I hope you're ready for 3,500 words of Cisco!
Enjoy!
Even though he had been anticipating it, Cisco still woke up confused. The confusion of a deep sleep, but a short one—he felt as though he'd been plunged into the ocean just long enough to lose consciousness, and now he was being hauled out by a fishing net, dripping and heavy. Light was trickling through gauzy curtains, which was disorienting, given the fact that he was sure it had been dusk when he'd gone to sleep. He was on a soft bed with a patchwork quilt drawn up over his shoulders, which was also not right, because the only handmade blanket he owned was so holey it couldn't possibly provide any warmth.
He rolled to his side and squinted at his watch. The glowing green interface announced that it was 7:13 in the morning.
"Shit," Cisco muttered, tangling himself up in the quilt in his haste to vacate the bed. "Oh, shit."
He stumbled to the only other piece of furniture in the room, a dresser, where he'd thoughtlessly kicked off his shoes before collapsing the night before. He tugged on his shoes with a good deal of effort and an even greater deal of cursing; so much for saving time by not untying his shoes. As he staggered against the dresser, his gaze caught the few framed pictures that took residence there. One was a perfectly-staged photo of Barry Two and Iris Two's wedding. Iris' dress fit her like a glove, and glimpses of her legs peeked through diamond-shaped cutouts along the bottom, in that peculiar Earth-2 fashion. Barry Two beamed beside her in a tuxedo jacket trimmed with electric blue.
A more candid photo sat beside it: a college graduation ceremony, Barry Two in a black gown and cap with his parents on either side. Nora planted a kiss on his temple while Henry grinned at something off camera. Or, perhaps, he was not grinning at anything at all, but at the bright future that they were suspended in front of. Barry Two was the only one looking at the camera. He'd neglected his glasses, and his eyes scrunched up in that way they did when he was unabashedly joyful.
Cisco's gut twisted. "Damnit," he muttered again, and he pulled on the other shoe.
"Why didn't you wake me up?" he burst when he made it back upstairs to the workshop. "I slept the entire night!"
Nora, still hunched over a table like she'd never moved, looked up. "Good morning. I've been working on it while you slept."
"I slept too long," Cisco said, running a hand over his face. "You should've gotten me up."
"Hardly," Nora said. "Besides, I believe I've figured out the last piece. A literal last piece, mind you. I have to run by Mercury Labs to get it, and they don't open until eight. Why don't you join Barry and Iris downstairs while I run over?"
"Is there any use in me protesting?" Cisco asked.
"Nope," Nora said. "There's nothing for you to do until I come back with the part. Just sit tight and try to wake yourself up. It's going to be another long day."
Longer, Cisco thought, with nothing to do. When Nora finally left the house at five minutes to eight, Cisco spent a quarter of an hour doing nothing but pacing the upstairs, one end of the workshop to the other. Then, when even that became too boring, he ventured downstairs for breakfast.
Barry Two and Iris Two looked far better than Cisco felt, though perhaps that was because they had not starved themselves of sleep the day before. They both sat on the living room couch watching a tiny television in the corner and hardly took notice when Cisco padded past into the kitchen. They'd had the good graces to leave him some cold scrambled eggs and bacon, which he piled up on a plate and carried into the living room.
"…found dead at an abandoned warehouse just outside of Central City." The news anchor on TV caught Cisco's attention, and he took a seat with a piece of bacon halfway in his mouth. "Mayor Snart called an emergency press conference this morning after an anonymous tip concerning the dark speedster Zoom…"
"Mayor Snart?" Cisco said, taken aback.
"I called her last night," Iris Two said. "She agreed to pass along a warning."
"She?" Cisco said, doubly confused, but before anyone could answer, Lisa Snart appeared on screen. Her hair, so voluminous on Earth-1, was cropped short against her head, and her lips glimmered dark red.
"A tip from inside the CCPD last confirmed that the metahuman known as Zoom is on a rampage, with multiple sightings across the city," she said, her gold earrings twinkling as she spoke. "I have declared an indefinite state of emergency and will be enacting metahuman attack protocols. I urge the citizens of Central City to take precautions and stay indoors unless absolutely necessary. And please, please, look after your neighbors and your loved ones. We must unify in these trying times, rather than give into fear."
The screen cut away from Lisa and back to the newscaster, who appeared unflappable. "The state of emergency follows two days of panic, after Zoom spread the message 'Bring Me Wells' across the city. The scientist's whereabouts are currently unknown, as are the whereabouts of the Flash. The Flash has been missing and presumed dead for months, and some speculate that he was killed by Zoom himself…"
The news report droned on, and Cisco found himself catching less and less as he continued to eat. He suspected Barry Two and Iris Two weren't listening, either. There was nothing new to learn, just speculation and half-truths of things the three of them wished they didn't know.
Nora came back an hour later, and her arrival spurred on a new wave of motivation. She and Cisco took to the second floor again, renewed, and the two of them set upon the goggles immediately.
"You're brilliant," Cisco said when Nora produced the new part: an additional power source. "This is exactly what we need."
"Let's hope so," Nora said. "There's only one way to find out."
The shifting shadows on the floor were the only indication to Cisco that any time was passing—without looking at his watch, he would never have been able to decipher the hours that passed. The afternoon sun brought up thoughts of food again, but this time Barry Two and Iris Two anticipated the fact that neither Cisco nor Nora could be torn from the work. Sandwiches were delivered to the workroom promptly and without much comment, and Cisco devoured his tastelessly, frantic with the tangibility of success.
As he worked, his mind wandered ceaselessly back to the photos he'd seen in the guest bedroom. Of all things to think about, he always circled back to it, and every time it made him feel sicker. When they finished the goggles, he would return to Earth-1 immediately to face that version of Jay.
I won't leave you, he'd told Barry.
One more rescue attempt. I won't leave before that, he'd told Harry.
There were two versions of Zoom in existence. If Cisco and the rest were killed by one, there would be nobody to make that rescue attempt. Even if they beat one, it would be for nothing if Cisco wasn't able to make it back to Earth-2. The photo of a grinning Barry Two popped back into Cisco's mind, and this time he allowed the train of thought to worm its way further, back into Zoom's lair, back to the cold glass cell. Another day and half had gone by so quickly. Cisco wondered if Barry had eaten, if he'd slept, if he was even still alive—but, of course, he was still alive. Jay needed that much, at least.
The Jay of Earth-1 didn't need that much of Caitlin and Iris and the rest. And that was the thought that kept Cisco resolute in his decision to leave.
It was late afternoon when, after many near-successes and a fair bit of fine-tuning, that Cisco felt a tug of vibrational energy so concrete and so pure that he let out a whoop.
"I feel something," he said. He touched to the fingers to the side of the vibe goggles as if that might steady him. "It makes sense, it…I can feel it, and I think I can…"
He held out a fist. The world looked blue to him, but it felt silver: like little strands of piano wire around him, stretched taut, musical in their own way. He felt through them, reaching, knowing instinctively which ones to pluck in order to open up the correct frequency. A resonant tune, a familiar tune, but one that had no sound, traveled up through his arm and rattled his bones.
"It's working," Nora breathed beside him, and he knew it too. He felt the breach opening up around his fist, swirling and pulsing in its instability. It grew to the size of a basketball before sputtering out, but even that was enough to make Cisco practically leap across the room toward Nora.
"Did you see that?" he said, ripping the goggles from his face and grabbing onto her arm. "I did it. I actually opened a bitty mini breach."
"It'll be a lot more than a bitty mini breach with some practice and a few more adjustments," Nora said, beaming. "I knew you could do it."
"Wow," said Cisco, falling back into a chair. "That felt amazing. It's like…the whole universe, just…" He gestured wildly, trying to convey the feeling, but there was no way to do so. "I feel like it all just clicked. Right there. Like a light switch."
"It sounds amazing," Nora said. "Do you think it can get you home?"
She might as well have said, Are you prepared to jump into the lion's den?
"I think so," Cisco said. "I think that if—"
A boom shuddered the house. A scream shrilled up from the ground floor. Glass shattered.
Cisco and Nora froze.
"Was that an earthquake?" Cisco managed, before all hell broke loose.
The house rattled with a shock so violent it sent Cisco flying into a table. Nora fell back into a chair, and a beaker tumbled off a nearby table and broke into pieces. The one earthquake that Cisco had been in, fourteen years ago when he'd visited the coast of California, had been a continuous and predictable vibration. The rise and fall of an invisible tide, half a minute of rolling earth before a hush.
This was nothing like an earthquake. The pulses of motion struck irregularly, in bursts—but each burst was ten times as powerful as what Cisco had known. The walls creaked, books cascaded from their shelves, tables tipped. And then, with one horrendous cracking noise, the roof began to collapse.
"We have to get out of here!" Cisco shouted. He heard more screams downstairs, a bang as something large toppled. "Come on!"
"Mom!"
"Metahuman," Nora panted, hitting another chair as the floor bucked and a chunk of roof sailed down. "This is a metahuman. Zoom must have—"
Must have found us, Cisco said, but the sickness in his gut was quickly forgotten when he was thrown off of his feet. His elbow hit the floor, first, hard. He barely had time to recover before a beam from the ceiling sailed down toward him. He rolled, missing impact by inches.
"Mom!"
"The house is falling apart!" Nora screamed at Cisco unnecessarily. Amid the violent shaking of the floor, the shattering glass and the thump thump thump of medical dictionaries, she stumbled drunkenly toward Cisco. A quake, larger than before, opened up a crack in the floor, and she dived away just in time.
All of Cisco's instincts flared: go, go, go. He looked up, saw his goggles a few feet away where they'd fallen from the table. He pushed himself up, reached for them—
The hunk of wood that fell from the ceiling hit so fast, Cisco could hardly believe his own eyes. One minute his device was within reach; the next, it was split into two pieces, crushed, mangled. Cisco stared slack-jawed at the ruin, unable to comprehend, vaguely aware that Nora had her hands on his arms and was hauling him upright.
"Leave it," she said. "We have to go."
They took the stairs two at a time. Sometimes three at a time, depending on the severity of the quaking. On the ground floor, furniture had overturned; jagged cracks crawled up the walls; the huge clock on the living room wall lay on the floor in two pieces. Barry Two and Iris Two were nowhere to be found.
Outside, a gun fired. Without further hesitation, Cisco grabbed Nora by the sleeve and pulled her bodily out the door.
The scene in the street was no less chaotic than the one inside the house. Duskiness sapped color from everything, giving the neighborhood the eerie impression of liminality. Houses all down the street were dark—perhaps a result of the metahuman lockdown, perhaps because their residents wanted to stay as far away as possible from the action happening in the street.
The metahuman in question stood in the center of the street, dressed in reds and blacks, wielding some sort of scythe. Grim Reaper, Cisco thought. Zoom has literally sent Death.
Two more gunshots rang out, close enough to startle Cisco. Iris Two crouched in the driveway, partially shielded by the car parked there. She held her gun in one hand and gesticulated with the other, a clear order of go, I'll hold him off.
But just as she was turning back to the street, the metahuman's low voice reached them.
"It will take more than bullets to stop me."
A burst of red light lit up the sky. An energy blast, the very same that had shaken Nora's house on its foundations, hit the car that Iris Two was hiding behind and sent it spinning through the air. Cisco shoved Nora sideways, and metal screeched in his ears.
"No!"
When Cisco looked up again, the car lay on its side in the neighboring yard with a dent the size of a bowling ball punched into its side, Iris Two motionless in the driveway. Barry Two, emerging from his hiding place behind a row of hedges, sprinted toward his wife, across open ground, open, vulnerable.
And then it hit Cisco: he wasn't running to Iris Two. He was running unarmed toward the metahuman.
"Stop!" Cisco yelled, tearing away toward the street. "Stop, Barry! He wants me. He's here for me." His feet met pavement. He held out a hand and, miraculously, Barry Two slowed. Standing between Barry Two and the metahuman and suddenly very aware of how equally defenseless he was, Cisco swallowed and turned toward the meta. "You're here for me, aren't you? Nobody else has to get hurt."
The meta's face, covered in a mask, turned toward Cisco, and Cisco got the distinct impression that he had suddenly turned into a bug about to be hit by a windshield.
"Francisco," said the meta. "You killed my brother. It's time for you to die."
Reasonably, Cisco thought, the threat should have been the thing to give him pause. Instead, he frowned, and asked, "How do you know my name? And why do you think I killed anybody?"
The meta's hand tightened on the scythe. The other hand went up to his face and touched the side of his visor. With a shink, the metal retracted.
The face was exactly the same as the face he knew: the same jawline, the same eyes, even the same haircut. There was anger there, a level of anger he had never seen on his brother's face, but the downturn of his mouth, the way his ears flushed with emotion before his cheeks ever did—and those hands, the long, piano fingers that Cisco had once seen blue with frostbite—
Cisco's breath hitched. "Dante?"
"Don't pretend like you know me," Dante Two said. "Murderer."
Without further ado, he thrust his scythe outward, and a jet of red light blasted toward Cisco.
Cisco ducked just in time, rolling to the ground and skidding against the concrete. "Dante, wait!" Another red burst soared his way, missing him by inches and blowing a hole in the pavement. A hot chunk of street struck Cisco across the cheek, sending stars blinking across his vision. "I didn't kill your brother. I didn't kill Reverb. It was Zoom!"
But the assault was relentless. He crawled away, barely, from another blast. "Quiet," Dante Two growled. "Don't fight it."
Cisco smelled smoke. Another blast of concrete deafened him. He did the only thing he could: he threw up a hand in a universal "stop" gesture.
Dante Two's feet left the ground as the vibrational blast hit him. He soared ten feet and collided with a white picket fence, sending up splinters and dust.
Jaw hanging open, Cisco looked down at his palm. Had he done that? He'd seen Reverb do it, sure, those damaging blasts that had laid Barry flat—
He was so shell-shocked by the involuntary action that he wasn't prepared for the retaliating blast that struck him square in the chest. He registered the sensation of weightlessness, tangled limbs and screeching wind, before his world buckled with pain and all other senses shorted out.
Sight fizzled back in bursts, sparks of awareness. If you pass out, you die, he struggled to tell himself, but the throbbing, searing pain at the base of his skull informed him, You don't have a choice. He realized that he was crumpled against the overturned car, and there was blood trickling down his neck from the back of his head.
Dante Two strode toward him, relentless. Cisco made an attempt to scramble away, seeking shelter behind the vehicle, but the movement made the world tilt toward darkness. Instead, when Dante Two raised the scythe again, Cisco squeezed his eyes shut and once more raised his hand. The energy rose up in him and exploded outward, and he heard the scythe's metallic clatter ten, thirty, fifty feet away.
Yet, when Cisco opened his eyes, Dante Two had not halted. Weaponless, he advanced—the smoldering hatred on his face the only thing Cisco needed to be convinced he was about to die.
"Dante, wait," he slurred, trying and failing to pick himself off the ground. "You don't want to do this."
"You don't know what I want," Dante Two said. He stalked forward the last few feet, and Cisco shrank back.
"I didn't kill Reverb," Cisco said, right before Dante Two landed a kick straight into his gut.
"Stop lying to me," said Dante Two, leveling another kick at Cisco's shoulder. "You. Killed. Him."
"Did Zoom tell you that?" Cisco wheezed. "Did Zoom also tell you that he killed Deathstorm, too? And Killer Frost? He killed all of them, for disobeying orders."
Dante Two grabbed the front of his shirt, lifted him, tossed him bodily backward. The impact jarred Cisco dangerously close to the edge again, and he didn't even have the strength to flinch away when Dante Two towered over him. "Shut up!"
"I won't fight you," Cisco said sluggishly. "I'm sorry about your brother. I know how hard it must be—I wont—fight—"
Dante Two hurtled down toward him, fist crashing into his face. "You don't know anything," he said, another punch connecting. "You're a liar. You killed him. You deserve this."
"We can stop Zoom," Cisco managed. His mouth was filled with copper. "Please. You know I'm telling the truth. I'm so sorry." He held up a hand against the onslaught, a beating bred from grief, and he understood, he did, but with each new punch he couldn't help but think I can't die like this— "Please, Larrocha."
The punches halted. In that breath of respite, through fast-closing darkness, Cisco finally made out the tear tracks down his assailant's cheeks. Dante Two's raised fist, bloodied, trembled.
"What did you call me?" he said. When Cisco didn't respond, his weak grip on consciousness finally opening, Dante Two shook him by the front of the shirt. "What did you call me?"
But it was over. With a whoosh of something like weightlessness, Cisco felt himself going blind, deaf, senseless—dark.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed a little taste of the action; comments make the world go around.
Till next time,
Penn
