I really love Caitlin's PTSD in late season 2 but then it just disappears, even though season 3 takes place like five seconds after season 2 ends. Seriously, what? PTSD doesn't do that. So I guess this fix-it fic has just been sitting around on my computer for a few years because I was initially too angry about changing the end scene between Caitlin and Cisco in "King Shark" but now that the end of season 4 has happened, I was able to finally process my idea about Caitlin - panic and Hunter Zolomon triggering the first appearance of her cold powers.
She's on her way out of the grocery store. Literal grocery bags in her hands, one brown paper bag tucked neatly in her arm as she went to her car. It's a beautiful spring day, and there aren't any supervillains at the moment, so she actually has time to get groceries for cooking instead of stocking up on hot pockets (that Cisco will take). That's when she sees him.
Her first thought is Zoom. Then Jay. Then a fractured image of her own face, white with shock and cold as she bled out on the floor, stabbed with her own icicle.
It's several long moments, moments in which Caitlin can't feel her fingers or toes and her head throbs, before she realizes that this man is wearing glasses, loafers, a button-down shirt. With his folded newspaper and briefcase, he looks almost professorial – miles from jeans-and-t-shirt Jay – Zoom. Not Jay. It's not Jay. It's not Zoom. It's not Zoom.
She still can't breathe. Caitlin's hand fumbles in her bag for her phone, call Barry, panic button – but there's nothing wrong with this man. He's not doing anything wrong. He just looks like Jay. But all of her instincts scream. She's going to die. He's going to kill her. She joined the wrong side, she sided with her friends, and because it wasn't with him, he's going to come back through that portal, black and demonic and ethereal and repay her with pain and death. He must've come out of the speed force and now he's going to come and kill her like he told her he would –
It's several more long moments before Caitlin realizes that she's kneeling in the remains of her groceries in the parking lot, hands and feet numb and cold. Her breath is a cloud in the warm spring air, visible. Her head is aching, and she feels like she might've passed out or something, because she's cold and hot and not entirely here.
"Ma'am, are you all right?"
that
VOICE
"Get away from me," Caitlin screams, holding out her hands in front of her face and scrambling back up to her feet in a painful, crablike movement, her heels getting in her way. "Get away from me!"
Hunter Zolomon stops a few feet from her, aborting his attempt to help her to her feet. He stares at his arm.
Ice crusts the sleeve of his blazer. His fingertips are pink with cold.
"No, no, no, no-" Caitlin hears something, in her own voice – a kind of echo, that makes her think of still ponds for skating and dead, black winter trees and crisp winter mornings and frostbite. A feeling like frozen water cascades down her scalp, down her spine.
Woke up one day, cold, pale. Thought I was sick. Turns out it was something else entirely.
"No, no, no, NO-" Caitlin moves backward, more and more scared. Terrified. Hunter Zolomon stays where he is, and opens and closes his hand, trying to get blood flow back to it. He'll – be fine. He – Caitlin doesn't want him to be fine.
Leaving her groceries, Caitlin backs away even further, then runs for her car. Each footprint leaves a small, slippery, perfect patch of ice. No, no, no, no –
It's frigid in her car and it won't start initially. Hunter Zolomon is across the parking lot now, though, and closed in a safe space away from him Caitlin finds that she can take deep breaths. With each one, the temperature rises a few degrees until it's normal again.
Her hands shake as she slowly reverses out of her spot and turns onto the road. Cisco was terrified for her – terrified of her – when he got back to Earth-1 after meeting Killer Frost, and she'd told him she didn't have the meta-gene caused by the particle accelerator explosion. What would he say now? She doesn't understand what's happening and can't give him any reassurances that she isn't about to become – her.
I promise you, Killer Frost will never exist on this earth.
Instead of taking the turn toward home, Caitlin takes the exit that leads out of the city to STAR Labs.
If she's going to keep her promise, she's going to need to run some tests.