As always, you all are wonderful.
Enjoy!
"Can we please stop running these insane editorials?" Iris moaned. She skimmed the first few lines bolded on her computer screen. "I mean, really? Dark speedster kills the Flash…with the 'hero' gone, should metahumans be rounded up proactively?."
"People are nuts," came Linda's voice on the end of the line. "Plus, you can't blame them for panicking. Nobody knows what's going on. People feel unsafe, and that turns them into animals. Irrational animals."
"You'd think they would have something better to talk about by now," Iris said, flicking through more articles.
Linda's pause was poignant, sarcastic. "Seriously?"
"Oh, Christ," Iris said. "This one is actually defending Zoom. Saying he's some kind of vigilante."
"Oh hell no," Linda said. "I did not get kidnapped by that psychopath just to have people turn him into the next Arrow."
Iris issued a long sigh, closing out of the news site and pinching the bridge of her nose. "I just can't believe we're actually entertaining this crap."
"Haven't they asked you to write anything? You are the Flash girl."
"Nobody wants the optimistic piece, especially when I don't have any proof. But I'm working on it. Barry needs it as much as the city does."
A beat. "How is he doing?"
Iris' jaw tightened. "About as well as you might expect."
"That bad, huh?" Linda responded, the laugh in her voice aborted.
"He's healing. He just needs time." An intense pressure was building behind her eyes, and she quickly changed the subject. "What about you? How's Coast City?"
"Well, it's Coast City."
Iris' mouth tugged upward at the corner as she mirrored: "That bad, huh?"
On the other end, Linda chuckled. "Like you said, healing. It takes time."
"West."
Iris' head jerked upward. Across the room, the temporary managing editor, Mike, strode toward her.
"Sorry, Linda, I have to go," she said. "Keep me updated."
In the background on Linda's end, a kitchen timer rang. "Likewise. Stay safe, Iris."
"West."
"Yes, Mike?" Iris hurriedly stuffed the phone back in her purse as the man reached her desk. He cut an intimidating figure, hardened rather than frightened by Larkin's death. Iris prayed they found a replacement editor-in-chief soon.
"Unless that's the Flash on your phone, this office is not your personal conversation hour," Mike said. "Take it on your lunch break."
"Yes, sir, I—"
"Do you have a piece ready for me yet?"
"Not yet. I've been working on one, but—"
"A masked man bursts in here like a bat out of hell itself last week, shaking the lifeless body of Central City's hero, and you, the Flash girl, don't have a story yet?"
Iris bristled at Flash girl, but she forced herself to stay calm. "I've been reading over our recent editorials. They're a bit harsh."
"Then write something better." Mike rapped his knuckles against the edge of the desk, making Iris flinch. "Maybe you'd have a story written if you didn't spend all day on your phone."
He walked brusquely away without another word—probably a blessing, considering the words that were forming on Iris' tongue.
Swallowing her rage, she turned back to her computer screen and re-opened the blank word document she'd been staring at for days.
Not quite blank—at the top of the page, centered, were three words. The Flash Lives.
Over the past few days, she'd fiddled with those three words, obsessed with them. Changing font size. Changing font type. Bolding. Italicizing. Capitalizing.
The Flash Lives.
She'd straightened up her desk, which had fallen into disarray the night of Zoom's attack. Between the gust of speed and the frantic chaos that had followed, her usually-tidy workspace had gone through hell. It had taken her two days to fully scrub the coffee stains from the white surface and from her chair—while everyone had scrambled excitedly for notebooks and extension cords and keyboards following Zoom's appearance at the station, she had knocked over a coffee cup in her haste to gather her things and sprint from the building. To escape the toxic combination of fear and opportunistic glee that always permeated the station following a tragedy.
In the days following, she'd been meticulous about restoring her work station, ignoring questions about her sudden disappearance that night, relinquishing her own excuses to the mumbled ones provided: Pretty terrifying face, that speedster had…heard he went off to the police station, your dad was there, wasn't he?
And for days she'd stared at those three words, memorizing them, trying to force them to be real. Because the more she was forced to think of Barry pale under those white sheets, Barry sobbing into her jacket under the force of exhaustion and hopelessness, Barry without working legs—
The more she scrutinized those three words, the more she felt like putting a question mark at the end of them.
Once again, she closed the document and opened up the news site. Glancing up, she saw Mike at the other end of the room, pasty finger wagging at another unsuspecting reporter. He looked her way, frowned, and made a vague motion that might have been threatening. She ignored it and turned back to her screen, feeling flushed.
Just then, her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out halfway to read the screen, and saw Barry in bold letters across the front. Peeking quickly at Mike again, who was now too invested in his reprimanding to pay her much attention, she pulled out the phone and held it to her ear.
"Barry. Everything okay?"
Heavy, labored breathing answered. "Iris. Thank God. Call your dad and tell him that Dee is here."
His tone alarmed her, but she kept a steady eye on Mike. "What? What are you talking about?"
"Listen." Barry grunted. "There's a metahuman. John Dee. He's looking for revenge against the Flash and he's currently in STAR Labs. Tell Joe."
"Slow down," Iris said, because everything was moving too quickly, everything too frantic, too unstable for her. Friends were not supposed to call in the middle of a normal working day to say— "There's a metahuman in STAR looking for revenge? Against you? Where are you?"
"In STAR," Barry said.
Without another word, Iris stood and grabbed her coat. She was halfway across the room before Barry could say another word.
"I'm not sure where he is…I'm trying to get to the basement."
"Where are Caitlin and Cisco?"
The brisk air outside struck her across the face. She held up a hand for a cab.
"I…I don't know. They didn't respond…to my calls. They should be here."
Iris' breath hitched at this, perhaps a reactionary impulse to the drop of anxiety in Barry's voice. A yellow cab pulled up to the curb beside her, and she flung herself into the backseat with a barely-intelligible "STAR Labs."
"He has some kind of dream powers," Barry continued, panting. "He can get inside your head—just tell Joe—"
"Barry, you can't move," Iris said. "You can't even walk, you—"
"Wheelchair," Barry puffed. "Look, I'm trying to get downstairs…the headgear we used to fight Grodd's powers. I'm thinking it might also help against Dee. I think Cisco put it in the storage room. Tell Joe where it is, just in case…
"Don't finish that sentence."
"Iris." He ended abruptly. "I need to go."
She opened her mouth to say more, but the dial tone cut her off. Heart leaping, she tossed down her phone and leaned forward to the cabbie.
"Drive."
Bang.
"What was that?"
Caitlin turned slowly to Cisco, questioning. Cisco held up his hands in surrender.
"It's your dream. How am I supposed to know?"
They both stood from their position on the treadmill as another bang echoed toward them. Simultaneously, they both rushed toward the sound, out the door of the treadmill room, back into the hallway.
A burst of flame barreled down the hall toward them, illuminating the tight space with orange and red. Cisco shielded his eyes, pushed backward by the heat.
Although he knew the answer in his gut, he still asked: "What was that?"
Caitlin, too, knew the answer, and their suspicions were confirmed by the arrival of a figure at the end of the hallway.
"Remember, this isn't real," Cisco cautioned, but Caitlin had already taken a step forward.
"Ronnie, is that you?"
More fire. Firestorm strode forward determinedly, purposefully. His eyes were devoid of color, just as they were devoid of remorse.
"Ronnie, it's Caitlin."
"That isn't Ronnie, this is dream Ronnie," Cisco urged. "Stay with me, Cait."
A stream of fire erupted toward them, and the realness of it, the shock, snapped Caitlin back to attention. She and Cisco ducked to opposite ends of the hallway in evasion and faced each other.
"What do we do?" Caitlin said.
"We need to be careful," Cisco replied. "I think Dee's nightmares—they may not be real, but I think they're designed to kill. Like they killed his wife. The things in them can hurt us."
"That wasn't the advice I was looking for."
"Remember, we are not bound by reality," Cisco said. "The rules are different here. We're technically lucid dreaming."
"You made it out of your dream," Caitlin said. "Can't you come up with something to stop him?"
"I don't have any control here," Cisco said. "It's not my dream. You have to take control. Use your imagination. You can do whatever you want."
More fire. Cisco shielded his head. Firestorm continued to advance.
"I think you overestimate my creativity," Caitlin shouted.
"Oh, please!"
Fire rushed their direction, and Caitlin shrieked. The air smelled like heat. Caitlin locked eyes desperately with him a moment more. He looked back helplessly.
Then the ghost of a smile bloomed on her face.
A new blast of flame came toward them. However, instead of ducking away, Caitlin stood. Amidst Cisco's panicked shout of warning, she planted herself in the middle of the floor, stretched out her arms, and pulsed.
What emerged from her hands could only be described as frost, although it flowed so easily and rapidly that Cisco was hesitant to classify it as solid at all. It connected midair with the flames—the flames froze upon contact, and the frost kept creeping back, and back, following the stream until it connected with Firestorm himself. Instantly the man froze solid, features obscured by a slick blue layer of ice.
Cisco and Caitlin, too, were frozen a moment longer. Then, slowly, Cisco stood.
"Nice one."
"The opposite of heat, best I could come up with." Caitlin shrugged, looking rather dazed. "I'm not sure how long that will hold him."
"As long as you want it to." Cisco patted her on the back, urging her down the hallway. "I've gotta admit, that was a pretty sick power to come up with on the spot."
As they passed the frozen Firestorm, Caitlin lingered, disturbed. "Trust me, it won't happen again. Will he be okay?"
"It's a dream," Cisco reminded her gently. "None of this matters."
They rounded a corner into the warehouse area where they'd been hit by Dee's blasts, and were met with a deep chuckle and Dee's broad smile. "Oh, how wrong you are."
Thanks for reading! You know the drill.
Till next time,
Penn