Peace Stained With Blood

Chapter 4

AN: All of the Flash parts of this story are set after the end of 3.12, but before Jesse Quick comes back to tell everyone that her dad has been kidnapped.

Fair warning that you may need a hanky for this chapter.


Eobard Thawne was taunting him. He was using his super-speed to keep just out of Rip's reach, as Rip ran behind him desperately trying to catch him before… before… something important happened. Rip wasn't sure he knew what that was but there was a deep feeling of dread in his mind. He ran through a dark green landscape of metal and shadows.

Then Thawne turned on him and grabbed him, his red lightning buzzing in the air.

"Well done, Rip," said the speedster. "We've just got one more thing for you to do. We need you to kill your crew."

"No," said Rip, fearfully.

"You told me there was no lingering attachment. They need to die, Rip. You killed Sara, now you just need to kill the others. It'll be easy once you return to them. They'll think you're back and take you in again."

"No, I won't do it."

"Yes, you will, because you're still ours, Rip. You're still part of the Legion."

"No, I'm not. I won't hurt them." He struggled in Thawne's grasp. "No!" He tried to pull away…

And awoke in the bed that Team Flash had provided for him, tangled in his blankets, breathing hard and sweating fiercely. He lay there for a moment just reminding himself where he was and that it was just a dream. He wiped a hand across his face. The moisture on his skin was already cooling, but his heart rate was showing no sign of slowing. He sat up, and did his best to untangle himself from his sheets, and to try to calm himself, remembering how Caitlin had tried to get him to slow his breathing earlier in the day.

It was dark in the lab, but he could see movement through the glass wall. The shape of Cisco Ramon turned on one of the desk lights in the lab outside his room, knocked on the door and opened it enough to put his head round.

"Hey," he said. "So, that was your third nightmare. I'm guessing you're pretty fed up with sleeping."

"Yes, I rather am," said Rip, running a hand through his slightly damp hair. "You got the nightshift?"

"I was working late anyway. Caitlin said you'd never seen Doctor Who."

"I have no idea what that even is," replied Rip.

"They have television where you're from, right?" asked Cisco.

"Where I'm from? No. But I have encountered it on a number of occasions and the Legends seem to quite enjoy it as a medium of entertainment. Plus there was my stint as a film student…" he shrugged.

"And nobody has mentioned Doctor Who to you?"

"Not until Caitlin gave me the colouring book this morning," said Rip.

"Okay, so Caitlin said that if you can't sleep then it's okay to stop trying to go back to sleep and do something else. Do you want to watch some TV with me?" asked Cisco.

Rip shrugged again. "Whatever you recommend, Mr Ramon."

"Okay, I'll be back in a moment." Cisco left, the door clicking shut behind him.

Rip looked around at the sparse room he'd been given and suddenly missed the Waverider. He remembered how the entire team had decided to renovate their own quarters after they'd seen Rip's. For the entire mission to defeat Vandal Savage they'd put up with the standard quarters, spartan and with only a few personal items scattered about them. Once everyone had decided to stay on, there had been several complaints about how their quarters compared to Rip's and Jax had set about refitting everyone's rooms so that they were more homely.

There was nothing wrong with this room, but none of his things here and they lacked the cosiness of his quarters on the Waverider. Nothing smelt right or had the right textures. There was also the minor matter of the locked door. He shivered and pulled the blankets up around his shoulders.

Cisco returned wheeling, with one hand, a large flat screen TV on a trolley, with various bits of electrical equipment on the lower shelf of the trolley. In the other hand, he held a large beanbag. He plugged the television in and left it on the other side of the glass wall, so that Rip could watch it through the partition. Then he dragged the beanbag into the room and dumped it by Rip's bed.

He pulled a remote control out of his pocket and turned the television on. "You're going to love this."

Rip doubted that, but he didn't wish to appear rude. Hopefully it would be dull and it would put him back to sleep. Cisco came over to the bed.

"Let's get you a bit more comfortable." He fiddled with some controls that Rip hadn't even realised were there until now, which apparently raised the head of the bed so that Rip could lean back. "There you go. Now you can watch TV in bed."

"Thank you," said Rip, quietly. He was very unused to being taken care of in such a manner.

"So, there are about 800 episodes of Dr Who, but there was the original run and the new one, so we'll start with the new stuff. It's still going to take a while to get through. Wow, I've just realised, this is going to be like watching CSI with Barry. I bet you sit there and pick holes in everything."

Rip frowned. "Why would I do that?"

"Didn't Caitlin tell you anything? It's about a guy who travels in time."

"Oh," said Rip. "Hence why she thought the colouring book would be appropriate." He hadn't touched it since Caitlin had left it on his bedside table. Now that he looked at it, he noticed that it did appear to have a number of clocks on the cover, and a rather out of place blue police box.

Cisco sat on the beanbag and pressed more buttons on the remote. The program began. Music started up and there was a title page and a blonde girl, who seemed to be the main character.

"You didn't mention that it was British," said Rip, as it became clear from the accents.

"Yeah, homesick?"

"Not for London," replied Rip. "Is she Doctor Who?" he pointed at the blonde girl.

"No, that's Rose. We haven't met the Doctor yet. Are you always this impatient when watching stuff?"

"Er, no, sorry. I don't really, er, watch much in the way of television," said Rip, which at least applied when he was himself. Phil had been an avid consumer of all kinds of televisual media and had also enjoyed a lot of recreational drugs, and he was very glad he wasn't Phil anymore.

"There are a lot of gaps in your education that we need to fill," said Cisco. "Now, a little quiet, please, this is a good bit."

They watched in silence until the end of the episode.

"I hope he checked to see how she affected the timeline before he decided to take her with him," commented Rip. "He seems somewhat irresponsible."

"That's kind of part of the fun of it. Next one?"

"I suppose so." This television program was completely ludicrous. The mere idea that you could put a time machine in a police box and that it would be bigger on the inside was utterly ridiculous. Yet he found himself enjoying it, despite the hideous inaccuracies.

The next episode started.

"Well, that's wrong," said Rip. "There's no space station at the end of the universe. That would just be impossible."

Cisco gave him a look.

"Sorry, I'll be quiet now."


Rip and Cisco were still watching Doctor Who when Caitlin came in to check on her patient first thing in the morning. Or at least Cisco was, Rip was sleeping. Cisco put a finger to his lips to indicate that Caitlin should be quiet, and extricated himself from his beanbag. He came out of Rip's room and carefully shut the door behind himself.

"He had a bad night?" asked Caitlin, looking back towards Rip. Cisco had found him some more pillows and raised the head of the bed, so she suspected that it wasn't the most comfortable of sleeping positions.

"Three nightmares in a row and it didn't look like he was going to be getting back to sleep again quickly."

Caitlin nodded. "So, when did he fall asleep?"

"It was about half way through the fourth episode. He was like a little kid trying to keep his eyes open, and when he did fall asleep, I was worried that turning it off would just wake him up. If he's been sleeping that badly since this all happened… well, it's no wonder he looks like crap all the time."

"Cisco!" said Caitlin.

"What? He does, and he desperately needs some sleep. Maybe you could postpone therapy until later today?"

Caitlin nodded. "Yes, if he's actually sleeping then that definitely takes priority. I'll go and get on with some work until he wakes up. And he's not the only one that needs sleep, you know. You were up all night."

"Yeah, I'll go crash out in one of the labs. You're going to keep an eye on him? I'm kind of warming to the guy."

"Of course," said Caitlin. "Now, go on. You look nearly as bad as Rip."

"Hey, I'm not even in the same league as him when it comes to sleep deprivation, but it has been a while since I pulled an all-night TV marathon. Wake me up if the world needs saving." Cisco gave one last look towards Rip and then headed out of the lab.

Caitlin smiled at her sleeping patient and went to examine the footage and medical data from the previous night. She watched Rip trying to settle down in bed and taking a long time to actually get to sleep, followed by him clearly having disturbing dreams, which included shouting out things, only some of which she could make out. She caught the word "Sara" several times and "no", but the rest was much harder to discern. Rip woke up three times in all and each time he took longer to get back to sleep.

It was hard to watch and she was glad that Cisco had suggested doing something rather than Rip going through it all again or just lying awake. She knew that letting him sleep now might not help with his sleep tonight, but she'd rather he got some sleep, and they'd worry about when he did it later.

It was around eleven when he began to show signs of waking and Caitlin let him get up in his own time before she headed down with breakfast, which was more like brunch at this point. Again, getting Rip to eat anything was the priority here and she'd happily settle for whatever she managed to get him to ingest. Yesterday he'd drunk two cups of tea, some water and eaten half a sandwich; if he kept that up then she'd be more worried about him starving to death than anything else. It was still progress.

She headed to the kitchen and put a tray together. She'd bought supplies that morning and had stocked up on what Rip had mentioned to be his favourite tea, amongst other things. She carried the tray round to Rip's room and knocked on his door. He was sat on the bed, with clean clothes on and had strewn the crayons across the blankets. He was avidly colouring a blue police box on the second page of the colouring book that she'd given him. He looked up as she knocked and suddenly looked a little guilty, like he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't have been, or maybe he was just embarrassed.

"Er, hello," he said.

Caitlin smiled. "That's looking good."

Rip put down the crayon. "I've only just started. I expect Mr Ramon told you about my poor night's sleep, although apparently I was able to get to sleep eventually."

"I sent Cisco to get some sleep himself," said Caitlin. "I brought you breakfast."

Rip hesitated, then nodded. "Thank you."

Caitlin put the tray down on the table, and sat on the far end of the bed, opposite Rip.

"Do you want to talk about the dreams?" she asked.

"Not really," said Rip, and went back to colouring in the police box.

"It might help to get it all out into the light of day."

Rip raised an eyebrow. "I doubt it." He looked at Caitlin. "I'll make a deal with you. You explain to me what the glowing bracelets are for, and I'll tell you about the dreams I had last night."

Caitlin had been careful to wear long sleeves, but this morning she'd pushed them up her arms to make breakfast. She looked down at them.

"That's private, Rip, and nothing to do with what we're doing here," replied Caitlin. "As your therapist, we both need to maintain a professional distance. No deal."

"I thought not." Rip didn't sound surprised.

Caitlin took a deep breath. "I can't help you, if you won't tell me what you're thinking."

"You expect me to talk about myself, but you're not going to tell me anything about my therapist." Rip was very carefully shading an intricate pattern of cogs. "It seems somewhat unfair that I give you my personal history without you giving anything in return, and I wasn't exactly fully briefed on who I was meeting before my dear Legends dropped me off."

"Well, I suppose I can tell you a bit about myself. I'm 29, my parents were both doctors, so I decided to become one too. I have a medical degree, but went straight into research, and ended up working at STAR Labs. Will that do?"

"For now. You didn't explain the cuffs though."

Caitlin looked at Rip and thought for a second. She made a decision and took a deep breath.

"I have powers. I'm a metahuman. It took them a while to manifest and they also affect my mental state. I'm not a very nice person if I use my powers. Cisco made me these cuffs to suppress my powers," said Caitlin.

Rip stopped his colouring and closed the book. One by one he collected up all of the crayons and put them back in the box.

"I dreamt that Eobard Thawne asked me again to kill my team, except on this occasion they believed that I had come back to my senses and they trusted me. I dreamed the same thing three times and only on the last occasion was I able to wake myself before I killed them all," said Rip. "Because they trusted me, it was easy. Easier even than just setting the ship to self-destruct."

"Why do you think you dreamt that?" asked Caitlin.

"Aren't you supposed to tell me that?" said Rip.

"That's not how this works," replied Caitlin, gently. "You need to come to your own conclusions. I can't tell you what you were thinking."

"Because I'm a murderer, so of course I dreamt of murdering people."

"Rip, you're not a murderer. It wasn't you," said Caitlin. "You're dreaming about Thawne forcing you to kill your friends. You have to know that you wouldn't have done any of this if you'd had your correct memories."

"All Thawne did was take what was already there and…" Rip waved a hand, "turn it up. I'm entirely capable of killing. I've killed in self-defence before. It's only one step from there to murder."

"But they are different," said Caitlin.

Rip shook his head vehemently. "You're missing my point. When you spend your days moving through time and seeing history as a map laid out before you, an academic exercise to be completed correctly, it's easy to get blasé and stop considering all the individual lives that you affect. The Time Masters actively encouraged it because it made it easier to steer history on its course. If we started to see history as people then we'd perhaps begin to care too much about what we had to do and it would make it harder to remove aberrations, because they wouldn't be just aberrations. Thawne tapped into that. My necessary detachment. He took away my ability to see history as human beings."

"You don't think like that now, though. If you did then you wouldn't be struggling with what you did. There was a definite change in your mental state." Caitlin realised that this was the sticking point. This was what Rip couldn't get past.

"But I wasn't someone different, I was just more of the worst parts of me," said Rip. "That person is still inside me and I have to take responsibility for my actions."

"You have already by helping your team to track down the final piece of the Spear," said Caitlin.

"That's not justice for Sara or Mid-Nite," said Rip. "Or the countless others that died because of my carelessness in altering the timeline."

"Shouldn't you be putting all of this at Thawne's door? Even if we assume that you were at all responsible for any of this, he was the one who had the plan to find the Spear and he was the one who gave you your orders," said Caitlin.

"Oh, I agree that he gets some of the blame. There is plenty to go around, but not all of it. A large part of it rests squarely with me and my inability to rein in my worst impulses."

"But you weren't in control, Rip," said Caitlin.

"It didn't feel that way. I deserve to be locked up, because I'm a dangerous liability," said Rip.

"Is that why you tried to kill yourself?" Caitlin asked, gently.

Rip hung his head, and looked up at Caitlin from under his eyelids. "I don't know where to go from here. I can't see a way forwards. Sara should have left me for dead on the battlefield of Camelot. It would have been easier on everyone. But I was a failure at even that. I couldn't save my family, I couldn't protect the Spear, I couldn't even kill myself."

"That's a good thing," said Caitlin.

"Is it?" asked Rip. "Because I've been feeling lost for a long time. I took the Waverider to the sun and I was going to crash into it with Vandal Savage's meteorite, wipe myself out of existence. But I passed out and my family were there, waiting for me. I could have stayed, but I wasn't ready." Rip put his head in his hands. "I should have stayed."

"And the Legion would have the Spear because there wouldn't have been any Legends to stop them," said Caitlin. "Your life is important, Rip."

"My life is pain, Doctor Snow," stated Rip, bluntly. "My life is being the husband to a murdered wife, the father of a murdered son, and having my mind twisted so that I tried to murder my friends. I tried to murder the only people in my life who mattered to me as much as Miranda and Jonas." Rip pushed himself back against the head of the bed, tears in his eyes. He gestured with his hands as he spoke, agitated and defensive. "I can't live like this. I can't carry on shouldering this agony of grief and guilt and self-loathing. You can distract me with colouring books and television shows and whatever else you can concoct, but none of that stops me from feeling the unbelievable hurt that is with me constantly. Just let me die and I can finally join my family."

"I think your other family might take issue with that," said Caitlin.

"They're better off without me, and as has been proven, they don't really need me anymore," said Rip.

Caitlin wasn't sure what to say next. She knew that Rip was wrong but proving it was the hard part. Perhaps it was time to try a different tack.

"If I was to say to you that I was thinking of taking my own life and joining Ronnie, what would you say to me?" asked Caitlin.

"I'd tell you not to be so stupid. Your research on metahumans is clearly an important component of Team Flash's work. You still have a lot to give, and Barry, Cisco and the others would be devastated by your loss," said Rip, without hesitation. "But your situation isn't mine."

"Why do you say that? I lost my husband. I know we didn't have a child but we might have done in the future. I miss him every day. But I am doing my best to move on and live because Ronnie wouldn't have wanted me to die for nothing. And I'd be being selfish, and not thinking of my team's feelings," said Caitlin.

"So, you're saying that my wish to join my family is selfish?" asked Rip.

Caitlin had to tread carefully here, so she spoke cautiously. "Suicide is a selfish act. It's entirely centred on the individual, they don't think about what they leave behind them. That's often because they think they have nothing. But I know you don't have nothing. You have a crew who care about you and I watched you beat Barry at chess, you are smart. You want to throw all of that away, just so that you don't have to deal with your problems."

Rip sighed. "That is somewhat the point."

"Did you ever get any kind of grief counselling after your family were killed?" asked Caitlin, already knowing the answer but feeling like she had to ask rather than tell.

"The Time Masters forbid their members from having relationships. I couldn't even tell anyone, apart from Gideon, that they were dead," said Rip, his eyes watery and focused anywhere that wasn't Caitlin. "At least not until I met the team."

Caitlin had to take a moment because she suddenly realised that Rip had probably never really talked through his grief with anyone, had never even really talked about his family, and she felt physical pain in her chest for him. She discovered that she was on the verge of tears herself. She took a breath and tried to compose herself.

"Rip, you never talked to anyone about Miranda and Jonas' deaths?"

Rip shook his head, tears gathering in his eyes and spilling out to roll down his face.

"I had a recording of a message from them. I used to watch it over and over again, just to hear their voices again."

Caitlin blinked and put a hand to her mouth. She hadn't anticipated how hard this would be for her as well as Rip. She found herself deploying her own calming techniques, just to stop herself from bursting into tears. Rip had been alone and he'd had no one to turn to in his grief.

"You were alone then, Rip, but you're not alone now," said Caitlin, unable to keep the sadness out of her voice. "You have friends. You can talk to us. Tell us things about them. Remember them."

Once more Rip shook his head.

"I do see what you're trying to say, but right at this moment, I can't see anything beyond how much pain I've caused everyone."

"No, you're thinking negatively because you're depressed. You've never dealt with your grief properly and now it has been compounded by an unimaginable trauma. To you, everything is bad at the moment and you can't see the good. We need to help you back to something more even, so that you have the good, positive stuff back again."

"And how exactly do you propose to do that?" asked Rip, with very little suggestion he was really interested in the answer.

"I teach you to spot patterns in the way you're thinking and then move away from the damaging patterns and into better ones. It's called CBT, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. It'll take a few sessions, but it really does work. Maybe I'll give you a crash course in mental health exercises after you've eaten your breakfast."

Rip sighed and looked over at the tray of food. His shoulders slumped. "It would be nice if eating didn't just make me nauseous."

"Is that why you haven't been able to eat much? You should have said yesterday," said Caitlin. "I can prescribe you something for that."

Rip frowned. "I hadn't thought."

"Don't worry about it, now I know I can do something. Try just drinking some tea and maybe nibbling something slowly and see how that goes." Caitlin got to her feet and poured Rip a cup of tea. She handed it over and he sipped it. She followed it up with a piece of toast, which Rip received with less enthusiasm.

He sighed and nibbled a corner. Caitlin smiled encouragingly, and by the time they were done with breakfast, Rip had eaten an entire slice of toast and drunk two cups of tea with milk, with a little prompting. She'd talked him through some exercises to control his breathing during panic attacks and had begun on strategies to notice overly negative thoughts. She considered this to be relatively productive, and when Cisco knocked on the door a few hours later to see if Rip wanted to continue with their TV marathon, she felt like she was beginning to get somewhere. Now she just needed to persuade him that there were things to live for, but she was working on that.

Caitlin emerged from Rip's room and headed to the cortex, where she found Barry and Iris, locked in an embrace.

"You were watching the cameras?" asked Caitlin, with realisation.

"It was my turn," said Iris, tears in her eyes. "That poor man."

Barry gave Caitlin a look. "He mentioned them to me. I had no idea…"

Caitlin looked at the screen where Rip was sat on his bed, his knees pulled up to his chin. He was looking in the direction of the television but didn't really seem to be seeing it.

"How are we going to get him through this?" asked Barry. "The Legends are counting on us."

"We keep doing what we've been doing," said Caitlin. "I feel like we're getting somewhere, we just need to remind him that he has people who love him."