Six sentences from each of the fics I’ve made the most progress on this week.

The Flash, Barry/Caitlin “Third Time’s A Charm ” T ~10k words  (slowburn no powers AU)

“I prefer to think of it as...as...thorough,“ she says, using her finger to emphasise her point. It's kind of cute how determined she was to find him. He wishes it had worked.

It makes him flood with colour at the thought of her putting so much effort into trying to find him. He also feels a little embarassed he'd not put more effort into finding her; his only excuse is he didn't have much to go on. Suddenly he feels sad to think of all the years passed between them where they could have been friends and it's purely bad luck they weren't.

The Flash, Savisnow, “No Quick Fix” ~2.6k (Savitar on Team Flash AU + Caitlin is kidnapped again)

(warning for violence mentioned below)

Barry touches her on the shoulder, briefly pausing to ask if she's okay. A quick nod and she already feels the pressure of the ties relieved as he cuts through them with his powers and helps her up out of the chair, her legs weak at first. Stretching her arms finally she goes to take a deep breath and feels it catch in her throat as she glances over to where Savitar is.

He has the already plenty bruised meta held by the throat against the wall. She can't hear what he's saying but the words are said as harshly as his hold, choking the meta. The scene makes her flash back uncomfortably to the memory of Zoom doing the very same to Barry – Savitar knows exactly how that feels.

The Flash, Barry/Iris/Caitlin - Chapter 8, “I Can Only Stare” (soulmate AU, angst)

She says nothing, acutely aware of the power behind the man they face. The man who put Barry here in the courthouse, every aspect of his known life under scrutiny, and they can't prove it; Barry fell right into his trap.

DeVoe smiles then, satisfication evident even though it looks creepy on another man's face and she realizes why. The accidental compliment, the admission of how thoroughly he defeated them at this latest turn. He can read her thoughts. He knows everything she's thinking, everything about her-

"Yes, even that," he says, starting to sound bored with her predictability.

New episodes are good inspiration. Somehow my enthusiasm re The Flash helped me get out the Primeval fic that was almost complete too, because I was like, I want to write but I should get that done first.

And also write 1200 words on ICOS chapter 8. Only up to 4x11ish now but it’s progress and additional scenes to the canon too (some Barry/Caitlin in there too this time). Let’s see how much I like what I wrote when I am 100% sober though since I’ve been enjoying some gifted port tonight.

The Flash fic - I Can Only Stare (Rated M, 7/14 - Barry/Iris/Caitlin)

Author: Purpleyin

Rating: M

Word count: 6520

Summary: Soulmate OT3 AU. So much angst. UST and unrequited to start with, with canon pairings in there too, but eventual Snowestallen.

Caitlin doesn’t believe soul marks are a good way to choose a partner, she knows they don’t ensure happiness. Fate still finds her eventually of course, everything changes when the particle accelerator fails - not that she has to give in to it, not when it appears those involved have a better shot without her. She keeps quiet, she watches, she tries not to fall in love with them, but much like time, destiny wants to happen.

Spoilers: Up to 4x09 for this chapter but S5 for future chapters.

Read on Ao3 or FF.net.

The good news is I think I’ve got another chapter of ICOS ready for betaing. A decent 6.5k chunk which is about the max I want one chapter to cover.

The sort of maybe? bad news is it’s 95% Snowest moments (or Caitlin & Frost character related) and only covers about 2.5 episodes time period because it’s everything that needed to get developed pre-wedding and a little bit after that... yeah, the chapter count is definitely going up by 1 now. Chapter 8 is gonna have to be a big chunk of s4 and chapter 9 end of s4 + moving into s5 stuffs.

Also there’s the likelihood that my usual betas are busy at the moment so I’m not sure when I’ll be getting it to a postable state - if anyone wants to offer to beta it let me know.

Time for Six Sentence Sunday. :)

Some more ICOS, this time chapter 7.

The Flash, Barry/Iris/Caitlin, ‘I Can Only Stare’ (soulmate AU, angst)

“Thank you, Caitlin.” Something about how Iris says it is lacking, the words duller in delivery than she would expect, making Caitlin wonder if this was too much for her as well.

Iris doesn't move her hand and they sit quietly, Caitlin counting her breaths to retain as much calm as she can from the feelings that threaten to overwhelm her. It reminds her of the moments they shared in Jitters years ago, the grief that sat between them intense and hard to deal with but easier for having someone there. She isn't sure if this is easier now, when she is the cause of the intensity.

Then Iris speaks again, unexpectedly breaking the silence, her voice a little shaky.

Made some more progress on ICOS. Got 3.5k of fleshed out chapter but a lot of that is for 4x05-4x06ish events and stuff that has to happen pre-wedding. Still got another 1.5k in notes and to cover 4x07-4x18 events. So it might be more like 8k without even dealing with the last few eps of S4 or Nora stuff. So much for getting the rest of s4 and some s5 things done in the next two chapters. I spy an additional chapter likely and who knows if that’ll be welcomed. The plus side is ch7 is gonna have a lot of Caitlin/Iris moments that are added.

Time for some trivia about my Snowestallen fic “I Can Only Stare“. Yes, that WIP that I *am* still writing, slowly.

- originally I thought it would be only 12k words, tops. Then as I planned that expanded to 20k. As it stands, I’d estimate once finished it’ll be more like 70k. It felt like, at one point, an ever expanding fic! Part of that is because I really wanted to get into Caitlin’s motivations for not telling Barry or Iris about the soulmarks, and all the related angst, canon or soulmark caused. I’ve had some criticisms of it being too much a rehash of canon in earlier chapters but that ended up how I wanted to tell it, with the subtleties interwoven with more of her POV for most of the first half. It’s not a style everyone is going to like but it’s what I intended.

- the title is based off of a song “I Can Only Stare by Sleigh Bells“. Strangely enough, the song mostly makes me think of a Teen Wolf pairing (because of the field mention and me making a lacrosse connection) but my brain thought it’d make a good title for the fic seeing how Caitlin is doing a lot of watching/waiting from afar.

- I originally got the idea after reading one too many Barry / Caitlin soulmate AU fics (sometimes you can overdo it on reading a trope) and being a touch bored with what felt like a too predictable plot point of Barry thinking Iris was his soulmate but it ending up being Caitlin. I should add that I have nothing against the SB fics I read with that plot point, I did enjoy them, but I was probably oversaturated on that trope for that particular ship at the time I had the notion. I simply found myself wanting something more than what they were written to give, which lead to me writing my own for the OT3 solution to said love triangle instead. Hence my desire to see a fic where the post-s1 plot twist wasn’t that Barry mistakenly thought Iris was his soulmate, but instead that neither Barry or Caitlin are mistaken. That both of Caitlin and Iris are his, and by extension Caitlin and Iris connected too, and all three eventually get together (obviously with plenty of angst on the way there because I take virtually every opportunity for angst available).

- I considered making it Snowesthallen (Barry/Iris/Caitlin/Eddie) for a while and having Eddie still die as in canon end of S1, with extra angst for losing a soulmate Caitlin never really got a good chance to know. Eventually I decided I wasn’t sure anyone else wanted to read that pairing, especially if Eddie didn’t get a chance in it. Also that would be too much angst even for me and if I was gonna do Snowesthallen I actually wanted a fic where everyone, including Eddie, got a happy ending. This did mean the moment of Caitlin finding out she shares a mark with more than just Barry got bumped to later on in S2 timeline for added impact, instead of post-S1 awareness.

- the first scene I envisioned for it, that made up the core of the fic for some time, is one that isn’t coming up until Chapter 10, set in some future season sort of point. Where Barry knows the truth only because a very bad thing happened and he, by accident, travelled back to beforehand and is left with a whole load of questions, hurt and anger to go with the knowledge.

Time for Six Sentence Sunday! :D

This one is skipping a chapter ahead of what is so far posted for this WIP because Chapter 8 has more defined dialogue than Chapter 7 so far. Maybe this will have changed somewhat by the time I get to posting since my Nora voice isn’t likely to be the best it can be yet, but still, here’s a sneak peak.

The Flash, Barry/Iris/Caitlin, ‘I Can Only Stare’ (soulmate AU, angst)

"You're sorry, right? But you still left us. She tried so hard to find you. Every day she came home empty-handed she looked exactly the same as she did when she'd look at old photos of dad. You saw what it did to mom the first time and you let it happen again! I wish you'd never said anything at all."

The Flash fic - I Can Only Stare (Rated M, 6/14 - Barry/Iris/Caitlin)

Author: Purpleyin

Rating: M

Word count: 6327

Summary: Soulmate OT3 AU. So much angst. UST and unrequited to start with, with canon pairings in there too, but eventual Snowestallen.

Caitlin doesn’t believe soul marks are a good way to choose a partner, she knows they don’t ensure happiness. Fate still finds her eventually of course, everything changes when the particle accelerator fails - not that she has to give in to it, not when it appears those involved have a better shot without her. She keeps quiet, she watches, she tries not to fall in love with them, but much like time, destiny wants to happen.

Spoilers: Up to 4x05 for this chapter but up to early S5 for future chapters.

Read on Ao3 or FF.net.

Ok, I finally made some progress on Chapter 7 of ICOS this afternoon. I’m glad I did so much planning before, got plenty of notes and I did spend a chunk of yesterday rearranging them into the correct chapters since I wasn’t up to actual writing then. Did a few episode rewatches today to figure out order of events and I’ve finished dealing with things up to 4x05 events at least. Reasonably written sections come to 1.2k out of my 4-6k estimated per chapter.

But wow to how much the show handwaves that I want to cover in at least some way: how Frost joins the team officially, her and Cait’s agreements about that, Cait apologising to Iris and them spending time together as her maid-of-honor and all the pre-wedding stuff.

I’m starting to wonder if I can even cover everything I want in this chapter because I’ll be trying to add so much stuff. Pre-S4 and S4 is looking to cover at least 2 and a half chapters (Chapter 6, 7 and half of chapter 8 as that will be some S5 too) and now I’m wondering if it’ll mean adding a further chapter to get everything in unless it evens out over those 3 chapters. I dunno if that’ll annoy people to spend so long on S4 but that is where there’s a lot of Snowest potential to expand on canon.

Had that special feeling of excitement this morning to be just a couple of songs away from finishing a fanmix. XD And then a youtube adverts plops a song right in front of me that is perfect for it lol. Plus I stumbled onto another song I think fits too so it might be close to done, hooray!

This is a fanmix I’ve been working on for a while to accompany my snowestallen fic, 1 song per chapter roughly. Mostly it’s to help me get in the right headspace for writing things but I figured I might as well share it once it’s complete in case anyone reading wants to listen whilst reading. Or just in general, because there aren’t any fanmixes for this OT3 that I’ve found so far. Not finalized - need to do a few more full playthroughs to see if I am certain on the ordering and the newer songs added - but if anyone wants a preview of it, it’s here.

Six Sentence Sunday

I kept forgetting to do this but this week I finally remembered, so have a couple of snippets from chapter 6 that covers some S4 events.

The Flash, Barry/Iris/Caitlin, ‘I Can Only Stare’ (soulmate AU, angst)

“Caitlin, let's go,” Iris calls to her and she remembers she's needed. Her, Caitlin. She focuses on that, swings by the medbay to pick up the cold gun stashed there, and rushes to the Speedlab, to find her place by Iris' side.

---

She can't tell if he is staring into her eyes or seeing through her to some other memory, a different face. She sighs. She can believe in him but it doesn't change what this is, hard on the heart and feeling like she is responsible for something she can't begin to fix.

The Flash fic - I Can Only Stare (Rated M, 5/14 - Barry/Iris/Caitlin)

Author: Purpleyin

Rating: M

Word count: 6041

Summary: Soulmate OT3 AU. So much angst. UST and unrequited to start with, with canon pairings in there too, but eventual Snowestallen.

Caitlin doesn’t believe soul marks are a good way to choose a partner, she knows they don’t ensure happiness. Fate still finds her eventually of course, everything changes when the particle accelerator fails - not that she has to give in to it, not when it appears those involved have a better shot without her. She keeps quiet, she watches, she tries not to fall in love with them, but much like time, destiny wants to happen.

Spoilers: Up to 3x23 for this chapter but up to early S5 for future chapters.

Read on Ao3 or FF.net.

The Flash fic - I Can Only Stare (Rated M, 4/14 - Barry/Iris/Caitlin)

Author: Purpleyin

Rating: M

Word count: 5229

Summary: Soulmate OT3 AU. So much angst. UST and unrequited to start with, with canon pairings in there too, but eventual Snowestallen.

Caitlin doesn’t believe soul marks are a good way to choose a partner, she knows they don’t ensure happiness. Fate still finds her eventually of course, everything changes when the particle accelerator fails - not that she has to give in to it, not when it appears those involved have a better shot without her. She keeps quiet, she watches, she tries not to fall in love with them, but much like time, destiny wants to happen.

Spoilers: Up to 3x07 for this chapter but up to early S5 for future chapters.

Read on Ao3 or FF.net.