Summary: Cisco hears voices in the quiet halls of STAR Labs after the accident. At first he thinks he's having weird PTSD flashbacks - Dr. Wells is still in the hospital, after all, and Caitlin barely leaves her apartment anymore - but it quickly becomes clear that there's something else at work as the words become conversations. Including a particularly damning conversation, assuming any of what Cisco is hearing is real.
And then Cisco has his first full blown vision... of Hartley Rathaway falling to his death.
Hartmon Fest 2019 - Mar 5th – what do you hear
Notes: The quotes for what Cisco hears in the first part, as his powers are slowly booting up (and causing him no end of grief) are quotes from the show, particularly the flashback to Hartley's confrontation with Wells before he's fired.
Words in the Air
It starts with just words.
"I feel like I've been waiting centuries for this moment. See you soon, Barry."
Cisco's hand jerks away from the broken mess he'd been clearing away in Dr. Wells' office. He was trying to get the labs presentable again, or at least cleaned up enough that Wells will be able to maneuver his wheelchair around everything. But today's only his first day back and there's no way that Wells could possibly be in STAR Labs.
So Cisco freaks out a little at the sound of Wells' voice.
"Dr. Wells?" He stands up and looks around, then heads out into the cortex. "Dr. Wells?!" Still no Wells.
Cisco frowns and hurries over to the hallway and glances first one way, then the other. His heart is pounding in his chest, having been badly startled by the voice. It had sounded like Wells had been speaking right over his shoulder… but obviously he wasn't. Wells was still at the hospital for observation and none of the other STAR Labs employees had come in today.
Most of them were probably going to quit. If he's honest with himself, Cisco isn't sure he wants to stay either. Not when he see's Ronnie's death in his nightmares every night. But he doesn't want to abandon Wells either, no matter how hard it is to walk into STAR Labs and be greeted with silence and empty rooms.
He doesn't even want to imagine how much worse it'll feel for Dr. Wells, to have to roll through the halls where he once strode instead.
Shaking his head, Cisco headed back into the office and resumed his cleaning, straightening fallen items and carefully clearing away broken glass from fallen awards and degrees.
He must've imagined the words.
Cisco sets the incident out of his mind… though he did wonder, for a little while anyway, just who 'Barry' was supposed to be.
The voices don't stop.
Over the next few days, Cisco hears a lot of random voices. Dr. Wells calling out chess moves. Coworkers complaining about issues long past. Ronnie proposing to Caitlin. Even Hartley's voice mocking Cisco's attire.
As yet another coworker shows up to claim their things and formally tender their resignation, Cisco decides that he's just having flashbacks. Because of the trauma of what happened that night. He starts quietly looking into therapists in the area who are LGBT+ friendly because he's pan and he doesn't want to have to deal with an ignorant hack. He's hoping, though, that the flashbacks will go away on their own. But if he's being perfectly honest, they're getting more common.
Cisco tries to walk past the main entrance to the pipeline one morning and hears himself and Ronnie, at first joking about something only to flash forward to Ronnie telling him to lock the door. He barely made it to the bathroom in time to throw up, his head suddenly pounding.
He wasn't getting better.
At least the building was ready for Dr. Wells to come back. If only he knew if Caitlin would be coming back too.
When Doctor Wells finally returns to STAR Labs, he does not come alone.
He brings with him first, Caitlin, whom he tasks with setting up the cortex to monitor a young man who'd been struck by lightning the night of the accelerator explosion. That man's name? Barry Allen.
Cisco tries to tell himself its coincidence. But it doesn't feel like coincidence.
And then he hears it again. Dr. Wells' voice in his ears.
"I feel like I've been waiting centuries for this moment. See you soon, Barry."
There was something uncomfortable about Dr. Wells voice, besides the fact that it wasn't coming from Dr. Wells or that only Cisco could hear it. Dr. Wells' tone of voice was... Cisco didn't want to call it sinister, but... that was about the only word that fit right.
Cisco doesn't mean to go back to the pipeline entrance. But he feels like he's being drawn there. It's in his dreams all the time and he just... he needs to see it again.
Maybe he's just looking for closure.
But he walks inside and he hears voices.
"Now... what were you doing in my accelerator?"
"I thought it was our accelerator. Because it will be our fault if we turn this thing on and blow a hole in Central City. You're wagering the lives of everyone in this building. Everyone in this city. If you don't have the courage to admit you could be wrong, I... I'll do it for you."
"Hartley Rathaway... your position at STAR Labs is terminated."
"If you think you can shut me up..."
"Oh, I know I can, Hartley. Because if you breathe even a word of any kind of... unsubstantiated accusation, I will make sure the only job you ever get in physics is teaching it to high school juniors."
It couldn't be true.
It couldn't...
Doctor Wells wouldn't have knowingly...
Hartley Rathaway is no where to be found. His former apartment had been vacated mere days before Cisco showed up looking for him, needing to verify that what he'd heard in the pipeline wasn't real without... insulting Dr. Wells.
It's not helping Cisco's peace of mind, however, that Hartley doesn't seem to be employed anywhere either. He's not working at any of the labs that should have been throwing money at a brilliant mind like his. A few people Cisco contacted even seemed to think Hartley'd been fired from STAR Labs because he'd thrown a fit when Wells wouldn't sleep with him. Which... what the actual hell? Dr. Wells wouldn't have intentionally tanked Hartley's career... right?
Except, that was exactly what he'd threatened to do in whatever it was Cisco had heard.
Seen, too, in his dreams now.
Watched Hartley defiant and angry and heartbroken by Dr. Wells betrayal, led away by security in stunned silence. Dr. Wells, radiating smug superiority as he dismissed Hartley's findings and promised to ruin the life of someone he'd called his friend.
That morning at work, Cisco can barely look at Dr. Wells. He feels this ball of rage curling inside and he begs off work, claiming stress and exhaustion (all true, really) and taking PTO in order to go home to sleep. What he doesn't say is that he plans to finally set up an appointment with a therapist because... because he must've moved past guilt to anger in dealing with his trauma and he's blaming Dr. Wells and having auditory hallucinations and...
Cisco hangs up before he can give his name or make an appointment.
His every instinct tells him that what is happening is real. Cisco is hearing snippets of the past and Dr. Wells isn't the well meaning humanitarian Cisco always believed him to be. Though still panicking about the whole thing, Cisco feels slightly more in control for deciding to believe in what he's heard.
That's when the world goes blue.
He's not in his apartment any more. Cisco is standing in front of a warehouse, the address on a sign by the door. He walks forward, feeling lost and a little translucent and when he tries to open the door he just... slides through it instead.
The whole things is more than a little unsettling.
Hartley is inside the room, a makeshift workshop set up against the far wall. As Cisco watches, Hartley crosses the warehouse floor and starts climbing up a ladder. The rungs creak ominously under Hartley's hands and feet, but he doesn't seem to care... until his hand reaches for the last rung and it snaps. Hartley's other hand slips and suddenly Hartley is falling. His legs tangle awkwardly with the rungs for a moment before Hartley drops headfirst into the ground, nothing Cisco can do to stop it.
There's blood pooling on the ground after that, a sharp metallic scent...
And then Cisco is in his own bathroom, the world normal again, heaving into the toilet while his head aches.
Once Cisco recovers from his lunch coming back to haunt him, he jumps in his car and drives to the warehouse he saw in the vision. Google maps direct him on what turns to make because the address he saw was real. And when he finally gets there in person - parking down the street and power walking all the way down the block - it's exactly as he remembers.
It's real. And if its real, then Hartley is inside... possibly about to die, if he isn't dead already.
Cisco rushes to the door and yanks it open. Hartley is about to step onto the first wrung of that damned ladder, but he's turning around at the sound of Cisco panicked entrance.
"Ramon, what the hell..." he trails off when Cisco reaches him.
Cisco's only thought is to get Hartley the hell away from that ladder, so he's not really considering his actions a hundred percent rationally when he grabs Hartley's wrist, intent on pulling him away from the death trap.
Everything goes blue again. But this time Cisco isn't alone.
Hartley is standing outside with Cisco this time, facing the warehouse, though Cisco knows, in the real world, they're probably still standing in front of the ladder of death, staring vacantly. If anyone sees them, they'd probably assume the two scientists were stoned.
"What the fuck?" Hartley is panicking now too.
"Sorry. I think I'm doing this, but I have no idea how. But I had this exact vision earlier which is why I came here..."
"Vision," Hartley echoed flatly. "This is... this is nuts. I... I'm going back inside." Hartley turned and strode towards the door, only for his hand to pass through the doorknob.
"It's a vision," Cisco insisted. "Just... walk through." Cisco then did exactly that, walking through the door. Hartley followed behind him. Which is when it occurred to him that Hartley probably shouldn't watch this. Because there was another Hartley in the room, who could neither see nor hear them as he walked over to the ladder and proceeded to start climbing upwards.
"Rathaway, you don't need to see this. Really." Cisco tried to tug Hartley away, but he was staring at himself in bemusement.
"My hair looks awful," he muttered.
"It's about to look worse. Please, just, look away..."
The top rung gave out and Cisco closed his eyes, flinching at the sickening crack...
"Oh god..." Hartley pushed past Cisco and crouched over a trashcan, losing his own lunch.
Cisco walked over and sat down on the cot in the corner, waiting patiently for Hartley to get a hold of himself. But when he did, Hartley excused himself to go outside with a muttered comment about needing air.
More like needing to get out of the room where he'd just watched himself die.
So Cisco got up and checked the trashcan. Seeing that it had a bag in it, he carefully did up the draw strings and tied it off so it would hopefully hold in the smell. Then he brought it with him over to the door, as far away from the lab table and cot as it could go.
Stepping outside, Cisco checked on Hartley. "This is probably a stupid question, but are you okay?"
Hartley shook his head. "Not even remotely. What the hell was that?!"
"I... I think the energy released by the accelerator altered me somehow," Cisco said, finally admitting to what he'd been afraid of from the first moment he'd heart Dr. Wells' voice when there was no Dr. Wells to be found. Something he'd known was true no matter how much he'd tried to ignore it and pretend it was PTSD or hallucinations.
"You're not the only one," Hartley responded quietly.
They went back into the warehouse and took turns telling each other about the ways they'd been altered after the accelerator exploded. Cisco talked about hearing voices and the sudden addition of full blown visions, which may have started showing up as weird dreams first; Hartley responded with a terse explanation about his hearing being enhanced to the point that the world was a constant scream in his ears that home made hearing aids barely helped.
Then Cisco asked about what he'd heard in the pipeline. Dr. Wells firing Hartley for wanting to do the right thing.
The rage pouring off the other man as he confirmed that information was almost tangible.
"How did you stop it from destroying half the city?" Hartley finally asked.
"I didn't. Ronnie did." Cisco let out a shuddering breath because... because it wasn't his fault. It was Dr. Wells' fault. "Ronnie's dead now... because he stopped it."
Hartley cursed softly under his breath. "Caitlin must be devastated."
"She never smiles anymore," Cisco said en lieu of agreement. "Comes into work, checks on our coma patient, does busy work, goes home and sleeps. She barely talks to me at work anymore..."
"Wait, wait, wait... coma patient?" Hartley gave Cisco a thoroughly confused look. "What coma patient?"
"There was this guy who was struck by lightning - indoors - the night of the accelerator accident. He's been in a coma ever since. Dr. Wells had him brought to STAR Labs and basically all we do anymore is watch this dude sleep." Cisco paused and then added, "the funny thing is... the first time my powers activated I'm pretty sure I was hearing Dr. Wells from the night of the accident and... he already knew this guy's name. Like... he was expecting to meet him."
"Talking to him?"
"No. No, I think it was more of a talking to himself sort of thing. Pretty sure when this guy finally wakes up it'll be the first time he's met Dr. Wells. He's our age so... it just seems unlikely they've met before." Cisco shrugged.
Hartley nodded slowly. "Harrison put the city in danger to satisfy his own ego; injured, killed, or altered people as a result of his hubris; and he fucked my career over because I got in his way. And now its possible this was all somehow deliberate, that he was targeting some guy who is now in a coma at STAR Labs with zero protection from whatever the hell Harrison wants from him. To be perfectly honest, Cisco, I want to ruin Harrison's life."
Cisco's first instinct was to object. Dr. Wells is in a wheelchair, hasn't he suffered enough? But that rings hollow even just in Cisco's mind. A disability isn't some karmic punishment, but it is a crappy, mindset to treat it as such. But it was also the mindset that Dr. Wells himself had been promoting. Oh, look how I've suffered, how I have paid for my hubris... No, the truth was that Dr. Wells had actually gotten away with his plans so far.
"Coma-guy's foster father is a police detective," Cisco blurted out. "What if we can prove criminal negligence? Wouldn't that mean he could be charged with separate counts of murder or manslaughter for all the deaths that night?"
A smile curved its way onto Hartley's face. Not exactly a nice smile - not with how much anger he was harboring - but it was oddly good to see. "Yes," Hartley agreed. "Yes, I think it would. You said 'we.' Does that mean you're in this with me?"
Cisco nodded affirmatively. "We're in this together now."
Notes:
This has been sitting around in my unfinished folder as more of a plot summary than an actual story for a while, so I'm glad for Hartmon Fest's prompts pushing me to actually get a few pieces of this written.
(Meanwhile the favorite's prompt continues to be back-burnered because the mythology prompt turned into a dragon. Literally.)