A/N: I started writing this back in March for Hartmonfest2019 and the role reversal prompt but got a little stuck on it because I wanted to do more with Cisco's section originally. I decided to leave as is and get it out there. I've got another 4 role reversal scenarios for these two so there should be some other chapters coming at some point that do more Cisco POV than this has.
Thanks to Anthela for betaing. :)
/ Some things change, some things stay the same.
The particle accelerator going kebang, so many people dying because of them – Ronnie dying because of him – was bad enough. The headaches could be from the hella high levels of stress post everything going to shit. Could be, but it turns out they're not.
Caitlin starts looking at him funny, picking up on his irritability, actually noticing something other than their coma patient or her melancholy. She railroads him into her new medbay and takes time out of her busy schedule monitoring/studying their resident Lady Gaga fan to diagnose Cisco with tinnitus. She prescribes something he neglects to tell her is ultimately, utterly useless - it works for maybe a couple of weeks before the sounds are back to piercing levels.
Every noise becomes like nails dragged down a board. He wears his headphones as much as possible and uses white noise to block it all out. The headaches turn into migraines and he's not really getting decent sleep despite the industrial strength earplugs he has. Still, Cisco's real good at staying out of everyone's way and hiding this little fact, until he can't block out the tapping of Caitlin's pen and the whirr of Wells' wheelchair and he's shouting at them to just be quiet for once.
Caitlin is stumped on the exact cause but reckons it's due to damage from the explosion. Wells looks at him with a strange consideration that Cisco feels unnerved by. He doesn't tell either of them what else he's been hearing. Adding auditory hallucinations to his list of symptoms would just give Caitlin more to fuss about.
At least now he's not hiding the problems with his ears, he can wear his suped-up noise-cancelling headphones around the labs. He bops along with his favorite tunes, some relief if he sticks to his new coping method. Underneath the beats, there's more he hears. Like whispers of conversations that do not make sense. He doesn't realize they are conversations not meant for him, taking them in subconsciously and causing the creeping sensation of being watched.
Hartley's life is in ruins. No one will hire him. He's running out of his curbed inheritance from his grandparents. He wants to hit something but he wasn't raised to fight and there's nothing he can spare to break. No, he was raised to be quiet. Quiet unless he could be proper – right - but he doesn't want to apologize for being who he is anymore. For standing up to his parents, or to Harrison.
Somewhere in S.T.A.R Labs is the proof he needs to show the world. A plan forms. He codes day and night to get the virus ready. When he finishes writing it, he tests it out on a hapless former subsidiary company that still runs the same OS as S.T.A.R Labs. The hand slam upon his desk at the success sends an unexpected shockwave through his squat, rattling his bookshelves and shattering the fragile windows. He looks at his hand; he looks back at his scant possessions unsettled in their places and the smattering of shards on the floor. Whatever this is, was not a part of his plan. Hartley grins. Time for a new and improved plan - they won't know what hit them either.
It's difficult at first to channel the blasts. He works on some gloves to limit their breadth, keep them where he aims. It's always easier when he's riding the high of some success, that's how he figures out there's a biomedical aspect to his powers. He's no endocrinologist but he does his research and before long he has a power boosting concoction to take, in limited quantities, not entirely certain of its long term effects.
Using it is sweetened by knowing the constituent drugs were stolen from Rathaway Industries companies. Thinking of Harrison dead-center in front of him helps too. There aren't enough targets for his liking at his first location. Hartley gets ambitious with time, moves on to bigger and better squats.
That's when he starts to have eerie dreams every time he goes to sleep. A tinge of green to everything around him, like a strange night vision haze. Every time he dreams of S.T.A.R. Labs. Wells is there sometimes, wheeling around conspicuously, or Caitlin Snow fussing over a man on a gurney but mostly it is Cisco Ramon, face scrunched up in frustration and the occasional flit of pain across his features. He sees a lot of things. He sees Cisco log into his console.
When he wakes Hartley remembers every bit of it. He walks ten blocks to an internet cafe, hood up to retain anonymity and tries it out. The login is real. Hartley is staring at everything he could need to take Harrison down. One moment he's sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the cafe, the next he feels like he's slipped out of reality, into some dreamscape, the same tinge as his dreams that clearly aren't simply dreams. Cisco stands in The Cortex. Harrison stands too, hand unfathomably in Cisco's chest, saying "You were like a son to me."
Hartley returns to normality with an abrupt cut. Technicolor flooding back into view as his heart hammers in his chest. Has it happened already? Is it going to happen? He rushes out of the cafe, around to a back alley. There's a fervent need to get back to his squat, worried someone – Harrison, who he just saw murder Cisco - will trace his abused login. Out of nowhere a shimmering hole appears in the air and he stumbles through it instinctually, out of breath and confused but finally feeling safe again. His powers keep on surprising him time after time and Hartley isn't fond of it, but he does what he knows best, he figures it out, he tests his limits. He ignores how it makes him feel, the roiling in his stomach at each new application he finds – a building sense of responsibility.
After that his dreams descend into chaos, a never-ending stream of bad he can't shake. Hartley scans the newspapers every morning and realizes these things are happening. Except Cisco Ramon is not dead. He really does not know what to think, but he knows what he has to do. Hartley buys burner phones and as soon as he wakes, he breaches himself somewhere, ready to report his anonymous tips. Sometimes they take him seriously, it doesn't always work but it's what he's resolved he can manage in-between his unofficial research on his own powers. He doesn't sleep well beforehand, but he does rest easier after he does this duty he has resigned himself to.
He still dreams of Cisco dying. Over and over. He doesn't know why. Cisco is still alive. Hartley's learned how to check-in on him in real-time, a talent tested extensively on some dodgy individuals that Hartley feels no remorse ratting out as an anonymous source for the local bloodhound Mason Bridge. It feels incredibly weird to do so for Cisco, but he figures privacy is the least of his concerns if Wells is actually a threat.
Hartley knows enough to see there's more going on with Wells than even he could have suspected – not simply Wells can walk, he can run, at superhuman speeds, spookily the same ability their newly awakened coma patient happens to have. Hartley also sees enough to know his tip line shenanigans are getting noticed too. It feels like something is going to give any day now and he hasn't any clue how effective his powers would be against whatever Wells is. He stays out of the way, he isn't a hero.
The last time Hartley gets a vision of Cisco, it feels different. He can't explain it, he just knows this is happening now and he's seeing more of it than ever before – he has the warning as he watches Cisco ask Wells something he thinks is inconsequential, something spoken flippantly, that makes Wells' eyes flick up, demeanor changing entirely. Hartley sees the twitch of fingers as Wells leans forward to get up -
And Hartley is stumbling out of a breach, breathless at the energy exerted in a split instant from the vision to here. He isn't fast enough, he wasn't ever going to be. Hartley fails and he knows the cost of his failure exactly like Cisco.
He wakes up with a gasp from a dream, sucking in air with a sudden desperation. An overpowering sense of deja vu washes over him as he turns his head to his alarm ringing in his ears and looks at the date as he silences the sound. There's a stutter of another reality overlaying this one; so mundane, the same clock face display on his phone, the same date as today. Then the view blips forward to another scene and he can feel the chill of the aircon in S.T.A.R. Labs before he's aware of a hand vibrating menacingly towards Cisco's chest. The same feeling of cold in his bones overwhelms him as he sees the result - Cisco dead-eyed, crumpling lifelessly in front of his feet - and as he sees it comes for him next.
Once he surfaces from the vision, he struggles to breathe again, taking grateful gasps of air while he recovers from the feeling of panic triggered deep inside him. Not a dream, he corrects, knowing he's been here before, this moment he has lived before, wasted. There's a lingering feeling of crushing disappointment in himself, for leaving it too late to save someone he'd known was in danger for months, too afraid and making his move too late in the game. He remembers a hand through his chest as a creepy consequence of it. He's never shaking that memory but Hartley thanks the universe that sometimes, when speedsters are involved, you do in fact get a do-over it seems.
This time he breaches in with an arm already raised in defiance, senses on high alert, reaching to blast Harrison into the wall with everything he can muster before he's finished exiting the portal.
Cisco gapes at him, lollipop dropping to the floor with a sticky thud.
"Come with me if you want to live."
He doesn't wait for Cisco to respond before yanking him through to safety, but he figures Cisco will appreciate it anyhow, once he recovers from the shock.