Author's Note: Heyyyyy MERRY CHRISTMAS! My gift to all of you is actually, um, updating… after a reaaaaally long time….
I'm so so sorry. But I did warn you this would be the case. There's a reason SS7 is going to be the last in this series.
It was three in the morning when Caitlin shot upright in bed- or, rather, the gurney that she and Barry had fallen asleep in. Her headache from the past week had escalated, becoming absolutely blinding with pain. Pressing her hands to her head, Caitlin half-fell out of the gurney and stumbled towards a sink, desperate to get herself some water.
Before she could make it, she crumpled to her knees. It felt like her head was splitting in two, pain radiating all the way down to her spine until she thought she might scream, until she thought she might throw up, until-
Until it was suddenly gone.
Caitlin propped herself up on the floor, her panting breaths sounding twice as loud as normal. She slowly lifted her head and let out a shriek as she came face to face with… herself.
"Caitlin?"
Caitlin twisted on the floor, gaze shooting to Barry, who'd jolted out of the gurney at the sound of her alarm. His eyes were wide, locked on something beyond her shoulder, and Caitlin turned back.
"Ho. Ly. Toleeto," the face looking back at her whispered. The face that looked exactly like her own, but paler, blue-eyed, blond haired.
The face of Frost.
Flash!
"You- what- I-" Cisco spluttered, looking between Caitlin and Frost, because he now could look between Caitlin and Frost, because they were now in separate bodies. "This- you-"
"Told you he'd freak," Frost snickered.
Caitlin exchanged frazzled glances with Barry. After her intense experience on the floor of her lab, she'd immediately dragged Frost off for test after test. They had, at least, managed to come to some sort of a conclusion of what had happened, and they'd gathered the Team into the STAR Labs lounge to explain.
"So," Frost began, putting out mugs of coffee for everyone. "You remember when Mirror Monarch blasted me with her gun?"
"Mhm," Cisco squeaked.
"Ever since that blast we've had these crazy headaches. Last night, everything gets fuzzy-"
"Fuzzy?" Caitlin squawked. "I felt like my head was splitting in two."
"Yeah, yeah." Frost waved her off. "But then all the pain just… vanished. Everything was fine. But there's two of us."
She grinned eagerly, eyes flitting between the varying reactions of the Team. Cisco still looked shook. Iris nodded slowly, eyes bugging out of her head. There was a very long silence.
"Uh, Eva's mirror gauntlet contained a reflective mirror chip," Caitlin spoke up, deciding the explanation needed to be a bit furthered. "I think it forced Frost's cryogenes to rapidly replicate and create a whole new form so that she could survive."
She locked eyes with Barry, with whom she hadn't gotten any time to actually talk all this over with. He was eyeing her with concern and some bewilderment and she offered him a weak smile.
"So, can you still hear each other's thoughts?" he asked.
"Nope," Frost hummed. "Just sweet, sweet silence. And I got to keep my powers, Caity got to keep the doctor stuff and science know-how, which is fine by me."
"You always have felt like two different people," Cisco admitted. "Now you just have two different… bodies."
"But don't worry," Caitlin spoke up. "I'm gonna figure out a way to get us back together as quickly as possible because I'm afraid that the longer we wait, the harder it'll be."
She offered Frost a smile, but found the ice queen studiously inspecting her nails. "I mean, shouldn't we be focused on that berserker who killed Abra Kadabra instead?" she asked with a casual shrug.
"Frost has a point!" Cisco agreed. "Where are we with Fuerza?"
The rest of the group looked at him, confused.
"Fuerza," Cisco repeated, blinking. "Spanish. For strength. Look, She-Hulk was taken, okay?"
"Well, there's still no sign of her," Barry said. "But while Cait was running tests on this whole… thing, I was able to find a way to track her."
"Good," Cisco huffed. "Because if Fuerza can survive an antimatter blast, that kind of puts her on a whole other level of baddie. Like a… wet-your-pants level."
As if overhearing the word 'baddie', the STAR Labs alarm system started blaring. Cisco pulled out his phone. "Satellites detected an isotopic signature."
"That's Fuerza," Barry realized, eyes going wide. "Where's she headed?"
"Here," Cisco breathed. "Right now."
On cue, lightning exploded behind them. Barry swung around, flinching away as blue, yellow and red lightning bolts sizzled in the air. "What's the deal with all this thunder and lightning; is Fuerza a speedster, too?" Frost demanded.
Amidst all the lightning bolts, there was a ball of electricity at the top of the ceiling. Caitlin squinted, realizing it was forming a… human. "Who is that?'" she murmured, just as the person became fully formed and fell from the ceiling. Barry raced forward, catching her just before she hit the ground.
The woman in his arms was panting heavily, breaths all but wheezing out of her. Her eyes were half-closed and there was blood on her face, but she was absolutely recognizable to anyone in the room as Nora Allen.
Flash!
So… not Nora Allen. Not Barry's mother, anyway. Instead, it was the Speed Force, in the form that the Speed Force had the tendency to take.
Caitlin got Nora set up in a gurney and hooked up to some machines before she joined her friends in the Cortex. "I just got the Speed Force restarted, and now this," Barry sighed, looking at the monitors grimly.
"And what about your speed?" Caitlin queried. "Has it been affected?"
"No," Barry said, sending her a relieved half-smile. "At least not yet. I'm still trying to figure out how all of this is even possible."
"I have no idea; I've never seen biometrics like this." Caitlin fiddled with her tablet. Her mind wasn't nearly clear enough for this kind of new-field science. Every second she spent on Nora was a second she wasn't spending on getting her and Frost put back together, and she could feel her own stress level rising. Besides that, she'd had to send baby Nora to Joe and Cecile's again, and she was starting to feel somewhat guilty about it. She'd had quite few weeks where nearly all of her time was devoted to her baby, and now she felt like the most neglectful mom in the world.
"I need to figure out a way to accurately monitor her recover," Caitlin murmured, still staring blankly at her table.
Barry took off and appeared a moment later. "She's wearing my Speed Force gauge now," he said. "Right now it's red. If it changes, hopefully that'll tell us that her power levels are recharging."
"And if that's the case, maybe she entered a comatose state to help heal herself," Caitlin mused. "Good thinking, Barry."
"And when she recovers, she can tell us who did this to her," Iris finished, before correcting herself with a hurried, "it."
Barry's gaze was locked on one of the monitors. "Maybe it's the same thing that can rip through an antimatter bomb like it's tissue paper," he said slowly, before spinning back to his Team. "Those are residual geothermic isotopes; they're all over her."
"You think Fuerza did this?" Cisco asked incredulously. "Ohh that must have been one heck of a fight."
Barry gritted his teeth. "Not as big as the fight we're gonna take to Fuerza."
Flash!
Caitlin took a pause on monitoring the Speed Force to find Barry rewatching the video of himself getting crushed by Fuerza, not for the first time.
"You need to stop looking at that," she said quietly, reaching over him and closing the computer lid so the video stopped playing.
Barry let out a sigh and nodded absently rubbing the bottom half of his face. The two of them stared through the viewing window at the Speed Force's unconscious form.
"So, uh… we haven't really gotten a chance to talk," Barry mentioned, "about the whole… splitting thing."
"Don't worry; we've already figured out a fix," Caitlin told him immediately. "Cisco's rebooting the Firestorm matrix as we speak."
"So you… want to get put back together?"
Caitlin frowned, surprised. "Of course I do," she said with a faint laugh. "Frost and I- we're meant to be two halves of a whole."
"Does she want to be put back together, though?" Barry pressed. "She's not exactly you, but you make the same expressions, and she didn't look super pleased about the idea back when we were in the Lounge. And I just… I think about all the conversations we've had about how she can never fully live her own life. Even from the romantic aspect, I mean… you're married, and she's never even had a boyfriend. This would give her the chance to finally find her own life."
Caitlin blinked at him, surprised. She hadn't thought about any of this, and she was a little thrown that Barry had. Then again, he'd had to virtually share his wife's body with two women for multiple years. Maybe he was as tired of that as Frost possibly was.
Before the conversation could continue, Barry's phone buzzed. "There's a robbery downtown," he reported, wincing slightly.
"Go," Caitlin told him, pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. She glanced at Nora. "I'll keep an eye on her."
Barry flashed away.
When he arrived at the scene, it was to find two armored car drivers absolutely freaking out over… nothing. He turned towards them confusedly, only to find them screaming and scrambling away.
"Where are you-?"
"Oh, you gonna go so soon?"
Barry spun around at the sound of an oddly echoey voice. Walking towards him in a strange glitchy way was a humanoid figure wearing a bright purple mask. Barry flashed forward and slapped on the meta cuffs, but the figure just looked down at them and chuckled.
"Let me get this straight," Barry said, "you made those guards hallucinate some kind of Godzilla rip-off that almost squashed them?"
"Well, I suppose that is an accurate if not immensely reductive assessment of the situation," the figure replied placidly. "So yes. I scared them. And that was after showing them a vision of a dozen bystanders getting eaten alive by a very hungry kaiju. It's horrifying when you think it's your turn."
Barry raised an eyebrow. "Okay, um… look. Whoever you are, I really don't have time for this."
"My, my," the malefactor hummed. "How rude. And from a superhero. Is that actually allowed?"
Barry blew out an incredulous breath. "Okay… I apologize for the rudeness, but I hope you enjoy your stay in Iron Heights, 'cause I really do have bigger problems today."
"Not yet," the masked man said. "But you're about to."
His eyes glowed a dazzling, dizzying purple. The meta cuffs soon matched the color and crumbled off of his wrists.
"Scared yet? You will be."
Barry opened his eyes into greyscale world that looked like it had been drawn over with a purple highlighter. He was inside the Speed Lab, right at the foot of the ramp. Before he could get his bearings he was thrown back by a form moving at super speed. When it came to a standstill, Barry found himself looking up at the vibrating form of the Reverse Flash.
"You can't stop me, Flash," Thawn growled, voice modulating horrifically. "And you never will."
"No, I'm not afraid of you anymore," Barry ground out, rising slowly to his feet. "This is just a hallucination. Which means you can't hurt me!"
"Time to repent," Thawn said simply, and sped forward.
He lashed out at Barry's calves and then punched him in the gut, sending the scarlet speedster pinwheeling through the air. Barry hit the ground hard and crashed into a table. Sparks exploded around him and he stared up at the ceiling numbly.
He was wrong. Thawn could hurt him.
Barry stumbled to his feet and turned back to his worst nemesis, only to find him gone. White lightning flashed in his periphery and he made to turn, only for excruciating pain to slice through his chest. The spear was pulled out almost as quickly as it had been injected, and Barry staggered around to see Savitar staring back at him. "You lose, Barry," Savitar growled, and Barry crumpled to the ground.
As his head hit the linoleum, it suddenly turned to concrete. Barry groaned, colors flooding his vision. He was no longer in his hallucination…
But there was still a bloody red hole in his chest.
Flash!
"Your vitals were spiking, but they seem to have stabilized," Caitlin reported, reading off of her tablet.
Barry, sitting on a gurney with his shirt off, carefully removed the bandage she'd given him. The hole in his chest had vanished, thanks to his speed healing. The fear that it had been there at all, though… that still remained.
"What happened out there?" Caitlin went on, reaching out and brushing her fingers against the smooth, uncut skin on Barry's chest.
"I-" Barry shook his head, wanting to curl into her arms and hide for awhile. "I was hallucinating. Thawn, Savitar… they were trying to kill me. It was like-"
"Like a nightmare come to life?"
Caitlin, Barry, and Cisco, who was with them in the med lab, turned to see Cecile walk into the room.
Barry's eyebrows furrows. "Yeah," he said uncertainly, grabbing a nearby STAR Labs t-shirt and pulling it over his head as he got to his feet. "Like the guards in the truck. Wait, like you, and your nightmare last night."
Cecile nodded, lips pursing. "Yeah," she murmured. "Someone is… broadcasting fear into their victims and I'm tuning into it like an antenna."
"Fear I get," Cisco put in. "Hallucinations can make you freak out, but not bleed out."
"Whoever's doing this must be inciting extreme psychosomatic reactions," Caitlin theorized anxiously. "Barry's mind literally tricked his body into hurting itself."
"So… if you die in the hallucination… Cecile began.
"Then you die in real life."
"Well, he carried traces of the same isotopes that we linked to Fuerza," Barry pressed on. "That means we can track him too, right?"
Cisco nodded. "And it means that Fuerza and Psych must be connected somehow."
Caitlin wrinkled her nose. " 'Psych'?"
"He's a psychic psychopath causing psychosomatic symptoms," Cisco shrugged. "I mean, the guy practically named himself."
"He's only dangerous because he got inside my head," Barry said, his eyebrows still furrowed with discontent. "Cisco, do we still have the mental dampeners we used to fight Grodd? We could repurpose them to try and repel Psych's hallucinations. If we can keep Psych out of our heads, he can't hurt us."
Cisco and Caitlin nodded their agreement, confirming they were up for the task, then turned to leave the lab.
Flash!
"Frost!" Caitlin cried, storming into the lounge to find Frost and Cisco sitting on the couch. "The Firestorm Matrix has been sabotaged, only someone tried to make it look like it'd short-circuited. I ran the adaptor through an infrared scanner and guess what the temperature was? Negative 162 degrees."
Frost was glaring down at her hands sullenly. "Fine, I broke your stupid, precious Matrix," she grumbled.
"Why? Why would you do that to us?" Caitlin demanded furiously, ignoring Cisco as he tried to carefully scoot away from the target point of her wrath. "It'll be weeks before we can even consider another fusion attempt!"
"Because, maybe I don't want to recombine!"
Caitlin stared at Frost in horror. Barry had been right. "Why not?" she asked blankly, feeling her eyes sting.
"Well I- I-" Frost stumbled over her words, then stopped.
Caitlin shook her head, hurt lacing her chest. "Call me when you figure it out," she said stonily, and strode out of the Lounge.
Cisco cleared his throat awkwardly, but he didn't have a chance to try to repair the situation (or make it worse), before an alarm was blaring overhead. The satellites had picked up Psych's isotopic signature downtown at the Cleary Capital offices, and soon Barry, Cisco and Frost were standing in the building, ready to fight.
"Oh, it's you again," Psych grumped, turning his masked face toward the heroes. "Well, that's disappointing."
"We're not gonna let you hurt any more people," Barry said confidently, fists clenching. Perhaps he should have been more nervous around a man who'd made him so terrified he'd bled from the chest, but he, Cisco and Frost were all wearing the mental dampeners. They would be fine.
"Oh, I haven't hurt anyone today," Psych disclaimed. "I have freed them from a system that brings fortune to the fortunate and dooms the rest. Pretty poetic, don'tcha thing?"
Cisco squinted behind his glasses. "Wha-? What is this guys deal?"
"I think he's overcompensating," Frost replied, smirking.
"I don't like your friends, Flash," Psych snipped. "Also, if you think your flimsy dampeners can stop me… perhaps you all could use some freedom too."
The dark hollows of the eye sockets in his mask glowed magenta. Barry turned, horrified, to see Cisco and Frost's irises turn the same shade. Frost stumbled into a nearby wall. "How could she?" she whispered, over and over, while Cisco planted his hands on his knees, panic-stricken.
Barry looked back to Psych and gritted his teeth before rushing forward. He began to run in fast circles, stray papers flapping around him, until he had generated enough electricity to stop and throw a lightning bolt at Psych.
Psych held out a hand and calmly caught the lightning bolt. The yellow tendrils of electricity spiraled around his mask, interlocking over his face, before vanishing entirely. Barry stared at him in horror.
"Someone's back for seconds," Psych snarked.
"You already showed me my greatest fear," Barry huffed. "It can't scare me twice."
"Oh, Flash…" Psych sighed. "Those Big Bads aren't your greatest fear. This is."
Psych's face began to vibrate. Barry twisted his head away, shutting his eyes, trying to resist the power the meta exuded. But it was no use, and moment later he was opening his eyes into a desaturated, haunting version of the CCPD.
Not just haunting. Destroyed. Sparks flew from dangling wires and large chunks of stone and plaster were scattered across the floor. Papers were strewn everywhere, computer monitors and swivel chairs overturned. Barry took a slow step into the vision as the lights flickered horribly. On the ground throughout the lobby of the CCPD lay the dead bodies of his Team. Cisco, Iris, Frost…
And Caitlin, legs bent at an awful angle, her fingertips just brushing the body of a baby girl.
"Nora," Barry whimpered, eyes welling. It no longer mattered that the world around him was grey and purple. This was real. This felt real.
Thankfully, Barry didn't have to break himself out of his vision. A few minutes after Psych vanished from the Cleary Capital offices, his hold on Frost, Cisco and Barry faded away. They made their way back to STAR Labs, and Frost immediately vanished down a corridor. Cisco and Barry trudged to the Cortex to find Caitlin waiting there anxiously.
"Are you two all right?" she asked, reaching out and putting her hands on their biceps.
Cisco, looking very rattled, shook his head. "No," he said honestly. "No, I'm not."
Caitlin bit her lip and nodded, glancing over at Barry. "I'll be fine," he said shortly, moving into the Cortex.
Now that Psych had overpowered their mental dampening cuffs, they were virtually defenseless against him. Besides that, they had no way to anticipate his next move. Despite the fact that he'd broken into a stock market facility, he wasn't after money. Psych had an axe to grind with the system, and he wanted chaos.
"What exactly did he make you guys see?" Caitlin asked hesitantly as Barry and Cisco stood with her and Cecile in the Cortex, discussing their next move. Both Cisco and Barry were fidgeting anxiously, clearly unsettled by whatever vision Psych had forced into their brains.
Cisco hesitated, then managed a, "Just… Kamilla. In danger. What about you, what did you see?"
Barry shook his head, one fist pressed to his upper lip as he paced. "It doesn't matter," he muttered.
"What if it does?" Cisco pressed. "What if there's like- a clue or something in what you saw-"
"There isn't," Barry interrupted harshly, changing directions.
"You don't know that!" Cisco cried, just as agitated. "Look, you're gonna have to face him again, eventually."
"Well what if I can't, all right?" Barry thrashed. "What if he's too powerful and I can't stop him?"
"Barry," Caitlin broke in gently. "No one said-"
"You didn't have to!" Barry interrupted. "Maybe Psych's gonna destroy this whole city and everyone in it, and there's nothing I can do about it."
He turned to go, to storm off, to stride away, but Caitlin grabbed at his arm. "Barry, just stop for a moment," she murmured, and dragged him into a hug. Everyone was doing so much running away and she was tired of it. "Just stop and take a breath. You may have seen your worst nightmare, but that's all it is: a nightmare. You woke up from it because it's not real. And if it's not real, that means there's still something we can do to make sure it stays that way. But we need you here. We need all of our brains together if we're going to stop this. Okay?"
Barry pulled back, not meeting her eyes. "Okay," he agreed reluctantly, and moved back into the Cortex.
Satisfied, Caitlin nodded. "So where do we start?"
Flash!
Before long, Psych's isotopic signature had expanded so fast and so broadly that it showed up on Cisco's radar. By that point, though, Team Flash had a plan.
"If Cecile could send her own fear into Top, she should theoretically be able to do it on a bigger scale," Caitlin explained as she, Cisco and Cecile stood in the Speed Lab, Barry already racing through the city at top speed. "But, to raise our odds even more, we'll have her use this."
She gestured to the Thinker's Chair, which they'd brought out of somewhere deep in storage for the occasion. Barry's plan to use Cecile's powers was a little harebrained, a little risky, but it was the only idea they had and there was a sizable chance that it could work.
That didn't mean it was any easier to convince Cecile. She'd come around with a bit of prodding but still looked incredibly resistant as she stepped up into the Thinker's Chair.
"You good?" Cisco asked as Caitlin readied her tablet.
"No!" Cecile cried. "Nope! Not even close to good. I am sittingin a death machine. What if this thing fries my brain? W-w-what if this chair turns me evil like it did Top? What about that?"
Caitlin glanced up. "As a medical professional, I promise that you will be okay." She drifted away, a frown creasing her forehead. "Probably."
"Flash, where you at?" Cisco called into the coms.
"I'm approaching Psych's radius!"
"Okay," Cecile huffed, narrowing her eyes. She gave Caitlin and Cisco a slight nod. "Do it."
Caitlin powered up the chair.
As Cecile began to get a feel for all of the emotions flooding in to her from every part of the city, Barry neared the wall of Psych's energy. He gritted his teeth and ran straight for it, expecting to pass through to the other side… but instead he bounced off and tumbled across the pavement.
Lightning flickered in his vision and all of a sudden Barry was back in the grey and purple world of the destroyed CCPD.
He heard distant voices and strained to understand them, but before he could a the dead forms of his friends and family, crushed under rubble, flooded his vision.
"This isn't real," Barry muttered, rising slowly to his feet. "It's not real."
He studiously avoided looking at the bodies of Caitlin and Nora.
"It's not real. It's not real."
The lights flashed. Barry shut his eyes briefly, concentrating on what he knew to be reality. When he opened them, there stood Caitlin in front of him, grey skinned and black-eyed. Barry flinched at the jump scare.
"You got us all killed, Barry," Caitlin said sadly.
Slowly, the other dead bodies began to lift themselves up, rising from the rubble with eyes as black as the Blood Brothers that had attacked the city last year.
"I trusted you," Caitlin went on accusingly. "Why didn't you save me? When you let me die, you killed our baby, too."
Barry gritted his teeth, breath coming in pants as he fought agains the vision. Everything felt so real. His pain felt so real.
Back inside the Speed Lab, Cecile was shaking her head. "Barry can't hear us," she whispered tearfully. "He's caught inside his nightmare."
Cisco shook his head, exchanging fearful glances with Caitlin. "I'm diverting all satellite power to the coms," he said, rushing over to a different screen. "Caitlin-"
"Coming," Caitlin said immediately, hurrying down the steps to the computer. "Barry, listen to me. You have to fight this."
"Cait- I don't know if I can," Barry gasped out.
"Yes, you can!" Caitlin cried, relieved her voice had made it through to him. "You know why you can? Because you're strong enough. Everyone here believes in you. This whole city believes in you- and it needs you, Barry. We all need you. We need you to stop Psych and we need you to come home. I need you to come home. We can't do this without you."
Inside his nightmare, Barry shut his eyes. The empty faces of his friends still stared through him, throwing out hateful, blameful phrases. Barry shook his head. His real friends, his family, would never do that, even undead.
Barry opened his eyes.
Color.
He shot off like a rocket, straight through Psych's field.
The fight was over in minutes.
Flash!
After things calmed down, Caitlin found Frost in the lounge.
"We need to talk," she said, trying to sound as gentle as possible as she sat down beside her… Inner demon? Other self? Sister?
"I know," Frost mumbled. "I get why you're mad, Caity, but-"
"I'm not mad," Caitlin broke in. "I was, at first, but now I just want to understand. Frost, why don't you want to recombine with me?"
"I want my own life, Caity," Frost said simply. "You got to have your own life for years, and I want that chance. I'm sick of having to share. Share your house, your friends, your career, your husband, your daughter… I wouldn't change the life we've built for anything but those were still all your choices, and I want to make some of my own now."
Still feeling a bit stung, Caitlin nodded and looked down at her hands.
"But more than that?" Frost went on, putting a hand on top of hers. "I don't want want to lose you. That is what I saw in my fear vision, Caity. It was a life without you. So if- if not being a part of the same body means that I'll lose you then- then we can go back to the way things were, okay? We can recombine."
"No, no!" Caitlin cried. "Frost, you're never going to lose me, not as long as you still want me in your life. I see where you're coming from now, okay? You're right: no matter how much autonomy I think I'm giving you, it's never going to equate to the life I get to lead."
She nodded, steeling herself. "So let's try this. You and me… separated."
Frost nodded, eyes swimming as she dove in for a hug. "Thank you."
The hug was interrupted by a frantic paging from Cisco. "Caitlin!" he cried over the intercom. "Come to the Cortex, quick. It's Barry."
Caitlin shot to her feet and she and Frost took off running for the Cortex. When they arrived, Barry was doubled over in pain, gripping his head.
"Is it Psych?" Caitlin demanded, rushing over and putting a hand on his back.
"No, no-" Barry gasped out. "Ahhh…. this is something else."
"These are the same readings that came off of Nora," Cisco said, staring at his tablet.
Barry floundered with an arm and caught onto the metal bar of the desk. Sparks flew everywhere and the Team shielded their faces but Barry managed to pull himself to his feet. "I need to heal myself," he rasped. "Open the cryopod."
Caitlin nodded, dread bubbling. "It'll put you into a coma," she warned Barry, though she was already reaching for the controls.
"It's the only way," Barry said.
They exchanged long looks. Then Caitlin opened the pod and Barry sped inside.
Author's Note: Man this chapter gives me some deep nostalgia for the days of fighting Grodd's mental control with speeches over the coms… supportive wifey Caitlin hehe :))