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dagenspear · 4 years

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Crisis On Infinite Earths Outline Fix, Part 5: Laurel Returns!

This is the conclusion to the Crisis, Part 5! This is a bit of a longer one again. For parts 1, 2, 3 & 4, here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

I thank God for these ideas, if He wills, that He blessed me with:

The bright green light consumes the screen.

Kara, Wally, Jjonn, Ray, Sara and Kate all wake up in their new earth.

But things are different. Black Lightning's, Supergirl's, Earth 1's, Earth 3's and another earth's are now all merged into 1. Lex is the head of the DEO. All the speedsters remember everything. Cisco's powers are back, which when he touches Wally, vibes his pre-crisis memories back. The history of Earth 3 is now apart of that earth's, the Justice Society Of America having been prominent heroes, with the members of Jay Garrick Flash, Dinah Drake Black Canary (Laurel and Sara's mom), Ted Grant Wildcat, Dr. Fate, Hawkman/Hawkgirl, Alan Scott Green Lantern, and others, apart of the team in the 80's & 90's. Barry Allen's Flash has been erased, having never existed. Wally is seen as The Flash, the 2nd Flash there's ever been, after Jay Garrick. John Diggle's life has been altered as well.

Cisco misses Barry, but has become accepting of the situation after the preparations made for it and sees it as his responsibility to maintain the protection of the city. He uses his vibing to give Caitlin, Ralph and the others their memories back, but Wally stops him from giving them to Joe and Iris, saying that he doesn't want them to bear the heartbreak of losing Barry all over again.

Iris is the head of the Central City Citizen, which Post Crisis is a prominent newspaper.

Wally is left to ponder that the people see him as the Flash, him refusing to wear the costume, stating that he's not the Flash. Cisco tells him that the people think he is.

Mia is angry and guilty about the loss of her dad. Diggle has guilt that he couldn't be there for him when it happened.

Cisco picks up a reading of something coming from space, and traces it to landing outside STAR Labs, which he confronts, to find a man landing there.

Sara and Diggle talk about Oliver's loss and she tries to assuage his guilt, stating that no matter what, Oliver wouldn't have wanted him to die fighting this threat, and that Oliver was very stubborn, which they both have a small laugh about.

Sara comforts Mia, whose beginning to be accepting of her dad's death and that he died saving the multiverse, seeing him as a hero.

Sara, though having wanted to continue fighting, is still depressed about the fact that so much of her family is gone and that she has almost no one in her life. Which she talks with Mia about.

That's when they're attacked by some shadow creatures. They fight them, but are pinned down, about to be torn apart, when suddenly...

A sonic scream emerges from the side! BLASTING THEM BACK! And from the side...

Emerges Black Canary.

Sara is shocked. But apprehensive... until Black Canary looks at them and acknowledges Sara as her sister with a smile and rushes to her. Sara realizing that this is E1 Laurel. Alive. Laurel helps her up and Sara touches her shoulders, almost in disbelief that this is real, tears springing to her eyes, before hugging her, crying, in tears of happiness and grief. Mia almost smiles at the moment as well. Mia realizes and says that if they attacked them, they may attack the others as well.

They go to STAR Labs to warn them about what's happening. And are met with Cisco stating that he knows it's not over, as they've been told by someone, that someone revealing themself as the Green Lantern AKA Guy Gardner, from the Justice League Of America 1997 TV Movie, played by Matthew Settle.

Everyone is brought together, Diggle, Kate and Mia included. Guy Gardner tells them that he was from the other earth that was merged with the others, and is questioned by Diggle in how he survived the merge with all his memories intact. He says that his ring protected him. Cisco and Guy explain that the antimatter verse portal is still open, but is slowly closing as this new timeline, of sorts, cements, and if it does, those shadow creatures will be stuck here. Cisco determines that they're gonna need to recreate the sonic pulse to try and get those shadow creatures to them, so they can somehow get them into the portal before it closes. Laurel volunteers to do it, in spite of Sara's concern. Cisco explains that because there's no way to know where they are, they're gonna need to double the pulse from before to get all of them to them. Diggle suggests Dinah. Laurel questions that, but Cisco states that the Dinah Diggle is suggesting is Zinda Blake post-crisis and doesn't have a sonic cry and Laurel's mom has never had powers. Diggle realizes that he hasn't gotten all his memories straight yet. Cisco then says that there's someone else who can help them.

We cut to E2 Laurel standing in front of Laurel. Laurel is uncertain about this. E2 Laurel maintains her memories of pre-crisis. Laurel asks how this is possible. Cisco speculates that with the merging of some universes there may be holdovers from the previous, then stating that both Laurels have the metagene for the canary cry, a now discovered gene post crisis, and, with his memories of EX Laurel, he speculates at least most, if not all the Laurels in the multiverse, have one as well. But E2's was activated by dark matter, while post crisis Laurel's was activated by a gene bomb HIVE set off in 2014, HIVE post crisis being an organization who sought to enhance humanity, using techological and biological enhancements. Laurel asks E2 Laurel if she can be trusted with her history as a villain. E2 Laurel points out that she remembers nearly dying to help and hopes that's gained something. Sara vouches for her. Laurel trusts Sara's judgement and agrees.

The group all agree that the only reason the shadow creatures would have a reason to attack them is based on the Anti-Monitor being alive still. They talk about how that's possible, Sara, among the Legends, suggests that as time hasn't fully cemented yet, he may not be erased, Cisco then suggesting that he also may be acting essentially as a time remnant or using something to keep himself from erasure, like tech or something. Jjonn tells them that he read the Anti-Monitor's mind before he transported himself away and he read that because his plan to cause an antimatter universe of his own in place of our multiverse has been stopped, he's willing to try and prevent the multiverse from forming at all, even if it means his own destruction. They work out how he'd do that, coming to the conclusion that he can use the temporal zone to go to the dawn of time to try and undo it at it's inception.

As the group works out their plan, Guy Gardner uses the STAR Labs computers to look into information about his friends post crisis, from his earth, and where they are now.

His Barry Allen is now Darryl Frye, a detective in Central City.

B. B. Dacosta is now Green Fury, her alter ego as a pop star, Madonna-esque.

His Ray Palmer is now Al Pratt, a respected physics college Professor, and first Atom post crisis.

Tori Olafsdotter is now Mary Pratt, married to Al Pratt, and a reporter.

His Martian Manhunter is unable to be located here.

Diggle is there and tells him glad that a lot of his friends are okay on this earth. Guy Gardner understands that he speaks from a place of a grief at his friend having died in the crisis. Guy Gardner and Diggle bond over that, Guy telling him that now all his friends are found, that Martian Manhunter from his earth is still missing, but he has faith that he's out there somewhere and Diggle has to have faith that his friend is somewhere out there too. Diggle agrees that he does, that it's like Oliver said, it's God's plan.

The team works out the plan.

Before starting, Sara apologizes to Laurel for what happened on the boat. Laurel tells her that she didn't go through with it. Sara says that she would've and that kills her, for being jealous and petty like that, saying that she wanted to have what Laurel had, be her, but she was just hurting herself and her whole family, stating that she doesn't want this, hating herself, to hold her back anymore, that she wants to move forward. Laurel agrees.

Kara and Kate talk, Kate telling her that she can't find Bruce and doesn't know where he is. Kara tells her that she can't give up.

The majority of the group tracks the energy signature of the Anti-Monitor, courtesy of Cisco with combination of tech and his vibe powers, through the temporal zone in a waverider pod, as Diggle, Wally, Guy Gardner, E2 Laurel and Laurel remain on the waverider, above earth. The waverider pod containing Sara, Kara, Alex, Kate, Ray, Cisco and Jjonn.

The 2 Laurels begin their sonic pulse. Guy Gardner explains that they're going to have to act quickly, as his ring is running out of power, and that's why he can't use it for flight while he's using it for the trapping of the shadow creatures and why he'll have to stand at the open door of the waverider as he does it. When Diggle asks if he can recharge it, Guy tells him that post crisis the ring isn't his anymore and will seek out it's true bearer when the time comes, and because of that he doesn't have access to charging it. When the shadow creatures are drawn to the waverider by the sonic pulse, Guy Gardner uses his ring to capture them, giving the go ahead to Wally to superspeed a speedforce portal into the closing antimatter portal, allowing Guy Gardner to funnel the creatures into it.

Meanwhile the others chase after the energy signature of the Anti-Monitor in the wavrider pod, as he flies through the temporal zone. They get close to him, but, realizing they can't catch up, Cisco breaches them both into a neutral area, the vanishing point. The waverider pod crashing. When the group climbs out, they see...

Anti-Monitor standing, unscathed, towering over them, in full comic book Crisis On Infinite Earths Anti-Monitor tech body armor.

Cisco breaches away quickly.

The Anti-Monitor mocks them for that and bringing him here, stating that he's been erased from existence, so the vanishing point no longer holds it's sway over containing him.

Sara states that they didn't bring him here for that. They just didn't want anything or anyone to be in the crossfire, when they destroy him.

They begin the battle:

Atom blasting the Anti-Monitor, even trying to fly into his ear, shrunken, but he's slapped away.

Jjonn flies into him, reaching into his chest by phasing, but the armor he's wearing electrocutes and burns Jjonn. The Anti-Monitor then responding by punching into his chest, him flying backward, being smashed into the ground.

Kara and Kate double team him in an attack of distraction and offensiveness, but are blasted away by an energy beam.

Alex begins shooting at him from behind, telling him not to touch her sister, but he, unaffected, simply redirects his beams at her, which she just barely dodges, then, on the ground, leg badly hurt, being met with another blast directly at her.

Kara quickly superspeeds inbetween her sister and the beam, trying to hold it back with her heat vision, him walking up to her, pushing her heat vision back into her eyes, grabbing her head, placing his hand over her eyes, the heat vision burning them, BLINDING HER, her yelling out in pain.

Back on the wavrider Diggle, flying above earth, tells those on board that it's time. The 2 Laurels are ready.

Sara comes up behind him with a blade, but he grabs her quickly by the throat, destroying her blade, mocking her for thinking it'd work, then saying that now she's alone again. Sara smirks, saying that she's far from alone.

Suddenly a breach opens and Brandon Routh Superman emerges, flying like a freight train into the Anti-Monitor. The Anti Monitor's grip on Sara is immediately broken, him being SMASHED into the ground.

Cisco exits the breach right after, as Cisco as ever, exclaiming, "Was that a bird? A plane? Why, I think it was Superman!" He then asks Sara if she's okay. She says that she is, but what took him so long? He explains that they had a couple last minute additions.

Out of the breach emerges:

E1 Black Canary

E2 Black Canary

Killer Frost

Citizen Steel

Heatwave

Tyler Hoechlin Superman

Black Lightning

Tom Welling Superman

Obviously Brandon Routh Superman, as he re-positions himself.

They all engage in battle with the Anti-Monitor. Their powers all together do some damage. Atom's blasts, the canary cries, the electric blasts, the cold blasting, the flamethrower flames, the heat visions of all the Supermen doing the most damage. But he's still too powerful to defeat. Cisco tries to use his breaches to slice the Anti-Monitor apart, but his suit breaks the breaches apart when they close in on him.

Alex crawls over to check on Kara, whose eyes seem almost seared in a way.

In the waverider, Guy Gardner is having a hard time containing all the shadow creatures as he funnels them into the antimatter portal. Diggle, flying the waverider with some difficulty, tells Wally that the others need help down there. Wally's uncertain he can. Diggle lays it out, telling him that it doesn't matter what he thinks, because they still need the Flash. Wally takes the Flash ring out of his pocket, pondering it. Diggle asks him if he's ready to do what it takes to save everyone. Wally, in resolve, places the ring on his finger, and extends his fist, the Flash symbol on the ring glowing in almost a lightning crackle blaze.

In the battle, Sara tells them to try to hit the Anti-Monitor with all their powers all at once. They make an attempt, but he's too powerful for them to get at with all those hits at once. Cisco tries something, throwing his breaches around the Anti-Monitor's hands, then giving the Supermen the go ahead. The Supermen do so. Brandon Routh Superman grabbing his left arm, Tom Welling Superman grabbing his right, Tyler Hoechlin Superman grabbing his head, them all holding him in place.

On the waverider, Guy Gardner's green lantern power ring starts to drain, just as the last batch of the shadow creatures are getting to the antimatter portal. He tells Diggle he's almost there. Diggle tells him it could kill him. Guy states that they have to make sure they're all gone now, as the antimatter portal's about to close, it taking all of his willpower to hold it. Just as the last shadow creature gets in, the portal closes, Guy's power ring runs out and he falls unconscious from exhaustion, falling out of the waverider into earth's atmosphere. The Green Lantern ring slips from his finger and flies off as he falls. But just before Guy's about to be hit with the heat of re-entry...

Diggle swoops in with the waverider and catches him!

The Supermen holding the Anti-Monitor gives the others the room to throw their powers (canary cries, lightning, etc.) at him at the same time. It does more damage, but he still struggles. Tom Welling Superman stating that they can't hold him much longer. Sara asks how he's still so powerful.

Kara, hearing this, realizes, and tells them, that he's still empowered by the energy of the sun that was used to cause him to form and it may take a similar energy to destroy him. Cisco, as he holds the breaches around Anti-Monitor, intensely struggling, his nose bleeding a lot, says that it could work. Sara states that the only way to be sure would be to drop him into it directly. Cisco says that could result in the energy of the sun blowing back and killing all of them here. Kara tells them no, then asking Cisco if he has enough power to drop her in front of the sun. Cisco begrudgingly says yes, understanding her goal. Kara stands up, her eyes still seared, telling him to do so on her go ahead. Alex asks Kara what she's doing. She tells Alex that Nazi Supergirl could absorb enough of the energy of a sun to explode, and that if she gets enough, she could destroy him. Alex asserts that Nazi Supergirl died from it. Kara acknowledges that. Alex telling her no, she won't accept that. Kara hugs Alex tightly, telling her that she can't lose her home again and quickly pushes Alex away from her, telling her that she loves her and tell Lena she's sorry, then telling Cisco "now", the breach opening around Kara, taking her and closing just as quickly before Alex can stop it.

Tyler Hoechlin Superman asks what's happening.

Kara floats before the energy of the yellow sun of earth, it energizing her, the energy flowing to and healing her eyes, her opening them, with the energy of the yellow sun making them glow.

At Kara's request, Cisco breaches her back into the battle.

Kara floats over the battle, telling the Supermen to get away from the Anti-Monitor. Tyler Hoechlin Superman, realizing himself what's happening, tells her no, that he can't let her die, there has to be another way. The other Supermen agree. Kara states that he has a son to take care of, all of the Supermen do, it has to be her, that protecting him was her job in the first place. Tyler Hoechlin Superman continues to reject that.

But in a flash of lightning, all the Supermen are pulled away from the Anti-Monitor, and Wally stands before them, in the full Flash costume.

The Flash lives again, as Wally circles the Anti-Monitor at superspeed, throwing lightning at him multiple times, this keeping him in place...

Allowing Kara to enact her plan. She says to Tyler Hoechlin Superman, "I love you, Kal-El." and flies towards the Anti-Monitor, her heat vision BLAZING with the fire of the sun, searing into him, it burning through his armor, burning him from the inside out, FLAMES igniting from the eyes of his suit! This use of her powers causing her eyes to crack with yellow sun energy bleeding out, the cracks spreading more and more. The Anti-Monitor, enraged, yells out, "NO!" And Kara collides with him, the force of it IMPLODING THEM IN A FLASH OF LIGHT!

Leaving nothing but a crater, and Kara's torn cape. Alex and Tyler Hoechlin Superman rushing there, seeing only the cape, them both breaking down, almost leaning on eachother, Alex devastated, inconsolable. The other Supermen stand silently in mourning, placing their hands on their shoulders in an attempt at comfort. Everyone else surrounding them, in silence.

The President gives a speech, honoring the sacrifices of Supergirl and the Green Arrow with a statue of an \S/ in National City and one of Green Arrow being built in Starling City.

Diggle visits Guy Gardner in the hospital who tells Diggle that his time is over and now it's his turn. We confirm that Diggle, now having gained full memory of both earths, in this post-crisis, his name is John Stewart.

The team honors the Flash silently with a Flash symbol built in it and empty seats for Barry, Oliver, Kara, even Bruce at the new table, in the Hall Of Justice.

In the montage of showing the earths with show the same things, but now with inclusions of:

The Birds Of Prey TV Series Earth, showing that team now working with Kevin Conroy Batman, who has a renewed pursuit of heroism.

Tom Welling Superman with Lois, watching their kids, before he gets an alert on a fire in Metropolis, with Lois being proud of him.

Justice League Of America TV Movie Martian Manhunter alive, leading martians on Mars.

Earth 1 Bruce, alive, stranded on another earth, but on the search for a way back.

Gotham TV Series Bruce as Batman in his earth.

Some quick flashes with the Batman 89 earth and Batman 66 earth.

On a re-established Earth 90 E-90 Flash speeds through the city, before getting a message from Christina McGee of a bank robbery by Trickster, E-90 Flash smirking and then speeding off to it.

On earth prime, something falling to earth in front of Diggle, but stopping just short of hitting the ground and it redirecting and pointing right at him. It emanating a green light reflecting on his face.

Ending still on the Superman The Movie nod of Brandon Routh Superman flying, his symbol back to yellow and red.

THE END.

In case ya’ll are curious, Kara and Barry aren’t really dead and aren’t gone for good. In their respective seasons, they’d return after a couple episodes or so. Please review and tell me what you think!

#Crisis on Infinite Earths #laurel lance #The Flash #supergirl #arrow

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cyclone-rachel · 5 years

Note

“Who can say?” “You can! Right now!”

“Cisco Ramon?”

“Who’s asking?” Cisco asked, noticing the new figure who’d arrived in Star Labs with Barry and the others.

“Querl Dox- or Brainiac 5. I’m a friend of Kara’s.” Querl said, as he considered Cisco’s reaction to his name. Or rather, the lack of it- which, honestly, pleased him.

There’s no Brainiac on this Earth, he thought. Nobody’s afraid of me, or my family line.

It was why he was able to fight openly against Amazo, with nobody throwing tomatoes at him, or calling for someone in turn to stop him.

He was aware that the Crisis would be happening, around a year from then. Earth-1 and Earth-38 would become one, and the presence of aliens would be known, but not feared, and there was really no need to wish for something that would soon become irrelevant. But nevertheless, he almost wished he could stay just a little longer on Earth-1, if only for that reason, and that Earth-38 could be so open with their acceptance of their heroes. “Barry Allen has spoken highly of you. He said you would be able to get us home?”

“If I couldn’t, my superhero name wouldn’t be Vibe.” Cisco said. “And I’ve heard about you, too. Superman says you’re from the future, huh?”

“Yes. The thirty-first century.”

“Oh, wow… I’m sure that was a difficult adjustment.”

“Understatement.” Querl said.

“No kidding.” Cisco answered. “So, what’s it like?”

“Who can say?”

“You can! Right now!”

Querl knew he was taunting Cisco in a way, refusing to give him an answer. It reminded him of when Winn asked him the same question, wondering if a number of fictional universes were correct in their predictions of the future. But this was a different situation, and their time together was even less than his and Winn’s had been.

“I can’t reveal much.” Querl told him. “Really, I shouldn’t at all. I should not be here. But circumstances in my time have forced me to stay, and… I admit, there are some people I’ve worked with who make the situation worthwhile.”

“You mean, like Kara?”

Querl squeezed his eyes shut, trying to keep from blushing, or reacting in any way that would give away his answer.

“Perhaps.” He said, opening his eyes again.

“Okay, there’s that.” Cisco answered. “So, what can you do? What’s your superpower?”

“I would not consider my twelfth-level intelligence a superpower, by your standards.” Querl said. “But that is only the beginning of my superior attributes, and the most important.”

Cisco nodded.

“I get it.” He said, looking down at his bandaged hands. “I mean, my powers are cool and all, but… working here is more fulfilling for me than running around in a costume.”

His eyes were drawn to Querl’s hands, then.

“What’s with the ring?”

“Ah! That’s my invention.” Querl said. “It grants flight, allows for communication with others wearing the rings…”

“Can I see it?”

Querl held his hand out to him, and Cisco took his hand- lifting it closer, examining the ring- but paused as though he was frozen, staring at it for a few moments before looking up at him with wide eyes, breathing heavily.

“You were using one of your superpowers.”

Cisco gave him a nervous smile.

“Yeah, how’d you know?” he asked. “Wait, no, dumb question. But…”

He didn’t know how to break it to Querl, that the other man was in his universe’s 4th timeline. He didn’t know if Querl even knew that, or would want him to tell him. But it comforted him, just a little bit, to know that Barry and the Legends weren’t the only ones messing with time, and even though this guy had (or time had been messed up around him) it only made him want to get to know him more.

If only he wasn’t leaving so soon.

“Come on.” He continued, too quickly for Querl to comment otherwise, or ask what he had been about to say. “Our friends are waiting for us.”

“Right.”

#papa don't look #minifics #fanfics #rachel answers questions #padawanton #elseworlds #supergirl au #ish?#the flash au #au: mon el and the legionnaires #kinda #cisco ramon #querl dox #brainiac 5

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frozenflash · 5 years

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Better Latte Than Never

This was written for Day 3 of Coldflash week, Rogues vs Team Flash. It also conveniently works as a fill for the ‘Secret Relationship’ square of my Coldflash Bingo Card. Both are hosted by @coldflashweeks. This is just the first two scenes, the rest can be read on AO3.

Read on AO3

Summary: Something strange is going on with Barry and the Rogues. Cisco is determined to get to the bottom of it. Just as soon as he gets as handle on his caffeine addiction, that is.

Or, three times Cisco doesn’t understand why the Rogues keep pulling punches, and the one time it all makes sense.

The comms had gone dark as soon as Hartley Rathaway showed up, so Cisco and the others had no way of knowing what was happening at the museum. It had looked good for Barry before they’d lost contact, but fights with the Rogues were always unpredictable and could turn on a dime. It was part of what made them so dangerous, and part of what made them so entertaining.

“Do you think he’s alright?” Caitlin asked, rubbing her thumb against her other palm. She was standing on the opposite side of the monitors, having just come in from the med bay when she heard Cisco cursing.

“His vitals haven’t changed,” Cisco reassured her. His eyes never left the screen through, fingers flying across the keyboard as he tried to reestablish a connection to the comms in Barry’s suit. Beside him, Harry waved an unbothered hand at Caitlin and went back to the book he was reading.

Caitlin let out a long breath and started to pace. She made it two lengths of the room before she was halted in place by a blur of red lightning that sent all the papers in the lab flying into the air.

Barry pulled off his cowl, out of breath. “They got away. But they didn’t get the diamond, so.”

Immediately moving closer to inspect him for any injuries, Caitlin frowned. She shared a look with Cisco, whose hands were now hovering above the keyboard. “What happened? The comms went out. Are you okay? Are you hurt?” she asked, looking Barry up and down.

Barry just shrugged, brushing off her concern. “I’m fine,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “No one got any shots in. Hartley showed up and took out my comms, and then we basically ended up in a stalemate until Cold distracted me. By the time I realized that’s what he was doing, the rest of them were already gone.”

Cisco watched as Caitlin let out a breath of relief, but didn’t find himself doing the same. He leaned back in his chair, peering at Barry over the monitors. A fight with five of the Rogues and no one got a shot in? Not that Cisco wanted Barry to get hurt, it’s just that it was unusual. Even with the unofficial deal they had going, The Flash vs. Cold’s gallery of rogues was always chaos. No one walked away without getting hit at least once, least of all Barry, who was always outnumbered even with his team backing him up from the labs.

Heading off to change back into his regular clothes, Barry clapped his shoulder as he passed and grinned at him. His cheeks were still flushed from the fight, and he looked more tired than usual, so it was clear that he hadn’t walked away from the museum without putting a decent effort into stopping the Rogues.

Cisco shook his head. What was he looking for? Proof that something else had gone down when the comms went dark? Barry had no reason to lie to them, and Cisco had no reason to think he would.

It was all the sleep he’d been losing since his vibes had gotten more frequent — it was getting to his head. Just that morning, he’d thought the barista at Jitters was a spy sent by one of their enemies to get intel on him and Caitlin, as members of Team Flash. Clearly, he wasn’t thinking straight.

He should probably cut down on the coffee, too.

Cisco jumped through the breach, stepping off the ground in S.T.A.R. labs and landing in a loading dock in the warehouse district. It closed behind him with a swoosh, but he barely heard it over the sound of something blowing up only a few feet away. He rocked sideways from the force of the blast, but caught his footing.

The explosion had come from one of the transport trucks being launched backwards into the side of the building. Cisco couldn’t see from this angle who had done it, but Barry had to be nearby. He crouched low to the ground, rounding the now-destroyed truck as stealthily as he could—

And stopped. He blinked in confusion. The scene before him was chaos: half the warehouse was charred beyond recognition, the other half was coated in a thick layer of ice, and nearly every piece of equipment was… well, in pieces. It looked like the aftermath of a hurricane, if that hurricane had a maniacal laugh and enjoyed toying with teams of superheroes.

That wasn’t the confusing part. The confusing part was that there, in the middle of it all, stood Barry, unscathed and chatting with Captain Cold. Just standing there, three feet away from each other, Cold’s gun slung over his shoulder and Barry’s hands resting on his hips as he nodded his head along to whatever Cold was saying.

“Flash?” Cisco called out, not even bothering to hide his disbelief. He’d almost called him by his real name, before he remembered himself. The other Rogues could still be here, not all of which knew Barry’s identity. That had never sat right with Cisco — that Cold held something so massive over their heads and had yet to use it against them. Yet, he hadn’t. He’d stuck to their deal and never told a soul, as far as they knew.

Barry was caught off guard. He whirled around to face Cisco and opened his mouth, but Cold was faster. In the same instance, he’d drawn his gun, aimed it just beside Cisco’s head, and pulled the trigger. Racing forward to shove him out of the way, Barry only just made it time to save Cisco from an annoying case of frostbite.

It was like Cisco had pressed play on the paused scene — one of the other Rogues suddenly appeared out of nowhere and started destroying what was left of the place, Mick stepped out from wherever he’d disappeared to and resumed his mission to blow everything up, and the fight resumed.

Only, even as he dodged attack after attack, trying to keep Peek-A-Boo from making off with whatever it was they were here to steal, something felt off. He didn’t have time to dissect it while mid-fight, but it niggled at the back of his mind until they made it back to S.T.A.R labs, heist successfully prevented.

It wasn’t until he was in the med-bay with Caitlin fawning over the burn he’d sustained on his shoulder that he realized what it was. For as many punches as had been thrown on both sides, and as chaotic as the fight had been, Barry hadn’t suffered a single injury. He was always better at dodging than Cisco, given his speed, but in a fight of that scale, he should’ve at least been blown into a couple of walls. It was like…

It was like they hadn’t even been aiming for him. Like they’d been trying not to hit him.

Cisco frowned. He watched Barry fiddle with his phone at the computer station while Caitlin finished wrapping his shoulder.

Had he made some kind of deal with the Rogues they didn’t know about? But why wouldn’t he tell them?

He shook his head. It didn’t make any sense. He was probably just imagining things. Barry had been training harder than ever, so it was only logical that he would fair better in a fight. Besides, he’d fought the Rogues so many times that their movements should’ve been predictable to him by now.

While his sleep had gotten better lately, Cisco clearly still needed to finally bite the bullet and cut down on the caffeine. This was getting out of hand. Caitlin had even started making faces at him when she caught him with his fifth cup of the day, and this jittery paranoia was out of control.

Continue on AO3

#cfspring19 #cf1bingo2019 #coldflash #barry allen #leonard snart #the flash #my writing #my post

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whatsupwhump · 5 years

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Whump Bump of the Month: Laws of Motion

(where the new, the slightly old, and really old fanfic gets bumped to your attention in broken down, comprehension reviews)

Whump Bump of the Month: Laws of Motion

Written by: pennflinn

Posted on Ao3: November 26th, 2017

(word count: 4,858)

Fandom: Flash (CW TV)

Ship: Barry Allen/Iris West

Summary: A collapsing building is just part of the job. Being buried beneath the rubble was never part of the bargain.

Obvious but obligatory warning: The following contains spoilers for the entirety of the aforementioned fan-fiction. It contains quotes and personal opinions, both done out of appreciation for the author’s time and efforts put into their work.

“Laws of Motion” written by @pennflinn was chosen for the b-lated January Whump Bump of the Month for it’s astounding ability to allure a heartfelt sense of loss of hope, struggle, pain and heroism in its such short word count.

@pennflinn is far from new to bringing her audiences in with little words, instead focusing on simplistic punches that wrap up her plots tighter than a shiny Christmas present. There’s no dragging alongside a prologue or introduction when starting this fic -- rather you’re immediately presented with the problem Team Flash and Barry Allen are faced with: a collapsing building.

As the narrative so wonderfully goes on to say, none of this is new for our characters. Iris makes a mental note that, albeit hesitate to call it routine, burning buildings and breaches in the space-time continuum were all coming to be the norm. Still, Pennflinn doesn’t fail to captivate a sense of urgency between characters, gut-punching usage of verbiage like “His groan turned into a drawn-out yell” and “She was staring at her phone, pale as a sheet” doing wonders to satisfy a whump itch.

Character Whumped:

Barry Allen

The Enjoyment of Whump!Barry:

Barry Allen is a unique character for whump, not in the sense of being a superhero -- of which a lot of fans like to gravity towards for the trope of “hero who can’t save themselves” -- but because he has superhealing and an intolerance to prolonged pain, poisons and medications. It’s the latter that really makes the Whump!Barry spark. Though your time torturing the fastest man alive is limited, it can be intense, brutal and bring a mental and/or emotional pain after.

Flavor of Whump:

Foreign object in the skin -- a building collapsed leaves Barry with a back full of tiny shards of glass.

Comforter of the hurt/comfort:

Primarily Iris West with a dash of Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow.

[ Laws of Motion ]

The story transcends similar to a constantly moving camera, capturing moments of time scattered throughout an otherwise routine and somewhat insignificant event in Team Flashes life. It’s even mentioned in narrative that after having his back broken, clearing the use of his legs leaves more than just Barry with a sigh of relief.

[ Laws of Motion ]

| Cisco broke into a shaky smile. "So, you've just had a building dropped on you. How do you feel?"

"Spectacular," Barry croaked. He was cut off from further comment by Caitlin tearing off his cowl and fitting him with her own oxygen mask.

"Does anything feel broken?" she asked, while simultaneously shining her penlight into his eyes. Iris didn't need the light to tell that he was definitely concussed. "Can you move your legs?"

It was always the worst case scenario, ever since the Zoom incident. And judging by the way he'd been hunched over that girl, tons and tons of metal pressing down—

Barry's face scrunched as he agonizingly bent one knee, then the other. He groaned as he let them drop back to the table, but he bent each of his arms up as well to prove his mobility. At least, what limited amount he had. |

The groundwork is laid down neatly and without hesitation as Caitlin goes on to explain what the readers already know, and are subsequently excited for.

[ Laws of Motion ]

| Tweezers already in hand, Caitlin felt around for one piece near Barry's shoulder blade. "I'm going to have to pull these out, Barry," she said, having learned over time to narrate her actions. Whether or not it helped with the pain itself, it at least seemed to help Barry in identifying the source of it. "Some of these are..." She moved lower, frowning at the soft flesh beneath Barry's ribs. "...they're buried pretty deep, and I'm afraid some may have splintered into smaller pieces under your skin. They're going to require a minor surgical procedure—"

Barry moaned, and Iris whipped her head toward Caitlin. "Surgery? Isn't that the kind of thing that local anesthetic is for?"

"Minor surgery. We can't use anesthetic," Caitlin said, her face drawn and tight and deliberately blind toward much of the world. "You know that."

"I don't want to," Barry said, shaking his head, half-delirious, the fingers on one arm clenching and unclenching on the sheets. Based on the look of it, Iris was pretty sure the other arm was broken. "Please. Don't. Not now, please." |

The introduction of a Barry who doesn’t have the strength, mental or physical, to withstand the usual agony of healing his injuries is what makes this story so unique. Pennflinn goes on to spend time focusing on Barry’s struggle with the pain, his ability to hold it together deteriorating moment by moment.

[ Laws of Motion ]

| She pried the pieces from his upper back first, and quickly, so Iris and Cisco could plant their hands on Barry's shoulders and hold him down while he thrashed, screamed, begged, sobbed. |

Credit where credit is due to a moment of weakness written sharply yet precisely as Pennflinn makes the decision to capture Barry’s pain in short, gut-punching words.

Comfort is later found in the source of Barry’s lightning rod, Iris West. After giving him as much time as she felt she could, she goes to find him in one of the bathrooms in the deepest part of STAR Labs.

[ Laws of Motion ]

| Barry was facing away from her, and even though he was in front of a mirror, he didn't see her—his head was bowed over the sink, his working hand planted on the side and shoulders hunched. The way his spine curved reminded Iris of how he'd looked when he'd been uncovered from the rubble. Arched over the little girl, bracing against whatever might bear down on them both, getting crushed beneath the weight of a building. A loose shirt covered the damage: the stitches, the layers of gauze, the deep red bruises, the cast that encased his shattered arm.

In the ten seconds Iris waited in the doorway, he didn't move an inch, not even when she gave a light knock. It was only when she stepped into the room itself, her heels too loud on the tile, that Barry stirred. She knew better than to touch him, especially not without warning, especially not now. The physical wounds on his back were one thing, but she knew from hard past experience that they were only part of the unconscious touch aversion in situations like these.

"Barry?" she whispered, venturing to break the ice that way instead.

At this, he lifted his head and met her eyes in the mirror.

The lower lids of his eyes were pink, and his whole face sagged. He met her gaze with desolation, misery, a pleading look that said, I don't want to do this anymore.

Without a word, Iris moved forward. She reached out a hand tentatively. He allowed her to place it on his shoulder, her touch light. His face didn't crumple, exactly, but it wilted deeper into defeat. His breath shuddered under her palm, and she softened. |

The clarity of imagery here is worth noting and while never caught properly on the show, I would pay to see this recreated by an artist. Iris’s ability to wordlessly comfort Barry in his weakest moments, free of any judgement or disgust, is beautifully written here.

It’s not long after that Barry disappears, seemingly stuck in his own head.

[ Laws of Motion ]

| He picked up on the fourth ring, just when Iris was beginning to wonder if he'd left his phone behind as well.

"Iris."

"Hey," she replied. All at once she was very aware that she had no idea what she intended to say. "I just woke up. Are you alright?"

"Taking a break." Barry's voice sizzled, popped, through the phone line. "Might be a couple days. Don't worry."

He hung up before Iris could confirm that she was worrying, despite anything he said to the contrary. She held the phone up to her ear still, listening to the dead air.

It was only later that she'd see the international charges tacked on to her phone bill, a twenty-second call at 5:45 in the morning. |

His return is met with doubt, capturing a side to the hero often not seen. The strong, brass, brave Flash is suddenly exposed in the presence of his loved one, stating his nearing approach to a breaking point.

[ Laws of Motion ]

| After the meta had been safely locked away, Barry sat alone for a long while in the recovery bay, elbows up on the cot, face buried in his hands.

"I can't do it," he'd said when Iris had sat beside him. Even under her light questioning, he hadn't said a word more, and eventually she'd let him be.

That evening in the apartment, Iris kept the evening news on low while Barry made dinner. It was part of her nightly routine, practically required given her choice of profession. Tonight, she tuned out most of the national news, the breaking stories, in favor of listening to Barry putter about the kitchen. Steam whistled from a pot, a knife thunked against a cutting board, a can opener ground dully against metal.

The latter part of the newscast, near the end of the broadcast, was what caught her attention. Not because of what they were saying, but by what they were showing. Images of the ruined apartment building, the few piles of rubble that still remained.

Throwing a glance over her shoulder to ensure that Barry was busy, she turned up the volume a few clicks.

"��still missing, following an evacuation by Vibe. Vibe has since ignored our request for comment. With us tonight we have a very special guest in the studio. Six-year-old Grace Parks was shielded from the falling building by the Flash, and she has a message for him tonight. Grace?"

Grace Parks, round-faced and pink-cheeked and so vibrantly alive that only a six-year-old could be, faced the camera. She wore an earnest expression as she studied the camera lens, no doubt never having anticipated appearing on the news.

"I just wanna say," she began in her squeaky voice, "that Flash told me I was gonna be okay and now I'm okay. And I hope he's okay, too. I miss him." She glanced furtively off to the side, as if looking for confirmation that she was doing well. When she turned back, the corners of her mouth were downturned slightly. "Flash, if you're listening, I miss you. Thank you for saving me. You're my hero. And I wanted to say that. Thank you."

The feed cut back to the two news anchors, one of which was nodding sympathetically. "No doubt we all feel the same as little Grace—"

Some sixth sense caused Iris to angle her face back, and she was shocked to find Barry standing behind the couch, fixated on the TV. She quickly punched the mute button on the remote. |

Barry’s struggle between his own physical well being and the well being of others is so well detailed in the story, if not profoundly stated in the scene that follows.

[ Laws of Motion ]

| Once, when they were kids, Iris had accidentally knocked over Barry's Lego Star Destroyer and sent hundreds of tiny pieces skittering across the floor. Through her tears, she'd apologized over and over, feeling she'd destroyed something precious, something that could never be put back together. But it can, Barry had told her. Staring at the seemingly infinite number of broken parts peppering the bedroom floor, Iris had asked How? And Barry had smiled reassuringly: One block at a time. |

The story concludes as Barry aka the Flash goes to spend his time rebuilding the building that collapsed, inspired by the little girl he saved and returning her home to her.

Favorite Aspects:

[ Laws of Motion ] holds a side of Barry Allen that I have yet to see in any other written works. It seizes a side of weakness to his character without over-saturating the emotions. The blip of tears, cries, struggle and agony are all believable if not as well executed as Grant Gustins performance of Barry Allen within the show.

With his friends and family lending support, as well as all of Central City, he moves forward past another physically demanding injury with the mere words of, “tell me where I can go next.", exquisitely if not perfectly capturing the true essence of the the Flash.

#flash #barry allen #cisco ramon #caitlin snow #cw #whump #fanfiction

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i-love-coffee-ice-cream · 5 years

Text

it’s midnight and i don’t know where i’m going with this but enjoy

He spoke with an air of uncertainty. Cisco Ramon, the Central City high school alumna voted Most Likely to be a Nerd- yes, that Cisco Ramon- wasn’t sure if this was possible. Sure, he had seen other universes and had witnessed a man running at over mach 3 with his own two eyes, but this was his best friend’s safety he was risking.

“Woah, woah, woah, woah. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves now, shall we? You can’t beat this guy on your own; he’s gonna kill you!” Cisco cried, jabbing his hands at an invisible something floating in the air.

“I’ve defeated worse guys than this,” Barry replied, his voice projected by the speakers of the cortex. “I just have to outrun him for a little longer! He’s getting tired and his powers can’t reach me at this speed!”

“Barry, can you just—” Cisco sighed and the irony of the phrase, given that his companion was running— “take a breather?” He wrung his hands together, pacing slightly.

Barry chuckled, his voice projected via the speakers of the cortex. “Dude, really?”

“Yes, really!” Cisco exclaimed, his eyebrows raised. “Sometimes you have to slow down and think a bit, y’know? You’re acting impulsively. Iris’ll get mad if she hears of this.”

Cisco heard a dramatically drawn-out sigh, and then-

Barry appeared in a blur of yellow lightning, standing under the arch of the cortex and panting a bit. His hands were on his hips and he tilted his head a bit, almost like a dog. “Okay, fine,” he complied, “but I’m only stopping because I don’t want her freaking out.” He took off his gloves and set them on the top of a computer.

“What’s this? Who’s freaking out?” a voice from the doorway questioned. Barry wheeled around, facing the source of the voice.

“Ah, Dr. Caitlin Snow!” Ramon sang with a sly smile plastered across his face. “How lovely to see you! Now, what are you doing this fine morn’?” He bowed slightly, eyebrow raised in mischief.

“It’s the afternoon, firstly,” she replied, a minute smile cracking on her lips. She continued without giving the two a chance to respond. “Secondly, I’ve been whipping up a formula to inhibit this meta’s powers, and I think this one’ll work.”

Barry raised his eye in suspicion as Caitlin pulled up a visual onto the screen.

“This meta we’re facing has the ability to conduct nerve impulses that reach others outside of his physical form. Nerve impulses are what make your muscles move, and this meta can make others’ muscles move, much like a—”

“—a Puppeteer!” Cisco interrupted her, eyes alight. “Yup, still got it,” he gloated, obviously proud of his meta-naming skills. He tucked a few tufts of hair behind his ears.

“Yes, a puppeteer.” Caitlin picked up where she had left off, pressing a key on the computer to further advance the diagram on the screen. “However, nerve impulses can be stopped by stopping the release of neurotransmitters, inhibiting the specific receptors on the post-synaptic membrane, or inhibiting the neurotransmitters themselves.”

Barry blinked. “English, please.”

“If you stop a neurotransmitter from binding with a receptor, there won’t be any movement in a muscle,” Caitlin replied, pulling out a vial of purple liquid. “And I think this is our inhibitor.”

Cisco stepped forward, eyes bulging in interest. “Caitlin, you’re a genius!” he breathed.

“So, what do I do?” Barry asked. He, too, examined the vial.

“It’s plain and simple. Once you get this onto his skin, it’ll turn green and dilute his powers so you won’t be affected,” the doctor replied.

Cisco raised an eyebrow, backing away from the concoction. “But how will we know Barry won’t be controlled?”

“Remember when you stopped Peek-A-Boo on that rooftop a year ago? You froze her with your vibes. Do that to Puppeteer and he won’t be able to affect you or Barry,” she chirped.

“I’ll take your word for it.” Ramon paused, and then, “I’ll scan the city for electrical signals.” He walked over to the main satellite, sitting down and typing codes into the computer. It only took a second.

“Bingo!” He exclaimed, pulling up the exact location of the metahuman. “He’s at the old abandoned warehouse on the edge of the city. I’ll go suit up.. It looks like you need another set of hands.” He pointed at Barry, who nodded slightly before walking out of the room.

...

In an instant, the Flash and Vibe had arrived at the warehouse, using their abilities to decrease the travel time.

“Oh, I can vibe the energy coming off of him,” Cisco whispered anxiously. “Be careful not to get too close: your lightning could make his impulses stronger.”

“Noted. Stay away from the bad guy,” nodded Barry. “Easy.”

Cisco was the one to grab the handle of the big metal door, however, he froze as soon as his fingers graced the steel. A gurgled, mangled voice came from the depths of his throat. “I can’t move, Flash, run!”

Barry acted on impulse, grabbing the vial from Cisco’s frozen hand and phasing through the door. As soon as he entered the warehouse, he saw the meta. Beads of sweat rolled from his forehead as ragged breaths escaped his lips. He was exasperated, and his powers were taking more energy out of him than he realized.

“You don’t have to do this,” Barry shouted, arms out in front of him. “You don’t have to hurt innocent people. This isn’t you.”

His reply was strained. “This is me! I was born with this anger and the explosion only rubbed it in. Now, I can let others feel the pain I felt when my life became absolutely controlled by my powers.”

Suddenly, the door opened and Cisco walked inside. He couldn’t control himself; his actions were of the Puppetmaster. His hands were lifted and placed on top of his dark curls as fear and dread filled his eyes.

“I heard Vibe here has the power to kill people. Let’s see if that works on himself! Sonic blasts into his brain should do it,” the Puppetmaster shouted. His eyes were full of vengeance, like a snake readying itself before killing its prey.

In the nick of time, a thought came to Barry’s mind— why was the Puppetmaster only controlling Cisco and not both of them? Being controlled and forced to kill your best friend would certainly destroy one’s life... Why was it Vibe’s blasts and not Flash’s vibrating hand killing Cisco?

“He can only control one extra person at a time..!” Barry mumbled.

In the blink of an eye, Barry dashed over to the villain as Cisco’s hands started to vibrate. Blue swirls formed around the hands, his powers activating in slow motion. Rapidly, Barry broke open the vial and poured the liquid onto the Puppeteer’s skin, making sure his lighting wouldn’t interfere.

A bright green light emerged, reminiscient of the time when Dr. Light had blinded Barry, and the three of them were knocked unconscious. When the heroes came to, the Puppeteer’s powers were negated, he was unconscious, and Cisco was shaken but alright.

Wincing, Barry helped Cisco to his feet and the two embraced.

“You saved my life, man,” Cisco breathed in relief. “Thank you.”

“You’d do the same for me. You’re my friend.”

#kayla loves cisco ramon #kayla likes writing #what am i doing #it’s almost 1 am now #this took an hour #the flash #vibe #cisco ramon #barry allen #au #barrisco

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killervibe · 6 years

Note

Dunno if you accept anonymous prompts, but: Cait knows Cisco, and she knows he isn't going his parents' place even given is mood lately. So she tracks him down to comfort him in his near death but also to confront him about handling stress with alcohol.

If I Loved You Less – Part I

This is such an awesome idea thank you so much for the prompt!!

A few notes: This is going to have 2 parts and is a response to the first 4 episodes of season 5.

Read on Ao3 here (If you’re reading this on mobile and notice that the words are smushing together, then please read on ao3 or desktop, I don’t know what’s going on haha rip me :)

The night crept on apace, the moon went down, the stars grew pale and dim, and morning, cold as they, slowly approached - Charles Dickens

“No, of course, Mrs. Ramon. I’ll let youknow right away. Thank you so much, I promise I’m on it. Take care.”

Caitlin hung up the phone and stared straightahead.

Honing intuition could take years toperfect, but once Caitlin stepped into the world of forensics, surroundingherself with CSIs and detectives and somewhat frequent danger, her knack for listeningto her gut strengthened significantly. When Caitlin got a hunch nowadays it wasalmost always worth following. She was usually right.

This time she wished she wasn’t.

Barry overheard the conversation, havingwalked into the cortex five minutes ago. “Why were you on the phone withCisco’s mother? Is his shoulder doing worse?”

Caitlin turned to him, a thin line ofworry across her face. “No,” she said. “He never went home.”

“What do you mean he never went home?”Barry repeated slowly, perplexed.

“I mean,” Caitlin said tersely, standingup to shove her phone, wallet and charger into her purse, “He lied to us andnow his mother is worried because I called asking to speak to him about afractured collarbone she didn’t even know he had because he never went home.”

Barry held out a finger, his universal“wait one second” sign, then flew out the room with a woosh.

Before Caitlin walked three more stepsforward, he returned, skidding down the hallway. “He’s not at his apartment.”

Fear prickled down her spine. “What ifCicada found out we faked his death? We have to—”

Barry sped to the computers and began totype furiously. “Already did. Obviously, the GPS in his suit will lead back tohere since it’s in his workshop in tatters. And…” Barry looked up from the monitor.“His phone, tablet and laptop are deactivated.”

Caitlin swallowed down the lump in herthroat. “I have to look for him,” she said.

Barry nodded, “I’ll go with you.”

Hiscellphone chimed. Barry grimaced at it. “Oh…oh no. Iris is sending me a SOS Nora text.I’m so sorry, Caitlin, I need to play moderator. I promise to come help as soonas this is settled.”

Caitlin wished Barry would help her findCisco considering it would make it a lot fasterbut she understood. Barry was, strange as it was, a father now, and hisfamily needed him.

Justlike how Caitlin’s family needed her.

Barry walked Caitlin to her car then stoppedto put an arm on her shoulder. He leveled his eyes, “Cait…Just—Cisco’s been alittle off.”

“I know,” she admitted, opening the doorand getting in. She buckled her seat belt and brushed a flyaway hair from herface, “That’s why I need to find him.”

He closed her car door and watched her putthe vehicle in reverse to back out of her parking space.

A block later at the red light, Caitlinjumped to see The Flash knock on her window. She rolled down the window.

“Be careful.” Barry said. Her face was grim. “I will.”

~.~

It took four hours, but she eventuallyfound him—drunk—at his own vigil. Caitlin was terribly glad that he wassafe—The fear that Cicada had him murdered for real finally put behind her. Butshe was also cold, tired and more than a little peeved.

“Cisco,” she hissed, after she had weavedthrough the crowd, tugging the empty sleeve of his jacket. “What the hell do youthink you’re doing?”

Caitlin looked down at the Vibe shrine,her stomach twisting uneasily. It was haunting. Hundreds of teddy bears, flowers, candles,cards, posters and drawings by children with propped frames of newspaperclippings littered around the Team Flash plaque in Central City Park. She gaveCisco a sidelong glance. He looked near tears. This wasn’t making her feelgood, and she wasn’t even the one itwas for.

“Cisco this isn’t healthy, not to mention unsafe.”

“Callin,” He slurred, “Thanks for comingto my furenal.”

“This isn’t your funeral. This is a fakevigil for a fake death. I’m bringing you home.”

“Noooo,” He whined. “I need to thank thechill’ren for their pretty pictures.”

Caitlin steered him away, but he struggledagainst her.

“Cisco, come on, we need to go. You’resupposed to be laying low.”

Cisco’s lip trembled and he stumbled intoCaitlin.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, trying to hold himsteady, but he didn’t reply—Only burst into tears.

“Okay,” she soothed, as he sobbed againsther chest, frightened by his sudden outpour of emotion. “I’m here now. It’sgoing to be okay.”

“I’m dead,”he cried, and Caitlin held him tightly, glaring at the gawking onlookers and passerby. What was their problem anyway, they go to a memorial and aresurprised to see someone cry?

“You’re not dead,” she assured him, curling her fingers protectively into his hair. “You’re not dead.”

His grief might have made her heart ache,and she’d always lend him a shoulder to cry on, but she was still very cross.

She walked him briskly to her car parkedaround the corner, fifteen minutes later when his vision was no longer blurrywith tears and he was no longer at risk of causing enough racket at CentralCity Park’s Vibe vigil to be alerted as a public disturbance.

“Why are you walking so fast?” He complained,then tripped over a rock. She caught him by the arm before he hit concrete andhe howled at the pressure it put on his injury.

She couldn’t believe he got this drunk while he was hurt.

“How much did you drink?”

Cisco squinted and made a vague gesture withhis better hand. “Five….Four…?”

“Shots?” That wasn’t too terrible.

“….Bars….?”

Caitlin’s jaw dropped. “Cisco.”

“I kept telling the bartenders I was Vibe’scousin so they gave me free drinks until they kicked me out.” His words all mushedtogether, but Caitlin somehow understood.

“How were you going to get home?” Sheyelled. He couldn’t drive obviously, not just because he was inebriated, buthis phone was dead, nobody knew he was alone and she doubted he even rememberedhow to find a taxi.

Cisco opened his mouth.

“If you say you were going to breach I will smack you.”

Cisco closed his mouth.

Caitlin was so aggravated she wanted to pull out her hair. Shebuckled him into the passenger side, propping his head up against the windowafter asking at least half a dozen times if he felt sick. He kept denyingnausea but she wasn’t sure if she believed him.

She paused to call Barry to let him knowthat he could stop the search on the north side of Central City.

“I found him,” she said hurriedly in lieuof hello when the call connected.

She busied with cranking on the heat asBarry talked on the other line.

“Define ‘okay’,” she answered his questionabout his state, checking him again, “He’sextremely drunk. Like, only meta level possibility of drunkenness.”

Cisco laughed defensively, “I’m not that drunk,” he declared.

“Oh yeah? What’s Einstein’s theory ofrelativity?”

Cisco thought very hard, “Why people arerelated?”

“Was that him?” Barry asked.

“You are drunk,” she told Cisco matter offactly.

“He’sdrunk,” she repeated into the phone. “Imagine me doing karaoke and times that by ten —Hold on,” she said, then put her handover the speaker.

“Cisco put your seat belt back on.”

“No I wanna talk to Barry.” He was half in her lap. She pushed him off.

“You can talk to him tomorrow after you goto sleep.”

“Fine,” he grumbled, clicking the belt back on.

She returned to the call. “Sorry Barry, um, I’m going to take him tomy place to watch over him. I’ll let you know if I need you, okay? I think Ihave this handled.”

Cisco grew somber on the ride to Caitlin’sapartment, whereas Caitlin focused on the road to prevent herself fromseething over how stupid Cisco was to pull a stunt like this.

When she brought him to her bed, after shemade sure he wouldn’t die of alcohol poisoning, she gave him three tall glassesof water and watched him sink into her sheets.

“Why are you mad at me?” He asked in asmall voice. He looked rather pitiful, and now that she had a proper privateassessment of her own, Sherloque was right, his skin was beginning to show thesigns of excessive alcohol abuse, and he had terrible bags.

Caitlin sighed. “We’re not having thisconversation now.”

“But you’re mad at me!”

Caitlin sat on the side of the bed, brushingsome of Cisco’s hair off his forehead to put in an elastic in case he got sick later. “Cisco, I’m concerned, and you scared mevery badly. But you’re exhausted and sad, and your collarbone isbroken. So you need rest right now. We’ll talk about this later.”

He grumbled a little bit but listened toher, all of the fight leaving his body.

She tapped him gently, avoiding his badspots as his eyes drooped.

“Can you show me your back? I don’t thinkthis brace is tight enough.”

She carefully rolled him over and inspectedthe stab wound, willing her mind back into the detached and clinical purpose ofpracticing medicine. It was quiet and late, her bedroom light dimmed almost allthe way down and the curtains drawn. Caitlin’sshoulders relaxed as she pressed lightly against the stitches and bruises onhis soft, warm skin. She couldn’t help the thought about how easy and importantit was for her to take care of Cisco, and how close Cicada was to never makethat happen again.

When she had changed the linen wrappedaround his hands and properly secured his new brace, she pulled the soft shirtback down and tucked him into bed. He was more awake now, eyes wandering aroundthe room, probably disoriented as his brain tried to make sense of the fuzzymess it has become.

Caitlin changed quickly into her pyjamasand wiped her makeup off in her en suite bathroom, making quick work ofbraiding her hair.

When she climbed into bed beside him, she closedher eyes and thought about her family, especially her father and Cisco.

One she has thought has been dead for overten years until this week, the other nearly the opposite. Caitlin wasn’t fondof the irony.

Whatmuch more must she do to help them?

~.~

He began throwing up four hours later.

Caitlin leaned sleepily against thedoor frame of her bathroom as Cisco heaved into the toilet bowl, waiting for himto be finished.

He wiped his mouth and looked at her withhis hallowed sunken eyes, reaching forward to take her proffered cup ofmouthwash she had prepared since before they went to bed.

“I think I’m still drunk,” he croaked out,and covered his eyes with the palms of his hands with a whine. Caitlin frowned.

“Migraine?”

“Vibes,” he moaned. “Too much, too fast.”

Yeah, Caitlin thought back to his quipfrom two week ago. Don’t drink and vibe.

“Anything I can do?”

Cisco shook his head and threw up again.

~.~

Caitlin slept in. When she woke up, shesat up straight in her bed, a crack of bright sunlight spilled through hercurtains and her hair tumbled down her back, loosening out of the braid. Sherubbed the sleep out of her eye and glanced to her side. Cisco was not there,but he wasn’t far. He sat leaning against her bay windowsill, legs drawn up tohis chest, swaddled in Caitlin’s quilted blanket that was previously restedover them in their sleep. His cheek was smushed against his knees as if hecouldn’t hold it up without the support, and his hair hid half his face like a mask.

All of Caitlin’s anger washed away.

“Hi,” she said softly, knowing he waswatching her. She slipped out of bed, dragging another blanket to wrap aroundherself, and joined him on the opposite side of the bay seat. Their toespressed against each other as they both snuggly took up all the space.

Cisco finally raised his head, “Hi,” hesaid back. She looked up at her simple clock mounted on her wall. It was almostnoon.

“How are you feeling?”

“Hungover.”

“Do you remember anything from yesterday?”

He shrugged, looking down, too drowsy to look all that shameful, it was in his body language, his eyes, the way his good arm was wrapped protectively around the other beneath the quilt.

“Caitlin, I—“

She stopped him abruptly. She wanted to know, she felt like she deserved it, and she does. They will talk. If he doesn’t bring it up then she’ll make him. But that was for later.

“We don’t have to do this now.”

Cisco’s face was tragic. “We don’t?”

Caitlin shook her head and dropped the blanketshe’s been using as a security shield. “No.”

“Come here,” she said. And Cisco crawledimmediately into her opened arms.

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vibefrost · 6 years

Text

Killervibe Week - Day 3: Time Travel

So this is basically an AU of the last episode in season 4, where instead of Barry and Iris’s daughter coming back from the future, it’s Cisco and Caitlin’s daughter instead, which of course freaks everyone out (especially Caitlin and Cisco) :)

The girl appeared seemingly out of nowhere, yet it was as though she’d been there all along. Cisco tried to keep up with the conversation around him, listening as people pointed out where they’d seen this strange girl before, and speculating on who she really was. Yet Cisco found himself caught off guard by her appearance. She just looked so familiar, with her slender build, bronze skin and chocolate brown hair. Her eyes reminded him of the color of caramel, and the way she smiled, albeit nervously, struck him as oddly recognizable.

“Who are you?” someone, probably Barry, asked, and then the strange girl locked eyes with him.

Have I seen her in a vibe? Cisco asked himself, but this familiarity came from his gut, not his mind. She almost looks like she could be—

“My name is Angelina Ramon,” she announced, her voice steady despite her apprehensive expression. “I’m your guy’s daughter, from the future.”

Cisco realized she had shifted her gaze away from him and onto someone else, and the realization hit Cisco harder than Barry’s super-sonic speed punch.

The smile, the eyes, the behavior. That’s why it all seemed so familiar, because it reminded him of his best friend.

It reminded him of—

“Wait, me?” Caitlin gasped, the glass in her hand falling to the living room rug. “You’re my—our—” she gave Cisco a fleeting glance before turning back to the young woman, “daughter?”

Angelina Ramon nodded, twisting her fingers together nervously. “I came because…I’m in trouble, and I’m afraid I’ve made a really big mistake.”

It had been three days since Angelina Ramon showed up and completely turned Cisco’s world upside down. He had always wanted to have a family with kids, but he never even dreamed he’d be meeting them before they were even conceived.

Or that Caitlin would be the mother of his children.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing though, Cisco reminded himself as he watched Caitlin run a DNA test on Angelina, just to be sure. I mean, Caitlin is beautiful and smart, and a great person overall. She’s probably a terrific mother.

It was just the fact that he had never once found himself having romantic feelings towards Caitlin that made the whole situation seem so much more bizarre. Would there be a sudden change in their relationship coming up soon? Were they married in the future? Did they have other children too? Cisco wanted to know all the facts, but Angelina would hardly reveal anything about their personal lives, except that she was their child.

He watched as Caitlin walked over to him after the test had been conducted, and sat down by his desk, staring at the tablet screen in her hands.

“Well?” he asked. “What’s the consensus?” He already knew she was without a doubt their daughter, but wanted to hear Caitlin acknowledge it for herself.

“She is extremely healthy, has perfectly working organs and strong bones, plus…a perfect mix of both of our DNA.” Caitlin finally looked up at him, her expression unreadable.

“So…” Cisco started, watching as Angelina enthusiastically interacted with Barry and Iris. “We have a daughter.”

“I suppose we do,” Caitlin replied.

Their eyes met, and despite the strangeness of the situation, Cisco couldn’t help but smile.

It was soon discovered that some twenty odd years in the future, metas were being hunted. Angelina explained to them all that there was a man, simply called “The Hunter,” that had the ability to drain metas of their power, and that Team Flash was in a desperate need of help.

“The majority of our team had lost their powers, leaving only me and Nora,” Angelina told everyone, as they all gathered in Star Labs to hear her story.

“Wait, who’s Nora?” Barry immediately interrupted, his expression inquisitive.

“Oh, um, your daughter. She’s a speedster too,” Angelina revealed, and then quickly resumed her story. “Anyway, I was supposed to go back in time to get you, but I kept stalling because I was sure there was another way around the problem without messing up the timeline.” She grimaced before continuing. “But because I delayed so long, The Hunter found us and ended up breaking into our facility and took my powers right after I opened a time-breach, but Nora didn’t know he took my powers so she pushed me through, and now I’m stuck here with no way to get back and she has no idea.”

Everyone was silent as they took in what she said.

“So what are your powers again?” Caitlin eventually asked.

Angelina smiled at her and Cisco before responding. “I can vibe. And I also can freeze things. Back home I’m called Crystal Vibe.”

“You inherited both of their meta powers?” Iris asked incredulously. “I didn’t know that was even possible.”

“Wait, you said you opened a time-breach,” Cisco pointed out. “And…what is that?”

Angelina blinked in surprise, and then softy laughed. “Right, sorry, you haven’t invented them yet. It’s a breach that lets you travel through different timelines, including the one you’re in.”

Cisco held up his hands. “Hold up—I invent time travel?”

Angelina laughed again, a sound that Cisco was coming accustomed to. “Uncle Barry kinda did it first, but you invented a version of it.”

When everyone had finished their questioning, Angelina left to catch up on some sleep, and Cisco found himself drawn to wherever Caitlin was.

“She is pretty cool, you have to admit,” Cisco said as he watched Caitlin clean her instruments in the med lab.

“Of course she is—she has us as parents,” Caitlin replied with a smile.

Cisco found himself wanting to make her smile more and more. He never noticed how happy it made him until now.

“Y’know,” Caitlin continued as she rinsed off her scalpel. “I never mentioned it earlier, but out of everyone I could’ve had a daughter with, I’m…I’m glad it was you. I know I can trust you with anything.”

Cisco wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or if she was actually blushing, but his heart leapt at her words.

Maybe the notion of him and Caitlin eventually hooking up wasn’t so absurd after all.

The real trouble started when The Hunter found a way to come to present-time Central City.

It was a complete surprise to all of them, and unfortunately caught them off guard. The Hunter burst into Star Labs, ominously moving through the corridors as he sought out more meta power to consume. Immediately, Iris ordered Cisco, Ralph, and Barry to flee the premises.

“You’re our three metas with powers, and we’ve got to keep you safe,” she commanded, disregarding all of their protests. “At least just hide until the Hunter has left, and then we’ll come up with a plan.”

Cisco hated it, but knew she was right. He breached Barry and Ralph out of Star Labs to the other side of the city, where they brainstormed ways to defeat The Hunter while awaiting Iris’s “all-clear” signal. Yet when they got the message and returned to Star Labs, they were met with an unpleasant sight.

Almost half of Star Labs had been demolished, or at least severely damaged. Apparently when The Hunter realized there were no metas there, he went into a rage and started destroying everything in his wake.

Cisco was annoyed, of course, but then he felt his heart stop in fear when Iris told them Caitlin had been injured in the attack, and wasn’t waking up. He rushed as quickly as he could to the Med Lab (or what was left of it) and saw Caitlin lying eerily still on the white bed, her face scratched and bruised. For two whole days he stayed by her side, trying everything her could to help her heal faster and wake her up, but as the hours stretched on so did his anxious thoughts.

He had known Caitlin for so long, and for so long they had been best friends, always laughing with each other and spending time together, whether it be at work or at their apartments, watching cheesy Netflix shows and giving a running commentary while gorging themselves on snacks. He didn’t think he could picture his life without her. He didn’t want to picture his life without her. He wanted to always have her by his side, to see her smile at his jokes and help comfort him when times grew tough. He wanted to be there and support her through all of her troubles and be there to celebrate her triumphs. He just wanted to be around her, whether they were saving the city or just going to the grocery store, he just wanted her, and that was when he realized that maybe, just maybe, he was in love.

It took another few days before Caitlin awoke form her coma, and Cisco had never felt more relieved when she did. He hadn’t been able to function properly without knowing if she was going to be okay, and he shared his worries with her once she was fully awake and oriented.

“Don’t be silly,” Caitlin chided fondly. “I couldn’t die. We have to have our daughter first, remember?”

All Cisco could do in response was grip her hand tightly and try not to cry.

Throughout the next few weeks the Star Labs team worked nonstop, trying to come up with a solution. They knew that The Hunter was somehow harboring all of the meta powers he’d stolen inside him, so they couldn’t just kill him or else all the powers would be lost. They needed to find a way to siphon the powers away from him so they could return them to their respective owners in the future, plus also find a way to get to the future.

“The speed force only goes to the past, so Barry can’t do it,” Angelina told them. “It has to be you, dad.” She had looked at Cisco with so much confidence, as though she knew he could find a way to time-breach, but Cisco was completely clueless. He had listened to his daughter try and coach him through how to do it, but no matter how hard he tried his efforts were useless.

“It’s impossible,” he groaned to Caitlin after Angelina suggested they take a break. “A time-breach is beyond anything I’ve ever tried before. It’s literally vibing apart the time continuum and jumping into the future!”

“I’m sure it just takes time,” Caitlin reassured him, squeezing his hand comfortingly. “But if anyone can do it, I know you can.”

Caitlin’s encouragement meant more to him than she probably knew. The following days he trained harder than ever before, willing himself to go beyond his limits to try and save the future. And every day, after his long training sessions were finally over, Caitlin was always there to give his shoulder a comforting squeeze, hold his weary hands, or even gently kiss his throbbing forehead. Their physical contact was becoming more and more common now than ever before, yet neither of them really noticed. It just seemed so natural to the both of them, as though it was always meant to be this way.

Eventually all of Cisco’s hard work paid off, and he finally discovered how to open a time-breach. Everyone congratulated him and was encouraged by his positive success, but the proud smile Caitlin gave him and the way she gently kissed his cheek was all the reward Cisco needed.

They team now had a way to get to the future, and soon they discovered a way to reverse the powers of The Hunter and take the meta powers back. All they needed was to lure The Hunter into walking through a time-breach to take him back to the future.

Together they all devised a plan where Barry would lure The Hunter to Star Labs again, only this time Cisco would be ready with a time-breach that Iris, Caitlin, and Angelina would knock him through. Then Barry, Cisco, and Angelina would follow The Hunter through the portal and use their siphoning ray to take his powers, and then distribute them to all the powerless metas. Then The Hunter would be locked up in Iron Heights, and Barry and Cisco would go home.

The plan seemed fairly stable, but Cisco was slightly apprehensive about all the unknown variables they didn’t account for. What happened if The Hunter didn’t take Barry as bait? What if The Hunter somehow stole Cisco’s powers before he could open the breach? Questions raced through his head, but he shook them off for the time being, focusing on the plan and what they did know instead.

“I guess this means I have to say goodbye to Angelina,” Caitlin said to him softly, after Iris told everyone to get into their places.

Cisco squeezed her hand. “We’ll see her again someday.” Caitlin nodded at his words.

Both of them had completely accepted the fact that they were going to have a child at some point in the future by now, and Cisco found himself looking forward to the time when they would actually start a family.

“Just be careful, all right?” Caitlin told him, reaching up to tuck a loose strand of his hair behind his ear. “The future can be a scary place.” She smirked as he rolled his eyes.

“I’ll be fine,” he promised, and then drew her into a hug. He was about to pull away when Caitlin caught him by the arm, her deep brown eyes boring into his. Then without any sort of warning or preamble, she leaned forward and pressed her lips against his own.

It was a short and sweet kiss, but it left Cisco breathless all the same. When she drew back she gave him a shy smile. “For luck,” she clarified, and then turned to go and bid goodbye to their future daughter.

Barry walked over a few minutes later, checking to make sure he was ready when he frowned, giving Cisco a wary look. “You looked dazed. Are you feeling alright?”

“I’m feeling great,” Cisco assured, thinking about how that kiss was just the beginning of several more to come.

The plan went off without a hitch. The Hunter took the bait as planned, and Cisco was successfully able to transport everyone to the future. There Angelina used the gun on The Hunter and released all the stolen meta power, which was quickly returned to their rightful owners, and everything had been restored.

“Thank you so much,” Angelina told Cisco once everything was over, giving Barry time to talk to his future daughter Nora for a bit. “We never could’ve done this without you.”

“No problem,” Cisco said, and then cleared his throat before continuing. “And, uh, thank you as well. If you hadn’t come, I don’t think you would’ve ever been born.”

To his surprise, she shook her head with a laugh. “I don’t think that’s completely true. You and mom have always shared a special connection, even before I showed up. You would’ve found your way to each other eventually.”

Her words initially shocked him, but after a moment he began to see how she could be right. “You really think so?”

Angelina nodded confidently. “You’ve always been in love with her, I just helped you come to the conclusion a little faster.” She glanced around behind her. “Speaking of parents, I should find them. Well, I mean my current-time parents.” She giggled as her eyes lit up, so similar to Caitlin’s when she got excited. “Your future self is gonna freak when I tell him I met you and mom.”

Cisco smiled. “Freak him out good for me.” He then gave her a quick hug, and she was gone.

Once Barry had finished talking to Nora, he came back to Cisco, smiling widely. “I can’t wait to meet her in our timeline,” he said excitedly, and then the two of them jumped through Cisco’s time-breach back into Star Labs.

“You made it!” Iris exclaimed, racing over to Barry and embracing him. Cisco hardly took notice of them though, for his eyes were focused on Caitlin, and how she gave him a warm smile before coming over to embrace him as well.

Later that night, with their hands intertwined, Cisco and Caitlin sat on the roof of Star Labs, watching as the sun set and painted the sky with pinks and yellows.

“So…” Caitlin began, shooting him a playful smirk.

“So,” Cisco parroted, turning his head to face her.

“You think we should skip all the dating and stuff and just get busy on creating Angelina Ramon?”

Cisco nearly choked on his own breath at her words, but then saw a large grin split her face as she began laughing hard, tears sparkling in her eyes.

“Your face, Cisco, was priceless,” she managed to say while still laughing.

Cisco couldn’t help but laugh along with her, and once they had eventually calmed down he turned to her, his demeanor more serious. “I do want to start a family with you,” he admitted, rubbing his thumb gently across her knuckles. “But I want to start out properly.” He glanced up at Caitlin, noting the affection in her eyes as she stared at him. “So, how does a date sound?”

“It sounds perfect,” Caitlin responded softly, almost glowing due to the sun shining on her hair.

This time Cisco leaned forward and captured her mouth with his own, and enjoyed the feeling of her soft lips and the sweet smell of her caramel hair. He soon became lost in the kiss, thinking of nothing but Caitlin and how he was the luckiest man in the multiverse.

The future looked bright for them, and for the moment, that was all he needed to know.

#killervibeweek #killervibe week #killervibe #my fic #writing #future child

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goldenfatale-moved · 6 years

Note

Cisco wants the K

ALL 24 KISSES FOR CISCO // @mostlygoodvibes

1: Passionate Kiss

The first time he kisses her like this, it’s mid fight, pouring rain. Cliche if anything, but adrenaline is pumping through their veins and he has her pinned up against a brick wall as the skies flash lightning. She’s left breathless and grinning, even as he smirks and vibes away.

2: Gentle Peck

These are saved for mornings. When the sheets are wrinkled at the foot of the bed and she promises to get up and make coffee, his soft mumble following as she presses her lips against his before slipping free to pad barefooted into his kitchen.

3: Firm Kiss

She asks why he’s here. It’s been months since she saw him last, and he’s bold enough to step forward and kiss her. Closed mouth. But not soft like the one she’d left him with before riding off into the sunset. Sometimes you just don’t need words.

4: Shut-Up Kiss

Cisco talks a lot. Usually she doesn’t mind, but right now he’s ranting about something dumb that H.R. did and it’s easily been several minutes with no sign of slowing down. Reaching out she tugs him close and kisses him, hoping that will distract him enough and let him relax.

5: Romantic (Tender) Kiss

For the first time in her life, she’s brave. Telling him that she loves him as they sit on the top of Star Labs watching a metoer shower. Lisa pulled him away from the telescope he’d set up just so they could lean back on their blanket, holding hands and enjoying the softness of the moment.

“I love you…” It slips out, soft and sure, Lisa turning her head to smile at him before he leans in to kiss her, chasing those words with his touch.

6: Teary Kiss

He’s the one that breaks the news to her. Len died a Legend.

Lisa barely felt her legs give out beneath her, but she felt his arms around her, lowering them to the ground as she cried, fingers curled in his jacket and face buried against his shoulder. It was the most she’d felt in a long time; so many things she’d wanted to tell Len. So many moments she’d hoped he’d see.

The kiss was soft, wet and tender. I understand your pain.

7: Distract-Someone Kiss

To this day, she only has guesses as to who the Flash is. The clues keep coming together, the more time she spends with Cisco and the team. Only no one ever directly says that the Flash is Barry Allen.

Lisa caught a glimpse of plainclothes before her vision is suddenly full of her boyfriend. Cisco had panicked, hands cupping her cheeks and kissing her to distract from the face Barry had just whizzed in to grab his suit without realizing Lisa was in the Cortex.

8: Kiss in the Rain

“Goodnight, babe.”

Lisa presses her lips softly against his, ignoring the soft patter of rain that begins to sprinkle down around them.

He suggests she come inside instead of braving the roads on her motorcycle in the rain that is steadily getting harder.

9: Underwater Kiss

Is it a kidnapping if he vibes them willingly to whatever island she promised she’d steal him away to? Maybe, maybe not.

Either way they’re relaxing on a beach all to themselves on some earth that isn’t theirs, and Lisa drags him out to the water to cool off. It’s cheesy and silly as he kisses her under the water and Lisa pushes off the sandy floor to break up for air after grinning at him.

10: Upside-Down Kiss

“Since I’m stuck up here like Spiderman... do I at least get a kiss?”

Lisa didn’t have a way to get him down after they’d decided to tag team the Flash villain of the week. Turns out the woman was going to be dubbed Black Widow, trademark pending.

Smirking up at him, Lisa reaches out to steady his slowly turning body in the strange vicious rope the meta had produced. “Nerd.” She murmured fondly before pressing a kiss to his lips.

11: Goofy Kiss

They’re splattered in paint, helmets drawn up and spent guns in hand as they come off the closed course. “That was fun!” Almost as fun as robbing a bank. When Lisa leans in to kiss him, it’s full of smiles and laughter, and the faint taste of paint.

12: Almost Kiss

It’s the first time he’s seen her in years. Since she sped off on a bike and his life once again revolved around Star Labs.

When Cisco sees her again, she’s got gold in her eyes and a darkness in her voice. A promise of eternity on her lips as she leans in, as if she’ll brush her lips against his again and turn him to gold.

At the last moment, her breath, warm against his cheek, disappears.

She’s gone.

13: Hair Kiss

“Your shampoo smells good babe...” Lisa comments tiredly, snuggling into bed with him and burying her nose against the curve of his neck as she spoons him. It’s barely even a kiss, more of a sound as she smiles against his curls, softened by the rum she’d drank earlier.

14: Forehead Kiss

“Goodnight, Golden Glider....” They’re stuck on another earth, unable to show their faces anywhere in case they clash with their doppelgangers lives. His googles now seem apart of him, just as the golden hue she’s taken on since getting her powers is part of her.

Lisa barely responds, too tired from running - from fighting for their lives to find a way out of this place. She’s leaned up against his shoulder, both sitting with their backs to the wall, when he kisses her forehead. It’s almost sad, a melancholy cloak that settles over both their shoulders.

15: Eyelid Kiss//16: Nose Kiss//17: Cheek Kiss//18: Jawline Kiss//19: Collarbone Kiss

Lisa wakes to kisses. Soft ones at the apple of her cheek and as she smiles, humming softly in response to Cisco’s lips against her skin, he moves. They’re brushed lightly over eyelids, cheeks and nose. Slowly following the line of her jaw and then down her neck before he presses one to her collarbone.

Then the teeth come into play and Lisa tugs him down for a morning that makes him late to work.

20: Chest Kiss

“I love you... always.” Somewhere between on and off flirtations and stolen kisses they’ve found a sort of domesticity. A balance that they’re both okay with. They’re living their truth, warm and happy in the quiet nights that soften the action figures shadows against his walls.

Lisa brushes kisses over the faint outline of scar tissue on his chest.

21: Stomach Kiss

It turns out she’s ticklish, just a spot slightly to her left side and she can’t stop the giggle that escapes when Cisco brushes first fingers and then his lips over her skin inquisitively.

22: Hipbone Kiss

Hipbones are less ticklish and if anything, Lisa wiggles and moans as he brushes his lips over them.

The next morning she presses her fingers over the slowly darkening hickies that Cisco left in his wake as she gets dressed, glancing over her shoulder with a fond smile to watch Cisco sleep.

23: Hand/Wrist Kiss

“Together?”

Lisa asks softly, not looking at Cisco. They’re dealing with something far worse - something with big teeth and too much dark energy pulsing through it. Cisco reaches for her hand, entwining their fingers together and lifting it to his lips to kiss the back of. “We got this, girl.”

24: Butterfly Kiss

“Can we just check this off your list of things you didn’t think people did, because honestly... it’s a little weird.” Lisa is struggling not to laugh when he suggests among the new moves they’re planning in the bedroom for the weekend, they try butterfly kisses. The description alone had made her snort, but she was game.

After a bottle of wine.

They leaned in towards each other, close enough to feel the warmth of breath.

She tried terribly not to laugh as they flutter lashes at each other, but it can’t be helped. Lisa dissolves into giggles and rolls to the side.

#mostlygoodvibes #so many kissing moments

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paperpenmasterpieces · 7 years

Text

Different Earth's, Same Idea

Sorry for the wait! Enjoy!

Request: You're Barry's sibling on this earth and Cisco and you've never thought about a relationship ever. But then an alternate you pops in for some reason and lays one on Cisco which makes you super jealous and everything super awkward. But you all get a happy ending. (Word Count: 3884)

Growing up as Barry’s little sister wasn’t always easy. After we’d lost our Mom and our father was arrested, things were just slightly different. Yes, we were close, but I think we were both too afraid of losing the other that there was always a distance between us.

As a result, our paths, while traveled together, always had some firm line between it. He became a forensic scientist and I became a sketch artist, both working for CCPD. Living with the Wests was great, but again, that line was always there between Barry and Iris and I, most likely due to the three year age difference we shared. Even when Barry started spending more time at STAR Labs, I wasn’t immediately notified of the major effect of his lightning incident because Joe wanted to keep his girls safe. Iris was a reporter that had a knack for discovering things, and I was only aware of something if it was drawn out right in front of me. Naturally, you can guess who found out Barry’s big secret first.

And after that, it was like a light had switched back on. Learning how our mother died and that Barry now had the power to protect us seemed to immediately close whatever distance he and I had created. It was a closure to a traumatizing night we both desperately needed. And it was one thing that Eobard Thawne had managed to do right: merge my brother and I’s paths back onto the same road. As a result, I had two other families I fit in with: the Wests and the STAR Labs team.

And that’s all we were. Family. No harboring feelings for anyone, good or bad. I wasn’t secretly longing for a certain mechanical engineer that was a great friend for both Barry and I.

At least… I think that was the case. Until she had come along.

It was a good night as Team Flash celebrated another win. Caitlin and I were heading the Cortex as both Barry and Cisco were out on the field, an exciting moment for both guys as it was the first official outing for Vibe, and so far it was going really well.

“Alright, boys! That’s a wrap for tonight, so go ahead and come back so the Doctor can patch you up!” I smirked at Caitlin as I leaned back in the chair. I could hear the two superheroes’ confirmation and rolled my chair towards the brunette.

“Yes?”

“We never finished our conversation.” Caitlin rolled her eyes with a gentle smile.

“We went out for dinner and had a nice time.” At my grin, she shook her head. “It really isn’t anything. Julian and I are just friends!”

“Uh-huh. Surrre.”

She glared at me, losing the seriousness as a small grin was on her face. Her grin widened though as she squinted her eyes briefly. “What about you? Anyone caught your eye lately?”

I thought briefly about it. Between work at CCPD and work at STAR Labs, there really wasn’t anytime to see or meet anyone new. The closest I got to hanging out with another male (that wasn’t my brother) was Cisco and our office movie nights. It was a way to keep ourselves sane during nights when he needed to work on superhero stuff and I needed to work on police stuff (and there were plenty of them).

Subconsciously, I smiled as I remembered last night's argument over The Princess Bride, a movie I refused to see simply because it ticked Cisco off.

“This is a MASTERPIECE. Don’t diss this just because you have some weird grudge against me.” He was holding the movie against his chest as he stared at me, offended.

“Quit calling me Baby Allen and I’ll watch it.” I told him as I set up our chairs in front of the screen he’d pulled down.

“But…” I looked up as he tried to come up with an argument. Giving up he settled with, “But you ARE Baby Allen.” I sat down and crossed my arms, rolling my eyes at him and motioned for him to pick another movie.

He started to walk away before quickly spinning around. “Let’s compromise…how about Baby West?”

Yeah. I choose movie nights with someone I’m comfortable with then an awkward dinner with a stranger any day.

Looking back at Caitlin, she pointed at my face. “There is someone!”

Waving my hands, I shook my head. “Unfortunately, there isn’t so don’t try to shine the spotlight away from you, missy!”

I glanced at the monitor as she let out a scoff, only to see the two dots at their same location. I opened up the line for communication.

“Are you both okay?” Laughter filled the Cortex as Cisco’s voice came through.

“Alright you two! Breacher or Speedster? Who’s the faster of the two? Place your bets, now!” Letting out a loud laugh, I looked at Caitlin and we both put on our poker faces immediately.

“Barry has been getting faster.” She reasoned.

“But Cisco has really gotten the hang of opening breaches.” Narrowing her eyes at me, she responded to them.

“Barry, you better win this!”

“Seriously?” Barry’s voice came through. “No points for your own bro, sis?”

Shrugging though he couldn’t see me, I answered, “I’ve got to spice it up a bit!” Addressing Cisco I shouted, “Ramon! Let’s do this!”

“Yes! You know you on the winning team, gurl! Ain’t gonna let you down!”

His shout of excitement made me giggle and Caitlin had began a countdown on the computer.

But before the race could commence, a strange sound came from Barry and Cisco’s side.

“Cisco?” Barry’s voice was slightly anxious. “Please tell me you’re cheating.”

“What’s happening?” I turned to Caitlin and she pressed a few keys on the computer. Worried she quickly looked at me, “A new breach is opening right on top of them!”

“Guys, get out of there now!” I tried to downplay how scared I was, but let’s face it: a breacher from who knows where is always a logical reason to be worried.

Barry didn’t respond and it was a few moments of silence before we heard anything from them. That’s one of the hardest parts about being on desk duty with no metahuman abilities. The not being able to help and just standing aside waiting to see what would happen next. Caitlin and I were on edge as we waited for a blue breach to open or for a gust of wind to signal their return.

Caitlin tried the comms again after a few minutes. “Barry? Cisco?”

A heartbeat.

“Uh, yeah, we’re here…” Barry’s voice came through but there was something off about it.

“Are you okay? What happened?” I threw myself in front of Caitlin, trying to figure out what was wrong.

“Um, that’s the thing, we’re okay, but something happened? Or is happening…?” His voice trailed off and I could just imagine him turning to look at Cisco.

“Just… have the med bay prepped, Cait. We’re, uh– headed back.” Caitlin nodded at Cisco’s somewhat weak voice and while confused, she began to make her way to the clinic, her heels tapping away.

“Oh, and kid?” I hated when Barry called me that. Three years age difference!

“What?”

“Just… try not to freak out?”

Naturally, that caused me to do the opposite, but as my heart beat wildly in my chest I held my voice steady. “Why?”

A loud whirl behind me had me turning around and waiting for Cisco to land. However, when he did, he quickly took off his goggles and brushed his hair back, seemingly having trouble looking me in the eye. “Cisco? What happened out there?” I walked toward him and could’ve sworn he was blushing. “Uh, well…” He pointed to the entrance of the Cortex and my hair whipped around my face as Barry entered.

Except he was holding me. A scratched up and shaky me, but me nonetheless.

And I was trying my very hardest to listen to what my brother had just suggested moments ago.

He quickly took her (me?) to the med bay where Caitlin was and I was able to see her look at the girl in Barry’s arms and then back at me, a shocked look on her face, before she started looking her over. Barry walked back out, a worried look on his face before he looked at Cisco and narrowed his eyes just a little bit.

“So, uh…that’s me.” I pointed to the girl with Caitlin and then turned my back to her to face my friend and brother. The boys looked at each other briefly before both turned to me, “Yeah, that’s you.”

“But, is that a future me or–”

“No, no!” Cisco waved his hands quickly, an embarrassing smile on his face. “That’s an alternate you. And by that I mean from another universe– where things are completely different from this Earth! Because, uh…” He looked nervously at Barry before continuing his rambling, “…not everything is the same on every Earth. You know… Obviously. Um.” He awkwardly cleared his throat and banged his fist together as he made it a point to look away from me.

But while Barry had a somewhat amused look now, I stared straight at Cisco and I knew he could feel it. “What did she do to you?”

“You, uh, well– not you! Because that’s not here-you! No, uh…” He laughed nervously.

“I kissed him.”

I spun around quickly only to come face to face with my doppleganger. Looking her over quickly I saw that Caitlin had cleaned her up and that she looked fine for the most part. Taking the chance, I recognized just a few differences in us (her hair was lighter and straighter than mine and her style was slightly different) but overall it really was like looking into a mirror.

It was after the shock of meeting my doppleganger for the first time, that I finally registered what she had said and for some reason, a weird feeling landed in my stomach and my chest started fluttering.

“Wait– why would you kiss Cisco?”

“Apparently, she and Cisco are together on her Earth.” Barry crossed his arms and looked back and forth between me and Cisco, who I could now understand his reason for not looking at me because, well, I couldn’t face him either.

“But you two aren’t together here, I’ve gathered.” She stated, noticing the strange looks going on.

Glancing at the other me I nodded quickly. “We’re just really good friends! The best!”

Turning to look at Cisco for confirmation he briefly nodded his head and was about to say something but strangely paused and looked at the floor, crossing his arms across his chest. Confused, I turned to her and she had a small smirk on her face before she looked down and nodded. She looked back up to me and tilted her head. “You do the late night coffee runs?”

“Oh! They do the late night movies here at the lab!” Caitlin answered enthusiastically, causing us all to stare at her, me and Cisco with slight panic in our eyes and Barry with widened eyes.

My brother turned to me, his voice slightly high as he asked, “You said you always stayed to do your sketches at my lab?”

I held up a finger. “I said THE lab, not necessarily your lab. And I do them! The movies are just to relax and— I don’t need to explain this. Cisco and I are friends!” I stated firmly.

My doppleganger smiled knowingly as she said, “Yeah, that’s how we started, too.”

Seeing Barry’s eyebrows jump up, I quickly intervened. “Why are you here? Or– how did you get here? Are you a meta on your Earth?”

“No.” She sighed before lightly waving her hand towards the two males. “I explained it briefly to them when I came out of the breach. One created by my Cisco.” I could tell she was starting to get worried as she explained what happened.

“There’s a meta we’re handling on my Earth and he kind of just ambushed me and Cisco as we were on a date. Cisco started fighting him, but he got knocked down before the meta started coming for me.”

“Why didn’t you use the metahuman app to call Barry or Wally?” Cisco asked.

“Well… we don’t have one of those.” She thought about the idea of the app briefly before continuing. “But, uh, anyway, before the meta could attack me, Cisco created a breach and used his abilities to toss me through it.”

She turned to Cisco. “That’s why I ran up and kissed you as soon as I fell through. I thought you had looped it around to land next to you and it took me awhile to notice you were in your suit and were hesitant when kissing me back.”

Caitlin and I whipped our heads in Cisco’s direction.

“You kissed BACK?”

Blushing even darker, Cisco tried to explain. “Well, a pretty girl kisses me, I mean–” Cisco looked at me, “not to say that I just kiss anyone, because I don’t! But it was… instinctual? I–uh– Caitlin…” He looked helplessly toward her. “Help?”

“What I think he means to say is that it was just something he couldn’t help!” Caitlin suggested, a small twinkle in her eye.

Cisco raised a hand to his throat telling her to cut it out, but before I or anyone else could respond, my doppleganger continued with her story. “When Cisco created the breach, maybe in a state of panic, I think he accidentally created a breach that got me away from the danger. And that sent me to another Earth.” She flicked her hands around her. “Your Earth.”

She looked seriously at Cisco. “Which is why you need to get me back there immediately, so I can know he’s okay.”

“Makes sense.” Cisco put his glasses back on, placing his fist in front of him. “Just tell me which Earth and we’ll get you back… to…me?” His sentence had trailed off as he realized what he was saying.

Doppelgänger me hesitated before she asked, “You consider yourselves Earth-1, right?”

My eyes widened as I realized what she was saying. “You don’t know what Earth to get back to, do you?”

She nodded and ran a hand threw her hair. “Which would mean that my Cisco won’t know where to get me from either. Especially if he didn’t mean to send me here!”

Caitlin put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We’ll send you back. I know your family is missing you and will be doing the exact same thing we are in trying to get you home.”

We had separated into teams to try and figure this one out. Cisco and Barry had gone back to the scene of the crime to see if Cisco could vibe anything about her Earth. Caitlin had taken some evidence from my doppleganger’s clothes and went over to CCPD to see if Julian could get any hints about well, anything.

And that left me with her.

“So. Everyone here at STAR Labs seems pretty much the same.” She was walking around taking everything in while I sat in Cisco’s chair.

She sat down on Cisco’s desk and stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets. “Only small differences here and there.”

Slightly irritated I stared pointedly at where she was sitting. “Do you mind sitting in a chair? Cisco’s been working hard on all these diagrams.”

Surprised, she looked at the desk before getting off of it, moving over to roll another chair towards us. “Sorry! Force of habit, I guess?”

She looked down at the diagrams he had been working on for his suit before she pulled the paper toward her, grabbed a pen and started writing something on it.

“Hey!” I ripped the pen from her hand. “You can’t just write all over his stuff!”

“I do it all the time.” She stared at me, curious. “Are you not an engineer here?”

“Engineer? No. I’m a sketch artist. You’re an engineer on your Earth?”

Nodding, she gently took the pen out of my grasp before continuing her correction. “It’s how I met the team… and Cisco.” She focused on the papers in front of her as she talked. “We crushed on each other while working together, Barry became the Flash, Cisco and I grew closer, lots of stuff happened in between that and voila!” She finished writing and looked up. “Here I am.” She grinned and I asked her what I had been wanting to know ever since I saw her.

“How are you and Cisco dating? I mean, he’s awesome and a great guy… but we work together and he’s my brother’s best friend and it just seems…” I trailed off after realizing that there really wasn’t any logical reason as to why it seemed wrong.

Knowingly, she grabbed a spare sheet of paper and began doodling. “I don’t know. I always had some kind of feelings for him, but figured ‘Hey, he’s my best friend, let’s not ruin that’, but one day, this breacher from Earth 19 comes in and next thing I know she’s kissing him like there’s no tomorrow and I felt… betrayal. It was like that kiss sparked this jealousy in me that I hadn’t expected. Cait had noticed and convinced me to tell Cisco and I did. I can’t tell you how surprised the both of us were when we said we actually liked each other.” Smiling softly, she added, “As cheesy as it sounds, it’s one of the greatest things that could’ve happened to either one of us.”

Her eyes met mine and she had a thoughtful look on her face. “Maybe I’m your Gypsy.” I felt my forehead scrunch up as I looked at her completely lost. “You’re my what?”

She jumped up, sitting straight in her chair, a new wave of excitement flowing through her. “You don’t know who she is! That’s perfect! That means that I’m the one who gets your relationship going!” She pointed at me. “Tell me hearing about the kiss didn’t affect you in some way!”

I didn’t really have an answer for her. And she knew she had gotten me.

With a sweet smile she spoke softly. “Cisco said that on any Earth we find each other. A bit like Barr and Iris. Soulmates.”

“Who are soulmates?”

Footsteps entering the room made me jump as Barry and Cisco came back. Looking at Barry I was at a loss for words before my doppleganger answered for me. “You and Iris. We were talking about similarities between our Earths and you and Iris are as sickeningly cute as ever.”

Smiling, Barry took the answer, but peeking at Cisco and meeting his eyes, I knew he knew the truth. We stared at one another for a moment before I broke our eye contact.

“Did you guys find where to send our new friend back?”

“Yes.” Barry walked toward us. “Cisco managed to get a vibe from your Earth’s Cisco and they managed to figure out that you belong on Earth 14.”

“So he’s okay?”

Barry nodded at his sister and put his hands on her shoulders. “He’s fine. And from what he said the meta is taken care of and everyone is just waiting for you to get home.”

Letting out a breath of relief she hugged my brother. “Thanks, Barr.” He gave her a tight squeeze before releasing her. “Just stay safe, okay.” He smiled mischiveously before saying, “And tell Cisco he better take care of you, or I’ll run all the way over there to get him in line.”

“So you threaten my boyfriend the same way in any dimension.” She grinned widely at him.

“I’ll see you soon, kid.”

She walked up to Cisco next and they gave awkward laughs as they tried to figure out if they should hug or not. After a second, Cisco opened his arms and she stepped into them, a warm hug shared between them– a hug I was familiar with myself. She whispered something to him and Cisco cleared his throat as he pulled away, glancing at my brother and I before nodding his head briefly.

She turned around to face me and held out her hand as she said, “I always hear Barry talking about how he met past him, future him, doppleganger him… and as weird as it is, it was still pretty cool to meet you.”

Shaking her hand, I gave a smile. “Just stay safe over there, okay? And tell Cisco not to send you into anymore strange earths.”

Winking at me, she quietly said, “Oh, he’ll get a talking to.” Stepping closer she whispered, “Both of us will be having discussions with a certain Ramon tonight.” Giving my arm a squeeze, she backed away before explaining what she meant.

“Oh, and tell Caitlin thank you, will you?”

Barry nodded. “Of course”. He turned his head towards Cisco and gave him a meaningful look. “Ready?”

Pulling out his goggles he put them on and aimed his fist at the empty space in front of us, “Earth-14, welcome back your missing friend!”

The familiar swirl of the breach began to open, and turning around my doppleganger gave us one last wave before walking through, the breach immediately closing, leaving only the three of us in the room.

Talking to no one in particular, I quickly said, “Well, that’s a new one.”

“Eh, not really.” Barry replied.

Turning to look at my brother, I narrowed my eyes. “It is for those that weren’t allowed to other Earths.”

“You know what is new though?” Barry walked up and placed an arm around Cisco, playfully saying, “You two. I mean, who would’ve thought, right?” Cisco and I laughed awkwardly as Barry smiled at the two of us, loving the blushes that painted both of our faces.

“Yeah! I mean, that’s completely out of nowhere!” Cisco agreed, but his jerky movements and high pitched voice didn’t really fool me or Barry. And that got me thinking about what my doppleganger had said.

Yes, it would be a natural step between Cisco and I to move forward in our friendship. I mean, I would be lying if I said there weren’t moments that I wanted to move closer to him when we were already invading each other’s personal space, or times that I just never wanted to leave his side, even if it was just to go home and take a shower, only to see him at the lab a couple hours later.

Maybe that’s why I never thought of me and Cisco as me AND Cisco. We were already naturally gravitating around one another. Why would we need to point out the obvious?

“Hey? You okay?”

Snapping out of my thoughts, I found Cisco waving his hand in front of me, looking concerned. I looked around quickly and noticed that my brother had left.

Cisco replied to my unanswered question, “Barry said he had to go meet Iris about something or other.” He waved his hand around as an explanation.

“Ah. Right!” I nodded and we were silent for awhile.

“So what did she tell you before she left?” I asked, curious.

“Oh, that?” He smiled wistfully as he looked away from me. “Just some friendly Earth-14 advice.”

“About?”

He looked down and grinned before looking back up at me. “About us.” He answered, bluntly.

“Ah.”

I wasn’t nervous and neither was he. At least not as much as we should’ve been. And that’s probably why I was brave enough to continue the conversation.

“She seemed happy. And her Cisco probably is too.”

He stepped closer and I looked down and saw that our shoes were toe and toe, and while I could feel his gaze on me, I could also feel the warmth radiating from his body.

I looked up into his dark eyes, and smiled shyly. “I’m pretty sure I could make my Cisco happy as well.”

Giving me his wide grin, his hand swept down my arm and into my hand, interlacing our fingers.

“You already do.”

#cisco ramon imagine #cisco ramon #cisco ramon x reader #the flash #cisco ramon reader

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robininthelabyrinth · 7 years

Text

Fic: Win the Race (ao3 link) Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, references to Arrow Pairing: Barry Allen/Iris West; Leonard Snart/Mick Rory

Summary: You make some adjustments when aliens attack and a whole bunch of people get abducted.

Adjustments like adopting some kids - very quick kids -

(in which Len and Mick accidentally adopt Barry and Iris' kids)

A/N: Set past the end of Flash season 3. Very few Legends.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Losing Barry had hurt worse than anything.

Iris didn't want to eat - their favorite places - or see anyone - everyone reminded her of him - or, well, do anything.

They'd sent out their save the date cards, so at least she didn't have to look at the box of all her hopes and dreams and optimism. Not that that made her feel better. At least Dad took care of calling all of them and explaining that the wedding is off.

It's about a month and a half before people start getting impatient with her moping. Luckily, Iris gets sick right around the same time - vomiting! That means she's really sick, not just more moping! - so that's a good excuse to keep inside and away from everyone.

Play with McSnurtle. At least he doesn't pressure her to move on because "this isn't what Barry would've wanted".

Well, Barry's trapped in the stupid-ass speed force by his own stupid guilt - seriously, Iris has a list of alternative ways they could've satisfied the Speed Force's need for a speedster without having to give up Barry, because she totally hasn't been obsessing over this or anything - so Barry's sort of lost his right to have a say.

There's a knock at her door.

"Go away, Dad!" Iris shouts.

"It's, uh, it's not your dad," a muffled female voice says.

Iris frowns. She doesn't have that many female friends - never did, sad to say - so she's not immediately sure who it is.

She goes over to the door, wonders for a minute if whoever it is outside is going to judge her because she's wearing Barry's old college t-shirt and a pair of his STAR Labs sweats, figures the answer is yes, accepts it, and pulls open the door anyway.

She blinks.

"Caitlin?" she asks. "Or, uh, is it Killer Frost right now?"

"Caitlin is fine," the now white-haired woman says wryly. "I see you're handling what happened better than I handled Ronnie dying. Both times."

Iris hesitates. It's true, Caitlin does know what she's going through. That being said - "I'm not really in the mood for sympathy."

"I'm not here to offer it," Caitlin says. "I'm here to take you to your doctor's appointment."

"My...?"

"By your own report, you've been vomiting on a daily basis for two weeks straight. As a doctor: you are now way past time to see a doctor. Now, we either go to your GP for a walk in, or I kidnap you and take you to my lair to test you anyway. Since I am still a doctor myself."

Iris cracks a smile. "Is your lair STAR Labs?"

"Everything there is still set up for me," Caitlin says, not denying it.

"I'll call my doctor," Iris says. She doesn't want to go to STAR Labs. "She takes walk-ins."

She had time for Iris, miracles of miracles.

Iris wishes she'd taken the time to shower but, honestly, putting on real clothing was about as much effort as she was willing to put into this. Caitlin hadn't commented.

She had refused to leave, which - seriously? Iris isn't going to go out of a window to avoid having to have regular human interactions. Probably.

...not now, anyway.

"So, doc, what's the news?" Iris jokes. "Am I dying?"

She almost means it.

"Nothing like that, Iris," her doctor says warmly. "Just a bad bout of morning sickness."

Iris freezes. "Of...what?"

Dr. Hansen looks sympathetically at her. "Oh, I’m sorry! I didn't realize you didn’t know. Congratulations, Ms. West; you're pregnant."

Pregnant? But -

Barry.

"Oh god," Iris says, and goes to throw up.

---------------------------------------------------------------

"This sucks," Mick says.

"You're the one who wanted to live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland," Len points out snippily.

Mick thinks about objecting - Len needs to let 2046 go already! Mick's gotten over the Oculus! ...mostly! - but then Len blasts a few more aliens and Mick decides to let it go. Len's tired, he's tired. Len's always like order more than he did, and there's not much of that to be found now.

It's the end of the world.

No, really. The Dominators fleeing with their tails between their legs had apparently drawn the attention of the whatever-the-fuck these things were called, and this time, they'd been smart about it.

They went for the heroes first.

Of course, Barry was gone, so Central City was defended by a combination of Cisco - Mick refuses to call him Vibe, especially since Lisa had made that terrible joke about it - and Kid Flash, but they weren't Barry.

They'd never be Barry, and they knew it.

When the aliens came, they were careful to attack a whole bunch of places all at once, all places the heroes cared about, so that there wouldn't be enough time for a team-up. Without Barry to hold it together, any team-up probably wouldn't have worked, anyway.

They got to most of Team Arrow first, luring them onto a spaceship and then portalling it to the other end of the goddamn galaxy. As far as Mick had heard, those guys weren't dead, but they weren't getting home anytime soon, either. At least they'd been with their families when they'd detoured onto that ship - they'd been right in the middle of getting them out of the refugee camps the government had unwisely started forming.

Queen and Felicity were all that were left behind, and they're still standing, last Mick heard. They have a check-in every fortnight with them just to be sure.

Central City, with its metahumans, wasn't anywhere as lucky. The aliens timed their attack well - they'd invaded relentlessly, again and again and again, goading them, then waited until Team Flash got desperate. Team Flash had developed a habit of visit Earth-2 (apparently Kid Flash was dating the Flash of that Earth, which seemed weird, but also the Harrison Wells of that Earth served as their mentor so honestly Mick wasn't gonna ask), and they'd fallen back on the same habit when they decided to go seek help and a safe place to let some of their heroes rest.

That'd been what the aliens had been waiting for, the assholes. They detonate an EMP over STAR Labs just as the going group was jumping, disabling Cisco's universe-hopping device, and then they'd snapped Cisco up into one of those goddamn pods before he could make his way through.

Long-term stasis units, they were called. Fucking bullshit, that's what Mick thinks of them. They zap you unconscious and drag you to one of the pod farms, and then you're just lying there all Matrix-like, not aging, not moving, just asleep. Frozen in time.

But with no universe-hopper and no Cisco, there was no way for Team Flash to make it home. Joe West, Wally West, some other woman, even Caitlin Snow - all gone.

Only Iris West and Julian Albert had been left behind, and neither of them had powers. They'd teamed up with another CSI - some girl named Patty who used to be a cop - but there was only so much that they could do, these last few months.

The aliens were hunting them, too. Any association with Team Flash was as good as a target. They'd gotten Patty a week or so back, and Mick was pretty sure the other two weren't much longer for the world.

Which left Central City under the dubious protection of -

Well.

Him and Len.

Len was Central City's son, born and bred, and he was her foremost supervillain now that Grodd had been banished. The aliens hadn't counted for him in their plans.

Mostly because he'd been spending some time dead at the time they'd made their plans, but hey, what can you do?

(Len likes to tell people it was for tax reasons. Mick likes to hit Len whenever he says that.)

It'd ended up being to Mick's benefit, at any rate; when the aliens ambushed the Waverider, breaking the time drive and stranding them all god-knows-when, Mick was already back on land, nursing a still time-confused Len back to health. Len had gotten over his little brush with death - he'd only come back because they'd screwed up the timeline to such a horrific extent with that spear thing, but he was back and that's what's important to Mick - and now he was back with a vengeance.

A vengeance currently fixated on the aliens that had ruined large portions of his city.

Mick always said he'd give everything to Len, in the end, and he did: he dug up his old ship, with the Kronos armor, and though the time drive there was shot too - decay rather than sabotage, but either way still useless - it was still useful in launching a hell of an effective surprise attack on the bastards from space.

Mick also picked up some tips on armor from Haircut during their time on the Waverider, putting together weapons and cloaks and all sorts of shit you can use growing and shrinking and blaster tech for.

Len took a different approach. He gathered every metahuman still in Central - villain and civilian and confused - and he whipped them into a defense force under his control.

Well.

His and Lisa's.

The Rogues had been designed to be villains, but in the absence of real heroes, they ended up being hero substitutes instead.

Hell, the Rogues had been so goddamn successful that Lisa had ended up branching out, splitting off her own hand-selected group of Rogues and going to Gotham to recruit the villains there into their own version of a defense force. Len hadn't wanted to see her go, of course, but she'd insisted...

"Hey, Mick, you hear that?"

Mick pauses in where he's melting an alien which is probably (definitely) already dead by now, clicking his gun to silence.

Nothing at first, then, very distantly –

Crying.

"Someone's in trouble," Mick says.

"Let's go," Len says. "Unless you're getting low on charge..."

"Nah, I'm good. Ever since we got the dwarf star, the recharge times have been excellent, even if it does make the gun heavy as fuck."

"Good. Let's go."

The aliens are centering around a cute little daycare. There's a car which shows the typical signs of alien attack, so whoever had gone out to get groceries - Mick can see them spilled out on the ground - was almost certainly already pod-bound even as they approached.

The crying was coming from the daycare.

Shit, kids. Len hates it when aliens go after kids.

"Can we get them?" Len asks, trying to come off as dispassionate, coldly analytical as his nickname suggests, but Mick knows Len. His whole brain is bent on trying to figure out how they could save the kids - not at the expense of their lives, which Len knew were too valuable to Central to lose, but certainly with less of a margin for risk than usual.

Mick studies the situation. "Think so," he says, because he does. "Your call, boss."

"Let's move in. I'll go point, take center; you come in later."

Mick nods. They'd figured out the best way to hit these assholes long ago: the reason their plans were so good in advance is because they had their sharpest minds back on their homeworld planning it. The drones they sent to Earth, on the other hand, were shit at dealing with the unexpected.

Which is to say, dealing with Len at all, really.

Even against regular non-armed humans, they'd found the best way was for one human to establish a pattern of attack (like, throwing things) and when the aliens had adjusted to that attack, a second person attacks from a different direction using a different method (stabbing, shooting, whatever). The aliens are momentarily paralyzed trying to recalibrate their expectations, leaving a window of time when the humans can successfully attack or run away.

Mick and Len have been teaching a lot of self-defense classes at the underground refugee camp.

It's not actually underground, to be fair; it was just connected by radio and maintained-with-great-difficulty-and-sacrifice Internet into a living network instead of gathering up in person. The aliens used actual refugee camps as targets - too many humans in one place was practically asking for an attack. So they did the rounds, instead, meeting in short bursts and living off correspondence. But it's still living, which is better than not-living.

Len moves in with his cold gun.

The aliens he hits first die. The rest balk their wings (terrible buzzing creatures, like flies who couldn't achieve lift) and adopt a defensive formation, weakest drones out in front to act as a living shield against Len's ice while the stronger ones harden their shells against the cold.

Of course, a hard shell means that temperatures that go too high will cook them from the inside out.

Mick hoists his own gun and waits for the signal.

Len gives it, and in he goes.

There are more aliens than he'd anticipated, more than usual for these sort of pod runs, but about halfway through the fight Len and Mick swap guns and that confuses the aliens yet again. No one expects Captain Cold to be wielding flame.

Mick ends up having to bring out his Kronos pulse rifle to finish them off, which is a surprise; it's been a while since there have been so many gathered in one spot.

"Big family or important target?" Mick asks Len, who snorts.

"No more important targets left," he replies. "Let's go."

Inside, there are kids.

But not a huge amount, no; there are only two. Not even toddlers, not really - they're something like a year and a half, max. Maybe two, if Mick's being generous. And they're all alone.

"Shit," Mick says, already wracking his brain to see if he can find anyone who wants babies. The foster families are filled to the brim; the underground network is stretched thin...

Len kneels next to the kids. One boy, one girl. "Hey," he says gently, like he's talking to Lisa way back when she was young. "No more aliens, kids. Just me and Mick."

Mick's not expecting it to work - the kids are too young to really understand what Len's saying, and the calm tone he's using will eventually take some time to sooth them - but somehow it does. They calm down and reach out their chubby little arms to Len.

People who think Len's cold-hearted have never seen how quick he melts.

"Hey," Len says gently. "Where's your mom?"

They sniffle. "Momma back?" one asks hopefully. At least, that's what Mick thinks she's asking, it's a little slurred with tears.

Mick thinks of the car outside. "Doubt it."

Len glares at him. "What about your dad?"

"Daddy's gone." That sounded rehearsed, or at least an echo of something said regularly enough by a loving adult for the kids to repeat as well.

"Mick?" Len asks, but he's already put away the cold gun and is gathering them into his arms.

"I'm thinking!" Mick says. "There's a couple of options..." He shakes his head. "No one immediate. We'll have to cover for a few days while I get in contact with people."

Len nods. "My name's Len," he tells them. "You can call me Lenny, if you like. What’s your names?"

Oh, crap, they're at Lenny status already? Damnit Len, you can't get attached to all of them...

"Dawn," the girl says proudly.

"Don," the boy says, equally proud. "I'm a Don."

"Nice to meet you both," Len says gently, and Mick already knows what's going to happen.

Sure enough, by the time - about three days - that Mick finds someone to take the kids in, Len's in love.

Worse, Mick's got a case of the same.

"We can't keep 'em," he tells Len.

"We definitely can't," Len agrees. "C'mon, Duckie, open up for the airplane..."

Don - now proudly nicknamed Duckie, under the assumption that Don is short for Donald - pouts and turns his face away.

Len sighs dramatically. "Oh, well," he says. "Guess I'll have to eat this myself."

"No!" Duckie yells. "Mine!"

"Fine. Then you eat it."

There's a tug at Mick's pants. He looks down.

Dawn - already fed - looks up at him hopefully. "Dawnie up?" she asks.

"Sure, sunshine," he says, and scoops her up. Dawn likes to be tall. "You wanna sit on my shoulders?"

"Yeah!"

Onto the shoulders she goes.

Dawn imperiously waves at Duckie, making him demand that Len lift him as well.

"We can't," Mick says again, but it's weaker.

"You sure?" Len asks.

Mick sighs.

------------------------------------------

It's not that Len and Mick don't try to find the kids' original family. They do! If there was family, even if they're all dead, they'd want to know so they could honor their traditions or some such like that. Len is a stickler for that, talking grimly about the non-consensual adoption of Jewish kids after the Holocaust by converting Christians and how he ain't ever gonna be a party to that sort of shit.

Mick's got fewer personal connections to the issue, but he agrees.

Unfortunately, the daycare has nothing to tell them who lived there or who was using it. Their files were burnt, their walls were scrubbed, everything. The car is equally useless, since the obvious evidence of shoddy hotwiring makes it clear that it was stolen.

Asking Dawnie or Duckie is equally useless. It's not their fault, they're not even three; they happily tell them about Momma (mostly that they want her back and how she made things better), and Daddy (gone), and Paw-Paw (gone away as opposed to just gone), and Auntie C and Uncle C.

Auntie C had cold hands and Uncle C always has the best toys, but they also went “away”.

Not that unusual a story, honestly, but not very helpful.

Honestly, at this point, all they can guess at this point is that, given their light brown skin tone, at least one of their parents was black, possibly both. Dawnie is darker than Duckie, but her hair is straight and fine while his shows distinct signs of kinks and curls as it grows out.

Honestly, they're not even all too sure about that much. Neither of them were ever all that good at identifying ethnicities.

Whatever. The kids are the kids, and that's good enough.

They do eventually find out their middle names, via Duckie’s excellent memory of the fact that their Mommy used to be a first-and-middle name person when she was angry.

Well, okay, he doesn't actually explain that. He just waggles his finger at a misbehaving Dawnie and says in excellent adult mimicry "Dawn Eleonora, stop!"

Duckie's middle name (Henry) takes a bit longer to figure out, but they extract it with patience.

"I can't believe you finally cracked and got kids," Lisa gushes over the phone. "Tell 'em Auntie Lisa is coming to visit!"

"We're not their parents, we're just -" Len starts, but she's already hung up.

Hurricane Lisa shows up a few weeks later - transit from Gotham to Central isn't that easy any more - and that's the moment Mick really considers to be the start of their family.

Lisa's always been the best communicator in the Snart family. The kids love her.

She asks them what names they want to call Len and Mick, since they're going to be their new parents now. Len assures them that Uncle is fine for both of them, but the kids never really had a Daddy before (because their Daddy's gone) and they are delighted by the idea of having more.

"I refuse to be Dad or Daddy," Len says stiffly. "I won't take that away from their original Dad."

Lisa and Mick share a knowing glance, fully aware that it isn't the real reason and the real reason is the man Len called dad right up until the day he died even though he'd long since lost the right to it.

"I called my dad 'Pa' most of the time I knew him," Mick offers helplessly.

"What about what's the word," Lisa says. "From your mom's dad. Sabba."

"No, that means grandfather," Len corrects. "Dad is Abba."

"Then be Abba."

"I think I'd rather be Lenny," Len says, nose wrinkled.

It doesn't help him, of course. Duckie and Dawnie pick up on Abba for him like lightning - they still call him Lenny half the time, but he's their Abba, just as Mick is their Pa as often as he is Mick or Mickey.

They boast to the other kids at their new, underground daycare that they have a Momma, a Daddy, an Abba and a Pa, but of course Momma and Daddy weren’t around. The other kids – most of them with adopted parents of their own by – solemnly agree that this is by far superior to the system demonstrated on the films they watch. Those poor kids on the TV with only a Mom and a Dad and no one else; how sad.

Kids.

Mick hadn't expected he'd love the two of them as much as he does. Oh, sure, he'd expected to feed them - he does - and to worry about them - oh, he does - but he hadn't really thought about the way his shoulders would relax every time he hears their voices. The way his chest would glow and swell every time they run to him first. How every goddamn thing they did was the best way to do that thing, because they were wonderful and brilliant children.

His wonderful and brilliant children.

He hadn't expected how Len would melt for them, and stay melted. How Len was terrified of screwing them up and how he never, ever lost his temper with them. How effective and devastating a disappointed look could be, because Len refused to spank them.

(Mick eventually finds out that the kids had picked up on his and Len's tendency to worry about each other and that Len had exploited this ruthlessly, asking them to think about whether their actions would make their Mickey sad before they did them. He curses Len's name and quickly makes up for lost time by suggesting that they pay close attention to Len to see if he also needs love and affection. Len gets covered in snuggles on the regular. He doesn't complain.)

The kids also grow ridiculously fast.

Okay, totally within normal levels for kids their age - the doc swears it's true - but they're people. They're little people.

Mick can't remember when his siblings became people all those years ago. Nate was still a baby, he remembers that much, but the rest of it...

He's very careful to use the fire pit and lighters and other Len-regulated fire sources, and his kids know everything there is to know about fire safety.

Len teaches them how to spot danger and how to avoid it. He also teaches them how to pick locks.

They're the best four-year-old robbers ever, even if Len really had meant for it to be another safety measure. The idea of them being captured by aliens because they couldn't get through a locked door - unacceptable.

"Also, it's good finger coordination development," Len says, lying like a rug. It is, of course, but that’s blatantly not the reason he’s passing on his skills.

There’s still plenty they don’t know about the kids’ lives before Len and Mick found them: for example, Dawnie and Duckie are clearly twins, but they don’t know when their birthday is. As a result, they argue about it at length - sometime early in the year, they think, because of the vague memories of snow. They end up having January 23 for Dawnie and February 7 for Duckie, just because it's easier to give in than to explain that twins are born on the same day.

At any rate, it gives them more time to pick presents now that the kid are old enough to appreciate it.

Mick and Len are just debating the question of gifts - it's May and Mick had unwisely brought up the issue of half-birthdays - when the old Particle Accelerator, an abandoned and mostly destroyed STAR Labs, suddenly goes up in a painfully familiar mushroom cloud of orange light. It doesn't spread the way the first one did, but it does go up like a goddamn firecracker.

"Oh, shit," Len says.

Mick just runs to get a car.

They're the only ones going towards the labs rather than away; Mick sees people ducking into shelters in well-practiced motions.

The Rogues' war against the aliens was doing that much, at least: the aliens avoided Central more than they attacked it, nowadays. They were focused on subduing other parts of the world.

The same protection applied in Gotham, under Lisa and her girlfriend Selina.

The same in Bludhaven, where Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn - previously part of Lisa's Rogues - had set up their own Rogues.

The same in Starling, which had reverted to its old name out of habit, and where Oliver and Felicity had taken their sweet time about accepting the Rogues' offer to help but now considered themselves the leaders of the Starling Rogues instead of Team Arrow, a name they still used to refer to their long-lost teammates.

Mardon hadn't wanted to leave Central at first, but he couldn't resist Len's carefully structured offer to be the leader of the Rogues in the Windy City. Shawna, who'd been from Chicago initially, went with him to keep his ego in check.

Scudder had managed to get over himself enough to agree to work for Len again, his fear of the aliens managing to break through even his narcissism. After half a year learning how to fight aliens at Len's side, he'd been dispatched to L.A. to teach the self-absorbed assholes there how to really fight an alien movie. He liked Hollywood.

Rosa preferred San Francisco. Len was just happy that there was distance between the two of them - as much as they were still technically together, Rosa's obsession with Sam faded when he wasn't in her sight and she remembered things. Things like having been a first-rate computer engineer, once upon a time, and something of a genius. She did well in San Francisco and the nearby Palo Alto, between its tech industry and its loopier residents.

People were starting to figure out that where there were Rogues, there could be a city again.

Mick wonders, again, if he should inform Len that he'd become a general, but as always decides against it. Len thinks of the Rogues as his crew, albeit a crew that has scattered across the nation and each of whom is leading their own hand-crafted militia unit in the protection of their territory.

No need to trouble Len with politics. It's not like they had anyone strong enough to actually do more than hold back the aliens for a while.

At least, they didn't until they got to the center of the Accelerator, where they found a very confused-looking Barry Allen rubbing his eyes and shouting, "Guys? I'm back! Guys? Is anyone here?"

"Holy crap," Mick says.

Len is somewhat more fluent than that. He always did have a facility for Yiddish curses (Mick particularly likes the one that goes 'may you be as a lamp - so that you can be hung during the day and lit on fire every night!', all in about three or four harsh-voweled words.).

"What now, boss?" Mick asks.

"Now," Len says, smiling like he can't stop, "now we have hope."

"Snart?" Barry asks when he sees them approach. "Rory? What are you doing here? What happened to this place?" He gestures at the ruined room.

"You've been gone five years," Len says. "It's been an interesting time. Let me tell you all about it..."

-----------------------------------------------

"I can't believe it," Barry says, looking shell-shocked, his fingers clenched around a mug of hot chocolate. Len had broken out the good stuff for their guest, which is to say, the Swiss Miss with mini marshmallows. "Five years - and so much has changed -"

"The emotion you're looking for is 'I go away for five years and you assholes trash the place'," Len informs him.

Dawnie giggles. "You said a bad word."

"There are no bad words," Len tells her. "Only bad men."

"Not what Mrs. Levy says..."

"See, that's one thing," Barry says. "You guys have kids! Small adorable kids!"

"We're not small," Duckie says. "We're four."

"Paragons of age and maturity," Mick agrees solemnly.

Barry chuckles, but it still sounds strained and tense.

"Can you still time travel?" Mick asks, curious, thinking of the lost Waverider, still stuck who-knows-when.

"No. Well, a little. Not enough to help."

"What do you mean?"

"Speed force said I was abusing it and took it away," Barry explains. "Even though I tried not to mess up the timeline -"

"Let me get the sequence of this right," Len drawls. "You get told by everyone not to change time. You do it. Everything gets fucked up. You do it again. More fucked up. Speed force shows up personally, says don't do it. You do it anyway. Speedforce comes and gives you an ass-kicking, saying don't do it. And you do it again, but this time you're trying not to mess up the timeline. And you're surprised it yanked your cord?"

Barry makes a face. "Yeah. I've gotten the lecture."

"I'm not comfortable with how we're anthropomorphizing forces of nature," Mick grumbles.

"You think this is a problem, try being in the middle of a three-way argument between Death, Dream and Destiny about whether or not the way your life ended was narratively satisfying," Len grumbles back.

Barry looks a question at Mick, who shakes his head. He doesn't have any answers. He doesn't even want to have questions.

"So my friends..?" Barry asks instead.

"Like we said," Len says, easily distracted away from disturbing subjects. "Most of 'em are fine, just stuck on Earth-2. The only way to get 'em back is Cisco -"

"Who's stuck in the matrix?"

"Matrix-like stasis pod," Len says. "Good news is, you pop 'em open, people inside should be fine. Probably not even notice that time passed."

"And the bad news?"

"There's a shitload of pods, and we've got no idea which one your boy's in," Len says frankly. "Or your girl, neither."

"Why didn't Iris go to Earth-2 with the others?"

"No clue," Len tells him honestly. "Not like they really told us much. Cisco was hit first, yeah. West held up pretty well for a long time, but we were allies, not buddies. She was secretive. Ran a radio program. But a few years back, it cut off."

"She might be dead," Mick warns.

"She's not," Barry says firmly. Not the slightest trace of doubt.

"Speed force tell you that?" Mick asks skeptically.

Barry grins crookedly. "Actually, yes," he says. "It said I could save her if I took it slow."

"What does that even mean?" Mick demands.

"It means we're gonna save the world again," Len says, pretending to be put out about it. "One pod-break at a time."

"Do you know how to get into them?" Barry asks.

"Sure, but the risk's too high," Len says. "Unless, of course, I have a speedster on my side."

Barry swallows and sits up straighter, like he's making a decisions. "In that case, consider me one of your Rogues."

Judging by the delighted look on Len's face, his apocalypse has been made.

------------------------------------------------------------

There's a giggle and a thump and then more giggling.

Len has become a veteran child-raiser in the last two years, if he does say so himself, which is why he puts down the blueprints and heads over to the living room where the giggling is coming from.

Barry is sprawled out on his back on the Twister board, grinning helplessly as the twins crow at him.

"I see you're hard at work," Len says dryly.

Barry beams at him. "They said you and Mick refused to play it with them," he says earnestly. "What was I supposed to do, not teach them?"

"Like you couldn't not teach them the Macarena and the Chicken Dance?"

"Hey, you made me an honorary uncle when I moved in," Barry points out with some justice. Len hadn't been sure how else to explain 'magnet for trouble so I need to keep an eye on him' to the kids after years of refusing to cohabitate with any other family. "Part of that involves teaching them stuff that will drive you nuts."

"Not while you live here, I think. The true terror is Lisa."

Barry nods so fast that he's blurring, undoubtedly remembering when Lisa had managed to dig up some Tickle Me Elmo dolls for the kids' fourth birthday. Len had nearly strangled her - it was a rare item nowadays, so she'd clearly put time and effort into finding them, but it was also designed to drive Len, Mick and now Barry absolutely insane.

"You are menaces, you know," Len informs the twins.

"Like Dennis!" Dawn says excitedly. "Dennis the menace."

"Pa and Abba are pretty good menaces, too," Duckie says loyally.

"I'm not a good menace?" Barry pretends to pout.

"No! You're a hero!" Duckie proclaims. He’s maintained that ever since he found a Flash action figure.

Dawnie gives Barry a hug. "That's almost as good," she assures him with her nearly-a-five-year-old-really solemnity.

Barry laughs and hugs back. "Now," he says, making a big show of checking his watch. "I think you promised me that if I showed you how to play Twister..."

The twins giggle and run away from whatever chore they promised. Barry doesn't give chase, just watches them fondly.

"You're good at this," Len tells him.

"I'm a little jealous," Barry admits. "I've always wanted kids."

"You and Iris...?"

"Oh, no," Barry says. "We were only just getting married. Do you know what Joe would do to me if she'd gotten pregnant? Shotgun wedding doesn't even begin to describe it."

Len frowns. "But if you were getting married already..?"

"Doesn't mean Joe wants to think about us having sex," Barry says dryly. "At least if we were married, he could imagine that we conceived by magic or something."

Len shakes his head. He doesn't understand, but then again, he hadn't ever really expected to have kids.

"You're good with them," he says again.

"They're good kids," Barry agrees. "I hope that if Iris and I ever do have kids, they'd turn out like that." He thinks about it for a second. "Maybe slightly less larcenous."

"That's all good parenting," Len says proudly. "Now c'mon, I want you to see the plans."

Barry nods and is standing by Len's side before the words fade away. "What's the next step, now that we've cleaned out Central City?"

"Figuring out a way to consolidate our gains - installing those shield-makers Felicity reverse-programmed from alien ship tech, for one thing. I want Central City to live like a community again, not just refugees."

Barry nods.

"Also," Len says, "I think it's time to go north."

"North?"

"The largest single pod housing facility in the Midwest is located in the Dakotas," Len says. "We break that, we're talking tens of thousands of people. Possibly hundreds."

"Crap," Barry says, blinking. Most of the pod facilities were measured in the dozens or hundreds. "That means transportation. Serious and immediate transportation. That many people all together will definitely catch the attention of the local patrol ship."

Len stays silent.

"Unless that's the goal," Barry says.

"Mick's in Starling getting a crash course in alien tech," Len tells him. "Between Felicity's deductions and his own knowledge of piloting from his time with the Time Masters, I think we can do it."

"Are you planning on stealing an alien ship?" Barry demands, half-horrified and half-impressed. Mostly impressed.

Len smirks. "I told you, Scarlet. I intend for Central City to be free. The shields will help. Having our own gun-ship? That'll help more."

Barry nods. "And the people -"

"If we can defend them in the ships, we can do a slower transport. Cars, trucks, buses, the works."

"It's going to be massive."

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

"Oh, don't get me wrong," Barry says. "We're opening pods, which means we could be finding Cisco and Iris. I'm totally in. I'm just saying, it's going to be massive. Who's gonna watch the kids?"

"Mrs. Levy's agreed. Her husband was podded, too."

Barry nods. "Slow and steady," he says. It's been his mantra when it comes to dealing with the frustration that there isn't a single bad guy he can punch to make things better. "Let's save the world."

"Let's steal an alien ship," Len corrects him. "Stop making me sound heroic."

"Oh, no," Barry says, voice dry as dust. "Heroic? You? Never."

"Shut up."

---------------------------------------------------

"I don't want to sit this one out," Barry says stubbornly, but he's already given in, Mick can tell. More to the point, Mick can tell that Len can tell.

It's in the way Barry’s already started to make mac-and-cheese for the kids.

(They'd all been delighted to discover that certain farm-to-pre-made-food had been so automated that re-starting them was a cinch even after the apocalypse, but none more than the kids.)

"Uncle Barry!" Duckie shouts from the next room over. "We wanna piggy-back ride!"

"When the food is cooking," Barry automatically calls back, then scowls as he reveals his intention to be there in a few minutes. "Len, if you're sure -"

"You know we can do it without you," Len says reasonably. "And you know they're expecting you."

Barry sighs and nods. The aliens had immediately pegged Barry as the leader of the resistance once he had made its reappearance, presumably based on their snooping through old files, and they'd taken measures against him that Len was avidly noting down for future speedster problems (Barry seemed to attract future speedsters like flies, before - undoubtedly he would again; besides, what if he got around to having kids?)

The calculators behind the alien army, back on their homeworld, had made assumptions about Barry and Barry's inability to sit a mission he led out.

The calculators still had no conception of how to deal with Len. It helps to have all of your records eliminated, hard and soft copy both, so that the aliens look at you and see some asshole who got rung up on a single manslaughter count (murder in the heat of passion had been the final charge, and wasn't that hilarious?) who was assumed dead less than six months later.

They don't see Len.

And that's the way Len likes it, thank you very much.

Even without that well-timed deletion, though, Mick could've told them that none of them would ever have been enough to predict Len.

Mick has enough trouble doing it, even after all these years. That's why he only gets it then, and waits until they're in the car to actually bring it up.

The car, not the modified alien ship that even now patrols the skies of Central City.

"You think this is the one."

Len glances at him and smirks. "You always did know me best."

Mick nods. Normally, he'd leave it at that, willing to trust in Len, but maybe having two kids has made him a bit more open to actually talking about stuff out loud. "The reason this pod storage expects the Flash to hit it is 'cause that's where they've hidden his girlfriend."

"It was always too well guarded," Len murmurs. "I knew they had to have some valuable people there. It's not until a gap in their security opened up - a very specific gap, best exploited by a speedster - that I realized it was their idea of a trap. And to bait a trap..."

"Why not just fake us out?"

"Aliens," Len says. "Calculators for brain. They understand subtlety in attacking, sometimes, but not subterfuge. This trap is a step forward for them."

Mick nods. "Did you tell him?"

Len shakes his head. "I might be wrong," he offers.

"You don't think you are," Mick corrects. "You think Barry won't be able to resist the obvious trap."

Len shrugs, conceding it. Barry's been working with them for eight months, by now - long enough to celebrate the kids' fifth birthday with them as a much-beloved uncle - and Len usually trusts Barry to listen to the plan.

But, Mick supposes, this is Iris West. She always did make Barry irrational.

"You think maybe Cisco as well?"

Len is silent for a moment.

Mick glances at him sidelong.

"I don't have any reason to think so," he says slowly. "And yet - I hope he is. There haven't been any transfers out of this facility. But he'll be as hidden as Iris is prominent."

Mick nods. "Then we'll look twice as hard," he says, knowing they'll be working on a very limited time frame.

Len smirks. "Oh, you bet we will."

Mick thinks about the extra surprises he packed into his gear this time, the ones not even Len knows about, and wonders if today is the day he'll get to play with them.

Turns out it is.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Oh, God, Iris!"

"Barry?" Iris gasps, her knees buckling, but Barry is there to catch her.

There's gasping and hugging and kissing.

Mick edges back.

Len studies the wall pointedly.

"Forgot how awkward these reunions are," Mick mutters to Len. They hate public displays of emotion.

"Don't remind me," Len says through gritted teeth. "Lisa's taking care of Cisco's, uh, reunion."

Mick snorts. "When's Ms. Levy dropping off the kids?"

"Soon enough. Figured Barry ought to be alone for this."

"Figured the kids didn't need to be getting the wrong idea about being all touchy feely, you mean."

"Or getting an advanced education in human reproduction. Besides, I was thinking we could have Cisco knock open the door to Earth-2, stat, before the aliens figure out how to stop us."

"Good plan."

"Told Lisa," Len says. "I figure they'll be opening the door pretty soon now."

There's a gasp from where Barry and Iris are intertwined.

Len and Mick look over.

Barry's sitting down, looking dazed, like Iris got in a good punch. More likely she said something, Mick supposes. Maybe she got a new boyfriend in the two and a half years he was gone before she also got disappeared?

It's been nearly four years since then, too. The staggered aging of the pod-freed humans and their free counterparts was one of the weirdest elements of the whole apocalypse.

"I'm so sorry," Barry says to Iris, who has sunk down next to him and is clutching his hand. No new boyfriend, then. "God, Iris - if I'd known - if I'd had any idea -"

"I didn't either," she tells him. "I had no clue until a month or two after you'd gone - and then - oh, Bear. I thought I'd lost you forever. I thought it was all I'd ever have of you."

"Of course," Barry says, wrapping his free hand around hers. "I'm so sorry I left you at all - if I'd been here -"

"If you'd been here, the aliens would've adjusted their plans to attack you first," Len says dryly.

They blink at him, clearly having forgotten anyone else was in the room.

Mick's just happy they decided to go with 'shocking revelations' instead of 'joyous reunion sex'.

"Cisco's free, too," Len tells the two of them. "We found him in a hidden chamber."

"Cisco," Iris breathes. "Oh, god, Cisco! Barry - that means he can go to Earth-2 -"

"He'll be able to get Joe and Wally and the others -"

One of Cisco's holes in reality open up in the middle of the room.

Mick hasn't seen them live before, but it's a welcome sight regardless, especially when Cisco and a second speedster stumble out first, quickly followed by Detective West and a handful of others: Killer Frost, a guy that looks like Harrison Wells, a girl dressed similarly enough to the speedsters for Mick to hope that they've now got three speedsters for the aliens to contend with.

He glances at Len, who's smirking his ass off in a way that signifies real pleasure and anticipation.

"You think..?"

"The aliens went for "em first deliberately," Len replies in an undertone, understanding Mick's unvoiced question. "Their calculators-for-brains know that the odds are against them if we've got the full set of speedsters."

Mick nods, pleased. It's well past time for the world to rid itself of the alien scourge so that they can go back to having regular communities and not having to depend on a group of radical net-neutrality activists to man the various ISPs in the area so that everyone else could cooperate using the Internet.

Joe goes straight for Iris and Barry, shouting their names.

Mick sighs.

More reunions. Great.

If only the house were big enough for them to leave...

There are tears. So many tears.

Barry keeps saying, "If I'd only known -" and getting shushed.

Eventually Len runs out of patience (thank god) and says, "As touching as this is, we're starting to get near capacity. Maybe we ought to stop with the hugging and get with the planning?"

"We're nowhere near capacity yet," Barry says. "We have at least room for -" A quick count. "- uh, okay, only ten more. But that’s still something!"

"Capacity?" Joe asks.

"The aliens attack places where humans cluster in too-large numbers," Barry explains. “Well, they try, anyway. It’s a reasonable precaution not to cluster too large.”

"So that's why Snart and his buddy are here," Joe says, nodding. "You're working together against the aliens."

Mick doesn't like how that implies that Barry would otherwise pick literally any group of people other than them if they weren't useful, but he supposes if you've not been around for the last few years, you couldn't be expected to understand. Communal living is the way people survive, now.

"Iris," Joe continues. "What about..?"

"I was captured by a pod," she says, her voice breaking. “I looked through all the pods when I was rescued – they weren’t there –”

Joe’s face is ashen, grieved.

“What were you looking for?” Mick asks.

“My babies,” she whispers, tears filling her eyes.

“You let Barry reproduce?” Len asks, sounding appalled.

Everyone glares at him.

“They might not be dead,” Mick offers into the silence. “Aliens usually ignore kids if they’re on their own – not a large enough heat signature – and there’ve been really good networks for recycling lost kids into the community.”

“Recycling’s not the word,” Barry says, correction made more out of habitual bickering than actual attempt to correct Mick. “But you think – there might be a chance?”

“It’s always possible,” Len says. “Even if we do track 'em down, though, will you recognize even 'em? It’s been three years, and babies grow fast.”

“I’m their mother.”

“Three years,” Len says implacably. “Kids. Trust me, I’ve got two of my own.”

“Who let you reproduce?” Joe asks with a bit of a sneer.

“They’re adopted,” Barry says quickly while Wally elbows Joe, likely more because of the way Len’s hand moved to sit on his gun. “And very happy. Good kids. Ms. Levy have them?”

“She’ll be dropping ‘em off soon.” Len tilts his head to the side a second before Mick hears the sound of the door opening. “Make that, dropping ‘em off now.”

“Abba!” Dawnie shouts. “Pa! We drew pictures today!”

Mick mentally canvasses how much fridge space they have left. They may need to start overlapping…

Dawnie and Duckie skitter into the room, big grins on their faces, sticky hands clenched around artwork made in crayon, and Mick watches in amusement as the amount of tension in the room relaxes as everyone smiles helplessly at the adorable kids.

Then it all goes to shit, because Dawnie’s smile fades into something nervous and wary and wanting and she stares at Iris and squeaks, “…Momma?”

-----------------------------------------------------------

It started, of course, with a lot of yelling in surprise and "holy crap!" and re-introductions and hugging.

Then, of course, came the recriminations.

"Why is my grandson think he's named after a duck?" Joe demands. He's a bit sore because the kids only had the vaguest recollections of their Paw-Paw.

"His name was Donald," Mick says defensively. The nickname had been his. "How were we supposed to know?"

"He was already nicknamed Don," Joe snaps. "Just like my dad."

"I'm amazed they didn't kill them," Wally mutters to girl speedster.

"You saying I hurt kids?" Len snarls at him. "Or just that I'm incompetent?"

"I didn't mean -"

"I bet."

"I'm just saying," Wally says, starting to get annoyed. "You're supervillains -"

"And you were gone, hero."

"That's not Wally's fault," Cisco exclaims.

"Oh, yeah, he's just saying – just like I'm just saying -"

"Why is everyone fighting?" Duckie asks in a small voice.

Mick puts his fingers to his mouth and whistles as loud as he can. Given that he's been using his whistles to silence entire stadiums, it's pretty effective in such a small space.

Everyone shuts up.

"It doesn't matter," Mick says. "We can fight about the details once the kids are asleep."

The Earth-2 people look at him like he kicked a puppy by admitting that they were going to keep fighting. Dawnie and Duckie (and, amusingly, Barry) all relax because this is something familiar. Len and Mick always schedule their fights for after the kids are asleep, explaining to the kids that it helped them get out their annoyance in a reasonable fashion; as a result, the kids have gotten used to thinking of fights that can be rescheduled as no big deal. No need to worry until you wake up in the morning - if the fight is still ongoing at that point, then you know it's serious.

"Let's go have dinner instead," Barry says. "We can talk over that."

"I can make Grandma West's noodles," Joe agrees.

"Not in my kitchen, you ain't," Mick says, because he's got a reputation as a kitchen tyrant to uphold. Neither Barry nor Len can cook, and if he gives an inch now, they'll be back to eating uncooked pasta. In the interests of avoiding another fight, though... "Maybe another time."

They all go to the kitchen. Mick ends up serving out a few cooked chickens he'd been freezing with plans to use over the next few weeks in different preparations, but chicken enchiladas are good for a crowd.

Most of the conversation is fixed on safe subjects, like goings-on on Earth-2 (alien free and a little boring, but for the gorillas) or the kids' achievements.

"They're even doing above their grade level in math," Barry boasts. He's selling the kids hard, but in fairness to Barry, he always does that. It doesn't feel personal.

"That part definitely came from Iris," Joe jokes. "I remember your math scores, Bear."

Mick personally thinks it came from the hours of tutoring Len put in with the kids, but - he reminds himself - they're trying not to fight.

"Kids, dishes or no dessert," he says.

The kids leap to their feet and start collecting plates. There's no dishwasher - or spare electricity to run one - so they'll be in the kitchen extra-long washing plates this time.

"Aww, let 'em have a day off," Wally says, winking at them. "Not every day they get their whole family back."

"If they don't wash the plates, they'll become unusable," Len says, pointedly ignoring Wally’s phrasing. "Humid climate like this, we'll get mold right quick. Rules are rules for a reason."

He waves the kids off.

"Strict," Joe comments. It doesn't sound like a compliment, though it doesn't necessarily sound like an insult, either. He chuckles, his mind clearly shifting directions. "Bet things'll be different when they go back home. Be careful not to give them culture shock, Iris."

"Home?" Len echoes. It's good he does, because Mick was going to speak and the wording wasn't going to be intelligible. "Not sure if your skills have deteriorated in the last few years, Detective, but they're home now."

"I just meant when they go home with Barry and Iris," Joe says.

He doesn't even mean anything by it, that's the most infuriating part of it; he just says it like it's a fact.

Mick sees red anyway.

"Now listen here, you little -" he starts, but Len's hand snaps out and catches Mick's wrist in an iron grip, signaling silence.

"Mick," Len says calmly. "Don't overreact."

"Overreact?”

"Yes. What's happened here is clear." He smirks. "Detective West has gone senile."

"I what?" Joe exclaims. “I have not –”

"You've lost your fucking mind," Mick says. "If you think anyone is taking the kids away from us."

"I just meant -"

"You'd think as an adopted father himself, he'd have more sympathy," Len says. "Unfortunately not."

"Excuse me if I don't want a pair of supervillains anywhere near my grandkids -," Joe says.

"They're our kids, asshole," Mick says.

"And we're grateful you took care of them for a bit while we were gone, but now Barry's here and Iris' here and I'm here, even Wally's here, and we're obviously more fit to raise them, that isn't even in question -"

"Dad, maybe we should wait -" Iris starts to say soothingly.

"No, Iris, I don't think this can wait. I don't see why there's even any debate about this. They're kids. They need a good, loving, stable and safe home environment, and we'll be able to provide that."

"And we won't?" Len says dangerously.

Joe snorts. "No offense meant, Snart, but you're hardly a good role model, and I can't imagine you know anything about raising kids to be anything other than a pack of criminals. Which isn't happening, in case I wasn't clear about that up front."

"Ain’t really your decision."

"No, it's Barry and Iris', as their parents," Joe says like he's speaking to an idiot. Barry and Iris look uncomfortable. "And they will obviously want to take Don and Dawn -"

"We're not going anywhere!" Dawnie yells from the doorway.

Mick immediately twists in his seat to look at them. Their faces are red and they're clearly upset, clutching at each other for comfort.

"We don't want to go away," Duckie adds, his lower lip trembling so hard he's nearly stuttering. "We wanna stay with Pa and Abba -"

"Don, my little guy," Joe says, standing and moving towards them, "you don't understand - you'll be going back to your Daddy and your Momma and your Paw-Paw -"

"We wanna stay with Pa and Abba," Dawnie says, starting to cry, Duckie right beside her. "We wanna stay! We don't wanna go with you! We hate you!"

Joe takes another step forward, clearly intent on convincing them. Mick gets up in his chair, equally intent on punching him in the face - Len is getting up, hand on his gun, face murderous -

"We're not going anywhere!" Dawnie says, and she grabs Duckie's hand and they turn -

There's a crackle of lightning and they're gone.

Everyone blinks.

"Barry!" Joe exclaims. "Bring them back this instant!"

"Uh," Barry says. "I didn't do that."

"Another speedster?" Cisco exclaims.

"I think," Iris says very carefully, "another two, actually."

"Whatever," Len says, clearly done with all of this; the revelation about the kids isn’t even making a dent in his rage. Mick sympathizes. "I don't care. Now stay down here while Mick and I go fix the damage you just did."

The kids are curled up in bed, just like they were taught to go when they’re angry.

Good.

Len and Mick spend three hours getting the now-vibrating-fast-enough-to-hurt children to calm down, explaining that they're not going to be taken away. Eventually, with the help of multiple assurances, a few more comfort animals than they're usually allowed, and a bedtime story or four, they fall asleep.

Then Len comes downstairs, Mick right beside him, and says "Barry, get Detective West the hell out of my house. Take him to Ms. Levy's place and tell them to send a signal to the next train transport - I want him out of Central City by the end of the week."

"You can't do that!" Joe shouts, whatever efforts to calm him swiftly evaporating. “Listen here, you little –”

"Joe," Barry interrupts. "You don’t understand. He can."

"What?"

"He's the head of the Rogues," Barry says. "They protect the city. If he says you're out, then you're out, and you're lucky to be out alive."

"You'd never let that happen."

"No, but - damnit, Joe, he's my boss now! And a good friend! His kids call me uncle!"

"Your kids, Bear, not his kids -"

"His kids! Their kids! Joe, they've raised them for three years; that's more than Iris and certainly more than me. They're the only parents Duckie and Dawnie remember. We're not taking them away."

"Iris -"

"I agree with Barry, Dad," Iris says. She shakes her head a little. "Dad, if Mom had shown up when I was ten or twelve and decided she was taking me away, I'd have thrown a fit about leaving you, and rightfully so. If we have a big fight about this, they're going to pick them, not us, and then next thing you know I'm not going to get to see them anymore and that's just not acceptable. I lost three years of their lives. I'm not missing another day."

Joe is silent, for once. He doesn't agree, Mick can tell that much from the way he's scowling, but he's silent. Good enough.

"West can stay," Mick says, and Len glances at him. "Kids ought to have a chance to know him. One chance. If he acts up in any way, I'll burn him."

He means it, too.

"Won't that be more traumatic?" Wally asks, crossing his arms.

"I'll say he was an alien spy masquerading as their grandpa," Mick shoots back. "They'll be cool with it."

Joe bristles, but Iris glares him silent.

"Let's at least try to make this work," Barry says.

He always was an optimist.

-------------------------------------------------------

To say that this wasn't the life Iris was expecting is something of an understatement.

She'd planned a life with Barry by her side having adventures as a journalist, maybe a kid or two down the line to be taken care of at home. Maybe by her, maybe by Barry, maybe by Joe if he'd retired - maybe even with a nice babysitter helping them out.

Then Barry went away into the Speed Force - for good, she'd thought - and she was pregnant and then she had a new life in front of her: single motherhood, with help from Dad and Wally and her friends, of the two most amazing (and infuriating) babies of all time.

And then the aliens came for them, and her support system disappeared, and she'd thought of herself as a grim Sarah Conner, the prototypical mother figure, determined to survive and to keep her children alive until they could push the aliens back.

Then - nothing.

The sleep of the pod was like sleeping in bed, deep and dreamless as far as she recalls. Like a coma, maybe. Like Barry's descriptions of his own coma, at least.

And now -

Now, Iris has a life with Barry by her side having adventures as the captain of her own alien warship, and she still hopes to have a kid or two down the line to take care of at home when the aliens are gone. But she's also a part-time Momma to the two best kid-speedsters in the world - Cisco calls them the Tornado Twins - and she co-parents them with Barry and his supervillains.

One of whom is the widely acknowledged commander-in-chief of the United States, leader of the real fight against the aliens and to whose offshoot Rogue branches the armed forces have swarmed to pledge their allegiance - not that he knows it, since Mick still refuses to tell Len that the people he's commanding aren't just surprisingly competent criminals - and the other one is the guy who makes sure said commander remains functional. Iris wouldn't have believed that Len thinks ketchup is a legitimate vegetable if she hadn't walked into that argument herself, but she did, so she guesses that if Len has inadvertently become leader of the free world, that makes Mick his First Arsonist or something, and they're all very lucky to have him, too.

They all live together, with Barry and Iris having one master bedroom and Len and Mick sharing the other, and the kids have the entire downstairs to run around in. The downstairs is a disaster zone as a result, of course.

It's okay; Iris spends quite a bit of her time captaining the newly dubbed (by utterly unanimous agreement) Enterprise and supporting Barry from the air. It's awesome.

Wally's slipped happily into the role of Kid Flash and cool uncle, and even Joe has come around.

It's not the life she imagined, but it's a good life. She likes this life.

She leans back in her captain's chair. "Show them in," she orders, and watches as a handful of strange-looking aliens and one human, all dressed in shiny green suits, walk in. Iris smiles. "Welcome to the Enterprise, representatives of - how did you call it - the Green Lantern Corps. Let's talk about what exactly it is you think you can do for Earth - and whether we're going to agree to any of it."

#dccoldwave #westallen #leonard snart #mick rory #barry allen #iris west #my fic

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mosylufanfic · 6 years

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Sidekicks

Killervibe Fanfic Week! Monday June 18th: Role Reversal

@killervibedaily

I thought this was a pretty fun prompt, and of course, the first thing I thought of was Cisco Frost and Caitlin Vibe. That would have been pretty neat! But then I started to wonder what they would be like with swapped personalities, and that notion wouldn't let go. So here you go.

Sidekicks

Francisco Ramon had pulled his hair back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck, one so secure that the wind whipping down the runway didn't budge a single strand. Barry wondered if it gave him a headache. Maybe that was why he had such a dour expression.

He shoved his thick-framed glasses up his nose and studied Barry like he was a bug. "We've theorized that you were moving so fast, it only appeared that the world was slowing down. That's what we're testing now." He glanced back at the other two people from Star Labs. "Dr. Wells will be monitoring your energy output, and Dr. Snow, your vitals."

"And what do you do?"

"I build the equipment, of course," the other man said. He held up a black circle with a lightning bolt on it. "This is a two-way headset that I've modified, with a camera attached. It's designed to combat battlefield impulse noise."

"Or a sonic boom," Barry suggested.

"The speed of sound is three hundred and thirty-two miles per second. It's unlikely."

Okay. Fine then. He took the black circle in his fingers and studied it. "I like the lightning bolt."

Francisco rolled his eyes and took it back. "That was Caitlin."

Caitlin herself strolled up. The wind tossed her pink-streaked braids and set her bright blue dress and man's trench coat flapping She grinned at Francisco. "Are you complaining about my lightning bolt again?"

"It's pointless," he grumbled, yanking the helmet off Barry's head.

"It keeps it from being boring!"

"It doesn't need to be exciting, it just needs to work."

"It can work and not be boring," Caitlin said, pulling a gummy bear out of her pocket and popping it in her mouth. The three or four charm bracelets tangled around her wrist jingled.

He grumbled under his breath and took the helmet back to the table where Dr. Wells sat.

Caitlin rolled her eyes and muttered, "Stick in the mud." She turned back to Barry. "Okay. Let's get you synced up and see what you can do."

"You're a doctor?" he said doubtfully as she jabbed at the various sensors on his chest with purple-glittered nails, then tapped her tablet. "Like, really a doctor?"

"Nah, you got me. I printed my M.D. from the Internet." She ate another gummy bear. A stray sunbeam bounced off the pink sequined heart on the front of her dress and momentarily blinded him.

"Wait, what?"

"Yes. I'm a real doctor. School loans and everything."

"It's just that you're not - uh."

"Very professional-looking?" She flicked the pink-striped braid back over her shoulder. "Oh, I know. And I did spend a lot of years conforming. Pencil skirts, little pearl studs - " She shook her head so that the mess of metal that swung from her earlobes jingled cheerfully. "- neutral nail polish, that kind of thing."

"What happened?"

"The same thing that happened to you." She made a note in her tablet. "My once-promising career in bioengineering is over, my boss is in a wheelchair for life, and the explosion that put you in a coma also killed my fiancé. So, I figure I've got fuck-all to lose by wearing leggings with cats on them to work."

He glanced down automatically. Not only did her leggings have cats, they were also floating in outer space.

He looked back up, and she smirked at him. "Cute, huh?"

He smirked back. "Bet your co-worker over there loves that."

But instead of agreeing, she said, "Look, Cisco's kind of a stiff. I'll give you that. But he's the most brilliant, inventive mechanical genius you'll ever meet. Ever. And he's there when you need him."

Probably with a judgemental frown. Or a lecture. "Cisco? He said to call him Francisco."

"Yeah, you should probably stick to that for awhile, until he decides to let you in."

Barry looked over his shoulder at the scowling young man, working on his machines. "I'm not holding my breath."

"Give him some time. Let him warm up to you. In the meantime, don't push it."

Barry decided it was unlikely. "Do you think I can break the speed of sound?" It felt possible to him, with the lightning crackling in his blood.

"Tell you what," she called over her shoulder, already on the way back to the RV. Her heavy Doc Martens splashed through a puddle. "If you do, I'll give you a gummy bear."

When Cisco drifted into her lab, she didn't look up as she asked, "So, what do you think of our speedster?"

"So he runs fast. It's scientifically intriguing, but functionally pointless."

"You're just annoyed because the blowback landed you on your ass out there." She lifted her head and grinned at him.

He scowled at her in a way that as good as admitted she was right. "Really. What can he do with that ability?"

"What can't he do with it? He makes Usain Bolt look like a grandma in a walker. Fastest man alive!"

"This is real life, not a comic book."

"You could fool me, lately." She looked up. From this angle, she could see one of the "teeth" that curved over Star Labs, broken in half by the explosion nine months ago. "Maybe a superhero would have stopped this from happening."

She wanted to bite her own tongue off when she heard the words slip out. Wincing, she turned to look at Cisco.

He'd taken off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. "We didn't need a superhero. We needed better engineers."

He always looked younger with his glasses off. She suspected that was why he wore them, and why he tied his hair back so tightly.

"Hey," she said. "How many times do I have to say it? That - " She gestured up at the broken tooth. " - was not your fault. Ronnie was not your fault."

"If I'd done better - if I'd made a different choice - you would still have him."

"Maybe," she acknowledged. "And if I hadn't asked him to come along, he wouldn't have been here that night. And if his mom had never flirted with his dad at the roller rink in high school, he wouldn't have been born."

Cisco gave her a long suffering look.

"My point is, you can what-if until the cows come home, but this is the world we live in." She bit her lip, thinking of the engagement ring entombed in her jewelry box at home. But that hurt, a knot right under her breastbone, and she said, "Speaking of that, do you ever wonder about those cows? I mean, what are they doing out so late? Probably up to no good. Bovine delinquents."

Cisco's mouth quirked up at the corner, and she felt a flush of triumph. She didn't get a smile out of him very often. "Your shoe's untied," he said.

She glanced down. "Oh, yeah. I'll get them in a moment. I'm almost done with these samples." She didn't want to have to put on a new pair of sterile gloves after she'd handled her dirty shoelaces.

He nudged her wheely office chair over to her. "Put your foot up."

She raised her brows, but propped her foot on the seat. He leaned over, took her loose laces, and retied them. Double-knotted, of course. He gave the toe of her boot a quick pat and straightened up. "There," he said. "I imagine it's not very sterile to trip over your shoelaces and faceplant into your lab bench, either."

She settled her foot back on the floor, feeling a flush creep up her face. "Not particularly, no." She focused on her samples again.

When she had them all prepped and set up for the morning, she looked over at him. He was fiddling with her shelf of beakers, turning them all so they faced the same direction. "Hey," she said. "What are you thinking about?"

"Air friction," he said, brows drawn together in concentration.

Her hands paused. What had she thought he was going to say? I'm thinking about the way I look at you sometimes, when you don't think I notice? I'm wondering if you ever look at me that way?

(The answer was yes, but it wasn't an answer she was ready to give. Not yet.)

"Of course you are," she said, stripping her gloves off and chucking them toward the trash can. She started to put everything else away. "What else?"

"We clocked him at 220 miles per hour today. He only ran about a mile, but what if he does longer runs? The effect of air friction would be considerable."

Caitlin considered it as she hoisted herself up on the counter. She leaned over and pulled open a drawer, plucking out a mini Krackel bar. "His skin should be okay - he's got that healing factor - but his clothes, his shoes? Yeah, they'd be pretty thrashed, I'd say."

She unwrapped the chocolate bar and bit in half. With her mouth full, she rummaged through the drawer for a moment and then held out a piece of candy. Dark chocolate with almonds.

He started to tell her he didn't snack between meals. She knew it, she could hear the words practically gathering up on his tongue. But he took the candy bar and unwrapped it carefully, biting off the corner.

The only reason she didn't throw all the dark-chocolate-with-almonds away when she filled her chocolate stash was because they were his favorite. Weirdo, she thought fondly.

"Since you brought it up," she prompted. "I'm guessing you got something in mind for air friction?"

"I have been working on that heat-resistant material."

"The fire suit?"

"The fire suit."

She played with the wrapper from her candy bar. "Just for proof of concept, of course," she said innocently.

He shot her a look from behind his glasses, but before he could say anything, the door to the cortex thumped open and Barry's voice called out, "Guys? Hey, where is everyone?"

She called out, "In here!" and Barry appeared with two large boxes in his arms.

"Hey," he said. "You guys got some time to talk?"

"I was about to go home for the night," Cisco said coolly.

"But we can make the time," Caitlin said, giving him a warning look. He pushed his glasses up in a gesture of annoyance, but didn't argue.

"Great," Barry said, thumping both boxes down on the table and pulling files out. "I've been going over unsolved cases from the past nine months. There's been a sharp increase in unexplained deaths and missing people. . . ."

Caitlin listened as Barry explained what he wanted to do. Superhero, she thought. He wants to be a real-life superhero.

She looked across the table at Cisco. He had his arms folded tightly, his hands gripping the opposite elbows. His face looked blank as he stared down at the files scattered over the table. Unexplained deaths, missing persons, general weirdness. They all knew that Central City had gotten much weirder lately.

If all of them, or even some of them, were due to the particle accelerator explosion, then that was even more that they needed to atone for. But if Barry's idea panned out, maybe they could actually start on that instead of marinating in regrets.

"I can't do it without you," Barry finished up. He glanced at Caitlin, and then looked longer at Cisco.

When Cisco lifted his head, though, it wasn't to return Barry's gaze. Instead, he looked up at her. Anybody who didn't know him wouldn't have been able to see the mix of emotions bubbling in his eyes. Uncertainty, hope, wariness, excitement.

She knew him.

She tilted her head and raised her brows. He let out a little sigh and pressed his lips together. She smiled at him.

"If we're going to do this," he said slowly, as if the words were being pulled out of him, "I have something that might help."

FINIS

#Cisco Ramon #Caitlin Snow #killervibe #killervibefanficweek #mosylufanfic lives up to her damn name #fanfiction #writing this made me think a lot about defense mechanisms #self-protection via quirks and tics #and how a lot of people just see that and not the feelings underneath #anyway #happy killervibe fanfic week y'all!#the flash

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jeanjacket-carf · 7 years

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In The Wake

Kara lands on her balcony in full Supergirl garb. She knows it's dangerous, that she might be spotted but she can't bring herself to care. Her tears have dried in the wind but her eyes still feel puffy and raw. A headache sits dully behind her brows and her stomach churns. Today she took a life maybe more. Today she failed to save many more. Today reason and love and hope didn't win. Today she gave up her mother's necklace, just one more remnant from a lost world gone. Today she lost she lost someone she loved, forever. Today was not a good day. She knows she made the right decision, that there were no better options. That she made a choice worthy of Supergirl but she doesn't much feel like being Supergirl or even Kara Danvers right now. She wishes that for once she could just be Kara Zor-El.

But her apartment isn't empty when she lands.

Cisco. Cisco Ramon. Barry's friend. Vibe. Though you wouldn't have known today, he's dressed in an oversized green cardigan with his hair drawn into a loose bun at the nape of his neck looking dour and worn. Just like how Kara feels.

"Cisco," a hint of surprise colors her voice because she was almost expecting someone to be here but not him. It would have brightened her day, her whole world to see Barry there but Cisco she hardly knows. She's somewhat at a loss for words.

A hint of a smile races across his face like he knows exactly what she's thinking but it's all too fleeting. Something happened.

"Kara. Hey, sorry about the whole breaking into your apartment... again. I didn't know where else to find you."

"No, it's okay," she smooths her hands down her skirt and steps into the room through the open window. He's sitting on her couch and she doesn't quite know where to sit or stand. "Is there trouble?"

"Nothing you can fix at least not now."

Kara's stomach does a somersault and her mouth goes dry. A million horrible scenarios rush through her head.

"Can I get you something to drink?" She doesn't know why she says that. It's like she's been possessed by the spirit of some proper hostess in her steadily settling shock. Again there's the knowing melancholy smile.

"I wouldn't mind some whiskey if you've got it?" She does. Alex keeps her well stocked. She pours him a glass then brings the whole bottle and sets in on the coffee table. There's only a second of hesitation before she sits on the couch and places a hand on his knee because she doesn't know but she knows. His fingers tremble as he reaches for the glass.

"Thanks. Look I'm sorry for barging in on you like this. I just- I just thought you should know," he brings the glass up to his lips and takes a big gulp. A smattering of nervous laughter slips out. "You know I never got it. The whole super healing thing? It was never a part of the vibe package. Like the universe knew I was going to need a lot of alcohol." He meets Kara's eyes and for the first time, she realizes his dark eyes are red-rimmed. She squeezes his knee and he nods. He doesn't start where he meant to though, she can tell. "We buried HR. Yesterday."

"Mon-el had to leave the planet and he can never come back. I made him leave," she blurts the words out like verbal diarrhea when her mind is racing with what she remembers of the man with the bowler hat and drumsticks. She doesn't mean to compare because somehow she's devastated. But if they're sharing, they might as well share.

"I'm so sorry."

"I'm sorry too. HR was a good guy."

He nods and swallows hollowly.

"The weirdest, best guy I ever knew. But there's more. Too much more. Barry... Barry, he's, Kara, he's gone and I don't think we can get him back. I don't know how to get him back."

And there it is the floor dropping out from underneath her. She knew it had to be Barry. It was going to be Barry. But that’s one more. One more gone. She’s been abandoned again. Lost again. She sits stone cold and Cisco watches her. There’s desperation on his face like he wants her to tell him it’s not true. She wishes she could. She wishes it was all a joke.

“What- what happened?”

“Sometime in the future, Barry created a prison in the Speed Force. A hell to hold his other self only he didn’t know that Savitar was him. But we- we uh killed Savitar. So there was no one to fill that void and the Speed Force became unstable. It came for Barry, nearly tore the city apart to get him.”

“It took him?”

“It asked. And he went with it. He left us,” suddenly Cisco surges to his feet and runs a rough hand through his hair. “ And- and Caitlin left. I spent so much time trying to bring her home and then she just walked away.” His voice cracks with his last words.

Kara stays sitting because she’s not sure her legs would hold her up. She tries not to see this news as more people she failed to save. She fails at that too.

“Cisco, I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to lose people you care about. It feels like you’ll never be whole again. Like you’ll always feel this way forever.” And that’s maybe the tragedy of it all. Because in some ways you wish it would be agony for the rest of your life and it’s not. Not if you find something else to live for.

“That’s just it though. I didn’t just lose them. Not even HR. It wasn’t an accident, a twist of fate, it was a choice! They chose to leave. They left me. Just like everybody else leaves. Everyone leaves.” Cisco stops red faced with tears running down his cheeks. Kara finally pushes herself up off the couch and staggers to his side. There will be time for questions and plans later. For now, she wraps her arms around him.

“I know that feeling too,” she mutters softly. He buries his face in her shoulder and she pulls him in tighter. “But they didn’t leave because they didn’t want you. They left because they had to do what they thought was right. That’s all any of us can do. And we have to go on. It’s what heroes do.”

“I just don’t think I’m cut out to be a hero.”

“No one does. I certainly don’t. But we have to keep pretending because otherwise who would do it?”

He chuckles wetly against her and wipes his nose on his sleeve, leaning back to meet her eyes.

“How’d you get to be so wise?”

“Practice.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah, it does.”

#supergirl #the flash #kara danvers #cisco ramon #hurt/comfort #post finale #spoilers #crossover #one shot #drabble #fanfic #fanfiction #my writing #my fic #mywriting

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dracox-serdriel · 7 years

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Orion - Chapter Seven: The Heavenly Shepherd (The Flash)

Title: Orion [AO3] [LJ] [FF] Chapter: The Heavenly Shepherd Universe: The Flash Pairings: SnowJay (Caitlin Snow/Jay Garrick), SnowHunter (Caitlin Snow/Hunter Zolomon) Word count: 14,000 Spoilers: All episodes through 02x18 Versus Zoom and all comic books that feature Zoom/Hunter Zolomon. Rating: NC-17/MA Chapter summary: Zoom finally makes his move against the MTU, and Caitlin goes on her first mission as Bellatrix.

Canon-divergent as of 02x18 Versus Zoom. Caitlin Snow and Jay Garrick meet under strange circumstances, but the attraction between them is immediate and the connection, real. Stranded on Earth-2, Caitlin fights for her survival against Zoom, the seemingly unstoppable meta-human who has fallen in love with her.

Set immediately after the events in 02x18 Versus Zoom, Orion includes flashbacks to missing scenes during canon episodes of the season when SnowJay was developing.

Read Orion from the beginning.

Additional content warnings: This chapter contains graphic descriptions of violence, human experimentation, graphic descriptions of trauma, descriptions of meta-violence, and a lot of other terrible stuff. The other chapters talk about a war zone, but this chapter drags you neck-deep into it.

Orion Chapter Seven: The Heavenly Shepherd

Fort Green stood in the shadow of the Appalachians. It was an unremarkable army base named for an admiral who, some two hundred years ago, did something worthy becoming the namesake of the structure, though most historians maintained that the story was more folk legend than fact. Technically, the fort's mission was a well-guarded secret, but anyone with the right connections could parrot the same report: Fort Greene was where the youngest, greenest recruits and officers went to get whipped into shape with grueling missions deep in the wilderness of the mountains. It was staffed with nothing but untested soldiers and a handful of old timers who were assigned there to wind down their careers.

Perhaps that was why, for four hundred miles in every direction, there was nothing but sleepy towns with five or six thousand souls at most. Neither was there a historical site, landmark, tourist trap, or public attraction of any kind, despite a recent influx in government funds for unspecified infrastructure improvements.

Thirty miles from Fort Greene, there was a four-story office building that, for all outward appearances, was the research and development branch of some company with a very forgettable name. Beyond the locks on its doors, there were no obvious security measures, not even a fence.

There was no reason to suspect that it was the primary stronghold for the Metahuman Tactile Unit.

It was an incredible feat of ingenuity, hiding a fortress in plain sight. An intricate underground tunnel system - expanded exponentially with government funds - enabled the undetected transport of goods, personnel, and prisoners. The supposedly ramshackle army base provided formidable resources when called upon; its phony reputation just one more aspect of the facility's concealment.

For the past two years, countless metahumans had sought this facility, yet Blink tracked it down in two months, mere days after uncovering the MTU's secret weapon. Her sudden, sweeping successes did not go unnoticed, and despite having Totem and several others confirm the voracity of her intel, Hunter felt uneasy by Blink's recent insight into the MTU.

There was only one reasonable conclusion: she had an asset. A prisoner, a minion, a decryption key... something that gave her an edge. Most metas in her position would've handed over whatever-it-was to Zoom as soon as they discovered it, not only to win favor but also to be rid of the responsibility. Blink, however, insisted that her victories required nothing more than her extended teleportation abilities, which Totem had provided at his command several months prior.

Withholding from Zoom was a brazen thing to do: metas had died for far less. That was what bothered him the most. Blink wasn't foolish or suicidal enough to lie to him. Something else was going on; he could feel it.

It left Hunter in a quandary that Zoom never had to face. He had a strict policy of never allowing any meta to become indispensable. Every minion needed to know that if they stepped out of line, they would be killed and replaced without a second thought. Blink had transformed into a key player overnight and was rapidly approaching that "vital" label he so loathed, and now that Caitlin was under his protection, he couldn't let anyone hold that kind of sway. It was only a matter of time before Blink attempted to wrest control of real power.

She won't.

He didn't need pitiful self-reassurance. No, what he required was leverage -

Blink would never risk her son's wellbeing, let alone his life. Not for anything.

Hunter took a deep breath. He had gotten so wound up that he'd forgotten about her son. Some of his older lieutenants had adult children, but Blink was the only significant player that had a child who depended on her. That made the equation very different.

The only thing she might do is take her kid and run. But not now with the MTU hunting them both.

Hunter felt much calmer, much more in control. He had time to figure out Blink's asset and endgame, assuming she had one at all. Until then, he'd keep close tabs on her, and a very durable tracking device on Blink Junior. Just in case.

Don't leave her on the front lines.

That brought a smile to his face. Normally, a raid like tonight's would depend on Blink's gift for sabotage and mayhem, and after what the MTU did to her son, she was chomping at the bit to wreak havoc. That meant his precaution would also serve as punishment.

His smile widened. Doling out retribution - even a small one - was well within his comfort zone.

Caitlin trudged up the stairs to the kitchen, weary to the bone. She hadn't slept well the night previous, tossing and turning with dreams so vivid they allowed her no rest. Actually, it was just the one, over and over again, as if she fell back into the dream as soon as she closed her eyes. One minute, she was in her bed, and the next, she'd be standing outside on the doorstep with a cold wind riffling her hair. A distant silhouette waited on the beach, little more than a hazy shadow on the horizon, yet she felt drawn to it. Her feet would slip through the sands as she rushed to meet whoever awaited her. Each time, she came so very, very close... close enough to recognize Cisco's warm smile right before she jolted awake.

It made her homesick and compounded her loneliness. Maybe that was why she felt disappointed when she found the kitchen empty. That was certainly more palatable than the idea that she, on some level, wanted to see Hunter.

No, this is how abuse works, she reminded herself. He gets inside your heart, messes with your head, makes you dependent on him, isolates you. Don't let him win. You didn't want to see him. You wanted to see Cisco or Iris or Barry because you don't want to be alone. You miss them, not him.

She rationalized all the way to her bedroom. Had she not been so mired in her thoughts, she might've noticed the faint scent of electrified iron or the minute signs of disturbance, and she wouldn't have been so startled when she found someone standing by her bed.

After a moment, she realized it wasn't a person but a manikin decked out in a deep blue suit that reminded her of those worn by the various Doctor Midnights. Instead of the symbol of their mantle - a light blue crescent moon - on the forehead, it had a many-pointed star with radiating lines. There were other deviations, such as the cut and color of the trim, which more closely resembled Killer Frost's suit than Doctor Midnight's, yet it still maintained the general look and feel. Anyone would be hard-pressed to distinguish between the two with a quick glance.

Caitlin didn't have to inspect it any further to know that it had been made for her, but she couldn't imagine why. She turned to take in the rest of the room, expecting to see Hunter casually leaning against the far wall smugly waiting to explain everything, but she was alone.

She returned her focus to the suit, wondering after its construction. Usually, designs like this were implemented to resolve environmental issues that arose from meta-powers, like the friction Barry generated when he ran at superspeeds, or to augment and control their abilities, like Cisco's Vibe Goggles. But she had no powers to facilitate or compensate for, so why would someone make her a suit?

That was when she noticed the note on her bedside table.

Bellatrix:

Apologies for the delay in dinner. It will be ready at seven.

Rest up while you can because, before dawn, you'll be suiting up.

Be ready.

It wasn't signed, and she didn't recognize the handwriting. It also didn't sound like something Hunter or Totem would write, and she wondered if the author might be the one responsible for the meals and the general caretaking of the house. She wanted to thank them, whoever they were.

Caitlin's stomach growled loudly. Seven o'clock couldn't come soon enough.

Fire and ice collided, and the resulting tremor shook open the already-cracked walls, splitting them down to the foundation. Cheers of triumph joined the cacophony of destruction as the bulk of the meta-army finally received the signal to attack. The rise in numbers forced their enemies into a hasty and desperate retreat. An unnatural darkness descended over the area and choked out all the lights, compliments of a powerful quasi-mystic named Shade. Hunter never trusted the man, but his ability to manipulate shadows proved invaluable to a siege.

But even Shade is expendable, he thought as he donned his Nightshade Goggles, designed specifically to see in Shade's overcast.

He winced at the initial brightness, but his sight rapidly adjusted, becoming twice as sharp. He took a moment to watch the throng of metas charge down the brave few who stood their ground to provide cover fire for their fleeing comrades. A handful of stragglers likewise fell under his soldier's advanced, perhaps victims of Deathbolt's blasts or Berserker's unstoppable fists. Wave after wave of his minions flooded the battered facility, making the possibilities truly endless.

He couldn't let them have all the fun, now could he?

He sped into the fray, and to him, everything unfolded in painfully slow motion. It took centuries for the retreating agents to shout, "Zoom! Run! Zoom!" After that, it was eons before they pulled the triggers on their already-raised weapons, and an age before the bullets left their chambers.

Struck with a playful idea, Zoom wound through his enemies and spun them this way and that so that carefully aimed, specially enhanced, anti-metahuman weapons achieved nothing but friendly fire when they discharged.

Normally he would blaze through personnel in a battle, but tonight he had the exotic pleasure of disarming and maiming his foes before leaving them helpless to the wrath of the oncoming storm of his meta-army. The high from running mingled with the euphoria induced by the snapping of bones and the spilling of blood. He got caught up in his revelry, barely noticing Pyranis directing flame like a missile or Scrap effortlessly deflecting the very bullets designed to revert his body from steel to flesh.

He raced ahead, ready to decimate whatever security measures the MTU had mounted in their next feeble defense. This place was like a maze, a castle with countless areas to fortify and fall back to, and he was going to tear every last one of them down.

He was zipping through the next corridor when his feet went out from under him. He was knocked on his ass, blue lightning and all.

Looks like you've just met the MTU's secret weapon.

Zoom glanced up at the sole defender of this particular fortification: a woman in her late twenties with a modified assault riffle pointed right at his heart. The orbs of her jade eyes shined unnaturally under the influence of the Nightshade Goggles, flaring dramatically with her medium-length blond hair.

He had more than enough time to take in her features and confirm her identity before the bullets started flying. He dodged them, but it was far from an effortless evasion. It was like he was running through Turtle's field of stolen kinetic energy but fifty times worse. Something was acting like a dampener on his powers... all of his powers, leaving him with only the barest of super-speed.

That, and she was using friction-targeting bullets, which were drawn to him like tiny angry magnets. He took a few hits to his left arm and shoulder before he broke past the dampener and led the bullets into the next hallway, where they struck a handful of MTU reinforcements, cutting them down like a bolt of lightning.

He immediately sought Killer Frost, going so far as to whisk her away before her kill shot hit its mark. It couldn't have been more than a few minutes since he escaped the secret weapon, yet in that time, she had injured Pyranis and Scrap. Her victories drew the attention of the most powerful metas advancing on her position.

It was foolish, but this woman had been responsible for the capture of countless metahumans, including Geomancer, Gigawatt, Count Vertigo, and Silencer. The reports suggested - or, rather, hinted - that she had a resistance to meta-abilities, but if his recent experience was any indication, her abilities were far more expansive. He wanted to see it for himself.

So he dragged Frost behind a secure barricade and watched as Deathbolt delivered blast after blast as he closed in on the seemingly invincible MTU Agent. She dodged a few, but most of them hit her, though they may have been drops of rain for all the effect they had on her. She was remarkably patient, waiting until he was only a few yards away before returning fire, hitting her mark on the second try. Zoom had no idea what kind of weapon discharged, but it made Deathbolt wail in agony as it threw him through a solid wall of cement and steel.

She didn't even notice when lighting charred the floor behind her feet. She rounded on Typhoon when he screamed in a rage. He loosed a dozen more bolts, but each one grounded rather than striking her. Undeterred by the wind and hail of his frustration, she raised a handgun and pulled the trigger over and over again, which Typhoon evaded. It was a simple enough diversion; it kept him occupied as she closed the distance between them. Before she reached him, however, Black Siren let out a screech strong enough to crush a man's skull.

He watched as the energy of her scream rebounded on Black Siren, silencing her booming cry and throwing her clear across the room, where concealed by a barricade caught her. He couldn't see who it was, probably a member of her entourage or one of the other Sirens.

Zoom had seen enough. He didn't have the luxury of being impressed with her, not while she was mowing through his army like The Terminator. She had defended herself against five of his best fighters as many minutes, and beyond that, she had done it all without night vision goggles or any defense against Shade's shadows.

He grabbed Frost's arm and said in his modulated voice, "Remember, I want her alive."

She sneered, but he didn't give her time to reply before he sped her into the line of fire. Again, his powers began to dwindle, as if something was leaning on his abilities, choking them off at the source. He skidded to a graceless halt far closer than he had planned, nearly tripping over Frost as he put her down.

"Agent Cameron Chase?" Frost prompted.

"Yeah. And who the hell are you?" Chase demanded.

"Killer Frost."

Zoom bolted from the fray, grabbing Typhoon and relocating him to a high vantage point overlooking the thickest part of the fighting.

"Destroy them," he ordered.

He left Typhoon before he could reply.

The only true threat in this entire building filled with anti-metahuman measures and weapons was Special Agent Cameron Chase, and he needed to secure her capture before beginning the next phase of his plan. So he raced for a better line of sight and kept moving, diverting overly curious parties while observing the fight.

Chase's assault rifle was discarded, trapped in a solid block of ice. She pulled out one weapon after the other, but Frost froze them before she could fire. Yet she kept going, as if she had an endless supply of firearms inside her coat. He smiled. It had only been a theory until this moment, but Zoom had surmised that someone resistant to meta-powers would be easy prey to an other-powered person who was presumed metahuman. Chase was just like the people she took down: a metahuman too reliant on her own powers. It was clear as day that she had never before faced an opponent with abilities intact.

Killer Frost loosing her powers unencumbered by doubt was a beautiful thing to behold. She was glorious in a fury, though even then, she didn't hold a candle to her Earth-1 counterpart.

His happy thoughts were interrupted by a piercing scream.

It came from Frost. He could see her lips move and her face contorted, but it sounded like it emanated from somewhere else. It was like his mind refused to believe that Frost was injured.

But in the next second, black-red blood blossomed over the right side of her suit, spouting from near her collarbone. Chase pressed her advantage, raising a miniscule gun for another shot, only to have Frost retaliate with a harpoon-sized icicle. It was poorly aimed and barely scraped Chase's arm as it pierced her coat and embedded into the wall behind her, trapping her arm and giving Frost the time she needed to turn the pesky gun into an ice cube.

He should've been furious with Frost for attempting to kill Chase, but he found he was more concerned about what Caitlin would do if Frost died from a treatable wound.

She would never let you hear the end of it. She will never trust you.

Frost pinned Chase down and frosted-over her coat with a single, chilly finger. The MTU's secret weapon was slowly turning blue.

It was lamentable, but he really did need Chase alive.

He waited until the last second to yank Frost away, earning an icy blast for his trouble. He vibrated it off as he growled at the pain, but in truth, he was pleased. He stood right next to Chase, but this time, his powers were intact.

"BLINK!" he shouted. "BLINK!"

The teleporter appeared as if rising from the mists, her face neutral, though he knew she was furious that he ordered her to wait in the shadows during such a battle.

"Take Agent Chase!" he ordered. "Keep her sedated in a carbyne cell. I'll call when I need you again."

She nodded her head, yes and begrudgingly took hold of the slightly frozen MTU Agent. Then they both vanished into the darkness.

Though nobody could see beneath his cowl, Zoom was smiling like a madman. Now the real fun could begin.

Several hours later... Caitlin jolted awake, confused. She had been so certain she wouldn't be able to fall asleep when she curled up on top of her bed, but now she couldn't imagine what had so rudely awakened her.

Then, as if her mind was catching up to her senses, the acrid smell of chemicals and blood filled her nostrils, driving her stomach into churning knots. It was the kind of scent that came with a taste, and it was so horrid it made her gag.

"Caitlin?"

He appeared in front of her with his telltale flash of blue lightning, his soft voice a stark contrast to his battered suit.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

Her first instinct was to recoil, but there was nowhere for her to go. The offensive odor lingered, burning the inside of her nostrils.

"I'm fine," she replied. "It's just... that smell..."

He ripped off his cowl and revealed his sweaty face, and it made her wonder what he had just been through. He seemed off to her, like he had returned to his senses after days of neglect.

You're imagining it.

"I apologize, but there's not much time," he explained. "Your suit will protect you, even from the smell. But it's not enough to keep you safe. So if you're serious about coming on this mission, I need you to promise me two things."

"What two things?" she asked, tempted to refuse his requests out of spite.

"You will remain with your bodyguards at all times," he said.

She didn't like the idea, but without powers of her own, she wouldn't it be able to defend herself or patients. She would need help. At the very least, it sounded as if she wouldn't be stuck with him all night.

So she nodded her head, yes.

"Good," he said. "And promise to remember that you don't know these people."

"What?"

"In this universe," he explained. "No matter who they are to you on Earth-1, you don't know them on Earth-2. They don't take kindly to strangers who know their legal names. Taken names, and only if you absolutely must. You don't know these people, Caitlin."

She saw true concern in his eyes, and it worried her. Whether or not his feelings for her were real, he had a vested interest in keeping her alive. That begged the question, who did he think she'd see and mistake for a friend?

"All right," she replied. "I won't forget."

His curled his lips and bared his teeth, giving her a brief glimpse of his ugly smile before it disappeared under his cowl.

"Get dressed, Bellatrix," he said in his modulated Zoom voice. "Blink will be waiting for you downstairs in ten minutes."

His lightning flickered, but he hesitated, lingering in her room for a few seconds too long. He zipped over to her and placed a kiss on her forehead, light and gentle through his mask.

"Be careful," he added.

He raced away before she could respond, leaving her somewhere between annoyed and startled. Her eyes wandered to the clock; it was nearly two in the morning.

Again, she turned her attention to the suit. It seemed silly, but if wearing this thing was what she needed to do to keep tabs on Hunter and figure out his endgame, then that's what she'd do.

She struggled to put it on. The material was much heavier than it appeared. It was one solid piece, which forced her to pull it on from her feet, and the fact that it was made to be skin-tight didn't help matters. Yet, after four full minutes fighting with it, it slid into place, and every inch of it fit her perfectly.

She glowered at the hood and mask before pulling it on. She thought it would feel stuffy and suffocating, but the material was light and didn't restrict her breathing, though mercifully, it canceled out the foul smell that still hung in the room.

She descended the stairs, surprised at how natural the suit felt, like a light summer dress. She found Blink pacing in the kitchen, practically exuding impatience.

"We need to leave," Blink said abruptly. "Keep alert. We'll have the mercs with us - "

"The who?" Caitlin interrupted.

"The mercenaries," she replied tersely. "Heat Wave and Colonel Cold. They call the shots. Do what they say when they say it. It's my job to get you in and out alive, and for my son's sake, I will not fail. Do you understand?"

If she was being honest, Caitlin didn't understand anything. She had demanded to join this mission to protect her doppelganger and to prove to Hunter... to show him... damnit, she had been so frustrated and angry, so desperate to make a point, she hadn't really thought about what she was asking. Now she was about to enter siege with Earth-2's Mick Rory and Leonard Snart bossing her around while she scrambled to save... who, exactly? Bloodthirsty minions of Zoom? The so-called doctors who removed Blink Junior's eyes as an experiment?

Caitlin Snow was a doctor. She had taken an oath to do no harm, and as part of that, she had helped people she loathed and saved people she didn't trust. Every time, she told herself that she had done the right thing. Was that what she was doing now?

It didn't matter. She knew Blink wasn't going to wait for her to wrangle her doubts, so she quelled her tumultuous thoughts with self-deceit.

"I understand," she lied.

Somewhere between heartbeats - between the moment Blink reached for her and actually grabbed hold of her - she decided that tonight she wouldn't be Caitlin Snow with all her attendant complications... tonight, she would be Bellatrix, whatever that meant.

The next thing she knew, she was standing under the night sky. Blink had teleported them to a small clearing in a forest that reeked of burning flesh and embers.

Without a word of explanation, Blink set off through the trees, and Caitlin followed, scrambling to keep up. The tree line came to an abrupt halt at a cliff-like overlook that opened into a smoking crater with the charred and battered remains of an office building. It looked like the epicenter of a disaster or a terrorist attack.

That's because it was a terrorist attack.

"You're early," a woman said from behind them.

Caitlin spun around, surprised. She had expected Heat Wave and Captain - no, Colonel - Cold to be similar to their Earth-1 counterparts, but here they were decked out in cyborg-like enhancements. She assumed the man outfitted in a suit of metallic red was Heat Wave, which meant the woman in cerulean blue steel was Colonel Cold. They were both white with dark brown hair, and something about their body language made her think they were siblings. It was hard to tell, though, because they were wearing heavy-duty goggles that covered most of their faces.

"Why are you still in Nightshades?" Blink asked.

"Shade hadn't dropped the shadows when we left," Heat Wave replied, his voice surprisingly smooth and soft. "But we should be good to go now."

Colonel Cold had hers off before he even finished his sentence, and Caitlin had to stifle her gasp of surprise. Though she had only met her Earth-1 counterpart a few times, she would recognize Thea Queen anywhere. It was enough to make Caitlin glad that she had a mask concealing her reactions.

No matter who they are to you on Earth-1, you don't know them on Earth-2.

Hunter's words echoed inside her head, and while she didn't trust him, she took his warning to heart. She didn't know this Thea nor the man she worked with, and since Zoom employed them, assuming the worst was her best option. She couldn't think of her as Thea.

She's not Thea. Not your Thea.

"Well, now that our ride is here, I say we're good to go," Colonel Cold said. "Ready, Doc?"

Feeling the urge to assert control on the chaos of her life, Caitlin said, "It's Bellatrix."

Cold gave her a look somewhere between dispassionate amusement and a death stare, dispelling any chance of mistaking her for Earth-1 Thea Queen.

"Well, then, Bellatrix, hold on to something."

She felt Blink's hand on her arm, and the world dissolved around her. When it reformed a few moments later, it was too hot, and smoke clouded her vision. As her senses adjusted, she took in the wreckage around her. Walls of solid metal and concrete had chunks torn and beaten out, their rubble strewn across the floor, obscuring broken furniture and rubbish. Everything looked unnecessarily eerie in the dim emergency lighting.

It was overwhelming. She frozen until the cold metal of a very large gun nudged her shoulder.

"Move, Doc!" Heat Wave barked.

"Got a patient down the corridor, Trix!" Cold yelled from ahead.

As Caitlin moved forward, she realized that she didn't have a medical kit. She had expected to collect one or at least a few supplies before arriving.

There was nothing for it now. She stumbled into the next corridor, which was filled with bodies. The first two were beaten to a bloody pulp, their skulls smashed in along with the majority of their long bones. A third had burns so severe that it had shriveled to three-fourths its natural size. Three others had died from something that caused them to bleed from the eyes and ears. She checked the five possible survivors for a pulse and found nothing. Six lives gone in the span of a few feet.

"Over here, Trix!" Cold shouted.

She pushed ahead to where Heat Wave was clearing debris from a man trapped under part of a collapsed ceiling.

"Shit, it's Scrap," Heat Wave grunted.

There was real concern written across his face. They must know each other, and with a name like Scrap, the patient was likely metahuman.

Scrap seemed to be in his late teens, maybe his early twenties at the oldest. He had a mop of brown hair and kind-looking blue eyes, but though they were opened, he was listless and unfocused. He didn't respond when Heat Wave said his name, nor when Caitlin crouched over him and took his pulse.

"Scrap, can you hear me?" she asked. "My name is Bellatrix. I'm a doctor."

He didn't respond at all, and his breathing took on a strained wheeze. Seconds later, half his skin turned to steel, and a bubbling, hollow scream poured out of him, echoing before it even left his lips. She pulled back to observe and noted that it was unilateral over his entire right side.

"What are his powers?" she yelled to Heat Wave, who had his back turned to them.

He glowered at her over his shoulder before he said, "I'm here to make sure you don't get dead. Not to hold your hand."

"You know him," she pressed. "Or know of him at least."

"I got us covered," Cold said firmly. "Two minutes."

Heat Wave stowed his gun across his back like a sword, before he joined her at Scrap's side.

"He can transmute his flesh into some kind of invulnerable metal," he replied. "They developed special bullets for him, but he adapted to them... no idea how."

The steel fell away, leaving Scrap panting for breath and looking all too human. She quickly inspected him for wounds, but there wasn't a drop of blood on him. Severe bruising covered his right arm with deeply purple marks, so she checked his torso and found the same pattern along his right side.

"What the hell happened to him?" Heat Wave asked.

"Probably a crush injury with internal bleeding," she said.

Wishing she had more tools with her, she gently pressed against the edge of the wound, eliciting a small grunt from Scrap. The redness didn't blanch, but even as she looked at his skin, the bruises seemed to spread.

Where's a Sharpie when you need one?

Then suddenly, her right glove's index finger pulled back to reveal a slightly spongy surface. It was inky black.

She swiped her finger down the edge of his torso's bruise, but before she got even halfway down, she saw the purpling move beyond the mark. Hematomas often spread after a serious injury, sometimes for days, but they always followed gravity.

"Help me get him on his side," she said. "We need to get him on his right side."

"His injured side?" he repeated incredulously.

"Yes, now!"

They rolled him quickly, and Scrap whimpered in pain.

"T-t-tommy," Scrap muttered. "Stop... it's too much. It's too loud."

"This is hurting him!" Heat Wave protested.

She barely heard him. She was so intensely focused on the line she'd drawn that she shut out all other stimuli. She waited, and she hoped -

But then she saw the bruise grow even farther beyond the line. Whatever happened to Scrap was still going, and moving at an alarmingly rapid rate. She couldn't tell how bad the damage was without some kind of CT or tissue scan.

"Too loud! Too loud!" Scrap cried.

"Back on his back," she said to Heat Wave. "We need to get him to a medical facility. He needs a surgeon, and - "

"No can do, Trix," Cold interrupted. "It's either you here and now or nothing - we move on and leave him."

"Blink can bring him - "

"He goes nowhere until he's been cleared of Trojans," Heat Wave interrupted.

Trojans... she'd read about them while helping Blink Junior. It was an umbrella term used to describe implantable, attachable, or otherwise disguised technology that could have any number of ill intentions, from tracking a subject's location to somehow impacting their immediate environment, like disrupting transmissions or sabotage. The only way to ensure the patient was free of them was a full body scan.

"And how exactly do you expect me to do that?" she shot back.

"Have you even scanned him yet?" he snapped.

"With what?"

"Is this your first time in the suit?" he asked, his voice mocking.

"Yes," she replied.

His expression went from disbelief to confusion to eye-rolling disapproval, like he was too good to protect someone on her first mission.

"Left palm has a scanner," he said. "Forehead thermometer in the left middle finger. You can read blood pressure by wrapping either hand over the bicep. That can also read heart rate. Scalpels and other pointy things in the belt and boots."

"You seem to know a lot about someone else's suit."

"Nothing that anybody saved by Doctor Midnight couldn't tell you."

The marker finger had just sort of... happened. She flipped her left hand up and focused on the palm, and sure enough, it started to glow. She waved it over the edge of Scrap's bruise, and she nearly flinched when a stream of data appeared at the corner of her vision. The scan projected to the left of her eye openings.

Doing her best to ignore the countless questions born of her curiosity about Earth-2 technology, she closed her right eye to focus on the scan results. There was some kind of foreign substance moving inside his body. She rescanned his torso to make sure the reading was correct.

It was the same as the first: tiny foreign bodies were moving, just below the dermis, no, deeper, below the fascia.

"Damnit," she muttered. "Nanites."

The most advanced of the anti-meta poisoned utilized nanotechnology to attack internally, destroying minor blood vessels first, causing an array of symptoms from minor aches and pains to immobility and severe nerve pain, sometimes lasting hours before killing its victims. It was combined with a chemical cocktail that arrested most meta-healing powers, slowing them to near-human rates.

It had been created as an enhanced interrogation tactic, and more importantly, it had an antidote... no, an off-trigger.

"We need someone with sonic powers," she said. "They can initiate the nanite self-destruct sequence."

"Cold," he said with an oddly formal tone. "Any of the Sirens nearby?"

"Motley Siren's been screaming his head off for a doctor," she replied casually. "Doubt he'll be interested in helping."

"Got any better idea?" he sniped.

Yep, definitely siblings.

"Blink, go get Motley for us," Cold ordered. Then she turned to Heat Wave and added, "But to be clear, he's your problem now, Heat."

Unsure of how long she'd be waiting, Caitlin tested out the other tools the suit offered. Scrap's temperature was low, but his heart rate was elevated, which further confirmed her suspicion of nanites.

There was an explosion of sound, and Caitlin instinctively covered her patient. Heat Wave got to his feet and raised his weapon, standing between the doctor and the approaching danger.

"You left Lullaby on the floor! Alone!" someone yelled.

"Before the doctor can get to her, she needs help here," Heat Wave said. "Your help. Faster you get it done, the faster we get to Lullaby."

The new arrival made a series of frustrated sounds and half-insults before he finally grunted, "Fine, fine! What is it, Doc?"

"It's Bellatrix," she said, though for the life of her she didn't know why she had suddenly become so insistent on her alias. "I need you to emit a sonic pulse that is strong enough to interrupt nanite's communication, so it will trigger - "

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, the self-destruct sequence," Motley interrupted. "It's not like I've never blasted nanites before."

Caitlin took a moment to really look at Motley. His voice and mannerisms were familiar, but his garish meta-suit concealed his features. He wore a particolored suit of red and black, complete with matching cowl and jester's hat. Had it not been slightly charred and covered with blood splatter, he might've seemed comical.

She stood back and allowed him access to Scrap.

He extended a gloved hand over Scrap, who was getting worse. A visible power emanated from his palm, striking Scrap heard enough in the chest to make him buck involuntarily as he wheezed out a scream. Motley didn't even flinch. He continued the blast, moving his hand up and down at a steady pace over Scrap.

He drew his head back and yelled over Scrap's screams, "Done! Lullaby is this way!"

"One minute," she replied.

She grabbed her patient's wrist to check his heart rate, which was dangerously high and increasing every second. This wasn't just a physical reaction to the sonic pressure; it was probably a product of the nanites in his system. If it continued like this, he would need adenosine to stabilize his heart rate.

She ran her hand over the "belt" of her suit, though it was more of a thick liner over her midsection. It contained a number of small vials of adrenaline, a number of anti-seizure and pain meds, but no adenosine. She flipped the liner closed. She'd have to lower his heart rate some other way.

She crouched over Scrap and began to perform carotid sinus massage with her free hand while continuing to monitor him with the other.

It worked, his heart rate decreasing steadily, but once it dropped below one hundred and forty, Scrap transmuted into some kind of non-organic metal similar to steel. As he flickered rapidly between flesh and metal, it became impossible to compress his artery in the appropriate rhythm.

"Scrap, if you can hear me. I need you to control your power," she said. "Can you hear me? Scrap? Scrap!"

"Ah, come on!" Motley shouted. "Haven't we wasted enough time on this loser?"

Ignoring the angry Siren, she waved her left hand over Scrap's body and confirmed that the nanites were no longer moving on their own. Motley had successfully neutralized the nanotechnology, and it was up to Scrap's body to clear out the now-harmless contaminant.

"He's free of Trojans," she said. "Blink, he needs to be taken somewhere he can be monitored and given intravenous fluids."

"There's a medic tent outside," Blink replied. "I can get him there but won't promise any more than that."

Scrap's heart rate was down to one hundred and twenty. With the nanites disabled, it was a wait-and-monitor game now.

"Okay, take him," Caitlin said to Blink. Then she turned to Motley and said, "Lead the way to Lullaby."

"I decide where we go and when," Cold barked, the iciness in her voice perfectly illustrating her alias. "Blink is clear. Take Scrap and return once you pass him off. The rest of us are staying here."

Motley let out a hiss as Blink and Scrap vanished. He paced, stopping and starting erratically, as if he was about to explode, but he was clearly too afraid of Cold to defy her. So he huffed his breath in and out, vocalizing his frustrations without words, all while trying to look casual.

Cold's expression was difficult to read. Had she held them up just to toy with Motley? Or was she truly waiting on some kind of all-clear signal?

She's probably a sociopath. This is just her putting a subordinate in his place.

After several incredibly awkward minutes, Cold said, "Right, we're a go. I've got your six, Mot. Lead the way."

Motley Siren bolted for the next corridor with Cold on his heels. Heat Wave motioned for Caitlin to go, and once she started, he followed behind her, walking backwards with his gun raised.

They passed through a hallway riddled with blood and the dismembered bodies of at least four individuals. There were also victims burned beyond recognition; she didn't have the heart to count how many. The next chamber had bodies laid out as if in triage, some with makeshift dressings and a few restrained with rope or zip-ties. Doctor Midnight - one of them - must have been through here but hadn't gotten to treat everyone yet.

Caitlin doubted Cold (or Motley, for that matter) would allow deviations from their current course. All she could do right now was hope that Doctor Midnight would return. She'd find a way to double back to check on them.

To that end, she struggled to memorize their route through winding halls with poor lightning. Three rights, a left, another right...

"Step lightly!" Cold shouted. "Group up! Passing through a no-fly zone, Trix!"

All of a sudden, Heat Wave faced forward and jammed her up so she was inches behind Cold, forcing her to move at an uncomfortable pace.

He lowered his voice and explained, "For the newbie, no-fly zone means keep in line, no stopping, and keep your hands to yourself. Even if you see your sweet old gran, you don't stop. Got it?"

"Yeah," she grunted breathlessly.

The hallway was a tight squeeze. It had been barricaded and fortified before someone blasted through it. The rubble was filled with the wounded. Most were impaled on or crushed under debris. All of them were crying out in pain, most too far-gone to do anything other than beg, but as they passed more and more, a kind of death wail started, undercut by pleading murmurs. She choked down her horror as hot tears poured down her cheeks, welling up in odd places as they became trapped by her mask.

These people needed care; she might be able to save some of them if she acted quickly. Those she couldn't save... she could still help them. At the very least, she could manage their pain. Cold seemed more than content to leave these people to die. Caitlin screwed up her courage to speak. She couldn't abandon the injured, not like this.

She opened her mouth to ask - no, demand - that they help these people, but before she could speak, a rumbling tremor stole her voice and her footing. She stumbled into Cold, who grabbed her arm and dragged her ahead.

"Ceiling's giving out!" Cold shouted. "Move! Move! Move!"

She was right. The vibrations upset the already precarious supports and badly damaged walls, so Caitlin didn't have time to consider her options. She charged ahead full-force, and together, the four of them cleared to the next corridor moments before the ceiling came down behind them.

The stitch in her side forced her to stop to catch her breath, leaving her close enough to hear the pitching screams before absolute silence and stillness fell. She found it hard to breathe as the combination of panic and rage collected in her chest, leaving no room for air.

You saved Scrap.

She did. She diagnosed him and administered care so he would have a fighting chance, despite all the unknowns. She clung to that strand of hope, but in truth, it was a band-aid over a bullet wound. But it was all she had, so it had to be enough.

"Come on, Doc," Motley pleaded. "Lullaby is around the corner."

She moved to join him without hesitation, but distracted though she was, she still noticed Cold's sneer of disapproval. She flanked Motley without comment, and Heat Wave followed her lead. But Caitlin's instincts told her that this particular misstep wouldn't be forgotten.

Cold needs to believe she's calling the shots.

They turned the corner, and Motley swooped down to a young woman's side.

For the second time that night, Caitlin felt sucker punched. She was looking at the silently writhing form of Earth-2 Sara Lance, her mask discarded beside her and her suit in disarray. Motley had seemed familiar to her, but she never would've thought imagined Quentin Lance in Motley's outrageous outfit.

She crouched by Sara's side.

Don't think of her as Sara. She's not Sara.

"The bastards hit her with some kind of anti-sonic technology," Motley said. "It's like she can't speak, can't sing, can't make a damn sound."

Sara's - no, Lullaby's - heart rate and blood pressure were off the charts. She had minor abrasions and bruises on her arms and legs but no major injuries. Caitlin scanned her but found nothing.

"What are her abilities?" Caitlin asked.

"You serious?"

"To rule out all the specialized MTU weapons, I need a description of her abilities," she said with doctorly authority.

"There's a reason people call her Singsong Siren. Her voice... when she sings, her voice... it affects people."

"Affects them how?"

"I don't know how it works!" he snapped.

"Anything you can tell me," she insisted. "Anything."

"She can sing anyone - even the worst insomniacs - to sleep," he replied with reverence in his voice. "She can calm manics, set saints on a rage, induce euphoria in the most downtrodden of souls, a crushing depression in the most joyful, or childlike naivety in the most cynical. She sings, and it happens."

"Can she induce pain?" Caitlin asked.

"Yeah, anyone who tries to fight the emotions she sings to induce feels pain," he responded. "How exactly does this help my - uh - Lullaby?"

"There are prison cells that can rebound a meta's ability back on them," she said.

"Come on, Doc! When last I looked, she's not in a cell!"

Rather escalating with her own retort, she said, "I need you to hold her still. Can you do that?"

If Motley had any reservations about her, they didn't slow him down. He pinned Lullaby's torso, legs, and wrists, holding her steady while Caitlin scanned her head and assessed for trauma. Beyond superficial lacerations - likely incurred when she collapsed to the ground - there were no signs of injury or foreign bodies.

It was possible that she was experiencing somatosensory seizures; ictal pain could erupt anywhere in the body. But what could have triggered them? And why couldn't she make a sound?

Don't overcomplicate things.

If this were any other patient with apophenia, Caitlin would suspect nerve damage. So she ran her hand over Lullaby's neck, searching for abnormalities, but it was difficult to feel the anatomy through the thick gloves of her suit. What she really needed was contrast imaging, which wasn't possible in current circumstances. Her best guess would have to do.

Bilateral paralysis of the recurrent laryngeal nerves.

That made the most sense, given the symptoms, but there were no external indicators. It was an unlikely enough problem, but for it to happen to a meta whose power emanated form her singing voice...

It must be her worst nightmare.

Nightmare. That reminded her of a technology developed to treat REM-related sleeping disorders. For a handful of patients, it was marginally successful, but for others, it amplified them to a crippling level. The company responsible abandoned the clinical trials very early on, but it resurfaced about six months after the particle accelerator exploded, modified as an anti-metahuman tactical device. It didn't affect most metas, but those it did experienced prolonged bouts of relapsing and remitting sleep paralysis, complete with auditory, visual, and tactile hypnagogia. Some even experienced uncontrollable, rhythmic motion.

She said, "She needs to be moved. Is there a somewhere we can use? A cot or a desk or something?"

Motley nodded his head, yes, but when Caitlin went to help lift her, he said, "No, Doc, I got her."

He looked remarkably like his Earth-1 counterpart as he lifted his daughter in his arms.

He's not Detective Lance, she reminded herself. Who knows how many people he's killed today.

He carried her to an unused countertop across the room, about thirty feet away, and she followed. Cold and Heat Wave shadowed them silently.

Caitlin swept the surface clear so he could safely lay Lullaby out.

"Now what?" he asked. "Surgery?"

"No..." she replied. "You need to talk to her."

"What?"

"Talk to her," she insisted. "Hold her hand and talk to her the way you used to when she was little and would wake up in the middle of the night, scared from a bad dream."

"What the hell kind of a doctor are you?" Motley scowled, stepping between them as if to protect his daughter.

"The kind of doctor who knows all the weapons at the MTU's disposal," she replied fearlessly. "Even those that didn't make it to general use by law enforcement. Now that we've eliminated her exposure - "

He interrupted, "Exposure to what? Don't say that damn cell technology again! Because in case you didn't notice, Doc, I was standing right next to her, and I'm not writhing on the ground!"

"Only fifteen to twenty percent of those with an active meta-gene are affected," she countered. "That's why it never graduated to general use. That, and it requires persistent, direct exposure to remain effective."

Motley opened his mouth, his expression livid, but he hesitated. Then he sealed his lips and clenched his jaw, lending a sinister air to his garish costume.

"How sure are you, Doc?" he growled.

"As sure as I can be in the field," she replied. "It'll wear off within the hour, but if you don't see any change in half an hour, don't wait. Get her to a medical facility. I'm sure Cold will let you use Blink."

"Yeah, Trix," Cold interjected. "Nice to be remembered."

"And what about in the meantime?" Motley asked.

"Hold her hand," she replied. "Talking to her will ease her transition, but she'll still wake up scared and disoriented. She's free of Trojans and safe to move, so as soon as she's able, get her out of her. Not outside, not the medical tent - but off the premises. Now that we know she's susceptible, this place is too dangerous. Traps could be anywhere. No matter what, get her out of here. To the Comet, if you can."

"But if you're wrong - "

"Get her to the Comet," she pressed.

He oscillated between belligerence and resignation before he went to his daughter's side and took her hand.

Caitlin wanted to comfort him, but they had already left countless people to be crushed by a collapsing ceiling. There were others out there who needed a doctor. There was nothing more to do for Lullaby outside a medical facility. Motley wasn't Detective Lance, but it was clear he cared for his daughter. He wouldn't abandon her.

"Well, Trix, if you're done here, we got a situation," Cold said. "Blink can't get to us, so we have to go to her. Next stop: Robotics Lab."

"Robotics Lab?" Motley repeated. "You'd be nuts to go to that hell hole."

"Then call us Pecans, Mot, because we're going," Cold said. "Catch you on the flipside."

She brandished her gun before spinning on her heel and leading the way. This time, Caitlin didn't wait for Heat Wave to signal her to go; she fell in line and followed with him not far behind.

Caitlin wondered if Cold had extrasensory powers. She obviously received or obtained up-to-the-second intel, but she didn't have any communication devices on her. It wasn't the kind of thing she could casually ask a stranger, but her curiosity refused to abate, though perhaps she indulged it as a welcome distraction from the horror of her surroundings.

She thought she'd seen the worst of it on the way to Lullaby, but she was woefully wrong. There were dozens killed in what must've been a hailstorm of bullets, given the state of the remains and the walls. The next hallway was filled with soldiers who had been trampled to death despite their full body armor. There were bodies suffocated in a gas attack, frozen solid and frosted over, slowly dissolving in acid, burned and charred, torn in half, pulverized... she didn't stop to check for pulses.

This place is a tomb.

She told herself that they'd find a survivor around the next corner. And the next. And the next. Each time she was proven wrong, she became a little more lost, but she continued to hope... she didn't know how else to do this.

Just breathe.

"Button up!" Cold barked. "Tight edge ahead!"

Again, Heat Wave wedged her against Cold, but when they passed into the next corridor, their proximity failed to stop her from freezing. Her hands when to the nearest wall to help brace herself as she instinctively anchored her weight to the floor. When he met her resistance, he stepped back.

Heat Wave almost certainly could've forced her to move. She wanted to believe that he was a good man with compassion, but his restraint was more likely a byproduct of the dangers that lay before them.

The ceiling and walls had been blown away, comprising a tiny section of a crater that spanned five stories, rising straight up into the night sky and running all the way down to the catacomb-like basement, where bodies and rubble piled up like too many dishes in a sink.

The sole surviving wall had a thin stretch of solid floor wide enough to pass, but only barely so, and there was no railing or barrier between them and a gapping three-story fall.

"What's the matter, Trix?" Cold asked. "Not a fan of heights?"

While she never enjoyed elevated places, she'd never been afraid of them per se. She couldn't deny the vaguely ill feeling that gradually escalated to nausea. She attempted to respond to Cold, but when she looked up at her, words failed her.

Then she saw Cold's steely exterior falter, exhibiting a flicker of humanity that she hadn't expected.

"There has to be another way," Caitlin mumbled.

"Ordnance and Typhoon took out this whole area - and not on purpose," Cold replied. "There's no other way to the other side of the explosion. In case you forgot, that's where our ride is. So, unless you plan to stay in this building forever, you're gonna cross here. Got it?"

"Relax," Heat Wave chimed in. "We've got grappling hooks."

She was not at all reassured.

"Trix, either you move now, or Heat will carry you," Cold pressed.

The thought of being shouldered and dangling mid-air churned her stomach. So she wrenched her hands back to her side and took the smallest step forward. Her entire body felt like lead, and she wondered if being stranded in a strange universe by a madman had weakened her constitution. Or had she always been this way? It was difficult to remember.

"Good choice," Cold said. She sounded very, very far away. "Keep up."

It felt like hours to the other side, even though Cold set a relentless pace. She felt very little relief when they reached the next solid, walled-off room, so she was glad that they didn't slow down or stop.

After a few more winding halls, Cold stopped abruptly outside a room that ran the length of a very, very long corridor with floor-to-ceiling windows. Two men waited inside, flanking the first large glass door. One wore black and white leather augmented with a symbol of an upside-down horseshoe of navy blue. The other was in a suit of deep red with pale yellow undertones and dark green trim.

"You didn't mention Berserker was here," Heat Wave said to Cold as he raised his gun.

"Didn't know," she shot back. "Colt made the report." The man in deep red stepped into the hall and took off, leaving horseshoe man - who Caitlin presumed was Colt - to usher them inside. She could only wonder after Heat Wave's distain for the mysterious and fast-moving Berserker.

Colt didn't speak as he led them inside to an area that had been converted into a makeshift emergency room with countertops, chairs, and tables serving as cots or instrument trays. One for each of the ten injured.

"Why are they restrained?" Caitlin asked.

"Protocol," Heat Wave responded stiffly.

"More like common sense," Cold said. "Restrain the unfriendlies."

"They're all unconscious," Caitlin pointed out.

"They all look unconscious," Cold corrected. "They stay restrained until I say otherwise. Got it, Trix?"

Caitlin nodded her head and set to work assessing her patients. Respiration, pulse, and blood pressure was within normal range for all for all of them. Four were covered in lacerations, abrasions, and gashes, with the worst of the latter hastily wrapped up to reduce bleeding. She would have to scan them to be sure, but she suspected broken bones.

These were the kinds of injuries she'd expect to see in people who were hit by the radiating blast of an explosion. Cold had mentioned there had been an unintended one not far from here.

She assessed the remaining six patients. They had all been knocked unconscious, almost certainly by the same person, given the nearly identical head trauma.

"Do we know what happened to these people?" Caitlin asked no one in particular.

"Colt happened to most of them," Cold said dispassionately. "He's good for captures, so if he's here, that can only mean one thing. These people have information we need."

"If that's true, why are they still here?" Caitlin asked. "Why risk leaving them in a building that could explode or collapse on them?"

"Because they haven't been cleared for transport," Cold replied. "No one goes anywhere until they're stable, clear of Trojans, and most importantly... until I say so."

Arguing wasn't going to get her anywhere, so Caitlin replied, "Fine. Once I've cleared them, I'll mark their foreheads with an X in permanent marker."

"Attagirl, Trix!" Cold said.

She confirmed that the patients were stable and free of any wounds that might render them unmovable. The only exception was one woman with a broken arm that needed to be set; the rest had uncomplicated rib fractures with minor head trauma. They would need to be monitored for the next few days, but they should all recover. Before she could mark them with X's, however, she needed to confirm they were free of Trojans.

And that was where she hit a snag.

All of them had a submuscular implant, though no two were in the same location. She guessed they were monitoring devices of some kind, almost certainly equipped with GPS. They were too deep for a superficial extraction; it would require a skilled surgeon.

Or a speedster who can phase through the body.

The queasiness that she had felt standing over the gapping crater resurged in full force. No, she wouldn't ask Zoom for help. There had to be another way.

With no acceptable recourse, she moved on. Nothing could be done for the ribs; even if she had compression belts, wrapping them could restrict respiration. That left the broken arm for her to set. It was all she could do right now, so she scanned the instrument trays for an appropriately sized splint and material for a sling.

She adjusted the patient for the procedure then took a steadying breath as she lined up the arm. This patient was in for a very rude awakening. With brutal precision, she set the arm, immediately moving the splint into place.

The patient woke with a scream, the restraints barely holding her back. Caitlin quickly secured the splint with what she hoped was medical tape before slipping the sling on, which was slightly complicated by the straps holding her in place. She then marked her forehead with a small but visible X.

"A heads up next time, Trix!" Cold shouted.

She hadn't even thought about warning her guards, but she made a mental note of it for the next time.

"You're okay," she said to the woman panting in pain. "You're going to be okay. I set your arm, and I can give you something for the pain if you'd like."

"Are they gone?" the woman said hoarsely.

It was only when she heard her voice that Caitlin realized she was treating none other than Earth-2 Eliza Harmon. In this universe, she had cropped dirty blond hair and lighter eyes, but her facial expressions, her voice... she reminded Caitlin too much of the friend she lost, all because she had been relentless in pursuing Velocity-9 as a "cure" for Jay.

Eliza's death wasn't your fault. Neither was Trajectory. She made her own choices.

It was difficult not to think of Eliza as another victim of Jay's - Hunter's - time on Earth-1, especially looking into the face of her recently injured doppelganger.

"Are they gone?" Eliza repeated.

"We're the only ones here. You're safe now," Caitlin said. Then she added, "What's your name?"

"Eliza," she replied.

"Eliza, I need help with the implants," she explained. "Yours and everyone else's. Can you help me with that?"

"All MTU personnel have a monitoring implant," she explained. "It's protocol."

"Implanted by a surgeon?"

"No... a surgical program," Eliza replied.

"I have to remove the implants before I can move anyone," she said. "And some of these people need a medical facility. Sooner rather than later."

Eliza's eye fluttered shut as her jaw clenched. Clearly, she didn't like what she was being asked.

"If the equipment isn't damaged, I can run the extraction program," Eliza mumbled. "But we'd have to go to the bio-med bay in the robotics labs - "

"We're in the robotics lab," Caitlin interjected.

Eliza's eyes went wide as her heart rate skyrocketed. She fought fruitlessly against the straps, flailing recklessly and helplessly.

"Eliza, stop! Stop! Tell me what's wrong!"

She stilled, but her heart continued to thump hard, as if she was fleeing a ravenous bear.

"Why are we in the Robotics Lab?" she asked.

"Not my decision," Caitlin replied. "The explosion wasn't far from here, and this area is large and stable."

"You... you swear?"

"I promise," Caitlin replied. "How far is the bio-med bay from here?"

"It's the next lab... they're connected with internal doors," Eliza said. "But... we can't just go in there... the guards, and the... the others..."

She didn't complete her thought, and her heart rate and respiration remained elevated, making Caitlin wonder what in the bio-med bay inspired such terror.

"Don't worry," she said in an attempt to reassure her. "I'll make sure it's safe first. For now, just try to relax."

Eliza looked far from convinced, but she nodded her head affirmatively before slumping back against the counter that served as her medical cot.

Caitlin turned to speak with Cold, who had already gravitated toward the patients and awaited her approach.

"You sure you wanna do this, Trix?" Cold asked. "Think we can trust her?"

"To save herself and her own people?" Caitlin countered.

Apparently, her rhetoric proved persuasive because Cold chuckled and brandished her gun, almost like she was toasting her good health.

"Heat!" she called. "Escort Trix here to the bio-med bay. Blink will bring the patients along once she and Colt get back."

"Got it," Heat Wave said as he waved Caitlin over.

They moved noiselessly through the lab toward the doors on the far side. It was filled will fascinating machines that constantly caught her eye. The majority of the technology in the lab was adaptive or assistive robotics for surgical procedures. It exhilarated her curiosity until she began to connect the dots between the mechanical equipment and the MTU's uses for it.

The doors into the bio-med bay were knocked off their hinges or smashed straight through with chunks of wall to match. Heat Wave led the way, stepping over the least-saved doorframe.

At first, there was nothing but untouched lab equipment, including several neuro-surgical assistive machines, but then the landscape changed.

It was like they stepped into hell.

The room was full of carbyne cells not unlike those in Zoom's mountain lair, though there were dogs, pigs, and even monkeys in these. All of the animals were dead, their lifeless eyes glazed over and opened in an accusatory stare. Various monitors read TERMINATION SEQUENCE COMPLETE.

They killed them all when they realized they were under attack.

Bodies littered the spaces between desks: charred, beaten, bloody, and broken. No pulses, cold to the touch... whatever happened here occurred hours ago. Heat Wave kept her moving, not giving her more than the time required to check for breathing and a heart beat, so they quickly made it to the center of the lab.

Had she thought they were in hell before? Well, she was wrong, because this - this was hell.

Animals were not the only subjects in this laboratory. The next cells - no, that was too humane a word, these were cages - contained people, all as dead as their animal counterparts. At least, she assumed as much, since their monitors likewise read TERMINATION SEQUENCE COMPLETED. Zoom's minions had smashed through the carbyne and covered the victims with sheets, lab coats, or anything they could find.

She asked Heat Wave, "Who were they?"

He shook his head, no, but the expression on his face gave a very different answer. He clenched his jaw, and suddenly, his eyes flared, appearing like tiny suns where his sockets should have been. He closed them, but the light radiated through his skin, which barely contained the glow.

She felt the temperature rise. Perhaps she imagined it... or maybe, in this universe, Heat Wave earned his moniker for something other than the heat gun he carried.

Caitlin wasn't sure if concern was warranted, but it didn't look as if he had it under control. In fact, he seemed like he was going to explode. She discreetly put some distance between them, hoping that if he needed help, he would ask for it.

Then it stopped as abruptly as it started.

"You know," he said gruffly, trying to act as if nothing had happened. "Check'em, though, just to be sure."

She didn't argue, but climbing into that first cage was worse than she imagined. It was too small to lie down in, and the carbyne walls were clear on all sides, leaving the subject without privacy, space, or dignity. The body inside was cold, and from the petechial hemorrhages in the eyes, she surmised that a gas displaced the oxygen in a confined space - no doubt the very cage in which she stood - caused suffocation. It was a horrible way to die, especially while on display.

She moved on to the next cage. And the next. And the next. When she found a vacant cell that had been busted open like the others, a thrill of relief and hope washed over her.

"Do you think an empty cell means a survivor?" Caitlin asked.

"Survivors?" Heat Wave repeated skeptically. "I'm all for wishful thinking, but... nobody survives a place like this."

She persisted in confirming the dead long after she lost count. She had to be certain that she hadn't left anyone behind.

She hesitated outside one cage that was bloodier than the other, worrying at what she might find. She uncovered the body and discovered a teenage boy, sixteen at the oldest. Unlike the others, he died from blunt force trauma to the head. She felt sick as her mind pieced the evidence together, forcing her to watch the events unfold as if they were happening before her.

The boy saw what was happening to the others in cages around him, and he felt the air thin. Pure panic drove him to trash at the walls, and the desperation to survive gave him strength enough to ram his own head against the carbyne with all his weight behind him over and over again, covering the walls with his blood, and after the final blow, his brain matter.

He must've been terrified.

She staggered away from the sight, her mind racing. She felt like she was suffocating, like she was jammed inside one of these cells, asphyxiating. She tumbled into the next row of horror and yanked off her cowl, desperate for air, but instead of a breath of fresh air, she inhaled the stench of institutionalized murder: decay, antiseptic, and the faintest hint of smoke.

Reeling from the choking scent, she almost didn't hear her name.

"Caitlin," a familiar voice cried. "Oh, my sweet Caitlin!"

Her eyes went to the speaker, a woman inside a cage yet still alive. The walls of her cell had been smashed in, but the survivor hadn't left.

Because she's frozen in place.

Caitlin couldn't believe it. She was staring at the face of Doctor Carla Tannhauser, her mother.

She's not Mom.

"Caitlin," she murmured. "They did it. They cured you. They promised me they would."

Her stomach clenched. Mom - no, Carla - thought she was her daughter, cured of whatever transformed Killer Frost into a heat-hungry ice queen. Caitlin couldn't let her think that; she needed to get her out of here. She had promised Frost to help Mom in this universe.

She's not Mom.

Caitlin couldn't bring herself to explain things to Carla, especially not when she got an unobstructed view. She was frozen from the waist down in a solid block of ice. Her lips were blue, and her teeth chattered as she shivered violently.

Before she could stop herself, she said, "What did they do to you, Mom?"

"It doesn't matter," she replied. "Sweetheart, he's alive. He's okay. They promised me."

"I'm going to get you out of here," Caitlin said. Then she yelled, "Heat Wave!"

She had enough presence of mind to drag her mask over her head before he arrived.

Carla started to ask to see her face again, and she kept asking as her voice faded.

"You called?" Heat Wave asked.

"Can you melt this ice?"

"Come on," he said, flashing a genuine smile. "What's my name?"

He waved for her to step aside. Then he aimed the heat gun at the block of ice, loosing a stream of fire that cut the chill in the air. Unfortunately, it barely made the ice sweat.

"What the hell?" Heat Wave grunted.

"He's alive... he's with..." Carla mumbled.

She fell silent, and Caitlin ran to her.

"Wait! Wait!" Caitlin yelled. She dropped her voice and pleaded in a whisper, "Mom, wait, please... stay with me."

She wasn't breathing, and her heart wasn't beating. Her body temperature didn't register on any of her instruments.

"We need to get her out of here," she said. "Melt this ice. Warm her up."

"Bellatrix, she's gone," Heat Wave said.

"She's not dead until she's warm and dead," Caitlin retorted.

"You know meta-biology doesn't always follow the rules!"

"She's not metahuman!" she countered, her voice much louder than she intended.

"She's right," someone said.

No, no, no.... this isn't happening.

She turned to face Killer Frost, who seemed unmoved by her mother's demise, though there was a fury in her eyes that betrayed her anxiety.

"Frost, I can save her," Caitlin pleaded. "I just need you to get rid of this ice."

"The Colonel sent me to replace you. She's expecting you," Frost told Heat Wave. Then she turned to Caitlin, "And you... get out of my way."

Heat Wave left without another word, and Caitlin stepped out of the cage to give Frost room to work. She watched intently as her doppelganger focused all her energy on the ice that trapped her mother. Slowly but surely, it evaporated, defrosting the entire area and thawing Carla's flesh, restoring a rosy complexion to her skin.

Frost carried her out of the cell and laid her on the ground, stepping back to allow Caitlin to begin compressions.

After several fruitless minutes, however, a chilly hand came down over her shoulder.

"She's gone," Frost said.

"No, she's like you, she can live - "

"The MTU protocol for a siege is total termination," Frost interrupted dispassionately. "She would've survived the cold... but not the poison. She's gone."

It was probably a bad sign that her icy, emotionally imbalanced doppelganger was the one talking sense to her, but Caitlin didn't care. She didn't want to believe it.

You must. She's gone.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I thought - I thought I could save her."

"She was dead as soon as they took her," Frost said.

"She kept saying that he was here," Caitlin added, grasping at straws.

Frost dragged her to her feet, grappling with the collar of her suit.

"What else did she say?" Frost demanded, every feature of her face livid. "Tell me!"

"Just that he was safe, and... and that he was with the others."

"Think, Doc! Where is he? Did she say where he was?"

"No, only that he was here," Caitlin replied. "She wasn't making any sense. She thought I was you!"

Frost shoved her away in disappointment.

"Was she talking about Deathstorm?" Caitlin asked.

"I need to find him," was all Frost said.

"Listen, there's a woman who survived the explosion. She knows the equipment, and she's ambulatory. She with Cold. Maybe she can help."

Before she could finish, Frost was off, racing back the way she came, leaving Caitlin too many steps behind as she scrambled to catch up. She couldn't leave Eliza at Frost's mercy, not in her current state.

Then she felt a heavy weight drag her to one side, and she veered away from Frost's path, doing a complete one-eighty. Her mind... it didn't feel right.

Memories of doctors in white loomed over her, their merciless eyes observing her terror, her pain with cold-blooded indifference as they cut into her, as they barked another callous command. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think.

Caitlin... Caitlin...

No, these weren't her memories. She knew that voice. She'd heard it in her head before.

Caitlin always kind.

Images and feelings besieged her, too belligerent to ignore, too many to experience. Her head pounded with pressure, and her emotions pulled her in every direction. All she could understand were quick flashes, tiny moments of significance compressed to an unbearable degree.

The fear of being dragged through a portal without knowing what was on the other side. The euphoria of a new home, of no longer being alone. The sting of loss and the rage that followed. The wrath of retribution against the assailants. The shock of capture... and then nothing but the agony of being trapped and experimented on. The torment that came from knowing freedom was a dream that would never come true again.

Caitlin came back to her senses mid-vomit. She couldn't stop the retching, and she didn't want to. She needed it. She needed to purge all the poisons inside her. It felt like it would never be enough.

When it finally abated, she examined her surroundings. She must've wandered off when Grodd's thoughts overcame her because she didn't recognize where she was. There was an enormous carbyne cage set out like a fish tank in front of half a dozen desks.

Grodd must've pulled her here in a desperate call for help. That meant he was alive and nearby.

She raced to the edge of the fish tank, doing her best to keep her mind clear.

Grodd wasn't the only one in the fish tank, or the Intensive Care Unit, as the monitors called it. Two men were restrained on medical cots near the front. The first was called the Donor, and as far as she could tell, he was only heavily sedated. The second, Wild Card, had recently had both arms amputated, and from the looks of it, he was in dire need of post-operative care. He had bled through his bandages and had an elevated heat rate, likely because he was in pain.

Unlike the rest of the lab, this cell hadn't been broken into, so Caitlin had to set up an electrical current like the one she used in Zoom's lair to take out one of the carbyne panels. She busied herself with what was in front of her, removing the Donor's IV and giving him adrenaline to counter the effects of the sedatives. She administered pain meds to Wild Card before applying new compression bandages to prevent him from bleeding out.

Caitlin always kind.

She rounded on Grodd, who was at the back of the unit.

Caitlin... give final kindness to Grodd.

The great ape's body was unrestrained, but only because shackles were no longer necessary. His head was at an unnatural height, contained inside a clear dome-like bubble. As soon as she saw it, she felt her cervical spine crack and snap as the horrible whooshing and grinding of a medical saw dug into her flesh. The pain was followed by... nothing. No feeling, no sensation... her body was gone, and there was nothing but the abiding ache of loss.

"Hey, Doc? Doc!"

She gasped as she returned to her senses, Grodd's memory fresh in her mind and clear as if it were her own. The Donor had gotten his feet under himself and come to her aid. He was cradling her, as if he'd caught her when she fell... but she couldn't remember falling.

"You shouldn't be on your feet yet," she said to him. "You need some time before the sedatives wear off."

"You mean he does," the Donor replied, pointing back to his bed... where he still sat.

"Relax," the Donor said. "That adrenaline you gave me was just enough to spawn this copy."

"The Donor..." she said, realizing who he was. "You clone yourself."

"Don't call me that," he replied as he guided her back to her feet. "That's what they call me... using my copies for spare parts..."

Desperate for a happy memory, she dug in, and the moment Cisco named the Donor's Earth-1 counterpart came to the forefront.

"Multiplex," she blurted.

"Multiplex," he repeated. "I like it. You okay, Doc?"

"No," she replied. "I'm not."

Final kindness.

She wanted to tell Grodd that there was hope, that Totem could help him by bonding him with a familiar and accelerating his healing. But something told her that Totem's powers wouldn't work on Grodd... because he was an ape or from Earth-1, or maybe both.

"Poor bastard," Multiplex said.

"He wants me to... to... show him a final kindness," she said, unable to say what he really wanted.

"You know him?" Multiplex asked.

She nodded her head, yes.

"He wanted to be with others like him, so I helped send him to the gorilla sanctuary," she explained. "All he wanted was not to be alone anymore... and I'm the reason he's here."

"No one in this world is innocent," Multiplex said. "But that's no reason to take blame that isn't yours. The MTU did this. This is no more your fault than it is mine."

It was a kind thing to say, but it was based on ignorance. Grodd wouldn't have been on Earth-2 to become prey for the MTU if Caitlin hadn't helped trick him into that portal. She didn't have the energy to argue her guilt; she only wanted to press the issue to avoid the real conflict.

"I'll do it," Multiplex said.

"It should be me," she said.

"No, it shouldn't," he replied. "You remind me of my wife. She has a kind heart, and doing this... even for someone that she cares about, it would cripple her."

"And what about you?" she asked. "What about your heart?"

"My heart's only a few minutes old," he quipped. "It'll bounce back."

"Thank you," she said.

Then she turned to Grodd, unsure of what to say.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I just wanted you to have a home."

Words failed her. What could she say to comfort him?

Grodd found home.

She saw the image of a luscious jungle centered around a light-haired gorilla with silver eyes. She was beautiful and gentle and strong. In that moment, the only thing that Caitlin felt was persistent, unmovable, indestructible love.

Caitlin... always... kind...

"Doc? Doc!"

The voice was loud in her ear, shaking her away from the pleasant bubble that was fast growing dark. She looked at Grodd, hoping to speak with him again, but it was too late. Multiplex had administered a fatal dose of sedatives.

Trying to keep herself together, she scanned Wild Card and found no sign of Trojans. Multiplex's clone was free, too, but the Prime wasn't.

"We need to get him to the others," Caitlin said. "Hopefully they can remove his Trojans with the technology - "

She stopped dead in her tracks when she remembered what she had been doing before Grodd drew her away. She had been following Frost to protect an unsuspecting Eliza Harmon from her wrath. How long had she left them alone? What had happened to Eliza?

Was Ronnie alive?

Even if he was alive, he wasn't her Ronnie. He was Deathstorm.

"Found her!" someone shouted. "You, Bellatrix!"

She turned to see horseshoe man - no, Colt - a few desks away.

"We need another doctor," he announced.

"We need help," she replied. "Two are ready for transport. The other - "

"I'll handle them," Colt interrupted. "They need you. Now."

"We'll be fine," Multiplex added. "Thanks to you, Bellatrix."

She went to Colt, who pointed toward a bustling intersection not far from where they stood. She could see at least two Doctor Midnights at work. What on earth did they need a third doctor for?

There didn't seem to be a point in asking Colt, so she walked as swiftly as she could. Cold swooped in before she reached the throng of activity.

"I was hijacked by a telepathic gorilla," Caitlin said preemptively. "There was nothing anyone could've done to stop it, least of all me."

"You sure you're not telepathic, Trix?" Cold asked, giving her a cocky smile. "Though I think it's important that nobody hears about your... unauthorized excursion. Things might get dicey. My employer isn't the forgiving type."

"My lips are sealed," she promised.

"Good," Cold said. "Don't get comfortable, Trix. I don't think we'll be here for long."

With that, Caitlin passed into the buzzing hive of people, and she saw what had attracted so much attention.

Children.

There were dozens of them, ages ranging four to twelve. There were even infants and toddlers. One Doctor Midnight was working with Eliza, who was mercifully unharmed (though handcuffed), on removing Trojans from the kids. Before she knew it, they had waved her over and walked her through the process. She needed to scan to locate the implant and then select the corresponding program to extract it.

She felt... thin. Wrung out. Torn apart. It wasn't the ideal the time to perform detail-oriented tasks. Her movements were sluggish at best, and her bedside manner was abysmal.

She only managed to help three kids before an alarm sounded. She had thought this place had been buzzing with activity before, but the speed amplified. With all the meta-powers in proximity, it was impossible to be certain what was happening. She caught sight of Blink teleporting in and out over and over again, transporting no fewer than five people at a time.

She also saw Cold barreling towards her, her gun at the ready, before Frost appeared out of nowhere.

"Remember your promise to me, Caitlin," Frost said, her voice stern.

Before she could point out that their - her - mother hadn't survived, a two-year-old boy was pressed into her arms. He had the most enormous blue eyes she'd ever seen and a tuft of dark brown hair that made him the spitting image of someone she'd never be able to forget.

"Ronnie," she whispered.

"RJ," Frost corrected.

"He's beautiful," she said.

She meant it. He was probably the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. She was so focused on him that she barely registered Cold's barking orders at her.

"Did you hear me, Trix?" she said loudly. "You've been recalled. Now."

It was only then that she realized Frost had left her with RJ and was nowhere in sight, though she could only see a few yards in all this chaos.

"What about you? And Heat Wave? And Frost?"

"Sweet of you to ask," Cold said sarcastically. "But Heat and Cold never run from a fight. I'm not Frost's keeper. You and the kid are next up with Blink."

"Fight?" she asked. "What fight? I thought the fighting was over."

"'Was' being the operative word," Cold replied. "Reinforcements from a secondary site. Nothing we can't handle. Nothing to worry your pretty little head about."

She winked before turning on her heel, and in the next instant, a mob of people surrounded her and RJ. Then Blink appeared, and the world around her vanished only to reappear as the night sky.

Blink didn't stay to chat. Caitlin was left standing on the edge overlooking the crater they had just escaped. She found herself the center of a huddle of children, surrounded by no fewer than three Multiplexes. There were others she didn't recognize, some shepherding the others, but most collected at the edge to watch.

She clutched RJ closer as the earth shook violently. All eyes fell on the wrecked building below them as more and more gathered around. It was nearly impossible to look away, especially when an alarm screeched, echoing into the mountains.

That's when the blue lightning flickered. It started as a few streaks, but it soon filled the entire valley, a constantly changing path of blue then white then black. The dawn came, the gentle morning sun easing its way into the picture of smoke and flashes of light. It was hard to tell from her vantage point, but it seemed like Zoom was evacuating people to a second location.

Caitlin stifled a sob as RJ's tiny hands explored her mask. The alarm became louder and louder, rising with the morning sun, and she watched without blinking. The blue lightning never stopped.

Chapter notes: The title of this chapter, The Heavenly Shepherd, comes from the Ancient Babylonian name for the Orion constellation.

Author’s notes: Apologies for the delay in getting this chapter out. It's a bit longer than I intended (even after I cut a great deal from it), and there's every possibility I will update and change it. There is also a limited amount of Hunter/Caitlin interaction, but it was unfortunately necessary at this part of the narrative. All I can do is promise that the next chapter will definitely make up for it, though I don't have an ETA on when that next chapter will be complete.

I hope you enjoy this installment and are looking forward to the next one!

For next or previous chapters, go to the main Orion page.

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