(A/N) Another How It Should Have Ended! This one for this request from Tumblr: "could you do a killervibe fic where Cisco and Caitlin pretend do be their earth 2 doubles, in order to fool Zoom, or something." Written before 2.22 aired.
Cisco swiped Barry's keycard, hoping against hope that Zoom thought a basic keycard reader was beneath his dignity to disable -
- aaaaaaaand in.
Caitlin whipped around, almost falling out of her chair. Barry's chair, still cranked high to accommodate his long legs so her high heels dangled. When she saw him, her face froze in a strange, diffuse expression.
"Hey," he said. "I know I'm a little short for a stormtrooper, but I'm here to rescue you."
The expression pulled together into a sneer. "It's about time you showed up."
Guilt twisted his stomach. "Y-yeah," he said. "I know. It's been - "
"Joe saw me two days ago, and I'm sure it didn't slip his mind to let you know," she snarled. "But you left me here to rot with that psychopath."
"There was - there was a - "
"Oh, I'm sure there was some kind of an emergency, there always is. What were you doing? Building a gadget? Fighting a metahuman? Is that where you rank me, somewhere below your monster of the week?"
"Okay - you have a right - but - "
"Tell me, did you even notice I was gone, or was there somebody else to analyze chemicals and dispense band-aids?"
"We noticed," he said through his teeth. "I noticed." Like a hole in his stomach, he'd noticed. Like his right arm missing. But he'd kept going because that was what you did, you handled the problem right in front of you even though the problem that wasn't right in front of you was knotting up your internal organs.
"Isn't that sweet. Fuck you, Cisco Ramon. I don't want anything to do with you or the Flash or Star Labs ever again."
He paused and gave her a hard look.
She'd reamed him out before, but with words like a scalpel, sharp and cutting. Fuck you was blunt force trauma.
But her eyes glittered with cold and -
And panic.
His stomach settled. Yeah, he should feel guilty, but that wasn't what this was about. "Puh-leeze. Is that the best you can do at pushing me away? Pitiful. You did better when Ronnie died. But you meant it, then."
Her face crumpled. "Cisco," she said in a strangled whisper. "Please. He will kill you. All of you. Please go."
"Remember what I told you once? Not while I'm around?" He gave her his most reassuring grin, hoping it looked believable. "And it's the same for you. I know it is. So, I'm not biting it, not if you have anything to say about it."
"What makes you think I can stop him?"
"How's that supposed to convince me to leave you here? Huh? We are blowing this joint, like, ten minutes ago."
She didn't look reassured one little bit. Her face scrunched up like she was trying not to cry. "There's more."
"Usually is," he said, hooking an extra chair with his foot and flopping into it. He tugged her handcuffed hands toward him to examine the lock. The chain was looped into a hook on the underside of the chair. He dug in his pocket for the handcuff key that Joe had given him. "Jesus, your hands are cold."
"I'm cold all over now. All the time."
He looked up at her, transfixed with horror, as the handcuffs clicked open.
"Something's happening to me," she said, not bothering to pull her hands out of the cuffs. "Frost said it started for her the same way."
"You saw her? Is she here?" His brain whirred. Maybe he could get her to turn on Zoom again -
Underneath the whirr, something in him gibbered. No, no, not Caitlin, anyone but Caitlin -
"She's dead. He killed her. In front of me." She licked her lips and it looked like the spit froze. "But she said she was cold, all the time, at the beginning."
"Okay," he said, tugging the cuffs off her wrists. They swung from the hook, clanging together unmusically. "Okay. It's gonna - we'll figure this out. We'll figure out why this is happening, but later, okay?"
"He says there's darkness in me. He says I'll give into it. That I'll take my place by his side. That I'll be happy to be with him."
"And it's that or our horrific deaths, right?"
"I won't," she said, her face hard. "But he keeps saying it."
"There's a guy who needs to learn that 'get the fuck out my face' means 'no,'" Cisco said. He closed his hands around hers. It was like holding two popsicles. "You were there for me, with my powers. I'm here for you. And I will be. Okay?"
She pulled her fingers from his. "Please go. I can't watch you - "
"Not a chance. I'm taking you with me or I'm staying here."
"God, would you - !" She broke off, her eyes going wide.
"Cisco Ramon," said a monstrous voice. A nightmare voice. It had haunted his dreams for months even before he knew who it truly belonged to and now that he did, it haunted his waking hours too.
He couldn't move. He was seriously frozen, all his muscles locked, his brain firing off FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR from every neuron.
Caitlin took in a breath, and then something about her - changed. The way she was sitting, maybe. The tilt of her head. The set of her mouth.
"Zoom," she drawled. "About time you showed up. Why is it that when I was playing hard to get, you were all over me, but now I've decided to stop stringing you along, you're nowhere to be found?"
Cisco could see her trembling, a fine quiver barely visible even from this distance, and when her hands clenched, even that went still.
"What's he doing here?"
She slid off the chair. Practically slinked past him, like she was wearing an imaginary leather corset. "Cisco was just telling me how he's come to stay."
He gulped a breath. Samurai man bun mess, he thought. Hartley-style drawl. Frickin' pretentious guyliner. Sweet-ass leather jacket.
Hey, not all Reverb's style choices had been regrettable.
He pushed himself to his feet, turned on his heel, and prayed he wouldn't vomit from straight-up terror when he stared into Zoom's bottomless black eyes.
It was a near thing.
"You expect me to believe that you want to defect from your precious Flash?"
Though his skin crawled at the way contempt dripped from the last word, Cisco shrugged. "Hey, I'm a pragmatist," he said. "I know when it's time to jump ship. I had good times at Star Labs, but a guy's gotta look out for number one, yanno? You seem to have a pretty sweet setup for metahumans. Reverb did okay, anyway. And I'm not gonna be stupid enough to do like he did, so no need to worry there."
Too much? He swallowed, trying to keep it inaudible.
Caitlin was a foot away from Zoom, which was about three thousand miles too close as far as Cisco was concerned. She reached out and laid her hand on his arm.
"Cait?" Zoom said, and forgot to make his voice monstrous.
Cisco saw a tiny shudder twitch across her shoulders, but she tilted her head back and gave Zoom a look through her lashes. Cisco remembered seeing her throw that look at Ronnie when she wanted something. He'd always given in. Cisco had never blamed him.
"I'm going to need minions," she crooned. "This one's a start."
They had no idea what they were doing, Cisco knew. Either of them. But they weren't dead yet, so that was a trend they were going to want to keep up.
"Excuse me," he said. "Henchman pay grade or I walk."
She cast him a scornful look over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. "Typical. Always have to be the center of attention."
"And you always have to burst my bubble," he said.
Zoom cut in on their high-quality banter. "What use are you to me?"
"You saw what Reverb could do," Cisco said. He was almost not shaking now. Awesome.
"You're not Reverb."
And thank all the gods and little fishes for that, sweet-ass leather jacket or no. "Not yet," he said. "What you're getting with me is untapped potential."
"What I'm getting with you is a failure."
Caitlin went stiff, and Zoom's face snapped to hers. Faster than thought, his hand was around her neck and he'd slammed her up against the nearest wall. "What's your game, Caitlin?" he snarled.
Something boiled up from Cisco's stomach, something born of guilt and panic and rage at being once again compared and found wanting, and maybe, maybe with just a little tinge of sweet-ass leather jacket. He threw out his hands and all that something burst out of them and slammed into Zoom's broad back.
It threw him against the wall, against Caitlin, who let out a smothered cry as they both collapsed to the ground.
Cisco scrambled forward to pull her out from under Zoom, but froze on the spot when Zoom pushed himself up. "What did you do?" he snarled. "What did you do?" He took a step, wobbling like a newborn fawn. Like -
Like Barry when his speed had been drained.
"I don't - I - "
Behind Zoom, Caitlin scrambled and writhed away while he was distracted. Cisco backed away, trying to keep Zoom's attention. "I don't know, I did something, I, um - "
Zoom lurched forward - at normal speed, human speed, but still too fast to avoid - and grabbed Cisco by the chin, while his other hand clamped around the back of his head.
He thought of those poor cops in Jitters, their necks broken in a split nanosecond and wondered if maybe you could hear your own neck snapping -
Caitlin screamed, "No!" and all of a sudden everything was cold, bitter cold, and Cisco thought, Oh I guess you don't hear it then, when you die like this - But Zoom made a strangled, gagging noise and then there was a bloody icicle sticking out of his throat.
Everything was still for a moment.
Maybe this was what it was like to be Barry and have the world stop around you.
Then Zoom's grip loosened, and he fell to his knees, and then onto his face. Cisco stumbled backward, hands stretched out to - to do what? He didn't even know he'd done it the first time.
Caitlin stood over him, her eyes wide and horrified and blueblueblue, mist spilling off her hands.
The noises were - he was never going to forget the noises that Hunter Zoloman made as he died.
He gave the twitching, gurgling thing on the floor a wide berth. "Caitlin! We gotta go! Now!"
She jolted, her glowing eyes snapping up to his.
"Now!" he said, reaching out for her hand. The mist reached back, crawling cold fingers over his skin.
She jerked her hand back out of his reach, but spun and bolted out the door half a step behind him. They left the stuff of nightmares bleeding out on the floor, just a mortal man after all.
FINIS