Harmonies and Infinities
By TheLostMaximoff
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. Just some KillerVibe romance to end the year. R/R.
The first time it happens is at the West house during the Christmas party. Cisco is getting ready to leave and he gives Caitlin a hug to say goodbye. He feels the tingly buzz of his powers turn on without his consent. He sees the world through a haze of blue lighting and Caitlin is no longer Caitlin. She's wearing her Killer Frost costume that he saw in the vibe before this one. She's kneeling over him and she's . . . crying? Everything is hard to make out but she looks sad, remorseful even. Cisco can feel the blood trickling from the corners of his mouth and the air slowly seeping out of his lungs. He's dying and she's there by his side, pleading with him to stay but knowing that he can't hang on. He thinks she looks beautiful when she's herself instead of the monster that the world turned her into. He thinks this isn't such a bad way to die.
"Cisco?"
He snaps out of the vibe and sees Caitlin giving him a concerned look. He shakes his head to dislodge the ghosts and echoes of uncertain futures. He tells himself that it's only a glimpse at a possibility, not a certainty. His head is still jumbled from Savitar's meddling and he assumes this is just a temporary side effect.
"Little too much eggnog," he tells her. "Merry Christmas, Caitlin. See you in the morning."
"You too, Cisco."
By the time he returns home, he's already gotten the image of Caitlin watching him die out of his mind.
XXXXX
The next time it happens is New Year's Eve. He doesn't want to spend the holiday with his family. He had enough of that during Christmas and isn't intent on having a second helping of self-doubt and parental disappointment. So he calls Caitlin and suggests that the two of them watch movies until midnight and then ring in the new year. They're both sitting on his couch watching something on Netflix with a bowl of popcorn between them. Their eyes are glued to the screen so they don't notice when their hands reach into the bowl at the same time. Cisco's fingers graze against her and he feels it again.
He sees Killer Frost again but this time the scene is different. She's put herself between him and Savitar, trying to ward off the metal behemoth with a storm of ice. Cisco screams something, most likely her name but he can't be sure. He watches Savitar power through the cold and ram one of his blades straight through her gut. He watches her body lurch backward, sliding down further onto the spike of metal jutting from Savitar's wrist. Her body goes limp and Savitar removes it from the blade, dropping it without ceremony onto the ground. Cisco feels his body flare up with sonic energy and the rage of losing someone he loves. He watches himself fire the most powerful sonic boom he's ever conjured right at Savitar, shattering the god of speed into a million pieces of shrapnel. As the glittering shards of metal fall from the sky, he can't help but think it reminds him of snow.
Caitlin's laughter brings him back to the present and he shudders ever so slightly, trying to dislodge the vision of her death from his mind. He looks over to see she's right beside him and she returns his gaze. Her smile dims immediately as she realizes something's not right with him. She silently pleads with him to tell him what's wrong but he can't. He can't explain it anyway so he simply excuses himself for a moment. He tells her it's just a headache and pops some medication once he's in the bathroom.
XXXXX
It keeps happening over and over again, practically every time he touches her. Cisco thinks he's going crazy because he's seen so many iterations of the two of them. There was the one where Dante was the one working at STAR Labs, falling in love with Caitlin while his little brother Cisco was a gigantic asshole. There was the one with Cisco wreathed in flames, his body the vessel for the Firestorm Matrix because he was the one who went into the Pipeline that night instead of Ronnie. There was the one where both he and Caitlin were teenagers who had to be lab partners during science class, slowly falling for each other in the process. The one constant in all these vibes is the two of them. They always somehow manage to insert themselves into each other's lives.
Back in the present at STAR Labs, Caitlin asks him if she can borrow his pen and he hands it to her without thinking. The second her hand touches it, he gets hit with another vibe. He feels the sun on his face and hears the steady hum of a car engine. He's driving with the top down and she's sitting next to him, her hair whipping in the breeze. He thinks she looks beautiful, or at least even more beautiful than normal. She looks at him and smiles, her fingers lacing together with his. He sees the wedding rings on both their fingers and it makes him happier than he's ever been in his entire life.
"Cisco."
He thinks he wants to hang on longer to this dream that isn't quite a dream. It takes Caitlin two more times of calling his name before he finally lets go of the vibe. His face screams disappointment when he returns to the present and she frowns because she doesn't understand. Cisco shakes his head, trying to stop the buzzing in his brain.
"Sorry, spaced for a sec."
"No, you didn't," says Caitlin and he can tell she's getting annoyed. "You've been a little weird ever since Christmas and it's like you've been trying to avoid me lately. What's going on?"
"Power's screwed up." Cisco says it under his breath on purpose because he doesn't want to scare her or himself.
"Something's wrong with your powers?" Caitlin's concern ratchets up another five notches at least. She's always been a little worried about the effects Cisco's vibes have on his health, both mental and physical. "Tell me what's going on."
"I'm having a hard time controlling my vibes," admits Cisco because he knows she will get him to say it sooner or later. "It's . . . it's mostly when I touch you."
"Which means what?"
"I honestly have no idea."
"Hey, we'll do some tests," says Caitlin, trying to remain calm about the whole situation. "EEG, MRI, whatever we have to, okay? We'll figure this out together." She instinctively puts her hand on his shoulder to show him that he has her support just like always.
"Don't," says Cisco, trying to move away before he sees another vibe.
Her fingers graze his shoulder and he feels himself sucked into another vision. He feels something humming inside his head. It's not a headache because it doesn't hurt. It's more like a buzzing, some kind of tingly vibration that he can't explain. A torrent of images cascades in front of his eyes. He sees infinite versions of himself and of Caitlin, each one flicking to the next like a slideshow. Some are good, some are bad, and some are just strange. In all the infinite Earths, they somehow find themselves together. It makes no sense because it defies the laws of probability. It's impossible even though Cisco stopped believing in the concept of impossible a long time ago.
"Cisco!"
Cisco tries to look up at Caitlin and when he does, everything snaps into focus. The strange buzzing in his head grows still. He focuses on her face, trying to weed out all the different versions of it. He sifts through all the various lives he could have with her until he finds this one. The buzzing in his brain changes now, shifting frequencies to match another vibration. He realizes what's going on when he senses the harmonic frequency coming from her. His vibrations were all screwed up and he's guessing it was because of Savitar playing games with his head. All this time, his brain has been trying to find the right frequency to get things back to normal. All this time, he's been using Caitlin like a tuning fork because she's the one constant in his life, the axis on which his world revolves. She's always there no matter the time or the reality. He focuses again on her face and there's his Caitlin, tears at the corners of her eyes because she's so afraid she's lost him.
"I'm good," says Cisco and he feels his vibrational frequency pulse in time with hers, making a symphony that only he can hear. "That was trippy as hell but I'm good."
"You promise?"
"Yeah, I promise." Cisco doesn't realize it but their foreheads are pressed together. He's too busy getting lost in her eyes. "It's always you, Caitlin. All the stuff I kept vibing . . . you were always there. It was always the two of us together."
"What do you think that means?"
"I think it means I love you." Cisco has no clue what he's doing, barely even a clue what reality he's in. He doesn't care as long as he's with her. He kisses her and it feels right, good, and pure. It feels like the stars aligning, like a harmonic convergence.
"I think you should've done that a long time ago," says Caitlin once their lips part. "I love you too, Cisco. Just don't scare me like that again, okay? I don't want you leaving me."
"Never," he promises her and kisses her again, knowing that even if he did leave he would always find his way back to her.