Hours later and still half drunk, Cisco found himself wandering through the city, bathing in the eerie light of the setting sun and dressed in the clothes of his past life. With every step he took, he heard the *creak* of well-worn leather and the jingling of metal on metal. Each breath he took was hot beneath the cloth of the bandana, and the Vibe goggles kept the biting wind out of his eyes. He swung the baseball bat in his hand, and felt the gentle *thud* of the loaded and racked shotgun on his back with his every step. The bandana over his face blocked out the scent of the city, and the Vibe goggles blocked the vibrancy. His world was reduced to shades of dull grey and the sounds of the cities awakening criminal realm. In the light of day, you would never see the city's sordid affairs, yet the setting of the sun thrust the slime and scum of the streets into the full view of anyone who cared to look for it. Not that anyone ever willingly looks for the pain in the eyes of others, never willingly looks into the darkness of another's life when they can avoid it. God, people are the worst of all the species, only humans decide something is immoral then does it repeatedly. Only humanity would let such atrocities happen in the night and then heap the blame upon the victims. 'But it was my faul- Don't think about it. I should have- Don't fucking think about it.'
Cisco grimaced and shook himself out of his dark thoughts, he watched the few people on the streets scurry to cross instead of walking past him. Watched as the pushers lurked in alleys and the workers of the night stood on the corners, bare skin, latex, fishnets, and leather, leaning on rusty signposts and cold walls, shivering in the brisk city air. 'Ain't no rest for the wicked,' he mused, watching people scurry from one patch of light to the next, so afraid of the darkness all around them, yet so open to the darkness within themselves. He slung his baseball bat into the pouch on his back next to the shotgun and continued walking out towards the city limits. He thought back on what he used to be, drunken haze making everything in his memories so much more intense. Damn, drinking that much might have been a mistake, not that he would ever admit it. Cisco stumbled a little as he walked, it had been a long while since he had last drank tequila. Once outside of the city's edge, Cisco turned down the next road towards-
Wells' house. Daunting, dark and ridiculously modernistic, all smooth lines and crisp edges. It was an insane architect's cocaine-fuelled nightmare, an Art Deco monstrosity, it was largely sculpted metal and wide panels of glass. The landscaping and the small garden was completely overgrown and there was still broken glass on the ground from the attack by Pied Piper.
Cisco pushed the door open gently. Water damage on the floors and walls and mud was tracked throughout the entirety of the flooring. No possessions remained, and the wide empty space seemed ominous in the soft, red, tinges of the twilight. Maybe the house would have been considered beautiful once, and even in its state of destruction it had a quiet air of dignity and poise, but to Cisco it was only a reminder of what Thawne had done. Acting on pure instinct, he drew his shotgun and blasted a hole through the nearest wall with a noisy blast. Again he shot through the wood paneling of the walls, reloaded, and shot twice more, reveling in the deep noise rumbling through the abandoned building. He holstered the shotgun and swapped it out for the baseball bat, which he immediately swung through the first window he came upon. More glass rained down upon the dirty floor, and he ground it into the hardwood with each step he took. Window after window was subject to the wild assault, and cold wind rushed through the new gaps, raising the dust on the floor into forlorn wisps. Walls were destroyed, windows shattered, and Cisco stood panting in the epicenter of his wanton destruction, taking in the damage. Dust swirled around his ankles, wood and plaster shards showered down from the ceiling and walls, clinging to the leather of his jacket.
'Now for the final touch,' Cisco thought, pulling a can of spray paint from the holster on his thigh. He quickly exited the house, high on adrenaline, and sprayed the words 'monster,' 'liar,' 'traitor,' 'murderer,' and, his hands shaking as he wrote the final verdict, 'rapist.'
The rest of the night passed in a blur of flying fists and speeding bullets, anger and adrenaline, light and pain. After he had crawled back to his apartment long after the dawn, the next thing he knew with any certainty, Cisco was waking up with a certain satisfaction weighing on his mind, soothing his constant fears and weaknesses. He felt as if he was high, but Cisco didn't remember doing any drugs, not that it really mattered. A familiar ache rested in his knuckles and shoulders, and the cuts on his arm throbbed in tandem with his heart beat. The pain was welcome, and Cisco bounded out of his bed with an energy he hadn't felt in weeks. Hell, he hadn't felt so good for months. He hadn't felt since he found out that he was a Metahuman. He changed out from his leathers, and into a shirt that said "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate," a dark flannel, jeans and a pair of ratty old Converse. The outfit was both unassuming and non-threatening. He grabbed his bag and was out the door.
The walk to work passed quickly, his brisk pace made it more of a jog, and it seemed to take almost no time out of his schedule. His stop at Jitters supplied him with a double-caff espresso, just enough of a boost to keep him going all day. It was completely necessary caffeine. Cisco took a long sip of his coffee and looked up. STAR Labs stood before him, and Cisco felt a knot tighten in his stomach, his good mood starting to dissipate like fog on a warm day. 'I can do this, just get through this day. Don't let them know, don't let them see.' He took a deep breath and strode through the door and into the Cortex.
"Hey Caitlin, hi Barry," Cisco greeted the duo, false cheer in his voice, and he set his bag and mocha on the desk and flopped into his chair heavily. 'You can do this, just get through the day.'
"Hey Cisco," Caitlin chirped, her own coffee sitting in front of her. "Have you watched the news today? It's completely insane!"
Barry looked up from his phone again, "yeah, everyone at the station is freaking out about it. We should get Harry and Jesse in here, show you all at once."
"What is it?" Cisco was a little worried, was it something from last night? He knew he wasn't a hero, he was just a punk kid from the slums of Detroit, and he really didn't need any kind of publicity. This wasn't his territory, but what he had done needed to be acted out. The Flash did his work in the light of day, but what Cisco had done needed to be done in the dark.
Caitlin brought up a video on the main screen. "They have footage of Wells' house, somebody completely trashed the place." Cisco flinched at the reminder of what he had done while drunk, he felt nothing but an intense anxiety of discovery, and the tension roiled in his stomach, souring the flat mood of apathy into something dark and acidic.
Jesse and Harry walked into the Cortex, immediately turning their attention to the active screen. Cisco couldn't look in their direction, he felt the stinging feeling of shame prickling behind his eyes. 'This was a bad idea, it's too much to handle.' Cisco flinched as Harry walked past him and he hoped that nobody noticed. He felt sick, disgusted both from the resurfacing memory and with himself.
"What's this?" Harry asked, leaning against the nearest table. "Yeah," Jesse added, "what's going on?"
Barry looked up and away from his phone for a moment, "play it, Caitlin."
The video began, panning over Wells' houses interior, showing the absolute destruction of the walls and floor. Glass and wood covered every surface, and the walls were cratered with bullet marks, revealing the insulation and the support beams. Plaster was torn from the ceiling, and the wooden floors were torn up. The camera zoomed out from the wreckage, revealing the graphic words marring the exterior. 'Monster' 'Liar' 'Traitor' 'Murderer' and 'Rapist.' The words were repeated time and time again, covering the house in their spread.
This time, the camera panned to a reporter standing outside the trashed house, microphone in hand. "It is unknown who has committed this act of vandalism, but reports have come in of a man dressed in black doing the same thing to Harrison Wells' gravestone in Central Cemetery. If you have any information, please call the hotline number on the bottom of your screen. Back to you Tom."
"Damn!" Barry grimaced, glancing at his watch. "I've got to go to work, but you guys need to watch the rest of the report." Barry zipped out of the Cortex, already late even with his speed.
Caitlin nodded, "bye Barry," she said sarcastically to the rush of air that followed the absent speedster. Harry sidled up to her desk and continued the video.
The aforementioned Tom, the head news anchor presumably, was talking about an anonymously posted video of a thwarted purse thief, which had quickly risen to viral status. The video started, grainy footage of a cell phone and a man in black leather smashed a baseball bat across the jaw of the attempted mugger, then slammed a gloved fist into their stomach. The brutal beating continued, ending with the mugger on the ground, and the clad in black man picking a purse of the ground and handing it to the person behind the camera. 'Who are you?'
The vigilante shrugged, his face invisible behind the rust colored bandana, and eyes hidden behind a pair of strangely familiar goggles which glowed with eerie blue light. He turned and walked away, displaying the flaming wolf skull emblazoned across their back. The video cut to black, but not before focusing on the names above and below the skull.
Paco, and Los Lobos.
Cisco looked away from the rest of the news report anxiously, trying desperately not to draw attention to himself as the reported talked about the apprehended drug dealers found on street corners. Fuck, he shouldn't have gone out last night, this wasn't Detroit, and violence couldn't be fixed with more violence. He wasn't the 'Scourge of Harmony Village' anymore, and he didn't have any backup out there. He didn't need backup, but he was alone against the scum of the city, and maybe, just maybe, he felt he deserved it. Deserved this as a punishment for what had- '...don't think about it...'
Caitlin's voice caught his attention, she was discussing the videos content with Jesse and Harry. Harry said that he believed that what the vigilante did was alright, while Caitlin thought it wasn't. Jesse was just watching the two of them argue and trying not to laugh at how animated Caitlin was getting. Cisco turned back to his computer, 'I didn't know that anyone was filming, just wanted to stop a purse snatcher… ah well.' He drank his coffee silently, it had felt good to be doing something he was familiar with, even if it was just for the one night. 'It's not like I can become a true vigilante… can I? Nah, I'm not the Arrow. Nowhere near crazy enough to do that. Just help out people when they need it.'
Harry rolled his eyes and watched as Catlin freaked out, and Jesse just laughed as Cisco didn't pay attention or even seem to notice Caitlin waving her hands in front of his face trying to get his attention.
"-isco. CISCO!" Caitlin was less than a foot away, her hand in his face, and staring straight at him, concern written all over her expression. "Cisco, are you listening to me?!"
Cisco jumped up, scooting back in his seat, sending the now empty coffee cup flying across the room and his chair rolling backward. "Dios Mio, Caitlin! Are you trying to kill me!?"
"No, I'm trying to ask your opinion on that psycho from the news!" Caitlin threw her hands up in exasperation. "Were you even listening to a thing I said?"
"Truth be told? No, no I really wasn't." Cisco leaned back in his chair, trying to calm his breathing. "I was just sitting here, then you almost gave me a damn heart attack."
Harry smirked, watching their conversation, half listening to Jesse go on about how she wants to find a job in Central, but all of her job experience is from Earth-2. Cisco looked much more startled then he should have been… and he hadn't shown up to the Cortex yesterday. He was usually always here, making a ton of noise and annoying him. Weird that he hadn't. "Hey Ramon, where were you yesterday," Harry called out, cutting off Caitlin's rant on vigilantism. He watched as Cisco flinched at the sound of his voice and as his face paled, and he stuttered awkwardly through a response. Something wasn't right.
"Er, I was sick, didn't feel so great… uh, I just stayed at home all day." Cisco looked as if he was about to run off and never come back, 'he hasn't been looking very healthy lately,' Harry thought to himself. 'Looked way too stressed, and a bit panicked.' There was definitely something wrong with Cisco.
"What! You were sick!" Caitlin exclaimed, "why didn't you call us?"
"I didn't want to trouble you, it was just a stomach bug, nothing that I can't handle." Cisco felt as if his heart was about to leap out of his chest. Everyone was looking at him, staring. 'They can see,' the little paranoid voice whispered. "I'm just gonna…" Cisco pointed at the closest thing on his work table. Vibe goggles. Crap. Well, better than nothing. 'Maybe they won't notice that they're the same goggles from the video.' Cisco turned back to his desk, trying desperately to ignore the feeling of three sets of eyes boring into the back of his head. He felt like he was going to puke.
Caitlin turned back to Harry and Jesse. "Well that was odd," Jesse commented, only slightly worried about Cisco's odd behavior. It's not as if it's her job to worry, and Earth-1 seems to be pretty stressful to her.
"Well, he has been under a lot of pressure lately, then when Jay…" Caitlin stuttered to a stop, looking towards the ground, remembering what had happened to the man she had dared to love after so much loss. "He lost a good friend, we all did."
"I didn't really know him," Jesse said, not daring to say more once she saw the raw emotion in Caitlin's eyes. 'Damn, he must have meant quite a lot to her,' she thought, realizing just how much the people here had given up to save her from Zoom. "But I heard he was a good man." She looked over to her father and realized he hadn't said anything about the topic. "Dad? What did you think of him?"
"I thought he was an arrogant, small-minded, overly righteous do-gooder with a white knight complex." Harry caught the eyes of the two women he was speaking to. "He was all of those things, but he was a good man." He broke off the eye contact and instead glanced towards Cisco who was rubbing his forearm with a scrunched look of pain on his face. 'Weird, was he injured?' "Jesse, will you join me in my lab, I want to show you some research I've been working on." He nodded his head at Caitlin. "Snow."
Caitlin smiled gently, "you two have fun. I'll be here if you need me." She turned back into her lab and set to work analyzing a blood sample left from King Shark by ARGUS. As sharks have a natural resistance to many diseases and ailments, maybe some of that could be helpful to humanity. Possibilities were virtually endless.
Cisco sat at his desk, the quiet hum of machinery and computers washing over him. 'That was a close one', he thought. 'I need a way to disguise my voice. Just in case I ever go back out there.' He set to work on a voice modulator similar to the one that the Arrow uses. Only it wouldn't sound like he was speaking around a mouthful of gravel.
He carefully soldered the tiny wires and cooled then before he closed up the casing. An undercurrent of white noise and static emanated from the tiny box. In theory, the static and white noise would make it impossible to identify or record his voice in any future video or audio recording. 'I'll call it The Confounder! No interviews or press for this vigilante!' He shoved the device in his pocket, you know, just in case he ever needed it. Not that he would need it, no, but you know, just in case.
He idly scratched at the itching cuts on his arm. With every beat of his heart, the cuts throbbed, small hints of pain following in the wake of his heartbeat. Cutting is not any sort of an answer, he knew that, but neither is drinking oneself into a mindless stupor with tequila. 'Not exactly the poster child for proper mental health, are you?' the voice in the back of his mind whispered. He focused on the buzz of the computer and stared absentmindedly at his dark computer screen. 'I should really do something productive,' he thought, but the energy from when he had awoken was drawing his attention away from anything he tried to accomplish. 'Maybe I could work on something to get rid of my nightmares… maybe a low-level Delta Wave transmitter? Could hook it into the Vibe goggles... Nah, that would never work. Been watching too much Star Trek lately.'
Cisco turned back to the Vibe goggles and grabbed pen and paper. Sure, what he had done the night before had been inadvisable, but it had felt good to help people. He needed to get back out there, he needed to help people. When he had heard that girls cry for help… he had to do something, he couldn't just stand there as another person was victimized. Couldn't stand idly by as one more person suffered. He carefully put the goggles on and watched the future violence in the city unfold, writing down times and places as he saw them. College campus, alleyways, nightclubs, homes, more and more places, more and more crime. So much violence, and there was only one answer. More violence. Once the feed of information slowed to a halt, he stood abruptly and stormed out of the Cortex, not noticing the odd look Caitlin fixed on him as he left. He had places to be and violence to fight… With more violence. Definitely a good idea.
