has not yet even begun.

His timeline...

"Are you here to save me?" Savitar asks, drawing to a halt as his legs burn and his body feels rooted to the earth in a way it hasn't in forever. "Or to watch me die?"

Kronos snorts.

A doorway from nothingness opens over his shoulder.

Savitar looks at it. He's seen Kronos' ship before; he's even seen it cloaked, but he's never been invited on.

"Go ahead," Kronos says. "Their power to squeeze the powers out of you is bound to their Isle; the effect will fade once we're away."

"Have your Masters agreed to this?" Savitar asks, not moving. "You wouldn't let me on the ship if they haven't."

"They want me to make sure you survive this encounter," Kronos says. "The details of how are left up to me."

Savitar arches his eyebrows.

"I suspect their preferred answer would be for me to kill enough of the mob to let you get away."

Savitar smirks. "As tempting as that thought is, escape is good enough for me."

That's the problem with being part of a pantheon, he reflects as he limps onto Kronos' ship, waving jauntily to the AI, a duplicate of Gideon in the same way he's a duplicate of Gideon's creator. No matter how powerful you can be, it's still never a good idea to go up against another god on their own territory.

(He wonders if Diana knows the truth yet.)

Kronos's ship is every bit as empty and soulless as Savitar would have expected, the chains of a slave rather than the spartan freedom of a sailor, but Savitar feels better already, his speed returning to him. As they lift off and hurtle away into the timestream that Kronos navigates, he feels better still.

"So, you've got me," he jokes, draping himself on one of the less necessary-looking consoles on the bridge. "What are you going to do with me?"

Kronos is still a man, for all his fancy tech; he could never truly conquer Savitar and he knows it. But in all the time and times and tomorrows they've known each other, Savitar's never been in Kronos' bed.

He's interested in changing that.

"The Eye still can't see you," Kronos replies, his fingers moving over the controls confidently as he steers them through the time stream. He'll never be nimble and swift, not like Savitar, but he doesn't need to be. "It can only see your impact, which is why I was sent to avert your demise. Once that was averted, you're free as a bird again."

"So?" Savitar asks, marveling at how Kronos can say such things without resentment. Kronos resents only his Masters; it's one of his (few) virtues, alongside unbreakable loyalty - so long as that loyalty is won freely and without coercion. That guiding light of his won it, and never lost it, and Savitar likes to think he's won it, too. "What does that mean? Where are you planning on dropping me off?"

"I don't," Kronos says.

"What?"

"That was my last mission in the set I was assigned," Kronos says. "It's time to go back to base to refuel and rest and get new assignments."

Savitar sits up straight, understanding racing though him like lightning. "You're taking me to the Vanishing Point?"

"You did always say you wanted to see Mount Olympus," Kronos says, and pleasure curls through his voice. "Figured it'd be as good a time as any."

Kronos has been waiting for this, Savitar realizes: a chance to intervene in Savitar's timeline that is sanctioned by his Masters, a way for him to achieve his own ends even as he obeys what he must.

"Do you want me to kill them?" Savitar asks.

Kronos shudders, a spasm of pain at the very thought. "Not yet," he says. "I haven't broken the kill switch yet."

The one in his head, meant to deal out death if he turns against the Time Masters; the one that can only be destroyed when it is loosened by the demands of destiny, by the return of his memory - and that in turn is only to be found when a man crosses his own time.

Kronos will need to go after himself or another who recognizes him as himself when he is finally loosed against his true prey, and when that time comes - if Kronos is not killed as he gloomily predicts he will be, then -

The Masters should really know better than to let such a viper so close to their chests.

Savitar, who rather likes snakes, smiles.

"In that case," he says, "I would rather like a tour."

Savitar isn't impressed with the Masters.

The Time Masters, they call themselves, the pretentious assholes -

(He who calls himself a god has no room to talk.)

- but they're boring. Awful and cruel, yes, but nothing more than the basic sort of human cruelty that shows up any time someone decides that another person isn't worthy of sympathy. That another person isn't human.

Savitar is intimately familiar with the feeling.

On both sides, by now.

Either way, it turned out they wanted Kronos to report immediately, a process he'd predicted to take a few hours, so Savitar jumped into the blue and reappeared in the hallways, then slowed his run to a walk to look around. Kronos was right: put on a hood and you're indistinguishable from the rest of them. He's wandered through half of the complex already, observing greedily at first and then with less and less enthusiasm.

He's bored now.

Luckily, Kronos is exiting the chamber where he'd been giving his report. His shoulders are slumped, suggesting - not quite exhaustion, but resignation. Hatred, yes, but hatred beaten down so many times that he's almost lost hope.

Almost.

Savitar slides in beside Kronos as he walks away, watching with pleasure as Kronos' shoulders square once more. He might be a god, but he has only one true worshipper - only one who truly draws strength from his presence.

(Not like it used to be, when he was the Flash and everyone loved him. Not at all like that. Better.)

"How'd it go?" he asks lightly.

"They were pleased," Kronos says.

"This is how you look when they are pleased?"

"You can tell that they're pleased because I'm returning to my quarters rather than reporting for punishment."

Savitar snorts at that, but he's abruptly more interested in another part of what Kronos said. "Your quarters?" He smirks. "Will I get the tour? A thorough tour?"

"I want to show you something there."

"I hope it's the bed," Savitar quips.

"No," Kronos says, puzzlingly enough. "It's not."

When they get to Kronos' quarters, though, cramped and sparse as they are, there isn't really anything there but a bed, just a rather bizarre stick-like piece of furniture with pieces of wood jutting out of it. Savitar can't figure out what it's for, much less why Kronos would like to show it to him.

He's just started wondering if it's some sort of disturbing sex toy when Kronos finishes locking the door and sweeping the room for bugs or other recording devices and turns back to face him.

"What is it?" Savitar asks, nodding at the thing.

"A stand," Kronos says, moving over to stand in front of it.

"A stand?" Savitar repeats. "A stand to hold what, exactly -"

Kronos reaches up and begins to undo the clasps that hold his helmet in place.

Savitar's not slow in any respect. He gets it at once: this is where Kronos is meant to rest between jobs.

This is where he is allowed to remove his armor.

And that means -

Savitar will get to see Kronos.

To feel him, skin against skin instead of again armor.

To see those scars he knows are there.

He inadvertently vibrates with excitement like he hasn't in centuries, sending out sparks, but it doesn't matter; Kronos likes it when he does that, when he loses control, even if it's only a little bit.

Kronos removes his helmet and places it on the stand.

The back of his head is the first thing Savitar sees. Kronos is shaved bald, he notes, the white scars of old shaving nicks scattered across his head; he's older, physically, than Savitar is, but only by a decade or two. He's still physically very strong, muscular; that much is evident.

Savitar finds himself captivated by the base of Kronos' neck, and the scar that curls up from beneath his armor to rest at the nape - a scar white and red and every bit as grotesque as the melting of Savitar's face.

Kronos turns.

Savitar looks his lover in the eyes for the first time in the lifetimes upon lifetimes they have been what they are to each other.

"I know you," he blurts out, instead of commenting on the fierce eyes, or the soft mouth, or the firm jaw. "I know you!"

Kronos' eyes narrow. "You know me?"

Without the distortion of the helmet, his voice is familiar, too: deep and rough, with the same cadences that Savitar has grown accustomed to, but without the grinding mechanical sound underlying it.

"From - before," Savitar says, frantically searching his memory. It's been so long, centuries and lifetimes, and he doesn't think he knew him well, the man before him, but that face is familiar to him.

He knows him.

Kronos, who does not know himself, whose memories have been stolen by his keepers and held hostage against him, who has only the faintest memories of a life without bondage.

Savitar knows him.

No.

Not Savitar.

Barry.

Barry knows him, knew him, met him - before the split, he saw that face. It was focused and serious, just as Kronos is now, except for when it wasn't, when it was enraptured and joyous in the face of the burning flame -

"Heatwave," Savitar breathes. "Your name was Heatwave."

Kronos shudders as though he's been struck.

"Your real name was - Mick Rory, I think," Savitar continues. "You fought the Flash - you tried to burn him with your heat gun. You worked alongside -"

"Len," Kronos says, and his voice is a groan of rage and betrayal and love. "Len!"

"Leonard Snart," Savitar agrees. "Captain Cold."

Kronos sucks in a harsh breath, rocking forward, gloved hands going to his chest as if he's been stabbed. "Yes," he whispers. "Yes, I did."

"Do you remember what happened?" Savitar asks, curious.

Kronos looks up, then, and Savitar does not know if it is love or hate that shines in his eyes. "Yes," he says again. "I remember everything."

Savitar hesitates, suddenly - not shy, never shy, he's a god, after all, but feeling strangely wrong-footed. "Is that good?"

"Would you be who you truly are if you didn't remember?" Kronos asks.

"No," Savitar says slowly. "I suppose not."

That wasn't what he meant, though.

But Kronos hears the unspoken question, and he smiles - a smile, a smirk, an expression after centuries of reading nothing but body language - and he reaches out to Savitar. "I might be myself again," he says, and his voice is low and intent and certain. "But you're still my god."

Savitar's shoulders give way in - he wouldn't name it relief, would never admit to it, but that's what it is.

"Like you better even than fire," Kronos adds, something he's said before but never meant the way he means it now and that's it, the rest of that armor's coming off now.

Just because Savitar is a god doesn't mean he can't do some worshipping of his own.

(After all, their destiny is coming for them: this may yet be the last time he has a chance to.)

After that, of course, the Masters have no choice but to send Kronos on his final mission, aimed as a weapon against his younger self and his old partner; they had drawn it out as long as they could, but with the key of his memories unlocked, they had to send him to war before his rage died down enough to let him think.

Savitar could have gone with him, if he wanted: he could have helped him succeed the one mission his Masters most expect for him to fail.

But Savitar is a jealous god.

He does not like to share.

He stays at the Vanishing Point instead, looking to see if there's a way for him to murder the Masters and destroy all that they hold dear.

It's only hours later by his reckoning that Kronos returns, stripped of his armor and his defenses, and he wears the name Mick Rory again like an ill-fitting coat.

"We've improved the chair since the last time you've gone in it," one of the Masters crows as they tie him down. "This time, there will be nothing left behind. You will not escape our bindings again."

So Kronos has escaped their bindings.

How interesting.

Savitar kills the Master where he stands.

Kronos smiles at him from the chair.

"My god," he says, and means it.

He's still Savitar's Kronos, then.

"Get back your armor," Savitar suggests, nodding at the stand waiting at the side of the room. "You might need it."

He watches Kronos rush off with a smirk.

He watches -

Well.

It's a good thing he's a speedster.

It's a good thing he's a god.

Not that that fact seems to bother Leonard Snart none.

"You hurt him and I'll kill you," Snart wheezes, the time radiation of the Oculus just at the moment it was starting to explode reacting strangely to the blue that Savitar pulled him through. Savitar thought he got him away in time, immediately before the explosion, but now he's not so sure. Snart's eyes are filmed over, swirling Oculus blue, but regardless he's still got a decent glare.

"You hurt him first, you know," Savitar points out, amused by the ordering of Snart's priorities. Snart hadn't even checked himself for injuries before he'd gotten into his shovel talk.

"He forgave me," Snart says with dignity. "Eventually. And anyway, he's my partner. Who's going to stand up to his god if not for me?"

Savitar frowns.

"Partner," Snart reminds him. "Best friend. Of course he told me."

"Did he tell you who I am?"

"I got a name, yeah," Snart says, purposefully obtuse.

"I meant -" Savitar gestures at his face.

"What, the scar? He always liked scars."

"You're not this stupid."

Snart scowls at him.

...maybe not purposefully obtuse.

"Can you see me?" Savitar asks. "Can you see - anything?"

"I see plenty," Snart says, which probably means he's blind as a bat and bluffing. "More than I'd like, that's for sure. And if you're talking about your resemblance to Barry Allen, come off it; you're nothing alike, even if you were once."

No, not stupid at all.

"I'm going to destroy him or he's going to kill me," Savitar says, wondering how Snart will react to that. He'd rather liked Barry Allen, Savitar recalls, and it'd been mutual. "Barry Allen, I mean. One or the other, and if I don't try, I'll never get born. No way out - any way you look at it, I'm destiny's bitch."

Snart looks at him, eyes swirling blue, and says, "I wouldn't be so sure about that."

Savitar's shaken. He doesn't know why, but he'd swear those words weren't Snart's.

Or at least, not just Snart's.

Not anymore.

"Besides, it's doesn't matter; nothing's going to happen anytime soon. I don't even have my armor yet," he demurs. "It's not like I can go do what I want to do anyway."

Snart smirks.

"If I say I know a guy -"

"We'll be even," Savitar agrees. He doesn't know why he trusts Snart with finding something he's been searching for without luck for so long, but he does. "Your life for my armor."

"Good," Snart says, so full of confidence that he seems almost certain. "I'll get you that armor of yours, just the way you've always seen it in your dreams. Then we take care of you, take care of Mick, and when that's all done, I need to see a man about a book."

"Aren't you blind now?"

"Don't worry," Snart says. "So is he."

The albino who gave Savitar the armor smiled sadly as he did, murmuring something about wishing his siblings would stay the same for longer and something also about starting a trend, but anyway by that point Savitar isn't listening because the armor is perfect.

Better than anything insipid old Barry could dream of, that's for sure.

The blue comes even easier now, practically leaping to his command. He visits a dozen of his old stomping grounds, missing his former self by seconds, and roars out his name: his followers beam, grateful to see the true face of their god, even if only for a second.

The entire process takes less than fifteen minutes.

Oh, yes, Savitar likes this armor.

With it in place, with Kronos gone and hidden beneath the skin of Mick Rory - whatever Snart might say, Savitar still feels like he's lost him - Savitar goes to fulfill his destiny.

Central City at last.

He finds acolytes - he always does, wherever he goes - and some of them have truly unusual powers, this being Central City and all. He uses them to get Team Flash's attention, dancing on the faultlines of the timeline caused by his former self.

He goes to spy on them, his former self and her, and as he does he remembers how much he hates them.

Both of them.

(He still loves her, in his own way, but she has to die for him to be born and Savitar likes his life too much to just give up and accept non-existence - and anyway she would've been like just the rest, picking the clean-faced Barry over him.)

An interesting effect develops: this close to his past self, his memories begin to change, altered by his own interaction with himself.

Becoming the Savitar he remembers fighting.

(Becoming the Savitar he remembers losing to.)

And in the end –

In the end, Kronos was right.

Savitar lets hatred blind him, and weaken him, and he fails.

He fails.

He should have remembered how good he used to be at beating the odds, even when destiny itself said otherwise.

No.

Not how good he used to be.

How good Barry used to be.

Not Savitar.

Savitar’s just the copy, the wrong one, and maybe they all figured that out from the very beginning, that there was something missing in him, and that’s why they rejected him, rather than just for his burned out face.

Maybe that’s why he’s never had a real choice in all the things he’s done.

Maybe that’s why he never had a real chance.

Maybe that’s why all his desperation to stay alive, all of the terrible things he’s done, all the centuries he’s live, and the one person he thinks he might have loved were all for nothing – all for nothing more than being a learning experience for Barry fucking Allen and his charmed fucking life.

Destiny’s slave.

Destiny’s bitch.

Iris lifts her gun and fires at him from the back, and he hears her, he does, and he’s fast enough to outrun any bullet but maybe he shouldn’t, maybe he should just let it happen, maybe the bullet in his head will make up for his failure to do what he needed to do and stop the non-existence which he can already feel tearing at his heels –

“No, I don’t think so.”

Savitar finds himself unable to move.

That’s a first.

No one else seems to be able to move, either, but Savitar’s pretty sure he’s the only one who’s actually noticing it happening.

“Are you really sure about this one?” the voice continues, sounding doubtful.

“Yes, you asshole,” another voice says, warm and amused, and this time Savitar knows that voice, even though he only heard it without the distortion a few times. “I’m sure.”

Kronos.

Savitar finds himself free to move again, though the world around him remains frozen, and he turns to look.

Kronos is standing there, dressed in jeans and a grey shirt that suits him somehow better than the old armor ever did, and by his side stands Leonard Snart, who is holding in his hands – of all things – a book.

No measly paperback, either: this is one of those grand old tomes that you see in movies, old and massive and dusty. And, for some bizarre reason, it is attached at the spine to a chain that trails from the book to Snart’s wrist.

“…new fashion accessory?” Savitar guesses.

Snart barks a laugh. “Never mind,” he says to Kronos. “I like him.”

“I thought you might,” Kronos says, sounding satisfied. Sounding like Kronos, the way he always had, not like the Mick Rory Savitar feared he had lost him to be. “Well, Savitar?”

Savitar arches his eyebrows. “Well, what?”

“Will you stay or will you go?” Snart asks, voice sing-song, smirk on his lips, but the smirk dies quickly enough. “Seriously. Your choice.”

Savitar doesn’t understand.

“You can come with us and live,” Kronos clarifies. “Or you can stay and die.”

“That seems like a straightforward choice.”

“It isn’t,” Kronos says, and his face is serious. “You’ve been destiny’s slave all your life, running on a circular track that you had to run, running along on a hamster wheel because if you didn’t you wouldn’t be born, but what you got for losing your freedom was security. Certainty. You knew you were on the road you needed to go on because there wasn’t any other way you could go – sure, you could fiddle around and chance the details, but your torment was always going to be to run this race a million times over and find no other exit.”

He’s not wrong, Savitar knows. His own memories have come back to him now, stolen away from him as surely as Kronos’ old Masters stole his from him: this is not the first time he has run this race.

He was Savitar before, and he was Savitar after, and it was only because Barry Allen made different choices that the result was different. That’s what it was all about, in the end; Barry Allen learning his lesson and making things better for himself.

It was never about him at all.

A slave of destiny indeed.

“That’s the choice,” Kronos says. “You’ve been running a long time, Savitar. You’re tired, you’re angry, and you’ve been fueled by hate for so long you don’t know what else there is. You turn around now, there’s a bullet waiting for you, and it’ll give you the rest you’ve not-so-secretly wanted since the very beginning. Or –”

“Or?”

“You keep running,” Snart says. “But this time, you run without the guardrails. No more hamster wheel, no more circular track, no more certainty. This here’s the exit ramp of free will, and what lies beyond is entirely up to you, for better or for worse.”

Savitar takes a step back, involuntary. “That’s impossible. My destiny –”

“Don’t talk to me of destiny,” Snart scoffs. His eyes glow blue under his silly fluffy parka hood, pulled up until it shadows over his face. “I know everything there is to know about destiny. Destiny’s a thief and always has been, stealing away at people’s lives to try to make them run like clockwork when they ought to run free, making the patterns that seem like they have a purpose when purpose is nothing more than something we decide upon. The world ticks on until the end and the patterns of destiny are lies we tell ourselves, and there’s no better liar than a thief.” He smiles, harsh and proud. “There are no strings on me but those I choose, and this one –” He shakes his wrist, the chain sounding against itself. “– this one, I think, will suit me just fine for quite some time.”

Savitar doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t think he has to.

He has a choice to make.

A choice that should be easy, except it’s not: he’s wanted to die for so long that it became what he lived for, his motivation and reason. Kronos isn’t wrong; he’s been running on hatred since the beginning, hatred for the life that was stolen from him, hatred for the birth that he never asked for. He’d have to give that up, if he wants to live; give up that hatred that spurred his heels for so long.

He’d have to find a new reason to live.

“So if I accept,” he says slowly. “If I accept, I – live. And I’m free.” He swallows, his eyes skittering over to Iris’ frozen face, which has no sympathy, no pity, no love, nothing but determination. Putting down a rabid dog, for all she cares; she won’t even remember him in a few months after the next big crisis. “Free - but alone.”

“Not quite,” Kronos says, and Savitar looks at him. Kronos smiles, a crooked thing. “Not quite alone, if you don’t want to be. You’re still my god.”

“I failed,” Savitar points out.

Kronos shrugs. “What about me suggests I want a god that’s perfect?”

Savitar feels a hysterical giggle rise up in his throat.

(Just like at the beginning.)

“Yes,” he says, before he can regret it. “Yes. I’ll live. I’ll go with you. I’ll – I’ll figure it out, what it is I’m going to do now, and I’ll figure it out for myself. Not destiny, not anymore.”

“No,” Kronos says, holding out a hand. “Not destiny. Freedom.”

Savitar takes his hand, and Kronos leads him into the blue.

“This is a bad idea,” Savitar laughs, pressing his lover against a dirty tavern wall, somewhere in ancient Egypt.

“I keep telling you,” Kronos says, mock-sincerely, “Hollywood taught me many things –”

“Now that’s a world-ending statement if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Shut up, you’re just bitter what’s-her-name wouldn’t give you an autograph.”

“Her name is Lena Turner, and she’s perfect,” Savitar says. “And I didn’t want an autograph!”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

“I got a kiss on the cheek. That’s better.”

“Pity kiss.”

“Was not.”

“Was so, but that’s not the point –”

“The point is that I think those handful of years you spent with the Legends before coming back to me have gone to your head.”

“They have not. The point is that, according to Hollywood, there’s got to be something worth seeing inside those big old pyramids.”

“Yeah – dead people!”

“Dead people who, when alive, saw themselves as gods on earth. Like someone else I can think of, maybe?”

“I’ve grown as a person since then,” Savitar sniffs. “I’m older, wiser, more mature –”

“So you are going to help me break into a pyramid to fight some mummies.”

“Yes, of course I am,” Savitar says. “Do you really think I’m going to miss a chance to get laid in the resting place of a god on earth?”

Kronos snorts. “Older and wiser, huh?”

Savitar grins. “What can I say? I’m a jealous god; I don’t tolerate any rival.”

“Yeah, you are,” Kronos says, and his voice has gone soft. “Older, yes; wiser, no; but one thing’s for sure: you’re my god.”

Savitar kisses his lover for the hundredth time that day – it may grow old, at some point, but it hasn’t yet – and takes him by the hand. “Yes,” he says. “And you’re mine, and together we are both free. And now –”

He grins.

“- let’s go fight some mummies.”

In an dark alleyway in the middle of Central City, a man is standing in the darkness, ready to do his duty. He is in his middle years, that ageless time between thirty and sixty, and his shoulders are slumped as if he is very tired. His hood is pulled up over his head, casting his face into shadow, and his blind eyes are black coals hidden in the darkness.

Another man steps out behind him and taps him on the shoulder.

The first man turns his head.

“I think,” the second man says with a smirk and a drawl that suggests that he was born in the slums of this very city, his eyes just as blind but an unearthly blue, “that I’m going to take over from here.”

They watch as a third man – younger, in his twenties, and lithe as a sprinter – staggers out from the large building, his face in his hands as if he could hide the terrible scar that marked one side of it. His shoulders heave as though he is ill, but the illness is all within him: the isolation, the rejection, all crystalizing into hatred.

“Run,” the first man tells the newcomer when he falls into the alley. “Run until there’s nothing left of you but the running.”

“Run,” the second man echoes, but he stands behind the first man and the newcomer cannot see him. “Run until you are free.”

The newcomer shakes himself and rises up straight and turns and runs.

There is a crackle of blue lightning, and he is gone.

“Blue?” the first man asks. It hadn’t been blue the first time around, not until the young runner picked up the armor from a terrible far-future world that died shortly after he visited it.

Last time, it’d been black.

The second man shrugs. “I like blue,” he says.

“In my story, he comes back and kills the girl,” the first man says, conversationally. “Only to be trapped within the vortex of speed itself forever. Or maybe he doesn’t, and his death comes here, to the end of the circle, to meet him before he ever starts.”

“That’s nice,” the second man says. “In mine, he doesn’t. In mine, at the end, he runs free.”

“Someone will pay the price for that.”

“Let them,” the second man says. “I have faith that Barry Allen will find his way out in time.”

“Faith,” the first man says musingly. “There can be no faith where there is only what is already written.”

“No, there can’t be,” the second man says. “But I never much liked reading ahead anyway – and anyway, he’s dating my best friend, and for him I’ll do anything, even this.”

“That must be nice,” the first man says. He is about to speak, but then he pauses. He realizes. “I don’t know what happens next.”

He sound excited.

This is the first time that has happened in a long time.

The second man smiles – not a smirk, a smile, touched with sympathy and just enough ruthlessness that he will manage to survive this task he has taken upon himself. “This is where part ways,” he says. “I stay here, to watch over things, and you? You go visit your sister.”

“Yes,” the first man says. “I think I will.”

“One last thing first.”

They both turn as one to look behind them.

Blue lightning flashes, and two men appear: a god-on-earth with his face half-ruined, his loyal servant with burns along his shoulders. They stand together, laughing, shaking their heads, and they walk off together, human-slow, their hands intertwined.

The circle is complete.

The end comes, but it does not take the god; instead, the first man steps forward in his place, and disappears into a puff of dust that smells faintly of old books.

The second man looks upon the two lovers.

And he smiles.

“I love it when a plan comes together.”

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