(The Flash) Frozen Flashpoint: Chapter 13 – Future Meeting Coming Early

Chapter 13 – Future Meeting Coming Early

Summary: The speedster introduces herself to the team, and receiving some mixed reactions.

Barry got ready for a fight, but when the lightning faded, a teenager stood in front of them. Clearly, she was around 16 years old. What stopped Barry in his tracks was that he felt like he had seen the girl before.

She had long hair, a shade of light brown that he recognized. It was pulled back in a messy ponytail, with two strands of hair outside the ponytail and in front of her face. The odd thing was that those strands were silver-colored.

Her suit was interesting. It was clearly made of the same materials as his own, but the design was completely different. Most of the suit was a very pale shade of blue, almost white. Her gloves and boots were silver, the same color as the lightning symbol on her chest. Her shoulder pads were a deeper shade of blue with silver snowflakes spread across them. The final touch was the red lining on her suit, the same color as Barry’s suit.

Her skin was a light shade of pale, which Barry easily recognized, and her eyes were a familiar green that seemed to gaze into Barry’s soul. At that moment, Barry realized her eyes were bloodshot with tears still leaking from them. Her breath was heavy, and she looked disoriented.

She shook herself and began to look around. Once her eyes landed on Barry, they widened, and she screamed, “Mama! Dad!”

Before Barry could even think, the girl sped forward and hugged both Barry and Frost (When did she take over?) as tightly as she could. She looked like she was afraid they might disappear at any moment.

Frost gave Barry a raised eyebrow for a moment, then looked at the teen, who wasn’t letting them go, and said softly, “Sorry, little runner, but I think you made a mistake there.”

But the girl just buried her face deeper into Frost and shook her head.

Finally, Joe decided to take charge and asked as gently as he could, “Excuse me, miss. We really need to know who you are.”

The girl took another moment in their embrace before pulling away and turning toward Joe with a small, sad smile. “Sorry, Gramps. It’s all new to me, not used to introducing myself to my family.”

Joe looked shocked but still happy beyond words to be called a grandpa. Harry took the reins and, with his usual blank mask and emotionless tone, asked, “We are your family?”

The girl gave him a familiar lopsided smile and shot back cheekily, “As much as we annoy you, Grankle Harry, you’ll never deny that much.”

Harry’s lips twitched slightly upwards, and he didn’t retort. Jessie looked excited and asked in her cheerful voice, “You called Dad ‘Grankle.’ Does that mean...?”

Before she could finish, the girl chuckled and replied back, a little more cheerfully but still sounding forced to Barry, “Of course it does, Auntie Jess, as well as Uncle Wally.” The two seemed to catch on to the hidden meaning and blushed deeply.

Cisco raised a finger and exclaimed, “You’re from the future!”

Harry rolled his eyes and snarked, “A brilliant deduction, Ramon.”

The future speedster let out a little wet giggle at the exchange. Then Caitlin asked, “You called us Mama and Dad, so I’m assuming you’re ours?”

The teen turned to them again with watery eyes and said, “Of course, Mom. There’s no one else who could create something like me.”

Cisco raised an eyebrow at her. “You look cool and all, but no offense, you’re saying it like you have something special under your belt. Other than being a speedster, I mean, because those are getting to be far less rare these days.”

The teen smirked before she sped around the lab for a moment and then looked at Cisco with the same smirk on her face.

Cisco looked confused for a moment, then stood up and looked around. But as soon as he tried to take a step, he slipped on something and had to catch himself on the table.

Now bent over the table, the engineer looked down at the floor to see it was covered in ice. He, and everyone else, looked at the future speedster with wide eyes to see her standing there with cold air coming from her raised palm.

Harry was frowning. “But how? It should be impossible. Speed and cold are opposites. Not only can you use both, you’re doing it at the same time.”

Cisco nodded. “The man’s got a point.”

The girl shrugged. “Both of you, with the help of Uncle Wally, tried to find a solution to that exact question for a long time. The short answer is the Speedforce.”

“Oh, come on, that’s bullshit!” Cisco whined, not liking the explanation one bit.

Caitlin chuckled at him but said, “Well, we barely know anything about the Speedforce, to be honest. Until a year ago, none of us had any idea it could give Barry his powers back if he lost them, so how do we know what else it’s capable of?”

Harry thought it over for a moment before nodding and saying, “You’re right, Snow. Something to consider for the future.”

The girl just shrugged and said calmly, “Uncle Cisco called it Cold Speed.”

Cisco perked up at the name. “That’s an awesome name. Totally my work. Did I give you a hero name to go with that suit?”

The teen chuckled before striking a heroic pose. “You’re looking at Speedstorm.”

Cisco began bowing to everyone’s confusion and then said dramatically, “You’re looking at a master of the art, ladies and gentlemen. It’s clear my talents don’t fade in the future.”

Speedstorm laughed a little, and Barry could see the tension slowly leaving her body.

“A good name, no doubt. But talking about names...” Joe spoke again, “You still haven’t told us yours, young lady.”

The girl smiled widely around the room and said, “Hiya, all. My name is Lyra Nora Snow-Allen.”

Caitlin gasped and whispered, “Lyra, as in...?”

Lyra smiled at her and said softly, “You always liked your constellations, Mom. And I had a big legacy to carry on, so the name worked out well.”

Caitlin then looked at Barry with a soft smile. “I always wanted to name my daughter after a constellation, but since I fell for your dad, I assumed he would insist on naming you after his mom.”

Before Barry could say anything, Lyra answered Caitlin, “I asked you about that once. You told me Dad didn’t fight you for the name because he didn’t want me to feel like I was a replacement or that I had to uphold some standard that comes with the name. Still, I like my middle name just as much as the first.”

Caitlin gave Barry a wide, watery smile, and Barry felt really warm inside.

Wally raised his hand hesitantly. Lyra giggled a little before saying, amused, “You don’t need to raise your hand, Uncle Wally.”

Wally let out a small chuckle before pointing out, “You called Caitlin both Mama and Mom. Why?”

Lyra tilted her head in confusion for a moment before realizing what Wally meant. With a small smile, she said, “Caitlin is my Mom, and Frost is my Mama.”

Everyone froze in place to think about that for a moment until Cisco just shrugged and commented, “Yeah, makes sense.”

Caitlin then turned to Barry and asked kindly, “Barr, you’ve been really quiet until now. Don’t you want to know more about our daughter?”

Barry responded with a blank face and an emotionless voice, “Is she?”

The room froze again, and everyone looked at him with shock except Lyra, who, oddly enough, gave him a small, sad smile but didn’t try to defend herself.

Caitlin was the first to recover and demanded from Barry, “What are you talking about, Barry?”

Barry crossed his arms and shrugged before saying wryly, “We fell for that before with Thawne and Zoom. We don’t have a good record with speedsters claiming to be friends.”

The tension began to grow in the room now as Barry pointed out a completely valid point. But Jessie was quick to defend the future girl. “Come on, Barry, she looks just like Caitlin—with your eyes.”

Again, Barry shrugged and shot back, “Thawne wore your dad’s face for years without anyone being the wiser.”

Joe looked a little uncomfortable with the situation and tried to gently say, “Barr, don’t you think you’re being a little unfair right now?”

Barry frowned at Joe, uncrossed his arms, and began pacing while pointing out, “Even if she is our daughter from the future, why is she here? It’s a dangerous thing to do! She could change the timeline and never be born!”

Barry felt a shiver go down his spine and turned to see Caitlin giving him the harshest glare she ever had. Her voice was calm but furious as she said, “Isn’t someone feeling hypocritical today?”

Barry flinched at both the tone and the jab from his fiancée. The most painful thing was that she was right. He was being hypocritical.

“Umm, what is she talking about?” Jessie asked, trying to ease the tension in the room.

Lyra raised her hands in a calming gesture and tried to defend Barry. “Look, what’s important is the fact that it never happened, so...”

But the teen was cut off by her mother, who wasn’t in the mood to let Barry off after throwing shade at the future girl. “Barry seems to forget that before I talked him out of it, he was about to run back in time to save his mother and create a new timeline.”

There were gasps all around the room. Harry was the first to verbally admonish him. “Of all the irresponsible shit you can pull, Allen.”

Cisco just shook his head in dismay while muttering, “Dude, that’s a host of issues waiting to burst.”

Barry kept feeling smaller and smaller, especially when he saw the looks on Jessie’s face and Joe’s, who seemed about to say something. But before he could, the voice of the future speedster echoed around the Cortex as she yelled, “Enough!”

When she had all the attention in the room, she took a deep breath before saying calmly, “Dad only considered doing it after the defeat of Zoom. He had just seen his dad die, and you all locked him up. Totally not shwei, by the way. He felt alone and depressed. It took Mom barely five minutes to talk him out of the idea once she showed she still cared.”

Lyra then turned to Caitlin and, with a small shake of her head, commented, “I know you’re angry, Mom, but that was uncalled for. Not shwei.”

Caitlin nodded a little with a guilty look on her face and said in a voice full of remorse, “You’re right, little star.”

His fiancée then turned to him and pulled him into a hug, saying softly and genuinely, “I’m sorry, Barr. I had no right to say that to you.”

Barry let out a heavy sigh. “No, you had a point. Maybe I’m a little paranoid after everything.”

A chuckle broke them both out of their moment, and they looked at the smiling face of Lyra. Caitlin raised her eyebrow at the girl and asked in a motherly tone (When did she develop that?), “Is something funny to you, young lady?”

The smile didn’t leave Lyra’s face as she nodded, but under Caitlin’s piercing look, she explained herself. “It’s just that this conversation went pretty much like your future self predicted it would.”

Cisco looked around and asked the room, “Are we going to ignore the ‘shwei’ thing?”

With a giggle, Lyra turned to Cisco and simply said, “It’s a future kids’ thing, Uncle Cisco. None of you will get that.”

Cisco pouted a little at being told he was too old for something. He always did consider himself a kid at heart, one of the reasons Barry respected him so much.

But something else Lyra said caught Barry’s attention, and he asked, “Wait, you said your future mom told you to expect this conversation?”

Barry noticed that the tension that had slowly left the young teen’s body began to creep back as she nodded.

A little softer now, Barry tried again. “Then she knows you’re here, back in time?”

Lyra began to shift uncomfortably where she stood and said quietly, “She and Uncle Cisco were the ones to guide me to this point in time, and Uncle Harry was the one to help me with the time travel.”

Harry’s eyes widened, and he asked, not believing it, “I helped you travel back in time, even with all the risks involved?”

Jessie nodded beside him. “Yeah, gotta say, doesn’t sound like Dad.”

Lyra’s tension returned full force, and her face was as dark as her tone when she said, “You had your reasons. We all did.”

Joe got close enough to put a hand on her shoulder and encouraged her gently, “And what are those reasons, baby runner?”

Lyra fidgeted with her fingers before pulling a USB drive from one of her gloves. Everyone looked confused as she said, “Maybe it’ll be better if you hear it from the source.”

Barry raised an eyebrow at her. “We...” Lyra flinched at the word, but Barry ignored it and pushed on. “...sent you back with a recorded message?”

Lyra gave him a small, forced smile. “Mom thought it would be better to have proof with me, to save the time of having to prove everything to you myself.” She walked slowly to Cisco and offered him the USB drive. “Hopefully, that will explain everything to you.”