(Nothing is) Impossible

(Nothing is) Impossible 

Everyone is born with a familiar to help them find their soulmate.  So what, you ask, because you've heard this story before? That familiar didn’t represent that newborn in any way, it represented their soulmate’s soul.

The family of this new life cannot see the familiar only the baby. Likewise the baby is the only one that can hear it or touch it. Until they find their soulmate, but you had guessed that already, hadn't you?

Some familiar's can choose their own names early on in their lives, others wait until the soulmates meet and some might never pick a name at all simply going with whatever nicknames their human picks for them. 

This brings us to a little boy named Leonard Snart, who doesn't know what life has in store for him yet.  His sister hasn't been born and his father hasn't been arrested yet, but little Leo still has bad feelings about his father because his familiar has bad feelings about him. 

“My hackles go up every time he comes up from the basement, Leo.  i don’t like it.”

“His papers are down there, you know he says he’s just working when I ask him.”

“But he gets angry with you for asking, that’s why I asked you to stop asking him,” his familiar says one night, chirping a bit with nervous energy as it paces all around Leo’s room.  A smile tugs at Leo’s lips and he tries to hide it behind the little book he’s reading.

Leo's familiar is a cheetah, still a cub the way Leo is still a child, so when it tries to snarl or growl it still comes out more as chirps than anything else. He's trying to be quiet tonight because his father has company over that upsets his familiar, and the cheetah's hackles had been up all evening, even after they'd gone upstairs to get away from the men. 

Leo sets the book down and reaches out to the big cat, the cheetah moving quickly to the small circle of the boys arms, and he buries his face in familiar's side and breaths deeply, the cat curling around him. They both breath a bit easier like this, when they can touch the other, knowing that they will always have each other…and someday, Leo thinks, his soulmate and another familiar.

It is a scene that would play out hundreds of times, staying quiet and hiding from his father, changing only slightly once Lisa is born. 

Things change when Lewis decides that Len, because it’s Len now and not Leo, will go on heists with him because his hands are small enough to fit into places grown-ups hands cannot.  The cheetah hates it but follows along and stalks about watching out for Len the way his father clearly is not.

Len and his familiar are a very good team.  The same cannot be said of the crews that Lewis pulls together for the heists and eventually one of them goes south and Lewis blames Len for it even though it wasn’t his fault.  They manage to evade capture from the police, but when they get home Lewis ties Len’s hands together.

“You nearly cost me everything tonight, you ungrateful piece of trash!,” Lewis yelled as he tugged on the bonds around Len’s wrists.  “No son of mine is going to rely on some damn fool familiar for comfort for what’s coming,” he snarls in Len’s face as he walks off to go get something else.

Len’s face is ashen as he looks at the cheetah, not that he can see much because it is pressed up against his chest, one forearm wrapped around his shoulder.  Len can feel it’s heart beating wildly against his own chest, or it might be his own for all he knows.

Lewis comes back then, loud foot fall sounding harsher for all of Len’s panic.  With out warning something strikes Len’s back and he cries out in shock, squeezing his eyes shut and bowing his head forward.  It is the wrong thing to do all around.

Lewis snarls out another, “no son of mine!” and reaches forward and grabs ahold of Len’s hair and pulls his head up and then brings the belt back down against Len’s back.

The cheetah shifts it’s position so that it can press it’s cheek against Len’s face, forearm wrapping more securely around Len’s shoulder.

“You’re doing just fine, Len.  There’s nothing wrong with seeking comfort form familiars, mankind has been doing it for thousands of years!  Just a little longer, can you stay strong just a little longer for me, Len? I’ll stay right here with you, I’ll never leave you!” the cheetah says as the beating continues. It’s started to purr against Len’s front, he can feel the vibrations of it, hear the soft sounds of it even over the harsh sounds of his father hurting him.

When Lewis was done he left Len there, hands still bound together, and now laying on the floor with his back either bleeding or covered in welts.  The cheetah continued to speak softly to him and coax him to shift his handset from under him, though Len wasn’t sure what good it would do him.  He watches through tear filled eyes as his familiar extends its claws, claws that have never been able to touch anything before, and he watches as the cheetah slowly starts to scratch through what ever it is that his father has tied him up with.

Still sniffling Len asks quietly, “when do familiars start to touch things that aren’t their humans?”

The cheetah’s ears are flat back and its hackles are up as it continues it’s task.  It takes a long while before it replies back just as quietly, “when we need to be more.”

The reply sounds broken to Len’s ears, like the big cat wanted nothing more in the world than to not have told him the truth, or at least part of the truth.

As soon as his wrists are free Len wobbles forward and wraps the big cat in the best hug he can manage and the cheetah hooks it’s chin over Len’s shoulder, but ultimately doesn’t move to hug him back.  Len takes in a breath to ask why at the same time the cheetah starts purring again and Len feels the difference from when it had been purring before while Lewis had been beating him.  This feels more substantial, like here’s more to the cat now than there had been 30 minutes ago.  New tears leak from Len’s eyes and he takes a deep breath, knowing he has to get up and clean everything up before his father gets back or wakes up, which ever happens first.

He stands up, the cheetah bracing him on one side, and they get to work.

When Len is old enough to leave on his own and get away from Lewis, the cheetah is the one that talks him into it, even though it knows how bad it'll be for Lisa. It knows once Len gets away and gets the means, he'll come back for Lisa...somehow. And he does, eventually. Len didn't like the feel of running away though, even if his familiar had argued, successfully, it's pros versus its cons, he wouldn't be doing it again if he could help it. 

Len is in and out of jail after he escapes his father.  Sometimes on purpose, sometimes not.  His cheetah always goes looking for the weak points in the guards schedule, it's eye for detail as good as Len's own.  It gives him hope for his soulmate, whom ever they are.  

Len's in a new safe house when it happens, his cheetah is sprawled across him, easy as you please, when it jolts and its head snaps up eyes wide.  Len's never seen it look like this before.

He reaches both hands for it's head as he asks, "what's wrong?"

The cheetah lets out a terrible yowl Len is sure no actual cheetah can make and fear flashes through him, is something wrong with his soulmate?  If they died he would never know because the cheetah would continue to exist since it came into existence when he was born, so while it was ultimately a piece of his soulmate the cheetah was still his.  The back of his mind, almost hysterically, supplies that it's like joint custody of this one piece of the soul.

The cheetah moves then, pulling Len from that train of thought and burying it's head, as best it can for a full grown cheetah, into his chest.  Len wraps his arms around it and threads his fingers through the fur, entails scratching where he can.

"Scared, lightning, gone, mom, no, dad, no!  MOM!" The cheetah is babbling as it cries, actually cries against his chest.  Len has no idea what to make of it.  He's never heard stories of a familiar connecting to their actual soul until after they met them, he didn't know it was possible.  Whatever happened to his soulmate tonight must not have been good at all, and that rankled Len.

First he couldn't protect Lisa (though he was nearly had enough to go back for her) and now something had happened to his soulmate and he still didn't know who they were.  They had better still be alive...

---

A small boy sat bundled up at the Central City Police Department, off in a corner where he had gone to hide.  The CCPD had originally been looking for him, but one of the officers had reasoned that he was still in the building and just needed to calm down and a bunch of strangers stomping around and shouting for him was probably not helping.

The boy didn't recognize the officer from what he could see, but he was great full for them.

Huddled next to the boy was a slate grey wolf, as big as the boy himself, his head resting on the top of the boys head.  

"We can't stay here much longer."

"We can't go home, they took Dad."

"Joe said that we could stay with his pack, didn't he?"

The boy remained silent.

The wolf pulled it's head off of the boys to look him in the face and said, " Barry Allen, we are not staying in this corner and hiding forever from the man in the lightning! He is a faster runner than you anyway."

Barry turned red for a second, looking the wolf in the eye and then deflated, "why do you always have to be right?"

"I think things through with my head, while you think things through with your heart.  I imagine when we find my human you'll make quite the pair," the wolf said, what passed for a smile on a long muzzle plastered on its face.

"I wish I could find my soulmate now and live with them and not Joe, he didn't believe me about the man in the lightning," Barry sighed.

The wolf sighed too as it got to its feet and wiggled to get behind Barry.  Barry laughed at the feeling but obliged when the wolf gave him a push to get him up off the floor.

"Do you think they're nearby?"  Barry asked, trying to stall before they moved back to were anyone could see them.

"You know that's not how a familiar works.  We aren't like a compass that can point you towards your soulmates.  We're there so that in the long run you don't miss each other out right," the wolf replied.  He sounded just as upset by this as Barry looked.

"We're going to be the first to do it differently," Barry said and smiled at his wolf.

"Oh, and what makes you so sure?" came the reply.

"We saw a man running around in lightning!  Think of what other impossible things are out there, what other impossible things might actually be possible!"  Barry leant forward and wrapped his arms around the neck of the wolf, "you'll see, we're going to do the impossible too."

He wasn't wrong in the long run.

Once he had come out of hiding and Joe had gotten things sorted out, he had taken Barry home, the wolf sitting next to him, head resting atop Barry's again as both looked out the window as the familiar neighborhood passed by.  Barry could almost trick himself into believing that Joe was taking him home.

"Don't do that to yourself, it'll hurt more in the long run and there is only so much I can do to comfort you," the wolf said softly.

Barry wrapped an arm around it and sighed, turning his head to look out the front of the car and sighed.

Joe glanced at Barry from the corner of his eye as he slowed to a stop at a stop sign before going through the intersection.

"I know I have no right to ask since I'm not your father, but if you can, what kind of animal is your familiar?" He asked.  Most kids never told anyone but their parents what their familiar was, it was a piece of their soulmate after all, so it was special.

Barry wrapped his other arm around his familiar, glad that no one could see anyone else's animals but the souls they were linked to.  He shook his head and buried his face in the wolfs fur.  

Though to Joe it looked like he was just putting his face into open air.  Joe smiled and wondered when Barry would realize that others could still see his face when he tried to hide it in his familiar's side.  He certainly wasn't going to break it to the kid today.  Better, by far, to let him have this safety net for now.  He would tell him before school started back up in case it became a 'thing.'

---

Iris had stayed up and waited for her father and friend, so she was up and at the door when she heard the car pull into the driveway.  The wolf only just barely managed to brace Barry from behind so that the two wouldn't topple over when Iris rushed out to hug him and say how sorry she was that things had turned out this way, but that Barry was going to be with them now, so they could play all the time, and wouldn't that be fun!

Barry tried to smile, and it worked a little bit, but the reminder that he could never go home had him crying again and pulling away from Iris to twist around to reach for the wolf.

Joe looked on in awe as he watched as Barry's shirt shifted as the familiar moved to comfort the crying child.  He was also surprised to see that Barry's tears weren't rolling down his cheeks, but instead being absorbed by the familiar.  He had never seen such a strong reaction before and had to wonder just what had happened that night at the Allen residence for the normal bond between a child and their familiar to deepen so.