Okay.
There is no way for me to apologize that will be enough. I took about four (five?) months to come out with this chapter. And I am so, so, so sorry about that. Writer's block is a serious problem for me. I also suffer from the fear that nothing I write is good enough, so what you read has normally been rewritten about 3 to 5 times because I'm always anxious that it sucks. I'm sorry that this negatively affects my update schedule, but there's not really a ton I can do about it.
I also kinda lost interest in the Flash fandom for a while; over the summer I did a lot of laying around and watching TV, and my attention got diverted elsewhere. But now with the new season, I think I'll feel a ton more engaged and excited with the show- and this fanfic!
Thank you to everyone who reviewed, favorited, followed, even just read in between the last update and now. Thank you so much.
Just to let you know, I rewrote the last chapter- or at least, some of it -so you should check that out for this one to make sense (I changed the ending of the last chapter).
Allons-y!
Previously on Crescendo:
"You look like her. You look a lot like her."
Olivia, still frozen in shock, struggled to get the words out of her mouth. "Wh-who do I look l-like?" she stuttered.
The little girl laughed. "That's a silly question. My mommy, of course." The look in the girl's eyes changed from slightly deranged to hopeful in a second. "Are you… are you my mommy?"
Olivia stilled. She could here Cisco and Caitlin whispering through her comm link, and she scrambled to find a way to respond.
"Play along." Caitlin finally suggested. "Maybe you can find out why she's doing this."
Olivia cleared her throat, opening her mouth to speak. "Yeah, it's me. Your mommy's here."
The little girl squealed in happiness, letting out a shriek of pure joy. "Mommy! My mommy. You came back!" She jumped off of Olivia and tugged her up, making her stand, before twirling her around in a circle. She then encircled her in a sudden hug, squeezing her tightly. "I thought they hurt you, Mommy. They took you away and you never came back. And he said you were gone… dead… But you're not, are you Mommy?" the little girl looked up at her, smiling. "You got away."
Olivia tentatively hugged the girl back, her stomach doing flips out of nervousness. "Yeah… Mommy got away… she escaped."
The little girl sighed in relief and let go. "We can play together again, Mommy! We'll always be together now. Forever." She grinned. "I love you, Mommy."
Olivia attempted to smile. "Love you too, baby."
"Try to get her to tell you what happened, why she's after Clarence Miller." Cisco suggested.
Olivia wracked her brain, trying to think of a way to get the kid to talk, without making her hostile again. "Hey, sweetie," she started tentatively.
The little girl looked up at her, smiling sweetly. "Yes, Mommy?"
Olivia cleared her throat. "Mommy hit her head… she can't remember what happened to her. Can you tell me how I got taken away?"
The little girl's eyebrows furrowed in confusion, but she nodded. "After Daddy… went away… you cried a lot… and you said that we didn't have very m-much money… so you went to work as a… a… hu-human tester at Kord Ent-entrepise. Entapreese? I-it's hard to say, Mommy, and you wouldn't tell me what it is." she buried her face in Olivia's top, hugging her tightly again.
"That's okay, sweetie. Can you tell me what happened next?" Olivia whispered, mind racing.
The little girl hiccupped and continued. "Y-you didn't play with me as much b-because you were working." Letting out a sob, she took a deep breath. "Th-then one day you went away… and you d-didn't come back. There was just that man… he kept saying "she's gone"... "she's gone"... over and over and over…"
Olivia, swallowing thickly, pushed the girl away slightly and brushed her hair out of her face. Resting her hands on the kid's shoulders, she looked her straight in the eye. "It's okay. I'm… I'm never going away again."
The little girl's face broke out into a huge smile, clearly relieved at this reassurance. Once again, she hugged Olivia tightly. Pulling away for a second, she grinned up at her.
"Can we play our special game together, Mommy? Just like we did before you got taken away!"
Olivia froze. "Uhh… sure honey! What was it again?"
The girl frowned. "You remember, Mommy. You promised you would always remember to play it with me."
"A treasure hunt?" Cisco suggested. "Playing house?"
"Think of something quick, Olivia! You don't want her to get suspicious, she's dangerous; you saw what she did to those scientists."
Olivia wracked her brain frantically for games she played as a kid. "Uhh… right, sorry! Let's play… hide-and-seek!"
The girl's eyes narrowed and she growled. "That's. Not. Our. Special. Game."
"A-are you sure? Because I think I remember—" Olivia stumbled backwards, trying to get away from the advancing girl.
"You're not my mommy!" she screeched, preparing to throw her hands forward and probably kill Olivia.
Panicking, Crescendo fumbled with her escrima sticks, quickly lunging forwards and striking the girl at her right collarbone. As she did, her hand slipped and something on the stick clicked. When it came in contact with the little girl's skin, it let out a jolt of electricity that sent her into convulsions before she collapsed to the floor, limp.
"Olivia? What's going on? Did she hurt you?" Caitlin's anxious voice echoed through the comlink.
Taking a deep breath, Olivia held out the still-sparking escrima sticks as far away as possible from herself. "Cisco… Why did you feel it not important to tell me that my escrima sticks are equipped with an electrical charge?!"
I know this is super short, but I just had to post something. This is pretty much the only part of what I've written for this chapter that is actually fit for human eyes, so I thought that something was better than nothing.
I hope you can bear with my very sporadic updates and frequent writer's block! Let me know in a review if you enjoyed this, as well as the changes I made in the last chapter. ^-^ I can't make any promises for when I'll update next, but here's hoping that it'll be soon!