Warnings: violence and character death. This is pure speculation for the end of the season, but spoilers through 3x18. There are also hints of Killervibe, but nothing explicit.

Enjoy!

The body was found early Wednesday morning, discovered by a janitor whose only job was to recycle discarded programs and throw out plastic wine cups and vacuum between the seats. The cops arrived on the scene half an hour later, the Flash five minutes after that. By then, there was nothing to be done but stare at the frozen man, file paperwork, begin the hunt for the new metahuman threat. The police force was used to this procedure, even if the deceased was one of their own.

The Flash disappeared quickly from the scene. An EMT shook his head. A forensics expert shrugged on a jacket.

The newspapers printed Julian Albert's name next to a photo of him before his blood had been turned to ice; and, beside that, a photo of the empty, ice-slicked opera house where he'd been found.

"What makes you think I'm going to kill you?"

Cisco swallowed. Hard. "I don't know, maybe the fact that you have me tied up in a creepy old abandoned mansion. There's not much to suggest you won't disembowel me and brick me up inside a wall or something. Not that I want to give you ideas," he added quickly.

At that, his assailant gave a low, throaty chuckle. "Oh, Cisco. If I wanted you dead, you'd already be staring at the lid of your coffin. Just ask your CSI friend Albert."

And at that, Killer Frost leaned close enough that her cold breath bathed Cisco's face. Her nails, still rough at the edges like Caitlin's had always been, grazed the hollow of Cisco's throat. They were cold enough to feel hot to the touch, like liquid nitrogen, and Cisco jerked backward as much as he could in his chair. Frost, satisfied, smiled.

"There was no point in killing Julian," Cisco said hoarsely, trying to regain some control as shivers of equal cold and terror tore through him.

Frost practically stalked, her steps slow and her heels clicking as she paced. "Are you saying there is a point in killing you?"

Now, that was a compelling question, Cisco had to admit. It wasn't like he'd been lurking about, searching for trouble, when he'd been knocked out cold—literally, cold—and tied to a chair in some dilapidated mansion. He'd been walking to the gas station two blocks from his apartment for a six-pack of Mountain Dew and a Redbox rental. Sure, he'd been trying to track Killer Frost for weeks, but the only malicious thing on his mind that night had been how he could hide snacks so Barry didn't eat all of them during their movie night—

Barry, Cisco thought in relief. Barry would realize he was missing when he wasn't there for movie night. Then again, Cisco had become prone to missing social events, even casual ones, since Caitlin went poof-into-Killer-Frost. Barry probably wouldn't give it a second thought. Which…crap.

"If you're not planning on killing me," Cisco said, "then why the whole routine? What's it gonna be? Torture? Using me as bait for Barry? Again with the giving her ideas, he thought exasperatedly.

"Oh, no, none of that yet," said Frost, trailing her fingers along a dusty windowsill while Cisco tried not to gag at the word yet. "You're far too useful for that. Unless you misbehave and cause me more trouble than you're worth."

As subtly as he could, Cisco tested the limits of his bonds. Both hands were secured behind his back by something cold and unyielding, tight enough to cut off circulation. There was no give to them, as there might be in handcuffs, and he realized with a jolt that these were his own power-dampening devices. In addition to his wrists being bound, the power cuffs themselves seemed to be secured to the chair, and his ankles were zip-tied to its legs. If he was going anywhere, it would be in an awkward chair-shuffle.

"Be thankful; I could have used ice as my means of restraint," said Frost, confirming that Cisco had evidently not been as discreet as he thought. He stilled immediately. Frost continued her slow walk past the window. "Did you know this used to be the home of Dr. Snow's grandparents? She used to come here every weekend as a child. Until Grandma Snow left the stove on a little too long and torched the interior beyond recognition. They didn't have the heart to rebuild." She smirked. "Dr. Snow dreamt of this place often as an adult. She thought she might fix it up if she ever got the money."

Caitlin had never mentioned this place. Cisco looked around, taking in the scorched floor, a chandelier that hung sideways from the ceiling. "You mean you dreamt of it," he said firmly. "You're still Caitlin, underneath all that makeup."

"Keep telling yourself that," Frost said. "Caitlin Snow is as good as dead. And so will you be, if you become a nuisance."

"Why else would you take me here, of all places?" Cisco pressed on. "You have all of Caitlin's thoughts and memories, right? You still want this. You still long for this place. You're still her."

"I have all of Dr. Snow's memories, so I know exactly what you're capable of," Frost said, at last turning her attention back to Cisco. Her appraising look, white eyes under dark lids, made him shiver again. "Which is why I'm asking you to build me something."

At this, Cisco nearly scoffed. However, he was far too terrified to scoff, so he landed on something more akin to a strangled gulp. "You kidnapped me just so you could have me build you some tech? Who are you, Leonard Snart?"

"I don't need any tech, Cisco," said Frost with a sweet smile. "I want you to build me a suit."

It was a phone booth that Cisco found first, a small blue thing around the side of a gas station. Miraculously, he still had his wallet in his pocket—Frost hadn't been concerned with taking his money, only his phone. With trembling hands, he shook out some coins and shoved them indiscriminately into the machine.

The line rang once. Twice. Cisco pressed himself against the wall, facing the road and the forest beyond it through which he had just come. His palms sweated on the receiver as he clutched it with both hands, as though it might slip away from him like a balloon.

"Hello?"

"Barry-oh-thank-God-Barry-please." The words came tumbling out of Cisco's mouth in a rush, and all at once he was crying, sobbing, shaking, his knees too weak to hold him upright. "Please-Barry-please-I-need—"

"Cisco?" Barry's voice crackled from static for a moment, and Cisco's heart stopped beating. "Cisco, shit, I—we've been looking, we—where are you?"

"I don't know," Cisco blurted, hiccupping with tears and panic. "I'm at a—I'm at a gas station—"

"Deep breaths. Can you open up a breach home?"

"N-n-no."

"Okay." The other end of the phone line was filled with a loud rushing noise, and Cisco knew that Barry was already running. "Can you tell me anything else? What kind of gas station?"

Cisco looked around wildly until he caught sight of the bright red sign. "QuikTrip," he said. "It's a QuickTrip, please, come and get me, please, please—"

Before she finds me, he wanted to add, but before he could get the words out, he felt Barry's warmth static into being in front of him: a crackle of plasma too fast to take shape. The next second he was sitting on a couch, shivering so hard he thought he might turn intangible.

"Joe!' Barry shouted. "Joe, help!"

"I'm ok-k-kay," Cisco said, while the speedster paced back and forth in the West living room. The TV murmured the morning news in a corner. The smell of coffee permeated the space. It was all so warm, colorful, soft. "Really."

Seemingly not knowing which way to turn, Barry pivoted and zipped to a crouch in front of Cisco.

"Six days," he said. "You were missing six days, and I thought—it was her, wasn't it? It was Killer Frost?" Cisco nodded dazedly, and Barry ran a hand through his hair. "Jesus. How did you escape?"

"I don't know," Cisco said. "She left me alone and I just—I just ran."

"Barry, what's…" Joe hurtled down the steps in a half-buttoned shirt and slacks and stopped dead at the sight of Cisco. "Cisco. What…we need to get him to a hospital, Bar—"

"I'm fine," Cisco said, and for the first time he actually marginally believed it. Now that he was back in familiar territory, now that some of the panic and adrenaline was wearing off, he felt much more stable. "I'm okay. Not hurt, just tired and hungry."

"Dehydrated, too, by the looks of it," Joe said, throwing a glance Barry's way. "How'd you find him?"

"Went to every QuikTrip in the state," Barry said, before realizing this wasn't what Joe was asking and opening his mouth to recover.

Cisco stopped him before he did. "I escaped. I found an opening, and I took it."

"But what did she even want with you if not…?" Joe paused, uncomfortable. "Not to be insensitive, but if Killer Frost isn't going to kill…"

Barry looked at Cisco hard, fearful. "Was she trying to turn you against me? Turn you to her side?"

Cisco shook his head insistently. "Nothing like that." And did you think I would? he wanted to add, but didn't.

He remembered the first conversation they'd had after finding Julian frozen solid at the opera house. You can't kill her, Cisco had implored. We can save her.

We need to do whatever it takes, Barry had reasoned, before Cisco slammed a door on his face.

"She wanted me to build her something that would protect her against you," Cisco finally said.

The shift in Barry's facial expression was like a reflex; a twinge of fear, a shock of pain. "Did you?"

"Yeah," Cisco said. "Yeah, I did."

When Barry came limping into the cortex, he was sporting a black eye and a serious case of frostbite on his left shoulder.

"I'm okay," he groaned, waving off a concerned Iris and thunking down into a bed. "Just give me a few hours. She packs a punch."

"She kicked your ass, more like it," Cisco submitted wryly. "You shouldn't have gone out there alone." Barry mumbled a thank-you as Iris wheeled over a heat lamp, but said no more. Cisco shifted his weight. "I take it her suit worked?"

"Of course her suit worked. You built it." At Cisco's flinch, Barry corrected, "Sorry, that was meant to be a compliment."

"I know," Cisco said. "It's just not the first time I've created something designed to hurt you."

"Listen to me," said Barry, angling himself toward Cisco as much as possible while keeping his shoulder beneath the heat. "I don't blame you. Not even a little. You were under duress. She would've killed you. Okay? Don't carry that blame."

"You say this suit can, what, absorb kinetic energy?" Iris asked, scrunching up her face in confusion. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"It means speedster attacks are meaningless," Barry said. "I can't touch her. No speed punches, no lightning, nothing. That suit's like armor."

Iris crossed her arms. "I don't mean to be callous, but…she's not wearing a mask. Why not just punch her in the face?"

"Another element of the design," Cisco said, "is a modified version of Caitlin's necklace. Instead of deadening her powers, this reacts with them. It amplifies her cold aura, so to speak. It has an extreme neutralizing effect on the speed force, and worse the closer you get." He chewed his lip, fixated now on the ice encasing Barry's shoulder. "Like I said, specifically designed to negate her biggest threat. Speedsters."

"Alright, well…" Iris, clearly struggling to remain positive, stretched her face into a tight smile. "We'll find a way to stop her. We will."

We will.

"Just need some time to heal." Barry's eyes drifted closed. "Trust me, Cisco, we'll find a way around this."

We will.

"She nearly killed you, Barry," Iris said softly. "She's nearly killed both of you. Caitlin's gone. I don't know if there's a way around this. I'm not sure we can bring her back."

We will.

"No, but…" Barry's voice was thin, pained. "We'll find a way to…we'll find a way. Regardless."

We will.

A smudge of red, a smudge of yellow in the snow. Scorch marks, stains, primary colors where they didn't belong.

And yet, here Cisco stood, representing the both of them. If he was being honest with himself, he still felt like an imposter in his Vibe suit—even though he'd designed it himself, even though he'd fought a dozen times in it already, even though he'd purposely integrated himself with the rest of the team by including red and yellow stripes on his suit.

His suit. He'd shaped it for himself, by himself. That fact alone should have given him confidence. But perhaps it was precisely the problem.

He could not control himself; not in the way he controlled others. Their lives in his hands. Fabric and leather and stitches.

"I'm flattered you came to see me," said Frost, prowling back and forth in front of the fallen Barry and Wally. "Every time your friends have run in to me, you've been suspiciously absent. Give a girl a gift and disappear from the face of the earth." She tilted her head. "I thought you had more class than that, Cisco."

"Let's cut the crap." Cisco's boots crunched in the snow. Other than that, the forest was eerily quiet. "We both know what's going to happen here."

"If possible, Frost's eyes had gotten even paler since Cisco had last seen her, in that old mansion. They practically twinkled with sick delight. "I see—this is what you vibed, isn't it? All those months ago? Our great showdown." The last two words curled in the frigid air like acid. "Remember how scared you were when you saw this?"

Of course he remembered; he'd hardly stopped being scared since he saw it. Now, though, it was more gut-wrenchingly terrifying than it ever had been, because he'd seen the pieces of it come together. The pieces he'd helped put together. Frost grinned, white hair stark where it fell over her shoulders.

The suit was some of his best work, Cisco had to admit. Barry had described it as armor, and so it was—like the outfit of Earth Two Killer Frost, it covered most of her body, dark blue leather, with silver detailing around her collar and sleeves. And that was just the presentation: he knew intimately the tech that went into its functionality. Elegant, effective, powerful, deadly.

"Don't try to get in my head," Cisco said. "You don't know me."

"Of course I know you," Frost purred. "Don't you remember? I have all of Caitlin Snow's memories. All the movie nights, all the heartbroken couchsurfing, all the science exhibit dates, all the laughter and the blubbering…yada yada yada. If I didn't know better, I'd think she loved you."

"Those memories don't belong to you," Cisco said, beginning a slow walk in the hopes of putting himself between Frost and his friends. He couldn't tell, yet, if they were dead or simply incapacitated, but he couldn't afford to consider the possibilities now.

Thankfully, Frost obliged, mirroring his movement as they began to circle each other. "Poor Cisco. Even with all that foresight, you couldn't save your friend. Not then, not ever. But she was so weak before me. Trust me, she is better off dead."

Cisco clenched his fists in an effort to control his shaking. "She's not dead. She's still in you, fighting. You can't kill her."

Frost's laugh rang clear through the forest. "And why do you say that? You watched her die, didn't you? Everything you love, taken from you."

Not to be distracted by the barb, Cisco swallowed hard. "Why else would you go after Julian, the opera house? Why else would you hole up in her grandparents' house? Why else but because there's still a part of you fighting back?"

At last, the humor winked out of Frost's eyes, and her face turned stony. "You're mistaken."

"Am I?" Finally, he'd reached a spot where Barry and Wally were no longer in the line of fire. At the same time, he felt the temperature drop a few degrees. The jagged crystal at Frost's throat, far less beautiful than the one on Caitlin's old necklace, gleamed. Cold aura, Cisco thought. "What are you going to do about it? Threaten me with psychoanalysis all day?"

"No, Frost," Cisco said, grounding himself as the temperature plummeted another five, ten degrees. "I'm going to do right by Caitlin. You're just a mask. You're nothing. I'm going to save her." Ten more degrees. He gritted his teeth. "You know why I'm going to beat you? Because you have no control."

The icicle missed him by inches. He heard it whistling past his ear, the sensation brief but the ringing noise lingering in his ears. Two more shot his way, and he ducked—again, a margin too narrow for comfort. With his heartbeat strangling him, he backtracked and ran for cover, diving behind a tree just as another icicle soared his way. The knife-sharp tip grazed his arm, slicing a clean line through a suit that was supposed to be reinforced. Apparently, it was no good against killer icicles. He breathed hard and closed his eyes, back pressed against the tree trunk, warm blood trickling down his arm.

"No control?" Frost shouted across the expanse. "And who was the one who constantly told Caitlin she had no control over her life? Who was it, Vibe? Who told everyone about her powers, against her express wishes? Who was the one told her he believed her powers weren't evil, and then turned around and built her power-suppressing cuffs? Who was the one who wouldn't let her die?"

Three thunks hit the tree trunk; a fourth icicle missed its mark and thwapped through the air. Cisco kept his eyes tightly shut, trembling. His cheeks burned with the cold.

"Who was it, Cisco?"

At last, Cisco mustered up enough courage to shout back, "I wasn't the one who took off the necklace."

"No, but you didn't try very hard to keep it from happening. You didn't put it back on once I'd healed!" Another icicle hit the tree. "You took Caitlin's death away from her! You made me this!"

In one fluid motion, Cisco opened his eyes, spun from behind the tree, opened his fist. A jet of vibrational energy shot forth, directly at Frost, and this time it was her who barely had time to duck. She retaliated with a set of icicles and an unbounded, crazed laugh.

"That's the spirit!" she said. "I prefer to kill something that puts up a fight."

Cisco, who had ducked behind the tree again for cover, whirled again, this time with both hands outstretched. One blast went wide, and the other came within inches of her shoulder. Frost's eyes were deep-set, murderous, intent, following Cisco's movements like a lion tracking prey.

When he saw the icicle headed straight for his chest he knew, without a doubt, that he had reached the inevitable.

His heart had been stopped too many times in his life; throwing up his hands to protect it was a reflex. The air rippled, pulsed, shimmered: the icicle shattered in midair, a terrifyingly beautiful shock of two powers colliding. Like stardust, the pieces of the once-icicle shimmered and floated harmlessly to Cisco's feet. Cisco watched the broken pieces fall, transfixed.

He was only drawn back when he felt the thud in his side, the eruption of agony, the new icicle protruding from the leather of his jacket.

"Ironic, all this time I've been sentimental," said Frost, while Cisco staggered, fell to his knees. "When it was so easy to kill you, all along. Funny, this is pretty darn close to the wound that stopped her heart, isn't' it?"

Cisco gasped against the pain, knees numb in the snow. The icicle lodged on his side seemed to sear him from the inside out, dispelling the numbness he'd previously felt. Frost, with a calculated sort of casualness, knelt down in front of him, the two of them eye-level.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" she hissed.

Instead of responding, Cisco held up a hand and sent a bone-shattering blast to her ribcage. She toppled back with a yelp of pain, fingernails scrabbling against the dark blue leather on her abdomen.

With monumental effort, Cisco dragged himself forward on his knees toward her prone form. Her unfocused gaze found his face as he knelt over her.

"How…"

Cisco's bloodied hand found her modified necklace and, before she could say another word, he yanked it off. She gasped, and Cisco's eyes grew hot. He tossed the trinket to the snow, where it lay useless. The air warmed, if only slightly.

"You may have all of Caitlin's memories, but you're not her." Cisco ripped off his goggles and discarded them beside the necklace. He didn't need them, really, and it was hard enough to see through them without tears muddling his vision. "You don't know me like she did. Or, rather, you don't understand me like she did. If you did, you'd know I would do anything for her."

"Anything but let her die," Frost spat, blood-smeared lips now attempting that signature wicked smile. "I heal quickly. When I do, I'm going to take great pleasure in watching you die. Shattered bones won't keep me down forever."

"No," Cisco admitted. "But a shattered nervous system might."

He placed a splayed hand on her sternum, and she froze.

"The suit," she said. "It was supposed to protect me."

"It was designed to protect you against kinetic attacks. Speedsters, your biggest threat. That's what you asked for." Cisco pressed his palm downward, feeling out that vibrational energy, finding a heartbeat that had once given him such hope. "That was always your biggest weakness. You thought you knew me. You never considered that I was your biggest threat, because you never understood how much Caitlin meant to me. What I would do for her. You never even thought to create protection against me."

At last he found the intricate vibrations within her system, all the nerves and pulse points and fibers. His own energy mounted to accommodate it, the power building, building, building in response. Frost's suit might as well have been made of paper—it was useless, a false barricade, a cheap costume, a disguise that was fooling no one.

Frost wheezed again under him, perhaps sensing the intensifying, destructive power in Cisco's fingertips. She was scrambling for life, scrambling for control over her own failing body.

"Killing me won't bring her back," she said.

"No, it won't," Cisco said. And then he pulsed.

It was over in a matter of seconds. Cisco opened his eyes only when he felt the heartbeat cease beneath his palm. Frost's lifeless eyes stared up at the treetops, the white irises bleeding brown at the edges. Cisco shut them before lurching away from the body.

A trickle of wetness down his hip was the only reminder that he still had an icicle lodged in his side. The massive expenditure of energy had left him entirely numb in body, and his mind followed suit.

Ten feet away, Barry and Wally stirred. It was a sight that should have provided him relief, but he felt nothing. He tried to take his feet. A critical process failed. He collapsed beside the body, back against the snow, and didn't attempt to rise again.

For a moment, all was quiet. The snow had stopped falling; the trees settled under the weight of an unexpected season. A hush of winter evenings—like the one in the parking lot of STAR Labs after Cisco's first day, the one when they'd said goodbye for the first time.

It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Ramon. I think you'll be a great addition to the team.

Call me Cisco, please. It's a long walk back. Are you sure you don't want my gloves?

I don't mind the cold. I'll see you tomorrow, Cisco.

See you tomorrow.

Bootsteps in the frost. Barry and Wally's warmth pressed close, and the spell was broken.

"Going into shock, I think. We need to get him to a doctor right now. He'll be okay, he'll, Jesus—Cisco? Hey, man, can you hear me?"

"I want to go home," Cisco said numbly, blinking up at nothing. "Please. I want to go home. I want to go back."

Thank you so much for reading! I am a loser and literally cried writing this, but it's all worth it if you take a moment to comment with your thoughts. Suffer with me.

Till next time,

Penn