Leonard Snart + Your choice

Leonard Snart + giving his cold gun

The Flash 3x22 – Infantino Street

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one of my favorite things about the “you see the good in me, i see the bad in you” quote from “infantino street” isn’t even the quote; it’s barry’s response. he looks away. he doesn’t smile. he says “maybe.” 

and for the longest time i thought it was some kind of defensiveness over leonard labeling any part of what barry is as “bad.” he had very nearly killed king shark for iris, and come just as close to abandoning leonard to die for the same reason. i don’t think barry sees it as bad, being ready to sacrifice others for iris, so i assumed that was what was behind the “maybe.” 

but tbh? on rewatch? i’m pretty sure it’s what leonard says before that that causes barry to get reticent. “maybe that’s why we get along.”

leonard is dead. he’s dead, and he’s also strolling next to barry through that forest in siberia, looking over at him, almost smiling when he says it. “that’s why we get along.” present tense. the closest leonard has ever come to acknowledging that what’s between them isn’t just a tenuous agreement to split custody of central city, all banked hostilities and mutual distrust. they get along, leonard says, almost smiling. get along, he says, a year too late. 

leonard agreed to help for no reason except that iris was in danger. he kept barry from killing an innocent. barry never saw leonard again after he left to join the legends, and now, he’s finding out that they parted on far, far better terms than he ever let himself think. 

barry looks confused in this scene, heart-breakingly so. he was right about leonard all along, but i don’t think he realized that leonard had accepted his own heel-face-turn with so much grace, long before his death. that it wasn’t his sacrifice that had made him into a hero. that barry could’ve had this, had leonard in his life as an intermittent ally: someone who greeted joe by name just to watch the muscle in his jaw jump, who flirted with iris with a ring on her finger, who clasped his hand around barry’s wrist and trusted him to pull him to safety.  

i think that “maybe” is all barry has as a shield against realizing exactly how much he lost when leonard died. not just the idea of a good man, but the real thing. something tangible, someone he could’ve gotten to know. a version of leonard who said things like “that’s why we get along” in a voice like he was teasing himself for the attachment. 

barry is already in a terrible place in this episode; i think hearing leonard talk about them like they’re friends is dangerously close to becoming the straw that breaks the camel’s back for barry. he has to make one last, weak attempt at fending it off, and that’s the “maybe.” not maybe there’s bad in him, and not maybe leonard sees it. but maybe they get along. because that way, it’s only a maybe that barry is marching another one of his friends straight toward their death, and only a maybe that it was his fault all along.

This scene completely destroys me, because Barry has to feel that he's effectively murdering Len by sending him back to the Waverider. He knows that when he gets back on the ship, it's just a matter of time before he's going to die.

The entire episode shows him that it wasn't just a last minute change of character for Len, either. Sure, he's grouchy about it, but he goes right along with Barry's plan, and risks his life to get the Magical McGuffin for him.

Then later, to have the Speed Force tell him in plain words that the reason Len sacrificed himself is because of him? That Len was so determined to prove to Barry that he really was what he saw when he looked at him, that he would give up his own life? Gut punch.

Barry spends the rest of the series grieving for Len, in really small, easy to miss ways, and I love it. Referring to Nora's attempts at reforming someone as her having 'Her own Leonard Snart' Being awkward when he sees Leo and Ray kissing because it was something he didn't get a chance to learn about his version of Snart. Keeping one of Len's parkas. Putting his goggles up in his shrine to lost teammates.

Platonic or romantic or whatever, he loved him so damn much.

yeah i’m doomed by the narrative but i have a little time to be absolutely gay

putting my inevitable death on pause to be homosexual for a second