AN: I promised I would publish a special chapter during my birthday and here it is! I'm glad that I already got to this point in the story and was able to publish it today! Theme? Fated love!
Harrison didn't know whether it was day or night. It didn't seem to matter anyway. All that he could feel was the horrible exhaustion and pain. He was cold now, being stripped off his jacket and his shirt, left only in his pants. The painful stinging in his back didn't help and if so, it would make putting any kind of clothing on torturous. How long would he survive like this? He wondered. How long before his body and mind gave up? And what did it matter if he put up a fight, if he tried to be strong? He was already dead and he knew that. Nothing and no one could save him. Not even Barry. Maybe if they knew where to look for him, if they manufactured some weapon that could stop Zoom, maybe drain him off his powers, but not in this situation. The unknown location Zoom was keeping him in was the best cover he could ever get. The Flash would literally have to search a whole new world in other to find him and even then, he probably wouldn't.
Harrison cried out as he felt pain as sharp as a knife slashing his back in random patterns. He didn't even know when Zoom appeared again, resuming his torture. He didn't even want to think what was left from his back by now. It was probably a bloody mess, nothing more. One would think the pain would dull with another lash after lash, but somehow it was only more vivid just because instead of beating him up until he was unconscious, Zoom stopped and left him to rest. Now the pain resumed again and Wells just couldn't stand this. He didn't want to scream but he couldn't possibly hold it in.
"Are you ready now to do what I asked you to?" Zoom asked during a brief respite from slashing and burning Harrison's back with the blue lightening.
"Never," came the same, steady and surprisingly strong answer. "You're gonna have to kill me, because I'll never give you what you want."
"Wrong answer," he only heard in response and braced himself for even more agony.
Yet, it didn't come and he managed to turn his head to look at the mask hiding the man inside the monster.
"Why don't you quit being such a coward and stop hiding under this scary costume?" Wells just asked. "Why don't you show me who you really are?" he challenged him.
There was no change in Zoom as though he was just waiting to hear more or maybe waiting for the right time to strike again.
"I already know your real identity. Tanya managed to say enough for me to guess," Harrison continued then. "I always knew there was something off about you, Garrick. Is your name even Garrick?" he then asked, suddenly wondering. Thinking, focusing on something other than the pain seemed to give him a temporary respite. He had nothing to lose anymore. He wouldn't be found. He would sooner die so he might as well get some answers. He might as well tell Zoom everything he always wanted to tell him. How much he despised him. How much he loathed him. He knew Caitlin would take care of his little girl – even though Jesse was practically an adult, she would always be Wells's girl. The most important part was that she was safe and among friends, among people Harrison could trust.
"Ok," Zoom finally spoke with a nod, "we'll play it differently, then, Wells." To Harrison's surprise, he took off his mask and then circled him to squat right next to him and look him straight in the eye. "Listen to me, old fool," he started then, "if you don't cooperate with me, if you don't do what I ask you to, I will not kill you. Instead, I will go and take both Jesse and Caitlin. In fact, I could just go and grab your daughter back right this very moment. I could get both the women you care so much for," he stopped for a moment, reveling in the fear he saw reflected in Wells' eyes. Then he continued, "Can you imagine all the things I could do to them?" Harrisons body actually shuddered now and it wasn't from the cold. "I will torture your precious Jesse and I will kill her right in front of your eyes. As for Caitlin, well," an evil smirk appeared on Garrick's face, "I have other plans for her. Plans you don't even want to know about. Plans that would make you wish I just killed her. So," he said when standing up, "do we have a deal?"
Harrison silently prayed for all his friends and the women he loved to forgive him. He had no choice and he knew it. Zoom wasn't bluffing. Wells would have to do what that monster asked him to and then he would be killed. There was truly no other way out of this. He could only hope that Barry was strong enough to defeat Garrick. He could only hope that both Cisco and Caitlin would figure out a way to stop him, to maybe build some kind of a weapon against him. They had Tanya and she seemed to know a lot about him, so maybe that could help.
"I can't do this anymore," Tanya said when Caitlin walked into the room, finding the girl and Cisco holding hands and focusing on something very hard.
"Just one more time," Cisco pleaded and Snow raised her eyebrows.
"No!" Tanya stood up and let Cisco's hand go, exasperated. "I'm tired and I need a break," she informed when putting her hands on her hips. "Besides, I already showed you everything I saw in Zolomon's head. You saw him being sentenced to death for all the murders he committed and then you saw him strapped down to an electric chair and being hit with the particle accelerator just the moment they were trying to actually kill him."
"So he got his powers while on electric chair?" Caitlin asked, both disgust and shock clearly heard in her voice. "That's a new low, giving a serial killer super powers that made him even more deadly." She shook her head. "I think Tanya's right, though," she then said, "you two need a break. Let me worry about the situation for now."
"Caitlin, I don't think…" Cisco quickly started, knowing how vulnerable she was at the moment. She'd actually gotten very close very fast with Jesse and he wasn't sure whether it was a good or bad thing. On one hand, they could help each other, but on another, they both loved the person they might've lost forever and it was like opening old wounds with all the things they were sharing.
"Cisco, I can't just sit around and wait for things to happen. I can't just…" Caitlin closed her eyes for a moment. "I can't think about what happened because it's killing me. I need to occupy my thoughts with something else."
"All right, then," Cisco sighed.
"Where's Jesse?" Iris walked into the room, looking around. "How is she?"
"She's working in my lab," Caitlin explained. "I thought it would be good for her to take her mind off… Harry," she said with difficulty, "and work on something. She's majored in biochemistry and I thought we could try concocting something that could possibly stop Zoom. You two should just take some time off."
"What's on in the cinema?" Tanya suddenly asked Cisco.
"What do you like?"
"Eh… everything that's cool? I've been locked up for so long that I don't even know what I should catch up on. Are movies any different on this earth? Has the new Star Wars come up already? What about that Batman movie where he was to fight against Superman?"
Cisco eyes lit up immediately. "You like those movies?"
"Are you kidding? I love them! So, tell me what's worth watching!"
Caitlin actually smiled sadly when she made her way to the lab to join Jesse there. Apparently, Cisco had met his match. Good, someone was bound to appreciate his geekiness.
Harrison had been working for days and some parts of the nights. Food and clothes were provided for him, but still, it wasn't much. He mostly missed coffee because it was hard for him to think clearly when being exhausted all the time and most of all, living in a constant fear. He had a black t-shirt on and his jacket thrown over it, but even the slightest move caused him pain. Still, clothing won over shaking with cold even if the damage to his back was so substantial that he felt it all the time. He had to sleep on his belly, but that didn't seem to help at all. He thought Zoom torturing him was bad, but when he actually got his hands on a bottle of alcohol, desperate to prevent any infection that would render him useless and not able to keep both Jesse and Caitlin alive; he poured the contents of the bottle on the wound and thought he would literally pass out, it hurt so badly.
Still, he went on. His movements might be incapacitated, his back might be one open and still bleeding wound and he might be exhausted beyond belief despite the food and sleep, but he couldn't give up. He just wouldn't. There was nothing he wouldn't do for the two women he loved more than life itself. He needed to protect them if that was the last thing he did.
Today he'd been working on the potion for Zoom since five am as he couldn't possibly sleep more despite being dead tired. He was taking his time, though, stalling as much as he could. Garrick wasn't stupid, he knew Wells could make something that could actually hurt instead of help, but he make it clear that he would bring an innocent metahuman from the street just to test it out. If Wells failed to deliver, their blood would be on his hands.
He'd been working for hours in silence that was sometimes being broken by a hiss of pain coming from him here and there when he heard it. The sound didn't seem like Zoom coming back since Garrick never hid, just flew right into the room in all his terrifying glory. No, this was creeping around, a rustle here and there. Someone was trying to be inconspicuous, but Harrison knew that he wasn't alone anymore. Maybe just because he'd been left to fend for himself for way too long.
"Who's there?" he asked, his voice sounding hoarse from all the time he'd spent in silence. "I know you're here, so you may as well come out," he added, seeming to sense the mysterious person's hesitance. "Come on!"
To his shock, a slender and long-legged womanly figure came out of the shadows. She had white hair, wore high heels and was dressed in black, tight leather. It was when he took a closer look at her face that he gasped, nearly dropping the vial of a dangerous concoction he held in his hand. He managed to put it down carefully and then walked from behind the table, staring at the creature with his eyes widely opened. Because even though he saw a woman, she didn't seem human.
"Caitlin?" he finally asked when she was just standing there with a strange expression on her face. It was as though she was trying hard to hide something, maybe some emotion, he couldn't yet tell.
Then she finally spoke, "I haven't heard that name for a long time," her voice dragging the syllables while she did so, rendering her so different than his Caitlin, yet so similar in the same time.
In that moment, he finally understood.
"You're from this earth, aren't you?" he asked. "You're not the Caitlin Snow I know."
"Your voice sounds different when you mention her," she pointed out. "You love her, don't you?" she asked, very curious about that part. It caused his eyebrows to ride up on his forehead and he actually forgot about the pain for a moment.
"Why are you here? What do you want?" he asked one question after the other. "Are you working for Zoom? Is this another way of his to torture me?!" he raised his voice, tired of everything. Tired of being alive, even. Caitlin had told him she had the metahuman gene, so what if this was what she would eventually become? Then again, she was a completely different person from her own doppelganger. Everyone was different on all the earths. There might be multiple people called Harrison Wells and Caitlin Snow or Cisco Ramon out there, but despite their looking the same, none of them actually was the same person.
"I used to work for him," the woman said, "or maybe the right way to put it would be that I was forced to work for him. I don't want to anymore."
"Who are you?"
"My name is Killer Frost."
"So, what do you do, exactly?" Harrison swallowed hard.
"I freeze people to death with my touch," she answered idly as though her powers weren't deadly at all.
"Will you freeze me when I'm done here?" he asked again.
"Oh, silly. I'm not here to kill you," she told him when actually laughing at him icily. "I'm here to rescue you."
He could just stand there, completely dumbstruck. Did she just say…?
"Why?" was all he could get out at the moment through his constricted throat.
"Zoom's out of town for today and I figured I might finally get the chance to do something right," she said and shrugged.
"No, I don't buy it. If Zoom forced you to work for him just like he forced me, you know well that if he finds out you helped me, he'll kill everyone you care about and then he'll do the same to you."
"Oh, dear, everyone I care about is already dead and I no longer want to live this way," she said. She didn't even seem to be afraid. She seemed… defeated to Wells. He really wanted to know why, being torn between taking the help he was offered and getting the hell out of there and asking her more questions.
"But why me?" he just had to ask this one, his mind a confusing mess. Not to mention all the emotions he felt inside of his body when standing face to face with Caitlin's doppelganger. She wasn't his Caitlin, but she was familiar and that was enough to stir him up.
"Because…" she started and then suddenly stopped, looking away from him and boring her eyes into something on the wall to her right. He could see she was trying to stifle her own emotions, trying to be powerful and scary. She might want to look to him as though she couldn't care less, but her mere presence there betrayed that she did care.
"Come on, what did Zoom do to you that made you want to help me?" he pushed. She didn't seem to be in any hurry, so why would he? Apparently, Garrick wouldn't be back anytime soon. "He had my daughter, you know. He'd kept her for months along with another prisoner, Tanya. Why didn't you save them? Why now?"
"You really want to know, don't you?" Killer Frost just asked when turning around so her back was to him now. She pretended to be interested in some of the things he asked Zoom to bring over so he could do his job. "When I became what I became," she started, "everybody turned their back on me. I didn't have much friends or family to begin with, but once my transformation was complete, they were just done. I couldn't really blame them since I froze my own mother to death," she said in such an idle voice that it caused Harrison to shudder. Was she that cold? "I couldn't control it. I was mad at her and she was my first kill. Still, I did it." She turned back to face him, her eyes meeting his bravely. "I knew I was evil. I knew what I became and that there would be no redemption for me. That was when I met Zoom and he used me when I was at my lowest. One day he'd conquered a whole world and brought someone from that dimension, a sole survivor. A man that he thought could cook him something in a lab that would make him invincible. That man was very sweet, a romantic in soul, yet such a genius in physics. His name was Harrison Wells."
Wells's body twitched as he heard his own name, but in the same not really his. He thought he knew where this story was going and braced himself.
Killer Frost stopped looking at him as though the eye contact was too much for her. He could see the change in her even though it barely showed. She grieved, her memories being too much.
"Harrison made the drug Zoom asked him for, but it didn't work. It did make him faster, but when the effect wore off, it left Zoom sick, it caused him to lose his powers rather than to gain them. Harrison didn't know this was going to happen, but Zoom killed him for it. And I loved him," she suddenly confessed when looking at the version of Wells standing right in front of her. "I loved him with my whole heart. You know, he was the only person who really cared about me, who could see past this," she pointed her white face and hair. "I could never touch anyone without killing them before he came along and somehow, when he touched me, I didn't hurt him. I realized then that the reason was that I loved him. I could never hurt him because I loved him. Ironic, isn't it?" she asked. "Zoom killed him right in front of my eyes and I was hiding my true feelings, pretending I was still loyal to that monster afterwards, but that… control… it all broke down once I saw you. There's a Caitlin back where you come from, isn't there?"
"Well, actually, I come from this world," Harrison explained, still surprised and touched by the whole story.
"Maybe," she nodded, "but it doesn't mean anything. I loved the Harrison brought here from another earth and she loves you who also got to her earth from this place. I wonder whether the rest of our doppelgangers have such a complicated love story. It's romantic, isn't it? Star-crossed lovers turned planets-crossed."
He didn't know what to say to that. There was just too much happening in his head. It was crazy, yet it was happening. The love story of his and Caitlin's doppelgangers impossible, yet true.
"This is why I want to help you," Killer Frost told him then. "The way you look at me and in the same time you don't… despite us both being from this world… you don't belong with me and you never will. You belong with her. I had my Harrison long enough. I got more time with him than I could ever ask for when being the monster I am," she spread her hands. "Yet, he never saw me as one. He actually believed in me." There was a lonely stray tear flowing down her cheek now and immediately turning into ice. Wells could tell she didn't want to break in front of him, she didn't want to show him that she was still human, but she couldn't help it. "All I'm doing right now is for the love of Harrison Wells and Caitlin Snow. Tell me, have your Caitlin developed powers yet?" she suddenly asked.
He shook his head. "No, but she does have the metahuman gene and she's scared."
"Don't let her become me. Remember that love is always enough to conquer the monsters that hide inside of us," Killer Frost told him. "Now," her voice changed as she cleared her throat - it became more business-like. "Do you have any idea how to get back home with my help?"
Wells thought for a moment and then he got it.
"I need to get to S.T.A.R. Labs. I need to send a signal to my friend on Earth 1 so he could open up a breech for me."
"Then let's get you there."
Caitlin and Jesse were still working in the lab whereas Cisco and Tanya were watching a movie on his laptop. Barry was out, having an actual job he needed to go to and Iris was at the paper, also working. And then, suddenly, the idleness and relaxation both Cisco and Tanya felt because of the movie and Big Belly Burgers they were eating, was broken as a strange signal sounded.
"What the…?" Cisco started, sitting up straight and pausing the movie to make sure it didn't come from it.
"What is it?" Tanya asked, looking around. "Is this some kind of an alarm? Is Zoom here?!" she asked in panic.
"No, no," Cisco quickly said when taking her hand and not even realizing that he was holding it and stroking gently. "Don't be afraid. Zoom can't get to you here. It's… something else." He actually frowned when letting go of her, standing up and getting to his work station. Caitlin and Jesse both left the lab and jointed them.
"What is this noise?" Snow wanted to know.
"The sensors are picking up some strange vibrations coming…" Cisco stopped with a gasp. "It's coming from Earth 2!" he announced.
"It's Zoom," Caitlin said when hugging herself. "It has to be. He wants to lure us out because he can't get to us here."
"Zolomon's an engineer, remember?" Tanya reminded them. "Does he even know how to send such an elaborated signal?"
"She's right!" Cisco called out in excitement and sent the girl a huge smile of appreciation. "I don't think Zoom could do this. Only a physician and…"
"You actually thinks it's dad?!" Jesse called out. "Really?"
"Jesse," Caitlin started slowly, wanting so badly for it to be true, but in the same time knowing they might meet with huge disappointment. And even more heartbreak. Only then… "If there's even the slightest chance that it might be Harry calling for us, we have to risk it," she said, the decision already made.
"We need Barry here. Just in case it's a trap," Cisco decided, immediately sending an alert to the guy's phone. "Then I'm gonna open a breech in the place the signal originated from."
"Open a portal? What's happening, guys?" they heard Barry standing right next to them and nearly jumped, so immersed into this conversation that they didn't even notice him appearing.
Harrison was pacing back and forth in his own lab, now abandoned for months. Still, he didn't care. He didn't care he'd just disappeared in this world, leaving his work and the employees and the Labs behind. There might already be a new head of S.T.A.R. Labs and he couldn't care less. He just wanted to come back home. Funny that he'd seemed to find this place in an entire different universe.
"How much longer?" Killer Frost asked, getting impatient. Or maybe scared, Harrison suddenly realized.
"How much time do we have before Zoom comes back?" he asked her.
"I don't really know. I was sure that you'd be off this earth by now! Why aren't your friends responding?!"
"They're probably being cautious."
"No, not good enough. If they don't come to get you in the next ten minutes, I'm hiding you somewhere."
"And what good will that do to us?" Wells just asked. "I can't be hiding from Zoom my whole life. You know well that eventually he'll find me anyway. I need to get back to the people I love. It's now or never."
She pursed her lips, thinking hard about his decision. "I can only fight him for so long," she finally told him.
"I know and I'm not asking you to. You can just go," he offered her a way out. "You've already done enough for me."
"I'm not leaving," she said vehemently, folding her arms over her chest, adamant about staying. "Not until you're safe. I don't matter here."
It was so beautifully tragic that this creature, this cold and seemingly heartless monster, could care this much about someone. She wanted Caitlin and Harrison together, no matter in which universe. It was as though she wanted to give herself and the Wells she loved and lost another chance at love. She believed that they would always find each other no matter the earth and that he would always be the one coming there from another.
Harrison's thoughts were being interrupted by sudden and painfully familiar whoosh of air, indicating Zoom's coming.
"They better hurry!" Killer Frost said in a hard voice, bracing herself for the fight that was about to happen.
In that very moment, a small spec of light appeared in front of Harrison and hung in the air, getting bigger and bigger.
"Jump through!" Killer Frost called out to him when she faced Zoom.
"Come with me!" he tried to convince her.
"There's no redemption for me anymore! I don't want to be saved!" she called to him when charging Zoom. She didn't even manage to use her powers. He had the advantage while she was being distracted with saving the man she would always love. It happened before she tried to freeze her opponent and she made the mistake of looking back at Harrison one last time. "My Harrison is waiting for me," she told him and Zoom's fist pierced her body just then, crushing her heart, killing her on the spot.
The sight of her inert form falling to the floor was the last thing Wells saw before making the jump, the breech closing barely inches from Zoom, eventually cutting his way in and causing him to scream in rage.
AN: So, what do you guys think of this version? As soon as the idea popped into my head I couldn't let it go. It seemed so romantic to me that Caitlin and Harrison would always find each other and would always be the planets -crossed lovers. Also, happy birthday to me!