Chapter One - Caitlin Snow Becomes Killer Frost
Based on episode 2x20
With the text of Zoom's plans sent, Caitlin leaned her head back against the police desk and exhaled in relief. Barry would make sure everyone was safe. Even without his speed, he'd do everything possible to protect Central City.
She placed the phone on the floor next to her and shifted to prop her elbow on her knee. If she relaxed for a moment, the handcuff dug unforgivingly into her wrist, and she was tired of holding up her arm.
You think you are not like me, but I've seen the darkness inside of you.
Jay had said it as if he were merely commenting on the weather. A simple statement of fact. A truth. His, though, not hers. Not hers.
She forced her mind away from his words and looked around the abandoned room. Papers littered the desks, every computer monitor was powered on, the news blared from the TV on the wall, and chairs were pushed aside as if waiting for their owners to return. It was like a ghost town, and it sent a chill down her spine.
I've seen the darkness inside of you. Just like it was inside of Killer Frost. All you have to do is unlock it.
He'd knelt in front of her with Jay's eyes and Jay's face, but the way he spoke, the way he moved was pure Hunter Zolomon. Zoom. She'd fallen in love with a monster, and no matter how much she wanted to recoil from his proximity, she couldn't. No matter how much she wanted to hate him, she couldn't.
That didn't mean she'd forgive him for all the horrible things he'd done, all the deaths he'd caused, for deceiving her. She said she'd never be with him and she'd meant it.
A news alert pulled her attention to the reporter on TV. She stared at the woman, hoping to hear some good news. It'd been awhile since she'd had any, and right now, after being trapped in Zoom's lair and nearly killed by her evil doppelgänger, she needed that little boost more than anything.
When the reporter said the metahuman had been apprehended, she smiled.
"You told them Rupture was coming. How?"
Her gaze jerked to Jay, now towering over her, angry.
"How?" he demanded.
She shook her head, partly in fear—he'd never looked at her with such ferocity before—and partly because she couldn't answer him. Guilt shouldn't be an emotional response when it came to murderers, but there it was, gnawing at her conscience.
"Oh, you are smart, aren't you," he said, looking at the open police box and the cell phone she'd found in it. "You betrayed me!"
"You said you would spare them," she reasoned, though pleaded was how it came out.
Disappointment and something like bitter acceptance filled his features. "I guess now we're even."
As he put on the black mask, she leaned forward. "Jay, no."
Blue electricity zipped around his muscular frame. His voice changed to the ugly, crackling, sinister one of his alter-ego. "My name is Zoom."
With one last look at her over his shoulder, he sped away.
She turned to the TV just as he appeared in front of the officers being filmed inside Jitter's Coffee House. Her heart dropped. "No," she shouted at the screen.
He said something, then the next second, the cameraman must have collapsed, along with most everyone else in the room. The camera's view from the floor wasn't great. She could just barely make out several figures left standing.
Barry's voice came through, begging for him to not kill the police chief. To her surprise, Zoom dropped the man, but turned and ran his hand through Rupture's chest, picking him up and slamming him on a table. He made his way to the camera and lifted it to focus on his hideous mask. Besides the unnatural black eyes, his mouth was nothing but vertical slits, as if the suit's material had melted that way.
He slowly spun to show the destruction he'd wrought in a matter of seconds. "Central City, the Flash you've seen in your streets is a fake, a hologram meant to give you hope, but there is no more hope. There is no more Flash. There is no one left to protect your city. From me."
Caitlin turned away from the TV, barely able to breathe. She shouldn't have told him she wanted to go home. She shouldn't have asked him to let her go. Earth One would be safe, her friends would be safe, if she'd been able to control her emotions.
He'd brought her back, but only to conquer her world, like he'd done his, before moving on to how ever many more Earths existed.
But she could freeze her emotions. She'd done it before: after Ronnie had died, and then again when she believed Zoom had murdered Jay. That had been to cope, though. Now, she needed to protect everyone she cared for.
All you have to do is unlock it.
Closing her eyes, she focused on what that could mean. The metaphorical switch she searched for didn't exist. There was no well of frigid power lying within her. Maybe it wasn't possible for her to be Killer Frost. Maybe she truly didn't have the genetic makeup for it.
"Caitlin," Jay said after appearing in the room with her, his voice back to normal: smooth and mellifluous.
She kept her gaze trained on the handcuffs he'd imprisoned her with.
"You're mad?" His boots thudded as he walked to her. "Barry and Joe are still alive because of you."
And everyone else was dead.
He sighed and knelt before her. "I still love you."
She looked at him, at Jay's gentle, blue eyes. The memories they shared together—their shy and awkward beginning, the times they worked seamlessly together in the lab, their heart-felt conversations, every passionate touch and kiss—made her yearn to tell him she felt the same.
When he reached out to her, she made sure not to flinch away like she had the last time he tried to touch her. She thought of the sweet man she'd fallen in love with, not this sociopathic murderer, to steady her breath and calm the frantic beating of her heart.
His fingers grazed her cheek and brushed back her hair. She leaned into his touch, hating how much her body responded to him.
No one was faster than Zoom. No one was as ruthless as him. Worse yet, he was always on guard. Except with her. In his own twisted way, he did love her. She'd seen it when he pretended to be Jay and she saw it now in his true form.
Cold spread through her, numbing her feelings and erasing the warmth of his touch.
His gaze flicked down to her lips. Still, she did not recoil. He leaned in closer, then paused, as if asking a question.
Glaciers took up residence in her heart. Ice filled her veins.
She tilted her head in permission and closed her eyes, waiting for the perfect moment to do what only she could.
Their lips met, tenderly at first, but then grew into something desperate and needy. He knotted his hand in her hair and pulled her closer to him, as if to consume her.
Caitlin sunk into his embrace and gave herself to him completely. She placed her free hand on the lightning bolt covering his chest and ran her fingers over the soft leather there. If it wasn't for the all-pervading black of his suit, the insignia would be no different than Barry's.
All of the pain and suffering Zoom had caused her friends flashed in her mind. She could stop it though. No one else had to be subjected to his wrath. No one else had to die.
The coldness permeating her solidified into something tangible. Before she knew it, he gasped and jerked away. An icicle thicker than her arm stuck out of the circular insignia on his chest, so similar to a bullseye.
Knowing he would pull it out to begin the healing process, she drew more of the bitter cold residing in her heart to her extremities. A frosty cloud formed around her hands, just like it had with her doppelgänger. The handcuffs cracked under the frigid temperature as she ripped her arm free. She shot out a steady stream of ice, coating him from the neck down and rendering him immobile. The Speed Force couldn't heal him now.
"Smart girl," he said with a ragged breath.
His confident smile turned into a grimace of pain. His once-bright eyes diminished with each passing second. Blue spread across his lips, yet the color in his face faded to a weakened, pallid version of itself. She watched the transformation with cool detachment, their gazes fixed on each other the entire time. His held no hatred, though, and despite how much she wanted to despise him, neither did hers.
When he took his last breath and his body turned to ash, the cold fled from her body, allowing her to feel once again. The ache in her chest was no smaller than the icicle in his heart. Tears streamed down her cheeks and shattered into a thousand tiny ice-crystals against the hard floor.
"I still love you too," she whispered to his empty grave.
Author's Note: I'm obsessed with these two. Sadly, there are not enough stories for this complicated pair, so here is my contribution. Each chapter will be different. Some will have deaths and some won't, there will be happy and sad endings, some will be real possibilities and some that will only be found in fan fiction. Not all of them will be as closely related to an episode as this first one was.
I'm thinking about doing continuations for certain paths. If you have a favorite, let me know. I'll do the most popular first.
Constructive criticism is always welcome. Thank you for reading!