A/N: I really want the team to stop letting Cicada run away, so I wrote a fix-it for their latest confrontation with him. Let me know what you think!
They'd been through this before. 52 times before, according to Nora, and each time Frost failed.
She hated that Cicada had gotten away the night they transported those metas to safety. If she'd just stood up fast enough she could have kept Cicada from running away, but she'd decided to catch her breath.
Now, she was going to fix that.
When she jumped through the breach with Cisco and Ralph, she could see Cicada's dagger hurtling toward him. She landed on the roof as the dagger stuck in his chest, and watched as he fell with a cry of pain. Nora started to turn her attention away from him, looking toward Iris, and Frost reacted.
Frost ran forward as Cicada started moving, bringing her hands back to gather cold energy. She could see in his eyes that he was going to run, in that split second she met them, and as he jumped to his feet, she thrust her hands forward. The wave of frozen mist collided with him in the air and sent him over the edge.
She could feel everyone's gazes on her, but didn't stop moving, jumping to the edge of the roof and creating an ice bridge to follow Cicada. The man was falling fast, apparently trying to recover himself. Frost leaned forward and rode her ice bridge closer before sending another attack at him. Not mist, this time. Ice, that slammed into him and seemed to knock him out. He was free-falling, the ground rapidly approaching.
Don't, Caitlin said.
Frost created a slide for Cicada, letting him roll down it roughly and onto the street. "I wasn't going to let him die like that," Frost said, for the record.
"What are you doing?" Nora yelled.
Frost ignored her, extending the ice bridge she was standing on to the ground and sliding off next to where Cicada lay. He wasn't moving, and his eyes were closed.
She bombarded him with another wave of frozen mist, to ensure he was unconscious.
"Frost, stop!" Nora said, running down to her.
"Are you gonna run him to the pipeline, or am I dragging his sorry ass across the ice?"
Nora was staring at her. A breach opened and the others joined them, looking stunned. "You got him?" Cisco asked.
"Make a breach back to the lab!" Frost ordered. She sent another round of mist at Cicada, making sure to keep it tame. She couldn't kill him, but she definitely couldn't let him wake up.
Cisco aimed a fist at the air near Frost, and she knelt down to wrap Cicada's arm around her shoulders before jumping through the breach, not bothering to look back. She landed in the pipeline, and lugged Cicada into a cell. He was just stirring as the door sealed. "You… will… pay…" he said in that slow voice, fixing her with a death glare.
Frost imagined she had the same kind of look in her eyes. "Good luck with that, Orlin."
And she closed the outer door.
When she got back up to the cortex, the others were waiting for her.
"How did you -?" Ralph started.
"I didn't want to play his game anymore," Frost said in a loud voice. "I was sick of letting him slink away. So I didn't give him the chance." She met all of their eyes, daring them to start reprimanding her.
No one seemed upset. Cisco had a partial smile. "You got results. He's in the pipeline."
"We can use the meta cure when Barry gets back," Ralph said.
Nora was studying her. "How did you know he was going to try to run?"
"Because we let him run last time," Frost said, "and I learn from my mistakes."