— 𝒮 —

𝐁𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐘 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 next month training harder than ever; running every chance he got, improving the skills that his speed gave him, and going over every strategy and idea that Sophia came up with.

Sophia was a regular partner during Barry's training, and her mind raced as fast as Barry did when he was in action. It didn't take long for them to become good friends, especially while complaining about Cisco's antics and laughing about Barry's mess-ups.

Through the additional time she had spent with Barry, she had discovered that he, in fact, was not married with seven children, which was great news for her. Although, she still wasn't sure about her feelings for Barry, even though she felt them developing. A little too quick for her liking.

She knew that she was supposed to try and keep everything professional between the two of them, but damn, was it hard. It took all her will not to continue gazing into his blue-green eyes and instead lecture him about how he needs to stop speeding into the workshop and scaring her.

For what felt like the past decade, Sophia had dedicated most of her time to helping Barry train and come up with theories to test out. Even with the help of her now-genius brain, it was hard—this super-speed was, obviously, nothing they'd ever seen before. It was difficult work.

Which was all the more reason they needed to relax. And her perfect idea of a relaxing night was just this: playing Mario Kart with Cisco.

"Get out of the way, bitch!" Cisco steered his character—Bowser—towards Sophia's—Toad—effectively pushing her off the Rainbow Road.

It was Sophia and Cisco's shift that night, which meant that it was their game night. Whenever they had the lab to themselves, Cisco would set up his Wii and pull the TV to the middle of the room, and they would play different video games all night (all of which Cisco usually won—Sophia was terrible at video games despite how much she loved them) while snacking on whatever Caitlin had in her desk (don't tell Caitlin).

"Oh, come on, Cisco!" Sophia complained as she helplessly watched Toad spiral into space and sighed. "Stop doing that! That's, like, the millionth time!"

"Sucks to suck." 

Just as Toad was dropped back onto the track, Cisco completed his race, and he threw his arms up in a celebratory fashion. Sophia pouted as she lazily drove Toad to the finish line. There was no point in speeding now. 

"I win, yet again." Cisco did a small victory dance in his chair, his Wii remote in one hand before he nudged her. "I am the king of Mario Kart!"

"Shut up." Sophia rolled her eyes in amusement as she watched him start to do the Macarena.

Footsteps approached from the left, causing them to straighten up and whip their heads towards the entrance in alarm (it wouldn't be the first time Caitlin had caught them gaming).

"Hey, guys, I was just—" Barry suddenly stopped walking, his eyebrows knitting together as he saw what the two of them were doing. "Is that Mario Kart?"

Cisco shrugged. "No."

"I can see it right there."

Cisco shrugged again. "Yes."

Barry laughed as he walked towards the two, gesturing towards the game console with raised eyebrows. "Does Dr. Wells know that you have a Wii stashed here?"

"What he doesn't know won't hurt him." Cisco waved a dismissive hand. 

"We don't have anything better to do, anyway," Sophia giggled. "Why are you here? You need something?"

"Oh, well, I was free tonight, so I was just gonna ask if there was anything I could do," Barry replied. He nodded towards the paused screen, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he shrugged. "Clearly not."

A devilish grin grew on Cisco's face. "Oh, but there is something you can do. . . ."

Five minutes later, Barry and Sophia were competing at Waluigi Stadium, Barry playing as Luigi as Sophia continued as Toad. Cisco stood by Barry's side, cheering him on and all but shouting advice at him as if he were his coach. They were on their third and final lap, and Sophia, to no one's surprise, was not doing well.

"Oh, come on!" Sophia groaned as Barry crossed the finish line with a cheer.

"Hell yes!" Cisco gave Barry a high-five, the two men giving her childish grins.

Sophia pouted as Toad drove to the finish line, in eighth place yet again before she defeatedly placed the Wii remote on her lap. "This is rigged."

"No, you're just bad." Cisco stuck his tongue out, to which she rolled her eyes and shook her head.

"Yeah, you were driving the wrong way for a solid minute," Barry agreed, laughing as he handed the controller back to Cisco.

Sophia scrunched her nose as she amusedly scoffed, "Sorry that I'm not a Mario Kart master."

"You don't have to be a master to drive in the right direction," Barry pointed out with a grin. He squinted his eyes at her as he tilted his head and questioned, "Don't you drive? Do you not drive on the right side of the road?"

"Okay, real-life driving and Mario Kart driving are not the same!" she protested, lifting a finger in the air.

"They're pretty close." Barry shrugged lightly, receiving a nod of agreement from the man beside him. "Anyway, is there any actual stuff we need to get done?"

Sophia thought for a moment before giving a small shrug. "I mean, until we get some kind of emergency call, not really. Except Cisco and I have to do some research on your speed-healing, which we should get to at some point in the near future."

"You and me, baby." Cisco grinned as he gave her a fist bump.

Barry, whose expression had soured for a moment at Cisco's words, stammered, "All right, I'll uh . . . go to the training room. Call if you need me."

Barry gave them an awkward smile before speeding out, leaving Sophia's hair to blow to the side and for Cisco to stumble over his own feet.

After letting out a quiet curse and fixing his hair, Cisco turned to Sophia, his eyebrows raised. "He's got the hots for you, Soph."

"Wha—Cisco." Sophia rolled her eyes and pushed him, though she felt her cheeks warm from the statement. There was no way that could be true, right? Cisco was never any good at understanding this kind of stuff. "He definitely does not."

"He definitely does." Cisco gave her a grin as the two headed for the main desk. "Did you see how upset he was before he left?"

"You're just . . . over exaggerating." Sophia dismissively waved her hand in the air as she sat down and shook her head. "He wasn't upset. He was perfectly fine."

"Mhm, sure." Cisco rolled his eyes. "I think you're perfectly stupid."

— 𝒮 —

". . . and this is where my team monitors the police bands for criminal activity." Barry's voice floated into the room as he and a familiar blonde walked into the Cortex. "We can track anything that's happening in the city. Check this out, we've got our own satellite."

"I know." Felicity spun around in her spot, looking around the room with wonder. "I've hacked into it from time to time."

"Rude." Cisco raised his eyebrows as he took a bite of his Twizzler, walking up to the main desk.

Caitlin gave a nervous smile. "It is, of course, so wonderful to see you again, Felicity." She redirected her stare to Barry. "I'm just wondering how much of our operation she needs to know about."

"I'm really good at keeping secrets," she reassured Caitlin, giving her a wink.

Sophia smiled in greeting as she walked to the main desk. She had always liked Felicity, and damn, was the woman a stunner. Sophia always wondered how the girl wasn't in a relationship.

"Yeah, Felicity works with the Arrow." Barry gestured towards her excitedly.

"Sweet." Cisco grinned as he began to walk around the desk. "Now it's all making sense. You know who the Arrow is." His eyes widened as he looked at Barry. "Wait, do you know who the Arrow is?"

"Uh . . ." Barry leaned against the side of the desk, shaking his head profusely.

Sophia exchanged a knowing look with Cisco. There was no way Barry didn't know who he was.

"Let's just say that my team has a similar setup, but with . . . more pointy objects." Felicity grinned.

"Welcome, Ms. Smoak," Dr. Wells greeted from the entrance, a small smile on his face as he gazed upon them.

Her eyes widened as she whipped her head around to look at him. "Dr. Wells? The Dr. Wells?"

"Please, call me Harrison, Felicity." He smiled as he nodded his head.

Her breath hitched. "Oh, you know who I am?"

He began to move towards them. "Ranked second in the national informative technology competition at age nineteen, graduated MIT With a master's degree in cybersecurity and computer sciences . . . I know who you are. I keep an eye out for promising talent in scientific fields. It's what brought me Cisco, Caitlin, and Sophia . . . and I foresaw great things from you."

A small grin came onto Barry's face as he tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. "Speaking of great things, want to see something cool?"

That something cool, was him showing off how fast he could run. And he did just that by heading onto the treadmill and beginning to run as they all watched through the window from the outside.

"How fast can he run?" Felicity questioned, not taking her eyes off of the speedster.

"He hasn't reached his top speed yet, theoretically speaking," Sophia answered, giving a small shrug.

"So is he really okay?"

Caitlin glanced down at the screen in front of her. "His heart rate is within normal range for him."

"No, I mean, the lightning bolt changed him." Felicity's expression contorted to a worried one as she glanced back at them, her eyebrows furrowed. "Do any of you really know how much?"

"We know a fair amount," Cisco said, swivelling his chair around slightly as he shrugged.

She turned to them, questions racing through her mind. "If everything about him is sped up, is he going to age faster? What would happen if he ran too fast? I mean, would he just be running, and then, poof, he's dust in a red costume?"

"Everything we do here at STAR Labs is to protect Barry Allen," Dr. Wells reassured her. "Trust us, Felicity, he is in very good hands here."

"Want to see how fast I can run backwards?" Barry called out.

Crash.

Sophia grinned over to Felicity. "Don't worry. He heals quickly too."

— 𝒮 —

Dr. Wells and Sophia were in one of the storage rooms, where she was staring at the empty cell that should've been holding one of her creations. She felt guilt course throughout her whole body, and the anger seeping off of Dr. Wells only made it worse.

"How long has it been missing?" Dr. Wells asked quietly.

"I don't know," Sophia mumbled.

"Sophia, I'm gonna ask you again. But when I do, I expect a more specific answer than 'I don't know.' Now, how long has this weapon been gone?"

She rubbed her eyes, trying to think of a proper answer. "A day, maybe two. One of the janitors didn't show up for work this morning. He was probably the one who took it. I didn't think that . . ."

Dr. Wells cut her off. "You didn't think, because if you had, you would have discussed with me first your desire to build something that could, in theory, hurt anyone, and in particular, Barry Allen."

She turned to him. "I'm sorry. If you just let me explain . . ."

"You know how I feel about weapons. They do not belong in STAR Labs. Now, you are gonna figure out a way to locate this gun, and you are gonna do it right now," he ordered, and she quickly nodded. "This thing you built, what can it do?"

She sighed, looking back to the cell with dread. "Bad stuff."

— 𝒮 —

Barry was sitting on the hospital bed, his shirt slightly pulled up to reveal an area of black that had crept onto his skin.

He had just come back from the Central City Museum, having fought Leonard Snart, who was a thief. To Sophia's horror, he had somehow gotten his hands on the weapon she had created, ultimately using it against Barry.

"It's still numb," Barry groaned as he pulled his shirt back down, shifting his gaze up to the doctor in front of him.

"It's presenting itself like third-degree frostbite," Caitlin sighed.

Felicity furrowed her eyebrows, a tablet in hand as she looked at Caitlin with confusion. "I thought he had hyper-healing."

"It's been slowed," Caitlin explained. "If your cells weren't regenerating at the rate they are, your blood vessels would have frozen solid and the nerve damage would have been permanent. You're lucky to be alive."

"Snart wasn't another meta-human. He has some kind of gun. It froze things, slowed me down . . . enough that I wasn't in time to save someone," Barry said slowly as he got up from the bed, the corners of his lips downturned and his eyes moistened.

"According to his record, Snart didn't even bother to finish high school, so how did he build a handheld high-tech snow machine?" Felicity asked, looking down at the tablet which held this information as she walked over to Dr. Wells, who was in one corner.

Dr. Wells looked up. "STAR Labs built the cold gun."

Sophia stepped forward, guilt instantly filling her. In no way did she want the others to take the fall when it was her fault. "Dr. Wells, Cisco, and Caitlin had nothing to do with this. I built the gun."

"You did?" Barry's eyebrows furrowed, his face now shifted into an expression of shock as he looked at her. "Why?"

She sighed. "Because speed and cold are opposites. Temperature is measured by how quickly the atoms of something are oscillating. The faster they are, the hotter it is, and when they are cold, they're slower on the atomic level. When there's no movement at all, it's called—"

"Absolute zero," Barry finished for her, his hands settling on his hips.

She nodded as she folded her arms. "Yeah. I designed a compact cryo-engine to achieve absolute zero. I—" She sighed before confessing, "I built it to stop you."

Barry's gaze tilted down towards the floor as his eyebrows knit tightly together, his head shaking slightly as he processed all of this.

"We didn't know who you were then, Barry," Sophia continued earnestly. "I mean, what if you turned out to be some psycho, like Mardon or Nimbus?"

"But I didn't." Barry looked up, his voice growing angrier with each word. "Did I?"

Caitlin stepped forward, wanting to defend Sophia before Barry blew up. "We built the entire structure you're standing in to do good, and it blew up. In the wake of that, you can understand why she would want to be prepared for the worst."

"I can understand that, but what I can't understand is why you didn't tell me what you did." He bit on his lower lip for a moment as he shook his head. "I mean, after all we've been through, I thought you trusted me. I thought we were friends."

"We are, Barry," Sophia insisted as she took a step forward, to which Barry took a step back.

"I mean, if you would have just told me, I could have been prepared. But instead, someone died tonight."

She gave a grave nod. "And I have to live with that."

"No, Sophia." Barry shook his head. "We all do."

— 𝒮 —

A few hours later, Sophia walked into the Cortex, a tablet clutched in her hands as she announced, "I figured out a way to track Snart."

"Captain Cold," Cisco, who apparently had already come up with a villainous name, corrected with a raised hand.

"You gotta stop naming these guys." Caitlin raised her eyebrows, shaking her head as Sophia walked behind Barry, who was faced the other way as he watched the satellite's map on the TV screen.

Sophia frowned at Barry's back. He hadn't even acknowledged her coming in, never mind the important announcement she had made.

"Barry, listen to her," Dr. Wells instructed, seeing that the man had been ignoring her.

Barry sighed, and then turned to Sophia, obviously still mad. "How?"

"The cold gun is powered by an engine control unit, a microcomputer that regulates air-to-fuel ratios so that the sub-cooled fluid in the chambers don't overflow and explode," she began to explain.

"Right." Cisco nodded as Sophia hurried behind the desk, going to the side, where Felicity was standing.

Sophia continued, "This ECU was receiving updates wirelessly from this tablet. If we boost the signal using Central City's network and send a false update, we'll get a ping back, and then—"

"We can locate Snart," Barry finished the sentence for her. "How long will it take?"

Sophia looked over to Cisco, who then went in front of the unoccupied computer. "First we have to hack into the City's network, so I don't know—thirty minutes, maybe?"

"I can do it in less than one." Felicity grinned as she headed over to a different desk, where her laptop was. "When it comes to hacking, I'm the fastest woman alive." She cracked her knuckles but winced as soon as she did so. "Ow! That was not as badass as I pictured." She typed for a few seconds before giving a satisfied nod. "All right, I'm in."

"Are you kidding?" Caitlin looked up at her with a look of amazement, her jaw dropping in unison with the others.

Cisco grinned as he bent down towards the computer and began to work. "All right, I'm sending the updates. We're connected."

"Network is triangulating the location," Felicity called over.

"We got him. He's heading west on Nelson toward the train station," Sophia informed as she leaned over Dr. Wells' shoulder.

"If he's leaving, it appears Mr. Snart may have gotten what he came for." Dr. Wells nodded.

"When we put our minds to it, dude, nothing can stop us." Cisco grinned, looking around at the group.

Barry then sped into his suit, his normal clothes instantly changing into the scarlet suit. He raised his hand to his ear, disconnecting his earpiece.

"Oh, you turned your earpiece off. How are we gonna talk to each other?" Sophia furrowed her eyebrows.

"I don't feel like talking right now."

And with that, he was gone.

"You should go after Barry," Felicity said suddenly, getting up from her spot and walking towards them.

"You heard him, Felicity. He wants to do this alone." Sophia shook her head. He was already mad enough. She was sure going after him wasn't going to help with that.

"Of course, he said that. He's hurt. You're his team and his friends. If I had a nickel for every time the Arrow told me to back off, I would be as rich as Oliver Queen, uh—who I mention because he's the richest person I know . . . or used to be," she quickly corrected, her eyes squinting and nose scrunching.

Sophia then made the assumption that Oliver Queen was the Arrow.

Felicity continued, "The point is, you have your partner's back no matter what."

Cisco looked over at Sophia, a grin spreading on his face. "Get going, girl."

So she, Caitlin, Felicity, and Cisco rushed to the location they had gotten from the GPS from his suit, arriving at the railroad not too long after.

Sophia immediately found Barry as soon as she made it there, him and Snart being surrounded by fire. Barry was on the ground, trapped by a belt of ice, while Snart pointed the cold gun towards him, about to shoot him.

"Drop the gun. Now."

Snart paused before turning around slowly to her, his eyebrows raised before turning back to Barry. "I was wondering who you were talking to."

"Listen, buddy, if you don't leave right now, I can . . . hurt you," Sophia threatened, though she was sure she wasn't the least bit terrifying. "Really . . . really bad."

"Yeah?" Snart raised his eyebrows in amusement. Obviously, she was going to have to up her act.

She took a deep breath as she remembered that Barry and everyone else's life was on the line, and quickly formulated a plan in her head. A new confidence came over her as she lifted her head and forced a smirk on her face.

"Oh, yeah. I can manipulate your mind in any way I want. Erase your entire memory, decrease your mental capacity, control your mind, induce permanent brain damage, or even just destroy your brain and kill you." She gave a small shrug, praying with every ounce of her that he'd believe her though she had absolutely zero proof she could do this.

He had a sly smile on his face as he looked down at her fists, which were trembling. "Your hands are shaking. You've never killed anyone."

He was right—on both accounts. Sophia swallowed. "There's a first time for everything, Captain Cold."

Snart raised his head, a smile on his face.

Sophia took a step closer to him, and she lifted her hand. "I will do it."

He paused, considering his options. "You win, kid." He lifted the gun away, giving in. He turned and began to walk away. "I'll see you around."

As soon as he was out of sight, Sophia let out a sigh of relief, rubbing her forehead. "Thank God. I cannot do any of that stuff."

She rushed over to Barry, breaking him out of the ice. "Are you okay?" she asked in concern as she extended a hand to help him up.

He smiled, taking her hand. "I'm fine. Thank you, Sophia."

"Anytime."

— 𝒮 —

"We've been trying to track Snart, but he must have disconnected the signal somehow," Sophia sighed as she turned to Barry, who was standing only a few inches apart from her as they leaned forward on the main desk. She felt butterflies appear in her stomach as he shifted closer, his warmth radiating onto her body.

"We'll find him, Sophia." He gave her a warm smile. "Together."

"Thanks, Barry. And I'm—I'm so sorry about the gun, it wasn't—"

"Don't worry, I know. I just . . ." His gaze shifted down to the desk as he shook his head, his lips pressing together for a few moments before he continued, "I don't know, I felt like we were getting close, and it hurt to find out that you were keeping something like this hidden from me."

"We are close, Barry. I was just worried that you wouldn't—wouldn't like me anymore if I told you," she gave a small chuckle. "It won't happen again. Not that I have any more weapons to use against you, trust me, one was enough."

He laughed, "I trust you."

The two gazed at each other for a few moments, and Sophia could feel her stomach become infested with butterflies as her dark eyes stared into his light ones.

Her heart rate increased the longer they looked at each other, their bodies slowly getting closer and closer with each second that passed, and the warmth from his body spread to hers.

"Soph—oh, Barry, you're here."

The two quickly took a step away from each other, turning to the entrance to see that Dr. Wells had rolled in.

Barry nodded quickly. "I am. Here. I am here, yes. Actually, I have to go, though. Felicity's going to leave." He gave Sophia a smile before speeding away, the wind blowing her hair back.

Dr. Wells' expression was serious as he came toward her. "Sophia, don't you ever do anything like that again. Do you understand me?"

She nodded. "Yes, sir."