Author's Notes: Hello, everybody! I haven't updated my ffnet page in a while, so these fics are long overdue. I hope you enjoy them! (If you want to stay up to date with my stories, I always upload them to AO3 first.)
"I trusted you."
The Black Flash stands in the grass a good distance away from her. She can see the dim golden aura in Its eyes, lighthouses for centuries. Tears pool in her own. "I thought – I thought getting to talk to you would make things better." Her voice cracks, and she presses a hand to her mouth. The Black Flash doesn't move. Its expression, rock steady, does not falter.
Abruptly, anger surges in her. She closes the distance between them in a single blurred movement, smashing a fist against Its impenetrable chest, the soft, harmless thump of her hand pressing against Its suit making her sob. "I trusted you!" she screams, pounding Its chest again and again.
Keeping Its silence in the realm beyond living known as the Speed Force, the Black Flash does not respond to her. She fists Its suit in both hands, aching to tear the material to pieces. Her anger is powerless in the face of Its indifference. Seeing it, she lets go and steps away, feeling hollowed, staggered – bereaved.
"I don't ever want to see you again," she says in a low voice.
The Black Flash's eyes darken, glowing silver. It looks at her for a long moment. It chooses Its words and speaks, not aloud but very carefully.
I'm sorry.
It's too late. Nora turns, and runs, and leaves Death behind.
Ever since she was a little girl, Nora knew the name of Death.
Age four, she met It for the first time, an apparition come to life. She awoke that night long before dawn, and was drawn to the stairs, to the front door, to the creature dwelling on the porch. She creaked on soft human heels towards It. She reached out to touch It, and It looked at her with golden eyes and held up both hands in a universal gesture: Don't touch. She sat beside It, instead, mirroring Its stance. She didn't understand why she couldn't see Its breath in the cold November fog. She huddled inward, and stayed with It until morning dawned and the Ghost disappeared.
Age five, she told Mom about the Ghost. There was confusion at first, disbelief – and then devastating comprehension when the dark-clad speedster stepped into their home, disturbing nothing in Its path. It paused on the opposite side of the living room from them. Reflexively, aware of the unspoken rule of their numerous encounters, Nora warned Mom not to touch It. She didn't need to. Mom didn't move an inch, and neither did the Ghost, and an eternity later It vanished.
Age five-and-a-half, Nora sat entranced on the polished gray floor as Uncle Cisco stood at the clear markerboard and sketched an outline of the monster that visited her, the embodiment of human and Speed Force that was known to all familiar with It as The Black Flash. She asked why they called It that, and Uncle Cisco told her about The Flash, and her dad, and the line where the two split. "There is no line anymore," he said, and it was still the best explanation she'd ever heard to describe It.
Age seven, Nora enticed the Black Flash to attend show-and-tell. In retrospect, she thinks it might have been more apropos to bring It to Parents' Day.
It wasn't until she was ten years old that she began to understand the beast more fully. She could feel the coolness of Its presence in the world, a tangible shiver, an emotional wake. Where the living touched It, the living died. For her, having grown up with Its erratic presence for years, the shock never came as she watched grass wilt under Its feet. She still itched to reach out and hold one of those black clawed hands, all traces of humanity concealed beneath Its unbreachable suit.
Why is it there? she asked Mom.
To protect him, Mom replied.
They alternated between the phrases – It was the Ghost, the Speed Force Incarnate, the Demon, the Grim Reaper, Death Itself – and yet It would always be more to them, he would always be more to them. They didn't see It solely as the celestial: they saw It as Its former self, and that was the self that Mom mourned.
In a strange way, it was the Black Flash's unnerving, inhuman, entrancing face – concealed nearly perfectly beneath Its black mask and yet still somehow discernible, with Its brilliant white eyes soft and attentive as they watched her – that she came to know as her father's. Dad wasn't the man in the photos as much as the beast in the backyard, waiting for her to join It as the thunder and rain approached.
And lightning, she would add with hushed excitement.
She loved the lightning, loved it before she even knew what it felt like, coursing through her veins. She was older, then, approaching young adulthood, and she loved it like the breath around her on a cold winter's day, electrifying her, awakening her. She wasn't surprised that hers burned purple instead of white; it was supposed to be cool enough to touch, soft enough to hold. The Black Flash's lightning was golden; her fathers had been, too. But hers was purple, and she loved it. She loved the Speed Force.
And at last, she found that strange place. At last, she found the line between Life and Death that allowed her to embrace her father for the first time. At last, she met It in the Speed Force, the one and only place where the living and dead could interact harmlessly.
Over the years, she'd had thousands of unanswered questions for It, yet standing before It she could not find any of them. It didn't matter. She was home.
Returning to the realm of the living, Nora finds that it is raining and approaching midnight in Central City.
She shivers and walks across puddled sidewalks at a clip disproportionately slow, almost sluggish, for her. Her heart hurts in a way it hasn't for years. She longs for a friend and finds herself not at Mom's place but at a small warehouse on the edge of town. It's not a home, but a rendezvous point. The imperceptible wire is tripped, and in a flash of red light, he arrives.
There must be words to describe the ashy feeling inside of her chest, but she cannot find them. Eobard stands before her, clad in his yellow suit, a strange aura glowing about him. There is almost sadness there. There is nothing approaching remorse. "I did not lie to you," he says in a voice so entwined with Speed that it growls, dangerous, low, predatorial.
She has never been afraid of Death, and she is even less afraid of him. She steps towards him boldly, asking in a hard tone, "What gives you the right to judge me for trying?"
"I warned you." Carelessly, the Reverse Flash finishes, "You should have listened, if you wanted to be happy."
"Being lied to and kept in the dark isn't happy," Nora says in a voice that cracks midway, and she hates, she hates that the emotion carries so clearly through her tone. "Why would they – why would he do that? He was supposed to –"
The Reverse Flash waits, patiently, for her to finish, but she cannot find the breath anymore, sniffling, sobbing, at last weeping into her palms. "Oh God," she sobs, hunching over, "oh, God, what have I done?"
Grass shuffles. (It's wrong in her mind. The Black Flash's steps are soundless.) "Our heroes disappoint us," Eobard says methodically, "because even they fail." She tries, desperately, to calm down, but even the hint of lightning underneath her fingertips makes her ache again, a fresh sob bursting out of her. "Do not weep for him. He does not cry for you."
It is that – more than anything, more than any reprimand or consolation, It's not my father and I want It to be quiet in the deathly night – that brings clarity to her breath, steadiness to her drumming heart. She looks at the Reverse Flash, tears still painted on her cheeks, and sees no pity, no lies.
"He loved me," she says, and it is like a death toll, a sonic feeling in her soul, a pounding admonition: be true, be true, be true. "He came back because he loved me."
The Reverse Flash simply looks at her until she can feel her confidence waning, her words softer, less certain: "He loved me."
"Believe what you must," is all Eobard says, vanishing without a trace.
What does she believe?
The lightning.
It dances between her fingertips as she sits with her back to the outer wall of the warehouse, watching little flickers of purple light jump between them. I trust you, she tells it, the inanimate, and feels it shiver in her soul, gentle and forgiving. You won't hurt me. She closes her hand, extinguishing the light, but it beats steadily in her chest, warming her against the cool November night. You will never hurt me.
Slowly, with all the time in Eternity at her disposal, she rises to her feet, and presses onward, not at a walk but at a run, surrounded by purple light.
It is not her imagination that leaves golden footprints behind, vanishing before they can be seen from the outside.
It's late morning when she glides to a gravelly halt, looking around to regard her surroundings.
It's Central City, but a different time, a different place – a darker time, a younger place.
Why here? she asks the lightning. It does not respond. Of course it doesn't, she thinks, suddenly annoyed, and tired, and desperate to return to her own home. But it brought her here, and in some strange way, she feels compelled to trust it, and follow its story.
So she walks along dry city sidewalks, intermingling harmlessly with crowds of people, beelining unthinkingly for Jitters – walking through the motions of getting coffee and finding a seat without really interacting with the world around her. She looks around, people-watching, and sees a TV screen in the corner, advertising the opening of the STAR Labs' particle accelerator.
She rises slowly, walking towards the screen, half-expecting the entire scene around her to vanish, but it's tangible – it's real.
Her hands shake. She doesn't blame it on the untouched coffee.
Instead, she finds herself walking out of the shop, down the streets, first at a walk, and then a jog, as fast as she dares without running, arriving at the stone steps before her breathlessness can even think about stopping her. She walks up the stairs – pushes through the doors – and rises to the top floor in the elevator.
She exits, and finds calm, intermediary calm, calm-before-the-storm nonchalance as officers converse. In a daze, she walks towards the staircase leading to the uppermost level. She puts a hand on the railing to keep herself upright, her trembling approaching full-bodied weakness. Hesitation never occurs to her; she simply walks, step-by-step, until she reaches the forensics' lab.
At the closed door, she steps forward, intending to push it aside – her mind is so blank it is loud, imminent, like a freight train approaching in the dark – but halting when she hears voices inside.
"Bet you'll find a really sweet Shelby parked at one of them."
It still jars her to hear his voice – it sounds so much rawer in the real world, like it belongs in the real world and doesn't translate correctly into that ethereal Other realm. She feels tears misting her vision and knows she should act, but she can't move, frozen in place as the door finally slides open and her parents, barely older than she is, emerge.
Like the Ghost of her childhood, she vanishes before they can see her. Had Joe not called back affectionately, "Don't get in too much trouble," and the two of them turned back briefly to retort cheerfully, they might have seen the lightning trail.
But they never did, and history repeats itself.
In some bastardized version of her own time, she stands alone in front of a blank whiteboard, trying and trying and trying to find the reasons.
She writes them down, lost in thought, alone with her Universe.
Dad died.
Dad died, and it was just me and Mom left.
Dad died, and Mom was too afraid to lose me.
Dad died because of the lightning, and Mom didn't want me to die from it, too.
Dad died, and …
She stares at the phrase – Dad died – and slowly, slowly, absorbs the magnitude of the words.
My dad is dead.
Her hand, holding the marker, goes lax, and the marker clicks onto the stone floor. She feels a chill settle over her, fear and sadness and devastation stirring in her belly.
At last, with trembling fingers, she picks up the eraser and banishes her thoughts to oblivion.
The aching, empty feeling does not leave her.
Why would you do this?
At the time, standing before Mom with the new scar on her shoulder, Nora didn't even hear Mom's response – shaking with anger, with shock, with horror at what had been done Nora couldn't even hear it – before bursting out, How could you take this away from me?
There was no answer in the world that could have satisfied her.
Hesitantly, Nora reaches out and knocks on the door, twice. It seems very soft, but the wood is hard against her knuckles, far unlike the yielding surface she can still feel, vividly.
It takes a few moments before the door opens, a familiar face appearing in the frame. "Nora," Mom says, and her voice is almost as tired as her eyes, and it's still midnight here crosses Nora's mind but she doesn't allow it to deter her.
Straightening her shoulders, preparing for a fight – she lets them sink, slowly, and asks instead, "Can I come in?"
Mom steps back wordlessly, and Nora ventures inside her house for the first time in six months.
Sitting on the couch with Mom perched on a chair nearby, Nora thinks about everything she could say, every accusation, every justifiable rebuke she could make. She sees the steady vigilance in her mother's eyes, prepared to take every blow, braced but - listening. I'm listening.
Death could kill her with a single touch in any realm outside the Speed Force, and still It allowed her to rebuke It. She sees the same silent endurance in her mother's eyes and understands, suddenly, the emotion behind the solidarity, together and apart.
She wants to begin in the right place, but there is no right place in their story anymore and so she says the only thing she can think of:
"I still love you."
Mom closes her eyes for a moment, overcome, and then she looks at Nora with mist in them and says, "I'm so sorry."
The words echo in her mind, a whisper, a faint acknowledgement from another time that exists beyond time, a place that is not a place.
Finding her own voice, Nora replies, "I know."
And at last, it tastes like forgiveness.
It's weird, performing the song and dance of normalcy in the past when her eyes keep falling on the distant future, gazing upon the nothingness that is not there. Everything is ordinary, Nora thinks, looking around her at Jitters and longing for that Other place. Thunder rumbles in her soul, beckoning, inviting, and she follows its echo out to the fields, to a place in the world that might be called Nowhere for its remoteness from all other life.
To the other side, she says, "I'm listening."
There is silence for a time, and she closes her eyes, allowing the quiet of the world to permeate her soul.
When she opens her eyes, It's standing there, not thirty paces ahead, tall and grand and terrible, a beast feared by many, embraced grimly by few.
Everything about the Black Flash breathes warning to the mortals who dare to interact with It. Its enormous stature reminds her of primordial encounters with predators arched high and mighty above their weaker opponents, towering above every human. Its hands do not come to soft arches but steep points, killing claws. And Its eyes blaze with white light, inhuman.
She should be afraid.
She steps forward fearlessly. "You came."
It looks at her and slowly, deliberately, bows Its head in response. Leveling Its gaze at her, It needn't speak. She can hear It.
There's a lump in her throat as she repeats Its own words, her mother's words: "I'm sorry."
Unable to speak in the mortal space, the Black Flash raises a hand with care and lays it over Its chest, right on top of Its still heart.
(The first time the Black Flash did It, It was to her mother; and Mom responded in kind, aloud, with the words:)
"I love you," Nora whispers, mirroring It, echoing the days of her childhood as she signed, encounter after encounter, that simple message in their own simple way. "I love you, too."
It opens Its arms to her, and she doesn't need to think about her response: she simply runs, trusting the lightning to catch her, and when she reaches out to It, her hands meet solid flesh beneath Its black suit of armor, and she clings to It as tightly as she can.
I will always love you, It tells her.
She believes, burying her face in Its shoulder, sobbing not for sadness but for reprieve, because no matter how much she must endure in the strange, the amorphous, the wonderful and terrible worlds beyond – worlds, now; she can travel to any of them, here, now, there, forever – she will always have It.
"Thank you," she whispers.
The Black Flash hugs her back just as warmly, and she feels it, and knows it, to be her father's embrace.